Jul 19 1973
From The Space Library
NASA'S X-24B lifting body [see July 5-6], flown by NASA test pilot John A. Manke, successfully completed its first captive flight from Flight Research Center, attached to a B-52 aircraft. Erratic B-52 power resulted in unintelligible telemetry traces and forced a switch to X-24B internal power. The telemetry cleared and excellent traces were returned. X-24B performance was adjudged satisfactory but the scheduled glider flight was postponed until July 24 to allow for battery recharge. The X-24B had been built around the existing basic structure and subsystems of the X-24A, which, like other lifting bodies, had been designed for reentry from space flight. But the X-24B had a new double-delta shape with small blended wings and three vertical tails-parts of a configuration representing a forerunner of future aircraft capable of hypersonic (above mach 5) flight. Like its lifting-body predecessors, the X-24B would be air-launched by a B-52 aircraft from 12 000-m (40 000-ft). Subsequent flights would use the XLR-11 rocket engine to increase speed and altitude performance in the joint NASA-USAF pro-gram at Flight Research Center. (NASA prog off; NASA Release 73-180)
Samples from three materials-processing experiments performed during the Skylab 2 mission (manning the Orbital Workshop May 25 to June 22) had been turned over to the principal investigators at Marshall Space Flight Center, MSFC announced. The small metallic spheres and welding specimens represented the first effort to obtain basic engineering and scientific data for materials processing in space. The samples would be analyzed and the results compared with similar data from earth-processed samples to learn how to fabricate and repair structures in space, develop unique or improved materials for use on the earth, and provide new knowledge of material properties and performance. (MSFC Release 73-96)
President Nixon submitted to the Senate the nomination of Apollo 8 Astronaut William A. Anders, Executive Secretary of the National Aeronautics and Space Council 1969-1973, to be a Commissioner of the Atomic Energy Commission for the term expiring June 30, 1978. The nomination was confirmed Aug. 2. Anders would succeed James T. Ramey, whose term had expired. (PD, 7/23/73, 914, 920; CR, 8/2/73, D960)
U.S. heart specialist Dr. Paul Dudley White sent the first telegram via satellite between the U.S. and the People's Republic of China, to inaugurate direct communications between Peking's General Administration of Telecommunications and the New York headquarters of Western Union International Inc. Dr. White, one of the first U.S. physicians to visit the PRC in 1972, sent greetings from U.S. physicians to their col-leagues in China, via Intelsat-IV F-4 (launched Jan. 22, 1972) . (NYT, 7/20/73, 27; ComSatCorp No)
A Tass photo published by the New York Times showed Soviet Apollo -Soyuz Test Project Cosmonauts Valery N. Kubasov and Aleksey A. Leonov practicing moving from a Soyuz spacecraft in the water to a rescue raft. The site of the training was not identified. (NYT, 7/19/73, 1)
Aerospatiale President Henri Ziegler told a Paris news conference that the Concorde Anglo-French supersonic transport aircraft would visit the U.S. for the first time in September for the opening of the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport in Texas. The Concorde was also scheduled to stop at Dulles International Airport in Chantilly, Va., for a demonstration on its return from Caracas, Venezuela, in September. (B Sun, 7/20/73, A5)
The award of a $7 125 497 firm-fixed-price contract to Litton Systems, Inc., for avionics for the F-4 jet fighter aircraft was announced by the Air Force. (non Release 360-73)
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