Jun 21 1982
From The Space Library
NASA announced signing of agreements with Telesat Canada for launch of five Anik Communications satellites, four on the Shuttle and one on a Delta. The launches would cost Canada's domestic satellite communications corporation about $75 million; the spacecraft would be worth about $130 million. The third-and fourth-generation Anik C and Anik D communications satellites would be the backbone of Canada's system until the 1990s, carrying new pay-television, voice, video, and data links, private business networks, and other special services. First of the D series would be launched in August from KSC; the next Telesat launch would be an Anik C, one of two communications satellites scheduled for the Shuttle's fifth flight and first commercial mission. (NASA Release 82-101)
June 21-23: NASA Administrator James M. Beggs and former astronaut Sen. John Glenn (D-Ohio) were speakers at the 18th National Joint Propulsion Conference in Cleveland, sponsored by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Society of Automotive Engineers, and American Society of Mechanical Engineers. In attendance were more than 800 technical professionals and key managers representing worldwide organizations in research and development, manufacture, and use of propulsion systems for aircraft and space, surface, and marine vehicles. Glenn, keynote speaker, received an award commemorating the 20th anniversary of his orbital flight. Representatives of European and Asian firms presented papers, and a group from the People's Republic of China attended.
Beggs, luncheon speaker, said that foreign competition in high-tech research required a new partnership between government and industry. Although NASA-industry cooperation over the past 25 years was a major factor in U.S. world leadership, many foreign firms had been able, with "far-sighted planning [and] government-industry cooperation," to move from idea to manufacture to delivery in half the time the United States needed.
The world edge once enjoyed by the United States in many high-tech areas has "been eroded," he said: France was ahead in nuclear power; West Germany, in chemicals; Japan, in optics and metallurgy. "The Japanese have managed to capture some 70% of the American market for the 64K random-access memory, which can store 64,000 information units." The Harvard Business Review had even suggested that U.S. firms look abroad-even to Iron Curtain countries-to tap foreign technology. What was needed, Beggs said, was a more balanced cooperation between government and industry, geared to investment in projects leading to speedy adoption of new technologies.
"No one ever ran a race by standing still. And we are in a race, a dead serious one. The stakes are high. They include not only our own economic security but the economic security of the Free World," he concluded. (LeRC Releases 82-30, 82-34)
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