Jun 27 1975
From The Space Library
The European Space Agency announced the appointment of Hans Hinterman (Switzerland) as director of the European Space Research and Technology Center (ESTEC), effective in September. Hinterman would replace Ove Hammarstrom who was leaving to accept a post in industry. Hinterman was director of research of the Laboratoire Suisse de Recherche Horlogeres in Switzerland. (ESA Release, 27 June 75)
Most of the 40 participants at a space-food exhibition banquet in Zvezdny Gorodok, U.S.S.R., found the meal tasty but not very filling, the Washington Post reported. Presiding over the affair, cosmonaut Aleksei A. Leonov, Soviet commander for the scheduled July Apollo Soyuz Test Project, said that after the third day of spaceflight, when an astronaut's appetite improved, he could consume four meals a day. The banquet menu included fruit juices, coffee, borsch, cabbage soup, bite-sized bread, and a compote of cucumber, chicken necks, and kidney.
During the dinner Leonov revealed that the Soyuz 18 cosmonauts Pyotr Klimuk and Vitaly Sevastyanov, launched 24 May and in orbit aboard the Salyut 4 space station, would continue in orbit during the ASTP mission and would probably remain in orbit for another month. (Piper, W Post, 27 June 75, A2)
U.S. airlines carried more than 207 million passengers during 1974, an increase of 2.6% over 1973 and a new record, the Air Transport Association announced. In addition, U.S. lines carried 4.9 billion ton miles of freight, an increase of 3.2% over 1973. Total operating revenues in 1974 were $14.7 billion, up from $12.4 billion for 1973. Net profit rose by 41.9%, from $226.7 million in 1973 to $321.6 million in 1974. (ATA Release, 27 June 75) 28 June: When commercial communications via satellite began with the 6 April 1965 launch of Early Bird 1, the U.S. was expected to be the prime user of the new global communications system, a New York Times article said. Experts assumed the system would be used chiefly for occasional live events such as sports, state affairs, space missions, etc. However, these uses had actually accounted for only a fifth of transglobal comsat TV volume. A number of poor and developing countries had come to depend heavily on the International Telecommunications Satellite Organization's seven INTELSAT comsats. Although major events were still the subject of much global TV traffic, the most extensive and consistent use of commercial comsats was for daily news.
News packages were sent from one country to another. U.S. networks used almost daily satellite news reports from correspondents in various parts of the world. Spain and Mexico were linked full time by satellite. Madrid also transmitted 15 min of daily news to Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Venezuela. When events warranted, these countries transmitted news to Spanish TV. France transmitted daily news to Israel, Iran, Jordan, and Martinique as well as several North African countries. News from London was transmitted daily to Australia.
The NYT quoted officials of Communications Satellite Corp., U.S. manager of the INTELSAT system, as saying that in 1965 the comsats carried about six TV transmissions a month for a total of less than 6 hours of programming; in 1975, the INTELSAT system was handling 400 transmissions a month, more than 200 hrs of programming not including the 200 hrs a month carried on the Spain-Mexico channel. (Brown, NYT, 28 June 75, 43)
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