Mar 17 1978
From The Space Library
Space News for this day. (1MB PDF)
NASA announced it had selected four 2-man crews to begin training for Space Shuttle orbital flights. Those chosen were John Young, commander, with Robert Crippen, pilot; Joe H. Engle, commander, with Richard Truly, pilot; Fred Haise, commander, with Jack Lousma, pilot; and Vance Brand, commander, with Charles Gordon Fullerton, pilot. Young and Crippen would crew the first orbital flight test (OFT-1) scheduled for launch in spring 1979 from KSC, with Engle and Truly as backup.
NASA had planned 6 orbital flight tests increasing in complexity to check out the first U.S. reusable spacecraft. On the first 4 flights, the 75-ton orbiter would make an unpowered landing on a dry lakebed at DFRC; thereafter, it would return to a specially constructed runway at the KSC launch site. NASA had also considered an OFT mission to boost Skylab into a higher orbit; prime and backup crews to implement such a plan would be selected from those already named. (NASA Release 78-44; JSC Release 78-15; DFRC X-Press, Mar 24/78, 4; JSC Roundup, Mar 31/78, 1)
Pioneer Venus, scheduled for launch May 20, would carry a recently completed JPL instrument to obtain new weather information on Venus, JPL Universe reported. VORTEX (Venus orbiter radiometric temperature experiment), a $4.5 million co-effort of JPL and Oxford Univ., England, would collect close-up data on winds, cloud structures, water vapor, and temperatures of Venus. Using technologies developed for satellite monitoring of earth weather, VORTEX would report 3-dimensional measurements of the Venus atmosphere. The complex instrument, an 8-channel radiometer combining 4 different subexperiments (three separate radiometers and a spectrometer) would weigh only 12 lb, partly because of the special hybrid microelectronics used. Orbiting as close as 100km above the cloudtops, it could "see" weather conditions at 7 different levels or layers. For a full Venus year of 243 days, scientists would process VORTEX data into weather maps and infrared images and compare meteorological conditions on Venus with those on earth. (JPL Universe, Mar 17/78, 2)
NASA announced appointment of Neil Hutchinson, Charles Lewis, and Donald Puddy, all of JSC's Flight Operations Directorate, as flight directors at JSC for the first manned Shuttle-orbital flight, to plan and direct activities of the Mission Control Center during real-time Shuttle operations. They also would be responsible for integrating inputs from all elements of NASA, contractors, and the scientific communities. Hutchinson would manage all activities associated with the Shuttle-ascent phase; Lewis, the on-orbit phase; and Puddy, the orbiter reentry phase. All had served as flight directors during Apollo and Skylab missions. (JSC Release 78-16; JSC Roundup, Mar 31/78, 1)
KSC's Spaceport News noted the 20th anniversary of the launch of Vanguard 1, a satellite which, together with Explorer 1, launched 6wk earlier, "invoked a national sigh of relief." Project Vanguard had begun in July 1955 with a White House announcement that the U.S. would launch a satellite as the U.S. contribution to the International Geophysical Year. The first attempt to launch a Vanguard, TV-3, ended when the spacecraft was destroyed Dec. 6, 1957, in an explosion on the pad. As one observer stated, "Following the explosion of TV-3, the Vanguard became a whipping boy for the hurt pride of the American people." Then came the success of Explorer 1. But the failures of the next Vanguard and next Explorer meant tremendous pressures on the Vanguard launch team. Vanguard 1 had been launched from Cape Canaveral at 7:15am, March 17, 1958. The Vanguard team had in record time (2yr, 6mo, and 8da) developed from scratch a complete high performance 3-stage launch vehicle, a highly accurate worldwide satellite-tracking system, and an adequate launch facility and range instrumentation. And, they had succeeded in getting the Vanguard into orbit during the International Geophysical Year. (Spaceport News, Mar 17/78,4)
Many significant technological advances of the past decade should be credited to NASA, said the Lewis News, quoting an article by Dr. Wojciech Rostafinski, an engineer in LeRC's Fluid System Components Division and frequent NASA spokesperson on Voice of America broadcasts, in the Cleveland Plain Dealer. The article continued: "The magnitude and importance of NASA-derived technology benefits have already been reported. Broadly, payoffs from technology transfer are direct and indirect. One direct benefit is satellites that report on weather, pollution, and crops.... An example of indirect benefits-the so-called spinoffs-is the electronic circuit miniaturization, so widely adopted today by terrestrial computer and calculator designers. Countless other innovations could be given for both categories.
"Now a question arises concerning the monetary return on the investment. In other words, why should we continue to spend large sums of money on `obviously' abstract endeavors in space? ... Let us check the figures. Since 1958, when NASA was created, in the span of a short (or long, depending on the `yardstick' by which the time is measured) 20 , years, NASA spent a total budget of $67.8 billion. This relatively lofty figure does not appear high at all when compared to other expenditures of the federal government. NASA appropriations have represented, on the average over the years, only 1.8% of the federal budget; in the last five years this has been down to 1 %. Currently, NASA accounts for only 0.85% of the budget. Making a parallel with the budget of a family whose income is $20 000 a year, last year's NASA appropriation represents $170 per year set aside as investment. Not a large figure; a small one, actually, when compared to today's car prices, utility bills, or to the cost of education.. . .
"In 1971, Midwest Research Institute, studying the impact of technological activity, concluded that the $25 billion NASA spent in its first ten years had returned $52 billion through 1970 and by 1987 will have returned $181 billion. Five years later, Chase Econometrics also studied the economic impact of NASA R&D and concluded that an annual increase in NASA spending of $1 billion for the 1975-1984 decade would increase the GNP $23 billion by 1984; $23 billion for $10 billion during ten years ....
"Summing up, it becomes obvious and clear that it is much cheaper and wiser to seek technological progress through rational research, federally organized and performed by government and industry. The return on such investment is sound. The relatively modest sums invested in the national aerospace programs entrusted to NASA are well spent." (Lewis News, Mar 17/78, 1)
Rockwell International Corp. announced that the Air Force Flight Dynamics Laboratory had awarded its Los Angeles Division a $6.04 million contract to build test-aircraft structures using a revolutionary manufacturing process developed by the company and used on the Rockwell-built Space Shuttle. The AF Built-up Low-cost Advanced Titanium Structure (BLATS) program would use 2 Rockwell-developed processes (diffusion bonding and superplastic forming) in designing, fabricating, and testing a 10001b section of fuselage for use on a future advanced fighter. The 46mo contract called for construction of a complex about 8ft x 10ft x 3ft, representing the center fuselage section where the wings attach, and a portion of the aft fuselage where the engines would be mounted, and including the necessary fuel tanks.
Rockwell engineers believed superplastic forming with concurrent diffusion bonding of titanium aircraft structure was the biggest breakthrough of the decade in advanced metals fabrication, because it might result (depending on the type of structure) in cost savings of from 50 to 70% and weight savings of from 30 to 50%, compared to conventional methods of building titanium parts. Besides the next generation of fighter aircraft, other applications of the process could be jet engines, spacecraft, and supersonic transports. (Rockwell Release LAD-8)
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