Mar 28 1976
From The Space Library
A reorganization of the NASA office (NaPO) located at the contractor-operated Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Pasadena became effective. NaPO would no longer report to the Associate Administrator for Center Operations at NASA Hq in Washington, D.C.; a resident legal office would report to the NASA General Counsel, and a resident procurement office would report to the NASA Assistant Administrator for Procurement at Hq. E.S. Groo, the Associate Administrator for Center Operations, said the change was made to relate the N.PO functions more directly to the functions performed by their Hq counterparts, or by certain NASA field centers. NaPO's cryogenics procurement activities and personnel would be relocated to the MSFC resident office at Canoga Park, Calif., and would be functionally responsible to MSFC; the Delta procurement activities and personnel would remain at JPL but would be functionally transferred to GSFC at Greenbelt, Md. (NASA Release 76-50; Groo anno. 15 Mar 76)
A component of the backpack worn by Neil A. Armstrong on the moon's surface had been used by the former astronaut-now professor of aerospace engineering at the Univ. of Cincinnati-in bioengineering experiments testing better blood pumps for heart-lung machines and artificial hearts or kidneys. The Apollo double-diaphragm pump that circulated cooling water through plastic tubes in the astronaut's space suit proved in the UC tests to be 10 or more times less damaging to red blood cells than pumps previously used. Blood, a delicate substance easily damaged by prolonged mechanical pumping, had lost critical amounts of hemoglobin in procedures such as open-heart surgery when pumps had taken over the heart's function for several hours. Armstrong, working on a team at the university's Institute of Engineering and Medicine, recalled the Apollo pump's efficiency from a power and weight standpoint and borrowed one from NASA for experiments with animals. The pump, designed to run on minimum power, created little turbulence in the flow of fluid and had no moving parts to damage the cells. It would be further modified for medical use. (NYT, 28 Mar 76, 64)
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