Mar 3 1980
From The Space Library
NASA reported award of contracts to Martin Marietta and Aerojet worth $750,000 and $350,000, respectively, for a liquid-propellant boost module to increase the cargo-carrying capacity of the Shuttle's external tank. The goal would be to provide additional thrust by adapting portions of the Titan, still used by the U.S. Air Force as its heaviest intercontinental ballistic missile. The companies, which had been building the Titan and its engines for the U.S. Air Force, were considered the logical choice for adapting the booster to the Shuttle. The studies, managed by MSFC would be completed by the end of September 1980. (NASA Released 80-32; MSFC Released 80-28)
LaRC, manager of the Scout program, announced that NASA had awarded Hampton Technical Center (a division of Kentron International, Inc., of Dallas) a $2.2 million contract modification calling for ten Algol 111A Scout rocket motors by March 31, 1981. Prime contractor for Scout was formerly Vought Corporation, also of Dallas; the modification was made with the same parent firm, Ling Temco Vought. Name changes and other corporate restructurings would streamline the work done for NASA, with estimated savings of about $1 million to be gained by contracting with a subsidiary already qualified to build and load the motors. To be qualified, a firm must have fired two or three launch vehicles, a process costing about $1 million. Scout, NASA's smallest vehicle, was a four-stage solid-propellant rocket that had launched payloads for NASA, DOD, and several foreign countries. (LaRC Release 80-15)
FBIS carried a Reuters dispatch quoting diplomatic sources in Beijing that the People's Republic of China had launched a CCS-3 limited-range intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) February 9 from Jilin province in northeast China to an impact area in the far western Xinjiang region, a 2530-mile flight across a largely unpopulated, mainly desert region. The People's Republic had conducted at least six missile tests in 1979 over distances much shorter than the February 9 test. Other sources said the Chinese were working on a full scale ICBM with a range that would bring the United States, western Europe, and all of the Soviet Union within striking distance. Test of such a missile would need an ocean-impact area such as the southern Indian Ocean, but no such firings had occurred. (FBIS, Reuters in English, Mar 3180)
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