May 25 1977
From The Space Library
Dryden Flight Research Center announced it had developed an autopilot device during flight tests of the YF-12 aircraft that would enable future high-speed planes to fly closer to the preset flight path. Experience gained from aircraft cruising at high speeds and high altitudes had shown deviations up to t 4000ft in altitude and more than 30mph in speed from those planned. An aircraft flying across the country at Mach 3 could encounter normal changes in temperature and pressure as rapid changes that could affect the Mach number; conventional techniques to correct for those changes had caused large altitude deviations and poor quality passenger comfort. The deviations could degrade aircraft performance or overrun the plane's operating limitations. The new control system combining surface motion and throttle motion, hot previously used together, with newly developed data sensors, had kept the YF-12 on a highly precise flight path even at high-speed conditions over extended periods of time. (DFRC Release 19-77)
KSC announced it had awarded to the Univ. of Fla. a $16 200 supplemental grant to continue a study of the effects of lightning strikes. University personnel had been doing research on lightning under this grant since 1973; working as consultants, they had used advanced instrumentation available at KSC together with engineers from the space vehicle operations and information systems directorates to measure high frequency radiation from lightning activity within a cloud, intensity of lightning strikes, and the extent of damage to structures or aerial and underground cables. The study would improve handling of Shuttle launch, processing, and landing under marginal weather conditions. (KSC Release 108-77)
A KSC spokesman said work was proceeding slowly on dismantling the Delta vehicle that had lost one of its solid-fuel rocket boosters May 18 while waiting on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral, Today newspaper reported. The second stage of the Delta had already been removed to clear the way for detaching the boosters from the first stage and then removing the first stage, damaged when one of the 9 boosters crashed 12ft through a support platform. The accident, which interrupted an ESA comsat launch scheduled for June, had also delayed launch of a U.S. weather satellite. (Today, May 25/77, 12A)
The Natl. Science Foundation reported that Census Bureau figures for the end of 1975 had shown a 5yr decline in private industry employment of scientists and engineers. Private industry had been by far the largest employer of scientists and engineers, using about 2/3 of all those employed. Engineers constituted 72% (850 000) of all that group employed by private industry, the largest numbers being electrical engineers (292 000) and mechanical and aeronautical engineers (201000). Computer scientists were the largest group (143 000) among scientists, as well as the largest group (100 000) employed by nonmanufacturing industries. Among physical scientists (104 000), the most numerous specialty was chemists (65 000), more than 3/4 of them working in nondurable goods manufacturing industries including chemical industries. Private industry employment of scientists and engineers decreased 5% between 1970 and 1975, compared to a 14% gain in 1965-1970 and a 19% gain in 1960-1965. The drop in employment between 1970 and 1975 was mostly in durable goods manufacturing; nonmanufacturing industries showed an 11% increase in engineers employed during that period. (NSF 77-132)
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