May 3 1967
From The Space Library
NASA's Lunar Orbiter Incentive Evaluation Board awarded Boeing Co. a $1,918,725 bonus-maximum amount permitted under May 1964 contract provisions-for the LUNAR ORBITER II mission. Spacecraft had obtained 98% of planned prime site photography after it entered lunar orbit Nov. 10, 1966; equipment failure resulted in loss of other 2%. Because LUNAR ORBITER II also took excellent secondary photos-including two million square miles of the hidden side of the moon-Board ruled that usefulness of photographic data merited maximum award. (NASA Release 67-112)
Dr. Mac C. Adams, NASA Associate Administrator for Advanced Research and Technology, was featured speaker at MIT conference sponsored by Electronics Industries Assn. to acquaint aerospace industry with NASA's requirements for electronic systems on future space missions. He outlined objectives of NASA's electronics research program: (1) stabilization systems to maintain orientation in space environment and to point telescopes and other experiments at celestial bodies with precise accuracy; (2) communications systems to translate data acquired in space activities over millions of miles and at rates comparable to exchange of information on earth; (3) communications and navigation satellites to meet increasing demands in commercial air transportation; (4) data-handling systems to quickly and e5ciently store, catalog, analyze, and edit data produced by space exploration; (5) instrumentation systems to detect and measure environmental characteristics over broad ranges of temperature, pressure, and density; and (6) components and technology which could operate reliably for long periods of time despite extremes in radiation and temperature. (Text, NASA Release 67-103)
Charles W. Harper, Director of OART's Aeronautics Div., was appointed to new position of NASA Deputy Associate Administrator for Aeronautics. Aeronautics Div., renamed Aeronautical Vehicles Div., would be directed by A. J. Evans. (NASA Release 67-108)
Confidential report submitted to NASA by General Electric Co. cited numerous serious workmanship flaws in Apollo spacecraft No. 17, scheduled to be launched by Saturn V booster on an unmanned mission no earlier than August, New York Times reported. Flaws included damaged parts, corroded valves, leaky pipes, three small holes in heat shield that "could have catastrophic implications" during reentry, and more than 1,300 "discrepancies" in the 20 mi of electrical wiring. Report was prepared by GE's Apollo Support Dept. under terms of a 1962 contract with NASA to conduct computer-assisted checks of all systems in Apollo spacecraft prior to launch. George C. White, Jr., NASA Director of Reliability and Quality, OMSF, told New York Times reporter John Wilford in a telephone interview that report was "a working document that, in effect, summarizes known problems" for KSC supervisors and should not be taken as "an alert of really big problems." NASA officials said many of the flaws cited in the report had already been corrected; others had yet to be changed. (Wilford, NYT, 5/3/67, 1, 2 )
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