Nov 1 1976
From The Space Library
NASA would appeal a decision of the U.S. District Court ordering the agency to rehire all Marshall Space Flight Center civil service employees laid off since 1967 as the result of awarding support-services contracts to private business, Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine reported. The court had ruled that all such contracts awarded at MSFC since 1967 were illegal. NASA spokesmen estimated that up to 1500 contractor employees now at MSFC could be fired as a result of the ruling, and that 17 000 contractor employees throughout the agency might be affected by the decision, which ordered NASA to rehire the civil service personnel with back pay in amounts depending on the period of unemployment. Had all the employees affected been unemployed for the full 10 yr (the "worst-case situation"), necessary back pay might go as high as $150 million, NASA said, although the actual funds required would be less. An appeals court had already granted 'NASA a stay until 1 Feb. 1977 before the district court's ruling became effective, so that the agency could ask Congress for supplemental funds to cover the back-pay requirements. (Av Wk, 1 Nov 77, 22)
NASA announced plans to use a new technique for rapid detection of fecal coliform bacteria in water systems, under an agreement with EPA's region 2, to define water quality in coastal areas of the New York Bight along the Atlantic coast. NASA would supply remote data-collecting buoys and a monitor designed to detect coliforms, the accepted indicator of bacterial contamination. Developed at LaRC as a byproduct of early Skylab environmental-control systems technology, the electronic monitoring device could detect human and nonhuman fecal coliforms in a few hours rather than days, permitting health authorities to act promptly upon discovery of large quantities of disease-producing bacteria. Shellfish beds could become infested with pathogenic organisms resulting from ocean dumping of sewage; the sensor could also monitor coliform levels in lakes, public water supplies, and sewage-plant effluent. (NASA Release 76-178)
The U.S. Air Force Systems Command announced that its space and missile systems organization (SAMSO) had completed tests at MSFC to define effects of sound waves and shock waves on the Space Shuttle during launch, using a 6.4% scale model of the launch pad proposed for Vandenberg AFB. The model launch pad, measuring roughly 13 m long by 6.5 m wide by 2 m high and weighing more than 27 000 kg, underwent engine induced overpressure and noise environments simulated by Tomahawk solid-fuel rocket motors and high-pressure gaseous hydrogen-oxygen engines. Shock waves from rocket-engine ignition interacted with exhausts on the launch pad to direct overpressure back to the launch vehicle; the flow rate also created an acoustic field causing turbulence in the surrounding atmosphere. The altered environments were modified during testing by altering the configuration to produce the most acceptable design of launch vehicle and payload. (AFSC Release OIP 170.76)
U.S. nuclear export policy should be conditioned on an international understanding that certain activities are "inherently dangerous," said Victor Gilinsky, commissioner of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in a speech at Mass. Institute of Technology. Although the dangers of plutonium-"both a nuclear explosive and the key to a virtually inexhaustible source of energy"-had been regarded as located far in the future, "the future is here," said Gilinsky, citing the accumulation of plutonium-rich spent fuel from civilian power reactors in storage sites around the world, with more and more nations interested in commercial-scale reprocessing. Although the desire for plutonium had been stimulated by the assumption "almost universally held" that its use was a natural, desirable, and indispensable result of using nuclear materials to generate electricity, the assumption had made even more difficult any attempt to restrict the availability of plutonium. Likewise, safeguards based on confusion or misapprehension about the possibilities of misusing plutonium had been nullified by the spread of technological knowhow as a national policy of the U.S. More than 90% of the enriched uranium imported in 1'975 into the European Economic Community to produce energy-and eventually plutonium- had been supplied by the U.S., Gilinsky pointed out. Nuclear commerce should be conditioned on a new policy that "unrestricted national development of nuclear power programs is inherently incompatible with a secure world," he concluded, and no distinction should be recognized between military and "so-called peaceful" nuclear explosives. (NRC Release S-14-75)
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