September 1984
From The Space Library
NASA Administrator James M. Beggs announced the establishment of the new position of assistant administrator for commercial programs, reporting directly to him, to provide a focus for and facilitate efforts within NASA to expand U.S. private-sector investment and involvement in civil space-related activities. Isaac T. Gillam IV, formerly assistant associate administrator, Office of Space Flight, would assume the new position with L.J. (Bud) Evans Jr., formerly assistant to the deputy associate administrator for commercialization, to serve as his deputy. In announcing the position, Beggs said, "In support of the President's policy on commercial uses of space, the commercial programs office will be responsible for providing management direction within the agency for our efforts to establish new links with the private sector to stimulate the development of business in space. It will also be responsible for maintaining existing relationships with industry through the functions of industry affairs, technology utilization, and shuttle marketing." (NASA Release 84-129)
USA Today reported that 2,500 teachers had represented to NASA with requests to be the first observer to ride the Space Shuttle in 1985 or 1986-even though the agency was not yet taking applications. NASA would announce its application process shortly. Dale Boatright, a Chicago teacher, was told by the U.S. Department of Education that his request was the first received, nearly a month before. NASA was notifying the teachers that they would receive a formal application when plans were set. (USA Today, Sept 24/84, IA)
NASA had embarked on a new research program to show that a transport airplane's metal skin and supporting structure could be replaced with metallic composite material to save weight and manufacturing costs and thereby in-crease fuel efficiency. Work in the program represented the first application of composite materials in the construction of primary wing and fuselage structures for transport-class aircraft. NASA's long-range goal was to provide commercial air transport manufacturers with the technology to produce composite structures and apply them on new aircraft, or on derivatives of current air-craft, in substantial amounts by the early 1990s. Researchers at LaRC, where the new composites programs was managed, expected by the mid-1990s to see about 75% of the airframe structure of a transport to be made of composites. (LRC Release 84-69)
Dr. Jerome C. Hunsaker, an aviation pioneer who founded the first college course in aeronautical engineering at MIT and later designed the first air-craft to fly the Atlantic Ocean, died September 8 after a brief illness. He was 98 years old. He had established himself as one of the leading theorists of flight and aircraft design in a career in aviation engineering and air technology that spanned six decades. In addition to designing the flying boat NC-4, which flew from Newfoundland to Portugal and England in the first trans-Atlantic flight in May 1919, Hunsaker supervised the design of the dirigible Shenandoah, the first large rigid airship made in the United States that made its first flight in 1923. (NY Times, Sept 12/84, B-6)
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