Apr 23 1973
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(New page: Dr. Rocco A. Petrone, Marshall Space Flight Center Director, announced personnel actions to reduce the Center's total Civil Service personnel to 5214 by June 30. Separation notice...)
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Dr. Rocco A. Petrone, Marshall Space Flight Center Director, announced personnel actions to reduce the Center's total Civil Service personnel to 5214 by June 30. Separation notices had been given to 108 employees-87 at Huntsville, Ala., and 21 at MSFC installations elsewhere. A total of 67 MSFC employees would receive notices of change to lower grade, with 15 losing some salary. Reassignment of 57 would be made concurrently with the reduction in force. (MSFC Release 73-45)
The European Space Research Organization had selected two new scientific satellite programs while rejecting participation in NASA's Venus orbiter program, Aviation Week & Space Technology reported. A joint International Sun-Earth Physics Satellite (ISEPS) program-to study solar winds and observe the discontinuities such as the magnetopause, bow shock, neutral sheet in the tail, and wave shocks-would place two satellites in orbit by a single booster in 1977. ESRO would develop one satellite at a cost of $28 million; NASA, the other. The second ESRO program, the Highly Eccentric Lunar Occultation Satellite (HELOS), would be launched in 1979 to define the position, map the spatial and spectral features, and monitor the time variabilities of x-ray sources. It would cost an estimated $75 million. (Av Wk, 4/23/73, 28)
The U.S. Postal Service issued an eight-cent stamp commemorating the 500th anniversary of the birth of Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus. First-day ceremonies, sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution and the National Science Foundation, were held at the National Museum of History and Technology. The first-day flight cover featured a photo of Orbiting Astronomy Satellite OAO 3, named Copernicus and launched by NASA Aug. 21, 1972. (uses Philatelic Release 8; Flight cover)
Exclusive astronaut writing contracts with Life magazine and other media had harmed the press, the public interest, the space program, and the astronauts themselves, Robert Sherrod said in a Columbia Journalism Review article released in advance of its May/June publication date. The contracts had brought relatively little money to all but a few astronauts and had distorted their individuality and diversity into a "deodorized, plasticized, and homogenized" image. Under the contract system, NASA could censor whatever the astronauts signed. "Even though this censorship was rarely invoked, it was inhibiting; so was the necessity of Life's making the astronauts look good, and vice versa." President Kennedy had originally opposed the contracts, but had been persuaded in their favor by Project Mercury Astronaut John H. Glenn. Former President Johnson had supported the contracts in a letter Sherrod received a few months before Johnson's Jan. 22 death. Sherrod said the contract system had had no adverse affects on the flow of space news. "Due in large part to the exclusion policy, many members of the working press deeply resented NASA.” (Text)
April 23-25: A committee of 35 astronomers met at Marshall Space Flight Center to review proposed experiments for the Large Space Telescope (LST) to be launched by the space shuttle as a general-purpose facility for various astronomical instruments. The committee-representing 7 observatories, 10 U.S. universities, and NASA installations-would help NASA select science participants for LST definition studies. The LST would observe galaxies 100 times fainter than those seen by the most powerful ground-based telescopes and would provide long-term monitoring of atmospheric phenomena on Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. (MSFC Release 73-46; Marshall Star, 4/25/73, 1)
The National Academy of Sciences held its annual meeting and participated with the Smithsonian Institution in a joint program to honor the Copernican Quincentennial. Dr. Philip Handler, NAS President, announced that Dr. Robert C. Seamans, Jr., retiring Secretary of the Air Force, would become president of the National Academy of Engineering in May and that the NAE council had voted to sever NAE'S affiliation with NAS. NAS elected 95 new members.
During the program devoted to cosmological questions and humanistic aspects of scientific research, Dr. Stephen Toulmin, Provost of the Univ. of California at Santa Cruz, said he had detected a lack of purpose among younger scientists that might be leading to the end of the intellectual era inaugurated by Copernicus.
Dr. John A. Wheeler, Princeton Univ. physicist, said the collapse of the universe into a single, great "black hole" with the annihilation of all matter and all physical laws seemed inevitable. Black holes superdense objects in space-had been predicted as end products of the collapse of large stars when they no longer produced sufficient heat to counter the weight of their own material. Black holes could serve as examples of what would happen if the universe ceased its expansion and began to fall back upon itself. Since its expansion did not have sufficient momentum to continue indefinitely, the universe could reach its maximum size in 40 billion yrs. Dr. Alan R. Sandage of the Hale Observatory said a five percent decrease in the brightness of galaxies for each billion years of their lifetime would alter the calculation and indicate indefinite expansion of the universe. (NAS Memo to Press; Sullivan, NYT, 4/26/73; 4/28/73, 48; NYT, 4/26/73, 74; 4/29/73, 47)
April 23-26: The American Physical Society held its annual meeting in Washington, D.C. Dr. Edward H. Teller, Univ. of California physicist and atomic scientist, urged legislation to declassify all Government scientific secrets after one year. He predicted the action would force the U.S.S.R. to take similar action "in maybe 10 years," because U.S. science and technology would advance faster without secrecy. Naval Research Laboratory scientist Dr. Herbert Friedman said most astronomers who believed that creation began with a "big bang" also believed that at least as much gas and dust had been left behind when the stars were formed as had been consumed in star formation. Recent findings had been that two clouds moved out in opposite directions from an exploding galaxy to form equally shaped spheres and that radio galaxies left wakes as they plowed through space. "In both cases you need great quantities of gas to put enough pressure on the clouds or the galaxies to slow them down. Galaxies moving through empty space leave no wakes or trains behind them.” (W Post, 4/25/73, A3; LA Times, 4/26/73)
April 23-27: A symposium at Lewis Research Center's Plum Brook Station presented ideas of NASA engineers on new uses by business, industry, labor, other Government agencies, and universities of Plum Brook facilities available because of NASA's imminent shutdown of the station for budgetary reasons [see March 6]. (LeRC Release 73-21; LeRC PIO)
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