May 4 1973
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Major countdown demonstration testing of the first two Skylab launch vehicles and their spacecraft on Kennedy Space Center Pads 39A and B, with crew participation, had been completed, NASA announced. Both launches remained on schedule for May 14 and 15. The three astronauts earlier in the week had been pronounced physically fit for the 28-day mission, after completing medical examinations at Johnson Space Center. (NASA Release 73-92)
Dr. George M. Low, NASA Deputy Administrator, received the National Civil Service League's 1973 Career Service Award for Sustained Excellence at the League's 19th annual awards banquet in Washington, D.C. Dr. Low was cited as the individual most responsible for the success of the Apollo program because of his significant contributions toward solving reentry problems. Also honored was Paul G. Dembling, General Counsel for the General Accounting Office, who as NASA General Counsel had been a principal drafter of the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958 and a major participant in developing the legal framework governing peaceful uses of outer space. (NASA Hq WB, 4/16/73; W Post, 5/5/73, 134)
Findings that the Aug. 4, 1972, solar storm-the largest ever recorded-had caused a small but measurable increase in the length of a day on earth were reported in Nature by Goddard Institute for Space Studies research associate Stephen Plagemann and John Gribben, an astronomer employed by Nature. Examination of U.S. Naval Observatory data had shown a daily increase in the day's length 10 times greater than usual between Aug. 4 and Aug. 8, indicating that the earth's rotation had slowed down fractionally. After a few days, the rotation rate had returned to its normal level. Nature, 5/4/73, 26)
Patents for X2048, a new aluminum alloy that could replace the two alloys used in the construction of supersonic aircraft, had been applied for by Reynolds Metals Co., a Reynolds spokesman said in Richmond, Va. X2048 provided up to 50% more fracture toughness than one alloy and was stronger and lighter than the other. (AP, W Star & News, 5/7/73)
Magnetite from the Orgueil Cl meteorite was only 2.0 to 2.4 million yrs older than the next oldest meteorite, Karoonda C4, a Univ. of Chicago and Univ. of California at Berkeley team reported in Science. The oxide-xenon dating method had tied the primitive Cl meteorite to the chronology of the normal meteorites. If Karoonda and Orgueil had been formed from the same material, the age difference was an upper limit of the formation time of these meteorites and, by customary extension, of the solar system. (Herzog et al., Science, 5/4/73, 489)
Award by Lewis Research Center of a $2 833 780 contract to General Electric Co.'s Gas Turbine Products Div. for two gas turbine assemblies was reported by Lewis News. The turbines were for a new test facility to bench-test advanced turbines and combustors for future aircraft. (Lewis News, 5/4/73, 4)
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