Jul 25 1976
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Blueprints for future Mars explorations, triggered by the Viking 1 landing on Mars, included not only the dispatch of roving robot vehicles to the surface of Mars but also collection and return of Mars samples by a "sailing ship"-a spacecraft carrying an onionskin-thin sail of aluminum-coated plastic measuring more than 185 m2 and powered by the pressure of solar electromagnetic radiation. Space flight would become possible with less reliance on heavy and expensive rockets, said John Noble Wilford in the New York Times; a space-sailer could be launched from an earth-orbiting Shuttle, deploy landers to collect and return samples, and return to earth with larger amounts of Martian samples than possible by other methods. JPL's plans for future missions might include a fleet of the sailers (to be called Yankee Clippers) "flying the routes from earth orbit to the vicinity of Mars, hauling supplies and portable habitats, and finally explorers, to a Mars base." (NYT, 25 July 76, 44)
Rep. Les Aspin (D-Wis.) charged that the U.S. Navy planned to spend $187.6 million to repair F-14 Tomcat jet-fighter engines that it planned to replace at an additional cost of up to $1.9 billion. ". . . The Navy hopes to pull a double whammy on the taxpayers by replacing the repaired engine with a brand new one," Aspin said. The Navy conceded that replacing engines in the jet fighters 'would cost $1.6 to $1.9 billion, but claimed the planned repairs to current engines would cost only $86 million. The Navy said it wanted new engines for installation beginning in 1981. (W Post, 26 July 76, A-1)
25-31 July: An almost equal division of opinion in the U.S. Senate on whether to go ahead with production of the B-1 bomber was occupying politicians and commentators in Washington. The New York Times Magazine story headed "Will It Bomb?" asked if the B-1 were really needed and concluded that it was not, admitting that the project had a "seemingly irreversible momentum" and already had "a backhanded commitment to production." Election-year oratory was calling for a decision to be postponed until a new administration took office. A lobby group called Campaign to Stop the B-1 Bomber, claiming to represent 26 national organizations, sent a telegram to Democratic presidential nominee Jimmy Carter asking him to send back Sen. Walter F. Mondale (D Minn.), vice presidential nominee, who was meeting with Carter in Ga., for a "crucial" vote in which Mondale's presence was "essential." The vote to postpone in the Senate Appropriations Committee was 15 to 14; the House of Representatives had voted twice, in April and again in June, to proceed with the B-1, but on both votes the nonvoters could have changed the outcome. (The April vote in the House was 210 to 177, with 46 not voting; the June vote was 207 to 186, with 37 not voting.) A spokesman for Rockwell Intl. Corp., which would be prime contractor for the B-1, warned that postponement would increase costs by at least $500 million, cost 3000 workers their jobs, and shelve plans to hire another 7700 workers. Defense Secretary Donald F. Rumsfeld said delay in producing the B-1 would be "unsound from a cost standpoint, from a management standpoint," and Air Force Secretary Thomas C. Reed said delay would add "half a million dollars to the cost of the program for no purpose." A New York Times story 30 July said that a breakfast meeting with Secy. Reed for a group of Senate aides had been paid for by the Air Force Association, a private group with 155 000 members-largely retired Air Force personnel-and chartered as a veterans organization not required to register as a lobbyist. The Air Force Legislative Liaison Office, which arranged the breakfast, seemed to have been "concerned that it might be engaged in a form of lobbying of doubtful legality," said the NYT, pointing out that a 1948 law "specifically provides that no funds appropriated by Congress can be used by a Government agency directly or indirectly `to influence in any manner' the vote of a member of Congress." (NYT magazine, 25 July 76, 7; W Post, 26 July 76, A-13; C Trib, 29 July 76, 10; NYT, 30 July 76, A6; Av Wk, 26 July 76, 23)
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