Oct 10 1976
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U.S. balloonist Ed Yost, who had ditched his balloon in the Atlantic when loss of helium prevented him from completing the first transatlantic balloon crossing, was rescued by a West German tanker, the Elisabeth Bolton, after more than 3 hr of floating about 1200 km west of the Azores. The ship was reported headed for Gibraltar. A rescue plane sent to the scene earlier from the USAF Search and Rescue Center at Ramstein, West Germany, had circled over Yost's position until he was picked up. Yost had stayed aloft just short of 107 hr (exceeding the 1913 record of 87 hr) and had traveled about 4000 km, well beyond the 1914 record of less than 3 100 km. He had worked a year and a half on the 2-ton balloon-which had cost him about $100 000 of his own money-and began his journey from the U.S. coast at Milbridge, Me., on 5 Oct. The 57-yr-old balloon manufacturer from Sioux Falls, S .D., said he was "in good spirits because I broke a lot of records ... but I'm sorry I didn't land on solid ground." (C Trib, I l Oct 76, 3; NYT, 12 Oct 76, 5)
Problems confronting physicists in a major effort to discover "the true nature of the most basic components of matter and the laws that govern them" were the subject of last week's annual meeting of the Am. Physical Society's Division of Particles and Fields, held at the Brookhaven Natl. Laboratory on Long Island, said Walter Sullivan in the NY Times. Scientists from the U.S., the Soviet Union, and other countries were considering the construction of a "world machine„" a particle accelerator that would dwarf any now in existence, measuring about 48 km in circumference and generating ten thousand billion electron volts. Its cost, estimated as 3 to 6 times that of the largest accelerator in existence, would be met on a global basis with the U.S. and the USSR "playing major roles," Sullivan said. Although the project had been discussed at several international conferences and would not be built until the end of the century, proponents believed that groundwork should begin immediately and had asked the Intl. Union of Pure and Applied Physics to take the lead in organizing the effort. Design decisions would await the results of several machines now projected or being built, that might show how problems should be most effectively handled.
The most powerful machine now operating (at the Fermi Natl. Accelerator Laboratory in Ill.) had a 6.5-km ring that could boost protons to 500 Gev (one Gev equaling a billion electron volts). A modification now in progress, called the doubler, would increase the potential to 1000 Gev by the late 1970s and would cost between $40 and $50 billion. Fermi's closest rival was a super proton synchrotron at CERN-the European Center for Nuclear Research at Geneva, Switzerland-also with a 6.5-km ring slightly less powerful spanning the Swiss-French border, deep beneath rolling farmland. According to the CERN newsletter, The Courier, the most ambitious project was a complex planned by the USSR called UNK (from its Russian name) consisting of two machines in underground tunnels at Serpukhov, south of Moscow; one tunnel, forming a ring nearly 18 km in circumference, would house a device to accelerate protons to 2000 Gev, while the other tunnel would contain a 20-Gev electron accelerator whose beam would collide with the proton beam. Such collisions, at energies higher than now available, might provide answers to puzzles that baffle the theorists, Sullivan said.
The Brookhaven conference heard plans for Isabelle, a 3.2-km machine for colliding proton beams at energies up to 300 Gev, that would take 3 yr to build and cost $166 million. CERN was drawing up plans for a machine to collide beams of 100-Gev positrons and electrons; energies achieved in such collisions are lower than those from proton accelerators because the positron is less massive than the proton. A powerful machine of this type operating at Stanford Univ., Palo Alto, had been called SPEAR; a larger version known as PEP (positron-electron project), more than 2 km in circumference, would be completed there in 1980 at a cost of $78 million, and would generate beams of 18 Gev. The collision of positrons and electrons was considered a "clean" way to produce exotic particles because the collision would annihilate the primary particles in an extremely intense burst of energy, which would then form itself into new particles.
Among questions discussed at the Brookhaven meeting were the nature of the basic building-blocks of matter such as quarks or muons (particles tinier than quarks, said to have been suggested as a possibility by Mao Tse-Tung when told of the quark concept by a visiting physicist). Recent work had shown "how little we understand about the internal dynamics" of particles, and the use of higher energies would be one way to solve some of the problems, Sullivan suggested. (NYT, 10 Oct 76, 7)
10-16 October: More than 1000 of the world's top government and industry space experts assembled in Anaheim, Calif., at the wk-long 27th Congress of the Intl. Astronautical Federation. Theme of the meeting was "The New Era of Space Transportation." Delegates would have the opportunity to hear more than 300 technical papers on topics such as safety in space, the future of space law, and the proposed moon treaty. Also scheduled for discussion were the use of direct-broadcast satellites, space rescue, and the use of solar energy in space. Chairman of the conference was Dr. George E. Mueller, president and chairman of System Development Corp. in Santa Monica and former associate administrator of NASA (1963 to 1969) in charge of manned space flight. Delegates arriving Sunday evening had a choice of Disneyland tour or a wine and cheese reception before the sessions began.
At opening ceremonies on the eve of Columbus Day, Dr. Mueller read a greeting from President Ford and spoke of the Bicentennial and Columbus as symbols of international cooperation. NASA Administrator James C. Fletcher joined with John F. Yardley, associate administrator for manned space flight, in sounding an optimistic note on potential uses of space. Fletcher said that mankind had "entered a new world . . . in less than two decades," pointing to the scheduling of Shuttle flights beginning in 1981 that would make space travel attainable, even economically feasible, for the conduct of previously earthbound activities. Roy Gibson, director general of the European Space Agency, said the member nations of ESA were suffering from an economic downturn and might have trouble maintaining ESA's present funding level, estimated at $550 million a year. However, he maintained that space programs were justifiable on the basis of economic return, and that ESA would recommend no program "unless it makes good economic sense for the users." Dr. Leonard Jaffe, president of the IAF, told the delegates that astronautics involved all technical fields and affected all human institutions. Dr. Lubos Perek, chief of the United Nations' Outer Space Affairs Division, brought greetings from the UN secretary general and summarized UN activities in space, from identifying objects in orbit to supporting remote sensing and telecommunications-a span of interests, he said, "from Astronomy to Gastronomy." A panel on space transportation discussed 14 questions, from details of the Shuttle mission to clarification of payload prices and legal liability for aborted payloads. The electronic environment of the session wireless microphones and wireless translation headsets-illustrated collateral benefits from astronautics, said Rob Weadd of the Los Angeles section, AIAA, in the convention newsletter. On Monday afternoon, officials of the Soviet and U.S. space programs reported jointly and individually on results of the July 1975 Apollo-Soyuz mission. A current events session Monday afternoon heard Boris Petrov, chairman of the Soviet Intercosmos Council, call for renewal of the 1972 agreement that led to the Apollo-Soyuz mission, after the agreement expired in 1977. Shigebumi Saito, commissioner of the Space Activities Committee of Japan, said his country hoped to participate in another Spacelab in the 1980s and looked toward cooperation with ESA as a result of the recent visit of ESA director Roy Gibson. Lawrence Morley of Canada's Dept. of Mines and Resources said that Canada was "made for remote sensing" and would be looking for partners in the study of ocean management.
On Tuesday, 12 Oct., the Ind. Institute of Space Law held its 19th colloquium in morning and afternoon sessions, continuing through the remainder of the convention. Since 1967, when an initial treaty of principles was signed, space lawyers had worked out international agreements on liability for space accidents, registration of space objects, and rescue and return of astronauts. Two current problems demanding attention were treaties to govern direct broadcasting from space and the monitoring and sensing of terrestrial phenomena. Also, a draft treaty on moon exploration and resource extraction was under way. Among papers presented, that by Dr. V. S. Vereshchetin of the Moscow Institute of State and Law proposed that the legality of each type of practical use of space should depend on its compliance with principles of state sovereignty and sovereign equality of states. Dr. Stephen Gorove of the Univ. of Miss. law school described the legal regime likely to apply to space colonies, pointing out gaps in existing law and recommending changes. In another paper, Or. Gorove called the moon treaty a landmark in the development of space law, and cited many areas of general agreement, adding that lack of agreement was equally instructive in revealing problems in the process of international lawmaking. Dr. D. Krstic of Yugoslavia stated that the era of sovereignty was gradually disappearing, and that space activities should be a product of all mankind, not just the strong powers.
On Wednesday, 13 Oct., some of the congress delegates "including a large group of Russian cosmonauts and scientists" took a bus tour and had a briefing on the Space Shuttle program at the Rockwell Intl. plant at Downey, Calif. Dr. Krafft A. Ehricke, scientific adviser at Rockwell Intl., described studies of Lunetta and Soletta systems that would use huge reflectors on thin plastic assembled in space to illumine areas of earth either by day or by night, lengthening agricultural activities in season or lighting polar regions for increased access to petroleum or mineral deposits in areas where nights might last for 3 mo. Other delegates went in four busloads to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Pasadena for an all-day program during which the guests in four groups rotated among exhibitions and lectures on the Viking spacecraft, the space flight operations and spacecraft assembly facilities, and future planetary missions. Speakers included Dr. Bruce Murray, director of JPL, and A. Thomas Young, deputy Viking project manager, as well as John Casani, manager of the Mariner Jupiter-Saturn project.
On Thursday, 14 Oct., IAF delegate R. Gilbert Moore became the first Shuttle customer to hand over a letter of intent to purchase NASA's "getaway special"-a 90-kg 0.14-cu-m package to be carried by the Orbiter on a space-available basis, for $10 000. Moore, general manager of Thiokol Corp.'s Astro-Met plant at Ogden, Ut., said he would buy the ticket for himself, not his company. He had been active for some time in obtaining space rides for student experiments, and said he might open his Shuttle package for students or sublet some of it to recover costs, but had not decided yet what use to make of the package. "It's such a bargain," he said. "You can't get a ride anywhere else for that kind of money." Moore handed his letter of intent to Chester Lee, director of space transportation systems operations in NASA's Office of Space Flight, who was in charge of rounding up Shuttle customers; the letter went by Comsat satellite to Lee's office in Washington, D.C.
Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine reported that the Soviet representatives at the IAF meeting questioned officials about the Shuttle's thermal protection system, its main-engine refurbishment, and its handling characteristics, being "especially interested in the use of cathode-ray tube displays." The briefings were part of the Rockwell tour offered to IAF groups. NASA had approved Soviet inspection of the orbiter, the magazine said, because no technology transfer problems were involved and the Soviets had shown Salyut and Soyuz vehicles to U.S. personnel; however, the Soviets had never discussed or shown future vehicles to U.S. representatives, the article added. Upon questioning the Soviet representatives unofficially about any USSR shuttle plans, NASA was told only that analytical studies were under way.
The Washington Star and Av Wk reported that Soviet Intercosmos chairman Dr. Boris N. Petrov and Vasily A. Sarychev, another member of the Soviet IAF delegation, were robbed at gunpoint in the lobby of their motel and escaped when a number of people got off an elevator. Petrov and Sarychev did not understand the gunman's demands at first, but finally surrendered $37 before the unidentified robber fled. Although local police were notified, Petrov did not register a formal complaint, and the delegation stayed at the convention two days longer, after which Petrov and other Soviet officials flew to Washington to discuss future joint space missions. Besides Petrov, the IAF delegates included Dr Vereshchetin, deputy chairman of Intercosmos; V. C. Vachnadze and A. I. Tsarev, Intercosmos members; R. Z. Sagdeyev, director of the USSR Academy of Sciences institute of outer space, and his associate, Y. P. Semenov; and D. S. Chetveryakov, M. V. Sokolov, and V. P. Legostayev.
As the IAF convention closed on Saturday, 16 Oct., Dr. Mueller said the panels and presentations at the meeting had demonstrated again the benefits and feasibility of international cooperation. He said it was up to the members to convince the President and U.S. Congress to provide sufficient funds for the Shuttle over the next 5 yr. (IAF news 27th Congress, text; list of abstracts; LA Times, 12 Oct 76, 11; 14 Oct 76; Av Wk, 18 Oct 76, 25; 25 Oct 76, 22, 23; W Star, 20 Oct 76, A-2; W Post, 27 Oct 76, A-2)
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