May 1977

From The Space Library

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Current revision

Natl. Research Council's News Report said a committee chaired by MIT's Wilbur B. Davenport, Jr., had recommended that NASA resume support of comsat services research and development but stay out of the business of operating such services. The committee said that agency support of an operational program of public service satellite communications would "obscure the real costs of the public service"; agencies that needed to use or provide such services "would not be faced with the hard reality of determining whether a program is worthy of execution when compared with its actual cost," the report said. (NRC News Report, May 77, 1)

The Natl. Aeronautic Assn. newsletter reported that the USAF industry team that produced and demonstrated the B-1 aircraft system was 1976 recipient of the Collier trophy, rather than the NASA Viking project with its "spectacular success" in landing spacecraft and instrumentation on Mars. The AFSC Newsreview said that the B-1 team represented the Air Force, Rockwell International Corp., General Electric, Boeing Co., Cutler-Hammer's airborne instruments laboratory division, and more than 3000 other subcontractors and suppliers.

The NAA noted that 50yr earlier the solo flight of Lindbergh across the Atlantic, considered a shoo-in, had failed to receive the trophy given for "the greatest achievement in aviation in America, the value of which has been demonstrated by actual use during the preceding year"; that trophy committee had unanimously awarded it to Charles L. Lawrence, designer of the Wright Whirlwind aircooled radial engine that had powered not only Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis, but also a number of other notable flights in 1927. (NAA newsletter, May 77, 1; AFSC Newsreview, May 77, 4)

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