Feb 20 1978
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(New page: Av Wk reported that NASA had been struggling with institutional and funding arrangements for launching a Hughes-built comsat, Syncom-4, without giving Hughes the unfair advantage of a ...)
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Av Wk reported that NASA had been struggling with institutional and funding arrangements for launching a Hughes-built comsat, Syncom-4, without giving Hughes the unfair advantage of a free Space Shuttle launch. The problem required prompt attention, because NASA had to make decisions within a few weeks if Syncom-4 was to fly on an early Shuttle mission.
Hughes had designed and offered Syncom-4 specifically to fit the Space Shuttle payload-bay design, since NASA had wanted to deploy a test spacecraft on a Shuttle orbital mission. Under the Hughes proposal, the spacecraft would have no significant communications capability, and NASA would launch the unit free of charge; however, the satellite-user community (the state of California, Agency for International Development, and the Interior Dept.) had asked that the spacecraft include some communications capability instead of merely verifying a design. NASA had to decide who would pay for the added capability and whether Hughes would have an unfair advantage.
Without a decision, NASA Administrator Dr. Robert Frosch said the whole exercise could revert to the original concept, with no significant communications channeled through the satellite. NASA might decide to run an open competition for systems to demonstrate Shuttle-launched communications spacecraft in the same manner as Syncom-4. However, Frosch was concerned that in an open competition Hughes could be "competed out of it in a way that is not quite proper," since the Syncom-4 concept had been a Hughes innovation. "As it has developed," Frosch explained to a House appropriations subcommittee hearing, "it is not completely clear that there is a proper solution to this dilemma." (Av Wk, Feb 20/78, 60)
The Canadian government had asked the USSR to pay possibly more than $2 million as the cost of an extensive search to recover debris from Cosmos 934, Av Wk reported. Canada's request was in accord with a 1968 United Nations agreement that "expenses incurred in fulfilling obligations to recover and return a space object or its component parts ... shall be borne by the launching authority." The Canadians had delivered an official statement to the Soviet embassy in Ottawa that pieces of Cosmos 954 had landed on Canadian soil Jan. 24, and that Canada would return the debris to the USSR on receipt of the desired payment. The Canadians had also sent the UN a note reserving the right to claim compensation under the 1968 UN agreement, and announcing their intent to request compensation from the USSR. The report did not specify the amount of compensation requested. (Av Wk, Feb 20/78, 24)
A Soviet-French complex of thermostatic equipment on Soyuz 27 had passed the test of terrestrial and space conditions, Tass reported. Soviet and French biologists had prepared biological cultures and chilled them in an ordinary refrigerator before putting them into the semiconductor instrument "Termokont-2." On the night before the Soyuz 27 launch, Termokont-2 had handed over its biological "load" to another Soviet instrument, the thermostat "Bioterm-8," to maintain a temperature of 8°C during the launch and orbit of Soyuz 27 until it docked with Salyut 6. After docking, the biological insert had gone into the French semiconductor thermostat "Cytos," which thawed the cultures and began to study spaceflight influence on cellular division of microorganisms under the strictly controlled temperature of 25°C. (FBIS, Tass in English, Feb 20/78)
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