Jul 23 1980
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(New page: The Soviet Union launched Soyuz 37 at 9:33 p.m. Moscow time, carrying Col. Viktor Gorbatko and a 33-year-old Vietnamese air force pilot, Lt. Col. Pham Tuan, first Asian space t...)
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The Soviet Union launched Soyuz 37 at 9:33 p.m. Moscow time, carrying Col. Viktor Gorbatko and a 33-year-old Vietnamese air force pilot, Lt. Col. Pham Tuan, first Asian space traveler and sixth citizen of an eastern-bloc country to be part of the USSR's Intercosmos program. The Soyuz would link up within 24 hours with the orbiting Salyut 6 space station where Leonid Popov and Valery Ryumin had been working for more than three months. The Salyut's docking port had been cleared July 19 by jettisoning cargo ship Progress 10, which burned up reentry. (W Post, July 24/80, A-15; Today, July 24/80, 1A; W Star, July 20/80, 2; July 24/80, A-7)
Forthright criticism of Carter-administration space policy came from Rocco A. Petrone, former director of MSFC, and Dr. Thomas A. Paine, who was NASA administrator during the early manned lunar landing years, the Huntsville Times reported. The two testified July 23 before the House Committee on Science and Technology's subcommittee on space science and applications.
Committee chairman Don Fuqua (D-Fla.) and ranking minority member Larry Winn (R-Kans.) both expressed support of the NASA veterans; Winn remarked that it was "like old timers' day up here." Under Carter, Paine said, the U.S. had "lost both our senses of direction and our resolution ... Ringing rhetoric proclaiming U.S. leadership in space is no substitute for plans and programs. In my view it is self-delusive to give lip service to leadership while avoiding initiative and commitment." Petrone said the usual pause for evaluation after a large program like the lunar mission "is now becoming dangerously close to a condition of stall and possible loss of minimum momentum needed" for complex space programs. He expressed concern over "technological timidity in a nation that has been built over the years on technological strength." (Htsvl This, July 24/80, 6)
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