Nov 6 1985
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(New page: Eighteen European governments agreed today to finance a plan, known as Eureka, to increase Europe's technological presence through development of 10 pilot technology projects, the NY Times...)
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Eighteen European governments agreed today to finance a plan, known as Eureka, to increase Europe's technological presence through development of 10 pilot technology projects, the NY Times reported. Although some observers considered Eureka a counterweight to the U.S.'s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) program, most of the Eureka projects, ranging from high-powered industrial lasers to a diagnostic kit for sexually transmitted diseases, were under discussion well before French President Francois Mitterrand proposed them in April 1985 as the Eureka project.
The agreement was reached at the same time that several European countries were considering whether to support the Reagan Administration's SDI program. Britain agreed in October to full participation in SDI, France had withheld support, and West Germany said it would decide before the end of the year.
In the Eureka agreement, ministers from the European Economic Community (EEC), joined by Spain, Portugal, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Switzerland, Austria, and Turkey, said in a seven-page "declaration of principles" that the program's aim was to "strengthen the basis for lasting prosperity and employment" by furthering "closer cooperation among enterprises and research institutes in the field of advance technologies." Widely differing conceptions of how Eureka should work had slowed the plan, but the governments finally found ways around several obstacles, including questions on government versus private financing and a secretariat to oversee the agreement. Emphasizing that funding should come largely from the private sector, the declaration called for "adequate financial commitment by participating enterprises." The ten pilot Eureka projects and nations to participate approved by the ministers were: production of a standard microcomputer for education and domestic use (Britain, France, Italy); production of a new type of computer chip made of amorphous, or uncrystallized, silicon (France, West Germany); development of a high-speed computer (France, Norway); development of a laser for cutting cloth in the apparel industry (France, Portugal); development of membranes for water filtration that could be used to desalinate sea water (Denmark, France); development of high-power laser systems (West Germany, France, Italy, Britain); development of a system to trace pollutants in European air (West Germany, Austria, Finland, the Netherlands, Norway, and the EEC); development of a European research computer network (West Germany, Austria, Finland, France, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, and the EEC); development of a diagnosis kit for sexually transmitted diseases (Spain, Britain); and development of advanced optic electronics (France, Italy). (NYT, Nov 7/85, D1)
The Space Shuttle Challenger on mission 61-A landed at 9:44 a.m. today at Edwards Air Force Base, the NY Times reported, before an estimated audience of 9,000. "The bird fspace flight, said at a post-landing news conference. "The brakes look like it's in good shape," Jesse Moore, NASA's associate administrator good coming in and we are very, very pleased with the results of the nosewheel steering test." During the landing, Challenger commander Henry Hartsfield tested a new steering mechanism built to reduce tire and brake damage that had occurred during several Space Shuttle landings. An orbiter had not landed at Kennedy Space Center (KSC) since the previous April, when both main landing gears collapsed and one tire blew out. The test called for Hartsfield to engage the new steering mechanism seconds after the nosewheel touched down on the runway so he could steer Challenger 20 feet off course and then bring it back to the centerline. One more successful test later in the year would clear orbiters to resume landing in December at KSC.
Officials in West Germany, which paid NASA $64 million to fly Spacelab D-1 on Challenger, called the mission "highly successful" and predicted that 90 to 95% of all the science studies would be completed. Earlier, a West German official at the science control center near Munich said only one study, a heat diffusion test on a sample of salt, would be unfinished by the time Challenger returned to earth.
Crew members Dr. Bonnie Dunbar, Col. Guion Bluford Jr., Dr. Ernst Messerschmidt, Dr. Reinhard Furrer, and Dr. Wubbo Ockels did not attend a postflight press conference, the Washington Post reported, but traveled to Dryden Flight Research Center where researchers would run tests on them to determine how well they readapted to gravity after a week in weightlessness. Later the five would go to Kennedy Space Center for more elaborate tests. The European Space Agency (ESA) announced after the flight that it was particularly satisfied with results from Spacelab D-1, on which ESA had 38% of the payload in terms of critical resources (mass, energy, and crew time). All ESA facilities on Spacelab D-1-the Space Sled, for studies of man's behavior under microgravity conditions; the Biorack, a multi-purpose facility for biological investigations of microgravity and cosmic radiation effects on life forms; and the Fluid Physics Module, for studies of basic fluid phenomena in space-performed perfectly with no operational or technical failures. (NASA FOR M-989-61-A [postflight] Nov 8/85; NYT, Nov 7/85, A21; W Post, Nov 6/85, A4; ESA release Nov 11/85)
Hermann Oberth, considered by some to be the father of spaceflight, watched on TV at Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) the landing of the Space Shuttle Challenger on mission 61-A, the Washington Post reported. Oberth is the last scientist survivor of the group that transformed theory into modern space exploration. Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, the Russian who worked out some of the early theory of rocket propulsion, died in 1935; Robert Goddard, the American who experimented with early rockets and for whom GSFC is named, died in 1945. But Oberth, who made the most complete analyses of the problems and prospects of human space travel, lived to “see it happen.” In 1932 Oberth wrote a paper in which he not only showed mathematically that it was possible to escape earth's gravity, but also anticipated a host of other aspects of spaceflight not seriously approached for the next 30 wars. Oberth described in the book a spaceship's propulsion system and architectural form down to the rocket engine's nozzles; designed spacesuits and methods of eating in weightlessness; conceived of astronauts performing spacewalks; proposed space stations in earth orbit as transfer points for interplanetary travel; considered the problems of weightlessness and motion sickness (which astronauts still faced); proposed that the stations spin slowly to create an artificial gravity; and suggested the use of flying shuttles that could take off like a rocket, visit the space station, and land back on earth like airplanes.
Oberth also worked out the physics of joining two spacecraft in orbit (referred to now as rendezvous and docking), anticipated that photos of earth from space would be useful for studying the ground and forecasting weather, foresaw that telescopes in earth orbit could gather far better astronomical data than those that looked through the atmosphere, and claimed that practical uses for space travel would someday make it a profitable enterprise.
Working unaware of Tsiolkovsky or Goddard, Oberth wrote the paper as an amateur physicist and mathematician while serving as a soldier in the Austro-Hungarian army during World War I. Oberth's commanding officer sent the paper to the War Ministry, where the generals rejected it as obvious fantasy.
After the war, when Oberth was at the University of Heidelberg, he submitted as his dissertation a longer version of the paper, complete with elaborate mathematical formulas proving his ideas. Again it was rejected.
Eventually Oberth paid to have the paper published. “The Rocket Into Interplanetary Space” gained a wide following and attracted Wernher von Braun, who worked as Oberth's assistant and then left to join the German military rocket research program at Peenemunde. Von Braun brought Oberth to work on the V2 rocket, the first major device based on Oberth's ideas. During three years in the 1950s, Oberth joined von Braun in the U.S. where he was developing the Redstone rocket. In 1958 Oberth retired to West Germany.
Oberth had concluded in his book that “the foregoing demonstrates that it is possible, with present day science and technology, to construct vehicles which could attain cosmic speed and that it is probably possible for men to ride in these vehicles,” but that it would take more than a decade to realize these possibilities. At GSFC today, Oberth said it had “proven to be much more complicated that I thought.” (W Post, Nov 7/85, C1)
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