Dec 9 1966
From The Space Library
Space News for this day. (2MB PDF)
NASA's ATS I satellite took first U.S. high-quality photos of the earth from synchronous orbit altitudes. Photos showed changing cloud cover pattern over 40 per cent of the earth's surface. (NASA Proj. Off.)
NASA's second Project Scanner instrument package was successfully launched by three-stage solid propellant Trailblazer booster from NASA Wallops Station on suborbital trajectory to gather information on earth's horizon. Two-channel radiometers measured infrared energy emitted from earth's horizon by carbon dioxide and water vapor; starmapper telescope provided data on attitude of spin-stabilized spacecraft. Project Scanner was a phase of horizon definition research conducted by LaRC. (Wallops Release 66-58)
Complexities of modern society required a new concept of management, NASA Administrator James E. Webb told graduation class of Harvard Univ.'s Graduate School of Business Administration. "The kind of challenges that we in management are facing today . . . call for new and experimental approaches to organization. One . . . is the question of the chief executive function. In traditional thinking, the structure of an organization peaked in the chief executive. . . . However, as organizations have become more complex and their challenges more interdisciplinary . . . there has been an increasing tendency to experiment with the idea of the multiple executive. . . . We saw this kind of need at the very beginning of NASA's history. We evolved, therefore, a partnership arrangement which included Dr. Hugh Dryden, Dr. Robert Seamans, and myself. We all had many common ideas, and yet each brought to our work on the critical decisions affecting the nation's space effort certain specialized experience. To do it any other way would have deprived us of the kind of mutual support and broadly-based leadership that I think we achieved." (Text)
December 9: French President Charles de Gaulle and Soviet Premier Aleksey Kosygin signed extension of scientific, technical, commercial, and cultural cooperation between U.S.S.R. and France provided for by June 30 agreement. Declaration followed eight-day visit to France by Kosygin who had toured the Center for Nuclear Studies and Air Liquide laboratory and inspected prototype of the Concorde supersonic aircraft. (Reuters, NYT, 12/10/66, 16; Nossiter, Wash. Post, 12/8/66, A32; Mooney, NYT, 12/6/66, C10)
Report on national document-handling systems in science and technology prepared by Federal Council for Science and Technology's Committee on Scientific and Technical Information (COSATI) was summarized in Science by Launor F. Carter, vice president of System Development Corp.-a participant in the study. Report had recommended that Office of Science and Technology: (1) accelerate its efforts to organize an integrated national network of information and document-handling systems in science and technology; (2) collaborate with other Federal agencies and private organizations to develop comprehensive, coordinated program and sponsor effective legislation; (3) encourage private sector to formulate plans for its consideration; and (4) encourage Federal support of experiments in information technology, including prototype information systems. (Carter, Science, 12/9/66, 1299-1304)
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