Jan 1 1973
From The Space Library
NASA had scheduled 15 spacecraft launches in 1973 from Kennedy Space Center, Eastern Test Range, and Western Test Range, KSC announced. Launches would include four Skylab missions, three of them manned; Intelsat-IV F-6, F-7, and F-8 for Communications Satellite Corp.; Pioneer-G to fly by Jupiter; Canada's Telesat-B comsat; RAE-B Radio Astronomy Explorer; United Kingdom's Skynet II-A comsat; Mariner mission to fly by Venus and Mercury; ITOS-E Improved Tiros Operational Satellite; ERTS-B Earth Resources Technology Satellite; and AE-C Atmosphere Explorer. (KSC Release I-73)
NASA and Soviet space officials had agreed to permit representatives of the U.S. and U.S.S.R. to observe and advise in Apollo and Soyuz flight control rooms during orbital phase of July 1975 joint mission, Aviation Week & Space Technology reported. No agreement had been reached to permit U.S. observers at the Soviet launch site during liftoff of Soyuz spacecraft. [See March 15-30.] (Av Wk, 1/1/73, 13)
An Aviation Week & Space Technology editorial noted the aerospace industry forecast for 1973 was for continuing improvement "across the entire technical spectrum." The year 1971 had bottomed out the 1969-1970 recession and provided the "first tangible evidence of upswing." The year 1973 should continue the uptrend "on a modest but solid curve." Industry had been "under increasing pressure from Congress, the Pentagon and the taxpaying public for the last five years to improve its managerial efficiency and the reliability performance of its products. The pressure has now accumulated to the point where the industry must respond, both internally in cleaning its own house and mounting an aggressive campaign for government contracting reforms to match, or face the very real spectre of nationalization in the public mood that may well prevail four years hence.” (Hotz, Av Wk, 1/1/73, 11)
The "deeper meaning" of Apollo 17 (Dec. 7-19, 1972), the last manned lunar landing mission in the NASA program, was discussed by author William I. Thompson in a New York Times article: The mission had represented a "sunset" of rocket technology. "Apollo 17 turned the night into day, but elsewhere smaller lights were going on as men began to discover relationships between consciousness and the growth of plants .... between enzyme change and faith healing .... and between mind and matter in psychokinesis. . . . The space program was an important scaffolding, but now that the building of the new human culture is up, we no longer need the scaffolding." To spend a fortune on rockets now "would be the same as spending a fortune on dirigibles in 1916. There are other forms of space travel to be invented, and these forms are more likely to spring from the new paradigms emerging in science than from the hardware of the old technology. The era of the rocket has climaxed in Apollo 17; if we push on and ignore the sense of an ending, we shall find only the bitterness and disappointment of the anticlimax.” (NYT, 1/1/73, 3:13)
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