Sep 13 1973
From The Space Library
Ten Soviet scientists and engineers arrived at Johnson Space Center to help evaluate the docking system for the July 15, 1975, U.S.-U.S.S.R. Apollo Soyuz Test Project mission. Vladimir S. Syromyatikov of the Soviet State Research Institute of Machine Building led the team, which would assist in evaluating the U.S. and Soviet sections of the docking module for proper mating and in checking pressure integrity and structural strength of the combined system. The U.S.-U.S.S.R. team also would make dynamic tests of the docking. The system would be studied under thermal extremes. JSC was testing full-scale development hardware built by both countries for compatibility and operation. (JSC Release 73-119)
NASA 427, an instrumented G-54 aircraft from Wallops Station, flew to the German Air Force Base at Leek, West Germany, to participate with European scientists in the Joint North Sea Wave Project Sept. 17-30. Daily research flights from Leck would study surface waves and prevailing wind relationships in the second of a series conducted by the West German Hydrographic Institute, Hamburg. The C-54 carried Langley Research Center's S-band radiometer and laser profilometer ; the Naval Research Laboratory's K- and Ka-band radiometers, narrow-pulse radar, and inertial navigation system; and Wallops' Hasselblad and flight research cameras. Participants included the National Center for Atmospheric Research, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NRL, and universities. The NASA 427 itinerary had been planned to fly beneath Skylab passes over Newfoundland and the Azores Sept. 13. (Wallops Release 73-10)
President Nixon submitted to the Senate the nomination of Dr. Dixy Lee Ray, Atomic Energy Commission Chairman, to be U.S. Representative to the Sept. 18-24 International Atomic Energy Agency General Con-ference in Vienna. Among five alternate representatives nominated was Apollo 8 Astronaut and former National Space Council Chairman William A. Anders. (PD, 9/17/73, 1128, 1132)
Military records damaged in a July fire at the Military Personnel Records Center in Overland, Mo., were being salvaged through space-age technology, McDonnell Douglas Corp. officials told the press in St. Louis. A space chamber used to simulate temperatures and pressures encountered in Mercury and Gemini manned space missions was being used to re-claim records. The scorched and water-soaked records had been sealed in the chamber and put through a freeze-drying process. "The records came through the process legible," an official had said. (AP, NYT, 9/14/73, 11)
NASA launched an Aerobee 170 sounding rocket from White Sands Missile Range carrying a Goddard Space Flight Center solar physics experiment. Rocket and instrumentation performed satisfactorily. (GSFC proj off)
President Nixon accepted the resignation of Dr. Eberhardt F. Rechtin as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Telecommunications. (PD, 9/17/73, 1131)
Military and aerospace expenditures in the laser field were expected to average about $317 million annually in the next five years, according to a study by technological market research organization Frost & Sullivan, Inc., the New York Times reported. The FY 1973 laser market would be about $290 million, more than double earlier estimates. Operational thermal (laser) weapons were probably 10 yrs in the future, but prototype experiments were expected to be made by 1975. Technology had progressed to high-energy, gas-dynamic lasers that produced light beams when their internal gases were heated, expanded, and forced through small nozzles at supersonic speeds. The laser's most no-table military contribution thus far had been bombs directed through the air toward targets illuminated by laser lights. A new system, target-recognition attack (TRAM) , was being developed to spot targets day and night with an infrared detector bore-sighted with a laser range finder to illuminate the target. (Middleton, NYT, 9/13/73, E22)
September 13-October 17: Ames Research Center conducted a five-week experiment to determine the effects of weightlessness and reentry into earth gravity on female space shuttle passengers. The experiment, with 12 Air Force nurse volunteers participating, was a follow-on to similar studies on men made in 1972. Following two weeks of orientation and medical studies, eight of the nurses would simulate weightlessness with absolute bedrest while four acted as ambulatory controls. After two weeks of immobility, the eight would be subjected to g forces expected when the shuttle entered the atmosphere at a mission's end. The final week would be for recovery and testing. (ARC Release 73-107; ARC Biomed Research Div)
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