Jul 19 1974
From The Space Library
Astronaut Alan B. Shepard, Jr., the first U.S. man in space and the fifth man to walk on the moon, announced his retirement from NASA and the Navy effective 1 Aug. During his 5 May 1961, 14.8-min Mercury-Redstone 2 mission, Shepard flew his Freedom 7 spacecraft to a 186.2-km altitude and initiated the U.S. manned space program. He commanded the Apollo 14 lunar landing mission 31 Jan.-9 Feb. 1971. Shepard would join the Marathon Construction Co. of Houston, Tex., as a partner and Chairman. (NASA Release 74-203; A&A 1961)
NASA announced the appointment of William C. Schneider as NASA Deputy Associate Administrator for Manned Space Flight, effective 21 July. Schneider had served as both Acting Associate and Acting Deputy Associate Administrator for Manned Space Flight from 18 March to 17 May and had been Skylab Program Director from December 1968 until the end of the Skylab program. (NASA Ann, 19 July 74; NASA Release 74-207)
British Prime Minister Harold S. Wilson and French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing decided at a Paris summit meeting to limit construction of the Concorde supersonic jet airliner to 16 aircraft. The decision, which would end the joint project by 1977, was a compromise between the British Labor Party's desire to cut off state funds entirely and the French demand that the program be expanded to 19 aircraft. Since many parts had already been manufactured, the decision meant that many of the 30 000 employees of manufacturers Aerospatiale France and British Aircraft Corp. Ltd. might lose their jobs. There were firm orders for only nine of the $40-million aircraft, with options on several others. U.S. airlines had refrained from ordering any of the aircraft because of doubts about its operating economy. (WSJ, 22 July 74, 6; UK Embassy PIO, Wash, D.C.)
Dr. Floyd L. Thompson, former Langley Research Center Director, had been selected to receive the Society of Automotive Engineers' 1974 Daniel Guggenheim Medal, the Langley Researcher reported. He would receive the award for his "farsighted development of men and facilities, and for decisive leadership of research that provided technological foundations for manned flight beyond the speed of sound, safe reentry of spacecraft, and successful exploration of space." (Langley Researcher, 19 July 74, 1 ; A&A, Dec 74, 72)
President Nixon announced his intention to nominate James E. Dow to be Deputy Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration, succeeding Kenneth M. Smith, who had resigned. Dow had been Associate Administrator of FAA since August 1972. The nomination was submitted to the Senate 22 July and confirmed 8 Aug. (PD, 22 July 74, 817; 29 July 74, 995; FonF, 7 Sept 74)
Communications Satellite Corp. reported a net income of $21 013 000, or $2.10 a share, for the first six months of 1974-up from $15 223 000, or $1.52 a share, for the same period in 1973. Operating revenues for the period were $63 322 000, up from $55 902 000 in 1973. The in-creased revenues had resulted from a gain in the number of half-circuits leased by ComSatCorp to its carrier customers for overseas satellite communications. (ComSatCorp Release 74 11)
Columbia Broadcasting System newsman Walter Cronkite recalled the two most exalting moments in his years of TV space coverage, during an interview with the Christian Science Monitor. The first was "Alan Shepard's little 15-minute plop-down into the Atlantic. Rocketry itself was so uncertain . . . I just didn't know whether or not I was going to be. able to watch." The second was the first lunar landing. "That was a highly emotional moment for me. The actual touchdown, not so much Neil Armstrong's walk." Cronkite, preparing for the TV documentary "Space: A Report to the Stockholders," said he still believed the major achievement of the moon landing was that "it proves that we truly have the capability at this stage of man's civilization to do any darn thing we want-the most outlandish or the most practical things."
Of course there were important spinoff values. "Probably one of the most important industrial spinoffs . . . is the command that U.S. industry had gotten in the computer business. . . . I attribute that almost solely to the space program." Cronkite said that recent cutbacks in the manned program were proper. "It is just about where it ought to be-most of the concentration now is in unmanned satellites" and a deliberate, but not crash, program toward the reusable space shuttle. If news-men were allowed to travel on the space shuttle, he'd go "on any flight they offered me." When asked if he wouldn't be missed by American TV viewers at blastoff, he said, "What do you mean. . . ? I hope to be broadcasting all the time from inside!" `'(CSM, 19 July 74)
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