Mar 21 1969
From The Space Library
Space News for this day. (1MB PDF)
Dept. of Commerce, DOD, Dept. of Interior, DOT, AEC, NASA, and NSF released News from BOMEX, report of Barbados Oceanographic and Meteorological Experiment to be conducted in May, June, and July in cooperation with government of Barbados. Scientific study of joint behavior and interactions of atmosphere-ocean system in subtropical and tropical waters was part of Federal Air-Sea Interaction Research Program and major U.S. contribution to Global Atmospheric Research Program (GARP). BOMEX would study continuous exchange of energy, momentum, gases, particulates, and electrical charges at air-sea interface and study ways in which energy and other properties were transported from area by atmosphere and ocean. NASA would test concepts of satellite sensors for weather and oceanographic observations. Its experimental weather and communications satellites (Ats III, Nimbus III, and ESSA satellites) and devices being developed under Earth Resources Survey Satellite program would be directly engaged in BOMEX. Photos taken by Apollo 9 astronauts with hand-held Hasselblad camera of 900 sq mi of equatorial Atlantic Ocean off Barbados would be used in project. (Text; NASA News; Science, 3/28/69, 1435-6)
First decade in space corresponded with early years of aviation following Wright brothers flight at Kitty Hawk, NASA Associate Administrator for Manned Space Flight, Dr. George E. Mueller, told Annual Kiwanis Dinner in Milledgeville, Ga. "I recently calculated the costs per seat mile of their first flight for comparison with our Apollo flight to the moon. They probably had ten thousand dollars invested in first Kitty Hawk flight that went one fifth of a mile, giving a cost per seat mile for Orville of fifty thousand dollars. We will have about twenty-four billion dollars invested in our first five-hundred-thousand-mile trip for three astronauts to the moon, giving a cost of only about sixteen thousand dollars per seat mile. We are ahead of the Wright Brothers-but we have a long way to go to catch up with the DC-8 or 707. If subsequent flights to the moon cost two hundred million dollars each, that's less than one hundred and fifty dollars a seat mile, so we are going in the right direction." (Text)
INTELSAT conference of 67 countries and observers from Communist bloc and underdeveloped nations ended at State Dept. without agreement on method of sharing control over international satellite communications. Committee of INTELSAT members was appointed to work through summer on alternate drafts of final agreement to be presented to conference in November . Leonard H. Marks, American chairman of conference, had announced his resignation and would return to private law practice in Washington, D.C. (Lydon, NYT, 3/23/69, 31; Rpt of US Del)
Aviation Progress committee announced appointment of former Sen. A. S. Mike Monroney as consultant and adviser to committee and stated its purpose was "to work with interested individuals and organizations to . . seek and support ways to improve and expand the National Aviation System of airports and airways." As Chairman of Aviation Subcommittee of Senate Commerce Committee, Monroney had been largely responsible for legislation which created FAA in 1958. (Committee Release; W Star, 3/23/69, C5)
Secretary of Transportation John A. Volpe announced award of $544,302 FAA contract to Laboratory for Electronics, Inc." to develop two low-cost, solid-state, microwave-instrument landing systems (ILS) for STOL aircraft operations at FAA's National Aviation Facilities Experimental Center in Atlantic City, NJ." and at suitable operational STOLport such as Dulles International Airport near Washington, D.C. (FAA Release 69-38)
Harvard Univ. biologist Dr. George Wald and MIT physicist Dr. Bruno Rossi disclosed that some 251 NAS members out of 806 had signed letter to President Nixon expressing continued opposition to deployment by U.S. of ABM system. Letter said, "Russia is as well prepared to build such devices as we are. This can only introduce a new and perhaps disastrous spiral in the arms race. Our science and technology, rather than being used to add further to the present 'balance of terror,' needs to be redirected to solving pressing problems of poverty, malnutrition, control of population, and improvement of the human environment for our own people and people everywhere." (AP, W Post, 3/22/69, A5)
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