Jul 3 1975
From The Space Library
The Washington Post reported that NASA had turned down a request by Sen. William Proxmire (D -Wise.) to postpone the Apollo Soyuz Test Project (scheduled for launch on 15 July) until the U.S.S.R. brought back the two Soyuz 15 cosmonauts who had been docked with the orbiting Salyut 4 space station since 26 May 1975. Sen. Proxmire said that the Soviet Union would be unable to maintain ground control of two manned missions simultaneously. He had based his judgment on closed-door testimony given him as chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee by Carl Duckett, deputy director for science and technology at the Central Intelligence Agency. The Post quoted Proxmire as saying that the Soviet command center would be strained to handle two manned flights, particularly if one were in trouble in space. Sen. Proxmire said that it would be a simple matter to deorbit the two Soyuz I S cosmonauts and bring them home.
In a telephone interview with the Post, ASTP Technical Director Glynn S. Lunney said that the Soviet Union had two mission-control centers, one managing the Salyut flight, the other managing ASTP. Lunney said NASA had calculated that the two Soviet spacecraft would cross over the same Soviet tracking stations only twice: One overlap might last as long as 30 sec and the other 90 sec. Soviet officials had assured NASA that ASTP communications would have priority during these two short passes. (O'Toole, W Post, 3 July 75, A33)
NASA was inviting U.S. and foreign corporations, universities, and government organizations to propose experiments for the Ats 6 Applications Technology Satellite (launched 30 May 1974) after it completed its year of service to India [see 2 July]. After the Indian experiment, Ats 6 would be moved westward to the west coast of South America where it would operate within range of North and South America and adjacent ocean areas. NASA's announcement of experiment opportunities for the comsat's third year of operation invited proposals in the fields of societal, communications, or technological disciplines. (NASA Release 75-187)
The Energy Information Center at the Univ. of N. Mex. had compiled for NASA a bibliography, Wind Energy Utilization. The 496-page volume included foreign and domestic literature on wind-power plants, wind power generators, wind machines, and wind-energy storage facilities. The center at Albuquerque, established in 1974 as a cooperative effort between the university and NASA, had also published comprehensive bibliographies on hydrogen and solar thermal energy. (NASA Release 75-186)
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