May 7 1976
From The Space Library
NASA announced plans to launch a second maritime satellite (Marisat) for the Comsat General Corp. later this month, as part of a system to provide communications to the U.S. Navy, commercial shipping, and offshore industries. The first satellite of the system, Marisat 1, was successfully launched 19 Feb. into an orbit over the Atlantic at 15°W longitude, where it had provided UHF service to the Navy since 25 Mar. NASA hoped to inaugurate full-time commercial voice and data communications, using both Marisats, by 1 July. A third satellite had been constructed as a spare. (NASA Release 76-83)
A launch-abort system for the Space Shuttle, for use in case of malfunction during the first 2.5 min of flight, was "quietly" removed by NASA 3 yr ago although such a system had been designed into the Shuttle late in 1971, according to the Washington Post. (In 2.5 min the Shuttle would reach a 40-km altitude from which it could "fly" to earth.) Staff writer Thomas O'Toole said that in 1973 NASA "reversed itself and dropped the launch-abort system ... a decision understood to have met with dissent inside the space agency." The abort system designed for the Shuttle consisted of 2 huge solid-fuel rocket motors, one on each side of the Shuttle tail, that could be fired to separate the spacecraft and its occupants from the booster engines and main-engine fuel tanks in case of trouble; however, the abort motors weighed 43,500 kg-half as heavy as the entire 68 000-kg Shuttle carrying an average 18 000-kg payload-and even after they fired, the Shuttle would fall for 2 or 3 sec before being lifted away from the boosters.
Elwood W. Land, director of system operations for the Shuttle program, defended the decision to remove the abort system, saying that it was not needed because of redundancy built into the spacecraft and its engine. Land noted that, in 58 manned space flights, neither the U.S. nor the USSR had resorted to a launch-abort system to rescue spacecraft crews, notwithstanding 2 close calls: Gemini 6 astronauts had almost fired their ejection seats when their engine shut down on the pad in 1965, and the Soyuz 18 cosmonauts never reached earth orbit but flew their spacecraft to a landing in southeast Siberia. The 1-man Mercury capsule had a rocket-boosted escape system to carry the spacecraft cabin away from its rocket engines and fuel tanks; the 2-man Gemini had ejection seats to fire astronauts from the cabin like jet pilots from disabled aircraft; and the 3-man Apollo carried a large solid-fuel rocket motor that could pull the 18 000-kg spacecraft away from its tower of engines sec after trouble hit the engines or fuel tanks. Only remaining provision for the Shuttle was a pair of ejection seats for pilot and copilot of the first 4 orbital test flights; the seats would be removed when 5 more crew members were added for subsequent tests and for operational flights. "There is no way to install 7 ejection seats in the shuttle," the article noted. (W Post, 7 May 76, A-3)
Bradford Johnston was appointed NASA's Associate Administrator for Applications, succeeding Charles W. Mathews who retired 27 Feb., NASA announced. Johnston's appointment would be effective 7 June. Now a private management consultant in Wis., he received a B.A. in economics from Wabash College and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School. His NASA responsibilities would include planning and directing agency programs to identify and demonstrate useful applications of engineering and science techniques. (NASA Release 76-84; Hq announcement 10 May 76)
The Smithsonian Institution awarded its Langley gold medal for aeronautics to James E. Webb, former head of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the late Grover Loening. Webb was cited for management skills in leading the U.S. to "pre-eminence in space flight research and development." Loening [see 29 Feb.] was honored as "a pioneer aeronautical inventor" who developed the Loening amphibian plane and the design of the strut-braced monoplane. (W Post, 8 May 76, E-3)
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