Feb 9 1977
From The Space Library
Fifteen yr almost to the day after the U.S. placed its first man in earth orbit, NASA would begin flight tests of the Enterprise-first Space Shuttle orbiter off the assembly line-to be carried piggyback on a Boeing 747 on Feb. 11, 1977, for its first trip through earth's atmosphere. The flight of Marine Lt. Col. John H. Glenn on Feb. 20, 1962, lasted less than 5hr; since that flight, the U.S. had accumulated 22 04 man-hours in space by using 43 astronauts on 31 separate manned missions that included 9 trips around the moon, 6 moon landings, and 3mo earth-orbital missions on Skylab.
Glenn's Mercury spacecraft Friendship 7 weighed only 1315kg, with barely enough room for the pilot and a few instruments, and had parachuted into the Atlantic after its one-time use. The orbiter would weigh 67 500kg empty, could carry up to 7 crew members, and was designed to land on a runway and be prepared for another flight within weeks. In contrast to Glenn's 3-orbit flight, Spacelab missions carried by the Shuttle might last from 7 to 30 days. First of 6 orbital tests of the Shuttle was set for 1979, and operational flight for 1980. (NASA Release 77-21; NASA pre-ALT rept Feb 11/77)
NASA announced it had certified the General Aviation Design and Analysis Center at Ohio State Univ. airport in Columbus to make analyses of single-element airfoils, a first step toward providing a complete service for the general aviation community. Developed under a 3yr contract with LaRC and OSU's aeronautical and astronautical research laboratory, the ADAC would provide directly to aircraft designers and manufacturers services such as analysis and design of 2-dimensional airfoil shapes, investigations of high-lift devices and aerodynamic controls, compilation of airfoil aerodynamic characteristics, and technical assistance (including consultation and data interpretation) for windtunnel and flight testing of airfoils. ADAC would provide the services on a fee basis. ADAC personnel under Dr. G.M. Gregorek would work with NASA on refining present codes used in computation; as NASA developed new techniques and improved codes, ADAC would use the improvements to solve more difficult design problems. (NASA Release 77-22)
JSC and the Lunar Science Institute announced plans for the 8th annual Lunar Science Conference in Houston, March 14-18. More than 600 scientists from around the world would discuss new data about the moon, derived from studies of lunar samples and from Apollo surface and orbital experiments, as well as new interpretations of previous models of lunar origin and history. Several Soviet scientists would attend, to give NASA materials from the Luna 24 mission for analysis. Dr. Michael G. Duke, acting chief of JSC's Lunar and Planetary Sciences Division, and Dr. Robert Pepin, outgoing director of the Lunar Science Institute, would cochair the conference.
The conference would also be the second meeting on "planetary" science, continuing the practice of the 1976 conference, where planetary interests were discussed for the first time as a result of the accumulation of data from NASA and USSR missions to Venus, Mercury, Mars, and the outer planets. The assembled data on planetary origin and evolution had proved of primary interest to lunar scientists. (JSC Release 77-09)
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