Mar 20 1978
From The Space Library
Ames Research Center announced the scheduled arrival this month of the XV-15, a tilt-rotor research aircraft, which would have wingtip-mounted turbine engines that turned 7.6m (25ft) prop rotors. The engine-prop rotor assembly could be tilted up for helicopter-type vertical takeoff and landing, or oriented forward in the normal position for conventional flight as an airplane. Bell Helicopter Textron, Fort Worth, Tex., had built the aircraft under a joint program of ARC and the U.S. Army's Research and Technology Laboratories at Moffett Field, Calif. The first XV-15 to arrive at ARC, modified for remote control, would undergo 6wk of testing in ARC's 12.2 x 24.4m (40 x 80ft) wind tunnel. Flight test of the second aircraft would begin at the Bell facilities in Fort Worth after wind-tunnel tests. ARC would eventually house both aircraft for Army/NASA evaluation of the tilt-rotor concept, and for ARC research on terminal-area (airport) navigation and on vertical- and short-takeoff-and-landing. (NASA Release 78-45)
The U.S. Army had devised a charged-particle beam weapon using negative hydrogen neutralized through an exchange cell as an antisatellite-kill mechanism, Av Wk reported. The program had been code-named Sipapu, an American Indian word meaning sacred fire. Its application to ballistic-missile defense would be as an accelerator with small angular divergence; an antisatellite version with a range of several thousand km could destroy enemy vehicles without maneuvering to intercept. Av Wk said that a smaller adaptation of the device, requiring lower power levels, could be orbited in 2 or 3yr, probably by NASA's Space Shuttle.
The Accelerator Div. at Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory had worked on Sipapu for the Army, with USAF participation; the Army's Ballistic Missile Defense Command would spend $4.3 million this year and $5 million in FY79 for charged-particle beam weapons, and $3 million in the coming yr for high-energy laser weapons. (Av Wk, Mar 20/78, 13)
The USAF had sent a destruct signal Mar. 19 to a Titan rocket carrying a pair of military comsats, the W Post reported, aborting an $80-million mission 8min after liftoff from Cape Canaveral. Air Force officials said a range-safety officer had sent the destruct signal when the rocket suddenly began slowing down and falling back to earth. Debris from the 31 0001b space mission, rocket, and satellites had fallen into the ocean, although the exact location was unknown. (W Post, Mar 20/78, B-9)
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