July 1980
From The Space Library
ESA's monthly newsletter said that the launch failure of its Ariane L02 launch vehicle [see May 23, June 17] did not call into question the continuation of the program. When the cause of the engine failure was known, program officials would conduct the other two qualification firings. The six Arianes now being manufactured would launch Marecs B, Sino 2, INTELSAT V, Exosat, ECS, and Telecom 1A, the organization said. (ESA newsletter, July 80)
NASA announced appointment of Dr. Stanley I. Weiss, DOE's deputy assistant secretary for industrial and utility applications and operations, as associate administrator for space transportation operations, effective July 7. He would be responsible for STS functions including Shuttle, Spacelab, and expendable launch vehicles during transition to the Shuttle. (NASA anno July 2/80)
NASA announced appointment of Gerald D. Griffin, deputy director of KSC, as acting associate administrator for external relations at Headquarters effective July 7. He would have responsibility for policy-level management, direction, and coordination of NASA's Offices of Public Affairs, International Affairs, DOD Affairs, Government/Industry Affairs, and University Affairs, reporting to the NASA administrator. His KSC responsibilities would be given temporarily to senior managers at that center. (NASA Release 80-104; NASA anno July 3/80)
The Washington Post reported the death of Walter R. Dornberger, 84, who as a German general had supervised Wernher von Braun's work on the V2 rocket during World War II. Cause of death June 26 was not given in either the Washington Post or Aviation Week & Space Technology. Dornberger was visiting in West Germany. He had come to the United States in 1947 after two years in a British prisoner-of-war camp; like more than 100 other German born rocket scientists who worked for the U.S. Army and U.S. Air Force, he became a U.S. citizen. He also worked for Bell Aerosystems Company, where he was a vice president.
A volunteer in the imperial German army of World War I, Dornberger was a career soldier to the end of the second war. In 1932 he was given charge of a group of scientists working on rocket concepts and moved to Peenemunde in 1937. When the first test of the V2 October 3, 1942, was successful, Dornberger asked von Braun: "Do you realize what we accomplished today?" Von Braun said "Yes, today the spaceship was born." In 1958, nearly three years before President Kennedy voiced the goal of landing a man on the Moon by 1970, Dornberger predicted that man would be on the moon in 10 years: "whether he is Russian or American depends on how much money Congress is willing to spend," he said. (W Post, July 2/80, B-6; Av Wk, July 7/80, 25)
The Washington Star reported five new members for the Aviation Hall of Fame: former astronaut Charles Conrad, third man to walk on the Moon; Anthony H. G. Fokker, founder of Fokker Aircraft Company; William T. Piper, founder of Piper Aircraft Corporation; retired U.S. Air Force Gen. Bernard A. Schriever, "architect of the Air Force's ballistic missile program"; and Robert F. Six, founder of Continental Airlines. Fokker and Piper were honored posthumously in the announcement at Dayton, Ohio's, exhibition center. (W Star, July 21/80, A-2)
NASA announced that its quiet short-haul research aircraft (QSRA) had made more than 500 landings on a simulated aircraft-carrier deck in a NASA/U.S. Navy study of the application of propulsive-lift technology to aircraft carriers. The landings were made at a naval auxiliary landing field near ARC in California. Using a carrier-deck outline painted on the runway, the craft in 23 mph (37 kmh) headwinds touched down at about 52 mph (84 kmh), slow enough to make unnecessary the arresting gear normally used on carriers.
Actual operations would be demonstrated on a U.S. carrier at sea off San Diego later in July. Built by Boeing under NASA contract, the plane was essentially a new aircraft making extensive use of existing parts: fuselage and tail from a deHavilland C-8 Buffalo, landing-gear parts from a Boeing 727 jet transport, and engines from the US A.F. A-9A prototype. (NASA Release 80-111)
FBIS carried Tass reports on the flight of Salyut 6, with Leonid Popov and Valery Ryumin aboard for 12 weeks. The crew spent the first week of July unloading cargo ship Progress 10, which linked with the Salyut July 1. Unloading was completed, and the orbiting station was refueled by July 15.
Experiments with Isparitel apparatus were performed, using a powerful beam of electrons to plate metal and glass surfaces with precious metals and alloys of aluminum and copper. Properties of plating done in weightlessness differed from those under Earth conditions, Tass noted. First tests of the apparatus were made last year when Lyakhov and Ryumin brought back 24 titanium plates with metal covering from Soyuz 32; the current tests should produce about 200 specimens covered with films of varied thicknesses.
Progress 10 separated from the Salyut 6-Soyuz 36 complex at 1:21 Moscow time July 18 after a 17-day stay, during which its engine was used to adjust the station's orbit. On July 19 the cargo ship engines were switched on by ground command; it reentered over the Pacific and "ceased to exist." Soyuz 37, launched at midnight July 23 Moscow time, carried the first Vietnamese cosmonaut, Lt. Col. Pham Tuan, and veteran cosmonaut Col. Viktor Gorbatko as the sixth Intercosmos crew to visit with Popov and Ryumin, fourth main crew on Salyut 6. At the launch, Boris Petrov, vice president of the Soviet academy of sciences, noted that "although space school in Vietnamese science was established later than in other Soviet countries," experiments in space medicine and technology and in mapping of land and ocean surfaces had been prepared for the Soviet Vietnamese expedition. Soyuz 37 docked with Salyut 6-Soyuz 36 at 2302 Moscow time July 24; on July 25, the visitors began a study of head blood circulation during adaptation to weightlessness, with Pham Tuan as first subject. The visitors returned in Soyuz 36 at 1815 hours July 31 to the preset area. near Dzhezkazgan. (FBIS, Tass in English, July 4-31/80)
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