Mar 12 1985
From The Space Library
A U.S. House Appropriations subcommittee approved a resolution to release $1.5 billion frozen in Congress the previous year for an additional 21 MX missiles, the Washington Post reported. The vote, expected in the defense subcommittee that had supported the MX in the past, was only the first in a series of votes required before funds could be released. But missile opponents acknowledged that the vote was indicative of the uphill battle they faced in trying to defeat the MX in the midst of renewed arms control talks with the Soviets.
The Reagan Administration had lobbied hard for the previous two weeks to win release of the funds, contending that continued funding of the MX was crucial to the arms control talks that had opened in Geneva.
MX missile supporters on the subcommittee argued that the administration should not be denied a weapon that could be a "bargaining chip" in the arms talks. On the other hand, opponents characterized the missile as "the glass jaw in our strategic forces" and "totally irrelevant" to the arms talks.
The resolution would next come before the full committee, which had backed it in the past. Observers agreed the real fight over the missile would occur on the Senate and House floors. Under a complicated arrangement worked out the previous year, representatives of the Republican-controlled Senate and the Democratic-controlled House had agreed that the MX legislation would be sent to the floor of both chambers regardless of what action was taken at the committee level. (W Post, Mar 13/85, A4)
NASA announced that personnel at Ames Research Center (ARC) would break ground March 14 for the numerical aerodynamic simulation (NAS) facility building to house the world's most powerful supercomputer system, which was intended to provide a national computational capability that would complement NASA's experimental facilities in maintaining national preeminence in aeronautical research. Researchers would use high speed supercomputers in the system to solve complex aerodynamic equations describing the fundamental fluid physics and large scale aerodynamic flows associated with aircraft flying in earth's atmosphere. In effect, they would test aircraft configurations by "flying" them in the NAS supercomputer system, reducing both time and costs associated with development of new aircraft.
NAS would also support other research, including computational materials and structures, chemistry, and astrophysics; weather predictions; and genetic engineering. ARC also intended to make the supercomputer network available to remote users in universities, private industry, and other government research agencies via satellite.
Cray Research's Cray 2 supercomputer, with an expected operating speed of 250 million calculations per second when working aerodynamic problems, would be the heart of the initial NAS network when it became operational in mid-1986. NASA intended to incorporate even faster supercomputers as they became commercially available, with the aim of including supercomputers with up to one billion calculations per second in 1988 and 10 billion calculations per second in the 1990s.
In an effort to create a partnership between people and machines that, in itself, would advance computer simulation, NASA had architects Hunt and Co. design the 90,500-sq. ft. concrete building so as to encourage scientists who would use the computers for research to work closely with the people who would operate, maintain, and develop the NAS system. Building contractor was Perini Co. (NASA Release 85-37)
Soviet and French scientists would soon launch into orbit a space observatory, the Gamma 1 Project, that would carry a large gamma-ray telescope to help determine sources of cosmic rays, streams of highly charged particles that bombarded the earth from space, the NY Times reported the newspaper Izvestia as saying. Researchers hoped to obtain a detailed picture of the sky in gamma rays in order to understand the mysterious nature of gamma stars and their possible relationship with known astrophysical objects. Izvestia had gone on to say that testing was underway on the observatory but did not report a launch date.
The Izvestia article said the two countries had cooperated in designing a special spacecraft, to be placed in an orbit 216 miles above earth, capable of carrying nearly two tons of scientific equipment for the Gamma 1 experiment, including main, small gamma-ray and X-ray telescopes.
Franco-Soviet space cooperation dated back to an agreement signed in 1966; France was a major partner in the Vega missions the Soviets had launched in December to examine Venus and Halley’s Comet and, in June 1982, the French cosmonaut Jean-Loup Chretien had been the first and was the only man from a country outside the Soviet block to go into space aboard a Soviet spacecraft, the Soyuz T-6. (NYT, Mar 12/85, C3)
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