Sep 17 1968
From The Space Library
Presidium of Supreme Soviet ratified space rescue treaty signed by U.S. and U.S.S.R. April 22, according to Tass report. Presidium took care of legislative matters when Supreme Soviet was not in session. (AP, W Star, 9/19/68, A10)
Dr. Thomas O. Paine, NASA Deputy Administrator whom retiring Administrator James E. Webb had said would be named Acting NASA Administrator by President Johnson, represented "new breed of scientist-administrators making their way into government," said John Lannan in Washington Evening Star. Unlike Webb, he was new to Government, having come up through "the scientific ranks of the sprawling General Electric Co. over a period of 19 years." As Webb's chief deputy since March, Dr. Paine had been authorizing and signing major announcements but had yet to confront Congress. He and Webb saw eye-to-eye, he had said, on agency's current program emphasis, which had been criticized as too heavily oriented to manned flight. "I am a very strong supporter of doing as much as we can in planetary areas." Dr. Paine said, "but it's one of those cases where you've got limited resources and you're trying to do all the things you can. You've got to do things in aeronautics; we've got to finish up the Apollo program; and we've got to do more in earth resources (surveying them from space) here on this planet." A lot of NASA'S future "is in the questions that we'll be raising as we continue to probe the planets." On balancing space needs against problems of cities, Dr. Paine felt U.S. suffered from "what I would call almost a national hypochondria . in many ways crippling some of the forward-looking things we're able to do. . . . I feel that one of the very highest priority matters is the war on poverty and the problems of the cities. But in the meantime, we're making . . . a lot of progress in the civil rights area and really, this nation is a good deal healthier than we're giving it credit for today." He was confident of a resurgence of public interest in space once the Apollo program got underway. (W Star, 9/17/68, A4)
Under Administrator James E. Webb's leadership, Don Kirkman commented in Washington Daily News, NASA had "put John Glenn in orbit in the Mercury capsule, brought back all the Gemini spacemen without mishap, and intended to put U.S. astronauts on the moon before the 1960s ended." Unmanned spaceships had photographed moon and Mars and probed Venus host of weather, communications, and navigation satellites had been launched. But since Jan. 27, 1967, Apollo fire and with needs of Vietnam war, "every new budget brought new blows." (W News, 9/17/68, 9)
U.S. patent No. 3,402,295 was issued to Robert W. Astheimer, Vice President of Barnes Engineering Co., for process by which aircraft pilot could spot clear air turbulence (CAT) far enough ahead to avoid danger. To discover rise in temperature which marked CAT, pilot would scan ahead with radiometer to detect significant heat radiation from carbon dioxide uniformly distributed through air. (Pat Off Pio; Jones, NYT, 9/21/68, 45)
September 17-18: Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved nuclear nonproliferation treaty by vote of 13 to 3 after three previous meetings failed to attract majority of members. Senate Democratic leaders expressed hope treaty could be brought to vote on Senate floor before mid-October Congressional adjournment. In formal statement after Committee approval, Vice President Humphrey, Democratic Presidential candidate, called upon Republican Presidential candidate Richard M. Nixon to support ratification. U.S.S.R.'s occupation of Czechoslovakia, Humphrey said, should not deter Senate approval of "crucial" treaty. It was not agreement between Washington and Moscow, but a treaty already signed by 81 nations and developed among many signers as well as the United Nations. (Sherman, W. Star, 9/17/68, A5; Unna, W. Post, 9/18/68, 1; Finney, NYT, 9/18/68, 1; Furgurson, B Sun, 9/19/68, I)
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