Feb 12 1991
From The Space Library
NASA Administrator Richard H. Truly announced a nationwide search for a senior official to direct NASA's activities to send people to the Moon and to explore Mars. This announcement represented an implementation of a recommendation of the Advisory Committee on the Future of the U.S. Space Program to create a new Office of Exploration under an Associate Administrator. (NASA Release 91-24)
The NASA Advisory Council of 25 leaders in industry, government, and academia sent a letter to Vice President Dan Quayle commending NASA Administrator Truly's quick action in implementing the Report of the Advisory Committee on the Future of the U.S. Space Program). (NASA Release N91-10)
The National Space Council, headed by Vice President Quayle, developed a policy directive intended to strengthen the Nation's commercial space industry. The policy creates guidelines requiring the government to act more like a private business in dealing with space-related enterprises. It calls for increased efforts to negotiate trade agreements to reduce or eliminate subsidies provided by foreign governments, including the Soviet Union, China, and Japan, to their commercial satellite-launching services. The policy would also encourage government agencies, particularly NASA and the Defense Department, to support space activity by entering into cooperative research and development efforts with private industry and assuming some of the financial risk; basing contracts with rocket and satellite makers on "performance standards" rather than complex military specifications; and taking into account the government's overhead and development costs in assessing bids by private firms. (P Inq, Feb 12/91; UPI, Feb 13/91)
An ongoing NASA project released a lithium canister from a satellite, producing a red sphere. Rick Howard, one of 40 scientists working on the project, said the purpose was to try to inject an artificial lithium plasma cloud to we if precipitation can be increased. (AP, Feb. 12/91)
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