Sep 20 1965
From The Space Library
Dr. Smith J. DeFrance, Director of NASA Ames Research Center, would retire Oct, 15 after 45 yrs, of service, announced NASA Administrator James E. Webb. "Dr. DeFrance's leadership at Ames has brought about many engineering and scientific achievements in our country's aviation and space programs," Webb said, "and we all owe him a great debt of gratitude." Following distinguished service as a combat pilot in France during World War I, DeFrance served for 18 yrs, at Langley Research Center. He became director of ARC, when it was created in 1940. In 1947 he received the Presidential Medal of Merit for designing and building the Center, H. Julian Allen, present Assistant Director at ARC, would succeed Dr. DeFrance. Allen was recognized as an international authority on reentry physics, having conceived a solution to the reentry heating problem. In 1957, he received NACA's Distinguished Service Medal for this work. Allen received the Sylvanus Albert Reed Award in 1955 from the Institute of Aerospace Sciences "for contributions and leadership in solving problems in the design of supersonic airplanes and missiles, especially thermal problems at hypersonic speeds," John F. Parsons, Associate Director of Ames, would remain in this post. (NASA Release 65-298)
Paul P. Haney, NASA Manned Spacecraft Center Public Affairs Officer, announced at a news conference the crew selected for the Gemini VIII spaceflight: Neil A. Armstrong, a civilian, would be command pilot; David R. Scott (Maj. USAF) would be copilot, Backup crewmen named were Charles Conrad, Jr. (LCdr. USN), and Richard F. Gordon, Jr. (LCdr. USN), Gemini VIII was scheduled to include practice on rendezvous and docking maneuvers and a space walk that could last as long as one orbit of the earth-about 95 min. (AP, Wash, Eve. Star, 9/21/65; AP, Balt, Sun, 9/21/65, 6)
CBS interviewed Dr. Edward Welsh, Executive Secretary of the National Aeronautics and Space Council, on Cosmonaut Leonov's affirmation at the IAF Congress in Athens that the Soviet Union would first rendezvous, dock, and assemble systems in orbit before proceeding to a lunar flight. "They have a lot of things they have to do before they can really put a so-called permanent platform up there. They have to rendezvous. They have to engage in docking. They haven't had enough time experience yet of men in space to really say what they can do on a permanent platform." (SBD, 9/20/65, 88)
U.S. policy decision to conduct space operations in an atmosphere of maximum public exposure received editorial comment from Robert Hotz in Aviation Week and Space Technology: "The course of space technology has proved the U.S. policy to be far more effective than that of the Soviets. It has projected an international aura of leadership and achievement that has permitted the whole world to share in U.S. space projects, both scientifically and emotionally. It has also applied a steady and increasing pressure on the Soviets to abandon their super-secrecy. . . "There is little doubt that the leadership in space technology passed to the U.S. during the course of last summer. But who, outside a small internal bloc of techno-politicians, would have realized this under a blanket of supersecrecy?" (Hotz, Av, Wk, 9/20/65, 21)
Three basic capsule designs for the Project Voyager Mars lander vehicle were being studied by a special planetary missions technology steering committee at NASA Langley Research Center, reported Aviation Week and Space Technology. Low atmosphere density values for Mars determined by the MARINER IV occultation experiment would have to be taken into consideration before final capsule design specifications could be prepared. (Av, Wk, 9/20/65, 28)
Move begun within USAF to offer all scientific experiments previously proposed for MOL to NASA was reported by Donald E. Fink in Aviation Week and Space Technology. Proposal was that NASA fly these experiments in its Apollo Extension System (AES) program. (Fink, Av, Wk, 9/20/65, 26)
Hundreds of construction workers returned to their jobs, following removal of Boeing pickets from four of the five entrances at Kennedy Space Center, NASA, ending the eighth major construction work stoppage at KSC within 20 mo. Confinement of the striking IAM members to the one gate used by Boeing personnel had been ordered September 18 by NASA and USAF. (AP, Balt. Sun, 9/21/65, 10)
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