Apr 4 1978
From The Space Library
The W. Star "In Focus" column reported that NASA had awarded a grant to Dr. T. Stephen Cheston, associate dean of Georgetown University's graduate school, to inventory the literature produced by the social sciences on space activities and to plan for a scholarly journal, an academic forum for lawyers, economists, historians, and other specialists on ways to handle the new technology. The column quoted Cheston as saying they would have a lot to think about: "What we need is wisdom and a hell of a lot of it," he said. He commented on the many social scientists working on problems related to what is called "the industrialization of space." By establishing a scholarly journal, he had hoped to raise the "general quality of discussions of these issues because so many people are working in isolation now." The column noted that the Space Shuttle had made possible the launching of satellites that could intrude into many aspects of human endeavor; Capt. Robert F. Freitag, NASA's deputy director of advanced programs in space transportation, said that by 1984 the Shuttle should be ready to begin construction of the first large satellites, those with a diameter of at least 100ft. Although NASA was weighing a number of options, according to Freitag, the technology "is for all intents and purposes here today. It's just a matter of nations, large corporations, and institutions deciding to go ahead and do it." Although some disciplines had generated little space-related literature, lawyers had been at work for a dozen yr producing 4 treaties governing outer space, with several more in the works. J. Henry Glazer, legal counsel at Ames Research Center, had said that some of the proposed treaties were "needed yesterday," because "technology has rapidly overtaken the legal questions involved." Glazer had predicted that large comsats of the late 1980s would be the forerunners of much larger economic enterprises in space, such as an orbiting power-generating station about the size of an ocean liner that could convert solar energy into electricity and beam it to earth in the form of microwaves; or the idea in a book written by Dr. Brian O'Leary, Princeton astronomer and physicist who had helped develop the solar-power satellite, on pushing a small asteroid into high orbit around the earth and mining it for space-station materials. When asked about the legal and social ramifications of such a concept, O'Leary admitted there were quite a few "gaps: The social scientists are hopefully going to play catch-up ball here." (W Star, April 4/78, Al)
Launch of Cosmos 1000, reported FBIS, had led Soviet scientists to review highlights of the series. The research program using Cosmos satellites had used several types of unified apparatus, and the USSR had always referred to them as a "series" irrespective of their scientific missions. The virtually mass-produced output of satellites had greatly assisted the high turnover speed of the series, which had reached the 1000 mark within 16yr and 2wk, more than 500 launches having come in the past 6yr.
The Cosmos series had begun Mar. 16, 1962, with the launch of an unnamed satellite (named Cosmos 1 only 3wk later, when Tass reported launch of Cosmos 2). The USSR had seldom announced the purpose of Cosmos launches, a ploy that permitted concealment of their purposes as well as of their failures. Observers had classified Cosmos 96, for instance, as a Venus probe left or stranded in orbit; Cosmos 146, which had arrived in orbit measuring about 14m long and by next day was only 9m long, after emitting 2 capsules, was probably a Soyuz precursor. Georgy Narimanov of the Soviet Academy of Sciences Institute of Space Research said the USSR had used Cosmos satellites to test long-range communications systems, reentry installations, life-support systems, and assemblies for the Lunokhod moon-rover, as well as automatic-docking procedures. Lack of information had encouraged speculation about military applications, including hunter-killer tests.
USSR comments had stressed the practical aspects of the Cosmos program, such as experience accumulated during geophysical experiments for use on the "Meteor" spacecraft; basic research by Cosmos 321 that had defined distribution of the magnetic field over 94% of the earth's surface; and Cosmos investigations of the upper atmosphere, the aurora, and the magnetosphere. (FBIS, Tass in English, April 4/78; Tass Intl Svc in Russian, April 1/78 [2 items])
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