Apr 11 1985
From The Space Library
Colombia lodged a protest with the U.S. over placement of a private U.S. satellite in geostationary orbit over that country, FBIS, Bogota Emisoras CARACOL Network in Spanish reported, space that Colombia claimed as its own. Colombia's Foreign Minister Augusto Ramirez Ocampo said the satellite was placed there secretly, since the firm owning it had not presented a request to the interested nation in accordance with international legal procedures.
Colombia's United Nations Ambassador Ernesto Rodriguez Medina denounced the situation before the U.N.'s Legal Subcommittee for Outer Space, saying his country planned to place its Satcol satellite in that same position in orbit. (FBIS, Bogota Emisoras CARACOL Network in Spanish, Apr 11/85)
Lewis Research Center NASA announced that Lewis Research Center (LeRC) was developing a liquid droplet radiator intended to solve the problem of dissipating heat that builds up inside a spacecraft, allowing a livable temperature for astronauts. Heat removal was currently accomplished through a heavy, bulky, rigid metal heat transfer system, which added considerable weight to the spacecraft.
The LeRC system would use the surface of a liquid coolant to radiate away excess heat and save as much as 90% of the current hardware weight. The system entailed exposing a moving stream of hot droplets, the diameter of a human hair, directly into space, allowing the heat to radiate from the droplets' surface. In the process, a generator would eject the droplets into a collector where they would rejoin to form a liquid; the system would then recirculate and reuse this coolant.
Selection or development of a heat transfer fluid with proper vapor pressure and a sufficiently long life was essential to the project. Also crucial to system feasibility was development of a micromachining capability to produce holes with 0.002-in. diameters for use in the liquid droplet generator.
"This is a very advanced concept," Alden Presler, LeRC program manager, said. "The technology we're developing here at Lewis will result in a very lightweight and compact piece of hardware." (NASA Release 85-53)
A prime time TV series for the first time would offer a comprehensive look at the history of manned U.S. and USSR space flight, the Ames Research Center's Astrogram reported. SPACEFLIGHT, a series of four one-hour programs sponsored by the Public Broadcasting System and the Du Pont Co., would chronicle man's achievements in space from the rocket plane that first broke the sound barrier to the touchdown of the Space Shuttle orbiter Columbia.
The series' executive producer, Blaine Baggett, said his staff interviewed some 40 key participants in space activities-astronauts, people on the ground, scientists, and historians. In addition, the Soviet science attache in Washington provided about 10 hours of film footage. Among those interviewed for the series were Chuck Yeager, first man to break the sound barrier; Scott Crossfield, first to travel twice the speed of sound and to pilot the X-15; Werner von Braun, who worked on the U.S. rocket program; Alan B. Shepard and John Glenn, first American in space and first American to orbit the globe, respectively; and Sally Ride, first American woman in space.
From the point of view of the USSR, the series sought answers to such questions as who the chief designer was of the Soviet space program and why the Soviets were first in the early days of space activities.
SPACEFLIGHT also examined future space plans such as space colonies, space stations, and the Strategic Defense Initiative. (ARC Astrogram, Apr 11/ 85, 4)
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