Apr 2 1976
From The Space Library
Gerald D. Griffin, Deputy Associate Administrator for Operations in NASA Hq's Office of Space Flight, had been named Deputy Director of the Dryden Flight Research Center effective 1 May, NASA announced. Griffin joined NASA in 1964 and served as a flight controller at Johnson Space Center during the Gemini program before being named an Apollo flight director in 1968; he served in that position on all 11 Apollo missions, and was lead flight director on Apollo missions 12, 15, and 17. He went to NASA 'Hq in 1973 and had previously been Assistant Administrator for Legislative Affairs. He had served in the Air Force and was an aerospace engineer with Lockheed and with General Dynamics before coming to NASA. (NASA Release 76-66; DFRC Release 5-76)
Two engineers at Marshall Space Flight Center had developed a solar energy collector using air rather than water for heat transfer; this might be the key to low-cost solar-energy systems. The collector consisted of 3 parts: a rigid foam structure, a metal collector plate, and a transparent cover. The device needed no tools or fasteners, but could be fitted together, and required no insulation; it measured 1 by 2 m and weighed about 17 kg. The inventors said their collector had shown itself in tests to be as efficient another more costly and complicated collectors, and the chief patent counsel at MSFC was considering it for patenting. An average house of about 140 m` would require about 67 m- of collector area, or a 40-collector system, to provide sufficient heating. A solar-energy system could save a household about 75% of its normal winter heating expense, and could be modified to heat water year round. (NASA Release 76-56)
The largest American flag ever painted would be exhibited on an outside wall of the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center as part of KSC's preparation for the Bicentennial exposition Third Century America, scheduled from 20 May through Labor Day 1976. The flag, measuring 64 m by 33.5 m, would be painted on the VAB-world's second largest building-along with a huge Bicentennial symbol 33.5 m in diameter. More than 1900 liters of specially formulated paint had been donated by the Montgomery Ward paint laboratories, and the Bicentennial administration would pay for the painting. The 160-m-high south wall of the VAB would be washed down, rinsed, and primed with white before the finishing coat of white could be added and the design overlaid in red and blue. KSC had been chosen by President Ford to house the Third Century America exposition, featuring exhibits by 16 federal agencies and many U.S. industries, the only such exposition to be sponsored by the government during the Bicentennial year. (KSC Release 112-76)
Pluto-outermost of the 9 planets circling the sun-might have a surface of frozen methane, putting its temperature in its near-vacuum environment at close to absolute zero (total absence of heat) and indicating that never since the ice formed had the sun's heat been able to boil off the covering, according to a team at the Kitt Peak National Observatory in Ariz. Dr. David Morrison of the University of Hawaii said that Pluto might look and behave just the way it did when it was formed during the creation of the solar system; nowhere but on Pluto had methane been found as a solid, and nowhere else was it present in such abundance. The frozen surface also meant that astronomers might have' been fooled since Pluto's discovery in 1930 into thinking it larger than it really was; instead of being the size of the earth, Dr. Morrison said, "it might be only half our size or even smaller." Pluto, 4.8 billion km distant, was the last planet to have scientists define its surface composition. (NYT 2 Apr 76, 37; W Post, 2 Apr 76, A-1; Science, 23 Apr 76, 362)
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