Aug 4 1980
From The Space Library
The Wall Street Journal reviewed the competition for locating the Large Space Telescope's science institute at one of three sites, each the protege of a university consortium: Princeton University in New Jersey, the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, and the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory west of Chicago. NASA teams visiting the sites would make a decision in October.
In November 1979, five sites were being promoted with two others as minor contenders: Princeton, Hopkins, Fermilab, the University of Colorado, and the University of California at San Diego (UCSD) plus the Universities of Arizona and New Mexico, where numerous ground telescopes were already located [see November 18, 1979]. Usually the site for an astronomical installation would require clear skies and steady air, but "any old kind of sky" would do for the Space Telescope, the Wall Street Journal said, as the images its computers received would originate above Earth's atmosphere. The winning manager would provide his own building, either a new one or a remodeled existing one; a resident staff of 100 to 150 persons; and room for a constant flow of visiting astronomers. (WSJ, Aug 4/80, 15)
MSFC reported that students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) had returned to the center to continue a study begun last January on in-space assembly of large structures in MSFC's neutral-buoyancy simulator, this time with a manned maneuvering unit they had built themselves. The MSFC simulator, a 1.3 million-gallon water tank, closely approximated a zero-gravity environment. The students had spent three weeks on a NASA-MIT project, assembling in the tank a tetrahedral truss containing 48 parts: 36 tubular beams 11 feet long with 12 joints, largest in number of components ever tested in the simulator.
Since their January stay, the students had modified the beams and joints (designed and made in MIT machine shops) on the basis of data derived from their work at MSFC and had been building an alternative crewed maneuvering unit. Testing it at MSFC would show whether it would be of use in assembling large space structures; like one previously built by MSFC engineers, it had instead of the gas jets needed to move it in space five small motor-driven propellers to move it in the tank. The motors were enclosed to prevent injury to other divers or damage to hoses and lines in the simulator. The unit would fit on the backpack worn over a pressurized space suit. (MSFC Release 80-103)
Press reports said that Maxie Anderson, who made a transatlantic crossing in the balloon Double Eagle II in 1978, crashed his balloon Columbine If into a lake near LaCrosse, Wisc., August 4 during opening ceremonies of the U. S. National Hot Air Balloon Championships. Anderson, his wife Pattie, and copilot Don Ida escaped injury, but the balloon was destroyed.
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