Dec 3 1975
From The Space Library
Dr. Maxime A. Faget, director of engineering and development at Johnson Space Center, received the gold medal of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers at its annual winter meeting honors assembly in Houston. Faget had been responsible for design and testing of the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo spacecraft and the Skylab space station, as well as of the Space Shuttle scheduled for flight in the late 1970s. Previous JSC recipients of the ASME gold medal had been JSC Director Dr. Christopher C. Kraft, Jr., in 1973 and former JSC Director Robert R. Gilruth in 1970. (JSC Release 75-98)
Dr. Ernst Stuhlinger, associate director for science at Marshall Space Flight Center, would retire after 30 yrs of Federal service on 28 Dec., NASA announced. Born and educated in Germany, Dr. Stuhlinger became a physicist and had been involved in rocketry and space work since 1943 when he joined the rocket development team at Peenemunde, Germany. He had come to the U.S. after World War 11 and worked for the U.S. Army before transferring to NASA when MSFC was wet up in 1960. Early planning for lunar exploration and the Apollo Telescope Mount had been carried out under his direction, as well as early planning, on the High Energy Astronomy Observatory and initial phases of the Space Telescope project. His work had included electric propulsion studies and scientific payloads for the Space Shuttle. (MSFC Release 75-256)
The Peoples Republic of China announced it had successfully recovered an artificial earth satellite for the first time, becoming the third country after the U.S. and the Soviet Union to develop a technique for returning a satellite from orbit. The satellite, which had been launched 26 Nov., was China's fourth; the third had been orbited in July and the first two in 1970 and 1971. Edward K. Wu, Hong Kong correspondent of the Baltimore Sun, noted that Chinese scientists and engineers apparently had solved technological problems including development of a heat-resistant alloy to withstand reentry temperatures, automatic techniques for remote control, and a trigger system to fire the satellite back to earth. (B Sun, 4 Dec 75, A4)
The automated docking of the U.S.S.R.'s pilotless Soyuz-20 with the unmanned Salyut 4 space station [see 19 Nov.] had been a preliminary to Soviet experiments aimed at building a permanent space base, the Christian Science Monitor said. Recalling the failure of the automatic docking system in August 1974, CSM quoted Maj. Gen. Vladimir Shatalov-head of the cosmonaut group-as saying that the Soyuz was being developed as a universal spacecraft for carrying crews, fuel, and provisions to scientific stations and for assembling complex structures in orbit; craft of this kind would "undoubtedly become assembly sites for large space stations to be set up in orbit." European observers had said the Soviet plan would be to launch the central part of the space platform first, followed by separate laboratory modules that would plug into docking ports to draw on the power and facilities of the mother station. The orbital stations would be supplied with consumables by a modification of the existing Soyuz, and this experience' would be applied later to shuttles and space tugs. (CSM, 3 Dec 75, 7)
Evidence that aerosols from spray cans had damaged earth's ozone layer had been under study by an independent scientific panel that would make its report early in 1976, the Wall Street Journal said, but Federal action against fluorocarbons was not considered likely before that time, and foreign governments were considered unlikely to act before the U.S. did. Fluorocarbon manufacturers and users had insisted that the ozone-depletion theory had not been proved, and warned of damage to an industry that had made products worth $400 million to $450 million a year, with manufacturing facilities worth $300 million. U.S. producers had accounted for about half the world's production of fluorocarbons, which was approaching about 0.9 billion kg a year.
Two Univ. of Chicago chemists -Mario J. Molina and F. Sherwood Roland-had advanced a theory 18 mo ago that fluorocarbons used in spray containers and in refrigerators and air conditioners were getting into the upper atmosphere, encountering ultraviolet light (more intense at high altitudes) that split the fluorocarbon molecules to release highly active chlorine. The chlorine had depleted the atmospheric ozone by converting it to ordinary oxygen. The theory had been partly confirmed in the laboratory by National Bureau of Standards chemists who showed that ultraviolet lamps would split fluorocarbons to produce either one or two chlorine atoms, depending on the ultraviolet wavelength used. However, no one had discovered a way to measure the ozone to tell whether it had been affected by chlorines from fluorocarbon dissociation. Another clue had been to search for chlorine products such as hydrochloric acid in the stratosphere; tests conducted by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory using U-2 flights and balloons had confirmed the presence in the stratosphere of hydrochloric acid that had not originated from the earth. Granting the effect of aerosols, opinions had been divided upon the significance of ozone depletion: possible consequences of additional ultraviolet radiation impinging upon earth included increased incidence of skin cancer, harmful effects on animal and plant life, and alteration of temperature patterns in the stratosphere with resulting alteration of weather patterns on earth. Even without proof of damage, public apprehension of risk had increased pressure for a ban on the suspect chemicals, especially in aerosols. (Tannenbaum in WSJ, 3 Dec 75, 1)
The Aerospace Corp. had donated its $2-million San Fernando Observatory to Calif. State Univ. at Northridge as an educational center for solar research, Aerospace president Dr. Ivan Getting announced. The nonprofit company, which had used the observatory in support of flights in the Apollo and Skylab projects, was giving away the 7-yr-old facility because its planned solar research had been completed. (SBD, 3 Dec 75, 173)
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