Feb 8 1978
From The Space Library
MSFC announced that its Boeing 747 modified for Shuttle orbiter transport had arrived at Redstone Army Airfield in Fla. for a dry run in preparation for its March landing with an orbiter atop. Crews from MSFC, KSC, and Dryden Flight Research Center had checked out handling gear and procedures to be used at MSFC for receiving the orbiter and offloading it from its carrier. MSFC had installed a large lifting derrick at the airfield with lateral-restraint and other devices needed to lift the Enterprise clear of the 747 and position it on a trailer-like transporter. When the 747 had departed, handling crews at the airfield would continue verification of the mate-demate device, using the orbiter ground transporter and a full-size orbiter simulator. (Marshall Star, Feb 8/78, 1)
Tass announced that the automatic supply-transport ship Progress 1 had reentered and burned in the atmosphere Feb. 8. The vehicle had a mass of 7020kg and could carry into orbit 2300kg of equipment, materials, fuel, and gas. Principal new features of Progress 1 had been the refueling system and a means of carrying an increased air supply. Its automatic operation on command from either the ground or from the systems to be developed would support individual experiments and related earth-based systems. The fluid-experiments system would use an area in the Spacelab for optical observation of fluid phenomena; it would accommodate a variety of cells for use in a broad range of experiments. The solidification experiments system would require a multiuse system for processing metals, alloys, eutectics, semiconductors, crystals, ceramics, glasses, etc., in orbit by melting, refining, and resolidification in near weightlessness. Scientists at MSFC's ground control laboratory would process "control samples" under conditions identical (except for gravity) to those on the spacecraft. (MSFC Release 78-20; Marshall Star, Feb 22/78, 2)
To alleviate natural gas shortages and other disruptions caused by unusually harsh weather, the U.S. government would increase efforts to understand and predict seasonal variations in climate by starting a national program on climate research described in President Carter's budget proposals for 1979, Science magazine reported. Climate research was not new: the Depts. of Defense, Commerce, Agriculture, Energy, and Interior, as well as NASA, EPA, and NSF, would spend $76 million on it in 1978. Next year, however, would be the first time a single agency -NOAA-would coordinate all research under a national plan. Cost of climate research would rise 37%, to $104 million in FY79.
NOAA's Climate Program Plan would use a fourfold approach: assessment of the relationship between climate variations and national activities through studies of carbon dioxide, crop yields, land and water resources, and coal use; early warnings of short-term climate fluctuations through a variety of observation systems; better understanding of climate processes through research carried out on the oceans and in the atmosphere; and study from space of long-term climate variations by monitoring subsurface ocean temperatures and snow levels. NOAA would not have authority to approve or reject any agency's climate program proposals, but could consolidate them into a single budget proposal for review by the White House each yr. (Sci, Feb 10/78, 671)
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