Jan 25 1979
From The Space Library
NASA announced that it had named the first four Space Shuttle orbiters that would operate in space to honor U.S. explorer ships. The first orbiter (102) scheduled for launch later in 1979 was named for the Columbia, which located the Columbia River in 1792; Captain Robert Gray named the river for his sloop. Challenger (orbiter 099) was named for the ship that gathered data December 1872-May 1876, filling 50 volumes on Earth's oceans. Discovery (orbiter 103) was the ship looking in 1610-1611 for a northwest passage from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean by exploring Hudson's Bay. Atlantis (orbiter 104) was the first U.S.-operated vessel designed for ocean research, a two-masted ketch that logged half a million miles between 1930 and 1966. Enterprise, the first orbiter built, was named for a vessel exploring the Arctic from 1851 to 1854, as well as for the flagship in television's Star Trek; as the test orbiter, it was not intended for use in space. (NASA Release 79-10; Washington Post, Jan 26/79, C-2; WSJ, Jan 26/79, 1).
NASA reported that engineers at MSFC and controllers at JSC, who had been trying to maintain the orbiting Skylab space station in an attitude of least atmospheric drag to keep it in space until the Shuttle could try to reboost or deorbit, had turned their efforts toward preserving some control over the spacecraft's final reentry, since NASA had decided in December to abandon rescue attempts. The controllers had put the Skylab into a solar-inertial attitude, pointing its solar panels at the Sun at all times to ensure full electric power, offering the possibility of some influence over the craft during reentry. Engineers had not agreed on the feasibility of such control but did agree that steps should be taken to preserve the option while studies continued. (NASA Release 79-12; MSFC Release 79-12)
Dr. Frank Press, director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, told the Senate subcommittee on science, technology, and space that President Carter's May directive reaffirmed the policy of five previous administrations: separation of military and "open" civilian space programs; data sharing, hardware sharing, and technology transfer between civilian and military programs; and domestic civilian remote sensing regulated by the government.
The United States had spent $100 billion over the past 20 years on federal space activities: about $67 billion for civilian programs ($25 billion for Apollo alone) and $33 billion in military programs. Today, the expenditure was about half and half. The FY79 budget request had been $7.1 billion, and the FY80 request would be $7.9 billion (up by 12 %). These sums did not include private investment in space, more than $2 billion in communications satellites alone. (Text, Jan 25/79)
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