May 5 1978
From The Space Library
NASA announced appointment of Samuel Keller as deputy associate administrator for space and terrestrial applications (OSTA), succeeding Leonard Jaffe, who had been appointed special assistant to NASA's chief engineer. In his new position, Keller would be responsible for general management and direction of OSTA programs. He had held numerous management positions at Goddard Space Flight Center before coming to NASA Hq as assistant administrator for personnel programs; had worked in industry and government; and had been a pilot in the U.S. Air Force from 1'956 to 1959. (NASA anno May 5/78)
Dryden Flight Research Center reported it had aborted the first design limit test of the parachute recovery system for the Space Shuttle's solid fuel rocket boosters (SRB), when the 48 0001b dummy booster scheduled for airdrop from a B-52 flying over the National Parachute Test Range would not separate from its aircraft. After several unsuccessful attempts, pilots returned the B-52 to DFRC without incident and rescheduled the flight for the week of May 5. (DFRC X-Press, May 5/78, 2)
The W. Post reported that a subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee had cut NASA's budget, endangering 3 of the agency's most ambitious plans for the next 5yr: to search for life beyond earth, to keep the Skylab space station from falling back to earth, and to fly a rare joint mission with West Germany around the north and south poles of the sun.
The subcommittee had cut $1.4 million from NASA's request for $2 million to begin a program called SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence), in effect killing the program. A NASA official said the funds would not be enough "to start design work on the antennas we were going to use to listen for extraterrestrial signals." The subcommittee also denied NASA $20.5 million to use for Space Shuttle astronauts to fire the abandoned Skylab space station into a higher and safer orbit. NASA considered the most critical cut to be $5 million from the $13 million sought to start in 1983 the solar-polar orbiter mission that would have used two spacecraft, one built by the U.S. and the other by West Germany. The West Germans had warned that any U.S. delay meant that Germany would drop out of the mission. (W Post, May 5/78, Al 3)
LaRC announced it would sponsor during May a program on "Women in Aviation," with slides and tapes highlighting women's contributions to aviation. An international organization of women interested in aviation, The 99s, which was founded in the 1930s and whose original members included Amelia Earhart and Anne Morrow Lindbergh, provided the program to LaRC. (LaRC Release 78-27)
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