Nov 5 1965
From The Space Library
NASA would negotiate with International Latex Corp. and Hamilton Standard Div, of United Aircraft Corp. for development and production of Project Apollo flight suits and a portable life support system for extravehicular activities during earth-orbital flights and on the lunar surface. International Latex would receive about $10 million to produce the flight suits, consisting of a liquid-cooled undergarment, constant-wear garment, pressure garment assembly, and thermal-micrometeoroid protective over-garment, Hamilton Standard, under separate contract, would receive about $20 million to produce the life-support system: a backpack weighing about 65 lbs. containing an oxygen system, thermal control system, and communications equipment. Present plans called for the pressure suit to be worn during the latter phase of the Apollo/Saturn IB earth orbital mission series and during Apollo/Saturn V missions, Gemini pressure suits would be used on initial Saturn IB missions. (NASA Release 65-346)
Final test in North American Aviation Space and Information Systems Div.'s seven-month paraglider operational test program was successfully completed at Edwards AFB, when Gemini boilerplate suspended beneath an inflated paraglider was towed to 9,000- to 10,000-ft. altitudes and released for free flights that averaged four and one half to five minutes. The test program, in which 12 consecutive successful flights and landings in tow-test vehicles were executed by company pilots, was not related directly to the NASA Gemini program but was an investigation in general operational aspects of manned landing using deployable maneuverable landing systems and emphasizing pilot problems. No further NASA funding was expected but NAA was performing some company-funded work on adapting the paraglider for controlled delivery of air-dropped cargo and had submitted a proposal to the U.S. Army for further work on this technique. (NAA S&ID Skywriter, 11/12/65, 1)
Thirty-six MSFC employees received a variety of awards, including a Presidental Citation and six inventions awards, in a local ceremony observing NASA's seventh anniversary. Dr. Wernher von Braun, Director of MSFC, addressed the gathering and William Rieke, NASA Deputy Associate Administrator for Industry Affairs, presented the invention awards. (MSFC Release 65-273)
Dr. William R. Lucas, chief of the Materials Div. of the Propulsion and Vehicle Engineering Laboratory, MSFC, received the Hermann Oberth Award from the Alabama Section of the AIAA for his "outstanding individual scientific achievements in the field of astronautics and for the promotion and advancement of the aeronautical sciences." (MSFC Release 65-279)
Man might be able to change the orbit of asteroid Icarus and make it an orbiting earth station, suggested Soviet scientist K. Stanyukovich in an interview published by Economichesky Gazetta. Icarus has almost a one-mile diameter and weighs over six billion tons; every 19 yrs, it passes within 4 million mi. of earth. "There is a great demand for a natural moon of Icarus' size," Stanyukovich said, where man could build scientific observatories and warehouses to store fuel for spaceships departing on interplanetary trips. He doubted that it could be captured on its next approach in 1968, but foresaw a possibility for 1987. (Burke, L. A. Times, 11/6/65)
Five lunar and Martian experts applied geological methods to interpreting Mars and the moon at the Geological Society of America Symposium in Kansas City. They found similarities between Mars and the moon: both bodies were subjected to slow erosion from showers of micrometeoroids from space; there was no evidence of surface water on either, Dr. Robert P. Sharp, Caltech, said that Martian craters were three-and-one-half times more numerous than on the lunar maria, but not as numerous as on the moon's uplands. He believed the planet had an extremely thin atmosphere of carbon dioxide, temperatures ranging from 35° C to -100° C and no liquid water, Dr. Eugene Shoemaker, U.S. Geological Survey, related experiments on earth with features on the moon in effort to explain why the moon was being eroded. A nuclear explosion in Nevada, for example, created a Meteor Crater-like hole, resulting in hundreds of secondary impact craters, "I think the surface is a fluffy material, about one meter thick, resting on the floor of small craters," he said. "The bulk of matter is moved by the impact of small micrometeoroids, Probably a good deal of the material is melted and the melt may fly off into space," Bruce C. Murray, Caltech, said that physical observations by studying emissions and radiation showed the moon emits light and other wave lengths in the same way that "fine, loose powder does." He believed the outer one-half millimeter is covered with dust, Infrared heat samplings showed variations indicating a heterogenous type of rock near the surface. Dr. E. C. T. Chao, U.S. Geological Survey, discussed tektites-small, dark, glass, button-shaped objects, which he believed had been formed by meteoric impact, presumably on the moon, and had splashed off to fall on earth, Harold Masursky, U.S. Geological Survey, showed a geological map of the moon with the ages of various areas in different colors. He said the Survey had mapped three million square miles in the potential landing areas on the equatorial belt, He found five different "episodes of movement" on the surface. (McCoy, Kansas City Times, 11/6/65)
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