Dec 18 1966
From The Space Library
USAF awarded Boeing Co. $6-million 2«-yr. contract to develop automatic flight control system that could double useful lifetime of large, flexible aircraft such as B-52, XB-70, and C-5A by dampening structural oscillations and reducing stresses from wind gusts and maneuvering loads, all of which caused metal fatigue. (AFSC Release 234.66)
Dr. Jan H. Oort, recipient of Columbia Univ.'s 1966 Vetlesen Award for his work in earth sciences, told Washington Post that Univ. of Leiden Observatory, which he directed, was building world's largest radiotelescope. A one-mile-long row of twelve 83-ft.-dia. parabolic disks in a remote area of the Netherlands, device would enable Oort and his colleagues to extend their explorations beyond earth's galaxy. 1968 was scheduled completion date. (Wash. Post, 12/18/66, B19)
US. and Soviet scientists had advanced two related theories to explain radio emissions that made Venus seem lethally hot, Walter Sullivan reported in the New York Times. Soviet scientists V. M. Vakhnin and A. I. Lebedinsky, writing in Zemlya i Vselennaya, proposed that the two halves of Venus' atmosphere, the sunlit and the dark, were of opposite electric charges, and, where the two halves met, lightning flashes could account for emissions. US. scientists Dr. Paul Harteck, Dr. Robert R. Reeves, Jr., Dr. Barbara A. Thompson, and D. C. Appleton of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, in Journal of Geophysical Research, reported on effects of electric discharges, such as lightning, in a simulated Venus atmosphere of carbon dioxide and sulphur dioxide. Investigation revealed that such discharges produced intense radio emissions in same region of microwave spectrum as observed emissions from Venus. (Sullivan, NYT, 12/18/66, 35)
FAA announced allocations of $72.5 million in Federal matching funds to help local communities construct and improve 341 civil airports under Federal-Aid Airport Program for FY 1967. (FAA Release 66-107)
25th anniversary of Reaction Motors, Inc. Formed to develop James H. Wyld's liquid-fueled rocket, corporation became in 1958 Reaction Motors Div. of Thiokol Chemical Corp. (Thiokol, Aerospace Facts, 11-12/66, 2)
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