Dec 8 1971
From The Space Library
NASA's TF-8A jet aircraft with supercritical wing, piloted by NASA test pilot Thomas C. McMurtry, successfully completed 25th and 26th flights from FRC. Objectives of flights were to investigate buffet boundary further at low supersonic speeds and to determine effects of aileron position and angle of attack on wing pressure distributions. Buffet boundary was penetrated at mach 1.15 and 15 200-m (50 000-ft) altitude. Pressure distribution data were obtained from mach 0.9 to 1.0 at 14 000-m (46 000-ft) altitude. (NASA Proj Off)
Apollo 15 Astronauts David R. Scott, Alfred M. Worden, and James B. Irwin received NASA Distinguished Service Medal from Vice President Spiro T. Agnew in Washington, D.C., ceremony. Citation was for "most complex and carefully planned scientific expedition in the history of exploration." (NASA Release 71-242)
Portrait of Dr. Robert H. Goddard, U.S. rocket pioneer, was unveiled by artist Peter Stevens and Mrs. Goddard and presented to Rep. George P. Miller (D-Calif., Chairman of House Committee on Science and Astronautics, by National Space Club. Ceremonies were held in Committee's main hearing room, where portrait would hang. (NSC News Letter, 11/23/71)
Spartan ABM intercepted one of several reentry vehicles in successful test of Spartan's ability to distinguish actual nuclear warhead from flock of dummies. DOD later said test, above atmosphere over Pacific, was first in which Spartan, its associated radar, and its computerized radar guidance system were required to make this distinction. (Farrar, C Trib, 12/10/71, 12)
Fiftieth anniversary of first transatlantic transmissions by American amateur radio "hams" on 200-m frequency. Bouncing radio transmissions off ionosphere over long distances was later to prove seminal in evolution of concepts for passive reflector satellites. (QST, 12/71, 57)
Baltimore Sun editorial commented on softlanding on Mars of instrumented capsule by Soviet Mars 3: "For the first time man has been able to reach Mars with implements that have proved capable both of surviving a landing and of working, for a time at least, after they have been landed. This of course is only one approach to the new studies of brother objects in space. The United States Mariner 9 may by photographic means add valuable pictorial knowledge to that which Mars 3 has reported by signal. And even if neither of these latest raids on the unknown returns as much information as men want, they have together shown that the means by which more and more can be learned are now in our hands, even if in only a primitive and imperfect state so far." (B Sun, 12/8/71, A18)
Kansas City Times editorial commented on "ambiguous" announcement of progress in NASA-Soviet Academy of Sciences meetings to develop compatible space docking system [see Dec. 3]: "The first interpretation was that agreement soon would be reached on a joint mission involving astronauts of the two countries in an orbital linkup. In hasty clarification, NASA explained that the mooted accord covered only the technical matters which could make such a mission possible.... Either way, the conclusion is obvious: The two space powers are moving at last, and seriously, toward the sort of shared space planning that logic and economics have long indicated but which competition and secretiveness have prevented." (KC Times, 12/8/71)
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