Jul 10 1967
From The Space Library
Chicago Daily News urged House/Senate Conference Committee on NASA FY 1968 authorization bill to accept Rep. Donald Rumsfeld's (R-Ill.) proposals to establish an independent safety review board and to require NASA to keep Congress fully informed on its operations [see June 28]: "There is ample justification for these requirements. "Part of it can be found in the scandalous record of fumbling, bumbling and pure carelessness unearthed in the investigation of the blazing death of three [Apollo] astronauts . . . [and part from] the perils of an alliance between big government and the big industries that serve it and profit by its contracts. Congress . . . has a unique obligation to exert discipline over the executive department's workings. In exotic fields like those of the Central Intelligence Agency and NASA there is an understandable tendency to resent such surveillance. But those same effiencies, for all the high average caliber of their work, have demonstrated that when supervision is lacking both arrogance and carelessness flourish." (C Daily News, 7/10/67)
Capt. H. L. Anderton (USN, Ret.) became Chief of Communications and Tracking Branch, Electronics and Control Div., OART. Before his retirement from USN July 1, he had been Deputy Director, Aeronautics Div., Office of the Deputy Chief of Naval Operations (Development). (NASA Ann, 7/18/67)
July 9-15: Yugoslavia would build an earth station for use with communications satellites, the official press agency Tanyug announced. In addition, the Government had given its approval for "incorporating Yugoslavia into the world system of telecommunications via manmade satellites." US. experts speculated that statement indicated Yugoslavia was seeking to become the first Communist country to join INTELSAT consortium managed by ComSatCorp. Speculation was based in part on Yugoslavia's failure to attend April 3-15 Moscow meeting of European Communist-bloc nations which resulted in April 16 announcement by U.S.S.R. of plans to create a separate comsat network. (NYT, 7/21/67,3)
July 10-13: Accelerated space effort by DOD was discussed in four-part Long Island Newsday series by AP writer Howard Benedict. US., he said, was quietly developing a strong military space capability because: (1) U.S.S.R. "is vigorously pushing for a military space capability"; (2) Titan II and Minuteman missiles "are threatened by new warhead guidance system 10 times more accurate than any previous system"; (3) Polaris missiles deployed at sea "are threatened by new satellite reconnaissance devices" that may soon be able to locate submerged submarines; (4) US. missiles designed to penetrate Soviet defenses were threatened by potential Soviet capability to neutralize and destroy them before they reached enemy territory; and (5 ) "world strategic situation has been changed sharply by Red Chinese achievements in nuclear explosives and by steadily decreasing costs which will permit other nations to deploy missile forces." DOD was developing "fantastic" weapons and military equipment, Benedict noted: "reconnaissance satellites that will spot a soldier hiding in underbrush or a missile buried underground; satellites to locate submerged submarines; communications satellites that will enable infantrymen . . . to converge on strategy; rockets to knock down enemy satellites; laser and radiation beams to pulverize space or ground targets; rocket-borne nuclear bombs to destroy missile warhead rockets with great power and versatility; and manned spaceships that will take off and land like conventional airplanes." USAF's Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL) program, he said, would determine whether man is more effective at performing tasks currently done by unmanned satellites and whether space itself could become a battlefield. (Benedict, LI Newsday, 7/10-13/67)
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