Jul 12 1973
From The Space Library
Dr. James C. Fletcher, NASA Administrator, outlined potential uses of space age technology before the Western Assn. of State Game and Fish Commissioners in Salt Lake City, Utah. He said earth surveying could find hidden resources, such as formations likely to have petroleum beneath them. (Evans, Desert News, 7/12/73)
A European Space Conference in Brussels failed to reach agreement on future programs, including the establishment of a European space agency. Spaceflight magazine later attributed the failure to divergent interests. The U.K. was concentrating on its maritime satellite, West Germany on the Spacelab, and France on the L-3S launcher. Sweden and the Netherlands required more time, and France was disappointed that the U.K. would not join West Germany in supporting the L-3S project. The meeting would reconvene in Brussels July 31 to meet NASA's Spacelab decision deadline of Aug. 10. (SF, 9/15/73, 321)
President Nixon transmitted The World Weather Program Plan for Fiscal Year 1974 to Congress. U.S. participation in the world program, coordi-nated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, in-cluded the Depts. of Defense, State, and Transportation; Atomic Energy Commission; Environmental Protection Agency; National Science Foun-dation; and NASA. In addition to programs presented in NOAA's Federal Plan [see July 11], the Global Atmospheric Research Program (GARP) would conduct the GARP Atlantic Tropical Experiment (GATE) June 15- September 1974 to study tropical atmosphere meteorology and its ef-fects on circulation of the earth's atmosphere. And the first GARP Global Experiment, scheduled for 1977, would include two polar-orbiting satel-lites, one provided by the U.S. and one by the U.S.S.R., and five earth-synchronous spacecraft-two operated by NOAA for the U.S., one over the Indian Ocean by the U.S.S.R., one over the western Pacific by Japan, and one over Africa and the eastern Atlantic by the European Space Research Organization (ESRO) (NOAA Release 73-168; PD, 7/16/73, 900)
The B-1 development program director, M/G Douglas T. Nelson (USAF), told the press in Washington, D.C., that construction of the swing-wing strategic bomber had fallen behind schedule, forcing a nine-month post-ponement of a decision on whether to produce B-1s at an estimated $54 million each. The decision date had been rescheduled for May 1976. First flight of a B-1 prototype had been rescheduled from April to June 1974. B-1 prime contractor Rockwell International Corp. had been "falling noticeably behind schedule" in installing subsystems because it had had to spend more time than anticipated on assembling the airframe. By slowing the development program the Air Force hoped to avoid a program cost increase during the current fiscal year, but development problems would result in a $78-million total increase, to bring the total development cost to $2.79 billion. (WSJ, 7/13/73)
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