Jun 17 1977
From The Space Library
NASA announced that preparations at KSC for launching the Space Shuttle had required only two new major constructions: an orbiter-landing facility, one of the largest runways in the world (roughly twice as long and twice as wide as an average commercial landing strip), with a microwave scanning-beam landing system to assist the orbiter to an automatic landing; and a large hangar called the "orbiter processing facility" with two high bays for checking out and servicing the orbiters immediately after landing: Existing facilities modified for Shuttle use were the Vehicle Assembly Building, 2 of its 4 high bays being altered for Shuttle assembly, and the launch-control center being equipped with an automated launch processing system developed for Shuttle checkout and launch, using a tenth of the manpower for Shuttle that had been used for Apollo: 45 persons, compared to more than 450. Final countdown for Shuttle launches would take only 2.5hr compared to the 28hr needed in countdown for an Apollo/Saturn V: Much of the work had been completed, NASA reported, and the eventual cost of the modifications would be about $240 million, less than a fourth of the 1960s cost of building the Spaceport for Apollo: (NASA Release 77-124)
MSFC announced it had awarded to Contractors Cargo Co., South Gate, Calif., a $227 120 fixed-price contract for moving the Space Shuttle orbiter Enterprise eight separate times during its testing at MSFC in 1978: Now in the midst of approach and landing tests (ALT) at DFRC, Enterprise would fly on its Boeing 747 carrier to MSFC on March 17, 1978, to be mated with an external tank and solid-fuel rocket boosters and erected on a dynamic test stand for vertical ground-vibration testing: The contract called for design, testing, and delivery to MSFC of an orbiter ground-transporter to travel about 6 km between the airfield and the pretest-preparation building, a trip to be completed within 2hr on March 18, 1978.
The "prime mover," a 480-hp tractor with 10 wheels, would be attached to 2 rear dollies each having 32 wheels and a forward dolly with 16 wheels. The segments would be joined by a "strongback" construction, and the entire rig would weigh about 24 000kg (52 9001b). Length of the transporter would be nearly 50m (about 160ft), the width of about 24m would accommodate the orbiter's wingspan, and the height from ground to top of a vertical stabilizer would be about 16m (about 54ft). For an operating demonstration before the arrival of the orbiter at MSFC, the transporter would carry a weightload of nearly 100 000kg (220 000lb), half again the weight of the orbiter. Contractors Cargo was the same firm that had moved Enterprise from the Rockwell plant at Palmdale, Calif., to DFRC in Jan. 1977. (MSFC Release 77-106)
Dr. Robert A. Frosch, awaiting confirmation as NASA's fifth administrator, probably had "more experience in research administration" than any of his predecessors in that position, Science magazine said. The article pointed out that Dr. Frosch-former assistant secretary of the Navy for research and development, former assistant executive director of the UN environmental program, former associate director of the Woods Hole Facility, and director at age 28 of Columbia Univ.'s Hudson Laboratories-had been stressing science in his initial public statements. "I'd like to be remembered as the guy who was able to help NASA imagine new uses for space and aeronautics and who helped the agency do good science," Frosch told Science in an interview.
The magazine noted, however, that the new administrator would take office at a time when Congress was cutting NASA projects and taking the agency "completely by surprise." NASA had enjoyed good relations with the chairman and ranking minority member of the Senate committee authorizing NASA programs, who were also ex officio members of the appropriations committee; but the old authorizing committee had been dismantled, and NASA had come under the jurisdiction of a subcommittee of the Senate commerce committee headed by Sen. Adlai E. Stevenson (D-Ill). Also, aside from his introduction to the president ("He sure gives a tough job interview," Frosch said), the new administrator had not been dealing with the president or his immediate staff. Overall administration attitude toward the space agency was a big unknown, the magazine stated, and rumors had been circulating that NASA would be taken over by the Commerce Dept. or the Dept. of Defense, although a spokesman for Carter's government reorganization chief had denied the rumors. Although Dr. Frosch might preside over a stronger science program for NASA, the article concluded, he might also preside over a change in the agency to "some new, perhaps unrecognizable form." (Science, June 17/77, 1301)
Newspapers and news services reported the death June 16 of Dr. Wernher von Braun, 65, former director of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, whose name had become synonymous with "America in space" when the team he headed used a Jupiter-C rocket developed by him for the U.S. Army to launch Explorer 1, the western world's first earth satellite, on Jan. 31, 1958. Dr. von Braun had undergone surgery in 1975; he had spent most of his time since Oct. 1976 in the hospital.
Dr. von Braun, an enthusiast of space travel and astronomy from his childhood in East Prussia (now part of Poland), in his early teens came across a picture of a rocket traveling to the moon that illustrated an article by Hermann Oberth, pioneer rocket theorist who later was part of the von Braun team at Huntsville, Ala. When von Braun obtained Oberth's book on rocketry, he realized he would need mathematics to progress in his studies, and went onto obtain a doctorate in physics from the Univ. of Berlin in 1934 at the age of 22 with a thesis on rocket engines.
He had continued his interest in the amateur Society for Space Travel (Verein fur Raumschiffahrt, VfR) whose rocket experiments impressed the German army seeking weapons not forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles that ended World War 1. Employed by the ordnance department after 1934, von Braun had continued his work with rockets, up to the success of the V-2 used against Britain, until 1945. The von Braun team at Peenemunde then decided to go south and surrender to U.S. forces rather than be captured by the Soviet army. About 120 of von Braun's associates were taken with him to the U.S. in Operation Paperclip to demonstrate their achievements with captured V-2 rockets. The group went to the U.S. Army's Redstone Arsenal in 1950 to work on a ballistic rocket called Redstone. When Sputnik 1 went into orbit in 1957 and the Navy's Vanguard rocket blew up on its pad, a version of von Braun's Redstone called Jupiter-C (Juno 1) put Explorer 1 into orbit for the U.S. in 1958, and another version carried Alan B. Shepard, Jr., on the first U.S. suborbital flight in 1961. Weeks later, when President Kennedy called for a moon landing within the decade, von Braun got the task of creating the rocket; his Saturn V won the race to put a man on the moon's surface in 1969.
When NASA was established in 1958, Dr. von Braun and his team had transferred to that agency from the army and he had become director of the Marshall Space Flight Center at Huntsville, Ala. After the moon landings, Dr. von Braun went to NASA Hq in 1970 as deputy associate administrator to promote post-Apollo space activities for the U.S. But public interest and support had declined, and Dr. von Braun resigned in May 1972 to become vice president for engineering and development at Fairchild Industries, Inc. In 1975 he founded and became first president of the Natl. Space Institute, a private group to increase public understanding and support of space activities; in 1976, when illness overtook him, he remained chairman and was active in formulating policy. He had resigned from Fairchild late in 1976, effective in Jan. 1977; At a memorial service June 22 in Washington Cathedral, tributes came from former astronaut Michael Collins; Dr. Ernst Stuhlinger, longtime associate of von Braun in development of rockets; and Dr. James C. Fletcher, former NASA administrator. An editorial in the W Post that described Dr. von Braun as "an American national hero in the 1960s after being an American national enemy in the 1940s" said that his life should be judged "as one of the new breed of international scientists ... You can think of him as a hired gun if you like. But you can also think of him as he apparently thought of himself-as a man indentured only to a dream ... And, unlike most of us, he saw a large part of it come true." (MSFC Release 77-111; AP wire service obit, June 17/77, nos. 17 & 20; W Star, June 17/77, A-1; NYT, June 18/77, 1; W Post, June 18/77, A7; June 23/77, C1 l, A24 (ed); C Trib, June 18/77, 1; Today, June 18/77, A; June 23/77, 8A)
FBIS carried an announcement by Tass that the USSR had launched "this morning" the French satellite Signe 3, product of a 2yr collaboration between the Toulouse Space Research Center and the USSR's Space Research Inst. of the Academy of Sciences. The spacecraft had carried French-made instruments to observe ultraviolet emission from the sun; objective of the mission was to continue study of "already discovered sources of gamma radiation in galaxies and also to replenish the catalog of stars." The announcement said that originally the French were to design the spacecraft and provide the equipment, while the USSR ensured launch; however, "the Soviet colleagues suggested so many design novelties ... that it is actually more correct to regard the Signe 3 as a Soviet-French satellite," according to French project director Antoine Miosi. This launch had begun a second decade of USSR-French cooperation in space exploration: Soviet spacecraft had carried French-made instruments, and the French Araks experiment had orbited a Soviet electron accelerator to study polar lights. (FBIS, Tass in English, June 17/77)
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