Mar 21 1973
From The Space Library
NASA Associate Administrator for Aeronautics and Space Technology Roy P. Jackson testified on aircraft programs during hearings of the Senate Committee on Aeronautical and Space Sciences on NASA's FY 1974 authorization: "The objective of the engine refan program ... at Lewis Research Center is to demonstrate the feasibility and cost of significantly reducing the noise of current civil fleet engines. The JT8D, which powers the Boeing 727 and 737 and the McDonnell Douglas DC-9, will continue in extensive civil fleet use well into the 1980's. The first JT8D refanned engine ground test is scheduled for January 1974." Flight tests would occur in FY 1975. Analysis of benefits from refanning indicated that approximately 50% greater community noise improvement could be gained from a fleet-wide JT8D refan retrofit than from a fleet-wide JT3D refan retrofit. The JT3D powered the four-engine Boeing 707 and Douglas DC-8. "This analysis resulted in the decision in January to concentrate, within available resources, on the JT8D and to defer work on the MD." NASA's experimental quiet engine program had achieved its major goals during FY 1973 and would be continued in FY 1974. "Altitude performance tests . . . will start soon in the christening run of the Lewis Propulsion Laboratory expansion authorized in 1967. After initial acoustic testing, a sonic inlet, which chokes off forward sound propagation, will be added to engine C." Technology was in hand to permit a new generation of civil aircraft engines, with acceptable economics, whose noise footprint in terminal operations would be less than 50% of that of the generation of relatively quiet wide-body jet aircraft now coming on the line in the civil fleet. (Transcript)
Confirmation of U.S.S.R. development of the SS-17 missile-a follow-on to the SS-11 with first strike capability against the U.S.-was given by Dept. of Defense spokesman Jerry W. Friedheim. The press had quoted U.S. military analysts as saying the U.S.S.R. had successfully tested the SS-17, which had an onboard computer to direct it to a predetermined impact point and to adjust for variables. Reports had said the SS-17 could attack U.S. Minuteman missile silos and advance Soviet development of accurate multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRVS) for its intercontinental missiles. (DOD PIO; Beecher, NYT, 3/21/73, 4; Aero Daily, 3/22/73; Av Wk, 3/26/73, 11)
NASA launched a Nike-Tomahawk sounding rocket from Poker Flats, Alaska, carrying a Goddard Space Flight Center magnetospheric physics experiment to a 239.8-km (149-mi) altitude. The rocket and instrumentation performed satisfactorily. (GSFC proj off)
March 21-25; Skylab mission simulation and flight-readiness tests were completed at Kennedy Space Center, including experiment hardware and the control system. The first Skylab crew-Charles Conrad, Jr., Dr. Joseph P. Kerwin, and Paul J. Weitz - participated in the checkout. Decisions were made to replace three water accumulators and bladders in the airlock module and the multiple docking adapter coolant system. (NASA Release 73-55)
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