Aug 1 1977
From The Space Library
NASA announced it had scheduled the first free flight of the Shuttle orbiter for Sam PDT Aug. 12 at Dryden Flight Research Center. Briefing the press Aug. 11 would be Deke Slayton, ALT program manager at Johnson Space Center, and John Young, chief of the JSC astronaut office; Chet Lee, Hq director of Space Transportation Systems operations, speaking on payloads, pricing policies, and users; and Aaron Cohen, manager of the orbiter project at JSC, on orbiter systems. (NASA Release 77-158; DFRC Release 26-77)
NASA announced it would put on each of the Voyagers to be launched in Aug. a phonograph record, "Sounds of Earth," containing natural noises of surf, wind, and thunder, and of birds, whales, and other animals. The 12in disk would include greetings from earth in a number of languages [see June 3] and samples of music from different cultures and eras. The disk contained electronic data convertible by an advanced technological civilization into diagrams, pictures, and printed instructions designed to give beings that intercepted the craft an idea of 20th century earth and its inhabitants. "The spacecraft will be encountered and the record played only if there are advanced spacefaring civilizations in interstellar space," said Dr. Carl Sagan of Cornell Univ., originator of the message sent into space on Pioneers 10 and 11. The copper disk in its aluminum jacket could survive as long as a billion yr; the Voyagers might take 40 000yr to approach another star, and other predictable approaches would occur in 147 000 and 525 000yr. (NASA Release 77-159) Langley Research Center announced that 21 area high school students had completed a 4wk hands-on career exploration program at the center, applying classroom concepts to actual situations. Each student had been assigned to a sponsor in science, computers, engineering, or mathematics to supervise the unpaid 8hr workdays. (LaRC Release 77-34)
Despite U.S. revulsion at Soviet domestic oppression of scientists and the resulting condemnation of such practices, the U.S. and the USSR had found "enough common ground" in the sciences to renew cooperation for another 5yr, the Christian Science Monitor noted. Renewal of the 1972 accord signed by President Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev was "neither casual nor automatic," CSM said. In view of charges that the agreement mainly benefited the USSR, a committee of the U.S. Natl. Academy of Sciences had reviewed scientific détente and had told presidential science adviser Frank Press that "positive benefits" for the U.S. made continued cooperation valuable. Subsequent negotiations, CSM noted, went on without mention of human rights. ". . . There is only so much one nation can do in holding up a moral standard for another," the article concluded, adding that ". . Two powerful nations holding seemingly irreconcilable political views should ... continue to seek ways to live peacefully together on the same small planet." (CSM, Aug 1/77, 11)
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