Aug 22 1975
From The Space Library
Defense, space, and energy accounted for most of a record increase in Federal research and development funding in FY 1976, the National Science Foundation's report An Analysis of Federal R & D Funding by Function, Fiscal Years 1969-76 stated. The largest dollar increase, $1860 million, was for national defense; the second and third largest increases, $343 million each, were for space and energy.
Relative increases in FY 1976 were largest for education, 102%; energy, 37%; national defense, 20%; and space, 13%.
Total Federal obligation for R&D in the 1976 budget of $21.7 billion was a record high. The $2.7-billion increase over FY 1975 was also a record increase for any one year, enough to indicate a real rise in R&D activity, allowing for a reasonable inflation factor. The upward change contrasted with an average annual decline of 2.7% in constant dollars over the period 1969-75. (NSF Highlights, 25 Aug 75, 1)
NASA announced selection of McDonnell Douglas Astronautics Co. for negotiation of a- $14.8-million fixed-price incentive contract to develop, build, and deliver Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Booster (SRB) structures, and to design and build the tooling necessary to produce them. The SRB structures would support the Space Shuttle on the launch pad, transfer thrust loading to the Orbiter and external tank, and provide structural support for the SRB recovery system, electrical components, and thrust-vector control system. (NASA Release 75-238)
A group of 28 scientists, engineers, sociologists, and economists concluded a 10-wk (16 June-22 Aug.) NASA-Stanford University study at Ames Research Center by recommending that the U.S. adopt a space colonization program using available technology. The "city in space" envisioned by the study group could be a 1.5-km-wide wheel-shaped habitat for 10 000 persons positioned on the moon's orbit at a point 385 000 km from both earth and moon. Costing an estimated $100 billion, the 454-million-kg wheel, or torus, would rotate around its hub at 1 rpm to simulate earth's gravity. The rim would house inhabitants as well as shops, schools, light industry, and closed-loop agriculture; heavy industry could be located outside to take advantage of weightlessness and high vacuum in space.
A major commercial activity of the first colony would be to construct solar-power satellites. Placed in geosynchronous orbit above the earth, the satellites would collect and convert sunlight into energy and beam it to earth as low-density microwaves.
The space colony would have several advantages that might make it self-supporting: weightlessness for manufacturing and transportation, massive use of lunar minerals, and continuous natural sunlight for increased agricultural productivity. The study group had considered social, cultural, safety, and ecological difficulties of a space colony, but had-found "no unsurmountable problems that would prevent humans from living in space." (NASA Releases 75-229, 75-249; ARC Release 75-41; Dunstan, W Post, 23 Aug 75)
The press commented on the mission of the Viking spacecraft to Mars [see 20 Aug.]. The Washington Post said that the essence of the space program had been "to provide mankind with new knowledge, not in hopes that this knowledge will be useful immediately hereon Earth but in hopes that it will expand our understanding of the universe in which we live and . . . enable us to reach better solutions to our philosophical and political, as well as practical, problems." The Viking missions had opened a new era in which the search for knowledge was to be done largely by machines; the rewards promised to be rich, beyond measure in strictly monetary terms.
The Christian Science Monitor agreed, commenting that Viking represented "an opportunity for mankind's self-awareness to take a greater stride away from earth-centered thinking than was afforded by Neil Armstrong's historic step on to the moon." Discovering organic life on Mars would strengthen the conviction that life existed abundantly throughout the universe and that we were not alone. Some had questioned whether the U.S. should spend a billion dollars on such a program when resources were hard pressed on earth, but anew discovery, that life was not a meaningless chance but part of a grand design, could give new inspiration to humanity's efforts to deal with earthly problems.
Here was a challenge for the architects of détente, the Monitor asserted. The U.S. and Russia had been needlessly duplicating scientific efforts, their cooperation amounting to little more than "arm's length information exchange." The two countries had much to share. "By abandoning costly competition for a truly joint program, the two countries could gain from each other's capabilities, minimize the cost to each of them, and pursue this cosmic outreach on behalf of all mankind." (W Post, 22 Aug 75, A24; CSM, 22 Aug 75, 28)
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