Dec 11 1961

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The U.N.'s Political Committee unanimously approved a resolution calling on the Committee on Peaceful Uses of Outer Space to meet on March 31, 1962, to begin discussions of world cooperation in space. The resolution essentially incorporated the four-point U.S. program on the peaceful uses of outer space. The U.S.S.R. supported the resolution although it had previously rendered the Committee inoperative by boycotting its meetings.

The national space program portends a major technological advance for mankind, NASA Associate Administrator Dr. Robert C. Seamans, Jr., told the New Orleans Chamber of Commerce. Comparing its potential to that of the invention of the steam engine, Dr. Seamans noted: "Two aspects of such major advances are characteristic. First, the practical results are largely unforeseeable, primarily because they develop on broad fronts and, frequently, in unsuspected directions. Second, the concentration of effort required does not diminish effort expended on other frontiers of knowledge, but rather spurs such activities. For example, despite fears that space technology would monopolize the scientific effort of this country, such fields of activity as oceanography, geophysics, and the physics of high-energy particles have greatly increased since the national space effort has become a serious one." Contract awarded by Army Engineers to Brown & Root, Inc., for design of major portion of NASA's Manned Spacecraft Center at Houston, Tex.

Survey of leading space experts on U.S. space goals from 197075 by the North American Newspaper Alliance produced a consensus that the United States would establish a Moon base from which to thoroughly explore the Moon and to launch interplanetary manned probes. Those interviewed included important figures in space industry, USAF, NASA, and space research.

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