Dec 23 1964
From The Space Library
Space News for this day. (2MB PDF)
NASA announced realignment of its manned space flight organization, designed to (1) provide a central organizational element with the overall operations responsibility for manned space flight programs, and (2) make a single organization responsible for the assembly, check-out, and launch of the total Apollo space vehicle in manned space flight programs at Cape Kennedy and the Merritt Island Launch Area (MILA). Key organizational changes would be effective Jan. 1,1965: (1) appointment of E E. Christensen to a new position, Mission Operations Director, in NASA Office of Manned Space Flight, supported by two Mission Directors with overall responsibility for the individual mission to which they were assigned; (2) creation of an Operations Support Requirements Office, headed by Porter Brown and staffed by representatives of each NASA program office, appropriate centers, and Office of Tracking and Data Acquisition; (3) transfer of Manned Spacecraft Center's Florida Operations to Kennedy Space Center; and (4) establishment at KSC of the position of Director, Launch Operations. Dr. Kurt H. Debus would also act as Director, Launch Operations; G. Merritt Preston, head of MSC Florida Operations, would become Deputy Director, Launch Operations. Resident offices were provided at KSC for MSC and MSFC program managers. (NASA Ann. 64-301; KSC Release 224)
NASA and ComSatCorp jointly announced the signing of an agreement covering the launching by NASA of "Early Bird"-the first communications satellite intended for commercial use. The agreement provided that NASA would launch Early Bird from Cape Kennedy, Fla., into synchronous orbit at 22,300-mi. altitude above the Atlantic as soon after Mar. 1 as NASA found feasible. ComSatCorp would pay NASA approximately $3.5 million for the initial launch, whether or not the Thrust Augmented Delta launch vehicle was successful in orbiting the satellite, and for each subsequent launch under the contract. The $3.5 million would reimburse NASA for the cost of the Delta vehicle, other launch services, propellants, guidance and tracking services, and data processing. Should the first launch be unsuccessful, NASA would try again on a second satellite. The contract gave ComSatCorp the option of calling for additional launches, after July 1, of synchronous satellites of the same type. (ComSatCorp Release, 12/23/64) [[ Jet Propulsion Laboratory]] released figures on MARINER IV, valid as of 12:01 pm: total miles to travel-325,000,000; total miles traveled-44,000,000; miles remaining to travel-281,000,000; miles from earth-4,306,180; speed in relation to earth-7,023 mph; speed in relation to sun-72,532 mph; total days required for trip-228; days already in space-26; days remaining to travel-202. (AP, Balt. Sun, 12/24/64)
It was reported that President Johnson would give special attention to science and technology programs in budget-making conferences at his Texas ranch. Dr. Donald S. Hornig, the President's special assistant for science and technology, said in Austin Press Conference that the significance of his presence as a participant in all meetings was that Johnson was looking at the "totality" of the various Government enterprises supporting science and technology in an effort to pursue a balanced program. Hornig said the Federal government was spending about $15 billion-roughly 15% of its budget-on scientific research, technical development, test, and engineering programs with about half this amount spent by DOD. Dr. Hornig also said he believed the hundreds of millions of dollars going into the effort to put an American on the moon by 1970 was well spent because "the moon is a very interesting place scientifically." It will "take a lot of going" to achieve that goal, he said, but present schedules "will allow it" (Wash. Eve. Star, 12/23/64)
Prof. Marcel Florkin of Liege Univ. a member of the Committee on Space Research (COSPAR), said that many American and Soviet scientists shared his belief that men cannot survive weightlessness in space for more than five or six days. He said that Soviet scientists had produced photographs showing abnormalities in cell division attributable to the sustained weightlessness some of their astronauts had experienced. Prof Florkin said that under present conditions, only space robots could visit the moon or Mars and that the only alternative would be space vehicles that could produce artificial gravity to simulate normal human environment. (O'Toole, NYT, 12/24/64)
Dr. Herbert Friedman, chief of astrophysics at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., told a meeting of the American Physical Society at Berkeley that x-ray detectors carried in Aerobee sounding rockets had picked up evidence of radiation above the earth's atmosphere which indicated the possible existence of a "neutron star." The invisible object, lying in the constellation Scorpius and relatively close to the earth, emitted streams of extremely feeble x-rays. Its size was unknown. The existence of such a star would offer important confirmation of scientific theories about the birth and death of all stars, and the distribution of elements throughout the universe. It would also be the densest collection of matter in the universe: a massive lump of nuclear particles weighing a billion tons per cubic inch. (Perlman, S.F. Chronicle, 12/24/64)
NASA Ames Research Center announced that the Carl N. Swenson Co, San Jose, Calif., had been awarded a $992,000 contract to construct a reinforced-concrete vacuum chamber and Structural Dynamics Laboratory at ARC. The space chamber would be in the form of a ten-story, 30-million-lb., hollow concrete pentagonal tower with walls three feet thick, would accommodate full-scale segments or smaller-scale models of rockets and spacecraft, and could be evacuated to a pressure of ten millimeters of mercury. (ARC Release 64-31)
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