Jan 26 1977
From The Space Library
Lewis Research Center announced it would participate in programs to demonstrate the feasibility of using an airborne infrared scanner to pinpoint residential heat loss. The cities of Cleveland, Ohio, and Springfield, III., would reimburse the center for its services. A NASA C-47 aircraft, flown over areas designated by Cleveland's city council as eligible for low-interest winterizing and rehabilitation loans from the U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), would record on magnetic tape the images of rooftops showing hot areas as white, warm areas as gray, and cool areas as black. Homeowners in the target areas could view the results at community centers and apply for block grant money from HUD as necessary. The city of Springfield had requested similar assistance for a HUD loan program. LeRC had used a thermal infrared technique in 1975-76 to scan NASA centers for energy loss, saving the agency about $350 000 in the first yr of the program. (NASA Release 77-13; Lewis News, March 11/77, 3)
A television relay satellite 22 000 miles in space was the focus of an experiment Jan. 25 in using TV transmissions to conduct judicial proceedings, reducing the travel time and cost of witnesses and lawyers, and to increase the efficiency of the courts, the New York Times reported.
The project, result of a yr's planning between the Univ. of Maryland law school in Baltimore and that of Ohio Northern in Lima, was only partly successful because the yr-old Communications Technology Satellite Cts orbiting over the equator south of Denver repeatedly sent to Baltimore the jagged horizontal lines of TV "snow" during the closing arguments of the mock hearing at Lima. Also, the voice-activated TV cameras, two at each location to cover the two pairs of lawyers and judges, would take over the projection screen whenever anyone wearing a lapel microphone coughed or cleared his throat.
The Maryland Center for Public Broadcasting, which sponsored the experiment, had paid nothing for use of the system, and the Cts project leader (Herbert Nunelly of Westinghouse Electric Corp.) operating the teleconference for NASA said he could not compute the cost of an hour's or day's use of the satellite. The American Bar Assn. had approved the mock appeals hearing before Judge Joseph F. Weis, Jr., of the U.S Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, and three lawyers before whom law school students were arguing the case. Judge Weis's ABA project director, Howard Primer of Chicago, cited several actual trials conducted with TV assistance. (NYT, Jan 26/77, B-1)
First appraisals of a Soviet MiG-25 aircraft flown by a Soviet pilot to Japan on Sept. 6, 1976, had been revised, according to U.S. Air Force specialists quoted by the NY Times. Further analysis had revealed that the aircraft did not lag behind the advanced technology of U.S aircraft, as previously stated, but contained some surprises. After 7wk of study, officials reported the MiG-25's radar to be more powerful and less vulnerable to enemy jamming than U.S. radars, although operated on vacuum-tube technology. The Soviet aircraft's radar also lacked the "look-down" capability of U.S. aircraft, so that Soviet MiG-25's could not detect low-flying enemy aircraft that blended in with the earth's surface. Similarly, Air Force specialists described the MiG-25's Tumansky jet engines as 15yrs outmoded: the flight computer-called impressive even though it too was based on vacuum-tube technology-required extra space, maintenance, and cooling mechanisms. The USSR apparently was reluctant to entrust its pilots with total control of their aircraft, which explained the "very sophisticated data base" which could not only handle fire control and sensor systems but could also return the craft to any of four predesignated landing fields. "The biggest advantage," said one U.S. Air Force officer, "is that we allow, we train, our men to think, to adapt. This does not occur in many cases with the Soviet air force." Designed in 1960 to combat the U.S. B-70 bomber, which never went into production, the MiG-25 had been altered later for use against the highflying Lockheed SR-71 reconnaissance plane. (NYT, Jan 26/77, A-11)
The New York Times reported that France had inaugurated its first operating solar power plant, in what officials predicted would be a race with the U.S. to sell solar power to Arab and third world countries. The plant, located at Odeillo in the Pyrenees mountains of southern France, would contribute about 64 kilowatts to the national electricity grid (enough to run about 60 household electric irons, the NYT said). Jean Claude Colli, the government's director for new energy sources, noted that the French could claim operational equipment, whereas "the Americans are presenting futuristic projects." France expected to sign a major solar energy development contract with Saudi Arabia within the week and to host a sales meeting at the end of the week with 26 countries from the Persian Gulf and Mediterranean regions. The new plant was said to receive about 180 days of sun per yr, and to use collector mirrors for reflecting the rays to a boiler heating steam to drive a turbo alternator that would produce the electricity. (NYT, Jan 26/77, A-9)
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