May 12 1969
From The Space Library
NASA launched two Nike-Apache sounding rockets from Wallops Station : first carried GSFC payload to study ionospheres; second carried Univ. of Michigan payload to conduct studies on atmospheric structure. Rockets and instruments functioned satisfactorily. (NASA Proj Off)
Melvin S. Day became NASA Acting Assistant Administrator for Technology Utilization, succeeding Dr. Richard L Lesher, who had resigned to accept position in industry. (NASA Ann)
Author Norman Mailer's total publishing rights on book on lunar landing would exceed $1 million when book was published by Little, Brown & Co. in January or February 1970, according to his agent, Scott Meredith. If film rights were sold, total could approach the $1.5 million paid for Lyndon B. Johnson memoirs. Mailer planned to visit KSC during Apollo 11 launch to interview astronauts and describe space center operations. He also planned chapter on philosophical and technological implications of lunar landing. Meredith said he was surprised at "phenomenal competition among foreign publishers for book and magazine rights." (Raymont, NYT, 5/13/69, 44)
Science students, younger scientists, and many older professors of physics and physiology were engaging in what Harvard Univ. political scientist Prof. Don K. Price called "a new kind of rebellion," linked only in part with radical activists on campuses, said Victor Cohn in Washington Post. It was rebellion against ABM "and other costly military-technological systems, against `weaponeering' at secret laboratories on or near campuses and, in many cases, against doing any research, secret or non-secret, to help the military." It had helped cause Stanford Univ. to decide to phase out 50% of secret projects at Applied Electronics Laboratory, made Stanford's trustees place moratorium on new chemical and biological warfare contracts at Stanford Research Institute, caused MIT moratorium on new secret contracts, and forced American Univ. to cancel partly secret USA research contract. Movement and student protests had, in past year, forced DOD to cut from 400 to 200 its classified R&D contracts on U.S. campuses. (W Post, 5/12/69, Al)
In American Aviation, Eric Bramley called 1969 year of "cautious optimism" for air transport industry. Deliveries of new aircraft to U.S. carriers would drop from 478 in 1968 to 309. Trunk traffic was expected to grow at same 14% rate as 1968, with available seat-mile increase of 17%. CAB-approved fare increases would add $194 million to revenues with profit level and rate of return expected to improve. (Amer Av, 5/12/69, 40-1)
May 12-24: At 10th annual meeting of Committee on Space Research (COSPAR) in Prague, Apollo 8 Astronaut Frank Borman received medal from Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences. NAS-NRC submitted United States Space Science Program, comprehensive summary of scientific research in space science in U.S. during 1968. "Although the principal concern of the space science program in the United States continues to be with the Earth, its environment, the Sun, interactions of solar and terrestrial phenomena, the Moon and planets, and the biological effects of weightlessness and radiation, there is a trend toward increasing emphasis on the use of space vehicles for stellar and galactic astronomy, especially in areas of the electromagnetic spectrum for which the atmosphere is essentially opaque. The successful operation of the Orbiting Astronomical Observatory satellite and the rapid development of improved instruments and techniques for ultraviolet and x-ray astronomy . . . are examples of this trend." In interview with press, NAS-NRC Space Science Board member Dr. Richard W. Porter said U.S. would probably have to review its expensive prophylactic measures in planned Mars landings if U.S.S.R. landed there first with same techniques and precautions used in Venus shots. Outgoing contamination of planets might well be bigger problem than contamination of incoming spacecraft. There was little likelihood of spacecraft landing on Mars and Venus and returning for at least 10 yrs, Dr. Porter said, and risk from lunar bacteriological contamination was infinitesimal. But contamination of planets was serious problem because it could spoil man's first chances to make a pure investigation of biological evolution elsewhere in the solar system. (Text; W Post, 5/23/69, A15)
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