May 18 1976
From The Space Library
Ames Research Center had contracted with Goodyear Aerospace Corp. of Akron, 0., for studies of 2 lighter-than-air vehicle concepts for civilian use, NASA announced. New requirements for transporting heavy loads in power-plant construction, transferring ship cargoes to shore points, and providing quiet energy-saving intercity transportation had revived interest in lighter-than-air vehicles, formerly the only means of nonstop rapid travel across the world's oceans. Use of airships for military missions also had come under consideration; principal potential use was transport of ship cargoes over a beach to shore points. NASA, in conjunction with the U.S. Navy, was also studying military applications for conventional airships that would use the great endurance potential of the airship in activities such as antisubmarine warfare and sea control.
One of the concepts under study, a feeder airliner 60 m long carrying 80 passengers, would be used as a short-haul transport system, landing and taking off vertically and cruising at 160 knots. The other concept, a vehicle to transport large heavy payloads over comparatively short distances, would combine features of large dirigibles and helicopter rotors to provide lifting capacity far beyond that of either type of vehicle alone; the dirigible buoyance would lift the empty weight of the vehicle, and the total lifting capacity of the rotor system would lift and support the payload. The heavy lifter would be most likely to have immediate application, NASA said, because of the need for transport of heavy power generating equipment or other outsize industrial equipment to a remote destination not served by any other heavy transport systems. Increased engineering knowledge and better understanding of weather phenomena, as well as substituting inert helium for the volatile hydrogen used in German airships of the 1920s, would make a modern airship safe. (NASA Release 76-93)
The European Space Agency announced completion of the launcher integration site for its Ariane launch vehicle on schedule. The site-a building near Paris measuring 105 m long, 50 m wide, and 33 m high-constructed on its own land by Aerospatiale, the contractor called "the industrial architect of the Ariane programme," was for development tests and assembly, integration, and acceptance of the complete launcher before its dispatch to the launch site. Four Ariane flight tests were scheduled for 1979 and 1980. (ESA release 18 May 76)
Marshall Space Flight Center and Dryden Flight Research Center officials signed an agreement to conduct jointly a comprehensive program of tests on the parachute recovery system for the Space Shuttle's solid-fuel rocket booster. The program, to begin early in 1977, would consist of drogue-parachute tests and main-parachute tests, using single parachutes, and test deployment of the 3-parachute cluster (actual flight configuration) to be used in recovery of the solid rockets, largest ever flown. The parachutes, some 36.5 m in diameter, would be the largest used in the space program; Apollo spacecraft parachutes were about 24.5 m in diameter. The Dryden center would provide the B-52 aircraft for the test drops, as well as the flight and maintenance crews, and would perform the tests over the National Parachute Test Range about an hour's flight from Edwards AFB in Calif. MSFC engineers would evaluate the test data to determine the adequacy of the system. (NASA Release 76-94; DFRC Release 6-76; MSFC Release 76-87)
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