May 1 1964
From The Space Library
NASA Associate Administrator Dr. Robert C. Seamans said in speech before Fourth National Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Space: "We are searching for a type of contract that will motivate the con-tractor to become more deeply involved in performing work of high quality with maximum speed and minimum cost. "In this way we hope to reduce the number of persons presently required to carry out what are essentially policing actions. These would be largely unnecessary if we could place more of the responsibility for basic decisions of performance, time, and cost in the hands of industry management. Only through such an approach can we hope to reverse the constant escalation of costs that stems from adding persons on both sides of the equation. That is, as the government adds people, the contractor has to add people to respond to our people, and the result is not satisfactory to either side. . . . "Let me emphasize ... that there are three factors we want the contractor to be involved in-cost, time, and performance. We want contracts to be written in such a way that industry management will carefully weigh and consider what any change in his operation will do to all three items. Obviously, there cannot be an alteration in any one of them without a concomitant effect on the other two. We feel that only in this way can the present performance be improved at the contractor level. . . ." (Text)
President's Advisory Committee on Supersonic Transport held its third meeting in the Pentagon, where it heard executives of the three aircraft and three engine manufacturers that had submitted preliminary designs. (Clark, NYT, 5/2/64)
NASA announced it would award grants to Maryland Univ. and Rice Univ. for construction of aeronautical and space science research facilities. Maryland's $1.5-million grant would be used for a building to provide additional space for research in such areas as chemistry, physics, fluid dynamics, astronomy, computer sciences, and mathematics. Rice's $1.6-million grant Would be used for a space science building to accommodate further research in space-related scientific areas. (NASA Release 64/104)
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