Nov 19 1973
From The Space Library
The Soviet Mission Control Center at Star City, near Moscow, was described by U.S. Apollo Soyuz Test Project Director Glynn S. Lunney during a Johnson Space Center briefing on the Oct. 1-18 visit of a U.S. delegation to work with Soviet counterparts on the July 1975 joint docking mission. Soviet Mission Control was "not unlike the control centers . . . in this country." It was "characterized by consoles with some . . . large display screens down front and television display systems on the individual console." The building housing Mission Control was in two sections. "One is sort of a wing where the main operations Control Room is and some auxiliary rooms and equipment." Another wing held equipment for teletype, intercom, and TV. Lunney said a U.S.-built docking system and a U.S.S.R. docking system, "actually almost two docking systems, that were brought over by members of the Soviet test team," had been undergoing tests at JSCsince September. "The tests are almost complete with the mandatory test points that have to be taken. There's a period .. . where some additional test points may be taken . . . and that will probably go on for the rest . . . of November." To date, the tests had gone smoothly. "I think what they are telling us is that the assumptions that went into the design appear to be verified and that indeed we can expect that same kind of results when we use the production hardware in the qualification test next year." Lunney said U.S. delegates had learned that the Sept. 27-29 Soyuz 12 flight had tested fixes to the spacecraft to prevent reoccurrence of the fatal June 30, 1971, Soyuz 11 accident in which three cosmonauts died from decompression. He said that "all the fixes worked properly." Modifications included use of spacesuits for launch and reentry, a gas supply and hose system, and a strong cap on the valve that had been triggered open accidentally; the cap now had to be fired pyrotechnically to release. Firings to separate the reentry module were modified and a manual override on the valve was made more accessible to the crew. Discussions had given "a fairly full treatment of the problem, to the point where we are satisfied that we know what happened and we know what the fixes are and they appear indeed to be very substantial." (Tran-script)
George J. Vecchietti, NASA Director of Procurement since May 1964, became Assistant Administrator for Procurement. He would report di-rectly to the Associate Administrator for Organization and Management. Vecchietti had received the NASA Medal for Outstanding Leadership in 1966 and the NASA Exceptional Service Medal in 1969. He had joined NASA in 1960 as Assistant Director of Procurement. (NASA Ann)
A device to identify paper money by its sound "signature" had been developed for the blind from early NASA technology for semiautomatic inspection of microfilm records, NASA announced. A bill was passed under a light source on the small, inexpensive device. A phototransistor measured changes in the bill's light patterns and the changes were converted into "beeping" signals that differed with each denomination. (NASA Release 73-247)
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