Oct 2 1963
From The Space Library
Space News for this day. (2MB PDF)
The Russian people heard of President Kennedy's U.N. proposal for joint U.S.-U.S.S.R. lunar exploration for first time. Pravda reprinted without comment Walter Lippmann's column praising the President's proposal. (AP, Wash. Post, 10/2/63)
Sen. J. W. Fulbright (D.-Ark.), Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, stated on the Senate floor that he favored space exploration but considered the present large space budgets "an unwarranted diversion of resources from the Nation's most pressing needs." He favored President Kennedy's proposal for joint U.S.-U.S.S.R. lunar exploration for two reasons: "First, it would greatly reduce the costs of space exploration, releasing funds for important domestic programs, such as education, employment, urban renewal, and conservation of resources; second, it would further reduce world tensions by opening up a significant new area of Soviet-American cooperation." (OR, 10/2/63, 17598)
Talks at U.N. between East and West on agreement not to orbit large nuclear weapons were termed promising by Secretary of State Dean Rusk and Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko. Said to be the most important discussions since the negotiations on the nuclear test ban treaty, the talks also dealt, with exchange of observers between East and West to reduce possibility of surprise attack and with non-dissemination of nuclear weapons. (NYT, 10/3/63, 1; AP, Wash. Post, 10/3/63)
USAF and Martin Co. engineers reportedly adopted a tight engineering review system in the number and types of changes in the Titan II missile to the man-rated Titan I1 booster for Gemini flights. System is intended to improve reliability by holding changes down to fewest possible and seeing that each of these contributes to overall reliability. Modifications that have been made include the necessary structural changes to accept the Gemini capsule, redundancy m certain key systems, and a malfunction detection system that would alert the flight crew to possible trouble. (Space Bus. Daily, 10/3/63, 20)
Dr. Karl G. Guderley, senior scientist at. USAF's Aerospace Research Laboratories, Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio, was presented DOD's highest civilian award, the DOD Distinguished Civilian Service Award. Award was for contributions to transonic flow theory and other problems in aerodynamics and mathematical physics. (OAR Release 10-63-1)
Space Business Daily, reported that Dr. Robert C. Seamans, Jr., NASA Associate Administrator, "said flatly this week that he would resign rather than become involved in a technical bog-down caused by U.S.-Soviet co-operation on a lunar flight." In its Oct. 4 issue, the same publication said that NASA had officially "denied" the report as being "flatly untrue in language, concept and fact" and asserted that Dr. Seamans was "'enthusiastic"' over the possibility of a joint program. NASA spokesman told the publication that Dr. Seamans had been addressing a group on Capitol Hill, had spoken of technical obstacles to lunar cooperative program, and had said "'in a joking manner"' that the problems would be so difficult "as to require NASA to find someone to replace him." (Space Bus. Daily, 10/2/63, 9; 10/4/63,26)
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