Astronautics and Aeronautics, 1967 - NASA's History Office

June 17 ASTRONAUTICS AND AERONAUTICS, 1967
Homestead, Fla. Only flaw was explosion of a portion of the exhaust
nozzle at the end of the test. Purpose of firing, third in NASA’s Large
Solid Rocket Twchnology Program, was to test “a large, submergedtp,
ablative nozzle; the use of inert slivers to control the burn-out of
propellant; elements of a motor failure warning system; and a higher
burning rate propellant.” First two 260-in motors, SL-1 (fired Sept.
25, 1965) and SG2 (fired Feb. 23, 1966), both operated about two
minutes and produced 3.5 million lbs thrust in tests to check strength
of the maraging steel motor case, structural integrity of the case propellant,
insulation and ablative nozzle, and the repeated performance
of test hardware. Managed by L ~RC under OART direction, program was
designed to demonstrate feasibility of building and operating solid
motors of greater size than those in current use for multistage launch
vehicle systems carrying heavy payloads into space. (NASA Release 67-
151; Lewis News, 6/9/67, 1; Reistrup, W Post, 6/18/67, A2; NYT,
6/18/67,6; Marshall Star, 6/21/67,10)
NASA Administrator James E. Webb received an honorary Doctor of Science
in Commerce degree from Drexel Institute of Technology in commence-
ment exercises in Philadelphia. (‘NASA PAO; P SB, 6/18/67)
Communist China, using ground site, successfully explored her first hydro-
gen bomb over western region of country, Hsinhua, Chinese Communist
press agency, announced. (NYT, 6/18/67,1,3)
June 18: NASA published Earth Photographs from Gemini ZZZ, IV, and V,
an atlas containing reproductions of 244 high-quality earth photos
taken by Gemini astronauts. Pictures, which were taken with hand-held
cameras from 100- to 215-mi altitudes as scientific, meteorological, and
terrain experiments, showed major. natural features and some man-
made ones in 50 countries around the world. (NASA SP-129; NASA Re-
lease 67-153)
* Citizens League Against the Sonic Boom, an organization with 230 mem-
bers in 18 states, had started a campaign to stop the construction of a
US. SST, New York Times reported. Harvard Univ. physicist Dr. Wil-
liam A. Shurcliff , director of the campaign, said in a Cambridge, Mass.,
interview that the League would attack the SST program in Congress.
“The amount of money provided thus far by Congress is less than one-
quarter of what is needed to get a prototype in the air. The government
must put about $1.1 billion together, and to date Congress has only
supplied $200-million or $299-million.
“I think our chances of stopping the program are good.” (NYT,
6/18/67, 60)
June 19: Tiros VZZ, oldest US. meteorological satellite in operation, com-
pleted its fourth year in orbit. Designed with a three- to six-month op-
erational lifetime, satellite had traveled 594,000,000 mi, completed
21,600 earth orbits, and taken over 124,500 photos of 50,000,000,-
000 sq mi of earth and its cloud cover. NASA said Tiros VZZ, which had
tracked the major hurricanes of 1963, 1964, and 1965, was now com-
manded to transmit photos only occasionally. (AP, NYT, 6/18/67)
NASA and USAF were expected to sign an agreement in fall 1967 for a joint
lifting-body vehicle research program, Technology Week reported.
NASA would probably have overall management responsibility of pro-
gram, which would include test flights by USAF’S SV-5P and NASA’s
HGlO lifting-body vehicles. (Tech Wk, 6/19/67,3)
* McDonnell Corp. was proposing an enlarged 9- to 12-man version of the
190