Astronautics and Aeronautics, 1967 - NASA's History Office

July 9 ASTRONAUTICS AND AERONAUTICS, 1967
program, assuming the sonic boom is intolerable over populated areas.
. . . The only thing that is involved here is whether we sell more aircraft,
not whether the program is a success. . . .” Even if SST were limited to
subsonic flight over inhabited areas at least 300 aircraft could be sold
initially, he said, and market studies indicated “that there is a possibility
of going up to 1,200 aircraft by 1990.” (Transcript, 41, 294, 942)
0 NATO had begun to modernize its communications network by using com-
sats, Clyde H. Farnsworth reported in the New York Times. Initial
$900,000 test phase of project had been inaugurated by Supreme Allied
Commander in Europe Gen. Lyman L. Lemnitzer in a transmission from
his headquarters in Casteau, Belgium, to Naples, Italy, via one of DOD’S
15 Initial Defense Communications Satellite Project (IDCSP) satellites.
US., which had proposed the NATO project, was permitting NATO to use
the IDCSP satellites temporarily. Following approval of the second phase
of the project, $45 million-of which US. would pay 25%-would be
spent to link 12 alliance countries via two 100-lb cornsats owned by
NATO and launched by USAF into synchronous orbits over the Atlantic.
Two ground stations would be in US. and one in each NATO country
except France (who had not been invited to participate in the project),
Luxembourg, and Iceland. (Farnsworth, NYT, 7/9/67, 17)
July 10: Chicago Daily News urged House/Senate Conference Committee on
NASA FY 1968 authorization bill to accept Rep. Donald Rumsfeld’s (R-
Ill.) proposals to establish an independent safety review board and to
require NASA to keep Congress fully informed on its operations [see
June 281: “There is ampIe justification for these requirements.
“Part of it can be found in the scandalous record of fumbling, bum-
bling and pure carelessness unearthed in the investigation of the blazing
death of three [Apollo] astronauts . . . [and part from] the perils of
an alliance between big government and the big industries that serve
it and profit by its contracts.