Tag Archives: James Fletcher

Science / Space Race

[April 28, 1971] The Age of the Space Station Has Begun! (Salyut-1 and Soyuz-10)

Leave a comment

A black-and-white photo portrait of Kaye Dee. She is a white woman with long, straight dark hair worn down, looking at the camera with a smile.
by Kaye Dee

Last month, I looked at what NASA’s future plans might be under its new Administrator, Dr. James Fletcher (who was just yesterday formally sworn into office, as seen below), reflecting on the proposals in the Space Task Group report (the so-called Agnew Plan) from 1969. One of the proposals in that report was the development of a “space station module” that would be the basic element of future manned activities in Earth orbit, of further lunar exploration and of future manned expeditions to the planets.

A black and white photo shows the swearing-in of the new NASA Administrator. Dr. James Fletcher, a white man with pale hair and glasses wearing a suit and tie, is standing in a room of the White House. He is raising his right hand to swear his oath of office.  He is standing next to President Nixon, with two other white men looking on in the background.  Fletcher's wife, a dark haired woman in a white overcoat, holds the Bible for him, while a white man with dark hair reads the oath for Fletcher to repeat.
The plan called for a space station module to be initially located in low Earth orbit, permanently occupied by rotating crews of 6–12 occupants. This basic module could eventually be clustered with additional modules to create a much larger orbiting space laboratory occupied by crews of 50-100: a similar concept of connected space station modules could also form a manned base in lunar orbit.

A color painting shows a gray cylindrical space base floating over the earth.  It has red satellite dishes on long metal arms extending from the lower third, while four large cylindrical modules extend perpendicular to the main structure at the top forming an X shape. Two pencil-shaped antennae extend forward from the front end.A 1969 illustration of an orbital space base, based on the the Agnew Plan proposal for a large space station composed of smaller "space station modules".

In the present tight budgetary environment in the United States, President Nixon has nixed the possibility of this ambitious space station. At least the Skylab space workshop, based on utilising left-over Apollo hardware, is going ahead. Skylab is due for launch in 1973.

However, while NASA talks about a space station in its future, the Soviet Union has once again stolen a march on it by placing the world’s first space station, Salyut-1, into orbit just over a week ago!

Continue reading [April 28, 1971] The Age of the Space Station Has Begun! (Salyut-1 and Soyuz-10) →

No comments Leave A Comment
Science / Space Race

[March 28, 1971] The Way Ahead? (NASA's Future Plans and March Mission Round-up)

Leave a comment

A black-and-white photo portrait of Kaye Dee. She is a white woman with long, straight dark hair worn down, looking at the camera with a smile.
by Kaye Dee

Illustration of future space plans in 1970. It shows a space station with a space shuttle attachedAn illustration of the space station and space shuttle proposal outlined in the Agnew Plan. Will we ever see this become reality?

Breaking the Drought
Australian poet Dorothea Mackellar famously described our nation as a land of “droughts and flooding rains”, and her words have rung particularly true these past few months.

Since 1965, the entire eastern part of Australia has been mostly gripped by drought, which has contributed to devastating bushfires, including the catastrophic 1967 Tasmanian fires in which 62 people died in one day and 1,400 homes were lost. Even as the drought began to ease elsewhere, it continued in large parts of Queensland and inland New South Wales, destroying land, stock and livelihoods in the pastoral and agricultural regions that are the mainstay of our national economy. 

Large flock of sheep approaching a nearly-dry waterholeSheep desperate for feed and water during the height of the drought in 1967 gathering at a nearly-dry waterhole

But at last, the drought has truly broken, with an extremely wet Summer across Queensland that has so far included the second largest number of cyclones (hurricanes) ever recorded in our region. In this past month, the deluge has caused massive inundation across the state turning large swathes of the outback into an inland sea – recently dry rivers now flowing sheets of water thirty miles wide!
But for the first time, in addition to using satellites to track the cyclones (thank you TIROS, NIMBUS and ESSA), the Bureau of Meteorology has also used them to track the course of flooding across the remote parts of Australia, enabling outback communities to be given timely warning that floods are on the way.

Satellite image of Cyclone Sophie with outline map of its location over AustraliaCyclone Sophie, one of the record number to cyclones to develop this season, is seen crossing the coast of Western Australia in this satellite image

Although the flooding is presently devastating towns, farms and stations (ranches) across Queensland, New South Wales and South Australia as the waters flow south, we know that it will open the way for a brighter future in the affected areas, and put new vigour into the Australian economy, as the parched land becomes productive again following its drenching.

Aerial view of a flooded town, with the streets covered by water.Aerial view of the flooded town of Narrabri in outback New South Wales

On the space front, this past month has also provided us with a new crop of space news, with new satellites launched, and NASA looking to its future with a new Administrator and a new road-map to potentially guide its future programmes.

Continue reading [March 28, 1971] The Way Ahead? (NASA's Future Plans and March Mission Round-up) →

No comments Leave A Comment