would nearly double the original AF estimate of $3.4 billion for the C-5A program. However, without the repairs, the C-5A fleet would have to be grounded beginning in 1979 when the flying-time safety limit had been reached. Because of the defects, service life had recently been re-estimated at 8750 hr and payload limit at 78 900 kg. (NYT, 15 Dec 75, 1; WSJ, 24 Dec 75, 3) • Citing "new scientific evidence" supporting ozone-depletion theories, the Natural Resources Defense Council and 10 states had petitioned the Consumer Product Safety Commission to ban the use of fluorocarbon propellants in aerosol products. The commission had denied a previous petition from the resources council; the Food and Drug Administration-which had responsibility for regulating all food, drug, and cosmetic aerosol products-had also rejected a petition from the group. Copetitioners with the resources council were the Environmental Defense Fund and the Minnesota Public Interest Research Group; the 10 states were Colo., Fla., Mass., Mich., Minn., N.H., N.Y., Ore., Vt., and Wis. Both N.Y. and Ore. had already passed laws banning the use of fluorocarbon sprays, and more than a dozen other states were said to be considering this action. The Aerosol Education Bureau-sponsored by industry to oppose a ban of fluorocarbon-containing products-issued a statement that restrictions would be "inappropriate." (WSJ, 24 Dec 75, 5) 26 December: The Christmas Day inaugural flight announced for the U.S.S.R.'s supersonic jetliner had been delayed a day by weather conditions variously reported as runway ice or fog at the destination, but its first flight carrying freight and mail from Moscow to Alma Ata-capital of the central Asian republic of Kazakhstan-took only 4 hr for the 8000-km round trip. The Tupolev-144 airliner, rival of the British-French Concorde, could fly at an altitude of up to 46.3 km, higher than conventional airliners. Although the flights had been billed as the first commercial service by a supersonic jet, and had been scheduled to get ahead of the Concorde passenger service set for January between Paris and Rio and between London and Bahrain, Tu-144 would not carry passengers until the second half of 1976 at the earliest, and then on internal routes, according to Deputy Aviation Minister Nikolai Boikov. (NYT, 27 Dec 75, 2; Miami Herald, 27 Dec 75, 20A) 27 December: In a Miami Herald article presenting "the case for the Concorde," S. Fred Singer-who had served in 1970-71 as chairman. of an interagency task group to evaluate environmental effects of supersonic transports-pointed out that the effect of Concorde pollution would be completely swamped by other factors that had been shown to decrease atmospheric ozone-nitrogen fertilizers, carbon tetrachloride, and fluorocarbons. Banning the Concorde from the U.S. would not prevent it from depositing pollutants elsewhere; in any case, military planes flying in the stratosphere and subsonic planes pushing to higher altitudes to avoid traffic would produce the same pollution effect as the Concordes. Singer, now a professor of environmental sciences at U. of Va., called for more study of the effects of Freon and fertilizers and for modification of the engines of future SSTs. (Miami Herald, 27 Dec 75, 7A) 28 December: Lutz T. Kayser, an aerospace engineer from Stuttgart, Germany, had established a business called Orbital Transport and Raketen A.G. to build and launch rockets on a commercial basis, starting in 1980: if successful, it would be the world's first private space-launch venture. NASA had been charging at least $25 million to put a $12-million satellite into space; Kayser had designed a “space truck" to put satellites in orbit for half the NASA price. His rockets could not be used for military purposes, he said, as he had no plans to sell equipment, but would do the launches himself and sell only booster services. As the launches could not take place in crowded West Germany, they would have to be done from either a ship at sea or from a base in some sparsely populated country. After ground tests of Kayser's rocket engines last summer, German scientists had been convinced that his spacecraft would fly. Kayser said that if the Germans would not support him, he would seek backers elsewhere, in South America or Asia. He had hoped more than half the backing would come from private investors, and the rest from banks. The West German government had spent about $2 billion to encourage German and European space projects that could offer an alternative to the NASA monopoly, but such projects had not succeeded. The first "space truck"-now under construction for suborbital test next year-would be 39.62 m high and consist of inexpensive conventionally produced materials. To make mass production possible, all stages would use identical engines; the stages would be placed in concentric rings that would drop off as the craft climbed. (NYT, 28 Dec 75, 18) 30 December: Pulsars had been discovered to be not only superdense but also superfluid, Columbia University physicists reported in Astrophysical Journal. Pulsars, collapsed remnants of exploded stars formed almost entirely of neutrons, had been shown to be so dense that a spoonful would weigh millions of metric tons. Theorists had suspected that such objects, even with a thin rigid crust of iron, would be superfluid a state produced experimentally on earth in small helium specimens cooled almost to absolute zero, where both friction and viscosity disappear. Material inside such an object, stirred into motion, would swirl indefinitely. The Columbia Univ. experimenters had attempted to measure the surface temperature of a young pulsar, such as the one in the Crab Nebula. If the temperature were less than 8.8 million°C, the object would probably be superfluid; a fast-spinning neutron star would cool rapidly because of its reduced heat capacity. Temperatures of such objects could be detected by x-ray wavelengths, but the x-rays produced could not penetrate earth's atmosphere. Space observation was necessary, and rockets launched by NASA from Hawaii and N. Mex. tested the Crab nebula pulsar, using the moon as a curtain. As the moon passed across the whole nebula several times, cutting off its various x-ray emissions, the physicists had been able to identify the x-rays indicating temperature. Since the Crab nebula pulsar's temperature was shown to be less than 5 million °C, the physicists concluded that the pulsar must be superfluid. (NYT, 30 Dec 75, 40) Predictions of a trend toward harsher winters for North America had been put in question by satellite monitoring of snowcover over the northern hemisphere during the past 9 yr, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. NOAA's National Environmental Satellite Service had published a document, "Monthly Winter Snowline Variation in the Northern Hemisphere from Satellite Records, 1966-1975," containing the most complete record available of hemisphere snowcover. Analysis of the charts had revealed no significant change in North American snowcover during the entire period. Predictions of harsher weather had raised the possibility of southward movement of the polar ice cap, which could be caused by a drop of only a few degrees in average winter temperature. The document concluded that "Lack of systematic increase in . . . snow cover tends to contradict the evidence. . . that the current climate is changing adversely." (NOAA Release 75-217) • President Ford had signed legislation establishing a 17-member U.S. Metric Board to plan for voluntary conversion of the nation to the metric system. Dr. Ernest Ambler, acting head of the National Bureau of Standards, said the signing of the bill would encourage U.S. industry and commerce to export products made to metric dimensions, which "should stimulate additional international trade." (SBD, 30 Dec 75, 299) During December: Goddard Space Flight Center and the Fla. Dept. of Natural Resources had approved the first long-range, space-assisted program to develop an "early warning system" for the onset of red tide, an ocean-borne organism that had left tons of dead fish rotting on beaches around the world. Dr. Warren A. Hovis of GSFC had designed an ocean-color scanner capable of detecting subtle variations in the color of coastal waters that might indicate changes in concentration and species of marine phytoplankton, especially the red-tide dinoflagellate Gymnodinium breve. Red tide had been a major problem because of oxygen depletion in ocean water from fish decomposition, and eye and respiratory infections caused by toxic particles produced in the organism. Shellfish beds affected had been closed for months by authorities. An outbreak of red tide in 1971 had cost the state of Fla. more than $20 million in lost tourist business. The ocean scanner, developed for use in the Nimbus-G pollution-sensing spacecraft scheduled for launch in 1978, could be used in photographic overflights by aircraft and Landsat spacecraft, in connection with on-site sampling of ocean waters by research ships, to detect the organism in time to take countermeasures and warn the public about affected areas. (Spaceflight, Vol 17 No. 12, Dec 75, 425) The boards of directors of the All-Women Transcontinental Air Race and the Ninety-Nines, Inc., had decided to terminate the Powder Puff Derby-world's largest and longest speed race for light aircraft-after the 1976 bicentennial race, because of the nation's current financial and energy problems, the National Aeronautic Association announced. Sponsored by NAA since its beginning in 1947, the derby had a safety record unparalleled in air race history: no fatalities. The NAA newsletter noted that the derby had inspired countless women to fly, and that recent races had more than 100 aircraft competing. The final derby had been scheduled for 12-19 July 1976 from Sacramento, Calif., to Wilmington, Del. (NAA News, Dec 75) Space scientists and astronomers had been wrestling with a "cultural crisis" in putting names to features of distant worlds that had never been clearly seen before, as closeup views of several planets became available and more were on the way. Working through the Interna tional Astronomical Union, the scientists had been forced to look beyond the names of scientists and explorers that had been used almost exclusively for objects on the moon and on Mars. A meeting on the problem in Moscow in July 1974 had agreed that objects on Venus would be called after women famous in mythology and history. New maps of the recently photographed surface of Mercury would bear the names of contributors to the arts and other humanities; the scientists had sought advice from scholars in the humanities to get the widest possible representation from past and present cultures. The Moscow meeting on new approaches to names for planetary features had been preceded by intense work on naming newly discovered configurations on the moon and on Mars. A complete scheme of names for more than 500 large formations on the far side of the moon-visible only to spacecraft because one side of the moon had always been turned toward earth-had been approved in 1970. Soviet scientists had rejected suggestions of names from the humanities for features on the moon and on Mars; they had urged a fresh start on Mercury, a new planet, with formations named not only for authors, as the Americans had originally suggested, but also for persons in other branches of the humanities. (NYT, 25 Dec 75, C10) • Space communities that could supply enough energy to the earth to end its energy crisis permanently had been described in an article by Dr. Gerard K. O'Neill in Aerospace magazine. Recalling the conclusions of Princeton Univ. conferences on space colonization in 1974 and 1975, and his own testimony before the Subcommittee on Space Sciences and Applications of the House Committee on Science and Technology 23 July 1975, Dr. O'Neill said that within 13 yrs after beginning construction in space, the amount of usable electricity delivered to the point where power would enter the distribution system would exceed the peak capacity of the Alaska pipeline. An investment of about $96 billion over a 6-yr period would serve to establish the beachhead colony, and even with program costs of up to $300 billion the payback after 9 yr would exceed the total investment and interest, he estimated. (Aerospace, Dec 75, 3) • Establishment of manufacturing facilities in space might be feasible within this century, Dr. Gerard K. O'Neill wrote in the December issue of Science magazine. Construction of satellite solar power stations (SSPSS) from lunar materials, for example, could be shown more economical than building such stations on earth and lifting them into orbit. The space manufacturing facility (SMF) that had been envisioned by Dr. O'Neill and others would be a self-sustaining habitat for a large number of people whose energy needs could be met by solar power used directly for agriculture, as process heat for industry when concentrated by mirrors, or indirectly as electricity. Dr. O'Neill had assembled tables and figures from the literature to accompany his argument for the SSPS as a means of meeting increased demands for electricity on earth in a time of shortage of fuels and concern about use of nuclear energy. (Science, Vol 190, 4218) Appendix A SATELLITES, SPACE PROBES, AND World space activity increased in 1975. Total launches, 125, increased from 106 in 1974. Of this total, the U.S. had 28, described in the introduction to Appendix B. The U.S.S.R. had 89 launches with 112 payloads, 85 of these in the Cosmos series; Cosmos payloads included such specialized spacecraft as Cosmos 775, part of the Statsionar series for TV relay, and the Cosmos 782 biosat carrying 4 U.S. experiments. The Soviets also launched 10 spacecraft in the Molniya comsat series, 4 in the Meteor series, 2 Intercosmos spacecraft carrying experiments from other countries, the 2 Venus landers (Venera 9 and 10), the magnetospheric investigator Prognoz 4, a color-TV comsat called Raduga (Rainbow), and 5 Soyuz spacecraft including the April 5 "anomaly" and the Soyuz 19 that participated in ASTP. The U.S.S.R. also launched Aryabhata for India in April, and Sret 2 for France as a piggyback payload with Molniya 1-30 in June. The number and variety of launches by other countries also increased in 1975. In Feb., France launched Starlette, a passive geodetic satellite, first for the Diamant booster developed by CNES; in May it launched Castor and Pollux, first 2 satellites launched by France on a single booster; in Sept., the industry-managed satellite Aura went into orbit on the last Diamant booster. The U.S.S.R. had launched France's Sret 2 in June, and a French-West German consortium sponsored the launch of Symphonie 2 by NASA in Aug. In Feb., Japan launched Taiyo to observe solar radiation and thermospheric structure; in Sept., it launched Kiku to measure temperatures in space. The People's Republic of China in July launched its third satellite, first in 4 yr (previous launches were in 1970 and 1971); in Nov., it launched a fourth satellite and shortly announced its successful recovery, becoming the third country to retrieve a payload from orbit. In Dec., the PRC launched its fifth satellite, third for 1975, in what observers considered a step toward its first manned space flight. The following table includes all payloads that have (a) orbited; (b) as probes, ascended to at least the 6500-km altitude that traditionally had distinguished probes from sounding rockets; or (c) conveyed one or more human beings into space, whether or not orbit was attained. The 1975 table lists for the first time in this series the identities of Soviet launch vehicles; for details on these vehicles, see Soviet Space Programs 1971–75, U.S. Senate Comm. on Aeronautical & Sp. Sciences, 30 Aug. 76, Vol. I, 39–61. For details on U.S. launch vehicles, see Aeronautics & Space Report of the President, 1975 Activities, GPO stock number 033-000-00649-1, App. D, 110. Sources of these data include the United Nations Public Registry of Space Flights; the Satellite Situation Report compiled by Goddard Space Flight Center's Operations Control Center; press releases of NASA, De |