Word: nasa
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...found the Soviets still obsessed by secrecy, but they did divulge more information than on any previous launching. In Moscow, TIME'S Gordon Joseloff assessed detente propaganda surrounding the mission, and provided biographies of the Soyuz cosmonauts. Atlanta Correspondent David Lee reported on the scene and personalities at NASA's mission control center in Houston. Aerospace Correspondent Jerry Hannifin furnished the "specs" of U.S. and Soviet space hardware. Reporter-Researcher Janice Castro verified details ranging from what the American astronauts will have for dessert (rehydratable peach ambrosia) to the mechanics of the "androgynous" docking module that will link...
...sides, it is no small technical and managerial feat to link up two spacecraft that are of different design and have been launched from pads 6,500 miles apart, and briefly bridge-for four days of pursuit, docking and undocking-two radically different technologies, languages and social systems. Says NASA's deputy administrator George Low: "We are opening the door for many more cooperative efforts in the future...
Near Sandusky, Ohio, NASA'S Lewis Research Center is putting finishing touches on a lOO-ft.-tall experimental steel windmill with two 62-ft.-long aluminum blades. When these blades begin turning in the summer breezes off Lake Erie later this month, they should produce as much as 100 kilowatts of electricity, enough to meet the needs of 30 one-family homes. Other projects range from a large eggbeater-shaped rotor being tested by New Mexico's Sandia Laboratories to small sail-driven devices created by such ecology-minded outfits as R. Buckminster Fuller's Windworks...
Advances in metallurgy and aerodynamics make such disasters much less likely today. NASA's Ohio windmill, for instance, borrows directly from helicopter design. Like a chopper's rotor, the 2,000-lb. blades can be "feathered" (or turned on their axes), by manual control; they will continue to whirl at a steady 40 r.p.m. even as the wind varies. In future NASA models, chip-sized computers developed for spacecraft will monitor the performance of the windmills and automatically command them to adjust to wind changes...
Excess Power. Unlike NASA'S traditional configuration, Sandia's upright eggbeater does not have to turn to face the breeze; its symmetrical shape offers the same surface to winds from any direction. Cribbing from jet aircraft, Polytechnic Institute of New York engineers are experimenting with a delta-shaped airfoil used in conjunction with standard windmill rotors. Pointing into the wind, the triangular whig amplifies the wind's power at least fivefold; the wind is focused into whirling streams that strike the rotors. Other teams at General Electric and at Connecticut's Kaman Corp., a helicopter manufacturer...