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Aviation History
1969
1969 - 0096.PDF
78 FLIGHT International, 16 January 1969 WORLD E W S Lunar Landing Crew Named The crew for the Apollo 11 Moon- landing mission was named in Washing ton last Friday, January 9. The three astronauts will be Neil A. Armstrong, commander of the Apollo 9 spacecraft; Lt Col Michael Collins, USAF, com mand module pilot; and Col Edwin E. Aldrin, USAF, lunar module pilot. All three are 38 years old. During the flight Armstrong and Aldrin will transfer to the lunar module 'in Moon orbit and land to perform experiments and collect soil samples, leaving Collins to continue orbiting. At the end of their stay on the Moon the two astronauts will launch themselves in the lunar module ascent stage, to rendezvous with the command module. They will climb back into the latter and then abandon the ascent stage before returning to Earth. Armstrong is employed by NASA and as commander of Gemini 8 was the first American civilian to fly in space. He was a USN pilot in 1948-52, flew in Korea, and has flown the X-l and X-15 research aircraft. Collins worked in the experimental flight test department at the USAF Flight Test Centre, Edwards AFB, California. In 1963 he was selected . for astronaut training and flew aboard Gemini 10, launched on July 18, 1966. Aldrin saw action over Korea and was later a flight commander with the 36 Tactical Fighter Wing in Germany. He was pilot of the Gemini 12 flight of November 11, 1966. A widely held belief that the Apollo 8 crew—Borman, Lovell and Anders— would be selected for this flight was scotched when it became known that Borman had been appointed Deputy Director, Flight Crew Operations, at the Manned Spacecraft Centre, Houston. Lovell and Anders have been appointed as back-up astronauts for Apollo 11. The three Apollo 8 astronauts were received by President Johnson on January 9 and invested with NASA's distinguished service medal. Decision Nearing FX and VFX Decisions on the choice of contracts for two important new American mili tary projects, FX and VFX, are ex pected in a few days' time. The USAF fighter known as FX has now been given the military designation F-15, and two companies, North American Rockwell and Fairchild Hiller, are believed to be more strongly favoured than their other competitors, McDonnell Douglas and General Dynamics. The successful com pany will go forward to contract defini tion studies and the USAF hopes to have a design and engineering effort under way by this time next year. The other project, the VFX, has been re-designated F-14, and is the USN counterpart of FX. The five companies Mobnrakers Apollo 11 astronauts: left to right, Neil A. Armstrong, Michael Collins and Edwin E. Aldrin (see "Lunar Landing Crew Named") originally participating have now been reduced to two — McDonnell Douglas and Grumman — of which, predictably, Grumman is favoured. The winner is expected to be announced this month. It appears that the Dassault/LTV agree ment, signed last September (Flight, September 26) and designed to streng then LTV's hand for a variable-geo metry design, has failed to further that company's interest; the final solution is expected to toe a fixed-wing layout. Dr Hooker's US Honour Dr S. G. Hooker, technical director (aero) of Rolls-Royce Bristol Engine Division, and Mr Perry W. Pratt, vice- president and chief scientist, United Aircraft Corporation, have been selected to share the Goddard Award of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. They will receive it at the AJAA honours banquet in New York next Tuesday, January 21. The award, named after the American rocket pioneer Robert H. Goddard and sponsored by UAC, is presented annually to "a person that has made a brilliant discovery or a series of outstanding con tributions over a period of time, in the engineering science of propulsion or energy conversion." Dr Hooker and Mr Pratt have been jointly honoured "for their independent and sustained major contributions, each in his own country, to the development of the aircraft gas turbine; and for their imagination, competence and persistence which have made these engines outstand ing in human transportation." France's Israeli Embargo General de Gaulle's decision to embargo the export of military equip ment to Israel following the airborne commando attack on Beirut Airport (Flight, January 2) has led to a complex situation between the two countries, with Israel deciding to ask for a refund of money paid to France for Mirages and spares. For her part, France has said it will not refund this money. Delivery of 50 Mirages was stopped after the June 1967 war and Israel has subsequently negotiated with the United States for the purchase of 50 Phantoms. It has been suggested that France's embargo on spares to Israel might be circumvented by the recent Dassault decision to acquire a holding in SABCA. the Belgian subsidiary of Fokker, follow ing the Dassault/Fokker agreement (Flight. January 9, page 65). This could enable the export of Dassault equipment from Belgium. BNEC's US Sales Mission Further work from Lockheed Aircraft Corporation for Scottish Aviation and a Lockheed contract for Cossor Elec tronics were among the main results from the second Aerospace Sales Development Mission, organised by the British National Export Council. The 16-man team representing 13 British air craft equipment manufacturers and led by Mr John H. Lobley, export manager of Scottish Aviation, spent 14 days in Texas and on the US west coast. The mission followed one in March 1968 RAF Buccaneer, the first of lb ordered last autumn, seen after roll-out from the assembly hangar at HSA Brough, Yorks. The Royal Air Force will receive both new and ex-Royal Navy aircraft during the next few years and will ultimately absorb all the ex-RN Buccaneers
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