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Show Committee Action Gives Solid Fuels 'Chance King Says "Solid fuels for the first time now have a very real opportunity to show they can push the American Amer-ican space effort faster than liquid fuels," Rep. David S. King said Thursday. This opportunity is spelled out in the 158.3 million-dollar authorization au-thorization which the House subcommittee sub-committee on advanced research and technology approved Thursday Thurs-day for the solid-fuel program in fiscal 1963. The bill gives the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Admin-istration (NASA) a clear mandate man-date to integrate the super solid-fuel solid-fuel boosters into plans for manned space missions, just as quickly as the Air Force and the contractors can prove out the demonstration models of these boosters. "This is the key feature of the bill," Mr. King said. "If the Air Force and the solid-fuel indus-tires indus-tires can produce reliable solid-fuel solid-fuel boosters that develop more thrust than any liquid-fuel boosters boost-ers available at that same time, then NASA is going to have to use the solid-fuel boosters. "The experts generally believe the USA has a commanding lead in solid-fuel technology, and this may be our big chance to leapfrog leap-frog the Russians in the space race," Congressman King said. The subcommittee has so drafted draft-ed its report on the authorization authoriza-tion that it instructs NASA to ask for funds for production models of the solid-fuel boosters boost-ers immediately upon the Air Force's proving out the demonstration demons-tration models. The arrangement gives the Air Force the funds to sharply expand ex-pand research and development on three boosters: the 120-inch, to yield an anticipated thrust of more than one-million pounds, for which the committee earmarked ear-marked 73.3 million; and the 156-inch and 240-inch boosters, with expected thrusts of 2.8- and 5-million pounds respectively, each programmed for 20 million. |