Categories
Astronomy Science & Technology

The Thousand Foot Radio Telescope

AreciboAfter months of lobbying the U.S. Air Force and the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) for help in funding a large-aperture radar/radio telescope dish for studies of Earth’s ionosphere and the space that lies beyond, Cornell University’s Bill Gordon publishes a report in the journal of the School of Electrical Engineering. Gordon’s report, setting out the basic parameters for the project, includes a reflector dish diameter of one thousand feet – a daunting prospect from a structural engineering perspective. Sites in Texas and upstate New York are considered before a natural limestone “bowl” south of the city of Arecibo, Puerto Rico emerges as a promising candidate site.

Hear about it on the Sci-Fi 5 podcast

Categories
Music

The Move: Looking On

Escape From The Planet Of The ApesFly Records releases the third album by Birmingham rock group The Move, Looking On. The group sports an elegant, elaborate new sound on this outing, having recruited budding songwriter/performer Jeff Lynne from another local band, the Idle Race. Lynne’s interaction with Move frontman Roy Wood will lead to the formation, a year later, of the Electric Light Orchestra.

More about The Move in Music Reviews

Categories
Mariner Uncrewed Spaceflight

Mariner 9 at Phobos

PhobosNASA’s Mariner 9 Mars orbiter becomes the first spacecraft to provide relatively close-up images of Mars’ innermost, larger moon, Phobos, from over 3,500 miles away. The irregular shape and heavily cratered surface of Phobos point up its likely origins as an asteroid that long ago came close enough to Mars to be captured into an orbit. Phobos (and its still unseen-at-close-range smaller sibling, Deimos) will be imaged at much closer range later in the 1970s by the Viking orbiters.

Categories
Music

Electric Light Orchestra

ELOElectric Light Orchestra‘s self-titled debut album is released in the UK, though it proves to be the last released collaboration between founders (and former Move members) Roy Wood and Jeff Lynne; Wood leaves the band after an unpromising live debut. The album is released in the US in March 1972, where a phone call to clarify the album’s title results in a misunderstood written note that leads to the American release going out under the unintentional title No Answer.

More about ELO in Music Reviews

Categories
Television

Superboy: Test Of Time

SuperboyThe 61st episode of the syndicated series Superboy, starring Gerard Christopher and Stacy Haiduk, airs. This episode is written by David Gerrold (Star Trek).

This series is not yet chronicled in the LogBook. You could help change that.

Categories
Television

Super Force: The Gauntlet

Super ForceThe eighth episode of the science fiction crime drama Super Force is broadcast in syndication in North America, starring Ken Olandt, Larry B. Scott, and Patrick Macnee (The Avengers).

This series is not yet chronicled in the LogBook. You could help change that.