A 179-foot mobile service tower at Cape Canaveral AFS, Fla., came crashing down on Aug. 6, helped along by explosives. The deliberate blast reduced to rubble a former key component of the country’s space programs. The structure was used to launch 51 Atlas/Agena space vehicles in the 1960s and 1970s—including the five lunar orbiter missions for NASA. The last launch was in 1978.
A new report from the Government Accountability Office calls for the Pentagon’s Chief Technology Officer to have budget certification authority over the military services’ research and development accounts—a move the services say would add a burdensome and unnecessary layer of bureaucracy.
