henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) (12/12/90)
Editorial calling for solid funding for the X-30, observing that every year the Senate says it's a valuable program and then zeros the budget for it (and then the House puts it back). Making progress requires reliable funding. Germany picks astronaut teams to train for Spacelab D-2 and the German Mir flight. [They didn't give names for some reason.] Image of a gravitationally-lensed quasar from HST's Faint Object Camera, substantially more detailed than the best images from the ground. NASA appoints five-man team to assess recent orbiter turnaround problems and consider whether changes are needed. The team is headed by "former astronaut" John Young. ["Former"? I thought he was still nominally an active astronaut.] Amusingly, later in the same issue, Lenoir is quoted as saying that the team has already finished the bulk of its assessment. Informally, its conclusions are that recent processing problems have no common pattern but that it is hard to say whether the trouble rate is abnormal. NASA would like airline data on industrial accidents for comparison, but the airlines consider this proprietary. General recommendations include a specific leader being responsible for each task, engineers spending more time "in the shop" with the technicians, more specialization among at least a core of technicians (there has been a tendency to eliminate specialization to cut costs), less wildly-optimistic scheduling, and discipline for the more serious mistakes extending to the supervisors as well as the technicians. Unofficial sources inside the space station work at JSC say: "Our worst fear was approval of full funding. It would have made it difficult for us to achieve the major redesign needed." There is widespread agreement that a major shakeup was needed, but the budget cuts make a splendid justification for it. Speaking of which... Redesign work has been underway quietly for some time, but now it is out in the open. The long truss is probably not long for this world, in particular: a Goddard project to attach science payloads to it has been cancelled, and the request for bids for the assembly training facility in Houston has been withdrawn. The leading idea right now is simply to retain the central cluster of modules, but kill the truss. Among other advantages, the resulting station should have gravity-gradient stability, eliminating attitude-control thruster firings that eat fuel and bother the microgravity people. NASA HQ has issued an 11-point directive to centers, contractors, and the international partners on how the redesign will be done. Assembly will assume at most four shuttle missions per year. Construction will be done in phases. Budget is capped at $2.6G/yr, down from $4G/yr. The initial crew will be four, not eight. Life sciences and materials work explicitly have highest priority. An attempt will be made to stick to March 1995 as the date for start of assembly. [A mere 13 years after Reagan told NASA to build a space station. I suppose that's not bad... considering.] The redesign will try to avoid impact on the international partners, and will involve them early. [Translation: if NASA botched this redesign process like the last one, they wouldn't have any partners left.] (There is, however, a possibility that the international modules may fly a year later than the current date, which will bother ESA's budget in particular.) There will be no revision of the management structure, despite a lot of feeling that it could use one. Development not directly supporting the "baseline configuration" will be dropped or deferred. Lenoir says no station hardware is immune to being eliminated or deferred, but there is unlikely to be any move towards free-flying experiment platforms (on the excuse that the station will be only man-tended for the first 3-4 years anyway) or expendable launchers (in particular, NASA does not want to wait for development of a new booster). There will be no specific target date for completion, in hopes that station expansion will be seen as an ongoing process. One problem yet to be resolved is the clash between "no development not supporting baseline configuration" and the interest in using Fred as a Moon/Mars staging point. Interesting graph of projected space shuttle launch schedules vs. actual, with every projection assuming that the launch rate is about to rise to a high sustained level. More realism called for. Congress largely kills SDI's nuclear X-ray laser, cutting it back to a modest long-term research project. The nuclear-directed-energy part of SDI's budget was cut drastically, and LLNL says that the project's current near-term-hardware orientation cannot be maintained. The project has hit two fundamental technical problems -- conversion efficiency and focusing -- and one massive political problem, the aversion to exploding large numbers of nuclear weapons as part of a defensive system. Atlantis set to launch Nov 15. New shuttle manifest being composed for the next five years (although probably with specific dates only for the next three), including seven launches in 1991. It is said that the proposal for a Mriya-launched pure-rocket Hotol has reawakened British government interest in funding the project to some extent. [Not entirely surprising. The British government has been obsessed with joint projects for a long time, to the extent where it often seems to consider British-only projects inherently worthless.] Story on a new spacesuit design originated as a private project by Boeing Huntsville engineer Brand Griffin and space artist Paul Hudson. Volunteer efforts from colleagues in NASA and industry have supported construction of an engineering mockup, with Harrison Schmitt assisting in evaluation. The major novelty is that the torso, helmet, and backpack are one rigid piece. The helmet uses several flat panes rather than a bubble shape, which gives a roomier helmet, a better view, and the opportunity to mount data displays on the framing bars. That last is of particular note, because current cuff-mounted checklists are widely considered inadequate, and high-tech solutions like voice control have various problems. Putting the displays inside the helmet would reduce problems with glare and avoid lunar dust, and would eliminate most of the chest-mounted clutter of the current suits, which gets in the way of the arms. Flat windows also permit thicker panes for better radiation shielding, and make louvered sunshades practical. A final flourish is that the rigid suit body could be attached to vehicles to provide a sort of ready-made cockpit. [One major loss is that the proposal does not envision higher internal pressure to reduce prebreathing time.] The four "prime" contractors for Hermes agree to form a single management company to run the show, once final funding approval is given. Aerospatiale study confirms that Hermes would be feasible as a space-station lifeboat. ESA is building two for its own use, and the station would need two more for lifeboat use at a total cost of about $800M. They would go up on Ariane 5s and would share Hermes infrastructure for operations. The payload area would be fitted with six rear-facing seats in addition to the two for the pilots. The major design change needed would be better protection against micrometeorites and space debris for the long stay in orbit. Soviet-Canadian joint venture plans to build and launch three comsats for services to international businesses. NPO PM (Krasnoyarsk) will build the spacecraft bus, which will then go to Spar Aerospace for payload installation, returning to the USSR for launch. The birds will go into Soviet comsat slots in Clarke orbit, and will be operated by Soviet facilities and marketed by Canadian Satellite Communications. Various kinds of approval are still needed, not to mention significant funding. Japan's Space Communications Corp signs with Arianespace to launch Superbird E, a replacement for Superbird B that went into the Atlantic when Ariane failed in February. (The replacement for BS-2X, the other casualty, will go up on an Atlas.) -- "The average pointer, statistically, |Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology points somewhere in X." -Hugh Redelmeier| henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry
lvron@saturn.lerc.nasa.gov (Ronald E. Graham) (12/12/90)
In article <1990Dec12.044442.2101@zoo.toronto.edu>, henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes... Regarding Fred... >Speaking of which... Redesign work has been underway quietly for some time, >but now it is out in the open. The long truss is probably not long for this >world, in particular: a Goddard project to attach science payloads to it >has been cancelled, and the request for bids for the assembly training >facility in Houston has been withdrawn. The leading idea right now is >simply to retain the central cluster of modules, but kill the truss. >Among other advantages, the resulting station should have gravity-gradient >stability, eliminating attitude-control thruster firings that eat fuel and >bother the microgravity people. Gravity-gradient stability may not necessarily mean that all attitude control firings are eliminated (although I'm not sure whether that's what the article intended to say). Although a body will tend to stay in a gravity-gradient stable position once that position is reached, aero forces could perturb the body. If Fred retains solar arrays, those guys will have to be pointed, and that would cause your aero to vary during the orbit. That being the case, you'd need your control-moment gyros to trim Fred, and you may need a firing from time to time to "dump" the gyros. The article didn't say anything about Fred's photovoltaic arrays, but we have been hearing that *that* part of the design will most likely not be changed much - only where they get positioned would get changed, and how many there would be, since "Assembly Complete" is now a wild dream. Anyway, under those conditions, although you could reduce your firings, you can't get rid of 'em altogether. Looks like the reaction control system would certainly be sized down, at least. RG
jsalter@slo.awdpa.ibm.com (12/13/90)
In article <1990Dec12.044442.2101@zoo.toronto.edu> henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes: >Aerospatiale study confirms that Hermes would be feasible as a space-station >lifeboat. ESA is building two for its own use, and the station would need >two more for lifeboat use at a total cost of about $800M. They would go up >on Ariane 5s and would share Hermes infrastructure for operations. The >payload area would be fitted with six rear-facing seats in addition to >the two for the pilots. The major design change needed would be better >protection against micrometeorites and space debris for the long stay >in orbit. Would it be possible to work something like LLNL's kevlar coccoon around the "spaceboat" while it's up that would rip off, or could be blown away, when the spaceboat is used? This would eliminate need to redesign Hermes and would still provide the protection needed with little additional weight. In fact, Hermes could bring the "space-shroud" up with it. >"The average pointer, statistically, |Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology >points somewhere in X." -Hugh Redelmeier| henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry jim/jsalter IBM AWD, Palo Alto T465/(415)855-4427 VNET: JSALTER at AUSVMQ Internet: jsalter@slo.awdpa.ibm.com UUCP: ..!uunet!ibmsupt!jsalter PS/2 it, or DIE! :-) The ramblings above have nothing to do with Big Blue.
gregc@cimage.com (Greg Cronau) (12/14/90)
In article <1990Dec12.044442.2101@zoo.toronto.edu> henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes: >NASA appoints five-man team to assess recent orbiter turnaround problems >and consider whether changes are needed. The team is headed by "former >astronaut" John Young. ["Former"? I thought he was still nominally an >active astronaut.] While John Young still has the official title of "Astronaut", I believe he has removed himself from the active flight rotation schedule. I have not heard why he made this decision. gregc@cimage.com
henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) (12/16/90)
In article <1990Dec14.051844.3830@cimage.com> gregc@dgsi.UUCP (Greg Cronau/10000) writes: >While John Young still has the official title of "Astronaut", I believe he has >removed himself from the active flight rotation schedule. I have not heard >why he made this decision. I'd guess that he has little or no chance of flying again. He lost his position as chief astronaut after some injudicious remarks in print about lack of astronaut involvement in decision making. Who gets to fly is a matter of office politics first and technical qualifications second. (The reason why his remarks were injudicious, by the way, is that the lack of astronaut involvement was considered mostly his fault. Astronauts have busy schedules, and anything that the boss doesn't consider important tends to fall off the bottom of the list. Young's predecessor insisted on, and got, astronaut involvement; Young didn't.) -- "The average pointer, statistically, |Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology points somewhere in X." -Hugh Redelmeier| henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry