henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) (10/29/90)
[Yes, you're right, this is out of order. Somehow I managed to skip this one, so I'm popping back to do a quick pass over it. That's the bad news. The good news is that Nick Watkins has very kindly sent me xeroxes of the space-related parts of the Aug 13 issue I missed, so it will be next. After that I can get back to trying to catch up...] Frederic d'Allest leaves Arianespace to become head of Matra, as planned before the Ariane failure early this year. Charles Bigot succeeds him. Last month's successful Ariane launch was the first to use a new ESA telemetry station on Ascension Island, operated by a British company, Cable and Wireless. Previous flights rented time on a NASA station there. Arabsat asks for firm final bids from comsat builders for a second generation of Arabsat regional comsats. NASP contractors to meet and decide on a single configuration this month. Probable dimensions are 150-200ft long with a 50ft wingspan and a weight of 250-300klbs. It will have some rocket propulsion to supplement its primary air-breathing engines. The five major contractors swapped data for the first time in a June meeting, and it became clear that they had very different ideas. McDD came up with a flat rectangular design, easy to analyze but rather draggy, with a resultant need for rocket assist in some regions of the flight envelope. Rockwell's design was more conical, efficient but with more complex flow patterns. GD vacillated and ended up with a compromise between the two. Propulsion systems also differed; P&W stressed inlet design while Rocketdyne emphasized efficient fuel burn. All parties agree that materials technology is coming along nicely. Sandia offers its SWERVE, a Mach 14 winged vehicle developed and tested under a tactical-nuclear-weapon research project, as a testbed for hypersonic work. SWERVE is an unpowered "slender, winged vehicle" 8-9ft long, launched by a rocket booster. It has already been used to demonstrate sending and receiving radio signals through the plasma sheath that interferes with communication at hypersonic speeds, a serious issue for NASP. Improved versions would be desirable for future work; in particular, the current SWERVE design is not recoverable. Sandia says that the SWERVE design does not lend itself to either a major on-board propulsion system or a manned variant. Aerospatiale will propose Hermes as the space-station lifeboat, citing the fact that ESA is already paying for its development and only minor changes would be needed. The Inmarsat 3s will be built by GE Astro Space. New Mir crew launched Aug 1, planned mission length 132 days with an emphasis on materials work in the Kristall module. Some detail on LANL's Alexis satellite, aimed at qualifying a small satellite design for sensor development. The first Alexis will fly Aug 1991 on Pegasus. The payload will be an X-ray telescope with no military or arms-control applications, meant primarily as a useful test payload. If the launch date is met, Alexis will have gone from conception to launch in four years. -- "I don't *want* to be normal!" | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology "Not to worry." | henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry