henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) (10/19/90)
White House approves United Technologies' request to bid on construction and management of the Cape York spaceport, contingent on "fair pricing" [meaning "not too much competition for the launcher cartel, please"]. Note that it is still the case that any satellite built in the US needs an export license to be launched from abroad. SDIO can't decide whether Saddam Hussein is their friend or their enemy. On one hand, he's the best argument they've had in years for the usefulness of a small-attack antimissile system. On the other hand, the Gulf crisis is gobbling money by the carload, and somebody's going to have to pay for it. The CIA image-processing and photo-analysis facilities for satellite data are on a war footing for the first time, and they're clearly overloaded. Analysts are working 18-hour days and data is sometimes backing up. The Interpretation Center near Washington declines to be specific, but AW&ST checked its parking lot at midnight and found over 100 cars there. The Defence Mapping Agency is also on an emergency schedule to provide precise targeting data for cruise missiles and aircraft. The two currently active KH-11 satellites have been maneuvered to give an overhead pass of the Gulf every two days; however, the KH-11 is known to be capable of looking well to the side of its ground track, and useful data may be available more often. These are KH-11s numbers 7 and 8. Number 6 is still in orbit but thought to be out of maneuvering fuel; however, it may still be returning data. The Lacrosse radarsat is also said to be proving useful. The rather mysterious Aug 1989 spysat, initially observed to be tumbling but since seen to maneuver, may also be active. Nobody knows quite what the failed Feb 1990 satellite was, although there is a rumor that it was highly specialized, perhaps a dedicated infrared spysat. The Soviets are also busy, with at least one satellite maneuvered and another freshly launched. Magellan staff plan to command Magellan into a more intelligent operating mode, as its current emergency-fallback mode is vulnerable to some kinds of single-point failures. The delayed H-1 launch of the BS-3A tvsat went off as planned Aug 28. Harold Masursky, late of the US Geological Survey, died Aug 24. He played a major role in choosing Apollo landing sites and scientific objectives, headed the Mariner 9 mapping of Mars, helped select the Viking landing sites, and was instrumental in getting Magellan funded. He saw the first Magellan images a few days before his death. Hubble produces the first detailed photo of the gas shell around the remains of Supernova 1987A, and an image of a "typical" galaxy, NGC 7457, revealing that its core is much more densely packed than expected (strongly sugestive of a black hole). The SN1987A image is 2-3 times better than ground-based ones. The images were made with ESA's Faint Object Camera. Feature section on Europe's Aerospace Industry, anticipating the Farnborough Air Show. Not much on space. Nice photo of a night Ariane launch. Article discussing Arianespace's near-future plans, notably more flexibility in mix-and-match two-satellite launches on Ariane (using a new payload housing to handle two payloads of quite different size), exploration of the idea of a marketing alliance with OSC/Hercules for Pegasus services, and further use of the capability to piggyback small commercial payloads on low-orbit Ariane launches [which are, admittedly, not common]. Various options for cooperation on Pegasus operations are being considered, including use of the Kourou tracking range for Pegasus launches, and Pegasus assembly and carrier-aircraft operations from there. Arianespace is also studying the idea of commercial Hermes operations. Looming in the near distance is politicking on launcher pricing policy [translation, "what on Earth is the launcher cartel going to do about Soviet competition now that we don't have the Cold War as an excuse any more?!?"]. Arianespace counts the total loss of schedule from the February Ariane failure as 3.5 months; the hiatus was five months, but six weeks of that was normal turnaround time. The cloth that blocked the water line is still being investigated. It is cotton, of a type used in shop coats, unmarked, and completely clean (which indicates it was not being used for cleaning). Nobody is sure whether it was in the Aerospatiale part of the line or the SEP part (nobody being responsible for the whole line, a management mistake that will be fixed). Sabotage has not been formally ruled out, but the general belief is that it was an accident. AW&ST often has a "Market Supplement" in the middle, with lots of advertising and some lightweight pseudo-editorial coverage on a specific topic. This week's topic is a surprise: Pegasus. Good pictures, limited content. "We're trying to use advanced technology to drive down costs rather than to achieve performance breakthroughs." -- David Thompson, OSC chairman. Pegasus cost about $45M of private funding. (DARPA bought the first launch and options on five more, four of which have been exercised, but did not contribute any development money.) OSC decided to use a fairly small group of people rather than the "Battlestar Galactica" approach to development; the OSC Pegasus team never exceeded 35 people. The result was first flight three years after project conception, less time than it takes for NASA just to approve a project. Off-the-shelf hardware was used as much as possible; for example, the flight-control computer is the fire-control computer from Israel's Merkava tank, and the guidance system is the one Litton builds for the Mk48 torpedo. "We didn't invent anything we didn't have to." One major problem area was aerodynamics, since nobody knows much about Mach 8 flight, so "we tried to produce an aerodynamically boring vehicle". Production Pegasus tooling is available for one per month, with no great problem in boosting production to one per week. Three are currently being built, with immediate plans for two more. The hope is to build 8-10/year by 1992. 15-20 flights will be needed to recover development costs. A major upcoming goal is to end dependence on NASA's ancient B-52, by fitting a commercial transport for Pegasus launches. A used Tristar is a strong candidate, because they are cheap on the secondhand market (being a dead-end product, out of production, with operating costs high compared to modern airliners) and are amply big enough. Another plan is to equip Pegasus with a Navstar receiver, which would improve guidance precision and eliminate the need for a pre-launch guidance update from the launch aircraft. A longer-term objective is a restartable liquid-fuel fourth stage, which would increase payload and permit much more accurate final orbits. NASA Langley is doing early work on a telerobotic system for assembly of space structures, initially aimed at dealing with a simple repetitive structural unit like a truss. Picture of the Alexis satellite (Array of Low-Energy X-ray Imaging Sensors) being developed for Los Alamos as a sensor testbed. It will fly next year, on Pegasus. Story on the details of the NRC study panels' report on EOS. The first EOS platform, aimed at lower-atmosphere interactions, really does benefit from having all sensors looking from the same perspective at the same time, the panels say, but the second, aimed at the upper atmosphere, currently does not have a strong case for being one large platform. There is no significant cost difference between one large satellite and several smaller ones, and the smaller satellites would be more flexible. NRC says that NASA generally has not paid enough attention to contingency planning for instrument failure, and is casting the design of later spacecraft in concrete too early, ignoring the benefits of revising their design based on results from earlier ones and changing priorities. -- The type syntax for C is essentially | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology unparsable. --Rob Pike | henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry
melkor@wpi.WPI.EDU (A Soldier Of God) (10/25/90)
In article <1990Oct19.031416.8237@zoo.toronto.edu> henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes: >Note that it is still the case that any satellite built in the US needs >an export license to be launched from abroad. Isn't it true that any no-government space launch needs an export license just to be "exported" to orbit? _______________________________________________________________________________ |L.T.N.A.T. (Love Thy Neighbor As Thyself) S..G.L.Y.&S.D.I. (Smile.....) | | "He died for me. I'll live for him" (D&K)| |SSSS CCCC H H L EEEE TTT ZZZZ melkor@wpi.wpi.edu | |S C H H L E T Z The Domino's Dude | |SSSS C HHHH L EEE T Z "I won't go underground/I won't turn and | | S C H H L E T Z flee/I won't bow the knee" PETRA | |SSSS CCCC H H LLLL EEEE T ZZZZ (508) 792-3745 Dominos: 791-7760 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) (10/26/90)
In article <1990Oct25.084527.8907@wpi.WPI.EDU> melkor@wpi.WPI.EDU (A Soldier Of God) writes: >>Note that it is still the case that any satellite built in the US needs >>an export license to be launched from abroad. > >Isn't it true that any no-government space launch needs an export license just >to be "exported" to orbit? I don't think so. This is a slightly strange situation, actually. There *is* historical justification for legal classification of space launches as "export", since there have been a few instances of import duties being refunded for items later launched (a diamond window for the Pioneer Venus large probe being the example I remember). But in general you do not need an export license to launch something. What you *do* need is a launch permit from the Office of Commercial Space Transportation, plus FCC approval for any radio transmitters involved. Nobody else has the authority to deny you launch permission in the US; it was deliberately set up that way after Space Services Inc. publicized the bureaucratic nightmare they had to wade through to get approval for a private sounding-rocket launch. Mind you, OCST is supposed to consider just about any conceivable issue, including "the national interest", before giving you a permit. And they don't have to give a reason for refusing one. -- The type syntax for C is essentially | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology unparsable. --Rob Pike | henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry