henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) (07/23/90)
[There will be a delay before further issues, because I lost the June 18 issue briefly and haven't started reading it yet.] Four-day Magellan dry run, including no-target radar tests, successful; everything appears to be ready for Venus. The star-calibration problem appears to have been solved by software changes. First major Soviet space-program museum exhibit in US opens at the Boston Museum of Science. It will tour several other US cities this fall. Eight Soviet technicians accompany it to explain the equipment. The Space Exploration Initiative looks to be in for a rough time in Congress. Images from Voyager's "group portrait". As predicted, the planets are just little dots, although Jupiter and Saturn just barely show disks. No Pluto or Mercury, as planned, and scattered sunlight overwhelmed Mars's image. Earth very nearly got lost too; its image has a strong scattered-sunlight background, but the planet is visible. The Voyagers are now being turned over to a much smaller staff at JPL, to free up people for newer missions. The imaging systems will be shut down this summer, and the only major science activity remaining will be the watch for heliopause encounter. If everything keeps working, the Voyagers should be in touch for about another 25 years (the limit being the steady decay of their isotope power packs), out to a radius of about 130 AU. The heliopause is thought to lie at maybe 100 AU. Total Voyager pricetag so far, including launches, is $865M. Another $30M has been budgeted, so far, for post-Neptune monitoring and control. NASA picks Martin Marietta and TRW for detailed studies of a robot satellite servicer, mounting MM's Flight Telerobotic Servicer [the most flagrant Congressional pork-barrel project for the space station] on TRW's Orbital Maneuvering Vehicle [which has just been cancelled!]. Astro-1 shuttle mission slips badly as Columbia rolled back to VAB due to hydrogen leak. This will take some juggling, as both active VAB bays are already occupied. The pad with partly-stacked SRBs for STS-40 (Spacelab Life Sciences) will be parked either on pad 39B or near the VAB for the moment, to clear High Bay 3. High Bay 1 is occupied by Atlantis. Once Astro-1 and SLS (also scheduled to use Columbia) fly, Columbia will be out of service for five months or so for modernization and changes to turn it into the long-duration orbiter. Discovery's right payload bay door accidentally snagged by hook during operations in the Orbiter Processing Facility, and flexed before anyone noticed. Door and hinges are being checked for damage, but none is expected. West Germany's Roentgen Satellite (Rosat) is up, launched June 1 by Delta from the Cape. Checkout and calibration are underway; once this is done, in early August, Rosat will do a six-month X-ray sky survey. NASA cancels the OMV, citing funding shortages and little near-term need. The only firm plans for its use were reboost of HST and AXAF, which can be done [not as well] by the shuttle itself. [This is a really stupid, shortsighted decision. Limited though it was, OMV would have added a whole range of capabilities that NASA simply does not have right now. Once more, we see the vicious circle at work: nobody plans to use capability X until the hardware for it is operational, because they can't be sure it will be built, and so it is cancelled for lack of firm customers. Sigh.] Kristall is having docking problems at Mir. [As usual, the Soviets fixed it.] Trade-bill amendment in the House forbids export of any US-built satellite intended for launch on a Chinese booster. No word on it from Senate yet. Two of the three Hughes satellites recently cleared for Long March launch [as a fulfillment of pre-Tiananmen promises] have not yet been shipped. This week's "Market Supplement", with light technical content and heavy advertising, is on the building of HST. A few nice pictures. Visiting US delegation at Baikonur sees and photographs docking hardware for Buran-Mir mission. This will be the next Buran mission, possibly next year, using the second orbiter. No decision has yet been made on whether the mission will be manned. The delegation was told that a third orbiter is under construction, and saw Energia #3 and #4 being assembled. Pictures, from the USAF Maui Optical Station, of the external tank from the Discovery/HST mission burning up in the atmosphere. The Maui site is more normally used for photographing Soviet and US satellites, including use of lasers to illuminate satellites [!!] for photography during night passes. The cameras are pretty good; for example, they can tell whether a Soviet nuclear radarsat is operating by looking for the red-hot glow of its reactor (in visible light, not IR). They have been used extensively to photograph shuttle orbiters, and are good enough to give a fair picture of the payload-bay contents; one underlying motive for this is getting a look at Buran payloads. One minor discovery that has come out of this program is that the visible plumes from the shuttle's big thrusters are surprisingly long and tend to line up with the Earth's magnetic field. The unusually high HST mission put its ET burnup within range of Maui. Reportedly, at least one missile-warning satellite also observed the debris burnup. The Maui photographs show a total of three explosions during ET reentry, presumed to be rupture of the hydrogen tank, rupture of the oxygen tank, and explosion of the ET's destruct system. The tank gradually breaks up into a rain of fragments, most of which are thought to burn up before impact. There was a large vapor cloud in the upper atmosphere for some time after burnup. The purpose of all this photography was to determine how well the tank burns up without its "tumble valve", which normally vents leftover propellant in such a way as to make the tank tumble, encouraging it to break up early in reentry. Omitting the valve would save both weight and money, so it was disabled for the HST launch as an experiment. The Maui data says that the tank tumbles anyway, so the valve is probably unnecessary. -- NFS: all the nice semantics of MSDOS, | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology and its performance and security too. | henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry
jdnicoll@watyew.uwaterloo.ca (Brian or James) (07/24/90)
In article <1990Jul23.045611.8147@zoo.toronto.edu> henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes: [Many items of interest deleted] >Astro-1 shuttle mission slips badly as Columbia rolled back to VAB due >to hydrogen leak. This will take some juggling, as both active VAB bays >are already occupied. The pad with partly-stacked SRBs for STS-40 (Spacelab >Life Sciences) will be parked either on pad 39B or near the VAB for the >moment, to clear High Bay 3. High Bay 1 is occupied by Atlantis. >is more normally used for photographing Soviet and US satellites, It strikes me that this would be a particularly poor time to have a fire in the VAB [Not that there'd ever be a *good* time for one]. My brother, who is the Chemical dept. Stores Superviser at UW, has commented [at length] to me about the interesting tendency for fires and mishaps to occur at important bottlenecks [ie; the fires *never* occur in an area where they would only damage an electrical system, if by occuring 2m away they could trash a water pipeline and communication cable as well]. I think this is the Manichean theory of disaster prediction. This, of course, doesn't pretain to the VAB, since I'd bet it has damage control systems on damage control systems. I wonder what the VAB would cost to duplicate, these days, though... JDN
maw@cbnewsh.att.com (michael.a.weinstein) (07/25/90)
From article <1990Jul23.045611.8147@zoo.toronto.edu>, by henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer): > > Total Voyager pricetag so far, including launches, is $865M. Another $30M > has been budgeted, so far, for post-Neptune monitoring and control. > About the price for a single B2 bomber (this is so mind boggling that I had to run to the library to verify it). Wouldn't it be great to trade a bomber for a top notch space probe like Voyager? Maybe someday we'll get our priorities straight. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Michael Weinstein AT&T Bell Laboratories, Holmdel, NJ maw@arch1.att.com [all standard disclaimers apply :-)]
laub@spock (Boniface Lau) (07/25/90)
In article <1990Jul23.045611.8147@zoo.toronto.edu> henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes: > The Maui site >is more normally used for photographing Soviet and US satellites, >including use of lasers to illuminate satellites [!!] for photography >during night passes. The cameras are pretty good; Could someone post the pictures mentioned in this news? By the way, I am aware that the CompuServe Space Forum graphics section has a bunch of GIF pictures taken by NASA. They are very nice. Could we have those and more recent GIF pictures posted in this news group? Thanks. Boniface
henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) (07/25/90)
In article <1990Jul24.133049.16005@watdragon.waterloo.edu> jdnicoll@watyew.uwaterloo.ca (Brian or James) writes: >>... This will take some juggling, as both active VAB bays >>are already occupied... > It strikes me that this would be a particularly poor time to >have a fire in the VAB [Not that there'd ever be a *good* time for one]. >...I wonder what the VAB would cost to duplicate, these days, though... Don't even think about it... NASA used to have an ironclad "no fuel in the VAB" rule. They weren't too pleased about having to handle live SRBs in there. -- NFS: all the nice semantics of MSDOS, | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology and its performance and security too. | henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry
mvk@pawl.rpi.edu (Michael V. Kent) (07/26/90)
In article <1990Jul24.183248.16311@cbnewsh.att.com> maw@cbnewsh.att.com (michael.a.weinstein) writes: >From article <1990Jul23.045611.8147@zoo.toronto.edu>, by henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer): >> >> Total Voyager pricetag so far, including launches, is $865M. Another $30M >> has been budgeted, so far, for post-Neptune monitoring and control. >> >About the price for a single B2 bomber (this is so mind boggling that I >had to run to the library to verify it). Wouldn't it be great to trade >a bomber for a top notch space probe like Voyager? Maybe someday we'll >get our priorities straight. > Actually, about the cost of 3 B2's. Mike mvk@pawl.rpi.edu
awesley@egrunix.UUCP (Tony Wesley) (07/27/90)
First henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes: >>> Total Voyager pricetag so far, including launches, is $865M. Another $30M Then maw@cbnewsh.att.com (michael.a.weinstein) writes: >>About the price for a single B2 bomber (this is so mind boggling that I And mvk@pawl.rpi.edu (Michael V. Kent) writes: >Actually, about the cost of 3 B2's. Weinstein is correct. The cost of the B-2 will be about 800 million per airplane. If the full production run is made. If the airplane comes in at cost. Since it will probably be over budget and less than full production, the costs will probably go over $2 BILLION per B-2. > >Mike mvk@pawl.rpi.edu -- And little Sir John with his nut brown bowl Tony Wesley/RPT Software And his brandy in the glass voice: (313) 274-2080 And little Sir John with his nut brown bowl awesley@unix.secs.oakland.edu Proved the strongest man at last... Compu$erve: 72770,2053
john@newave.UUCP (John A. Weeks III) (07/27/90)
In article <565@egrunix.UUCP> awesley@egrunix.UUCP (Tony Wesley) writes: > First henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes: > >>> Total Voyager pricetag so far, including launches, is $865M. Another $30M > Then maw@cbnewsh.att.com (michael.a.weinstein) writes: > >>About the price for a single B2 bomber (this is so mind boggling that I > And mvk@pawl.rpi.edu (Michael V. Kent) writes: > >Actually, about the cost of 3 B2's. > The cost of the B-2 will be about 800 million per airplane. The price of the B-2 depends mainly on your accounting method. The program has about $22-Billion sunk into R&D so far. If you allocate this 22G evenly to each plane produced and assume a full production run, you get a figure around $800-Million. If you consider the $22-Billion to be a sunk cost, then each plane would cost only about $235-Million (according to Newsweak). Depending upon how you allocate the R&D money and the length of production run that you assume, one can argue just about any price for a B-2. -john- -- =============================================================================== John A. Weeks III (612) 942-6969 john@newave.mn.org NeWave Communications ...uunet!rosevax!bungia!wd0gol!newave!john ===============================================================================
manning@arrester.caltech.edu (Evan Marshall Manning) (07/28/90)
awesley@egrunix.UUCP (Tony Wesley) writes: >Weinstein is correct. The cost of the B-2 will be about 800 million >per airplane. If the full production run is made. But a full production run will most likely not be made. I'm betting no production craft will be made, giving us a divide by zero error in calculations of unit cost. Comparable to the cost of a successful Phobos, I guess ;-) -- Evan *************************************************************************** Your eyes are weary from staring at the CRT for so | Evan M. Manning long. You feel sleepy. Notice how restful it is | is to watch the cursor blink. Close your eyes. The |manning@gap.cco.caltech.edu opinions stated above are yours. You cannot | manning@mars.jpl.nasa.gov imagine why you ever felt otherwise. | gleeper@tybalt.caltech.edu
sysmgr@KING.ENG.UMD.EDU (Doug Mohney) (07/31/90)
In article <manning.649117127@arrester>, manning@arrester.caltech.edu (Evan Marshall Manning) writes: > >But a full production run will most likely not be made. I'm betting >no production craft will be made, giving us a divide by zero error >in calculations of unit cost. Comparable to the cost of a successful >Phobos, I guess ;-) Ahh, but 13 aircraft are already funded and paid for, regardless of what happens in the future. I'm not sure, but I think even the test article planes (1 & 2) will be able to take megatons to Moscow.
nickw@syma.sussex.ac.uk (Nick Watkins) (08/01/90)
From article <1990Jul23.045611.8147@zoo.toronto.edu>, by henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer): > NASA cancels the OMV, citing funding shortages and little near-term need. > The only firm plans for its use were reboost of HST and AXAF, which can > be done [not as well] by the shuttle itself. It is also an irritant to the Canadian/US WISP-HF plasma physics mission which had hoped to use the OMV. Nick -- Dr. Nick Watkins, Space & Plasma Physics Group, School of Mathematical & Physical Sciences, Univ. of Sussex, Brighton, E.Sussex, BN1 9QH, ENGLAND JANET: nickw@syma.sussex.ac.uk BITNET: nickw%syma.sussex.ac.uk@uk.ac