henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) (07/04/89)
[Cover on this one, by the way, is Mary Shafer's pet F-18, part of the high-angle-of-attack research program at Dryden.] NASA to close tracking stations at Guam, Santiago, Ascension, Dakar, and Hawaii, now that the third TDRS is operational. Second-stage motor for Pegasus fired successfully May 12 at Hercules. Third-stage motor was fired a couple of months ago; first-stage motor to fire June 20. Truly, in his first week as (acting) NASA Admin., names new heads for space-station program, after two successive station chiefs quit in two weeks. William B. Lenoir, ex-astronaut, is now boss. Truly wants to merge station and shuttle management at least partially, as the current completely-separate managements require Truly himself to referee even minor disagreements. National Space Council's first formal meeting comes down very strongly in favor of continued government support for Landsat 4/5 operations and Landsat 6 construction, ending uncertainties about Landsat's near-term future. What happens after Landsat 6 is still vague, though. Soviet scientists are grumbling loudly about the compartmentalization of the Soviet space program. They blame the Phobos losses, in particular, on the refusal of the satellite builders to give the science team a role in design. [This sounds a bit strong to me... I think it may be just a matter of seizing a convenient but irrelevant problem as a way of getting some action on bad organizational structure.] Both Soviet and US scientists are unhappy that the 1994 Mars lander/balloon mission is still somewhat ill-defined and not completely approved, with only five years to go before launch. [Sigh, there was a time when five years would not have been thought a short time in which to build a planetary probe...] "Brilliant pebbles" funding to rise sharply, as technical doubts begin to be raised. For example, there was supposed to be some b-p hardware aboard the Delta Star satellite launched in March, but it wasn't ready, leading to suspicion that Lawrence Livermore is overselling its rate of progress on the crucial technologies. There is also debate over the degree of autonomy b-p interceptors should have; Livermore proposes near-total independence, with the interceptors completely on their own after launch until an "open fire" command arrives, but the USAF wants business-as-usual, with constant command and control from the ground -- which would increase communications requirements and thus weight and cost. Industry people involved with more conventional space-based interceptors complain that a lot of b-p funding seems to be going to educate the Livermore people about basic space engineering, such as the amount of laser power needed for reliable laser communications. Many people are also unhappy that cost estimates for b-p hardware vary by a factor of four depending on who's doing the estimating and when. SDI funding cutbacks delay possible deployment of near-term operational hardware several years. Longer-term projects are also hurt, notably the free-electron laser project, whose priority appears to have dropped and whose output-power spec has been cut just before the contract was to be awarded. [This is more significant than it might sound, because the FEL is the #1 choice to power a laser-launcher system, and Jordin Kare's laser-launcher group is relying on SDI for laser development.] Major changes may be in store for the space-based parts of SDI's Phase 1 design; in particular, there is concern that there are too few tracking satellites and that they are too vulnerable to attack. NASA revises shuttle schedule, slipping Hubble telescope to next year and putting LDEF retrieval dangerously late in the year. [NASA's big priorities right now are getting Columbia flying again and getting Galileo off on time, and things were just looking a bit crowded this autumn.] GE signs with Arianespace to launch Satcom C-1 on Ariane in 1991, with options on launches for C-2 and C-4. Space Vacuum Epitaxy Center at U of Houston gets NASA contract to build a "wake shield facility" for the shuttle: a 10-ft-dia shield to be held "upstream" of experiments by the shuttle arm, giving materials-processing experiments an extra-good vacuum. Space Industries Inc. has been hired to do most of the design and construction. Pratt&Whitney says that public support for Aerospace Plane is suffering because of the secrecy surrounding it. Data-transmission tests between European Space Operations Center and NASA's Deep Space Network tracking stations successful, clearing the way for attempted revival of Giotto next year. Giotto is far away right now but will pass moderately close to Earth next summer; the revival attempt will be made early next year. If revival is successful, if Giotto is in good shape, and if funding appears adequate, Giotto will be maneuvered to make a close Earth flyby, aiming it at another comet. Grigg-Skjellerup is a possible target, and could be encountered in summer 1992. Letter from Charles Scott MacGillivray, observing that quite a bit of space-station funding could probably be had by selling advertising space on it. Letter of the week, from David M. Hoerr: "According to acting NASA Administrator Dale Myers, the fundamental purpose of the space station is `to inspire young people and provide incentives for engineering education'. "Does he really expect young people to be inspired by a slow- paced, bureaucracy-bound program with uncertain purposes and an even more uncertain future? How ironic that NASA has done its best to stifle real innovation and pioneering in space, as represented by the efforts of numerous struggling private space companies that would really inspire..." -- $10 million equals 18 PM | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology (Pentagon-Minutes). -Tom Neff | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu