henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) (04/04/89)
[A light news week, for no particularly obvious reason.] Japan is considering transferring its comsat programs to commercial hands in a few years. Satellite launch-insurance rates are falling, as successful launches continue. Rockwell proposes building another set of shuttle structural spares for NASA. The original structural-spares set is being used to build the new orbiter. Japan flies another quarter-scale model of the H-2 booster, successfully. NASA's general counsel advises that the legal requirement that NASA's top two officials come from "civilian life" precludes hiring James Abrahamson (ex-head of SDI) as head of NASA, despite frequent mention of his name in that connection. He is a retired military officer, receiving a military pension and subject to the military code of justice. Recent Office of Mismanagement and Beancounting decision requires private funding for several NASA projects, notably the Flight Telerobotic Servicer for space station assembly. NASA plans a May contract to build the servicer and related equipment for shuttle tests, but OMB refused funding for it. General opinion is that this is crazy, since the government is probably the only customer. Worse, this was in the middle of the contract competition, which made no provision for private funding. Industry says it will not pay for the development work without strong guarantees of recovering their investment. This probably will not kill the servicer, but it will delay it, and NASA is caught in between, because Congress ordered that the servicer be tested and deployed before similar Canadian hardware could be ready. [Congress, of course, is also the bunch that is constantly harping on how expensive the space station is getting. Parochial pork-barrel projects like this are a significant reason.] -- Welcome to Mars! Your | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology passport and visa, comrade? | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu
stolfi@jumbo.dec.com (Jorge Stolfi) (04/04/89)
Henry Spencer writes: > > [Congress, of course, is also the bunch that is constantly > harping on how expensive the space station is getting. > Parochial pork-barrel projects like this are a significant > reason.] Congress, of course, is also the bunch that was told that the Space Station was going to cost $8 billion, approved it, and soon afterwards was told that the real cost was more like $30 billion. Jorge Stolfi --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Certain cannonades in the Civil War had cost one thousand dollars a shot. President Barbicane's shot, unique in the annals of gunnery, might cost five thousand times as much. --Verne, _From the Earth to the Moon_ (1865) --------------------------------------------------------------------------- DISCLAIMER: yes.