jordankatz@cdp.UUCP (02/11/89)
This is the NSS's Space Hotline for the week ending 2/10/89. In last Thursday's state of the union address President George Bush stated that the space program must proceed at "Full Throttle Up, That's not just our ambition, it's our destiny.", and wants the space program to receive a $2.4 billion increase over the current fiscal year. He committed to a permanently manned space station, strong safe space shuttle system, mission to planet earth, and increased commercial space activities. NASA's Chief Administrator James Fletcher was pleased that the president supports the space station and the civil space program. Thursday the Senate Science Technology and Space Subcommittee held its first hearings of the year. Testimony given by NASA Administrator James Fletcher stated that the $13 billion dollar fiscal year 1990 budget approved by the Reagan office of budget management will not be enough to keep both the shuttle and the space station programs on track. Sen. Albert Gore (D-Tenn.) chairman of the subcommittee agreed that the fiscal year 1990 budget is barely enough to implement NASA's ongoing programs. Fletcher stated that NASA needs at least $1 billion more in fiscal year 1990 in order to proceed with the planned shuttle manifest, shuttle hardware improvements, the space station and other projects. Additionally Fletcher testified that 45% of NASA's rocket scientists, engineers and key support personnel will be retiring over the next two years. The fact that congress rejected the 51% pay raise that would be extended to many government officials has turned this problem into a catastrophe for NASA. He stated many top employees stayed on after the Challenger Disaster out of loyalty to the country and the space program, but are now ready to bail out. Fletcher reported that moral at NASA is pretty low among most of the young and old people. In addition Rear Admiral Richard Truly testified before the subcommittee that the explosion that wiped out a critical rocket fuel plant last may will cause solid rocket fuel shortages this year but the shuttle program will not be effected. At Kennedy Space Center launch pad 39B last week the Crew of the Discovery performed a practice countdown and rehearsed emergency escape procedures. During the flawless countdown crews performed voice checks, and engineers displayed the ability to make last minuet program changes in the orbiters computer system. Possibly cracked Oxidizing Turbo Pumps were removed from Discovery's main engines as the STS-29 crew looked on. New pumps were successfully tested at Stenis Space Center and are due to arrive at Kennedy Space Center next week. Crews successfully loaded the Tracking Data Relay Satellite into Discovery's payload bay last monday, and began performing several communication test between the satellite and ground control systems. The loading of propellent into Discovery's various power systems and storage tanks, went off with out any major problems reported. Meanwhile in the Vehicle Assembly Building..... Work continues on Atlantis, preparing it and it's payload for their April 28th launch. As of today all three main engines were installed in the orbiter. Engineers attached solar panels to the Magellan Venus Radar Mapper Probe and tested them with very high illumination electric lights. On the Columbia power up tests continue, while checking of the main propulsion systems, navigation system and communication systems are planned. The Air Force is getting ready to launch their new McDonald Douglas Delta II expendable launch vehicle. The expendable launch vehicle will be launched at 1:42pm EST Sat. Feb. 11, and will place into orbit the first navstar geopositioning navigation satellite. The launch will take place at complex 17 at the cape canaveral Air Force Base. Examination of the space shuttle solid rocket boost that was test fired last week has thus far shown that there have been no gas leaks from its O-rings. Two more joints remain to be examined. Vice President Quayle can't get space experts to staff the 7 member national space council of which he is chairman. AeroSpace Industry leaders are concerned that council will be ineffective, unless it is staffed soon. Some of those who have been interview but withdrew them selves from the running are Courtny Stadd-Former director of the commerce office of commercial space flight, Kenneth Pedersen-NASA associate administrator for external relations, and Fredrick "Rick" Hauck-who commanded Dicovery's mission last fall. The Congressional Budget Office in a proposal to slash the budget deficit recommend canceling the current space station in order to save $16 Billion per year in the fiscal year 1990-1994 budgets. An cheaper alternative to cancelation would be a modest series of extended manned shuttle/spacelab flights, and intermittently tended facilities. A report put forth by the commercial space advisory board (industry officials) stated the primary problem with commercial space industry is instability of US government space policy. The report notes that Federal Agency bickering over who is to assume what role, and the fact that none of Reagan's commercial incentives taken been seriously. JPL researcher have taken a compilation of mars picture and elevation data (returned by the viking probes) and crunched it all together in one of the worlds most powerful computers. The result is five minuet 3-D tour of a selected area of the martian surface. The computer graphic simulation took 37 days (24 hrs.) of supercomputer time to generate one of the 3500 frames that make up the short, each frame represents about 1 million bits of data. The tour is set to the Music of Gustav Holst's The Planets. VHS and Beta versions will be sold for $35.95. At Star City Russia, 10 Cosmonauts are training for future flights on the Mir space station while 7 others are training to fly the soviet space shuttle Buran. Buran's next flight could be manned but decision have not made yet, the spacecraft still being tested and inspected to determine if its safe for manned flight. It was reviled the back in 1984 a crew of 3 women were to have flown on Salyut 7, but the male backup crew went instead. No women will fly this year, and none are training. The next update will be on 2/17/89.
henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) (02/12/89)
In article <246900003@cdp> jordankatz@cdp.UUCP writes: >...Additionally Fletcher testified that 45% of NASA's rocket scientists, >engineers and key support personnel will be retiring over the next two years. >...Fletcher reported that moral at NASA is pretty low among most of >the young and old people. Hardly a big surprise, considering how the NASA bureaucracy has expanded in recent years -- the competent people are drowning in a swamp of supervisors. The supervisor:worker ratio is roughly double what it was during Apollo. Now, if 45% of the *managers* retired, that would probably pick up morale immensely, not to mention productivity... -- The Earth is our mother; | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology our nine months are up. | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu