henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) (10/21/88)
[Cripes, I'm getting behind again...] Two USAF C-5s are being modified to carry very large satellites, notably a new spysat similar in size to the Hubble telescope. US remote-sensing industry types are concerned about reports that Japan may give Japanese customers preferential access to data from the JERS-1 satellite scheduled for launch in 1992. SSMEs will continue to be in short supply for the rest of this year. By the end of the year, nine engines should be available -- enough for the three orbiters, but with minimal margin. Australian Launch Vehicles, Ltd., formed to develop a small booster to put 500 kg into low orbit. They want to start launches within three years, preferably from Cape York in the long run. Titan 2 pad at Vandenberg evacuated due to minor hydrazine leak. Nobody hurt. The first refurbished Titan 2 ICBM was originally supposed to be ready to launch in April, but in fact is still on the pad. USAF readying Titan 34D for launch from the cape, carrying a secret Clarke-orbit satellite. A launch attempt on June 26 was aborted at T-2 due to an electrical problem; the time since has been needed to clean out propellant tanks and re-check the payload. NASA rejects proposal to use SDI's Delta Star spacecraft to boost LDEF into a higher orbit. Delta Star is scheduled for launch early next year. LDEF retrieval is set for late next year, which leaves little margin for trouble, as LDEF reentry is predicted for early 1990. Using Delta Star for reboosting LDEF was considered seriously, but NASA felt it would be a distraction from its main line of effort, and SDI wanted Delta Star retrieved from orbit as part of the price for the reboost. NASA caves in to new USAF safety rules for shuttle launches, reducing spectators from 45k to 14k. Some NASA officials say this is stupid, since the number should be unlimited or zero. John Denver takes NASA spaceflight physical, in hopes of improving the chances that the Soviets will take him as a fare-paying passenger on a Soyuz. He will reimburse NASA for the cost of the physical. Both US manufacturers of ammonium perchlorate oxidizer are planning to shift the more hazardous parts of their oxidizer work away from populated areas. NASA sets new shuttle manifest. Most prominently, the Hubble telescope has slipped from mid-89 to early 1990. An effort will be made to bring the telescope up to a state of readiness where it could fly on short notice if another major payload cancels out. (This is being referred to as "vulture-on-the-fence mode".) The slip occurred because of the combination of domino effect from all the STS-26 delays, the inflexible 1989 launch windows for Magellan and Galileo (early May and late October 1989, respectively), NASA's wish to build up launch rate cautiously, Columbia's inability to lift the heavier payloads (virtually all of the early missions are weight-critical), and the presence of several ultra- high-priority military payloads (the USAF has the absolute right to bump other payloads in a military crisis). Basically, HST fought it out with three military payloads, and lost. One beneficial side effect is that it should now be possible to use one of the USAF's satellite-carrier C-5s [see above] to carry HST to KSC. The original plan called for it to go by barge through the Panama Canal, which led to worries about storms and terrorist attack. Another result of the new manifest is that Mars Observer has been moved from the shuttle to a Titan 3 launch in Sept 1992. The new schedule after STS-26 is a military mission in November, another TDRS in February, Magellan at the end of April, DoD missions in July and August, Galileo in October, LDEF retrieval in November (uncomfortably late), another DoD in December, and HST in February 1990. The February TDRS launch will be sacrificed, if necessary, to keep Magellan on track. The November mission is probably a missile-warning satellite. The July mission is a low-orbit mission using Columbia, which probably makes it a KH-12 spysat. The August mission, by elimination, is probably a Clarke-orbit eavesdropping satellite (one of them has persistently been mentioned as among the high-priority military payloads). The STS mission numbers are already hopelessly snarled. NASA says that the oxidizer shortage was not a big factor in the schedule after all. [Some of the above information came from a piece in Science.] India's Insat 1C has experienced a major power-subsystem failure, cutting its communications capacity considerably but not impairing its metsat and direct-broadcast functions. Soviets launch Soyuz TM-6, carrying three cosmonauts, including a doctor and an Afghan guest cosmonaut, to Mir. The doctor will remain up for a "short visit", thought to be four months. [For reference, that is one month longer than the US in-space duration record.] Titov and Manarov, the long-stay crew on Mir, are in their ninth month. Arianespace reports a substantial profit for FY1987. Ariane is already winning orders on the strength of Ariane 4's flexibility -- its payload capacity is a function of the number and type of strap-on boosters. When the Intelsat 7s got heavier in summer, Arianespace just revised the booster configuration in its bid to launch them. Sweden cancels its Mailstar message-relay satellite, but will use the launch reservation on Long March 2 for an ionospheric-science satellite instead. USAF's Pacific weather service is relying more on satellite images for typhoon tracking, more or less of necessity since the budget for weather aircraft is being cut. Typhoon forecasting has actually been more accurate since the changeover. There is considerably more resistance to a similar change for hurricane tracking in the East, partly for political pork-barrel reasons and partly because Atlantic and Gulf storms are less predictable. Work on updating the USAF launch-control facilities at the Cape continues. The new facility will be able to launch one vehicle while counting down another; at present, it's strictly one at a time. NASA is putting more effort into the space-debris problem. Current probability of damage to a shuttle is 1 in 30 for an average mission. At current growth rates, this will be 1 in 10 by 2000 and 1 in 4 by 2010. DoT is looking at regulations for the booster industry, since spent stages are a major source of debris. Even DoD is worried; it says that current risks seem manageable for current satellites, but the trend is disturbing. One fortunate case is the Delta 180 SDI experiment, deliberately run in a very low orbit to bring the debris down quickly; space tracking confirms that most of its debris was gone within six months. DoT issues major report on hazards and risks of commercial space launches. Space debris is an obvious concern. Uncontrolled reentry of dead satellites is not a big issue, since the average population density of Earth's surface remains very low. DoT comments that a fully fueled 747 has almost three times the explosive potential of a typical large expendable, and has a far better chance of crashing into a populated area. Letter from Chuck Bowdish suggesting that the avionics/engine pod of Shuttle-C should have trunnions and grapple fixtures to permit bringing it back down aboard a shuttle, for missions (e.g. space station) in which the orbits are right. [I think it's too big to fit in the cargo bay, but the idea sounds worth checking out.] Letter from Richard Troy: "...Potential solution [to the oxidizer shortage]: Let's ask the Soviets for some ammonium perchlorate... Couldn't we find a suitable trade they would like without compromising technology transfer issues? Like cash? ..." Letter from Daniel J. Connors: "Concerning NASA's tentative Shuttle C, a few comments seem in order... How marvelous that by 1993 or 1994 -- only 20 years after throwing away the perfectly reliable, completely successful Saturn 5 -- we may have a launch vehicle almost as capable as it was. With it we may be able to have a space station operational before the end of the century, only 30 years after we first landed men on the moon. "If such innovative thinking goes on, in a few years somebody may come up with the idea of putting an enlarged Apollo capsule on top of the Shuttle C, a capsule large enough for maybe 10 people, complete with a solid-rocket escape tower. Then we may be able to launch both men and a large quantity of cargo into orbit with the same vehicle. Like we were doing in the late 1960s..." [An interesting tidbit from the Aug 13 issue of Flight International:] British companies are investigating the idea of sending a British cosmonaut to Mir in the early 1990s, on a fare-paying commercial basis, to conduct microgravity experiments. The British government is not too enthusiastic about the idea, but unfortunately it fits very nicely with the government's policy of encouraging private funding for space activities. Austria is committed to flying a cosmonaut commercially in about 1992, and several other countries are interested. Britain's first man in space was to be Sqn. Ldr. Nigel Wood, who was scheduled to fly on the shuttle in June 1986, but that mission has been shelved. -- The meek can have the Earth; | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology the rest of us have other plans.|uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu
leech@tlab1.cs.unc.edu (Jonathan Leech) (10/23/88)
In article <1988Oct21.030358.2561@utzoo.uucp> henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes: >LDEF retrieval is set for late next year, which leaves little margin for >trouble, as LDEF reentry is predicted for early 1990. Well, heck, this gives us a chance to catch up with the Soviets in at least one area - large satellites undergoing uncontrollable reentry. Unfortunately we don't have a nuclear reactor on board, though. -- Jon Leech (leech@cs.unc.edu) __@/ ``After all, the best part of a holiday is perhaps not so much to be resting yourself as to see all the other fellows busy working.'' - Kenneth Grahame, _The Wind in the Willows_
tneff@dasys1.UUCP (Tom Neff) (10/24/88)
In article <1988Oct21.030358.2561@utzoo.uucp> henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes: >Another result of the new manifest is that Mars Observer has been moved >from the shuttle to a Titan 3 launch in Sept 1992. Has anyone seen those champagne glasses?!!!! -- Tom Neff UUCP: ...!cmcl2!phri!dasys1!tneff "None of your toys CIS: 76556,2536 MCI: TNEFF will function..." GEnie: TOMNEFF BIX: t.neff (no kidding)