henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) (04/19/88)
Editorial criticizing Commerce Dept's attempt to dictate shuttle pricing
policies, also its granting of an export licence for Mir microgravity
experiments without consulting the entire US government about it.
Zenith Star (SDI's big chemical-laser satellite) gets big budget boost.
Getaway Special program has about 530 reservations, roughly 1/4 of them
from outside US, with Germany in the lead followed by Canada and Japan.
NASA says RFP for advanced-SRB development will be issue in June, work
to start Jan. A segmented design will be used [boo hiss]. The question
of whether facilities will be owned by the contractor or the government
remains open.
NASA wins battle with Commerce over shuttle pricing: should paying users
pay full shuttle costs, or (since the shuttle would be flying even
without them) only the extra costs required to fly them? Commerce, OMB,
and DoD favored the higher price; everybody else, including customers and
Congress, was opposed. Rep. Nelson says that if the Administration was
favoring the higher price, "that's all we need to know to understand that
those who are making policy in the Administration don't know much about
commercial spaceflight". Rep. Walker (Nelson's Republican counterpart):
"For the life of me, I can't understand what idiot decided this was a
rational policy." He charges that advocates of the higher price were
ignoring the law: in NASA's FY86 authorization bill, Congress set firm
shuttle-pricing rules. DoT's Office of Commercial Space Transportation
observes that in the present situation, full cost recovery is "nuts".
Walker also tells Commerce that the unwillingness of Administration
officials to supply details on how policy was set is grossly out of order.
Budget situation looks sticky for space station and related projects.
Congress tells NASA that its persistent assumption of 15-20% annual budget
increases has no relation to reality. Also some criticism of the proposed
CDSF lease deal, which says NASA will start paying on delivery even if the
launch is delayed, but imposes no penalty for late delivery of hardware.
Spacehab is also unhappy that leasing of ISF could reduce its business;
NASA confirms that if it is paying for facilities, obviously it will use
them before buying more. [Could it be my memory, or do I recall a time,
only a couple of months ago at that, when Spacehab said it wanted no
subsidies or special treatment, just flight opportunities?]
Rep. George Brown introduces Space Settlement Act, making human settlement
of space an official long-term goal and requiring regular NASA reports on
progress. He is also making loud noises about more money for civilian space.
Picture of Hughes's latest Jarvis design, aiming at the ALS program.
Think of a slightly short shuttle tank, with 50%-scale replicas of itself
clustered around its base. The strap-ons would be recovered, but not the
core. Propulsion is identical for strap-ons and core: each has four
clusters of eight RL-10 engines [the Centaur engine], for a total of
224 [!!] engines if all six strap-ons are used. Everything would be
firing at launch, with the core then shutting down and restarting later
at high altitude. The RL-10 was picked for reliability, performance
[not as good as the SSME but not bad], and cost [much less than the SSME].
Hughes is proposing launch from Palmyra Island (vaguely near Hawaii) from
an austere facility.
British government semi-reverses itself, saying that it might return to
some of the big ESA projects if they can be revised to reduce costs and
increase benefits.
Andrew Stofan, outgoing space-station admin, says NASA is ready to start
shuttle flights again, and should have done so 18 months ago, but that
everybody is paranoid about safety due to intense unfavorable publicity.
"There is only one way to be safe -- never fly..." "NASA's been a
risk-taking agency. If they stop doing that, NASA's not a viable agency
any more." He also slams Congressional micromanagement and the "infinite
amount of time and energy" required to solve problems when everybody in
Washington wants a say.
NASA names crews for 1989 shuttle missions. Nobody remarkable. [In
particular, John Young isn't going to fly the Hubble Telescope mission,
as he was going to before Challenger. Young in fact is in the doghouse
these days. Shortly after Challenger, he openly criticized the lack of
astronaut involvement in engineering... something widely felt to be
mostly his fault, since his predecessors insisted on astronaut involvement
and generally got it. If you've wondered why he got kicked upstairs
from his position as chief astronaut, my spies tell me this had a lot to
do with it.]
[Finally, a repetition of old news: for those interested in a copy of the
Ride Report, AW&ST sells them. $14.95 plus "appropriate sales tax" to
The Ride Report (A128), Aviation Week & Space Technology, PO Box 5505,
Peoria, IL 61601. They take Visa, Mastercard, AmEx, Diner's Club.]
--
"Noalias must go. This is | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
non-negotiable." --DMR | {ihnp4,decvax,uunet!mnetor}!utzoo!henry