henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) (02/09/88)
[As usual, AW&ST skipped the last issue in December.]
First Titan 4 to roll out early this month.
Australia and New Zealand urge polar-platform builders to equip the
platforms with "direct broadcast" systems [as opposed, presumably, to
systems that go via relay satellites] so that deep-southern-hemisphere
countries can get real-time data.
Shuttle schedule to slip due to SRB test failure. [AW&ST has a "new look"
this year. I do hope the quality of the what-failed-in-the-SRB diagram
is not typical of what the new look is going to be like; it is totally
incomprehensible, and I *know* roughly what the insides of an SRB look like!]
Test of Titan SRB successful, clearing way for first Titan 4 launch. This
one incorporated a number of post-Challenger mods, including joint heaters.
Romanenko and Alexandrov finally return to Earth Dec 29, with Romanenko
totalling 326 days aboard Mir. They were clearly fatigued towards the end,
with work-days shortened and days off provided frequently. [The Soviets
have stated elsewhere that six months is now their preferred stay time for
station crews, except for those involved in long-term medical experiments.]
The mysterious third member of the relief crew, who went up with the new
crew and down with R&A, was not a doctor as previously rumored but a test
pilot. The official explanation is that it was to give him some space
experience that could be helpful in Soviet shuttle work, but another factor
may have been that it put a fairly fresh "safety pilot" aboard the returning
Soyuz.
Romanenko is going to be studied intensively for biomedical effects of his
stay. Of note are calcium loss from the bones, which appears *not* to be
regained on return to Earth, and general deterioration of leg muscles and
cardiovascular system. Some Soviet work has suggested that the calcium
problem, clearly the worst, levels off after about seven months in space,
but nobody is sure yet.
The new Mir crew is expected to do an EVA soon to add another solar array
to Mir.
Congress boosts FY88 funding for Lightsat, the Advanced Launch System, and
the space-recovery program. ALS gets $150M instead of the $140M asked for,
with a minimum of $70M of it going to NASA for propulsion work.
Congress restricts space-station funding in FY88, notably requiring NASA
to report on economy measures possible. Congress comes down hard on bad
management, noting that less than 30% of FY88 station funds is going to
companies actually building hardware: "This trend is unacceptable."
Congress earmarks $25M for NASA to start leasing arrangements for Space
Industries's Industrial Space Facility as an interim pre-station measure,
sets aside $20M for microgravity payloads, urges another Spacelab materials
mission in 1991, orders use of $28M to buy two Deltas for Rosat and the
Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer, caps Advanced Communications Satellite
funding at $35M until NASA gets cost overruns under control, approves
$25M boost for Mars Observer (to be spent either on MO itself or on
planetary-observer spares), and provides $5M to be spent on long-stay
orbiter work.
USAF planning 11 military-astronaut exercises aboard shuttle to settle
the 25-year-old debate about the usefulness of manned spaceflight for
military purposes. (Soviet cosmonauts have already run such tests.)
Of particular note is a test to determine whether an astronaut with
"simple optics" [binoculars?] can observe a missile launch and track
it reasonably well; this has obvious implications for credibility of
missile-warning systems.
Gamma-Ray Observatory structure complete (picture), on schedule for
launch in 1990.
FCC continues to push a spectrum-allocation scheme for L-band that makes
it very difficult for a company to run an aeronautical-safety [traffic
control etc.] satellite system without belonging to the winning consortium
in the great general-mobile-communications competition. This is not
affecting the navsat people (notably Geostar, scheduled to put up its
first [working] payload piggyback on a comsat due for Ariane launch this
spring), because they were recently allocated their own separate bit of
spectrum. (Geostar and such do have some limited data-communications
capability, but this was considered a secondary issue.)
Ground facilities built in Luxembourg for its privately-owned Astra
TV satellite will be rented for use during post-launch maneuvering of
Japan's Superbird A and B comsats.
[And an interesting bit from Flight International: ex-cosmonaut Vladimir
Shatalov, now a Star City official, criticizes "lack of purposefulness
and consistency" in economically-useful aspects of the Soviet space program,
remote sensing aside. He is particularly critical of the slow pace of
microgravity research; read it and weep: "We carry out experiments, wait
six months to get them back, spend a year studying them, and only then do
we prepare the next experiment. At this pace, we won't set up orbital
workshops and factories even by the year 2000."]
[Another read-it-and-weep item from Flight International: China reports
that high-temperature superconductors made in orbit are more uniform than
those made on Earth. Note, they are not speculating on this, they are
saying they've *tried it already*.]
--
Those who do not understand Unix are | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
condemned to reinvent it, poorly. | {allegra,ihnp4,decvax,utai}!utzoo!henry