henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) (02/02/88)
Cover: image of the Antarctic ozone hole from weather-satellite data.
KH11 spysat imaged the second Energia on its pad earlier in fall. It was
later removed; presumably this was for tests of some kind. Next launch
thought to be set for early 88.
Italy is interested in taking part in the space station even if ESA as a
whole does not. Italy is interested in the logistics module, and also in
use of tethers to lower reentry vehicles into a reentry trajectory. [Italy
is cosponsor of the shuttle tethered-satellite experiment.]
USSR proposes that US Mars Observer, to launch in 1992, be modified to act
as a relay satellite for data from the Soviet/French balloon probes. This
would considerably increase the number of images that could be returned, by
adding another relay satellite (the Soviet orbiters not being able to
provide 100% coverage). Mars Observer will be finishing its primary mission
at about the time the balloons arrive. It would need a receiver for the
balloons' signals, but otherwise there is little cost involved. White
House and NASA seem to be taking the idea quite seriously.
Soviets are planning a radarsat mission to Mars to fill the hole between
the Phobos missions (launch 1988) and the balloon missions (launch 1994).
Radar imaging would add information about surface composition and the
possible presence of water.
Launch of U of Chicago's cosmic ray experiment (flown on Spacelab 2 in 85)
to Mir has been discussed informally.
Booster and spacecraft being readied for the Mir crew rotation.
Aussat studying four proposals for Australia's next comsats. This is one
of the two major 1988 satellite buys, the other being the Intelsat 7
contract, and Aussat and Intelsat are interested in the possibility of
getting a quantity discount by choosing the same supplier. Australians
have been offered launchers including Long March 3, Ariane, and US
expendables. No bidder has openly said the word "Proton", but the Aussies
say they would be interested, and it is rumored that at least one US (!)
bidder will offer a Proton option. The US marketing agents for Proton
report having responded to several US requests for information on Proton
launches for Aussat.
Article on why the space station contracts went where they did, nothing
very interesting.
NASA's budget cut seriously, including major space-station cuts. First
station operations will probably slip a year, to 95-96. Shuttle recovery
program is also hurting, and Magellan's launch may be delayed.
Large article on SDI sounding-rocket experiment aimed at investigating
operation of high-powered electrical equipment in space. It flew Dec 13,
and pretty much completely worked. Another is planned for about a year
from now, carrying more realistic hardware. Of note [as a contrast to
some agencies we could name] is that this experiment took less than a year
to go from approval to launch.
Rocketdyne to build two ground-demonstration units of an isotope-heated
turbogenerator power system, aimed at providing several kW for military
satellites. Launch safety remains a concern.
SDIO considers advancing the launch date for its Starlab laser-pointing
experiment by swapping it with another military shuttle mission.
ESA approves [finally] its 1988 mandatory budget. [This is ESA's core
budget, requiring unanimous approval, that covers general operating
expenses, not major projects.]
KSC readiness for 1988 shuttle operations is being jeopardized by hiring
restrictions and personnel shortages, according to KSC director.
Japan Air Lines and Inmarsat demonstrate FAX transmissions between an
airborne 747 and ground stations, via Inmarsat satellites.
NASA decides to send a human inspector into the central cavity of stacked
SRBs; a fiber-optic instrument for joint inspection is badly behind
schedule. The inspector will be suspended by crane, using a breathing
mask and a lamp. Tests underway now. Morton Thiokol says this is not
overly hazardous, and human entry into horizontal booster segments is
routine at both M-T and KSC already. This is the first use of human
inspectors inside already-stacked boosters. Late delivery of support
equipment is considered a potentially serious schedule problem.
KSC managers express concern that manpower is not adequate to process
three orbiters simultaneously, once launches get underway again.
NASA Langley is testing space-shuttle landing gear, aiming at less tire
wear and better steering for landings at KSC. The KSC runway is very
rough, for good traction, and is quite hard on tires. Langley says that
smoothing the touchdown area somewhat would greatly reduce tire damage
without hurting wet-weather handling.
[Saving the Space Station, Part 2.
In the first installment of this editorial, I argued that we need a space
station, but that the program is in desperate trouble and needs drastic
changes to survive. Its missions should be support of a biomedical lab,
small hands-on experiments, satellite assembly, and man-tending of free-
flying platforms to support all the things that want occasional human
attention but don't want the noisy, dirty environment of a manned station.
(Note that this is not quite the same list of missions NASA has now.)
So, what sort of drastic changes am I talking about?
Well, first, foremost, and almost solely: Dump The Luxuries. The station
is in deep financial trouble and can no longer afford to fund everybody's
pet project. It is time to stick to building a useful space station, and
dispense with the pork barrel, the corporate welfare programs, and the
bureaucratic empire-building.
A major corollary of this, important enough to be mentioned in its own
right, is: Use Existing Hardware. One reason why the station is so
scandalously expensive is that it's developing nearly everything from
scratch. This has to stop; new development should focus on the (few)
things which *cannot* be bought off the shelf.
On to specifics.
The first Luxury which has to go is all the "high technology" swill.
The station's budget for automation and robotics development, in
particular, should be ZERO. There have been nine space stations flown
to date (eight by the USSR), most of them quite successful, none of them
with any significant use of leading-edge automation or robotics. The
same applies more generally to high technology: the only fundamental
defect of Skylab -- built with early-60's technology -- was the lack of
any way to resupply it in orbit. (It had other flaws, but nothing that
could not have been cured easily at the time with 5% higher funding and
a longer-range outlook.) The station cannot afford to develop technology
it does not need, and that means it should do virtually no technology
development.
Next in the list of Luxuries is the Polar Platform. This has nothing,
absolutely nothing, to do with the space station, and should be funded
on its own merits or not at all. (NRC agrees with me, by the way.)
And speaking of Platforms, the Co-Orbiting Platform needs, at the very
least, a long hard look. I don't recall the details of the current plans
for it, but I strongly suspect it falls under the same heading as the
Polar Platform.
But I did say I wanted co-orbiting platforms, didn't I? Yes, but not of
that sort. The station needs one major shared platform for multiple
small experiments, and a handful of modest single-experiment platforms
for things that are especially touchy or that have outgrown the shared
platform. Neither of these needs to be developed from scratch. SII's
Industrial Space Facility is perfect for the shared platform, and there
have been several proposals for small platforms that would do for the
other role. NASA's role in these projects should be limited to ensuring
compatibility and guaranteeing startup customers; there is no need for
major NASA funding for hardware that private industry is perfectly willing
to finance itself.
That leaves us with the station proper. The most obvious essential is
the pressurized modules. Can we buy existing hardware there? Damn right.
ESA would be overjoyed to see a straight commercial order for half a dozen
Spacelab "long modules"; they have long felt that they got thoroughly
shafted on the original Spacelab deal, and this would go a long way toward
fixing that. It would be worth seeing if the "long module" could be
stretched into an "extra-long module" cheaply, but this is not vital.
Yes, this means that agreement with the Europeans is essential and that
it would not be even theoretically possible for NASA to "go it alone if
necessary"; the current unwillingness to depend on supposed "partners"
is another Luxury, as are the parochial US demands that are obstructing
agreement with ESA.
The hardware to connect the modules is probably going to have to be built
from scratch. This means that it should be kept as simple as possible.
If the station needs more internal volume, we add more modules and more
connectors, rather than making the existing ones fatter. (Note that this
is the opposite of what NASA is doing, and the budget reflects it.) The
station should be planned around adding a shuttle external tank (or more
than one!) as the long-term solution to volume problems.
The Spacelab modules do need external support equipment to provide things
like power and life support, as do the currently-planned station modules.
In the current plan, this support equipment is partly built in and partly
the responsibility of a "logistics module" which is periodically replaced.
A reasonable plan. The built-in stuff will need some development, as will
the other "furnishings" of the pressurized modules; much of it can be done
with commercially-available hardware, though. As I recall, Japan originally
wanted to do the logistics module. Fine, let them; we need that much more
badly than we need Yet Another Laboratory Module, which is what they're doing
in the current plan. See above comments on international cooperation.
Given that the station I envision is *not* a mounting point for major
experiments, the need for the big truss needs to be re-assessed. If it
remains necessary, it's time to get some construction firms bidding.
If they are allowed to make it a bit heavier than an aerospace contractor
would, they can do it FAR more cheaply. The station is not like the
shuttle: every kilo of dead weight in either is that much less payload
when it's launched, but the station only needs to be launched ONCE. We
are far better off accepting slightly higher launch costs to keep the
development costs down.
Yes, the station needs reboosting periodically, but a heavier station
will need that less often, so to a first approximation the weight of the
station cancels out when computing station-keeping costs. In fact the
heavier station probably comes out ahead when indirect costs [e.g.
experiments disrupted by reboost acceleration] are figured in.
Speaking of reboosting... rather than developing all-new hardware for
the station, the simplest way to handle this is to carefully put the
logistics module at the center of gravity and include an off-the-shelf
liquid-fuel engine and tankage in it. Since the logistics module gets
replaced with a new one regularly anyway, and that is the logical time
for a reboost (this puts the replenishment visits at the low point of
the station's path, which is just right for maximizing shuttle payload),
this eliminates any need to mess with in-space refuelling and so forth.
This is *not* ideal and we should pursue better systems, but it will get
the station operational with minimum delay and cost, which is the major
requirement right now.
The station needs power. Fortunately there are several commercially-
available large solar arrays. Buy a dozen of whichever looks best.
It will be cheaper and quicker than building a new design from scratch.
Solar-dynamic power is an excellent idea, LATER. The nonsense of running
the power at 20 kHz, requiring *everything* to be developed from scratch,
is a Luxury of the stupidest kind and should be discarded at once. Yes,
higher frequencies mean lighter power equipment, which is why aircraft power
systems run at 400 Hz rather than 50 or 60 like land-based power. Off-the-
shelf aircraft hardware will do just fine for most of the station's needs;
the extra benefits of 20 kHz cannot possibly pay for themselves.
Some other support systems, like cooling, probably will need some new
development. Again the emphasis should be on simplicity and rapid
availability rather than on optimal design and minimal weight, and
aerospace contractors should be avoided whenever possible -- those people
couldn't sell you a pencil for less than $10 if they tried, especially
with NASA "helping".
Although we should be putting some effort into things like lightweight
spacesuits for easier EVA, for the moment we will need remote manipulator
arms of some sort. This is also said to be the easiest way to dock the
shuttle to the station; could be. Fortunately, reasonably suitable arms
are available off the shelf (well, almost...) from Spar Aerospace, which
builds them for the shuttle. There is no reason to mess around with a
major redesign. As for the mobile base for them, dare I suggest that it's
better to just buy half a dozen arms and put them in all the likely places?
Finally, we have to launch the thing. At least some of the stuff will have
to go up on the shuttle, since it's the only man-rated launch system we've
got handy (unless we take the Soviets up on Commercial Soyuz!!). It sure
would be nice to use a heavylift booster for the big things, though. I
know how to make one available, too. Just ask Boeing/Hughes to quote a
price for twenty Jarvis launches spread over, say, ten years. The station
won't need all of them, of course, but does anyone suggest that we can't
find uses for the rest? And the nice part of it is that Boeing and Hughes
are willing to do the development with their own money, provided they're
sure of having customers. The one thing better than getting a heavylift
booster is getting it FREE -- and we can.
Intelligently done, the above program would cut station costs vastly, and
probably shave some time off the schedule too. [These are not unrelated;
doing something sooner is usually *cheaper* these days.] Do I think there
is any chance of it happening? No way, no hope, no chance. Remember how
Congress squealed when NASA proposed some minor rearrangements in station
responsibilities within the US? How do you think they would react to some
of the above suggestions right off the bat, never mind after the lobbyists
got going?
My prediction? I give the space station less than a 50-50 chance, the way
things are going. And I don't see any way to save it.]
--
Those who do not understand Unix are | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
condemned to reinvent it, poorly. | {allegra,ihnp4,decvax,utai}!utzoo!henry