henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) (11/09/86)
[This issue is a bit late for various reasons. In case new readers are
wondering, these summaries usually run about a month behind the cover date
on Aviation Week because (a) AW&ST takes a while to reach my PO box, (b) I
only empty the box about every 10 days, (c) it takes a while for me to get
around to typing this stuff in.]
10-member team of senior US space people (NASA, White House, DoD, State Dept)
visited Soviet Union secretly in mid-Sept to discuss resuming US-Soviet space
cooperation. Team head was JPL director Lew Allen.
Space Industries Inc and Westinghouse have agreed to form a partnership to
continue design and development of SII's Industrial Space Facility. This
will be a free-flying man-tended materials-processing facility. Current
role of Westinghouse is financial backer and possible customer. NASA is
looking at renting a substantial fraction of ISF.
When NASA asked about getting a Titan 34D to launch a TDRS, the USAF, which
would act as purchasing agent for dealings with Martin Marietta, informally
quoted over $150M. This is raising a lot of doubt about whether MM can make
commercial Titan competitive with Ariane -- Ariane 4 is currently going for
about $84M.
One of the two tape recorders aboard Spot 1 has failed, and attempts to get
it going again have been unsuccessful. This recorder was giving trouble
earlier. [Tape recorders are generally a problem area in such satellites.]
Small commercial space companies are facing major financial difficulties as
a result of the Shuttle stand-down and the resulting policy changes. They
are being largely ignored in the policy debates, and often cannot afford to
wait endlessly for formation and clarification of the rules.
Orbital Sciences Corp is most unhappy about NASA's proposal to delay the
launch of the Mars Observer by two years. OSC is supplying the TOS upper
stage for it; the slip would mean that NASA would either delay purchase
of the TOS, or buy on schedule and store it for a while. Scott Webster of
OSC: "It would be devastating if they slip the contract for two years.
I don't know how we'd survive. If they decide to buy later, I don't know
who they'd be buying it from..." He does say that OSC will survive if this
problem is resolved, unlike other firms. He attributes much of the trouble
to the ineptitude of the officials enacting policy: "It's not so much the
Challenger disaster, as the fact that Reagan's policies on commercial space
development have been ignored and distorted to apply to others who are not
commercial innovators." He is specifically referring to the current
commercial expendable-booster suppliers. "I've almost given up on the
government's doing anything that is of real practical help to those working
with real outside capital to do new things in space."
Some companies that had been hoping for space access are renewing attention
to ground-based processes as an interim measure. Microgravity Research
Associates, which plans to make high-grade semiconductor crystals in space,
recently came up with a process for making small high-grade GaAs crystals
on the ground. This will defer their need for spaceflight by making it
possible to satisfy some of their customers without it. They still want
to move into space. The ground-based process is good only to about 1 inch
in diameter, which is good enough for development but too small for
production use. Space-based production should permit 3-5 inches, which is
the right sort of size for the much larger production market.
Management shakeup expected in DoT's Office of Commercial Space Transportation.
Lack of technical expertise is seen as a major problem with the current setup.
Officials of expendable-booster companies remain suspicious of the vague
policies about who can fly on the shuttle. Not even NASA knows quite how to
interpret some areas of the policies.
L.J. Evans, former NASA deputy assistant administrator for commercial space,
slams NASA and other federal agencies for failing to do much about the
commercial-space policies unveiled in 1984. In particular, he says NASA is
still incapable of making prompt decisions on cooperative agreements with
industry, with the result that such agreements are very expensive and
difficult to arrange.
Robert Brumley, Commerce Dept deputy general counsel, disagrees with Evans
about the desirability of pursuing the 1984 policies, but agrees that NASA
is botching the commercial-space aspect of its duties. He says, essentially,
that NASA wants to remain the boss and doesn't want independent commercial
activity.
American Rocket Co. unveils a new expendable design, intended for tests in
early 1988. It will be a four-stage design using 19 nearly-identical hybrid
rocket engines. The first stage is 12 engines in a ring around the common
oxidizer tank, whose base is used as a plug nozzle. The remaining stages
are seven cylindrical sections in a hexagonal layout; four of them are the
second stage, the remaining outer two are the third, and the central one
is the fourth. It will launch 4000 lbs into LEO, 3000 lbs to polar LEO.
The payload fairing is 90 in. dia with a 9 ft cylindrical section and some
taper fore and aft. Price will be $5-8M.
General Dynamics approves purchase of load-lead items to restart Atlas-
Centaur production. No firm orders yet.
Hughes asks NASA for a cooperative agreement on using Shuttle external-tank
tooling for building the Jarvis booster, and for prices on a couple of dozen
Saturn engines in storage at Marshall. One problem is that the tank tooling
belongs to NASA but the facility housing it belongs to Martin Marietta,
which isn't likely to be happy about Hughes using it to build a competitor
for MM's commercial Titan.
Western Union signs letter of intent to launch Westar 6S on the Chinese
Long March 3 booster in March 1988. Formal launch agreement by December.
Westar 6S is the replacement for Westar 6, which was one of the victims of
PAM malfunctions retrieved by Shuttle mission 51A. Western Union has not
yet made a deposit to reserve a launch slot, and is still talking with the
Chinese about things like reflight rights in the event of a launch failure.
Terasat Inc, which had booked Long March 3 launches for the two satellites
retrieved by 51A, has hit a snag. Palapa B2 was bought by Sattel Tech-
nologies before Terasat could complete financing, and Westar 6 has now been
sold to Johnson Geneva (USA) Ltd. JG is a high-technology consultant to
developing nations; it and Pan Am Commercial Services are putting together
a joint venture to sell comsat services to Pacific-rim island nations.
NASA agrees to a new division of work between Johnson and Marshall to
appease Congress. It actually doesn't change things much, but the wording
is different. The relationships between the two centers and their contractors
remain complicated and potentially troublesome.
[Editorial of the week: The only reason the Johnson/Marshall business is
causing so much fuss is that Marshall -- historically NASA's launch-vehicle
development team -- is at loose ends now. Clearly the Space Station should
be 100% Johnson, and Marshall should be doing launch-vehicle development
instead. An obvious job for Marshall would be replacing the SRBs with
liquid-fuel boosters, a desirable change for many reasons. Don't hold
your breath waiting for it to be funded, though. -- HS]
--
Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
{allegra,ihnp4,decvax,pyramid}!utzoo!henry