henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) (01/04/91)
Langley engineers pleased: Atlantis's tires showed neither a spin-up gouge nor excessive wear after the KSC landing Nov 20. The changes to the runway surface, meant specifically to reduce tire damage, appear to have been successful. Ames has been "reorganized", with Kenneth J. Szalai of Dryden named deputy director of Ames for Dryden. This restores a good deal of Dryden's original autonomy, lost after it was merged with Ames in 1981 to save money. The change was made to "improve Dryden's flight research effectiveness". [Rumor hath it that fairly high levels within NASA have been Seriously Unhappy with Ames's management of Dryden for some time, and problems with shuttle processing after landing were the last straw.] Military weather satellite launched by Atlas from Vandenberg. Noteworthy in that it was the first Atlas launch supervised by USAF Space Command, rather than by Systems Command. Landsat 6 launch slips another six months, to May 1992. Eosat (the operator) blames slow delivery of rad-hardened electronic parts. GE (the builder) declines to comment on the slip, but admits problems in getting delivery of the parts. Must Be A Full Moon Dept: SDI proposes "Brilliant Eyes", a large fleet of small missile warning/tracking satellites, as a derivative of Brilliant Pebbles. Only 14 months after original contract signing [!], McDonnell Douglas completes negotiations with NASA over three Delta launches of science payloads within the next five years. Columbia and Astro in flight, with both astronauts and engineers sweating over hardware problems. First the star trackers had software problems, delaying telescope activation to day three. Then, one by one, both of of the Dedicated Display Unit computers failed with "a smoky smell". Astro now running mostly on manual control by the astronauts, with fair success, at the price of giving the astronauts less opportunity to interact usefully with the observations. NASA and USAF squabble about cloud-cover safety rules late in Columbia countdown. Dan Brandenstein, flying abort patterns in the shuttle training aircraft, reported acceptable visibility from up top, but USAF range-safety people reported clear view from the ground only up to 7000ft, against rules requiring 8000. (The range-safety issue is that at low altitude, tracking radar does not give enough information to make a sufficiently quick decision on destroying the SRBs after an accident.) The dispute was resolved by putting a range-safety officer into a helicopter above the cloud deck; this worked, but may not be acceptable as a routine solution to such problems. Busiest week of manned spaceflight yet, as in addition to seven people aboard Columbia, the Soviets launch a Soyuz with two cosmonauts and the Japanese journalist to Mir. Mir was seen from Columbia, although an attempt to make shortwave radio contact did not succeed. Toyohiro Akiyama, the commercial cosmonaut, doing well despite problems with spacesickness. Tokyo Broadcasting System is cautiously pleased with the results, but is unhappy about all the add-on charges the Soviets tried to impose on top of the $12M basic price; negotiations on some of the details will continue after the flight. The basic problem seems to be that Glavkosmos is no longer in overall control of commercial contracts the way it used to be, and various other groups in the USSR tried to pad the bill. "[We] don't think they realize what importance it is to have a good image over the long term, especially when you enter the commercial business..." However, TBS says it's generally happy with the chance to fly the mission. "Although we have close ties with the US, we never would have been able to work out such a flight with NASA. Even if we wanted to arrange to have an experiment fly on the NASA shuttle without a Japanese astronaut, it would take years, and we'd have to go through all kinds of red tape." Soviets confirm that Salyut 7 will make an uncontrolled reentry early in 1991. It has been dormant since June 1986, and is no longer controllable. Apparently the Soviets have rejected doing a repair mission like the one in 1985. Soviets say reentry expected in January; USAF expects February. Soviets plan another Mir hatch-repair spacewalk. The attempt to replace the hinge pin during the Oct 30 repair didn't work, because the pin is bent. The revised plan is to replace the whole hinge. The Chinese feel that the Long March 2E gives them a sufficiently large booster to consider manned spaceflight [at 9 tons to low orbit, I should hope so!] and is studying the possibility of a four-man capsule. Soviets planning next Buran flight, using the second orbiter, now being checked out at Baikonur. The flight will be unmanned. It will start with a docking to Mir, where the cosmonauts will run tests for two days. Then the orbiter will separate from Mir and dock with the manned Soyuz carrying the next Mir crew, to demonstrate rescue techniques. After another two days, the orbiter will return to Earth unmanned, while the Soyuz goes on to Mir. Apparently the Soviets still can't do an automatic docking except on Mir's axis: the orbiter will dock to the docking ball on the Kristall module, but the module will have to be moved temporarily to the axial position on Mir's own docking ball for this to be done. Mission set for late 1991. NASA signs $184M deal with Spacehab for 2/3 of their middeck-expansion module's capacity on its first six shuttle flights. This capacity will be made available to researchers through NASA's commercial-programs office. Only about 8 of the orbiter's 50 lockers are available for secondary payloads, while Spacehab can hold up to 71 more (although its usual load will be about 50). Spacehab has an agreement with NASA covering eight launches, and intends to keep on flying the module, offering to process and fly payloads with as little [!] as 18 months lead time. The NASA contract is a major boost but is not considered enough to bring Spacehab into the black by itself. Spacehab's NASA contract had been expected for months, but was stalled over "political risk", i.e. the possibility that NASA might simply renege on its promises, as has happened before. Spacehab could buy insurance against other forms of problem, e.g. another shuttle launch hiatus, but this was a sticky one. Spacehab's backers wanted to be covered, and NASA balked at paying for it. In the end, it proved possible to get commercial insurance, with NASA paying part of the cost. This is felt to be an unusual case, given perceived strong support from both NASA and Congress, and the insurers warn that political-risk insurance is not going to be routinely available. Photos of separation test of the biggest Titan IV payload fairing, 86ft long and roughly duplicating the dimensions of the shuttle payload bay. This test and another later this month will clear the fairing for flight. The test fairing is reasonably representative, although in the near term most of the flight fairings will be custom-built to some extent, as use with payloads built for the shuttle has turned out to require structural modifications, access doors, and acoustic insulation (to approximate the more benign shuttle launch conditions) in various combinations for various payloads. Inmarsat picks GE to build at least 4 and up to 9 Inmarsat 3s, for launch starting in 1994. The 3 will include dynamic reshuffling of power and frequency between spot beams and broad beams, an L-band-to-L-band package to permit direct links from one customer to another (such links currently have to go via a ground station), and a Navstar/Glonass-like navsat package to fill coverage gaps in the two military navsat systems and provide continuous reporting of their accuracy (which is important to users like aviation who want to know at once when something goes wrong). France decides to abandon the idea of building follow-ons to the TDF-1 and -2 high-power broadcast satellites, opting instead for Eutelsat's proposed network of smaller satellites. The high-power birds are felt to have been rendered obsolete by improvements in receivers. Letter clarifying the reasons behind the drop in price for Landsat data more than two years old: Eosat has relinquished its exclusive marketing rights on such data, making it possible for the US government to resume at-cost distribution of it. -- "The average pointer, statistically, |Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology points somewhere in X." -Hugh Redelmeier| henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry
mhoey@ccvax.ucd.ie (01/08/91)
In article <1991Jan4.031224.18787@zoo.toronto.edu>, henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes: > Langley engineers pleased: Atlantis's tires showed neither a spin-up gouge > nor excessive wear after the KSC landing Nov 20. The changes to the runway > surface, meant specifically to reduce tire damage, appear to have been > successful. I thought about this for a while (tire damage on landing) the last time it was mentioned, but then forgot about it - the thing that sprang to mind at the time was: why not spin-up the tires (whoops - american spelling) BEFORE landing - maybe by using ducts attached to the wheels to harness the 230mph.ish winds (230mph I think ?) Neil Conway Physics Dept. Univ. Coll. Dublin Ireland MHOEY@CCVAX.UCD.IE
henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) (01/10/91)
In article <16769.2789dda7@ccvax.ucd.ie> mhoey@ccvax.ucd.ie writes: >> Langley engineers pleased: Atlantis's tires showed neither a spin-up gouge >> nor excessive wear after the KSC landing Nov 20... > > why not spin-up the tires (whoops - american spelling) BEFORE landing ... I suspect the answer is "it's not worth the trouble", now that the problems with the KSC runway have apparently been resolved. -- If the Space Shuttle was the answer, | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology what was the question? | henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry