brwk@doc.ic.ac.uk (Bevis King) (08/24/89)
Last night I recieved the September 1989 issue of Spaceflight, among
a number of very interesting articles, including an interview with
a Russian Mir cosmanaut, was one on a NASA study into Moon and Mars
missions. One of the more interesting topics mentioned was a new
proposal for a very heavy lifter called shuttle-Z.
Apparently, a top configuration Shuttle-Z would be capable of
delivering some 160+ Metric Tonnes of payload into LEO. Basically,
the shuttle-Z appears to be a standard shuttle external tank, with
SRBs and a group of SSMEs attached to it. (The SSMEs attached to
the tank, completely seperate from the payload.) The idea of
the excercise being that this combination launches a payload from
the pad with the expectation that the booster/SRB/SSME combination
will fail to make orbit but that the payload contains it's own
propulsion units, which fully expend their own fuel, but thereby
achieve orbital insertion (LEO, of course), but with a considerably
bigger payload than currently possible.
The idea appeared to then be to use either another shuttle-Z run or
several shuttle-C runs to refuel the payload for its onward journey
to the Moon, Mars or beyond. A number of possible shuttle-Z vehicles
were discussed, starting with a "on-the-side" version with 3 SSMEs,
rising to a brute of a device with 8 SSMEs mounted in an in-line
configuration.
All in all, the idea sounded interesting, but who knows if it will
ever get built.
Another piece of news in Spaceflight was that the ESA had found
it so difficult to deal with American technology exchange restrictions
that they had signed a contract with the Russians to use wind-tunnels
and other equipment at Star City for the development of Hermes.
Also, apparently the Russians have told the committee organising
the Briton-In-Space excercise that the final two candidates selected
for training must both be of the same sex, so that preparations
can be made regardless of whether the primary or back-up candidate
is selected. Now, how's that for a political hot potato!
Hope these snippets are of interest to net.folks!
Regards, Bevis
Bevis King, Systems Programmer | Email: brwk@doc.ic.ac.uk
Dept of Computing, Imperial College | UUCP : ..!mcvax!ukc!icdoc!brwk
180 Queens Gate, London, SW7 2BZ, UK. | Voice: +44 1 589 5111 x 5085
"Never argue with a computer" ... Avon (Blake's 7)