[sci.space.shuttle] space news from Nov 28 AW&ST

henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) (12/19/88)

McDonnell-Douglas is selling its shuttle-borne biochemical electrophoresis
equipment to NASA, for a pittance.

Pratt&Whitney gears up its West Palm Beach plant for long-term volume
production of RL-10 engines for the Centaur upper stage (used by both
Atlas and the bigger Titan configurations).

The protein-crystal growth experiment aboard Discovery came up with
bigger and better crystals than yet produced on Earth.  Several more
drug companies have joined the sponsoring consortium for the next
flight, on STS-29 in Feb.

Analysts suggest that the Nov 15 flight of Buran may have been the third
launch attempt, not the second.

Debate said to be underway within USSR on usefulness of the Soviet shuttle
and its impact on other programs.  Sagdeev, in particular, is skeptical.

NASA FY90 budget down about $1G from original request.  It's still a
large increase over FY89, but the cuts will constrain things enough that
NASA plans to appeal them.

GAO budget-deficit study incidentally criticizes NASA for lack of
long-term planning, underestimates of costs of major projects, lack
of life-cycle planning (i.e. cutting startup costs at expense of
operating costs), and the costly habit of delaying launches to "save"
money.

The airlock module to go up to Mir in spring (probably) will contain a
Soviet MMU for easier maneuvering during spacewalks.

It is now reported that each of the two add-on modules scheduled to go
up to Mir in 1989 will be roughly the size of the existing Mir complex!

Reagan signs launch-insurance bill giving government a share of third-
party liability for US commercial launches [some had expected him to
veto it -- he wanted liability limits instead], and the 1989 NASA
authorization bill [another slight surprise, since it establishes the
National Space Council that he opposed].

Hawaii starts action on master plan and environmental-impact statement
for a commercial spaceport at Palima Point or Kahilipali Point.

Solar-science community to ask NASA for another Solar Max rescue mission!
Solar Max will reenter in under two years, and may be uncontrollable as
early as Jan 1990.  Even optimistic estimates put reentry before June 1990
if the satellite is maintained in its current attitude, which keeps its
instruments pointed at the Sun but also puts the satellite broadside-on
to air drag about half the time.  A low-drag attitude is possible but
would greatly reduce scientific data return.  An urgent request has been
made for a shuttle mission to reboost Solar Max to a higher orbit, and
incidentally do a number of repairs that would improve its usefulness.
(In particular, Solar Max's high-gain antenna gimbal is jammed, making
it largely impractical to use the TDRS system for relaying Solar Max
data, and this will become increasingly important as TDRS takes over
other relaying jobs and ground stations are closed as a result.)  Action
is needed soon if the necessary hardware is to be ready in time; there
has been no decision yet.

Article on recent scientific results from Solar Max; interesting but
nothing remarkable.

Article on Jean-Loup Chretien's planned activities aboard Mir; nothing
remarkable.

NASA accelerating studies to give the new administration the option of
initiating work on a lunar base or Mars mission.  Bush will get initial
results in the next year or two, followed by formal NASA recommendations
in 1991.  [A mistake -- the sooner the better.  Bush's best chance to
get something like that past Congress is right at the start.  Of course,
NASA may be aiming at Bush's hypothetical second term...]  Bush himself
is now saying "...the logical order is first the Moon, then -- perhaps
Mars".  Major studies will aim at three ideas:  an evolving lunar base,
a streamlined [translation:  one-shot] Mars mission that could be mounted
early in the next century, and a possible Phobos mission.

The lunar-base studies will look at the commercial potential of such a
base, notably the potential for mining Helium 3 from the lunar regolith
for export to Earth as a fusion fuel.  Also of major interest is producing
liquid oxygen from lunar soil to cut costs of a possible Mars mission.
The Moon base is considered to involve the fewest unknowns, since the
Apollo landings eliminated most of them, and is favored as an intermediate
step even if Mars is considered the long-term objective.

The accelerated Mars mission would have a crew of 3 and would make limited
use of in-orbit assembly (it would not require an assembly base in orbit).
The spacecraft would not provide artificial gravity, and would use
aerobraking and fast orbits to do the whole mission in 14 months, including
20 days on the surface.  This would be a scaled-down version of an earlier
concept, which planned to launch an unmanned cargo transport in 2005 (with
lander, surface equipment, and Earth-return fuel), followed by a manned
ship carrying eight astronauts in a high-speed trajectory to reach Mars
in eight months (with a similar orbit used for return).

A new idea that is attracting attention is a manned mission to Phobos.
This could be done earlier than a Mars landing, would develop most of
the needed capabilities, could establish a useful staging base, and
would be of major scientific interest in its own right.  It could be
launched in 2001, using an unmanned cargo vehicle [presumably using
an economy orbit] to carry exploration hardware and return fuel to
Mars orbit, followed by a manned ship using a fast trajectory (nine
months).  The two would rendezvous at Mars.  Of the crew of four,
two would make a Phobos landing, while the other two control robot
activity (including a sample-return mission) on the Martian surface.
This again would be a 14-month mission with a Mars-orbit stay of 20 days.

USAF assumes control of Launch Complex 17 at the Cape, formerly NASA's
launch facility for Delta.

Work is underway to upgrade and automate the remote tracking stations
that form a major part of the USAF satellite-control network.

IKI, the Soviet space-research institute, is now offering its image-
processing system commercially (the hardware is essentially a PC clone
with fancy video gear).

"Aerospace Forum" piece by John Yardley (project engineer for Mercury,
technical director for Gemini, now president of McDonnell Douglas)
pushing commitment to a "Foundation Program" for the space program.
Nothing much new [as one might expect from somebody who expects to
profit heavily from the status quo].

[There will now be an interruption in the flow of these summaries while
I spend three weeks in Australia.  Back mid-January.  I may possibly get
the Dec 5 summary done before I go, but don't bet on it.]
-- 
"God willing, we will return." |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
-Eugene Cernan, the Moon, 1972 | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu

dietz@cs.rochester.edu (Paul Dietz) (12/21/88)

Henry Spencer writes:

> McDonnell-Douglas is selling its shuttle-borne biochemical electrophoresis
> equipment to NASA, for a pittance.

I'm not surprised this has happened.  I've read that McD-D considered
CFE because, among other reasons, they thought no competing process
could be developed in 5 years (this more than 5 years ago).

Recall that continuous flow electrophoresis is a process where a stream
of protein mixture is injected into a slab of flowing buffer fluid.  An
electric field applied across the slab causes proteins to migrate
laterally at a rate dependent on their charge and size.  At the other
end of the cell the stream has been separated and is collected in a series
of outlets.

Microgravity is supposed to help this process, for a number of reasons:

  - Most important, the protein mixture can be made to have a higher
    density than the buffer fluid.  In gravity, it slumps and disrupts the
    flow.  This increases throughput by a factor of 100.

  - Higher electric fields and thicker cells can be used in microgravity,
    because heating due to ionic currents does not cause convection.  This
    increases the throughput by another factor of 5 to 10.

However, I don't understand why you can't cleverly avoid these
problems in gravity.  Naively, I would have thought that you could
avoid thermal convection by running the equipment horizontally, and
cooling it on the bottom.  The difference in density between the
protein mixture and the buffer fluid could be addressed by making the
buffer fluid more dense (for example, by mixing in a carrier protein
that can be easily separated afterwards), or by setting up a vertical
density gradient.

> The protein-crystal growth experiment aboard Discovery came up with
> bigger and better crystals than yet produced on Earth.  Several more
> drug companies have joined the sponsoring consortium for the next
> flight, on STS-29 in Feb.

I previously was skeptical of this application, but I was wrong, I
think. I've read that drug companies are willing to spend $100-200K
for good crystals of particular proteins, and drug company R&D budgets
are in the billions of dollars.  If microgravity really does let one
make protein crystals that give better diffraction paterns, launch
costs would be less important than flexibility in scheduling and short
turnaround time.  Clearly a niche for a private sector launcher.

	Paul F. Dietz
	dietz@cs.rochester.edu