[sci.space.shuttle] space news from June 13 AW&ST

henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) (08/09/88)

DoD and NASA approve plan to restore ammonium perchlorate production:
Pacific Engineering will build a new plant to replace the ruined one,
while Kerr-McGee will re-open its plant, expand it, and also build a
new plant.  Supply will meet demand by 1990, but things may get a bit
sticky until then.

Bad news time:  Mars Observer may slip another two years (to 1994 launch)
due to cost overruns and NASA's budget problems.

SDI looking at cancelling the Space-Based Interceptor project as too
expensive.  SDI's priorities are also shifting, toward sensors and a
treaty-compliant ground-based interceptor system, partly to make the
Soviets happier about strategic arms reduction.

Morton Thiokol drops out of the bidding for the advanced SRB, officially
to concentrate its efforts on the current SRBs.  NASA denies that M-T
dropped out because it had no chance of winning after Challenger.

Ariane 4 first flight delayed by minor electronics problems.  [Went fine.]

Shuttle rollout imminent.  [As you might expect, I'm cutting some of this
pretty short because it's old news.]

Trouble in the offing:  the oxidizer shortage is likely to wreak havoc
with the 1989-90 shuttle manifest.  A further problem is that orbiter
Columbia's updating has slipped farther and farther onto the back burner,
and it may be late 89 before it's flyable again.

First launch of the new version of Delta slips a month or so due to parts
shortages.  First launch now expected late Oct or early Nov.

Soyuz TM-5 launched to Mir June 7, carrying two Soviet and a Bulgarian
researcher.  [Flight International reports that after currently-agreed
foreign participation in Soyuz launches is completed, all further "guest
cosmonauts" will fly on a fare-paying basis -- no more freebies.]

Detailed space station negotiations with all three international partners
reported complete, agreements to be signed over the summer.

"Aerospace Forum" piece by Lowell Wood, urging "brilliant pebbles" approach
to missile interception.  The basic notion is simple:  since about 20 grams
at 10 kps will kill an ICBM, and there appear to be no fundamental barriers
to shrinking "smart rock" technology to this size, it should be possible to
orbit "brilliant pebble" interceptors in very large numbers at manageable
cost.  Many SDI problems get simpler if interceptors are available in near-
unlimited numbers.  But he's got a touching faith in our ability to solve
certain software problems, the ability of DoD and its contractors to cut
manufacturing costs the same way personal-computer manufacturers have, and
the extent to which all this technology will be so routine that it can be
given to the Soviets without any technology-transfer problems!

Letter from Robert Stefan:  "With the way many of our government programs
have been run lately, NASA might as well name the space station Icarus.
Naa, that's too optimistic -- Icarus at least got off the ground."

[And from the 28 May Flight International...]  Several European companies,
including British Aerospace, are investigating building a small low-orbit
launcher, LittLeo, capable of putting a few hundred kilos into low polar
orbit from the sounding-rocket base at Ando/ya [well, how would *you* type
a slashed o on an ASCII keyboard?] in Norway.  This would be an entirely
commercial venture, with minor help (but no money) from ESA and a policy
of using off-the-shelf hardware.  It could fly in 1992; development cost
is estimated at "tens of millions [of pounds]".  [Note, yet another bunch
who don't believe that you need a decade and a billion dollars to put
something into orbit.]
-- 
Intel CPUs are not defective,  |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
they just act that way.        | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu