henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) (07/25/88)
[The cover story this month is Pegasus, which I reported on earlier.] Japan declines to bid on launch services for Intelsat 7 series, citing prior commitments for the H-2 launcher in 1992-3. Congress attempts to trim the fast at NASA HQ a bit; HQ has had 28% staff growth in the last five years. DoC report on international commercial space says commercial projects face major obstacles, notably inhospitable government policy and actions. It says there is definite potential for materials work and a definite need for US facilities for it. Report notes that the Soviets are giving this priority, with over 1500 experiments done to date and probably a total of 2500 by 1991; the US total is under 100 and this won't increase significantly in the next few years. US/Soviet space agreement mumbles about improving cooperation, the major tangible signs being the expected flight of instruments on the other side's satellites. The US ozone mapper will fly on a Meteor metsat, and the Soviet radio-relay system will fly on Mars Observer. Soviet experiments will probably fly on the SLS-1 Spacelab Life Sciences mission, set to go up in early 1990, and probably also SLS-2 in mid-91. Pictures of the Soviet launch facilities at Baikonur Cosmodrome, in the wake of the US press visit. The Soviets have *three* launch pads for Energia already, over and above leftover pads from their old big-booster project. There is an isolated pad that was used for the first test flight, and a complex that includes at least two more (one still being built). At least one old-big-booster pad may be converted for Energia as well. [Lest we forget, KSC had a grand total of two Saturn V pads, with provision for a total of four. (If you've ever wondered why there's a seemingly- purposeless bend in the crawlerway to pad 39B, that's where the route to the hypothetical pads 39C and 39D would have branched off.)] The space station is in deep trouble in Congress, with Proxmire in particular gunning for it. Some are interpreting Fletcher's threat to cancel the space station if it's not adequately funded as a veiled hint that that's where cuts should be made if needed. So far the station has survived, at the expense of major cuts to CSTI, Pathfinder, NASA expendables, and the Commercially Developed Space Facility. [Those are lousy places for cuts.] US and European commercial-launch people are pressuring governments to outlaw use of Long March for satellites built in US or Europe. One reason for the sudden fuss is that Australia is ordering satellites for in-orbit delivery and has indicated that it likes the idea of using Long March. The official reason for the pressure is the detrimental effects on the free-world launch industry of government-subsidized competition. [Isn't it wonderful when the interests of the free world happen to coincide so neatly with getting rid of a low-cost competitor?] NASA to run major launch simulation June 7, to exercise entire launch team and all facilities. Final preparations underway for the first Ariane 4 launch. [Went fine.] Large story on Magellan, slated to go up next spring, the first US planetary mission in 11 years. It will be the first interplanetary launch from the shuttle. Magellan is also the first of the Solar System Exploration Committee's recommended projects; originally it was the first of four projects, carefully timed to meet launch windows, to do a lot of useful science at a modest and essentially constant funding level of FY84$300M/yr. The plan hasn't worked out very well so far. Even Magellan is still at risk, because it slips 25 months if it misses its May launch window. It is currently scheduled for STS-30 on April 28, right at the beginning of the window, but STS-29 may trade places with STS-30 if shuttle timing slips [as it has]. STS-29 is another TDRS, which NASA would probably be happy to postpone to get Magellan off on time. Magellan is a dedicated radar satellite, with essentially no other science, although this still involves several different experiments. The primary mission is synthetic-aperture radar mapping of 90% of the planet to less than 500m resolution. (An extended mission will probably get the leftover 10%; the omission is due to Venus and the Sun getting in the way of data return, and viewing-angle problems at the South Pole.) There is also a wide-beam altimeter for absolute surface elevation (the extended mission may include some stereo mapping work for more precise elevations), a passive radiometer using only the radar's receiver for information about surface temperature and emissivity, a radar-occultation experiment to measure properties of the atmosphere, and a gravity-mapping experiment using Earth-based radar interferometry to measure Magellan's orbit very precisely. The gravity-mapping work will be done in the extended mission only, since it requires transmission from the low part of the orbit, and in the primary mission that period is dedicated to mapping. The primary mission should take about 8 months, and there should be enough propellant left for 3-4 years of extended mission. The rest of the SSEC's plan is in serious trouble. The four get-things- going-again missions were Magellan, Mars Observer, Comet Rendezvous Asteroid Flyby (CRAF), and Cassini (Saturn orbiter, Titan probe). "Celestial mechanics are now beginning to catch up with us. When we published the SSEC plan back in 1982, it looked like there were an awful lot of opportunities to get off to comets and to Saturn and Titan. But six years later a lot of opportunities are behind us now, and in the case of Saturn in particular, you really have to use a Jupiter flyby to get there in a reasonable amount of time. The last chance to do that is going to be launches in 1996 and 1997, and if we don't get ahead and get started now two things will happen -- one is that the Europeans [who want to build the Titan probe] will probably go off somewhere else, and the second thing is that Jupiter will go off and be in the wrong place." NASA is trying to get Cassini and CRAF approved as a package in FY90. They are also hoping to get a Titan 4 in 1991 as a planetary backup -- first as a May 1991 backup for Galileo's late 1989 launch, then (if Galileo is off on schedule) as a backup for Ulysses's late-90 launch, and then, if not needed for either backup role, as prime launcher for CRAF. NASA says that future deep-space missions definitely will not use the shuttle, since shuttle safety politics and budget problems make launch dates too uncertain. NASA would like a bigger launcher than Titan 4, though, and the shuttle will probably continue to be used for inner-solar-system missions with more frequent launch windows. NASA is also partly re-introducing the idea of backup spacecraft. "We had adopted too risky a policy given the number of failures that suddenly started popping up and a greater sense of realism that started pervading our thinking." The current idea is to build and launch only one, but to be prepared with spare parts to launch another one in the next window. [Still not as good as real backups, especially given funding problems. People make much of there having been two Vikings and two Voyagers, for example, but they miss the fact that there were actually *three* of each: two that *flew* and one spare. Sigh; for both Viking and Voyager there were plans afoot to *launch* the spare as well. The third Voyager would have gone out on a Jupiter-Pluto (!) mission; the third Viking lander would have been landed near the North polar cap, where there is liquid water at times. Think of it when you see them in the Smithsonian.] Soviet disclosure of the Glonass navsat signal format is considered a major boost to international acceptance of navsats; it helps to overcome concerns about being dependent on a satellite system run by the US military. The Soviets intend to have an operational system comparable to Navstar by 1995, with a limited network up by 1990, about the same time scale as Navstar. Accuracies are also comparable. A remaining problem is that neither system provides for prompt detection and user warning about failure or serious degradation of accuracy; this is felt to be quite important for aviation use. The Soviet Glonass documents made no mention of a military mission for the satellites, but here too Glonass is similar to Navstar, with a separate high-precision signal. Pratt&Whitney is rebuilding its space-propulsion test facilities in Florida, partly to support its NASA contract to develop an alternate turbopump system for the SSME (although NASA might opt to stick with improved versions of the current Rocketdyne hardware, in the end), and partly to support more work on the RL-10 engine for the Centaur. [The RL-10 has also attracted attention for other projects, since it is cheap and reliable (although small) compared to the SSME and is the only other oxyhydrogen engine still in production in the US.] Soviet Academy of Sciences and the Federation of American Scientists jointly propose a ban on nuclear reactors in Earth orbit. This would hamper SDI and shut down the Soviet nuclear radarsats. Nuclear power for deep-space missions would be allowed, as would limited Earth-orbit testing of reactors for such missions, and some types of isotope power sources for civilian missions. [I think the "for civilian missions" part is a tactical error; if they're pushing this on the safety issue, they should stay out of the political side. If isotope packs are safe for civilian missions, they're safe for military missions.] Canada, France, US, and USSR, the founding countries of the COSPAS/SARSAT search-and-rescue satellite system, reach agreement on long-term support of the system. COSPAS/SARSAT is credited with saving over 1000 lives since 1982. -- MSDOS is not dead, it just | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology smells that way. | uunet!mnetor!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu
acu@h.cc.purdue.edu (Floyd McWilliams) (07/26/88)
Re the planned Jupiter-Pluto flight by the Voyager spare: How long would such a flight take? Since Pluto is now closer to the sun than Neptune, would it take much longer than the 12-year trip by Voyager 2? I can just imagine a 1989 Neptune-Pluto double encounter... Of course, Voyager 3 wouldn't get a boost from Saturn or Uranus, which could make a difference - I just don't have the math background to figure it out. -- Floyd McWilliams acu@h.cc.purdue.edu
karn@thumper.bellcore.com (Phil R. Karn) (07/26/88)
> ... So far the station has survived, at the > expense of major cuts to CSTI, Pathfinder, NASA expendables, and the > Commercially Developed Space Facility. [Those are lousy places for cuts.] *Now* you see why the Space Station isn't such a good idea. If it competed solely with, say, SDI for funding I'd be 110% for it. But it instead competes, rightly or wrongly, mostly with other NASA projects, and with the possible exception of the Shuttle they are all far more cost-effective than the Space Station. > Soviet Academy of Sciences and the Federation of American Scientists > jointly propose a ban on nuclear reactors in Earth orbit. This would > hamper SDI and shut down the Soviet nuclear radarsats. Agreed. We really need some enlightened self-interest on both sides. An excellent start would be the following: 1. Ban the use of nuclear power sources in low earth orbit, "low" being defined as anything with a lifetime less than a thousand years or so. Deep space missions would be fine. 2. Ban any mission that involves the explosion of a warhead in orbit or the deliberate collision of objects unless the expected lifetime of the resulting fragments is less than a year. These two provisions would have the following highly beneficial effects: 1. The seemingly regular series of Soviet nuclear-powered radarsats re-entering the atmosphere would stop. 2. The increasing pollution of orbital space by ASAT and SDI tests would stop. 3. Taken together, the two provisions would effectively prohibit many, if not most, nuclear powered SDI tests. We urgently needed the Limited Test Ban Treaty in 1963, and we urgently need a treaty like this now. Phil
henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) (07/29/88)
In article <3821@h.cc.purdue.edu> acu@h.cc.purdue.edu.UUCP (Floyd McWilliams) writes: > Re the planned Jupiter-Pluto flight by the Voyager spare: >How long would such a flight take? Since Pluto is now closer to the >sun than Neptune, would it take much longer than the 12-year trip by >Voyager 2? ... I don't remember the numbers, and there may even have been a Saturn encounter in the middle, but yeah, it was a fairly rapid trip. Maybe even faster than Voyager 2, because Uranus is actually not on a direct course for Neptune. -- MSDOS is not dead, it just | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology smells that way. | uunet!mnetor!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu
jwm@stdc.jhuapl.edu (Jim Meritt) (07/29/88)
In article <1264@thumper.bellcore.com> karn@thumper.bellcore.com (Phil R. Karn) writes: }Agreed. We really need some enlightened self-interest on both sides. An }excellent start would be the following: } }1. Ban the use of nuclear power sources in low earth orbit, "low" being }defined as anything with a lifetime less than a thousand years or so. }Deep space missions would be fine. } }These two provisions would have the following highly beneficial effects: } }1. The seemingly regular series of Soviet nuclear-powered radarsats }re-entering the atmosphere would stop. }2. The increasing pollution of orbital space by ASAT and SDI tests would }stop. }3. Taken together, the two provisions would effectively prohibit many, }if not most, nuclear powered SDI tests. } }We urgently needed the Limited Test Ban Treaty in 1963, and we urgently }need a treaty like this now. Not to mention the radar reconnaisance satellites that are used. (rorsat, remember?) What space pollution? We haven't gotten anything (significant) into orbit in a LONG time! That stuff is up, shoot, fall. What nuclear powered SDI tests? I must have missed something. The only nuclear-powered space weapon I have heard of is a pop-up, and its use is forbidden under existing treaties. What are you talking about? SOMEBODY definitely needs enlightenment around here, all right. maybe me? Disclaimer: Individuals have opinions, organizations have policy. Therefore, these opinions are mine and not any organizations! Q.E.D. jwm@aplvax.jhuapl.edu 128.244.65.5 (James W. Meritt)