henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) (04/11/88)
Official rationalization for the USAF's Atlas-Centaur Subsidy -- er excuse
me, cancel that, I meant source selection for the Medium Launch Vehicle --
is underway. Announcement expected early May. [It shouldn't be hard to
figure out who the winner will be...]
NASA FY89 budget includes $195M for expendables: one Titan 4, two Titan 3s,
and four Deltas.
Testing of the NASA-Ames AX-5 hard-shell space-station spacesuit about to
start. Its competitor from JSC will start testing next month.
NASA FY89 asks $50M to start replenishment of the stock of shuttle structural
spares, the old ones having been used for the new orbiter.
NRC says NASA shuttle safety effort is hampered by complex and fragmented
bureaucracy, and needs better organization. NRC also says that there are
no specific reasons why shuttle flights can't resume this summer.
House members say NASA will not get its full FY89 budget request; support
for space in Congress is weak.
US studying ground-launched missiles and laser systems as possible
replacements for the cancelled Asat system. Also under study is what
could be done about using the existing Asat hardware to provide minimal
capability in a crisis.
Vyacheslav Balebanov, Mir project official, says an earth-resources module
will go up to Mir late this year. It will also include an X-ray telescope.
An airlock module will also go up this year.
Titov and Manarov do EVA Feb 26 to install a high-efficiency solar-array
section on Mir's third array.
Results from the Delta 181 SDI test appear mostly favorable, with some
surprises. Details secret. The spacecraft is finishing up its playbacks
of recorded data, and will switch to doing space science until its
batteries die. Picture of Earth's limb at dusk from it. Still unresolved
is why the spacecraft's two tracking computers disagreed at one point.
Kaiser Engineers Australia Pty Ltd picked for feasibility study of the
Cape York spaceport; they will manage the project if it goes ahead.
KEA is a subsidiary of Kaiser Engineers, a US firm. The study will
last two years and will include final site selection and a market study.
Another three years and about $1.5G would bring the site to initial
operational status.
USAF cancels ASPS upper stage, a large shuttle upper stage meant as a
backup for Titan-Centaur, due to shortage of money. [Interesting how
backup systems were vitally important when it was the (NASA) shuttle being
backed up with (USAF) expendables, and are low-priority now that it's
the other way around.]
Spacenet 3R, to go up on Ariane this week, will be first US domestic comsat
to fly in two years. It carries GTE Spacenet transponders and a Geostar
navsat package. GTE Spacenet is Arianespace's biggest US customer, although
it wasn't meant that way (they used to be a big shuttle customer). They
are thinking about alternatives to Ariane, but are strongly opposed to
using the same vehicle or launch facility as US military programs. GTE
Spacenet president says that the cancelled shuttle contracts are an
obvious example of the US government reneging on supposedly-firm agreements
without compensation. He does not want a repetition. He also does not
think the US expendable companies have proven their commitment to the
commercial launch business. GTE Spacenet will not use Proton but is
thinking seriously about Chinese and Japanese launchers.
DoC awards three small study contracts for next-generation civil remote
sensing satellites. Eosat, the current Landsat operator, did not bid.
Eight Ariane launches are planned this year, in an attempt to catch up
after delays. First is V21 on March 11, with Spacenet 3R and France's
Telecom 1C. (This launch is now critical to France due to Telecom 1B's
attitude-control failure in orbit.) V21 was delayed repeatedly for
several reasons, including investigation of unexpectedly-high temperatures
in third-stage pump bearings. This investigation arose from Arianespace's
new policy of thorough study of all telemetry, as a result of their
conclusion that such a policy would have given advance warning of the
third-stage ignition problems that grounded Ariane for quite a while.
After V21 will be Intelsat 5 on May 11, followed by the first Ariane 4
at the end of May. The limiting factor in Ariane launch rate is now not
manufacturing but the post-flight telemetry review, which takes three
weeks.
China and Brazil agree to develop a small earth-resources satellite for
launch on Long March in 1992.
Big story on Aerospace Plane work. Technology is progressing despite
budget cuts and yet another management revision. First flight is behind
schedule, now 1994-5. Despite early talk about commercial uses, the
project is now highly classified. One controversial issue that is coming
up is whether the X-30 should use rockets for final boost into orbit;
the original hope was that scramjet technology would be used all the
way to orbital velocity, with rockets only for orbital maneuvering.
GAO and Defense Science Board reports on X-30 question excessive optimism
on technology and predict schedule slips.
Gamma-ray detector originally meant for shuttle flies on balloon in
Antarctica, observing Supernova 1987A. Preliminary results suggest that
the supernova explosion was asymmetrical.
Major bottleneck in plans for Aug 4 shuttle launch is completion of
orbiter modifications. Everything is on schedule now but there is no
margin for problems. A 6-8 week slip is considered likely. One
possible reason for a slip is that NASA has neither selected a crew-
escape system nor decided whether it should be fitted for mission 26.
West Germany writes off TVSat 1, after all attempts to free jammed solar
array fail. This is a significant blow to Germany's post office (the
owners) and the space-insurance business. The insurers are lucky this
time, because the Germans were most worried about launch failures and
selected insurance coverage that dropped 50% after launcher separation.
Spinning the satellite did not work. Commanding full array extension
deployed the other array fine but did nothing for the jammed one.
Activating the array's Sun-tracking motors to wiggle the array did not
help. Technicians have deployed the transmit antenna and will try to
deploy the receive antenna; there is a slim chance that it might deploy
if the solar array is not fully jammed, and this would make the satellite
useful to a limited extent. The investigation report, not yet released,
does not call for major redesign, pointing the finger instead at sloppy
manufacturing and inadequate margins.
The insurers are also preparing to pay off on France's Telecom 1B after
its attitude-control failure. There is little hope of a fix.
Letter column includes several responses to NASA's decision not to go
metric on the space station, all negative. "If our space scientists
have to convert liters into quarts or meters into feet to react in an
emergency, our nation is in worse trouble than I realized."
Most of the rest of the letter column is criticism of Van Allen's latest
epistle. "Thanks to men with the Proxmire/Van Allen viewpoint, we have
no coherent space program today..."
--
"Noalias must go. This is | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
non-negotiable." --DMR | {allegra,ihnp4,decvax,utai}!utzoo!henryeugene@pioneer.arpa (Eugene N. Miya) (04/13/88)
In article <1988Apr11.020249.8269@utzoo.uucp> henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes: >Most of the rest of the letter column is criticism of Van Allen's latest >epistle. "Thanks to men with the Proxmire/Van Allen viewpoint, we have >no coherent space program today..." James van Allen is hardily in the same category as Proxmire. The problem comes from the political and social motivations for going into space. There is a tendency to believe that "going into space" constitutes "science" like "space science" is naively a part of "astronomy." Dr. van Allen and many others are the people responsible for keeping the SCIENCE in space and not just the political hype of sending people up. I would not blame van Allen that there is no coherent space policy, I can see few coherent policies anywhere in Government (economic trade, research, education, even the military ;-). Perhaps we need two (correction three) space programs: military, civilian political (for those who need firsts) and civilian science. 8-) [I know some would argue we have this already.] Added note: mail is getting especially bad. Please add a return address to your signatures otherwise, don't expect replies. Also I want to try and assemble a set of most asked questions (things we will see again and again, like "why not use expended Shuttle tanks for something?") I will post and we can iterate (when I get some time). From the Rock of Ages Home for Retired Hackers: --eugene miya, NASA Ames Research Center, eugene@ames-aurora.ARPA "You trust the `reply' command with all those different mailers out there?" "Send mail, avoid follow-ups. If enough, I'll summarize." {uunet,hplabs,hao,ihnp4,decwrl,allegra,tektronix}!ames!aurora!eugene