henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) (02/17/88)
Big story this week is AW&ST scooping Reagan on his own new space policy.
A policy backed up with money: NASA FY89 budget to be $11.5G, a $3G
boost from FY88... if Congress approves. Included is early funding for a
long-stay orbiter and an uprated SRB to boost shuttle payload by 12klbs.
Key words in the new policy are "preeminence in manned Earth orbital
flight" and "extending US manned operations beyond Earth". Technology
development gets underway at once, with specific mission recommendations
due in 1991. Technology development includes the "Pathfinder" program
that has already been discussed to death: rover technology, automatic
sample analysis, automatic rendezvous and docking, advanced oxyhydrogen
rocket engines, aerobraking, power systems, closed-cycle life support,
and materials production from lunar soil.
The new policy was approved by SIG-Space in December, after a long fight
against opposition from OMB.
Lots of pretty pictures of possible missions.
Now the bad news: CRAF and AXAF aren't included in FY89. Fletcher is
appealing the AXAF exclusion, with CRAF expected to slip to next
year (which will mean considerable delays in the actual mission).
Serious talk about major joint US-Soviet projects expected at planned
summer summit in Moscow.
[Lest there be too much euphoria at all this, remember that the next
administration in Washington will have much more say in whether this
all comes to fruition.]
Total count of Soviet launches in 1987: 95.
NASA assessing plan to conduct flight-readiness firing of Discovery
engines after stacking non-flight SRBs. This would permit continued
progress despite SRB delays. Unfortunately it would also mean having
to unstack and then restack the whole system after the FRF, a major
complication. Tentative launch date either way is August.
Amroc resumes full operations including engine tests. Unfortunately it
cannot meet the spring-88 date for the first launch it had hoped to
sell to SDI; Amroc still hopes for SDI business soon, though.
First Titan 4 rolls out and is shipped to the Cape. Launch October.
Congress tells USAF to either do something with the Vandenberg shuttle
complex or mothball it completely, on grounds that $50M/yr maintenance
funding cannot be justified on grounds of *possible* use in late 1990s.
Heavy reductions in SDI budget hit ground-based free-electron laser
work hard. [This is space-related because the FEL is the number one
possibility to drive a laser launcher, and the laser-launcher people
at Livermore are relying on SDI for the laser development.]
"Aerospace Forum" piece by Michael Lisagor, aerospace program manager
at "a major American aerospace firm". "Our government has an unwritten
policy of engaging in projects promising only short-term return.
American's space program (or lack of one) illustrates this fact...
an overabundance of 'short-termitis' also is prevalent in corporate
America."
NASA is running test flights with an F-104 to investigate using fast
aircraft rather than balloons for pre-launch weather assessment; the
big win is the ability to get data 1 hr before launch instead of 3.5.
NASA picks Northrup Strip, at White Sands, as primary alternate shuttle
landing site, after the Edwards lakebed. In particular, White Sands is
preferred over the Edwards concrete runways, due to concern over the
limitations of the orbiter's brakes. KSC comes fourth, except for launch
aborts. This policy will be reassessed after the first three launches.
One complication with landing at White Sands is that the fine sand there
caused some thruster problems after STS-3 landed there in 1982.
Letter from Glenn Reynolds, Washington DC: "Space activists should
emulate successful groups like the environmental and civil-rights groups,
who fill the halls of Congress with citizen-supporters for weeks and
months before crucial votes, instead of simply trying to generate mail
and phone calls in the final days."
Letter of the Month, possibly the year, concerning the enthusiasm for
Space Industries' Industrial Space Facility as a station alternative:
"I am distressed to learn of, and must take serious issue with, those
members of Congress who believe that an ISF could be 'preferable' to
NASA's space station.
"Nothing could be further from the truth. Astronaut crews can work in,
or tend, an ISF only when a space shuttle is attached. They cannot
live there. For that reason, ISF cannot provide the US with permanent
occupancy of space, nor can any number of ISFs prepare us to travel or
live beyond low Earth orbit...
"The ISF project initially complements the space station project in an
obvious way and can serve as a catalyst for the development of equipment
and users of the space station... the ISF provides the US with added
and complementary capabilities for in-orbit services just as the country
maintains added and complementary transporatation services with both ELVs
and shuttles...
"Over 12 years ago, as director of engineering and development at the
Johnson Space Center and as a member of the 'Outlook for Space' study
group, I stated that the US must work toward a permanently occupied
outpost in space. Four years ago I participated on a presidential
advisory committee that recommended the US pursue the design and
construction of an international space station. In the next century
the very viability of Space Industries, or any other US commercial
space company for that matter, will be possible only if there is a
permanent space station.
"Maxime A. Faget
President and CEO
Space Industries Inc."
--
Those who do not understand Unix are | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
condemned to reinvent it, poorly. | {allegra,ihnp4,decvax,utai}!utzoo!henry