henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) (02/09/88)
[As usual, AW&ST skipped the last issue in December.] First Titan 4 to roll out early this month. Australia and New Zealand urge polar-platform builders to equip the platforms with "direct broadcast" systems [as opposed, presumably, to systems that go via relay satellites] so that deep-southern-hemisphere countries can get real-time data. Shuttle schedule to slip due to SRB test failure. [AW&ST has a "new look" this year. I do hope the quality of the what-failed-in-the-SRB diagram is not typical of what the new look is going to be like; it is totally incomprehensible, and I *know* roughly what the insides of an SRB look like!] Test of Titan SRB successful, clearing way for first Titan 4 launch. This one incorporated a number of post-Challenger mods, including joint heaters. Romanenko and Alexandrov finally return to Earth Dec 29, with Romanenko totalling 326 days aboard Mir. They were clearly fatigued towards the end, with work-days shortened and days off provided frequently. [The Soviets have stated elsewhere that six months is now their preferred stay time for station crews, except for those involved in long-term medical experiments.] The mysterious third member of the relief crew, who went up with the new crew and down with R&A, was not a doctor as previously rumored but a test pilot. The official explanation is that it was to give him some space experience that could be helpful in Soviet shuttle work, but another factor may have been that it put a fairly fresh "safety pilot" aboard the returning Soyuz. Romanenko is going to be studied intensively for biomedical effects of his stay. Of note are calcium loss from the bones, which appears *not* to be regained on return to Earth, and general deterioration of leg muscles and cardiovascular system. Some Soviet work has suggested that the calcium problem, clearly the worst, levels off after about seven months in space, but nobody is sure yet. The new Mir crew is expected to do an EVA soon to add another solar array to Mir. Congress boosts FY88 funding for Lightsat, the Advanced Launch System, and the space-recovery program. ALS gets $150M instead of the $140M asked for, with a minimum of $70M of it going to NASA for propulsion work. Congress restricts space-station funding in FY88, notably requiring NASA to report on economy measures possible. Congress comes down hard on bad management, noting that less than 30% of FY88 station funds is going to companies actually building hardware: "This trend is unacceptable." Congress earmarks $25M for NASA to start leasing arrangements for Space Industries's Industrial Space Facility as an interim pre-station measure, sets aside $20M for microgravity payloads, urges another Spacelab materials mission in 1991, orders use of $28M to buy two Deltas for Rosat and the Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer, caps Advanced Communications Satellite funding at $35M until NASA gets cost overruns under control, approves $25M boost for Mars Observer (to be spent either on MO itself or on planetary-observer spares), and provides $5M to be spent on long-stay orbiter work. USAF planning 11 military-astronaut exercises aboard shuttle to settle the 25-year-old debate about the usefulness of manned spaceflight for military purposes. (Soviet cosmonauts have already run such tests.) Of particular note is a test to determine whether an astronaut with "simple optics" [binoculars?] can observe a missile launch and track it reasonably well; this has obvious implications for credibility of missile-warning systems. Gamma-Ray Observatory structure complete (picture), on schedule for launch in 1990. FCC continues to push a spectrum-allocation scheme for L-band that makes it very difficult for a company to run an aeronautical-safety [traffic control etc.] satellite system without belonging to the winning consortium in the great general-mobile-communications competition. This is not affecting the navsat people (notably Geostar, scheduled to put up its first [working] payload piggyback on a comsat due for Ariane launch this spring), because they were recently allocated their own separate bit of spectrum. (Geostar and such do have some limited data-communications capability, but this was considered a secondary issue.) Ground facilities built in Luxembourg for its privately-owned Astra TV satellite will be rented for use during post-launch maneuvering of Japan's Superbird A and B comsats. [And an interesting bit from Flight International: ex-cosmonaut Vladimir Shatalov, now a Star City official, criticizes "lack of purposefulness and consistency" in economically-useful aspects of the Soviet space program, remote sensing aside. He is particularly critical of the slow pace of microgravity research; read it and weep: "We carry out experiments, wait six months to get them back, spend a year studying them, and only then do we prepare the next experiment. At this pace, we won't set up orbital workshops and factories even by the year 2000."] [Another read-it-and-weep item from Flight International: China reports that high-temperature superconductors made in orbit are more uniform than those made on Earth. Note, they are not speculating on this, they are saying they've *tried it already*.] -- Those who do not understand Unix are | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology condemned to reinvent it, poorly. | {allegra,ihnp4,decvax,utai}!utzoo!henry