Hank.Walker@CMU-CS-VLSI.ARPA (02/10/84)
The PAM rocket (as described in the New York Times, Aviation Week, any major paper, etc) is a solid rocket made by Morton-Thiokol, who makes lots of solid rockets (I don't remember if they make the SRBs). The PAM module itself is made by Douglas. Geosynchronous orbit isn't achieved with just one burn. There is another smaller rocket inside the satellite that fires at apogee to circularize the orbit. Plus there are thrusters, so you don't have to hit orbit all with one shot (you can't get a circular orbit that way anyway). And since many folks don't seem to read the paper, I might as well add that the two rockets that failed came from a batch of 5, and so they are going to look at the remaining ones to figure out what went wrong, before the next PAM-launched satellite mission in May or June. As to grabbing the satellites and bringing them back, the standard Hughes design used for both satellites has a smooth photocell exterior that spins at a pretty good rate, and surface telescopes down to expose more photocell area, so the only real place to grab on is near the antennas. It is not clear how you'd stop the smooth spinning exterior. For Solar Max, an astronaut will just hook on to the side and fire some thrusters on the MMU to stop its spin.