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From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer)
Subject: space news from May 7 AW&ST
Message-ID: <1990Jun5.041131.9222@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
Date: Tue, 5 Jun 90 04:11:31 GMT

[This will be a real quickie, as I'm preparing to be away for two weeks
and time is short.]

Mamoru Mohri is Japan's first government astronaut, selected as payload
specialist for the Japanese Spacelab mission next year.  [AW&ST had it
as "Japan's first astronaut", apparently forgetting the two journalists
in training for the commercial Mir flight late this year.]

NASA's aging spare TDRS, TDRS-1, is being moved west to supplement TDRS-3,
which is operating at reduced capacity due to a partial antenna failure.
TDRS-5, set for launch next year, will probably replace one of those two.
[TDRS-2 was aboard Challenger; TDRS-4 is in the eastern position.]

Hughes reports that poor facilities were a serious problem when preparing
Asiasat 1 for launch at Xichang.  For example, Hughes ended up putting in
a satellite link to California to bypass China's hopeless international
phone system.

Sen. Al Gore, who supports the Moon/Mars initiative but wants to see more
international participation and more concrete funding plans, says that at
$500G, "Before a mission on Mars, I think the Administration needs a
mission to reality.".

Bush meets with Congressional leaders to try to rally support for expanded
spaceflight activities, notably in the financial area.  Various novel ideas
for financing were broached, as was the notion of revising appropriations-
committee structures so NASA would not constantly be competing head-on with
the Veterans and Housing&Urban Development at appropriations time.  No big
results to report, but such meetings haven't been common in the past.

Administration proposes 23% boost in NASA's budget next fiscal year,
and is resisting any cuts at all.

Major article with pictures of HST deployment and a detailed account of
the various post-deployment headaches.  [Sorry, I just don't have time
to summarize two pages of dense information.]

HST deployment mission set some other new records due to its record high
altitude:  most intensive OMS use, longest retrofire, hottest reentry,
and (incidentally) first use of the new carbon brakes.

Another long article talking about Sandia's ideas for using coilguns
to launch small payloads into orbit.  [Again, apologies for lack of time.]
Technical problems remain, but the basic notion looks viable, partly
because of recent improvements in high-power capacitor technology.
A full-scale launcher, firing 61kg to low orbit per shot, would cost
circa $1G but launch costs thereafter would be quite low.  [It has the
standard problem, of course:  apart from the politically-handicapped
SDIO, there are no firm customers.]
-- 
As a user I'll take speed over|     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
features any day. -A.Tanenbaum| uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu