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From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: space news from June 4 AW&ST
Message-ID: <1990Jul23.021414.5126@zoo.toronto.edu>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 90 02:14:14 GMT

South Korea's Institute of Space Science and Astronomy announces plans
for a Korean-built-sounding-rocket launch next year and a Korean launch
of a small satellite in 1996.

Negotiators at the Bush/Gorbachev summit discuss possibilities for space
cooperation including a Soviet cosmonaut on a shuttle mission and a US
astronaut visiting Mir.  One complication is that neither side wants
to do it purely as a public-relations stunt [that's novel!], so it
will not happen unless worthwhile science can be done that way.

Hydrogen leak halts Columbia/Astro-1 countdown at T-6h, schedule slip
likely.  [As usual, I'm not going to spend bytes on detailed coverage
of already-obsolete news that has been reported well by others.]

First space-accident jury trial in history absolves Thiokol from most
damages being sought by insurance companies hit by the Palapa/Westar
boost-motor failures in 1984.  The jury found no liability for damages
because of detailed prelaunch testing that found no problems in a design
used 18 times before without trouble.  However, the jury did find that
the failures breached the warranty and Thiokol is thus liable for small
failure-under-warranty payments to the insurance companies.

First commercial Atlas suffers slight damage in a pad accident, as a
high-pressure helium line fails and slightly damages the interstage
structure.  On-pad repairs are probably possible but the schedule is
going to slip a bit.

Arianespace gets the job of launching Helios, the first non-superpower
spy satellite, in 1993.  Helios is based on the Spot 4 bus.  It's being
built by Matra for France, Italy, and Spain.

Mir's Kristall add-on industrial module is finally launched.

Alexei Leonov comments that leaving Mir unmanned for budget reasons is
not a good idea, because considerable effort is required to prepare it
for unmanned operation and there are failures that could disable it if
no maintenance were available.

MIT Lincoln Lab shows off the first space-qualified laser-communications
transmitter, intended for a USAF intersatellite-link experiment aimed at
220 megabits/s communication at a 40000km range with 30 milliwatts of
laser power.

US Navy to buy ten UFOs from Hughes.  Relax, those are "UHF Follow-On"
comsats to replace the older FltSatCom and Leasat birds.  It's being done
as a very commercial deal, with Hughes providing launches (on Atlas via
General Dynamics) and paying heavy penalties if launches are delayed or
satellites are lost.

Northwest Airlines and Honeywell to flight-test Soviet Glonass navsat
receiver, as part of a longer-term effort to build receivers that can
use both Navstar and Glonass.

German Ministry of Research and Technology is told by technical advisors
not to pursue use of Glonass, on the grounds that it is less accurate
than Navstar and the Soviets are reticent about certain important details.

Letter from Geoffrey Landis observing that the price-tag difference between
LLNL and NASA Moon/Mars proposals is not primarily the result of technical
differences, but of different assumptions.  First and foremost, the LLNL
study assumes "generic waiver of procurement regulations", which even the
contractors estimate would give a factor of 2-3 reduction, plus whatever
is saved on the government side due to reduced supervision.  Second, the
LLNL program is "success oriented", with little subassembly testing
beforehand and little provision for failure.  [Color me skeptical, but
NASA tends to plan things the same way nowadays... witness the complete
absence of backup hardware in current space-station plans.]  LLNL also
generally assumes zero or very low costs for contractor supervision,
management, and ground-based R&D.
-- 
NFS:  all the nice semantics of MSDOS, | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
and its performance and security too.  |  henry@zoo.toronto.edu   utzoo!henry