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From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: space news from June 25 AW&ST
Message-ID: <1990Aug16.035644.16520@zoo.toronto.edu>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
Date: Thu, 16 Aug 90 03:56:44 GMT

Lenoir says that the House Appropriations panel's recommended $200M cut
in FY91 space station funding will cost the program $600-800M down the
road.

Bush sharply criticizes Congress's cuts to Moon/Mars budget and says he
will fight for "a fully funded space program".  The House has just about
killed M/M.  There have also been more modest cuts to the space station,
which are making the international "partners" edgy, and a complete
elimination of funding for ALS propulsion work [boo hiss].

USAF is shifting responsibility for its launch activities from Systems
Command to Space Command, as planned when Space Command was formed.
The transition will take several years.  Systems Command is generally
in favor but is a bit concerned about the ad-hoc non-production nature
of some of the launch facilities.

Titan 4 management begins transition to production operations, ultimately
aiming at a launch rate of 10/year, roughly half for the USAF and most of
of the other half for the spooks and generic DoD use.

Letter from James Muncy observing that the question of licensing for the
CRRES launch is not just a minor tiff between bureaucracies:

	The issue is not whether NASA has sufficient expertise to
	license the Atlas launch -- or to obviate the need for a
	license -- but whether NASA will serve as a true customer
	of a commercial launch service, instead of in its historic
	role of contract manager.  Otherwise, the goal of lowering
	launch costs by limiting and focusing oversight of commercial
	launches will be sacrificed to NASA's technological ego...
-- 
It is not possible to both understand  | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
and appreciate Intel CPUs. -D.Wolfskill|  henry@zoo.toronto.edu   utzoo!henry