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From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: space news from Nov 12 AW&ST
Message-ID: <1990Dec12.044442.2101@zoo.toronto.edu>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
Date: Wed, 12 Dec 90 04:44:42 GMT

Editorial calling for solid funding for the X-30, observing that every year
the Senate says it's a valuable program and then zeros the budget for it
(and then the House puts it back).  Making progress requires reliable funding.

Germany picks astronaut teams to train for Spacelab D-2 and the German Mir
flight.  [They didn't give names for some reason.]

Image of a gravitationally-lensed quasar from HST's Faint Object Camera,
substantially more detailed than the best images from the ground.

NASA appoints five-man team to assess recent orbiter turnaround problems
and consider whether changes are needed.  The team is headed by "former
astronaut" John Young.  ["Former"?  I thought he was still nominally an
active astronaut.]

Amusingly, later in the same issue, Lenoir is quoted as saying that the
team has already finished the bulk of its assessment.  Informally, its
conclusions are that recent processing problems have no common pattern
but that it is hard to say whether the trouble rate is abnormal.  NASA
would like airline data on industrial accidents for comparison, but the
airlines consider this proprietary.  General recommendations include a
specific leader being responsible for each task, engineers spending more
time "in the shop" with the technicians, more specialization among at
least a core of technicians (there has been a tendency to eliminate
specialization to cut costs), less wildly-optimistic scheduling, and
discipline for the more serious mistakes extending to the supervisors
as well as the technicians.

Unofficial sources inside the space station work at JSC say:  "Our worst
fear was approval of full funding.  It would have made it difficult for
us to achieve the major redesign needed."  There is widespread agreement
that a major shakeup was needed, but the budget cuts make a splendid
justification for it.

Speaking of which...  Redesign work has been underway quietly for some time,
but now it is out in the open.  The long truss is probably not long for this
world, in particular:  a Goddard project to attach science payloads to it
has been cancelled, and the request for bids for the assembly training
facility in Houston has been withdrawn.  The leading idea right now is
simply to retain the central cluster of modules, but kill the truss.
Among other advantages, the resulting station should have gravity-gradient
stability, eliminating attitude-control thruster firings that eat fuel and
bother the microgravity people.

NASA HQ has issued an 11-point directive to centers, contractors, and the
international partners on how the redesign will be done.  Assembly will
assume at most four shuttle missions per year.  Construction will be done
in phases.  Budget is capped at $2.6G/yr, down from $4G/yr.  The initial
crew will be four, not eight.  Life sciences and materials work explicitly
have highest priority.  An attempt will be made to stick to March 1995 as
the date for start of assembly.  [A mere 13 years after Reagan told NASA
to build a space station.  I suppose that's not bad... considering.] The
redesign will try to avoid impact on the international partners, and will
involve them early.  [Translation:  if NASA botched this redesign process
like the last one, they wouldn't have any partners left.]  (There is,
however, a possibility that the international modules may fly a year later
than the current date, which will bother ESA's budget in particular.)
There will be no revision of the management structure, despite a lot of
feeling that it could use one.  Development not directly supporting the
"baseline configuration" will be dropped or deferred.

Lenoir says no station hardware is immune to being eliminated or deferred,
but there is unlikely to be any move towards free-flying experiment
platforms (on the excuse that the station will be only man-tended for
the first 3-4 years anyway) or expendable launchers (in particular, NASA
does not want to wait for development of a new booster).  There will be
no specific target date for completion, in hopes that station expansion
will be seen as an ongoing process.  One problem yet to be resolved is
the clash between "no development not supporting baseline configuration"
and the interest in using Fred as a Moon/Mars staging point.

Interesting graph of projected space shuttle launch schedules vs. actual,
with every projection assuming that the launch rate is about to rise to
a high sustained level.  More realism called for.

Congress largely kills SDI's nuclear X-ray laser, cutting it back to a
modest long-term research project.  The nuclear-directed-energy part of
SDI's budget was cut drastically, and LLNL says that the project's current
near-term-hardware orientation cannot be maintained.  The project has hit
two fundamental technical problems -- conversion efficiency and focusing --
and one massive political problem, the aversion to exploding large numbers
of nuclear weapons as part of a defensive system.

Atlantis set to launch Nov 15.

New shuttle manifest being composed for the next five years (although
probably with specific dates only for the next three), including seven
launches in 1991.

It is said that the proposal for a Mriya-launched pure-rocket Hotol has
reawakened British government interest in funding the project to some
extent.  [Not entirely surprising.  The British government has been
obsessed with joint projects for a long time, to the extent where it
often seems to consider British-only projects inherently worthless.]

Story on a new spacesuit design originated as a private project by
Boeing Huntsville engineer Brand Griffin and space artist Paul Hudson.
Volunteer efforts from colleagues in NASA and industry have supported
construction of an engineering mockup, with Harrison Schmitt assisting
in evaluation.  The major novelty is that the torso, helmet, and backpack
are one rigid piece.  The helmet uses several flat panes rather than a
bubble shape, which gives a roomier helmet, a better view, and the
opportunity to mount data displays on the framing bars.  That last is
of particular note, because current cuff-mounted checklists are widely
considered inadequate, and high-tech solutions like voice control have
various problems.  Putting the displays inside the helmet would reduce
problems with glare and avoid lunar dust, and would eliminate most of
the chest-mounted clutter of the current suits, which gets in the way
of the arms.  Flat windows also permit thicker panes for better radiation
shielding, and make louvered sunshades practical.  A final flourish is
that the rigid suit body could be attached to vehicles to provide a
sort of ready-made cockpit.  [One major loss is that the proposal does
not envision higher internal pressure to reduce prebreathing time.]

The four "prime" contractors for Hermes agree to form a single management
company to run the show, once final funding approval is given.

Aerospatiale study confirms that Hermes would be feasible as a space-station
lifeboat.  ESA is building two for its own use, and the station would need
two more for lifeboat use at a total cost of about $800M.  They would go up
on Ariane 5s and would share Hermes infrastructure for operations.  The
payload area would be fitted with six rear-facing seats in addition to
the two for the pilots.  The major design change needed would be better
protection against micrometeorites and space debris for the long stay
in orbit.

Soviet-Canadian joint venture plans to build and launch three comsats for
services to international businesses.  NPO PM (Krasnoyarsk) will build the
spacecraft bus, which will then go to Spar Aerospace for payload installation,
returning to the USSR for launch.  The birds will go into Soviet comsat
slots in Clarke orbit, and will be operated by Soviet facilities and
marketed by Canadian Satellite Communications.  Various kinds of approval
are still needed, not to mention significant funding.

Japan's Space Communications Corp signs with Arianespace to launch
Superbird E, a replacement for Superbird B that went into the Atlantic
when Ariane failed in February.  (The replacement for BS-2X, the other
casualty, will go up on an Atlas.)
-- 
"The average pointer, statistically,    |Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
points somewhere in X." -Hugh Redelmeier| henry@zoo.toronto.edu   utzoo!henry