Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!henry From: henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) Newsgroups: sci.space,sci.space.shuttle Subject: space news from Aug 24 AW&ST Message-ID: <8727@utzoo.UUCP> Date: Wed, 7-Oct-87 17:59:32 EDT Article-I.D.: utzoo.8727 Posted: Wed Oct 7 17:59:32 1987 Date-Received: Wed, 7-Oct-87 17:59:32 EDT Organization: U of Toronto Zoology Lines: 117 [Next in the multi-way tie for third place in space-related periodicals is a pair: Planetary Encounter and World Spaceflight News. These are for people who want the nitty-gritty details. No glossy color photos or quotations from Chairman Carl to be found here, just page after page of real hard solid information. PE covers planetary missions, WSN covers near-Earth spaceflight. Aviation Leak spent one paragraph discussing Joe Kerwin's medical report on the deaths of the Challenger crew; WSN printed the whole thing. The NRC report on shuttle flight frequencies etc. got about one column in AW&ST; WSN printed the whole thing. The so-called International Comet Explorer got some polite coverage in various journals (no exciting photos to be had, since it had no camera); PE spent an entire issue on it, with diagrams, lists of experiments, an interview with the mission director, etc. When the shuttle was flying regularly, WSN printed things like payload manifests, activity schedules, and post- mission assessment reports for EVERY mission. The same crew also puts out a succession of extra-cost "special reports", containing things like NASA technical documents on related topics. (Example: although I think they may have had second thoughts due to poor sales on this, at one point they were going to put out a multi-volume special report reprinting the entire Critical Items List from the shuttle.) Highly recommended if you are tired of the babytalk in newsstand magazines and want to know the gory details. PE and WSN are at Box 98, Sewell NJ 08080. Each is nominally monthly, although in fact they've been coming out less frequently for the last year or so due to lack of news. Each is $30 for 12 issues sent First Class to the US or Canada, elsewhere $45 for 12 issues sent Air Mail.] Editorial commending the Ride report, and urging that it not get buried in the White House bureaucracy. The National Commission on Space is re-submitting its report in hopes that it will get attention this time. Intelsat prepares for RFP for Intelsat 7 series. They will be smaller than the enormous Intelsat 6s. The first 2-3 will be for the Pacific, for launch in 1992-3, with possibly more for the Atlantic 3-4 years later. Predictions of shortage of engineering talent in the Washington DC area as NASA's space station contracts start hiring hundreds. [*Just* what the space program needs, more bureaucrats.....] Oops: the Shuttle-C shuttle-derived heavylift launcher may end up in competition for funds with the advanced-SRB project. Official release of the Ride report, calling for aggressive action and [gasp] planning. "Without an eye toward the future, we flounder in the present." NASA is giving it a lukewarm reception at best. NASA people have been ordered to downplay it, and there was debate over whether it should be released at all. (NASA is afraid of the reaction from the Office of Mismanagement and Beancounting.) Ride report endorses shuttle and station, but as tools rather than goals. Shuttle-derived cargo vehicle should be developed immediately. Strong consideration of a new *manned* expendable urged, for station logistics. Strong emphasis on technology development, notably the Pathfinder program. Ride report says US could return to Moon by 2000, base by 2005-2010. Mars would take longer. Mars is clearly the ultimate near-future goal, but "...we should avoid a `race to Mars'. There is a very real danger that if the US announces a human Mars initiative at this time, it could escalate into another space race. This could turn an initiative that envisions the ultimate deployment of a habitable outpost into another one-shot spectacular... Settling Mars should be our eventual goal, but it should not be our next goal... We should adopt a strategy of natural progression which leads step-by-step, in an orderly unhurried way... towards Mars. Exploring and prospecting the Moon... would provide the experience and expertise necessary for further human exploration of the solar system. [We found] considerable sentiment that Apollo was a dead-end venture, and that we have little to show for it. Although this task force found some who dismissed [the lunar] initiative because `we've been to the Moon', it found more people who feel that this generation should continue the work begun by Apollo." Meanwhile, the Soviet Union plans to launch by the mid-1990s one or more dedicated asteroid missions with surface probes. SDI's Innovative Science and Technology group to launch first space experiment on sounding rocket in November, looking at problems of using high-power electrical equipment in space. IST is looking at the "small satellites" ideas and lightweight launchers, although it isn't funding them yet. Advanced propulsion work includes a proposal to replace the inert binder in solid rockets with a combustible fuel, and another to make solid fuels with continuous rather than batch processes. Materials work is looking at thin-film diamond as a semiconductor (it might be better than gallium arsenide) and as a tough coating for optical surfaces. Arianespace delays Ariane launch four days to give the launch teams some rest. [Launch successful.] Launch of Japanese H-1 booster carrying engineering test satellite slips four days due to valve problem in second stage. [Launch successful.] Chinese reentry capsule, carrying French experiment package, recovered after five days in orbit. [Also, I made a mistake in reporting this one: the capsule was of the type used for film-recovery spysats, but this particular mission was all scientific.] Inmarsat planning R&D program on navigation satellites. AW&ST is running a multi-part series on South American aerospace, including: Chilean space activity is modest but significant. Prominent in it is the shuttle emergency-landing runway on Easter Island; this involved extending the airport's runway and adding approach lights and landing aids. Chile hopes to fly an astronaut on the shuttle eventually. Also of note are an ozone-depletion experiment done jointly with the US and UK, and the first South American ground station for the Sarsat (search and rescue) program. Brazil's larger space program continues progress on building its own launcher (roughly Scout-class), environmental and Earth-resources satellites to go up on it, and a near-equatorial launch site for it. First launch tentatively 1989. ESA awards contract to British Aerospace for feasibility study of mobile communications satellite system, possibly using Molniya orbits for good coverage at high latitudes. -- "Mir" means "peace", as in | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology "the war is over; we've won". | {allegra,ihnp4,decvax,utai}!utzoo!henry