Xref: utzoo sci.space:5945 sci.space.shuttle:810
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From: roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith)
Newsgroups: sci.space,sci.space.shuttle
Subject: Re: advance space news from June 6 AW&ST -- Pegasus!
Message-ID: <3361@phri.UUCP>
Date: 18 Jun 88 13:35:27 GMT
References: <1988Jun17.053132.5314@utzoo.uucp>
Reply-To: roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith)
Organization: Public Health Research Inst. (NY, NY)
Lines: 20

henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes:
> Pegasus, a winged three-stage design that will be air-launched from a B-52.
> [...] Payload is 600lb into low polar orbit, 900 into low equatorial orbit.

	For the benefit of us interested-but-ignorant observers, can you give
me some idea of how useful a 600-900 pound (still no metric!) payload is?
What does a typical commsat weigh, for example?  Or a typical package of
scientific instrumentation?  Or (God forbid), a typical military payload
(warhead, spysat, whatever).  Is there even such a thing as "typical"?

	Would such a delivery system be useful for making small emergency
shipments to a permanent space station ("Houston, we, uh, seem to have loaded
our camera wrong and wasted all our film; think you could Pegasus up another
few rolls before this comet goes out of range?").  Sounds like putting one of
these up might be a lot faster than waiting for the next scheduled shuttle.
-- 
Roy Smith, System Administrator
Public Health Research Institute
455 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016
{allegra,philabs,cmcl2,rutgers}!phri!roy -or- phri!roy@uunet.uu.net