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Date: Fri, 29 Jul 88 19:05:29 PDT
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Subject: SPACE Digest V8 #303

SPACE Digest                                      Volume 8 : Issue 303

Today's Topics:
        Phobos missions leave Earth's Gravity
        Progress 37 docks to Soviet Mir space station
             space news from May 30 AW&ST
             space news from June 6 AW&ST
             Announcing New Mailing List
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Fri, 22 Jul 88 13:14:01 EDT
From: Glenn Chapman <[e-mail]>
Subject: Phobos missions leave Earth's Gravity


     The USSR has now announced that both the Phobos 1 probe (launched
July 7, and Phobos 2 (launched July 12) have now left "the earth's
gravity". By this they probably mean that the probes have all made their
burns out of earth orbit into a Hohmann orbit aimed at Mars (the lowest
energy orbit to get you from one planet to another).
     There were several interesting things about these Phobos probes.
First they allowed a number of foreign visitors to observe the launch
and to see the Phobos 2 Proton launcher while it was in the vehicle
assembly building.  Also extensive photos of the vehicle and the launch
were released, or taken by journalists.  Secondly at a conference held
in conjunction with the launch they laid out more of their future plans.
The 1992 Mars mission is now cancelled in favour of a much larger 1994
mission.  The 1994 will be launched either on a Proton or an Energiya -
there is a "competition" for the launcher currently.  Third manned Mars
missions are now not planed until 2014-2017 and will "require"
international cooperation.  Finally Academician Roald Sagdeev of the
USSR's IKI Space Research Institute will be retiring as its director
this year, because he feels that directors should only serve 10 year
terms (he has held the job for 15 years).  This is in line with the new
Soviet perestroika reforms of major scientific and industrial posts.
     Lastly the Phobos missions achieved another first, now in a
commercial area.  The Russians sold advertising space on the second
stage of the vehicle to Italy's Danieli and Austria's Voest-Alpine steel
firms.  Both companies sell a lot of steel to the Soviets and were happy
to purchase the space on such a major launch.  The irony of this is that
for years some people have been pushing the idea of selling adds on the
shuttle main tank and solids as a way for NASA to pay for the launch.
Who is the first to open this new commercial field of "billboards into
orbit"?  Why those who hate capitalism, the Russians!  Furthermore they
did it on a vehicle which, until 4 years ago, the Soviets kept so secret
that in 20 years only one partial photograph had been released of the
booster. We live in interesting times where the USSR is doing more to
commercialize space that the USA.  How about some efforts to change
that?

                                                    Glenn Chapman
                                                    MIT Lincoln Lab

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 22 Jul 88 17:26:37 EDT
From: Glenn Chapman <[e-mail]>
Subject: Progress 37 docks to Soviet Mir space station

    The Soviet's successfully docked the Progress 37 tanker to the
Mir/Kvant complex July 22, bringing up the typical 2.3 Tonnes of cargo.
This makes the 13th cargo ship to Mir (more than the 12 each sent to the
previous stations of Salyut 6 & 7).  It is also the 20th vehicle to dock
to Mir (in addition to 6 Soyuz's and Kvant).  It will probably be the
last cargo craft before the Afghan/Soviet Soyuz TM-6 mission in late
August.
    The Soviet's long duration Mir crew of Vladimir Titov and Musahi
Manarov have been up now for more than 7 months of their one year
mission.  They are preparing to do another space walk to continue the
repair of the Dutch/British telescope on Kvant.  They are probably
getting new tools with the Progress to help in that EVA.
    The Russians space station work seems to be fully routine now
(repairs by crews that have not done that work on earth based simulators
is common).  Meanwhile they are talking about rolling the shuttle back
into the vehicle assembly building due to an OMS leak.  They may not
have high tech, but at least the Soviets are in space.  This country
does, and has a high tech hanger queen.  It is the efforts and results
that matter, not the technology used to do it.

                                                    Glenn Chapman
                                                    MIT Lincoln Lab

------------------------------

Date: 22 Jul 88 04:42:55 GMT
From: attcan!utzoo![e-mail]  (Henry Spencer)
Subject: space news from May 30 AW&ST

New DoC commercial-space assessment says DoD will need 119 shuttle-
equivalent launches and 10 launches/year of smaller expendables between
now and 2000.  Commercial and foreign customers will want 15-25 big
ones per year and 10 smaller per year.  NASA will want 48-60 large
expendables before 2000.  Strong growth in Navsat services like Geostar
is forecast.  Satellite imaging may be $1G/yr by 1997, most of it in
value-added image analysis.

Moscow summit expected to lead to agreement to launch space science
instruments on each other's missions.  Reagan expected to avoid
endorsing Gorbachev's joint-manned-Mars idea, since the US is still
trying to figure out what its priorities are.  Likely results of the
instrument exchange are a NASA ozone mapper on a Meteor metsat in 1990,
a Soviet radio-relay system on Mars Observer (relaying data from the
Soviet Mars balloon mission in 1994), a US-Danish X-ray telescope on a
Soviet satellite in the mid-1990s, and possibly more.  DoD, as usual, is
squawking about technology transfer.  Reagan will propose that the two
countries study cooperation in solar-system exploration.  He will
refrain from endorsing missions involving extensive hardware cooperation
(e.g. Apollo-Soyuz), major manned projects, or specific unmanned Mars
missions.  [Has it occurred to any of the brain-damaged bozos who put
together this wonderful list of non-promises that maybe the Soviets are
tired of studying the notion endlessly and would like to *do*
something?!?]

The ozone mapper tentatively earmarked for the Meteor flight, a spare
from Nimbus 7, has been quietly pulled out of storage and is now being
overhauled to make it flight-ready.

Soviets give ICAO technical details on their Glonass navsat system,
offering it for international civil-aviation use.  The Leeds University
people who have been studying Glonass for several years say the data
is accurate and comprehensive.

NASA and DoC award General Dynamics a $200M contract to launch the next
three US Clarke-orbit metsats, the first in 1990.  This is the first
actual final contract for commercial launch services from the US
government.

First Ariane 4 readied for launch.  Ariane 4 is actually a family of
launchers, sharing a stretched and beefed-up Ariane core and adding two
or four strap-ons, those being small solids, big liquids, or two of
each.  The first launch will be the AR44LP variant, with two of each
strap-on, to get the most mileage out of one test launch.  Arianespace
has made firm commitments to order 50 Ariane 4s, in hopes that volume
production will cut costs and simplify management.

Work begins on the ELA-3 launch complex at Kourou, for use with Ariane 5
in the mid-1990s.  Included are an adjacent vertical test stand for the
Ariane 5 SRBs, and a factory for solid-propellant manufacturing.

House, Senate, White House quarrel over how to limit liability for
commercial third-party launches.  House and Senate bills are broadly
similar, setting fixed limits on third-party damage and government
property damage (with limits lowered if coverage to the limits is not
available at reasonable cost), with the DoT assuming responsibility
beyond the limits.  By comparison, the Chinese and the Soviets assume
all responsibility, while Arianespace requires $70M of third-party
coverage and the French government covers the rest.  The space-insurance
business is in bad shape and agrees that limits are needed.  USAF, NASA,
and DoT do not like the idea; they think goverment indemnification is
overly drastic and the $100M gov't-property limit is too low (USAF
estimate is that a Titan failure could cause $300M damage).  The Reagan
alternative would cap liability instead of shifting it to the
government.  [Congress does not like the radical change to liability law
that this implies.]  The USAF also takes a dim view of the clause
compensating commercial satellite customers bumped from the shuttle,
saying that this is a "direct federal subsidy".  [Now I've heard
everything -- compensating the victims when you renege on your promises
is a "subsidy"?!?]  It's not yet clear whether Reagan dislikes the
House/Senate bill enough to veto it; minor adjustments have already been
made to try to keep him happy.

USAF is seriously beefing up security for space-launch sites, in
response to post-Challenger studies showing serious vulnerability to
man-portable weapons before and just after launch.  The USAF now deploys
AC-130 gunships with specialized sensors to both Vandenberg and the Cape
when launches are imminent, but AC-130s are in short supply and the
increasing launch rates dictate dedicated aircraft.  Each site could get
at least three specially- equipped helicopters, probably similar to a
recent demonstration model shown at Vandenberg by ERA Aviation (which
does things like Alaska-pipeline inspection).  The ERA demonstrator had
an imaging infrared system, a low- light TV system, night-vision goggles
for the crew, a full set of IFR [night/bad-weather] flight instruments,
a loudspeaker system, and a high-power searchlight with a retractable
infrared filter.

Anyone who buys Wisconsin cheese is|  Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
a traitor to mankind.  --Pournelle |uunet!mnetor!utzoo! henry @zoo.toronto.edu

------------------------------

Date: 24 Jul 88 21:59:00 GMT
From: mnetor!utzoo![e-mail]  (Henry Spencer)
Subject: space news from June 6 AW&ST

[The cover story this month is Pegasus, which I reported on earlier.]

Japan declines to bid on launch services for Intelsat 7 series, citing
prior commitments for the H-2 launcher in 1992-3.

Congress attempts to trim the fat at NASA HQ a bit; HQ has had 28%
staff growth in the last five years.

DoC report on international commercial space says commercial projects
face major obstacles, notably inhospitable government policy and
actions.  It says there is definite potential for materials work and a
definite need for US facilities for it.  Report notes that the Soviets
are giving this priority, with over 1500 experiments done to date and
probably a total of 2500 by 1991; the US total is under 100 and this
won't increase significantly in the next few years.

US/Soviet space agreement mumbles about improving cooperation, the major
tangible signs being the expected flight of instruments on the other
side's satellites.  The US ozone mapper will fly on a Meteor metsat, and
the Soviet radio-relay system will fly on Mars Observer.  Soviet
experiments will probably fly on the SLS-1 Spacelab Life Sciences
mission, set to go up in early 1990, and probably also SLS-2 in mid-91.

Pictures of the Soviet launch facilities at Baikonur Cosmodrome, in the
wake of the US press visit.  The Soviets have *three* launch pads for
Energia already, over and above leftover pads from their old big-booster
project.  There is an isolated pad that was used for the first test
flight, and a complex that includes at least two more (one still being
built).  At least one old-big-booster pad may be converted for Energia
as well.  [Lest we forget, KSC had a grand total of two Saturn V pads,
with provision for a total of four.  (If you've ever wondered why
there's a seemingly- purposeless bend in the crawlerway to pad 39B,
that's where the route to the hypothetical pads 39C and 39D would have
branched off.)]

The space station is in deep trouble in Congress, with Proxmire in
particular gunning for it.  Some are interpreting Fletcher's threat to
cancel the space station if it's not adequately funded as a veiled hint
that that's where cuts should be made if needed.  So far the station has
survived, at the expense of major cuts to CSTI, Pathfinder, NASA
expendables, and the Commercially Developed Space Facility.  [Those are
lousy places for cuts.]

US and European commercial-launch people are pressuring governments to
outlaw use of Long March for satellites built in US or Europe.  One
reason for the sudden fuss is that Australia is ordering satellites for
in-orbit delivery and has indicated that it likes the idea of using Long
March.  The official reason for the pressure is the detrimental effects
on the free-world launch industry of government-subsidized competition.
[Isn't it wonderful when the interests of the free world happen to
coincide so neatly with getting rid of a low-cost competitor?]

NASA to run major launch simulation June 7, to exercise entire launch
team and all facilities.

Final preparations underway for the first Ariane 4 launch.  [Went fine.]

Large story on Magellan, slated to go up next spring, the first US
planetary mission in 11 years.  It will be the first interplanetary
launch from the shuttle.  Magellan is also the first of the Solar System
Exploration Committee's recommended projects; originally it was the
first of four projects, carefully timed to meet launch windows, to do a
lot of useful science at a modest and essentially constant funding level
of FY84$300M/yr.  The plan hasn't worked out very well so far.  Even
Magellan is still at risk, because it slips 25 months if it misses its
May launch window.  It is currently scheduled for STS-30 on April 28,
right at the beginning of the window, but STS-29 may trade places with
STS-30 if shuttle timing slips [as it has].  STS-29 is another TDRS,
which NASA would probably be happy to postpone to get Magellan off on
time.

Magellan is a dedicated radar satellite, with essentially no other
science, although this still involves several different experiments.
The primary mission is synthetic-aperture radar mapping of 90% of the
planet to less than 500m resolution.  (An extended mission will probably
get the leftover 10%; the omission is due to Venus and the Sun getting
in the way of data return, and viewing-angle problems at the South
Pole.)  There is also a wide-beam altimeter for absolute surface
elevation (the extended mission may include some stereo mapping work for
more precise elevations), a passive radiometer using only the radar's
receiver for information about surface temperature and emissivity, a
radar-occultation experiment to measure properties of the atmosphere,
and a gravity-mapping experiment using Earth-based radar interferometry
to measure Magellan's orbit very precisely.  The gravity-mapping work
will be done in the extended mission only, since it requires
transmission from the low part of the orbit, and in the primary mission
that period is dedicated to mapping.  The primary mission should take
about 8 months, and there should be enough propellant left for 3-4 years
of extended mission.

The rest of the SSEC's plan is in serious trouble.  The four get-things-
going-again missions were Magellan, Mars Observer, Comet Rendezvous
Asteroid Flyby (CRAF), and Cassini (Saturn orbiter, Titan probe).
"Celestial mechanics are now beginning to catch up with us.  When we
published the SSEC plan back in 1982, it looked like there were an awful
lot of opportunities to get off to comets and to Saturn and Titan.  But
six years later a lot of opportunities are behind us now, and in the
case of Saturn in particular, you really have to use a Jupiter flyby to
get there in a reasonable amount of time.  The last chance to do that is
going to be launches in 1996 and 1997, and if we don't get ahead and get
started now two things will happen -- one is that the Europeans [who
want to build the Titan probe] will probably go off somewhere else, and
the second thing is that Jupiter will go off and be in the wrong place."
NASA is trying to get Cassini and CRAF approved as a package in FY90.
They are also hoping to get a Titan 4 in 1991 as a planetary backup --
first as a May 1991 backup for Galileo's late 1989 launch, then (if
Galileo is off on schedule) as a backup for Ulysses's late-90 launch,
and then, if not needed for either backup role, as prime launcher for
CRAF.  NASA says that future deep-space missions definitely will not use
the shuttle, since shuttle safety politics and budget problems make
launch dates too uncertain.  NASA would like a bigger launcher than
Titan 4, though, and the shuttle will probably continue to be used for
inner-solar-system missions with more frequent launch windows.

NASA is also partly re-introducing the idea of backup spacecraft.  "We
had adopted too risky a policy given the number of failures that
suddenly started popping up and a greater sense of realism that started
pervading our thinking."  The current idea is to build and launch only
one, but to be prepared with spare parts to launch another one in the
next window.  [Still not as good as real backups, especially given
funding problems.  People make much of there having been two Vikings and
two Voyagers, for example, but they miss the fact that there were
actually *three* of each: two that *flew* and one spare.  Sigh; for both
Viking and Voyager there were plans afoot to *launch* the spare as well.
The third Voyager would have gone out on a Jupiter-Pluto (!) mission;
the third Viking lander would have been landed near the North polar cap,
where there is liquid water at times.  Think of it when you see them in
the Smithsonian.]

Soviet disclosure of the Glonass navsat signal format is considered a
major boost to international acceptance of navsats; it helps to overcome
concerns about being dependent on a satellite system run by the US
military.  The Soviets intend to have an operational system comparable
to Navstar by 1995, with a limited network up by 1990, about the same
time scale as Navstar.  Accuracies are also comparable.  A remaining
problem is that neither system provides for prompt detection and user
warning about failure or serious degradation of accuracy; this is felt
to be quite important for aviation use.  The Soviet Glonass documents
made no mention of a military mission for the satellites, but here too
Glonass is similar to Navstar, with a separate high-precision signal.

Pratt&Whitney is rebuilding its space-propulsion test facilities in
Florida, partly to support its NASA contract to develop an alternate
turbopump system for the SSME (although NASA might opt to stick with
improved versions of the current Rocketdyne hardware, in the end), and
partly to support more work on the RL-10 engine for the Centaur.  [The
RL-10 has also attracted attention for other projects, since it is cheap
and reliable (although small) compared to the SSME and is the only other
oxyhydrogen engine still in production in the US.]

Soviet Academy of Sciences and the Federation of American Scientists
jointly propose a ban on nuclear reactors in Earth orbit.  This would
hamper SDI and shut down the Soviet nuclear radarsats.  Nuclear power
for deep-space missions would be allowed, as would limited Earth-orbit
testing of reactors for such missions, and some types of isotope power
sources for civilian missions.  [I think the "for civilian missions"
part is a tactical error; if they're pushing this on the safety issue,
they should stay out of the political side.  If isotope packs are safe
for civilian missions, they're safe for military missions.]

Canada, France, US, and USSR, the founding countries of the
COSPAS/SARSAT search-and-rescue satellite system, reach agreement on
long-term support of the system.  COSPAS/SARSAT is credited with saving
over 1000 lives since 1982.

MSDOS is not dead, it just     |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
smells that way.               | uunet!mnetor!utzoo!henry [e-mail]

------------------------------

Date: 26 Jul 88 14:37:17 GMT
From: imagine!turing.cs.rpi.edu![e-mail]  (Christopher A. Welty)
Subject: Announcing New Mailing List


    I would like to announce the availability of Space Activists
Digest.  This is a moderated mailing digest of news and information
for space activists.  The digest has been in place for a few months
now, I am announcing it now that it is stable.  I encourage anyone
who feels that space should be a government priority to join.  One of
the main goals of the digest is to report on government activity
related to space, including congressional hearings and votes.  To
join, send a message to [e-mail], or
to me.

Christopher Welty  ---  Asst. Director, RPI CS Labs
[e-mail]             ...!njin!nyser!weltyc

------------------------------

End of SPACE Digest V8 #303
*******************