Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/mac/TEXT/SPACEDIG/V08/V8_326.TXT

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Subject: SPACE Digest V8 #326

SPACE Digest                                      Volume 8 : Issue 326

Today's Topics:
                 Mir elements
            space news from June 13 AW&ST
            space news from June 20 AW&ST
            space news from June 27 AW&ST
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 13 Aug 88 01:49:00 GMT
From: a.cs.uiuc.edu!m.cs.uiuc.edu![e-mail]
Subject: Mir elements


Indeed, they have reboosted Mir.  Here are the latest elements:

Two-line elements for Mir
1 16609U          88221.77631193 0.00026093           30000-3 0    00
2 16609  51.6180 157.0634 0018933 270.3884  89.4579 15.71082378142110

Object: Mir
NORAD catalog number: 16609
Element set: 0
Epoch revolution: 14211
Epoch time: 88221.77631193 (Mon Aug  8 18:37:53 UTC)
Inclination: 51.6180 degrees
RA of node: 157.0634 degrees
Eccentricity: 0.0018933
Argument of periapsis: 270.3884 degrees
Mean anomaly: 89.4579 degrees
Mean motion: 15.71082378 revs / day
Mean motion acceleration: 0.00026093 * 2 revs / day**2
B* drag term: 3.0000e-04

Derived figures:
Semimajor axis: 6733.64 km.
Perifocal radius: 6720.89 km.
Apogee height: 368.245 km.
Perigee height: 342.747 km.
Mean longitude at the epoch: 2.7386 degrees.
Magnitudes of short-period perturbations of the second harmonic:
    Radius vector magnitude: +/-1.00 km.
    True anomaly: +/-0.0118 degrees.
    RA of node: +/-0.0259 degrees.
    Inclination: +/-0.0203 degrees.
Secular perturbations of the second harmonic:
    Argument of perigee: 3.8220 degrees/day
    RA of node: -5.1166 degrees/day
    Mean anomaly: included in published mean motion.
Long-period perturbation of the third harmonic: X=-1.639e-03, Y=-8.706e-04


Source: NASA Goddard via NSS Mir Watch Hotline

NOTE: Apogee and perigee heights are referred to a mean equatorial radius
      of 6378.145 km, and not to the local radius of the geoid.
      All derived quantities are calculated using the NORAD SGP model of
      Hilton and Kuhlman.

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

Date: 9 Aug 88 03:21:40 GMT
From: attcan!utzoo![e-mail]  (Henry Spencer)
Subject: space news from June 13 AW&ST

DoD and NASA approve plan to restore ammonium perchlorate production:
Pacific Engineering will build a new plant to replace the ruined one,
while Kerr-McGee will re-open its plant, expand it, and also build a
new plant.  Supply will meet demand by 1990, but things may get a bit
sticky until then.

Bad news time:  Mars Observer may slip another two years (to 1994 launch)
due to cost overruns and NASA's budget problems.

SDI looking at cancelling the Space-Based Interceptor project as too
expensive.  SDI's priorities are also shifting, toward sensors and a
treaty-compliant ground-based interceptor system, partly to make the
Soviets happier about strategic arms reduction.

Morton Thiokol drops out of the bidding for the advanced SRB, officially
to concentrate its efforts on the current SRBs.  NASA denies that M-T
dropped out because it had no chance of winning after Challenger.

Ariane 4 first flight delayed by minor electronics problems.  [Went fine.]

Shuttle rollout imminent.  [As you might expect, I'm cutting some of this
pretty short because it's old news.]

Trouble in the offing:  the oxidizer shortage is likely to wreak havoc
with the 1989-90 shuttle manifest.  A further problem is that orbiter
Columbia's updating has slipped farther and farther onto the back burner,
and it may be late 89 before it's flyable again.

First launch of the new version of Delta slips a month or so due to parts
shortages.  First launch now expected late Oct or early Nov.

Soyuz TM-5 launched to Mir June 7, carrying two Soviet and a Bulgarian
researcher.  [Flight International reports that after currently-agreed
foreign participation in Soyuz launches is completed, all further "guest
cosmonauts" will fly on a fare-paying basis -- no more freebies.]

Detailed space station negotiations with all three international partners
reported complete, agreements to be signed over the summer.

"Aerospace Forum" piece by Lowell Wood, urging "brilliant pebbles" approach
to missile interception.  The basic notion is simple:  since about 20 grams
at 10 kps will kill an ICBM, and there appear to be no fundamental barriers
to shrinking "smart rock" technology to this size, it should be possible to
orbit "brilliant pebble" interceptors in very large numbers at manageable
cost.  Many SDI problems get simpler if interceptors are available in near-
unlimited numbers.  But he's got a touching faith in our ability to solve
certain software problems, the ability of DoD and its contractors to cut
manufacturing costs the same way personal-computer manufacturers have, and
the extent to which all this technology will be so routine that it can be
given to the Soviets without any technology-transfer problems!

Letter from Robert Stefan:  "With the way many of our government programs
have been run lately, NASA might as well name the space station Icarus.
Naa, that's too optimistic -- Icarus at least got off the ground."

[And from the 28 May Flight International...]  Several European companies,
including British Aerospace, are investigating building a small low-orbit
launcher, LittLeo, capable of putting a few hundred kilos into low polar
orbit from the sounding-rocket base at Ando/ya [well, how would *you* type
a slashed o on an ASCII keyboard?] in Norway.  This would be an entirely
commercial venture, with minor help (but no money) from ESA and a policy
of using off-the-shelf hardware.  It could fly in 1992; development cost
is estimated at "tens of millions [of pounds]".  [Note, yet another bunch
who don't believe that you need a decade and a billion dollars to put
something into orbit.]
--
Intel CPUs are not defective,  |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
they just act that way.        | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry [e-mail]

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

Date: 10 Aug 88 04:51:22 GMT
From: attcan!utgpu!utzoo![e-mail]  (Henry Spencer)
Subject: space news from June 20 AW&ST

US Navy is thinking about an antisatellite system that could be launched
from missile subs or surface ships.  Shared development with the USAF is
tempting but the Navy would prefer a system it has full control over in
wartime.

Pioneer 10 celebrates its fifth anniversary technically outside the solar
system, still returning data.  Someone asked TRW whether there was a
warranty on Pioneer 10; the reply was "TRW's position has been that if
you bring it back, we'll fix it."

First Ariane 4 launched June 15, a complete success.  Third-stage shutdown
was about ten seconds earlier than planned, so something performed better
than expected, perhaps the new liquid-fuel strap-ons.  Arianespace has five
more launches planned this year and nine next year; the earliest open
payload slots are late 1990.  Ariane 4 will normally carry two satellites,
but Arianespace is looking seriously at triple payloads to try to open up
more payload slots.  There were three aboard this time, but a couple were a
bit small by normal Ariane standards.  The payloads were ESA's Meteosat P2
Clarke-orbit weather satellite, Pan American Satellite's PAS1 -- the first
privately-owned satellite to compete with Intelsat for international
business -- and the latest Amsat.

Later this year, ESA will begin feeling out possible customers for low-
cost launch opportunities on the two test flights of Ariane 5.  Fees
will be modest in compensation for the risks of early flights.  European
satellites will have priority.  This is pretty much the same deal as for
the Ariane 4 launch, in which fees basically just covered payload
integration and were divided up by satellite weight:  Meteosat P2 paid
$2.4M, PAS1 paid about twice that, and Amsat was exempt on the grounds
that it will not be used for operational or commercial purposes.  Two
possible Ariane 5 payloads have already been identified:  a possible
second-generation Meteosat built from spares from the production series,
and the Cluster multi-satellite solar/terrestrial science mission.

Rocketdyne test-fires a small rocket engine with a thrust-to-weight ratio
of 1200:1 (20:1 is more typical for small engines).  The major application
is as a terminal-guidance thruster for a missile interceptor.  Of note is
the use of graphite and carbon-carbon composites in hot areas, eliminating
the need for ablative or active cooling.

Doesn't look good for the space station.  Congressional proposals basically
put the program in caretaker status until the next president decides what
to do about it.  Neither Bush nor Dukakis [as of June 20] has taken an
official position on the station.

MIT team aboard NASA's Kuiper Airborne Observatory make first direct
observation of an atmosphere on Pluto, by stellar occultation.  Team
leader, James Elliot, used the same technique in 1977 to discover the
rings of Uranus.

First SRB firing on the new dynamic-loads test stand; looks good at
first glance.

Aussat picks Hughes to build the next Aussats, with launcher selection
imminent.

Navy navsat launched by Scout from Vandenberg June 15.

Intelsat tentatively picks Ford Aerospace to build the Intelsat 7s,
subject to detailed negotiations.  If negotiations fail, second choice
is Matra.  [This is a very interesting way of announcing who won.  Why
in the world is this still tentative, with a backup choice announced?
Note a significant fact:  the backup contractor is European.  Smells
to me like Intelsat wants to launch on Proton, or just possibly Long
March, and the US firm gets the contract *if* the US government okays
this choice of launcher!]

International Civil Aviation Organization predicts major role for
satellites in aircraft navigation, tracking, and communications.  ICAO
has declined to recommend a specific navsat system, but has defined
specs for suitable systems.  Of note is that they ruled out "dependent"
systems like Geostar in which the position is calculated on the ground
and transmitted up, on the grounds that the complex communications make
this too fragile, while approving heartily of the idea of aircraft
beyond radar coverage (e.g. over oceans) automatically radioing back
their positions periodically for air-traffic control.  [I smell aviation
politics here...]  They have also called for tests of satellite
communications with aircraft in the polar regions, where Clarke-orbit
satellites are near or even below the horizon.
--
Intel CPUs are not defective,  |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
they just act that way.        | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry [e-mail]

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

Date: 11 Aug 88 04:42:42 GMT
From: att!chinet!mcdchg!clyde!watmath!utgpu!utzoo![e-mail]  (Henry Spencer)
Subject: space news from June 27 AW&ST

Cover picture:  the Ariane 4 launch.

Hercules decides to test its upgraded Titan 4 SRB in a nozzle-down position
to duplicate standard flight assembly procedures and loads; nozzle-up is
used for current Titan SRBs.

Senate subcommittee proposes transferring $600M from DoD research budget
to the space station.  Reagan is not pleased.

The Commercially Developed Space Facility is not going to get approval
from Congress, by the looks of it, without more detailed market studies.

Decision to start Shuttle-C unmanned heavylift launcher slips to FY1990.
NASA is considering flying Shuttle-C with some of the old pre-Challenger
SRBs that are still in storage.

Senate subcommittee moves to make SDI put up $200M to support ALS work,
with about half going to NASA for ALS propulsion technology.

Mir cosmonauts plan EVA to repair British/Dutch X-ray telescope hardware
that has failed.  Complications because it was not designed for on-orbit
servicing.  [The EVA had to be terminated when a tool broke; another
attempt will be made.]

Hughes quotes $360-520M for the first two new-generation Aussats; the
lower quote assumes launch on Long March.

Europe will press US for an agreement on "competitive guidelines" for
commercial expendables [translation, for an agreement to try to keep
Long March and Proton out of the Western market].

(Flight International, 2 July, reports that the Chinese are not pleased
about this.  They say technology exports are a transparent pretext, and
lower Chinese prices are due to lower labor costs.  They also say that
China is not a serious threat to other launch industries due to limited
capacity, with fewer than a dozen launches a year available to outside
customers.  The Chinese have just signed their first firm commercial
launch deal, to launch AsiaSat 1 (the former Westar 6, retrieved by the
shuttle in 1985) as Asia's first regional comsat, with a Hong Kong /
British consortium.)

Analysis of first Ariane 4 mission looks good; the payload orbits were
right on the nose and the telemetry looks clean.  Meteosat P2 and
PAS-1 have fired apogee motors and are drifting towards their final
positions in Clarke orbit.  Amsat 3C maneuvers are imminent [its final
orbit is very different].

Britain's last chance to get in on Ariane 5 is fast approaching; it
is unlikely that British companies can be involved otherwise, since
ESA policies portion out work based on national contributions.

Arianespace registers a modest after-tax profit for FY1987.

Pioneer 10, five years out of the solar system and sixteen years after
launch, is still doing well at 45 AU (six light-hours) out.  Both it
and Pioneer 11 are far beyond original lifetimes and performance.
Excluding launch, the two spacecraft cost a total of about $100M.
P10 has about 10 years of useful life still ahead as its isotope
generators decay.  It could continue to act as a radio beacon for some
while after the last instruments are shut down, this being significant
because gravity-wave and tenth-planet-detection experiments just need
precision tracking.

More on Pegasus.  The design emphasizes simplicity over ultra-high
reliability, with single, unredundant systems.  (The destruct system
is necessarily an exception, the only one.)  The solid rocket motors
use off-the-shelf technology, and the propellant is chosen to be a
relatively non-explosive formula requiring minimal handling precautions.
The similarity in size to the X-15 is not a coincidence, since Pegasus
is sized for similar carrier aircraft and somewhat similar early mission
profiles.  The bulk of the aerodynamic design has been proved by existing
vehicles, the major exception being wing/body shockwave interaction,
which is being studied using supercomputer simulation.  Cork insulation
will be attached to the composite wing in two areas where the shockwaves
cause localized heating.  Pegasus will be assembled horizontally in
the field by six men over about two weeks, in a special trailer.  The
carrier aircraft will also carry an equipment pallet for pre-launch
control, with a single operator.  The actual launch is triggered by
the pilot of the carrier aircraft, after the Pegasus operator enables
his launch control "pickle".  There will be no dedicated test launch;
the first launch will be heavily instrumented but will carry a payload.
Time and expense will also be saved by not using altitude-chamber
firings to calibrate the motors; this means the orbits achieved by the
first few launches will be fairly imprecise, although this will improve
as flight experience supplies calibration data.

There is continued talk of a "four-engined commercial transport" as the
long-term carrier aircraft, with OSC and Hercules still coy about which
one they've picked.  [I still think it's the Airbus A340.]

Pegasus is halfway through development, scheduled to be 28 months.
First flight expected July 1989, given a customer (probably ARPA) and
a firm contract.  All development so far is being funded by Hercules
and OSC, who have spent about one-third of their $40M budget to date.
A small amount of outside revenue will probably be available late this
year, from customer deposits.  OSC may possibly seek some commercial
financing before completion.  The companies are hoping for a wide mix
of customers to avoid dependence on any single budget.  Both consider
Pegasus a reasonably low-risk project.

Pegasus was originally OSC's idea.  Hercules was interested in the
small-payload market, was sound financially, and (according to OSC)
is the cheapest source of small solid motors.  Hercules has invested
heavily in automated production machinery in recent years, the
result being greatly lowered costs.

Letter from Peter Thomas comments that ALS tentatively might be ready
for operational use in 1998, 25 years after the last Saturn V launch.
By comparison, the first Saturn V was launched 22 years after World
War 2 and 10 years after Sputnik... and it was bigger than ALS will be.
--
Intel CPUs are not defective,  |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
they just act that way.        | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry [e-mail]

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

End of SPACE Digest V8 #326
*******************