Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/mac/TEXT/SPACEDIG/V11_3/V11_383.TXT

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Subject: SPACE Digest V11 #383

SPACE Digest                                     Volume 11 : Issue 383

Today's Topics:
           JSC "roundup" summaries (and other junk)
             Re: Manned landing on Venus
             Re: Manned mission to Venus
Re: Giant crawler transporter to pass 1000 miles on STS-35 rollout (Forwarded)
        Contact information for Space Academy?
              Galileo Update - 05/09/90
            Re: Voyager Update - 05/08/90
                launch windows
         Apollo-13 article from JSC _Roundup_
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 10 May 90 00:26:06 GMT
From: usc!cs.utexas.edu!texbell!nuchat![e-mail]  (Steve Nuchia)
Subject: JSC "roundup" summaries (and other junk)

When we last saw our hero, it was before finals and I thought
I could post a roundup summary a week, no problem.  Now that
finals are over and I've been properly humbled, I'm back online.

I asked for opinions about the usefulness of these, and got several
positive responses and no negative ones.  So I'll post when I've
got time.  This time I've also got a bunch of stuff Liz brought
home from work to tell y'all about.

One of the respondents asked:

> I would prefer more detail about stuff I haven't already heard about on the
> net-- material in NASA press releases that have already been posted-- but I
> think you've already figured that out, as your discussion of the ozone-hole
> and STS-31 stories was brief, and your discussion of the scale Shuttle and
> inflatable domes was longer.

The _Roundup_ is a four-page (ie one sheet, folded) tabloid with a bunch
of little stories and one "feature" on page three.  The longer stories
I post are usually summaries of the feature, the short ones are the
meat of the little news items.  It's hard enough summarizing what's
there without having to make up more :-)

Liz keyed in the entire text of a very well-done feature article
on Apollo-13, that's next.  I've also got a copy of the LDEF
investigators' newsletter and some other junk.  And of course
four roundups to summarize.  All following under appropriate
Subject lines.

--
Steve Nuchia          South Coast Computing Services      [phone]
"The study of the art of motorcycle maintenance is really a miniature study
of the art of rationality itself.  Working on a motorcycle, working well,
caring, is to become part of a process, to achieve an inner peace of mind.
The motorcycle is primarily a mental phenomenon."  -- Robert M. Pirsig

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

Subject: Re: Manned landing on Venus
Date: Wed, 9 May 90 13:24:00 MESZ
From: Joseph C. Pistritto <[e-mail]>
Mailer: Elm [revision: 64.9]

In my previous message, when I mentioned Henry Vanderbilt, I
actually meant Henry Spencer.  Mr. Vanderbilt is a regular in
the space forum on Byte Information Exchange, and I got the
two confused.  Apologies to all concerned.
                                                -jcp-
--
Joseph C. Pistritto (cgch![e-mail], [e-mail])
 Ciba Geigy AG, R1241.1.01, Postfach CH4002, Basel, Switzerland
 Tel: [phone] (work) [phone] (home)   GMT+2hrs!

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

Date: 9 May 90 00:24:39 GMT
From: mips!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uwm.edu!ogicse!zephyr.ens.tek.com!tektronix!percy![e-mail]  (Gary Wells)
Subject: Re: Manned mission to Venus

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Jon Bloom) writes:
>In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Mark SOKOLOWSKI) writes:
>> -  Notwithstanding its athmosphere, Venus is the TRUE twin of our Earth, and
>>    it should be therefore our main target from the cultural point of view.
>
>Exactly what kind of culture do they have on Venus, hmmm?
>
Venus was the goddess of love, so we can assume(!) that there would be lots
of wild women and (apparently) quite warm beer.  Sounds like _my_ kind of
"culture" :-)

--
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Still working on _natural_ intelligence.

gary@percy   (...!tektronix!percy!gary)

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

Date: 8 May 90 15:24:03 GMT
From: spock![e-mail]  (Peter Sheriff)
Subject: Re: Giant crawler transporter to pass 1000 miles on STS-35 rollout (Forwarded)


      Seems I read somwhere that the crawlers are powered by electric
motors on each track. The motors get their power from Diesel generators.
I am using my memory here so I could be in error.

                               Pete

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

Date: 9 May 90 14:06:37 GMT
From: clyde.concordia.ca!antares.concordia.ca![e-mail]  ( Steven Winikoff )
Subject: Contact information for Space Academy?


After hearing about the adult sessions at the Space Academy in
Huntsville, I'd love to go there!  I'd like to write to them to request
more information, but I don't have their address.  Does anyone have an
address (preferably) or a phone number where they can be reached?

I understand that they have a waiting list (but I can't go before next
summer anyway!), but as long as they accept reservations I'll be fine.

Thanks a lot in advance!

- Steven

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Steven Winikoff                                 [e-mail]
Software Analyst
Dept. of Computing services
Concordia University                            voice: [phone]
Montreal, Quebec, Canada                               (10:00-18:00 EST)

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

Date: 9 May 90 17:10:15 GMT
From: zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sdd.hp.com!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!jato!mars.jpl.nasa.gov![e-mail]  (Ron Baalke)
Subject: Galileo Update - 05/09/90


                     GALILEO MISSION STATUS
                           May 9, 1990

     Today the Galileo spacecraft is 95.7 million miles from
Earth.  It is presently going almost 67,000 mph in solar orbit,
slowing a little each day as it recedes from the Sun.  It has
travelled almost 361 million miles in orbit since launch, and has
more than 286 million miles to go before the first Earth flyby in
December.

     The spacecraft's health continues to be excellent, and
activity levels rather quiet.  However, tomorrow night the first
of two instruction sets for this week's trajectory correction
maneuver will be sent to Galileo, and Friday and Saturday the two
portions of the maneuver will be carried out.  This maneuver will
slow the spacecraft in its orbit by 25 mph, less than half the
magnitude of the four-day April trajectory correction.

     The magnetometer, dust detector, and ultraviolet
instruments continue to collect, store, and periodically
transmit measurements of the inner solar system environment.


 Ron Baalke                       |    [e-mail]
 Jet Propulsion Lab  M/S 301-355  |    [e-mail]
 4800 Oak Grove Dr.               |
 Pasadena, CA 91109               |    Go Lakers!

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

Date: 9 May 90 12:08:41 GMT
From: rochester!rit!cci632![e-mail]  (Lance Michel)
Subject: Re: Voyager Update - 05/08/90

>                      CONSUMMABLE STATUS
>
>    P R O P E L L A N T    S T A T U S            P O W E R
>               Consumption
>        One Week    Propellant Remaining     Output     Margin
>  Spacecraft (Gm)             (Kg)           Watts      Watts
>   Voyager 1  42            36.5 + 2.0        370         59
>   Voyager 2   6            39.6 + 2.0        374         66
>
                ^
Okay, I give... What is this?

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

Date: 9 May 90 16:49:12 GMT
From: swrinde!cs.utexas.edu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!utzoo![e-mail]  (Henry Spencer)
Subject: launch windows

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Gregory N. Bond) writes:
>And why is there any launch window at all for satelites, shuttles and
>stuff?  An orbit is an orbit, and the only reference point is the
>earth, no?

The Sun matters too, and that's the reason for a lot of launch windows
in one way or another.  Daylight at shuttle emergency-landing sites,
sunlight on solar panels whose attitude is constrained by engine firings,
and timings of passages through the Earth's shadow are all significant.
--
If OSI is the answer, what is |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
the question?? -Rolf Nordhagen| uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry [e-mail]

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

Date: 10 May 90 00:57:41 GMT
From: usc!cs.utexas.edu!texbell!nuchat![e-mail]  (Steve Nuchia)
Subject: Apollo-13 article from JSC _Roundup_


Space News Roundup April 13, 1990     by Brian Welch



                THE DAY THE DICE STOPPED ROLLING
         Twenty years later, a brilliant rescue is remembered



                  "HOUSTON WE'VE HAD A PROBLEM"

    APOLLO 13 FLIGHT DIRECTORS REMEMBER HOW PUZZLE PIECES FELL TOGETHER
                           FOR SAFE RETURN


The best show in Vegas that week was at the Stardust Hotel, where a
3.4 billion-year-old rock from the Ocean of Storms went on display the
same day that James Lovell, Fred Haise, and Jack Swigert left the
earth to bring back more such treasures, this time frim a hilly place
called Fra Maouro.

It was April 11, 1970.  And although the launch was exactly on time,
with the Saturn V delivering its standard thunderous spectacle,
there was a certain ennui about it all.  The liftoff inspired
"little excitement at KSC or elsewhere across the land," the
Wall Street Journal reported, citing the fact that only one tenth as
many spectators saw Odessey and Aquarius leave the planet as had
seen Columbus and Eagle depart nine months before.

The launch wasn't even carried live on TV stations in Houston, where
far fewer reporters than usual were on hand to cover the mission
from the Manned Spacecraft Center (MSC).  Days later, Max
Lerner writing in Philadelphia's Evening Bulletin, declared that he
and "millions of others" has simply "played a game of
apathy...confident that Apollo 13 was just one more sure-thing
deployment of what man already proved he can do."

Back at the Stardust, meanwhile, people were filing by the Apollo 12
sample in droves, as if to prove that at least somebody was interested
in the lunar expeditions.  Later that day, when a fire broke out at
the Stardust, three guards stood by their posts, watching over the
precious lunar stone while firemen scrambled about fighting the blaze.
It was only a temporary inconvience, however, and more than 20,000
people managed to visit the lunar exhibit in the days that followed,
during a week when the whole world's attention was quite suddenly
focused on the Moon and the three men flying toward it.


(PHOTO:  with caption:  Astronaut James A. Lovell Jr., Apollo 13
commander, reads a newspaper [Honolulu Star Bulletin...  NIXON TO
GREET THEM HERE     ASTRONAUTS SAFE    NIXON DUE HERE TOMMOROW ]
account of the safe recovery of the prblem-plagued mission's crew.
Lovell was aboard the USS Iwo Jima, prime recovery ship for Apollo 13,
on April 17, 1970.)

(PHOTO: with caption: An entire panel secured by 250 bolts was blown
off of the Apollo 13 Service Module by the oxygen tank explosion that
placed the crew of the Odyssey and all of JSC (then the Manned
Spacecraft Center) in a tense life-and-death struggle.  The heavily
damaged area became visible when the crew jetisoned it [the Service
Module] just prior to safely reentering the Earth's atmosphere in the
Command Module.)

(PHOTO with caption: During the mission, Command Module Pilot John
Swigert holds some of the temporary hose connections used to rig the
Lunar Module Aquarius as a "lifeboat.")

To understand why and how, one has to go back in time to 1962, when
the electrical specification for a particular thermostatic switch, one
of 4 million parts that comprised the Apollo spacecraft, was set at 28
volts, DC power.  There were two such thermostats on the heater system
that was to be installed in the cryogenic oxygen tanks of the Apollo
Command and Service Module (CSM).  Three years later, modifications to
the CSM raised the acceptable voltage on these heaters from 28 to 65
volts DC.  The specifications for the thermostats, however, which were
designed to protect against overheating by opening a circuit when they
sensed a temperature of 80 degrees F, were never upgraded accordingly.

Manufacture of the eighth Block II oxygen tank, serial number
10024X-TA0008, began in 1966.  It was originally scheduled to fly
aboard Service Module 106-later known as Apollo 11-and was installed
in the spacecraft in June 1968.  Problems with cryogenic tank domes on
earlier Apollo spacecraft prompted a modification, however, and
ultimately the complete oxygen shelf was removed from Bay 4 of SM 106.
During that process, this particular oxygen tank was accidently
dropped a distance of two inches, a meager jolt it would seem, but
enough in all probability to loosen and dislodge the fill tube
assembly inside.  Tests followed and the tank passed.  In November
1968, it was installled as Oxygen Tank 2 in CSM-109, scheduled to fly
the third lunar landing mission.

After successful visits to the Sea of Tranquility and the Ocean of
Storms, the stage was sset for Apollo 13, and the Countdown
Demostration Test (CDDT) for that flight began on March 16, 1970.  The
cryo loading test went smoothly enough, but when the time came to drain
the tanks to half quantity, Oxygen Tank 2, with its flawed feeder
tube, was uncooperative and would only relinquish eight percent of its
load.  When technicians were unable to expel the liquid oxygen, a
discrepancy report was written, and detanking operations resumed 11
days later.  "Number 1 again emptied normally," Lovell later wrote,
"but its idiot twin did not."

One way to coax the tank was to activate its heater in order to boil
off the liquid oxygen, but that didn't work very well either, since
the heater's thermostats, still rigged for 28 volts DC (a level
supplied by the CSM in flight) but receiving 65 volts on the pad, were
ruined the moment the temperature reached 80 degrees.  It was at that
moment, as the switches began to open once the temperature limit was
reached, that 65 volts arced through the gap and welded the contacts
closed.  The heater kept right on heating for eight more hours.  Later
tests at MSC showed that temperatures in the heater may well have
reached 1000 degrees F, more than sufficient to seriously damage
Teflon Insulation on adjacent fan motor wiring.

That's when the clock started ticking on Oxygen tank No.
10024X-TA0008.

It was just before 9 P.M. on April 13 and Flight Director Gene Kranz,
whose team was due to be relieved in an hour, was anxious to wrap up
a live television downlink by the crew and finish the checkout they
had been performing on the Lunar Module (LM) Aquarius.  Now almost 56
hours and 200,000 miles outbound from home, Apollo 13 was, as Lovell
put it, 'looking like the smoothest flight of the program."  After
commenting that it seemed rather odd to watch their small tape player
float free in zero-g aboard Odyssey, especially while playing the
theme music from "2001: A Space Odyssey," Lovell bid viewers back on
earth a good evening and concluded the downlink.

There were just a few more routine housekeeping chores to complete
before sending the crew to bed.  One of these chores, considered to be
about as routine and mundane as things got aboarda Moon-bound
spacecraft, was a request by Kranz's EECOM [Environmental Engineer and
Consumable Manager], Sy Liebergot, for a "cryo-stir."

By this point in the flight, the spacecraft had consumed enough oxygen
and hydrogen to allow the liquids to stratify into layers with
different temperatures and densities.  The fix was easy; just turn on
the tank fans and stir the stuff back into a high-tech, homogenous
supercold milkshake.

About nine minutes after the TV show, at 55:55 Ground Elasped Time,
with the cryo-stir under way the damaged wires on the fans in oxygen
tank 2 finally gave way, causing short circuits, arcing and
combustion, in a bath of supercritical oxygen, the result was like
throwing a match in a gas tank.

The explosion rocked the spacecraft, and blew a panel from the Service
Module that was 13 and a half feet long and 5 feet across and that,
seconds before had been securely fastened by 250 bolts.  The crew
heard a loud bang and felt the ship shudder.  Telemetry to Earth
dropped out momentarily.

Swigert saw a warning light and radioed home, "Okay, Houston, we've
had a problem here."

CapCom Jack Lousma responded, "This is Houston.  Say again please."

Lovell called back, "Houston, we've had a problem.  We've had a main B
bus undervolt."  He saw more warning lights, indicating that two of
the CSM's three fuel cells had just gone off line.

And then, with the remorseless certainty of interconnected, highly
complicated plumbing that has just had a wrench thrown into it, the
CSM began to die.

At first the readings on the ground were too bizarre to believe.  "For
thefirst 5 or 10 minutes, I thought it was an instrumentation
problem," Kranz recalled.  "It looked basically like we'd had a
significant power transient, and then the instrumentation went to Hell
in a handbasket."

What looked bad was made worse by the fact that Mission Control in
those days did not boast the same systems which today offer nearly
instant insight through more than a thousand sensors into the health
of the space shuttle, nor the ability to replay data in near real time
for swift analysis.

"The real time data had already gone by," Kranz said.  "We didn't even
have an analog capability for that thing so it was a question of now
taking this hour's worth of data that had unfolded, including the time
period before the event, and getting somebody offline to start looking
at it.  Because the real issue was, how much of the space system was
remaining, and then what the hell could we do with it?"

Kranz still has the notes he made in his logbook that night, and can
pinpoint with some precision how and when his concerns escalated.
"Within 10 minutes we alerted center management, because something
just said this was well beyond the norm and we'd better start getting
our people reporting in.  What I'd call the second level of escalation
was when Lovell reported at 56:14 that they were venting something
from the spacecraft.  That's when we called in all the LM guys and dug
out the lifeboat procedures.  About a minute after that, we got the
crew going on an emergency powerdown, and about 10 minutes after that
we brought up every resource we had."

Glynn Lunney, whose team was due to relieve Kranz and his controllers,
was talking to operators in one of the back rooms when somebody told
him he should plug in and listen to the Air-to-Ground traffic.

"It took a while for it to dawn on me how deep a set of problems we
were into," he said.  He does not recall exchanging any sentiments
with Kranz when he plugged into the Flight Director console for what
would turn out to be 10 very long and dangerous hours.

"I could just look at him and tell he was deep into working the
problem," Lunney said.  "It was one of those things where you didn't
want to jump too fast, but the more you dug the muddier it got.  And
when we got to the point of thinking about using the LM as a lifeboat,
we knew it was getting a little drastic."

Within the first hour, Kranz decided to take his team "offline" to
consider options and prepare for the eventual reentry, a job which
would involve rewriting all of the procedures normally honed over the
course of several months, not to mention the challenge of stretching
30 hours of life support capability in the LM to something like 110
hours.

Arnie Aldrich headed a team of specialists to work out procedures for
crew and flight controllers; John Aaron led another group responsible
for power management; and Phil Shaffer was in charge of the group for
guidance and navigation.

For Lunney's team, now on duty in the [Mission Operations Control Room]
[(]MOCR[)], it bacame a complex struggle simply to stabilize the
situation, power up the LM and prepare it to handle the navigation
tasks.  "We didn't have time to research what had happened to the CSm
because it wasn't long into my shift before the CSM was basically gone
anyway for all practical purposes.  I remember thinking that we had to
stabilize this thing because we were not on a free return trajectory
and we were going to have to make some burns to swing around the Moon
and get back home."

While Lunney's team wrestled with serious problems affecting virtually
every discipline inthe room-not the least of which was transferring a
good guidance reference from the CSM to the LM-the world was waking
up to the news that trouble had developed aboard Apollo 13.

At 12:20 A.M., MSC Deputy Director Chris Kraft, Apollo Program Manager
James McDivitt and Director of Flight Operations Sig Sjoberg met with
the media in Bldg. 2. [Bldg 2 houses the Public Affairs Office and the
visitors center]  When asked about the crew's chances, Kraft evidenced
the same kind of confidence as had prompted Kranz to begin planning
the reentry almost immediately after the accident.

"If the situation remains stable as it is at the moment," Kraft
answered, "there's no question but what we have the thing under
control and we can return the crew safely to the Earth."

But what if this had happened on the way back from the Moon, he was
asked, would it have been a fatal situation?

"Indeed it would," he said, underscoring the notion that bad luck is
one thing, but it's also relative.

For the next three days, the center, the agency and the nation's
aerospace community were mobilized around the clock, testing ideas,
developing procedures, figuring out how to stretch each watt of
electricity and every drop of water out of the Aquarius.  MSC's
engineering community took the lead in working the problem of
scrubbing the carbon dioxide out of the crew's breathing air, while
astronauts lined up in Bldg 5 [Bldg 5 housed the crew trainer mockups]
to try techniques in the simulator.  There were various options for
how swift an Earth-bound trajectory to plan for, involving, among
other things, the propect of "landing in a funny ocean," as Lunney
puts it.

"When you look back at how many people were involved and how the thing
dovetailed together, it was as if someone took a giant puzzle, threw
it up in the air, and it all came down and fell right into place,"
Lunney said.  "When you look at the total team performance, you have
to have a tremendous feeling of pride in the people who were
involved."

The payoff came April 17, when Odyssey separated from Aquarius and
splashed down in the mid-Pacific, near the recovery ship Iwo Jima at
142 hours, 54 minutes GET [Ground Elasped Time].  When the crew
jettisoned the venerable lifeboat Aquarius, there had been exactly 4
and a half hours of electricity and 5 and a half hours of water
remaining.

It was sone of those rare moments when the whole world was watching,
singularly focused as the drama which earned the crew and the flight
control team the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and one of those rarer
moments still, when according to the newspapers, the dice even stopped
rolling in Las Vegas.

(PHOTO with caption: Astronauts and flight controllers monitor the
console activity in the Mission Operations Control Room during the
problem-plagued mission.  Seated, from left, are:Raymond Teague, Edgar
Mitchell, and Alan Shepard.  Standing from left, are:Tony England, Joe
Engle, Gene Cernan, Ron Evans, and M.P. Frank.)

(PHOTO with caption: Three of the four Apollo 13 flight directors
applaud the sucessful splashdown while MSC Diector Robert Gilruth and
Deputy Director Christopher Kraft Jr. Light cigars.  The flight
directors are, from left, Gerald Griffen, Eugene Kranz, and Glynn
Lunney.)

--
Steve Nuchia          South Coast Computing Services      [phone]
"To learn which questions are unanswerable, and _not_to_answer_them;
this skill is most needful in times of stress and darkness."
        Ursula LeGuin, _The_Left_Hand_of_Darkness_

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

End of SPACE Digest V11 #383
*******************