Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/mac/TEXT/SPACEDIG/V16_9/V16NO935.TXT

Text File | 1993-08-03 | 36KB | 792 lines

Space Digest                Wed, 28 Jul 93       Volume 16 : Issue 935

Today's Topics:

                              11 planets
                    ALEXIS Satellite "First Light"
                              Buran Hype
              Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 at Jupiter (2 msgs)
                          Cryogenic Rockets
                 Good news on Delta Clipper confirmed
Karla: can anyone give me some information on a new object called Karla ?
          Low Tech Alternatives, Info Post it here! (2 msgs)
                         Mir-shuttle hook up
             NASA, Space Advertising! PR Work is needed.
            Satellite Assembly/Factory in Space! (2 msgs)
                          SPACE TRIVIA LIST

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

Date: Tue, 27 Jul 93 02:32:00 BST
From: [e-mail]
Subject:

> Date: Sun, 25 Jul 1993 00:03:07 GMT
> Henry Spencer <[e-mail]>

writes:

> Fuel costs have never been a significant part of even NASA's launch costs.
> Liquid oxygen is commercially available in large quantities in most parts
> of the US -- just place an order and let the suppliers worry about how
> to get it to you.  Liquid hydrogen is a bit harder to come by, but even
> it is commercially available in a reasonable number of areas.

Henry is, as usual, right about all this.

A few years ago, I was having a drink in a Huntsville bar, and got to
talking to a guy who was the chief of government marketing for the major
supplier of LO2 and LH2 (or LOX and LH2, in the case of  NASA) to NASA.
(We had met at some meeting we were both attending, I don't want
anyone to think I talk to strange people in bars. He will have to make up
his own story as to why he was talking to a strange person. )

He was remarking that the way things were going, that NASA was already
not a major consumer of LH2 and getting smaller by the day. (they have
never been a major LO2 customer, not in the NASA days, and maybe not
ever.)

I was quite surprised by that, and asked where most of the LH2 went, and
he said that most of it is used for processing atmospheres in the electronic
chip manufacturing industry. (It is cheaper to deliver as liquid and gasify,
than to ship as gas.)

I subsequently read a very fascinating book on industrial accidents,
("Major Chemical Hazards" by V. C. Marshall) and the author was quite
interested in the relative safety of various "volatile" liquids, and he was of
the opinion, though he could not get exact statistics, that hydrogen was
greatly under represented in the accident history.

There have been some serious explosions involving methane, but most of
the really scary ones have been propane, LPG, etc. and the worst single one
was in a nylon plant involving cyclohexane (which was, admittedly,
superheated at atmospheric pressure.) and he surmised that hydrogen is
probably too light to ever have an unconfined "Vapor Cloud Detonation"
under accident conditions. (The Hindenberg is not a counter example, as it
did not detonate, but burned very smoothly and politely.

Marshall is English, and in typical English fashion, he had rooted out all the
airship accidents that ever were, and even in cases where hydrogen filled
airships were being bombed, machine gunned, subjected to fire from a
variety of anti aircraft guns, were caught in burning hangers, etc. he could
only find one very poorly documented report of one which  was shot down
over Britain which was said to have broken a few windows. The nylon
plant took out a reinforced concrete control room and a good part of
Flixborough, England, the adjacent town.)

(Understand, you DO NOT want to be in a building, or anything that
remotely resembles a building, that has free hydrogen in it!)

It is also interesting that the government consumption of helium,
gaseous or liquid, is no longer a dominant part of the market, either,
so much for being on the cutting edge of technology.


Henry S. Hillbrath
    ----------------------------------------------------------
NO ONE  believes an analysis...   |  EVERYONE believes a.test...
   - except the guy who did it.   |     - except the guy who did it.

                   T. M. ("Scotty") Davidson


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

Date: Wed, 28 Jul 1993 04:26:02 GMT
From: Michael Moroney <[e-mail]>
Subject: 11 planets
Newsgroups: sci.space

[e-mail] writes:

>I keep wondering.  Seems to me I've read there is a planet
>closer to the sun than Mercury.  One which has an orbit which
>most of the time we earthlings can't see.

Better start reading books newer than the early 1900s.  The orbit of
Mercury precess and this was not explainable then except by hypothesizing
a planet inside its orbit.  Attempts to find it failed.  But then along came
Einstein whose Relativity theories explain what's going on with Mercury,
and its orbit now shows there is no such planet there.

>  Also seems I
>remember there is a planet the other side of Pluto.  Now

A few iceballs have been recently found out there but they are too small
to be planets.  Best described as asteroids or giant comets.

-Mike

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

Date: Wed, 28 Jul 1993 06:28:23 GMT
From: Jeffrey J Bloch <[e-mail]>
Subject: ALEXIS Satellite "First Light"
Newsgroups: sci.space

LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY
CONTACT:  John R. Gustafson, [phone]
                CompuServe Acct: 71742,1311

"FIRST LIGHT" FOR ALEXIS
LOS ALAMOS, N.M., July 27, 1993 - Los Alamos National Laboratory scientists
early Tuesday morning powered up one of the six X-ray telescopes on the ALEXIS
satellite and operated the novel instrument for the first time in orbit.
The ALEXIS telescopes capture and focus "soft," or low-energy, X-rays. Other
telescopes onboard ALEXIS will be turned on later this week, building toward
all-out astronomical observations with the full suite of telescopes.
"All indications are that the telescope worked beautifully," said Jeff Bloch,
lead scientist for the X-ray telescope experiment. "We adjusted the voltage on
the telescope's detector until we were getting decent count rates for photons
detected and then had about a four-minute exposure at that voltage level.
There is exciting information in this data that we need for running the
telescopes for real astronomical work."
"First light" is a special time for telescopes, but does not represent the
start of regular observations. The ALEXIS team needs to determine the optimum
operating conditions for the telescopes and measure the background radiation
from sources in the near-Earth environment so those effects can be separated
from the astrophysical X-ray emissions of interest.
ALEXIS, which stands for Array of Low-Energy X-ray Imaging Sensors, is Los
Alamos' first full-scale entry into the small satellite field. The $17 million
satellite, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Intelligence
and National Security, was designed and built by a laboratory-industry team
led by Los Alamos and is operated from a ground station at the Laboratory.
"ALEXIS is first and foremost a technology demonstration mission," said Bill
Priedhorsky, ALEXIS project leader. In addition to the six X-ray telecopes,
ALEXIS carries a broadband radio experiment called Blackbeard, which has been
used successfully in a series of experiments that started July 11.
Both experiments on ALEXIS were built to demonstrate advanced instrumentation
for possible use in future space systems to detect nuclear weapons
proliferation, but "by testing the technology with astrophysical and
atmospheric sources we can conduct valuable scientific studies," Priedhorsky
said.
Data from ALEXIS' X-ray telescopes, for example, will be made available to
researchers through NASA's astrophysical data program.
The coffee-can-sized telescopes, each with a 30-degree-wide view of the sky,
use recently developed multilayered coatings on their curved mirrors to
reflect and focus X-rays much the way that optical telescopes focus visible
light. ALEXIS' telescopes will monitor the entire sky in three separate
low-energy X-ray windows: 62 electron-Volts, 72 eV and 93 eV, respectively. A
typical medical X-ray, by comparison, has an energy of 80,000 eV.
The telescopes' combination of wide-field view and precise energy resolution
offer a unique view of the cosmos that complements information being returned
by other orbiting observatories.
The detectors on the X-ray telescopes were built by the Space Sciences
Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley. The detectors have to
time precisely the arrival of each X-ray photon so researchers can determine
where the spinning satellite was pointing when the photon arrived. The ALEXIS
team will need to "despin" the data to reconstruct an unblurred picture of the
sky, a task complicated because damage ALEXIS suffered during launch requires
that the computer programs to reconstruct the X-ray images be rewritten from
scratch.
ALEXIS was launched April 25 on a U.S. Air Force Pegasus booster built by
Orbital Sciences Corp. One of the satellite's solar panels was damaged during
the launch phase and the satellite was not brought under control until July 5.
The ALEXIS team is still learning how to compensate for the damage to the
satellite in advancing to full-scale operations.
Los Alamos National Laboratory is a multidisciplinary research organization
that applies science and technology to problems of national security ranging
from defense to energy research. It is operated by the University of
California for the U.S. Department of Energy.
-30-

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

Date: 27 Jul 1993 21:23:03 -0400
From: Pat <[e-mail]>
Subject: Buran Hype
Newsgroups: sci.space

|
|Good question, this should be in the FAQ if its not already...
|

Jon.
|FBIS is the Foreign Broadcast Information Service which is
|done by the CIA, gets all kinds of foreign radio, television,
|etc. broadcasts which is of an informational nature and translates it.
|They've been doing it since just after WWII according to a book
|I read recently. Apparently JPRS does the same thing with print
|media. Together they put it all in either daily or periodic reports.
|The Dept. of Commerce, National Technical Information Service sells
|them to anyone. They cover many countries and many topics mostly
|of political and technological nature. NTIS has a nice catalog of
|these products. See below for excerpt from their catalog.
|
|For about $75 a year you can subscribe to the "JPRS Report: Science &
|Technology: Central Eurasia: Space" and get most of the significant articles
|on space subjects published in the CIS from newspaper and TV news
|to technical journals. Its published about every 2-3 months according to
|when they can fill up 50 or so pages.
|
|I kind of wish they would do the same for the USA... BTW: NTIS says
|they are funded only by the sales of the reports but I doubt that includes
|the cost of gathering or translating...
|


Nexis  provides some similiar services.  According to Sandra the tiger,
Dialog, DOw Jones, BRS, NewsNet,  and UMI ,  are also good services.

They are expensive,  but many university libraries provide these.

pat

--

God put me on this Earth to accomplish certain things.  Right now,
I am so far behind, I will never die.

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

Date: Wed, 28 Jul 1993 01:52:40 GMT
From: Dave Michelson <[e-mail]>
Subject: Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 at Jupiter
Newsgroups: sci.space,sci.astro

Maclean's (Canada's weekly newsmagazine) ran a piece on
Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 in the August 2, 1993 issue (p. 43).

Highlights:

* "the impact [of the comet at Jupiter] will create a force as much as
   two billion times as powerful as the bomb that devastated HIroshima.."

* "an American spacecraft, the Galileo, that is due to reach Jupiter in
   1995, will be in a position from which it can record the event next
   July."

   (comment apparently (but not explicitly) attributed to Jim Wilson, a
    JPL spokesman)

* photo and mini-bio of Montreal-born David Levy

So, Dave, tell us about the camera that you're holding in the photo....

--
Dave Michelson  --  [e-mail]  --  University of British Columbia

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

Date: Wed, 28 Jul 1993 06:52:03 GMT
From: Dave Tholen <[e-mail]>
Subject: Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 at Jupiter
Newsgroups: sci.space,sci.astro

Dave Michelson writes:

> Maclean's (Canada's weekly newsmagazine) ran a piece on
> Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 in the August 2, 1993 issue (p. 43).
>
> Highlights:
>
> * "an American spacecraft, the Galileo, that is due to reach Jupiter in
>    1995, will be in a position from which it can record the event next
>    July."

Atmospheric entry is almost precisely on the limb of Jupiter as seen from
Galileo, though the uncertainty in the position is still a few degrees.

Voyager 2 will have a direct view nearly centered, while Voyager 1 will
be able to view it near the limb.  Jupiter currently subtends only two
pixels, however.  I understand that they are looking into the possibility
of reactivating the Voyager cameras for this event, but the main difficulty
is in reassembling the team of people who knew how to run those systems.

Jupiter will be in conjunction with the Sun as viewed from Mars Observer.

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

Date: Tue, 27 Jul 93 04:40:00 BST
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Cryogenic Rockets

> Date: 24 Jul 93 21:11:55 GMT
> Dave Michelson <[e-mail]>

Writes:

> The term "cryogenic motor" is usually reserved for engines
> which use both a cryogenic fuel *and* a cryogenic oxidizer.

I had been in the business about 30 years before I ever heard the
term, at all, and it was used to apply exclusively to LH2 engines, in
order to make, what I considered the utterly stupid point that
"cryogenic engines" have lower reliability than non cryogenic ones,
though it was, at that time, never hydrogen systems that were
involved in the failures. I protest every time the term is used,
and I find it is  almost always by non propulsion types.

One thing I do know, liquid rockets do not have "MOTORS." They are
always called "engines." No reason, but if you call them motors, they
know you are not a propulsion guy, on the spot. It use to be that
LOX/LO2 was like that, in some places you could just about get your
self punched out for using the "wrong one."

>  They have never been used in ICBMs (or, for that matter, IRBM's).

True fact.

>The US maintained the Titan missiles up until maybe the
> mid-80s when the last one was taken out of service somewhere
>  in the South (Alabama?)

There was never any operational ICBM in Alabama, Titan or
otherwise. There were some in Arkansas, but what the heck, they are
pretty much the same dull, dreary sorts of places.

> Not quite.  The Titan II used "room temperature" hypergolic fuels
that could be stored for months.

I was a junior engineer at General Dynamics when the Titan II
competition too place. I am not sure of the exact sequence, but GD
actually proposed a very minimal modification to the Atlas F series
to store LO2 in it full time. The Air Force had its mind made up, but I
am totally convinced that GD was correct, and that storing the LO2 in
the  missile would have caused almost no problems, where as the
storables caused enormous problems, and expense. It never pays to
be right when your customer is wrong. (The LO2, after all, is stored
in a tank only a few feet away, for the   same length of time, anyway.
It turns out that there are more problems with storing the   RP-1 in
the tank for a year at a time than LO2, by far.)

>>With solid motors, all you have to do is
> >worry about the guidance and other avionics boxes from going
>> down - they're far better as strategic forces.

The bonds cracking, and the grain slumping, etc. etc. I have worked
both liquids and solids, the best one is the one on the other side of
the fence.

> Date: Sun, 25 Jul 1993 00:12:31 GMT
> Henry Spencer <[e-mail]>

writes:

> To minimize confusion, it is important to understand that Titan I
and Titan II were *completely* different missiles, with only the
name in common.

I agree with that, and it is probably the right advice for "non
experts." yet, I think there may be more similarity, under the skin
than that statement suggests. I am more familiar with the engines in
this case than the vehicles, but from time to time, I have discussed
this with the engine supplier (Aerojet), especially, what would be
required to convert the Titan II engines to LO2/RP-1 and the usual
answer they give is "not very much" as many of the pieces are the
same as the Titan I engines. For the most part, it was stuff that was
removed that would have to be reinvented and put back on, like the
ignition system for the main chamber and the   gas generator.

There was a change in the second stage diameter, which makes them
pretty easy to tell apart.

One can also point out that there have been three really
fundamentally different Atlas configurations, the A, which was only
a "demonstrator" with no sustainer, and no staging, the B, C, D, up
through what ever they call them now, Atlas I, Atlas II, etc. and the
E and F series, which were the "real" operational missiles and which
are at least as different as the T-I and T-II, except they both use the
same propellant. There are family resemblances, of course, but there
aren't any pieces that match. There have been something a bit over
600 Atlas launches, and at least a third of them were Es and Fs
(which only a experienced egg candler can tell apart without a
printed program.)



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

Date: 27 Jul 1993 21:05:40 -0400
From: Pat <[e-mail]>
Subject: Good news on Delta Clipper confirmed
Newsgroups: sci.space,talk.politics.space

Well,  they certainly like thank you calls  far more then calls
asking for support.

pat
--

God put me on this Earth to accomplish certain things.  Right now,
I am so far behind, I will never die.

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

Date: Mon, 26 Jul 1993 08:05:56 GMT
From: Pete Phillips <[e-mail]>
Subject: Karla: can anyone give me some information on a new object called Karla ?
Newsgroups: sci.space

Hi,

I have heard about a new body in space called Karla, but couldn't see
anything about it in New Scientist.  Could someone please mail me a
bries summary and a reference ?  I don't read this newsgroup, so mail
would be appreciated.

thanks in advance,

Pete
--
Pete Phillips, Deputy Director, Surgical Materials Testing Lab,
Bridgend General Hospital, S. Wales. 0656-652166 [e-mail]
--
"The Four Horse Oppressors of the Apocalypse were Nutritional
Deprivation, State of Belligerency, Widespread Transmittable Condition
and Terminal Inconvenience" - Official Politically Correct Dictionary
--
Pete Phillips, Deputy Director, Surgical Materials Testing Lab,
Bridgend General Hospital, S. Wales. 0656-652166 [e-mail]
--
"The Four Horse Oppressors of the Apocalypse were Nutritional

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

Date: 28 Jul 1993 00:30:51 GMT
From: George William Herbert <[e-mail]>
Subject: Low Tech Alternatives, Info Post it here!
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Jim Bowery) writes:
>George William Herbert <[e-mail]> writes:
>
>I was being reasonably conservative, and assuming that there would be
>a variety of businesses (ie: several SMALL businesses) around to ensure
>that one of them would actually achieve something like their projected
>price reductions (in addition to being pressured into actually reducing
> price by competition rather than having one of try to pull an OSC on
> the rest via political connections & "strategic partnerships").

I was sort of hoping Delta Clipper would be such competition,
regardless of where it's coming from.  If you insist on more
competition, go ahead and start some.

>>and won't go much lower.  I'm not sure there will be
>>enough market demand to push that lower until 2005-2010.
>
>You sound like the mainframe or mini manufacturers of the early 70's
>talking about the demand for computers.  The market is a lot more
>flexible than anyone now imagines -- given a reasonably free market.

Space access has never been, and is not likely to soon be, as
cheap as computers ever have been expensive.  Damn right that
the market is flexible, but _how_ flexible, how quickly, and
who's going to be flexing?  If everything goes as well as I'm
hoping, and Retro's commercial operations are flying in late 95
or early 96, how long does it take for either new people to enter
the business or old customers to change the way they do business
and start building cheaper sattelites?  5 years, the historical
time line?  10, due to the massive restructuring of the whole
industry this will require?  2 years due to some nutcase
entrepreneur who will make good?  I refuse to try and predict
this, and basing a business plan on such a prediction would
be doubly foolish.

>>[Side note to the uninitiated: Peter Diamandis, one of ISU's
>>founders, is currently on his second launch services company
>>and does a graphic "this is what starting a business is like"
>>lecture.  8-) -gwh ISU '92]
>
>Any reasonable venture capitalist would look at Diamandis's FIRST launch
>launch services company more closely than his business plan for his second --
>and he wouldn't take Diamandis's version of the story as his primary source
>of info.  Personally, I would never invest in anything associated with
>ISU due to my opinion, formed when I met him in Washington D.C. around 1984
>and repeatedly confirmed since then, of Todd Hawley.  Your company "Retro"
>included.  I don't need to look at your business plan to see it isn't worth
>my time to bother.  All I need is to see you were at ISU and that you didn't
>come away with a negative opinion of the place.

Gee, and one of the first five employees of OSC was telling me the
exact same suggestions Diamandis had, too.  I guess you're the last
word, Jim.

>>The only problem with this is that Space isn't inherently a small-business
>>environment.
>
>No, but high technology startups ARE inherently small-business environments.

And high-technology startups that succeed rapidly grow.
I'm not planning on having anywhere near 50 employees when
flights begin.  Is this small enough?

>>The business plan for Retro for example, at the _lowest_
>>expected flight rate, is making ten million dollars a year in 1995 or 96,
>>and the high end of the possible growth curve has us in the half-billion
>>range by 1998.  So do I become a bad guy once I start making serious
>>money?
>
>No, you become a bad guy once you achieve the ISU dream of creating the
>"new generation" of space bureaucracy -- even if in the private sector,
>which, I'll admit, wouldn't be as bad as stealing taxpayer money to do so.
>
>Basically, however, your definition of "small business" is flawed in
>such a way as to expose your ideology:  Dollar volume => number of
>employees.  This is one step away from the idea that "the ultimate
> basis of value is the man-hour" which is the basic error of Marx.
>
>A "small business" has few employees, regardless of its volume of
>business or level of profitability.
>
>When you get over the ISU-promoted dream of becoming the new GM of space
>you'll recognize that about the time you successfully develop your technology
>your best tactic is to license it to someone who can actually manage large
>production bureaucracies well, like our friends in the orient, and then
>use your royalty stream to move on to the next technical frontier (as well
> as lobbying the State Dept. to get off their duffs and start enforcing
> U.S. intellectual property rights abroad rather than giving them away
> in bogus patent treaties).  Basically, accept your unique place in the
>world as an American -- you're a "looney inventor" who belongs NO WHERE
>on ANY organizational chart, but who deserves lots of royalties (when
> you turn out to have been more lonely than looney).

I'm amazed at how much you can divine from my posts, Jim.
Nearly all of it wrong.

My eventual plan is to form a number of related small companies
to handle various business areas I want to get in to; launch
services, orbital operations, science, commsats, etc.
These are not planned as big companies, personel-wise.
Launch Services should be a 35 tech person company when operations
start up for real about 2 years in, 15 engineers, 20 techs
and operations folks.  Plus a couple of marketing, couple
of accounting, and some secretaries and office assistants.
Counting them, should be under 50 total.  If I sell 12
launches a year instead of 2, I need twice that many ops
employees, perhaps 3 times as many.  As I develop larger,
more capable launchers, I may need to increase the
number of engineers, but that's the only reason I would
do so.  I suspect that 25 engineers will be enough to
develop my second-generation vehicles about two or
three years after the first, so that's not a lot of growth.
I'd like to keep the engineering and ops teams at 20 people
each, but both will probably end up bigger due to market
force demands.  I don't think I can fly 12 missions with
20 people, nor develop a HLV with 15 engineers.  And I want
to do both.

OSC ended up with 200 employees in 3 years.  That's not a risk
here, unless I have a hundred launch customers....  Really.

The other areas I want to work in, I also want to keep the
teams small (20ish people in eng and prod each, max) unless
market demand is really high.

I would like to know how you expect the companies to stay
small, Jim; if say 3 companies end up sharing the current world
market, that's 10 launches each, and I can't imagine doing
that with less than 50 production and operations staff.
If you're right and market volume grows a lot, that's a whole
lot more.

I don't want to sell out to someone who can "manage a production
stream" because they'll then become a monolith who are unlikely
to approve of further radical changes in the launch services
market, which I would eventually like to see happen in a second
wave past what I want to do.  I'm willing to _be_ that
next wave, if I can be, since greed isn't #1 on my motivations
for doing all of this.  Daewoo Launch isn't likely to be so willing,
at least not at first.

Who knows, though.  I may eventually end up making that move.
But I'll do it for my reasons, at my time, not because you
think I'm structurally incapable of making a tight and light
company appropriately sized for the environment.  I may be
a "Loony Inventor", but I have enough social and management
skills to see a project through all the way to long-term
production, and if I have my say about it the company will
damn well be structured to let me keep on inventing and
innovating as well.  If that doesn't work, we'll see what
happens then.


-george william herbert
Retro Aerospace

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

Date: 28 Jul 1993 00:52:43 GMT
From: George William Herbert <[e-mail]>
Subject: Low Tech Alternatives, Info Post it here!
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Keith Mancus) writes:
>  Personally, I define a small business in terms of number of people
>employed rather than $$$ earned.  The reason for this is that bureaucracy,
>the enemy of creativity, correlates well with the number of employees.
>So no, earn as much as you can, just don't turn into an empire.

Have no fear.  Is a 15 person engineering staff (first generation
of vehicles) growing to 25 (second generation, 1998ish) small enough?
Production and ops staff should be scaleable with volume of flights
if I fly 4 or more flights a year, and believe me, I'm gonna
try and keep the number low.

[See my more volumnous post replying to Jim Bowery for more info]

>| "Black powder and alcohol, when your states and cities fall,          |
>|  when your back's against the wall...." -Leslie Fish                  |

Totally off the subject, but _where_ has Leslie Fish dissapeared to?

-george william herbert
Retro Aerospace

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

Date: Wed, 28 Jul 1993 05:48:22 GMT
From: stephen voss <[e-mail]>
Subject: Mir-shuttle hook up
Newsgroups: sci.space

I read this one in the Miami Herald. I believe it is scheduled for 1997

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

Date: 28 Jul 1993 01:39:26 GMT
From: "Robert A. Lentz" <[e-mail]>
Subject: NASA, Space Advertising! PR Work is needed.
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Gary Coffman) writes:
>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:
>>NASA and other space realted companies/organizations need to do more
>>advertising, and PR work..  Also open up to the 20th Century..
>
>Sadly, because I too would like to see massive space colonization in
>my lifetime, PR is not a viable approach. Space already has a massive
>PR presence for free thanks to science fiction and Startrek and activist
>groups like this one. It's very unlikely that people who would be attracted
>by space PR aren't already on board. What's needed for space exploitation
>to succeed is simple to define and difficult to do; show a profit.

And then there was this NASA center higher-up (memory really foggy on his
exact position by now) back at the '89 ISDC here in Chicago who while
showing us his wonderful view-graphs, was bragging about the three people
with Mac II's he had outside his office who produced these things. I
certainly hope they were all volunteers and donated equipment...
(And people wonder where NASA gets something of a bad reputation from...)

-Robert Lentz

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

Date: Wed, 28 Jul 1993 00:08:38 GMT
From: Keith Mancus <[e-mail]>
Subject: Satellite Assembly/Factory in Space!
Newsgroups: sci.space

  I worked on OMV for about 6 months (in a very junior role) right before
it was cancelled; my work involved combining Shuttle-C (remember that?)
with OMV to get payloads to SSF, plus some work on rendezvous final approach.
This was very roughly the second half of 1989, through about March 1990.

[e-mail] (Andy Testa) writes:
>The OMV was unmanned and remotely piloted. Trouble was, everyone wanted to
>use it, and many of the uses conflicted.  The program became overburdened
>with requirements and the sales pitch didn't live up to the expanding cost
>and capability (sound familiar?).  The program underwent several redesigns
>to bring it back into line with the budget (familiar again?) and was
>eventually cancelled. This eliminated one of the big original selling points
>for Freedom: satellite retrieval and servicing.  By cancelling OMV, the
>servicing mission was cancelled.

  The original pre-descoped OMV was a pretty good vehicle.  The major
limitation was the 40 hour battery lifetime (plus 25% reserve).  There
was plenty of fuel on board, almost TOO much fuel, because you had to
use lots of extra delta-V in order to perform the mission within the battery
limits.  There was a GPS receiver, lights for docking, cameras in several
places, etc.  I feel sure the battery problem could have been corrected
in a "Block II" version after the first one was flying.
  Then the program went over budget by, oh, $15M or so.  I can't remember
the actual number.  The result was a major "de-scope", which removed
all kinds of capabilities that greatly limited the uses to which the finished
vehicle could be put.  The killer was the removal of GPS (estimated savings
of $6.6M; don't ask me why a GPS receiver has to cost that much!).  This

would have forced ground tracking to track the OMV for a couple of orbits
between burns, whereas GPS would have given the new orbital elements almost
instantaneously.  The already-too-short mission lifetime (due to the battery
limit) was compressed further, with the result that the vehicle was almost
useless.  A major study concluded just that, and the program was killed.
A few months later, the same groups that had wanted the original OMV (not
the de-scoped version!) started agitating for a new satellite servicing
vehicle.  The requirement for one had *not* gone away, but somehow that was
lost in the confusion.
  OMV cost us approximately $750M, and yielded nothing that I am aware of
that's still used in any program.

>OMV had some good capabilities. At one point it was tasked to bring a dual
>armed dexterous robot (FTS- Flight Telerobotic Servicer.  Another doomed
>station component, but one that still lives in the world of Shuttle tests:
>look for a flight with an experimental dexterous arm in the payload bay
>in the future. It's FTS) along with it to do on site telerobotic repairs.
>I believe HST was built with OMV interfaces on its bottom in anticipation
>of future servicing flights.

  Well, actually, we looked extensively at SSF construction using FTS.
(I moved to SSF assembly ops after OMV was cancelled.)
It had some uses, but the Canadian SPDM (Special Purpose Dextrous Manipulator)
appeared to be better, so FTS was canned.  So we didn't really lose much
there.  SPDM work is continuing as we speak; I was in a meeting just today
that involved some SPDM analysis.

--
 Keith Mancus    <[e-mail]>
 N5WVR           <[e-mail]>
 "Black powder and alcohol, when your states and cities fall,
  when your back's against the wall...." -Leslie Fish

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

Date: 27 Jul 1993 21:36:20 -0400
From: Pat <[e-mail]>
Subject: Satellite Assembly/Factory in Space!
Newsgroups: sci.space

 THe original Un trimmed OMV.  How much was it looking to Weigh.
How much would one cost?  what were the program DDTE costs running?
What was it's rough dimensions?

pat
--

God put me on this Earth to accomplish certain things.  Right now,
I am so far behind, I will never die.

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

Date: 27 Jul 93 16:37:35 -0600
From: [e-mail]
Subject: SPACE TRIVIA LIST
Newsgroups: sci.space

Regarding lunar orbit or not for Apollo 13 I remember well waiting _ with the
rest of the world _ for the moment that the signal from the Apollo spacecraft
was detected after Apollo went behind the moon.  If the spacecraft did not
slow behind the moon with a LOI burn the signal would be picked up sooner
that it would be if the burn had been effective in slowing the spacecraft
and placing it in a lunar orbit.  Any mid course correction would not be
enough to keep the moons gravity from accelerating apollo to better than
escape velocity.  The energy must be extracted at perilune to be most
effective.  Apollo 13 did not go into lunar orbit but just looped around
the moon as Chris Jones said.

Bob Elliott
Hobbs Observatory
Fall Creek, Wisconsin
([e-mail])


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End of Space Digest Volume 16 : Issue 935
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