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Subject: SPACE Digest V9 #445

SPACE Digest                                      Volume 9 : Issue 445

Today's Topics:
            space news from April 17 AW&ST
              NSS Hotline Update
               Re: Biosphere II
      What ever happened to the Hubble Space Telescope?
            Re: New Orbiter Name Announced
            Re: asteroid almost hits earth
            Shuttle Orbiter Names
      Re: manned vs. unmanned (was: Priorities at NASA?)
            Re: asteroid almost hits earth
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 19 May 89 02:49:15 GMT
From: cwjcc!mailrus!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!utzoo![e-mail]  (Henry Spencer)
Subject: space news from April 17 AW&ST

NASA seeks exemptions from the Freedom of Information Act, to restrict
flow of data to foreign nations.  Congress isn't enthusiastic.

Production of ammonium perchlorate oxidizer at Pacific Engineering's new
plant will be delayed until May due to minor funding delays.

Goddard Spaceflight Center requests commercial launch services for three
satellites, with options for twelve more.  The three are Wind, Geotail,
and Polar, part of the International Solar-Terrestrial Physics project.

NASA approves expanded studies for a space-station rescue vehicle that
would remain docked to the station.  NASA may be hoping to use the studies
to shorten the "advanced definition" stage, once a new administrator is
in charge and can make decisions.

Army initiative to educate field commanders about the uses of space
capabilities is being hampered by excessive secrecy, says BG Robert
L. Stewart (ex-astronaut, dep. cmdr. Army Strategic Defense Command):
"The world of space reconnaissance is too closed... This is an area
that doesn't need to be guarded that closely any more..."

US military commanders express concern about lack of a US Asat system,
and about the "less operationally oriented" US launch systems (compared
to the Soviet ones).

DoD considers severe budget cuts for the Aerospace Plane; it is unlikely
that NASA could pick up the slack.

SDI reconsidering Brilliant Pebbles cost estimates.  SDI laser development,
in particular, has been moving very slowly and is eating up a lot of the
SDI budget, which dampens enthusiasm for costly new projects.

NRC panel tells NASA that the Commercially Developed Space Facility is
too expensive and not useful enough, and that most near-term microgravity
work can be done with an extended-duration shuttle orbiter.  It does say
that the idea should be reconsidered if the space station is delayed more
than a year or two.  [Do they *really* expect that it *won't* be delayed
at least that long???]  Panel says that NASA could build the platform for
only slightly more than it would cost to lease it.  [Oh really?]  CDSF
would give more power and better microgravity, but neither is critical
for near-term experimental work, says the panel.  Finally, panel says that
there is little chance of substantial commercial activity in microgravity
work in the near future.

Space Industries and others are not so sure.  SI points out that the panel
was solid basic-research people, and simply doesn't know what's going on
in the commercial world.  Max Faget [SI's founder] says stronger private-
sector role must be provided if the US civil space program is to succeed:
"The government has dominated, providing all the infrastructure to date.
Every time [it does] a program, it takes longer than before..."

Another industry official [unnamed] is strongly critical of the report,
saying that of course the panel found no need for more power or better
microgravity:  all the experiments they looked at were designed to fly
on the shuttle!  The shuttle imposes major constraints on designers.
"These guys recognized things, covered them up and then drew the most
negative conclusions possible.. The conclusions are very conservative.
They... reflect the stacking of the committee with fundamental scientists."
He says the panel based its conclusions mostly on "expert opinion" from
NASA.  Others who briefed the panel agree.

The Senate will conduct major commercial-space hearings in May, and will
presumably reexamine this issue.

Payload Systems' planned June 15-Oct 1 payload flight aboard Mir is now
in doubt due to the Soviet decision to leave the station unattended for
a while.  PS says it has not yet been officially told of any delay.
Soviet engineers have visited PS recently to start flight-approval
procedures for the equipment, which is scheduled to go to the USSR in May.
The PS experiment consists of three sealed modules which cannot be
examined in detail by the cosmonauts.  Each module contains a number
of solution wells, with a wall between two compartments broken by an
external thumbscrew to start the experiment.  The cosmonauts will
photograph the inside of each well through a window at the end, so that
PS can determine whether broken crystals were intact before reentry.

Speaking of Mir...  Mir cosmonauts prepare Mir for "two to three months"
of unmanned flight to give the USSR time to mount a repair mission to
deal with electrical-power problems.  Electrical failures have begun to
severely limit available power, a worrisome issue because life support
is the biggest power user.  A Soyuz mission carrying a repair crew will
be launched in the next 2-3 months.  This is the second time the Soviets
have had to do major repair work on a manned space station, the first
being Salyut 7.  The team that saved Salyut 7 has been put in charge of
assembling the Mir repair mission.  The Mir cosmonauts have been firing
Mir's engines to raise its orbit, to give it a longer unattended lifetime.

Management shakeup at IKI [the research institute; note this is an entirely
different organization from Glavcosmos, which runs Mir, launchers, and
the shuttle] is likely as a result of the Phobos failures.

USSR is tentatively considering use of the Phobos ground spare to refly
the Phobos mission, possibly in 1992.  (This indicates a conservative
approach in planning, since there is a Mars window in 1990.)

Soviet scientists criticize secrecy and poor planning in Soviet space
program, blaming disorganization and internal bickering for the lack of
fully-approved planetary missions after Phobos 1/2.

Soviets will probably bring their An-225 [their shuttle carrier] to
the Paris air show, and may show a shuttle orbiter as well.

Arianespace delays first flight of the Ariane 44L, the maximum-lift
configuration of Ariane 4.  There is concern about high vibration levels
seen in the third stage at liftoff in the initial Ariane 4 flights.
Arianespace says the delay will be "a few weeks"; the first Ariane 44L
had been scheduled for April 28.

Letter from David P. Gump:  "...Twenty-eight years after the Wright
Brothers, the general public could buy passenger tickets on a pan-European
airline.  Twenty-eight years after Yuri Gagarin, the general public is
permitted to clap when five government employees take a short ride costing
almost $500 million tax dollars.  Only priviate initiative, aided by
short-term government incentives, will ever open space to the rest of us..."
--
Subversion, n:  a superset     |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
of a subset.    --J.J. Horning | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry [e-mail]

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

Date: 16 May 89 13:28:00 GMT
From: sgi!arisia!cdp![e-mail]
Subject: NSS Hotline Update


This is the National Space Society's Space Hotline for the week
ending May 14, 1989.

Last week NASA announced an updated shuttle manifest. In order to make
certain that the Shuttle program is capable of launching the probe to the
Jovian planet on or about Oct. 12, NASA has scheduled only one shuttle
flight between the recent Magellan mission and the upcoming Galileo
mission. Originally, the Hubble Space Telescope was scheduled to be
launched in between the two planetary missions but has since been pushed
to Spring of next year.

The manifest looks something like this:
STS-28 July 31-DoD mission on Columbia;
STS-34 October 12-Galileo on Atlantis;
STS-33 mid-November-DoD mission on Discovery;
STS-32 Syncom IV deployment/LDEF retrieval on Columbia;
STS-36-DoD mission on Atlantis;
STS-31-Hubble Space Telescope mission on Discovery;
STS-35-ASTRO-Spacelab on Columbia.

With the completion of a rigorous six month application process,
the NASA Safety, Reliability, Maintainability, and Quality Assurance
office has announced eight finalists for the NASA Excellence Award for
Quality and Productivity.

The eight finalists are:
Barrios Technology of Houston; Bendix Field Eng. Corp., Columbia, Md.;
Boeing Computer Support Service, Huntsville AL.;  Computer Sciences Corp.,
Houston, Tx.; EG&G FL, Inc. KSC FL.; Grumman Technical Services Div.,
Titusville FL.; Lockheed Eng. Corp., Downey CA.  The winner will
be announced at NASA's sixth annual contract conference Oct. 31,
1989.

Rear Adm. Richard Truly stated to the Senate Commerce, Science, and
Transportation subcommittee that the FY'90 budget is "as tight as
a drumhead"; and that any cuts in the $13 billion requested budget would
threaten the safety of the space transportation system.  In short,
either safety concerns would have to be forgone which Truly refused
to back off on, or less flights would be planned for the future.

Later in a round of debate between Senator Jake Garn and J.R.  Thomson,
current Director of MSFC and nominated to be NASA's Deputy Adm., Senator
Garn stated that developing the ASRM development is not worth the extra
cost and that if NASA's budget is cut, the ASRM program should be
dropped.  J.R. Thomas responded that the development of improved SSMEs
and ASRM are key programs in making the Shuttle system safer and that
possible catastrophic failures would be caused by the current SSME's and
SRMs.  The FY'90 request is for $496.6 million for the liquid SSME, and
$121.3 million for the ASRM, both will come on line some time in 1994 or
95.

Acting Associate Adm. of Space Station Freedom Thomas Moser
resigned as of May 15 after working for NASA for 26 years.  He
stated his resignation has nothing to do with the state of the
program, it was just that it seemed like the right time to go. He may have
been refering to the ethics legislation which goes into effect this week,
which would severely limit the consulting and lobbying work which an ex-
employee can legally do in the first year after retirement.

President Bush has chosen the name 'Endeavour' for Orbiter Vehicle-106,
the Challenger replacement.  The name was selected out of 6,100 submittals
by both primary and secondary schoolchildren.  James Cook the was
British explorer who first commanded the ship Endeavour on its
maiden Voyage in Aug. 1768.  The discoveries that Cook made in
navigation and exploration have led, at least in spirit, to the
possibilities of space exploration.

At KSC....

The Space Shuttle Columbia has been undergoing basic main engine
testing through out the week, with continued functional testing of
waste containment systems, power units, fresh water systems and
communication systems.  Additional tile work was scheduled to begin
on Sunday in the area by the payload bay doors.

An Air Force Titan 34D roared off the pad at 3:47 EDT from Cape
Canaveral on May 10, launching a pair of advanced communications
satellites to handle U.S. military and diplomatic communications.
The exhaust of the booster set off several brush fires that kept
the pad closed for three hours after the launch, no major damage was
reported.

Space Commerce Corp. of TX, who has signed an exclusive agreement
with the Soviet Union to market the services of Soviet boosters, is going
to make a formal offer to launch Space Station Freedom components for
a price.  In addition they will also start lobbying US companies
to consider launching their payloads atop Soviet Boosters.  As far
as NASA is officially concerned the answer is a strict no; it
wishes them well but would in no way consider such an offer.  As
far as commercial payloads are concerned there are specific State
Depratment policies forbidding such arrangements with the Soviets.

This has been Jordan Katz Reporting for the National Space
Society's Space Hotline.  The Next update will be on May 21, 1989.

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

Date: 16 May 89 21:29:00 GMT
From: surya.cs.umd.edu![e-mail]  (Yuan Liu)
Subject: Re: Biosphere II

There is a one page description of Biosphere II in the current issue
of IEEE Computer Magazine as part of an article on rapid prototyping.

====================================================================
Yuan Liu
[e-mail]

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

Date: 17 May 89 03:20:19 GMT
From: castor.ucdavis.edu![e-mail]  (Jason)
Subject: What ever happened to the Hubble Space Telescope?


After the Challenger explosion I stopped keeping track of all the reasons
for the delay with the H.S. Telescope.  Besides that tragedy, can anyone
give me the other reasons behind its late arrival.

Jason Gabler   jygabler@ucdavis

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

Date: 16 May 89 18:28:55 GMT
From: cfa!cfa250![e-mail]  (Steve Willner)
Subject: Re: New Orbiter Name Announced

From article <[e-mail]>, by [e-mail]
(Roger Levasseur):
> As a side note, it was the school children who picked the name, but
> from what I gather (and I haven't seen the material that was distributed
> by NASA) it would seem that the material made the name "Endeavour"
> rather attractive for the kids to pick.

On the same note, can anyone confirm or refute my suspicion that the
name (HMS) Beagle was made rather unattractive?
--
Steve Willner            Phone [phone]         Bitnet:   willner@cfa
60 Garden St.            FTS:      830-7123           UUCP:   willner@cfa
Cambridge, MA 02138 USA                 Internet: [e-mail]

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

Date: 17 May 89 06:16:59 GMT
From: unmvax!unm-la![e-mail]  (AIDE Hugh Hazelrigg)
Subject: Re: asteroid almost hits earth

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Keith Dancey) writes:
>My understanding is that the demise of the dinosaurs extended over a period
>of order of magnitude of a thousand years.  Certainly long enough to place
>doubt upon the viability of a single catastrophy such as the one mentioned.

What prevents the effects of a "single catastrophy [sic]" from propagating over
a period of a thousand years?  On a geological scale of time, the events of a
thousand years constitute less than a footnote in a billion-page volume.

Life on this planet seems to be pretty durable, in spite of its perceived
fragility.  We, the living, while certainly not immune from geological,
meteorological, or cosmological influences, won't go away overnight unless the
whole planet is blasted to smithereens in one swell foop!

Look:  a thousand years (or even five or ten) really is just a one-nighter
(what a party!).  The earth may have lost a host of magnificent species, but
did life disappear?

I believe the metorite/asteroid collision theory to be the best put forward to
date to explain the demise of the dinosaurs and their ecosystem. Your objection,
Keith, is ill-considered.

Hugh Hazelrigg
[e-mail]
Disclaimer:  None.  I don't work for anyone who doesn't trust me implicitly.

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

Date: Tue, 16 May 89 23:31:50 PDT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Shuttle Orbiter Names

In an earlier response, a comment was made that all the orbiters
had fictional counterparts except for Columbia.  Wasn't the
"ship" in Jules Verne's novel called "Columbia"?

--------------------------------------------------------------------
  David G. Michelson, PhD Candidate, University of British Columbia
--------------------------------------------------------------------

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

Date: 17 May 89 00:49:26 GMT
From: shlump.dec.com!jfcl.dec.com!imokay.dec.com![e-mail]  (Doug Borsom)
Subject: Re: manned vs. unmanned (was: Priorities at NASA?)

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (David Dyer-Bennet) writes:
>
>I suspect that, to most of us, the question of "Why should there be a manned
>space program?" is pretty much equivalent to the question "Why should Marco
>Polo sail out off the edge of the world?"  It's so transparently obvious
>that it's not worth discussing.

I appreciate your point, Dave.

The pro-space arguments I was interested in were not intended for
consumption by readers of this news group, who, you are probably right
in suggesting, are pretty much sold on the idea.

The reasons for an aggressive space program, unfortunately, are
not "transparently obvious" to most US citizens.  At least, not
obvious enough to make them willing to actively back the program.

It seems to me that getting more of the public actively backing the
space program, and supplying legislators with compelling reasons for
voting funding for the space program (reasons the legislators can use
to justify their votes), are important, though unglamourous, ways
of promoting a government-backed program. Even if you believe in a
privately funded space program, it will be necessary to sell the
program to folks who don't initially share your enthusiams.

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

Date: 17 May 89 08:42:10 GMT
From: [e-mail]  (Eugene Miya)
Subject: Re: asteroid almost hits earth

> Alverz et al extinction theory as plausible.

Wait a minute! You make a good point that 1K years is just a small
amount of time on a geologic or planetary (or many other) time scales.
I don't quibble about that, but I can't agree you can't look at this
without so skepticism (like fusion, conductors, etc.)

Several years I went on one of the yearly Caltech ski trips, when
this theory was fresh on every's brain (probably about 1982/3).  Okay
we discuss work on ski trips (we all get our turn).
Luis and Walter (and all the others) still got lots of respect,
but one of the people who came up, Peter Ray, a botanist at Stanford,
I won't just say "He shot holes thru the theory," but he did raise
interesting unanswered questions from the botanical community.
None of the original LBL people addressed this questions.  You have
to study some of these questions in great depth and say, "Oh yeah?!
I didn't think about that simple idea which remains unanswered..."
Happens all the time.  Theories are scientific fads.  Good find
some serious skeptics, I won't try to paraphrase Peter's questions.

--eugene miya, NASA Ames Research Center, [e-mail]

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

End of SPACE Digest V9 #445
*******************