Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/pc/text/spacedig/v16_6/v16no661.txt

Internet Message Format | 1993-07-13 | 32KB

Date: Thu,  3 Jun 93 05:08:26
From: Space Digest maintainer <[e-mail]>
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Subject: Space Digest V16 #661
To: Space Digest Readers
Precedence: bulk


Space Digest                Thu,  3 Jun 93       Volume 16 : Issue 661

Today's Topics:
                  Big Rock Can Hit Earth in Yr 2000
                                Buran
                              DSN Usage
             Hey Sherz! (For real!) Cost of LEO (6 msgs)
                   McDonnell Douglas email adresses
                          Moon Base (2 msgs)
                   Moon vs. asteroids, Mars, comets
                           Musgrave Injured
             Redstone Trivia  (Was Re: Von Braun and Hg)
                         Some numbers for Ken
                   sub launched material processing
                            WFPC-2 Shipped

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Date: 2 Jun 1993 16:49 UT
From: Ron Baalke <[e-mail]>
Subject: Big Rock Can Hit Earth in Yr 2000
Newsgroups: sci.space,talk.environment,sci.physics,sci.astro

In article <1uh7ej$[e-mail]>, choy@dvinci (Henry Choy) writes...
>What's going to be done about Toutatis? It's reputed to be
>one km wide and a close visitor of earth.

If flew by Earth last December at a distance of 2.2 million miles.  We
got some very nice radar images of it which showed it to be a contact
binary object and craters were visible.  The dimensions on the asteroid
is 2.5 miles x 1.6 miles.

>It doesn't have
>an invitation, but in the year 2000 it may come as close
>as the moon's orbital radius, maybe even closer.

Actually, it will be flying closer in 2004, but not as close as the
moon's orbital radius.  Here are the closest approach numbers:

    1992    .024 AU  (2.2 million miles)
    1996    .035 AU  (3.3 million miles)
    2000    .074 AU  (6.9 million miles)
    2004    .010 AU  (0.9 million miles)

We'll be bouncing more radar using Goldstone's 70 meter antenna on each pass.
There is a possibility that the Clementine II mission may rendezvous with
the asteroid in 1996.
     ___    _____     ___
    /_ /|  /____/ \  /_ /|     Ron Baalke         | [e-mail]
    | | | |  __ \ /| | | |     Jet Propulsion Lab |
 ___| | | | |__) |/  | | |__   M/S 525-3684 Telos | The tuatara, a lizard-like
/___| | | |  ___/    | |/__ /| Pasadena, CA 91109 | reptile from New Zealand,
|_____|/  |_|/       |_____|/                     | has three eyes.

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

Date: Wed, 2 Jun 1993 15:41:20 GMT
From: Henry Spencer <[e-mail]>
Subject: Buran
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <1uifs0$[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Pat) writes:
>I seem to recall reading somewhere during the Drop tests of Buran that
>they were even thinking of doing a Once around touch and go.

If my memory is not fooling me, among the videos Bozlee and Stine showed
at Making Orbit was a sequence of a jet-powered Buran taking off under
its own power.  (Understand, I'm not talking simulations or animations,
but real Soviet-shot footage of a real event.)

>|... but the flight configuration has no engines...

More correctly:  the only flight configuration that has actually flown
has no engines.  Whether that was the only configuration the program
planned to fly is less clear.
--
SVR4 resembles a high-speed collision   | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
between SVR3 and SunOS.    - Dick Dunn  |  [e-mail]  utzoo!henry

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

Date: 2 Jun 1993 16:34 UT
From: Ron Baalke <[e-mail]>
Subject: DSN Usage
Newsgroups: alt.sci.planetary,sci.space

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] writes...
>How busy is the DSN?

It is very busy.  Here's a list of the spacecraft we've supported in the
past 24 hours:  Voyager 1, Voyager 2, Mars Observer, Magellan, Ulysses,
Pioneer 11, Solar-A , Nimbus-7 , Hippocarus, Astro-D, Geotail, Rosat.
Also, some VLBI work was done.

>What are the most heavily loaded DSN resources?

I would say usage of the the 70 meter antenna.  Each station only has
one of these.

>Which missions are using DSN, either on a regular or irregular basis?

I count at least 71 spacecraft.  Don't ask me to list them all.  All of
the deep space spacecraft are supported along with several Earth orbiters.
Interesting enough, the DSN still officially supports Pioneer Venus.  It
usually takes a year or two after a spacecraft has died before it is
removed from the list.

>How much time does each get?  How far in advance is DSN time scheduled?

Varies widely, depends on what the project requests.  Can range from
minutes to hours.  The DSN time is usually scheduled at least three
months in advance.  This coming August will be particularly busy, since
two major events are happening only 4 days apart.  Mars Observer will
be going into orbit around Mars on August 24, and Galileo will be
flying by Ida on August 28.  Both spacecraft will be roughly in the
same part of the sky as viewed from Earth.  Both projects have carefully
scheduled their DSN resources to not to interfere with each other.

>How are "spacecraft emergencies" handled?

The are handled as they happen.  Any idle antennas are pulled in service,
and usually a project or two is asked if they will give up their antenna time
to support the emergency.

>Are things going to get better or worse?
>
Probably worse. I see more spacecraft being launched than dying out.
     ___    _____     ___
    /_ /|  /____/ \  /_ /|     Ron Baalke         | [e-mail]
    | | | |  __ \ /| | | |     Jet Propulsion Lab |
 ___| | | | |__) |/  | | |__   M/S 525-3684 Telos | The tuatara, a lizard-like
/___| | | |  ___/    | |/__ /| Pasadena, CA 91109 | reptile from New Zealand,
|_____|/  |_|/       |_____|/                     | has three eyes.

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

Date: 2 Jun 1993 11:55:04 -0400
From: Pat <[e-mail]>
Subject: Hey Sherz! (For real!) Cost of LEO
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:
>In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Allen W. Sherzer) writes...
>>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:
|
|Here are some nice numbers for you Allen
|
|Marginal Cost of Shuttle Mission
|
|$37 million (From Space News a few months ago)
|
|Cost of Replacement kick motor
|
|$15 million Thiokol Star 27 equivalent (This varies per deal)
|
|$85 million dollars launch cost paid for Shuttle Services
|
|Total
|
|$137 million dollars
|
|Cost for replacement
|
|$225 million (average not true for HS601 series closer to $400 m)
|
|$68 million (Atlas average launch cost (Also close for Arianne))
|
|$50 million (lost revenue mostly permanent due to the customer going elswhere)
|
|Total
|
|$343 million dollars
|

How about these numbers,  if we are going to talk on the margins.
Marginal cost of Comm bird IMO
$30 million.

Marginal cost of Atlas Mission (After all thestanding army is
going to be there.)

$12 Million. IMO.

Lost revenue for 3 months while you re-fly the bird,

$5 million.

$47 Million.

Come on dennis, if we are going to talk marginal costing,
the STS doesn't look any better then an Atlas.

If vendors had a serious program of building flight spares
for every bird, i don't think the costs would be that bad.
Besides,  Lockheed and Hughes are trying to get more on a
production line basis with their vehicles.  this one off
construction makes the prices murder.

And from what i read on satellittes,  there is an active healthy
market in transponders.  I am sure COffman can fill in any details,
but, there are regular bidding markets for transponder space.
once you get up there, and start offering, people will come
on out and buy.  The real trick is to get someone like ABC
or HBO on your bird, cuz they make it more valuable space.
and from what i see of most launches, they are planned replacements,
trying to upgrade dying birds.  If the replacement endsup in
the drink the original will just have to hangout longer,
or another bird will get shuffled around.

>$343 - $137 = $206 million dollars.
>
>between 18 and 25. All of the Computational Fluid Dynamics Codes owe their
>validity to the Shuttle's real world data.
>

I would have thought the X-15 bears some input to this also???

Dennis, as a research vehicle,  the shuttle would have flown for a
few years and shut down.  Look at the Fermi Tevatron.  It's a
Research device.  no-one talks about how much it cost, merely about
science prodduct, and occasionally about budgets.   Now if they
were producing commercial fisisles with it, then it would face a
comparison to the market.

Also,  The STS is not necessarily the best vehicle for
hypersonic research.  Wouldn't it be better to re-furb old
ICBM's  and launch them through the atmosphere?

One could get a lot more variable of a flight profile,and
all sorts of mods could be made on the vehicles, being unmanned.


I'd be more impressed with the STS if they stuck a SCRAM jet on the bottom
and used it for NASP testing.j
>Lighten up Allen. Shuttle ain't perfect but it is a necessary step in the
>process. Also you do love to blur the English language when it comes to
>talking about shuttle reuse. I suggest you read a little history about jet
>engines. The early ones only lasted about 10 hours before major rework had
>to be done to them. This is the F-80, F-84 jets and their engines. It is
>only through 48 years of development and further testing that they have
>reached the reliablilty that allows the airlines to skimp on maintainence.
>

I'd suggest that 10 years is more likely.  The army air corps began
flying jets in 43?  the F-58, i think.
Boeing came with the 707, in what 57?  I am sure the muse of wisdom
incarnate Mr Spencer, knows the exact years.

I suspect both the Comet and 707 did not need to overhaul engines
every 10 hours.

>There was no answer as you well know at the presentation about the RL-2000
>for the DC-series. You know that a new engine is going to cost 5 billion
>dollars to develop as the DC folks know. Hell the Japanese folks know this
>ask them abou the LE-7 and it is "just" an upgrade of existing engine
>technology. Those folks ought to take up the suggestion that I made to
>talk to NASA about J-2's. Also could you answer a question. Have any tests
>

The J-2's would be real useful on a DC-Y just as a risk reduction/
cost reduction item.  Being off the shelf,  there is little cost
to procuring them,  and even if under-powered, they would be
real good for validating the airframe and beginning the flight
test program.

From what i read on the X-15, one of the smartest things they did was
procure the small engines up front  to test the air frame and
control  behavior  at a lower speed range while the engine
went through de-bugging.  I guess they picked that trick up
from Bell on the X-1.
>By the way I was happy to meet you and Josh and all the other sci.spacers
>even the floating guitar player from fermilab!

Is that bill?

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

Date: Wed, 2 Jun 1993 14:52:13 GMT
From: fred j mccall 575-3539 <[e-mail]>
Subject: Hey Sherz! (For real!) Cost of LEO
Newsgroups: sci.space

In <1ughu2$[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Pat) writes:

>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Josh Hopkins) writes:
>>[e-mail] (Pat) writes:
>>>and a jet engine assist on landing.
>>Buran does not have jet engines.


>Really?

Really.  Or at least that is my understanding.  Buran has no sort of
'main engine' at all.  Other than OMS-type thrusters, it is unpowered.


--
"Insisting on perfect safety is for people who don't have the balls to live
 in the real world."   -- Mary Shafer, NASA Ames Dryden
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[e-mail] - I don't speak for others and they don't speak for me.

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

Date: Wed, 2 Jun 93 17:26:08 BST
From: Greg Stewart-Nicholls <[e-mail]>
Subject: Hey Sherz! (For real!) Cost of LEO
Newsgroups: sci.space

In <1uho3i$[e-mail]> Ken Hayashida writes:
>This is another example folks of an unreferenced number which mr. Sherzer
>puts out.  Mr. Sherzer, could you please inform the readers where
>and how you make these estimates.  Until you do, the post is meaningless
>because the numbers can not be confirmed nor understood.
>
>I urge you to follow standard science paper procedures in order to support
>your contentions, that means posting references, page numbers, and methods.
  This from a guy who _never_ uses figures, referenced or otherwise, to
back up his claims ??
 -----------------------------------------------------------------
Greg Nicholls ...         : Vidi
[e-mail] or     : Vici
[e-mail] : Veni

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

Date: Wed, 2 Jun 1993 15:37:04 GMT
From: Henry Spencer <[e-mail]>
Subject: Hey Sherz! (For real!) Cost of LEO
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Nick Haines) writes:
>   we have a program which is helping Americans maintain
>   preemince in spaceflight.
>
>Dream on. Americans have not been pre-eminent in spaceflight since
>February 20th 1986.

Don't you mean about a month earlier?

In any case, that's just when it became unmistakable.  The US hasn't had
any realistic claim to pre-eminence in spaceflight since December 19th 1972.

(For those who don't recognize the date:  the Apollo 17 splashdown.)
(If pushed, I might be willing to concede an extension for Skylab.)
--
SVR4 resembles a high-speed collision   | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
between SVR3 and SunOS.    - Dick Dunn  |  [e-mail]  utzoo!henry

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

Date: 2 Jun 1993 12:42:40 -0400
From: Matthew DeLuca <[e-mail]>
Subject: Hey Sherz! (For real!) Cost of LEO
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <1uige4$[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Pat) writes:

>|Dream on. Americans have not been pre-eminent in spaceflight since
>|February 20th 1986.

>I would posit,  that the STS is putting us into third place.

The Shuttle is like democracy: it's the worst system there is, except for
all the rest.
--
Matthew DeLuca
Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta Georgia, 30332
uucp:      ...!{decvax,hplabs,ncar,purdue,rutgers}!gatech!prism!matthew
Internet: [e-mail]

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

Date: 2 Jun 93 13:50:27 EDT
From: Chris Jones <[e-mail]>
Subject: Hey Sherz! (For real!) Cost of LEO
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <1uigmf$[e-mail]>, prb@access (Pat) writes:
>Don't the russians already hold the record for max number of people
>in space at the same time?

Maybe tied.  I believe the US shuttle has carried a crew of 8.  I don't believe
there were ever more than that many people simultaneously in space on
Soviet/Russian craft.  Soyuz 6/7/8 were in orbit simultaneously, carrying
either 7 or 8 people in total.  Off the top of my head, I can't recall any
other time 3 Soyuzes have been in orbit at the same time.  No Soyuz has ever
been launched with more than 3 people, so there would need to be at least three
Soyuzes in space simultaneously to exceed 8 (they've never left anyone on one
of their stations without a Soyuz docked to the station with a seat for the
ride home).
--
Chris Jones    [e-mail]

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

Date: Wed, 2 Jun 1993 16:54:06 GMT
From: _Floor_ <[e-mail]>
Subject: McDonnell Douglas email adresses
Newsgroups: sci.space

Help me if you can. I know this may be inaprropriate for this newsgroup
but I knew not where else to look. I'm trying to email someone at
McDonnell Douglas in St. Louis. They gave me the following as their
address:

farthing@most01@mrgate

Now I suspect this is not the proper internet form. I suspect it
should be something like:

[e-mail]

but I really have not certainty. Couls anyone help me with this?

  _____    "But you can't really call that a dance. It's a walk." - Tony Banks
 /  ___\  ___  __ ___   ___      _____________   [e-mail]
 | / __  / _ \ | /   \ / _ \     |  physics  |   [e-mail]
 | \_\ \ | __/ |  /\ | | __/     |racquetball|   [e-mail]
 \_____/ \___/ |_| |_| \___/     | volleyball|   [e-mail]
 Gene Van Buren, Kzoo Crew(Floor), Washington U. in St. Lou - #1 in Volleyball

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

Date: 2 Jun 93 16:15:39 GMT
From: Jim Hart <[e-mail]>
Subject: Moon Base
Newsgroups: sci.space

[e-mail] (Pat) writes:

>It is also a comment on the industrial infra-structure at the time,
>That columbus's first voyage went with 3 ships and returned with
>one,  but his second voyage had 17?  ships and his third voyage
>had 74?

If we were serious about doing useful exploration and development
like Columbus was, or like Hughes & Comsat were in their conquest of
Clarke orbit, we'd scale similarly -- use tiny insect robots and Brilliant
Pebbles for the exploration, then when we find valuable stuff
scale up to small  factory operations, then when those are booming start
up colonies.  The first Hughes Syncom you could carry in your arms.


Jim Hart
[e-mail]

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

Date: Wed, 2 Jun 1993 17:20:31 GMT
From: Frank Crary <[e-mail]>
Subject: Moon Base
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Henry Spencer) writes:
>>Zubrin's Lunar hardware is identicle to that required for Mars Direct,
>>except for the landing stage: The aeroshell/parachute is replaced
>>by an additional propulsive stage.

>Actually, my recollection is that he doesn't use any extra propulsion:
>the Moon's lower gravity makes up for the lack of atmosphere, and the
>fuel requirements turn out to be roughly the same.

No, I don't have Zubrin's detailed brakedown of the Lunar landing stage,
but the overview of all the vehicles used definitely has a propulsive
stage for landing on the Moon. It looks like he removed the aeroshell
and upscaled the fuel tanks on from the Martian landing stage.
The lower gravity still requires _some_ propulsion to land (about 2 km/s
delta-v), while on Mars the aeroshell and parachute reduce landing
requirements to almost nothing (a small retrorocket fired the moment before
touch down.) Counter-intuitively, a direct landing on Mars using aerobraking
actually requires less fuel than going to the Moon...

The launch vehicle Zubrin uses does put more mass onto the Lunar transfer
orbit than the Mars transfer. But that extra mass is eaten up in fuel
required to return from the Moon. Remember that Mars Direct lands the
Earth Return Vehicle unfueled except for 6 tonnes of hydrogen. The remaining
hundred-odd tonnes of fuel are manufactured in situ from the Martian
atmosphere. The Lunar mission can't do that; all the fuel for the return
trip must be sent from Earth. That drives up the landing stage requirments
as well.

As a logistical note, the Lunar mission actually has a slight, negative
fuel margin: The Earth Return Vehicle can't be landed with a full
load of methane/oxygen fuel. Zubrin solves than by including about
10 tonnes of oxygen with a habitat module. That hurts the science
payload, but supplies enough extra fuel for half-a-dozen missions. After
that, oxygen should be available in situ from the Lunar soil. He doesn't
want to count on Lunar oxygen from the start, because soil resources
are harded to obtain than atmospheric ones and harder to test on Earth.
Alternately, he could have used hydrogen/oxygen rockets on the landing stage.
That would have given him the extra mass, but it would also have required
new engine development and spoiled the idea of testing the Mars Direct
technology.

                                                    Frank Crary
                                                    CU Boulder

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

Date: 2 Jun 93 17:19:35 GMT
From: Jim Hart <[e-mail]>
Subject: Moon vs. asteroids, Mars, comets
Newsgroups: sci.space

[e-mail] (Jay Thomas) writes:

>And by the way is wrong with self replicating factories.

Nothing, in theory.  In practice, you have practically no idea
how to build one.   Unless of course you consider a few NASA
transparencies from a silly brew & pretzels "summer study" to
constitute a design.  Nanotech, which you dismiss as being "50 years
in the future and too expensive" is as close as anybody has come to
designing a self-replicating factory, and that's not very close.
At least Drexler has delved into the issue of what kinds of
materials, processes, and processing performance might be needed
for such beasts.  Instead of dismissing areas where new ideas are
being considered, where actual progress is being made at understanding
what it takes to do things like self-replication, you might check out
Drexler's *Nanosystems*  which is an in-depth exploration of the technology,
and start delving into books like *Rieger's Handbook of Industrial
Chemistry*, and otherwise start learning the basics of what it takes
to set up a self-sufficient industrial base.

I agree that practically all stuff needs to be made on site (even
90-95% is not good enough).  Problem is, you have no serious design
for doing that, just hand-waving.  The devil is in the details of
of how factories and chemical plants are built, what materials
are used in industrial process, etc.  Basically, all SSI has done is
putter around with a few of the easy bits and pieces of technology needed
for a very narrow and improbable scenario of space development, SPS and
lunar "resources".  The fact that you tout nearly homogenous,
bone-dry dry dirt and oxidized metals a "resource" just points up
the shallowness of your "research".

Jim Hart
[e-mail]

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

Date: 2 Jun 1993 17:33 UT
From: Ron Baalke <[e-mail]>
Subject: Musgrave Injured
Newsgroups: sci.space,sci.space.shuttle

I heard that Shuttle astronaut Story Musgrave was injured - suffered mild
frostbite to the fingers in his right hand.
     ___    _____     ___
    /_ /|  /____/ \  /_ /|     Ron Baalke         | [e-mail]
    | | | |  __ \ /| | | |     Jet Propulsion Lab |
 ___| | | | |__) |/  | | |__   M/S 525-3684 Telos | The tuatara, a lizard-like
/___| | | |  ___/    | |/__ /| Pasadena, CA 91109 | reptile from New Zealand,
|_____|/  |_|/       |_____|/                     | has three eyes.

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

Date: Wed, 2 Jun 1993 17:36:10 GMT
From: "joseph.l.nastasi" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Redstone Trivia  (Was Re: Von Braun and Hg)
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] writes:

>
> What is really weird is that on the Explorer I mission the second stage was
> also fired on command from the ground! There was not enough weight or
> power for automatics.
>
> Get this. The second stage firing time was ascertained by "listening" for
> the doppler from the rf beacon and from HAND CALCULATIONS of the time
> that the stage would be tilted over to 90 degrees from the ballistics of
> being at the top of the stage's arc!!!! These calculations were carried
> out by Dr. Charles Lundquist (My Boss) and Dr. Ernst Sthulinger (Von Braun
> Team).

Having studied the Mercury spacecraft in detail, I knew that it was very
crude even when compared to Gemini.  But I had no idea that ignition
was that simple.  Geez, my son and I flew some model rockets and that
was it: put your safety key in, check the continuity light and push
a button!  I've often said that (after the Challenger blew) I would
go up in the shuttle, O-rings and all (in warm weather, of course)
before I'd fly in a Mercury, Gemini or even Apollo...

You mentioned that Lundquist was your boss, so I guess you were involved
in the Mercury program, too?  Follow up with email on that if ya like...

Cheers,
Joe Nastasi
AT&T
>
> Dennis, University of Alabama in Huntsville
>

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

Date: Wed, 2 Jun 1993 17:00:08 GMT
From: "Allen W. Sherzer" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Some numbers for Ken
Newsgroups: sci.space

Well to help Ken out I dug out my spreadsheets and plugged in some new
DC numbers which recently came my way. I will present two models which
show expected vs worse case. The worse case is in essence the best case
times two. Both models assume a production run of four DC-1's and a total
launch rate of 200 flights per year for the fleet. DDT&E is amortized
over ten years at an interest rate of 8%/year. The numbers are:

DDT&E   Launch Cost   Total Cost    Payload    $/LB to LEO
 $5B        $6M         $9.63M      24,000 LB     $401
$10B       $12M        $19.26M      20,000 LB     $963

Now, let's compare this to Shuttle. To make Ken and Dennis happy we will
pretend that design and development of Shuttle where free. We will also
pretend that absolutely NO interest was charged to anybody (which only
seems fair since we are pretending the whole thing was free anyway). All
we will do is take what is spent on Shuttle every year and divide by the
flight rate. This gives us a per flight cost of over half a billion $$
per flight and over $10,000 per pound to LEO (two to three times the cost
of expendables).

Worse case SSTO numbers are still fully ten times cheaper than Shuttle. We
could even cut the flight rate in half and beat Shuttle by a factor of
five (and expendables by a factor of two). Yet we burden SSTO with all
its development and interest costs (which Dennis says is unfair for Shuttle).

If we accounted for SSTO the way Dennis accounts for Shuttle (using only
incremental costs and pretending overhead is free) SSTO wins by a factor
of ~40.

One final point: this vehicle, if it works, can be had for less than
what we spend on one years Shuttle operations.

So what's the problem Ken?

  Allen

--
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Lady Astor:   "Sir, if you were my husband I would poison your coffee!"   |
| W. Churchill: "Madam, if you were my wife, I would drink it."             |
+----------------------14 DAYS TO FIRST FLIGHT OF DCX-----------------------+

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

Date: 2 Jun 93 14:35:46 GMT
From: Dennis Newkirk <[e-mail]>
Subject: sub launched material processing
Newsgroups: sci.space

Radio Moscow Science and Engineering yesterday (6/1/93) ran a story
about a recent flight of a sub launched missile launched near Kamchatka
carrying a material processing payload (900 kg.). The payload was to
produce some medical related material. The payload seperated from the
booster at 130 km. and reached an altitude of 1000 km. before decending
to a landing site on Kamchatka. The flight provided 30 minutes of
microgravity.

Has anyone heard of this? What was the date and time of launch and
what type of missile was used? I believe Boris said an R-25 but it
was not clear.

Dennis Newkirk ([e-mail])
Motorola, Land Mobile Products Sector
Schaumburg, IL

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

Date: 2 Jun 1993 17:37 UT
From: Ron Baalke <[e-mail]>
Subject: WFPC-2 Shipped
Newsgroups: sci.space,sci.astro,sci.space.shuttle

Forwarded from:
PUBLIC INFORMATION OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIF. 91109. TELEPHONE [phone]

Contact: Diane Ainsworth

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                              June 2, 1993
JPL Press Release #1511

     The Jet Propulsion Laboratory's new Wide Field/Planetary
Camera, designed to replace the current camera on board NASA's
orbiting Hubble Space Telescope, was shipped yesterday from JPL,
two years after major redesign changes began in August 1991.
     The camera will be delivered to the Goddard Space Flight
Center in Greenbelt, Md., where it will be tested with spacecraft
and ground system simulators before being shipped to Kennedy
Space Center in Florida for integration with the space shuttle,
said Larry Simmons, WF/PC-2 program manager at JPL.
     "The Wide Field/Planetary Camera-2 was designed to restore
nearly all of the original imaging capability lost when an
optical flaw was discovered in the Hubble telescope's primary
mirror," Simmons said.  "We modified the camera's internal relay
optics and made several other design changes to enhance WF/PC-2's
overall imaging capability."
     Four small relay mirrors inside the camera's four optical
trains have been polished to a new prescription that will cancel
the error in the curvature of the Hubble Space Telescope's
primary mirror by creating an error of equal and opposite
magnitude, Simmons said.
     Small actuators will fine-tune the alignment of these
mirrors on orbit, assuring the optical quality that will be
required to image fine detail in star clusters, distant galaxies
and objects in the ultraviolet.
     After the camera has been tested at Goddard, it will be
delivered in mid-September to Kennedy Space Center, where it will
be readied for a Dec. 2, 1993 launch aboard the space shuttle
Endeavour.
     The camera is scheduled to be installed on the orbiting
telescope on the third day of astronaut extravehicular activities
during STS-61, the first of several Hubble Space Telescope
servicing missions designed to replace major components of the
space telescope and science instruments.
     About one month after installation, the new camera will be
ready to begin imaging science targets with its three wide-field
camera systems and one planetary camera system.  The wide-field
cameras will provide extraordinary sensitivity for the detection
of star clusters and distant galaxies, while the planetary camera
will perform high-resolution studies of individual objects,
including planets and their satellites, nearby galaxies and other
stellar objects.
     WF/PC-2 will be able to detect objects 100 times fainter
than those visible from Earth-based telescopes, with about 10
times greater spatial resolution.  The camera also has the unique
capability of imaging in the far ultraviolet, a capability that
is impossible from ground-based telescopes and limited, at best,
from space.
     The Wide Field/Planetary Camera-2 was designed and built by
the California Institute of Technology's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory for NASA's Office of Space Science.
                              #####
     ___    _____     ___
    /_ /|  /____/ \  /_ /|     Ron Baalke         | [e-mail]
    | | | |  __ \ /| | | |     Jet Propulsion Lab |
 ___| | | | |__) |/  | | |__   M/S 525-3684 Telos | The tuatara, a lizard-like
/___| | | |  ___/    | |/__ /| Pasadena, CA 91109 | reptile from New Zealand,
|_____|/  |_|/       |_____|/                     | has three eyes.

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End of Space Digest Volume 16 : Issue 661
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