Frontier Status Report #5 |
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Frontier Status Report #5July 3, 1996Dale M. Gray It has been a busy week on the frontier: a budget vote, two launches, experiments in space, Galileo passing Ganymede, EELV experiments, the cause of the Ariane 5 failure located, revelation of a previously secret tether experiment and to top it all off, the X-33 announcement. As this message is generated, the Russians have just finished voting for their next president which will have ramifications on the frontier. Tuesday, July 2, Vice-president Al Gore announced that LockMart's skunk works would be building the X-33. The contract for nearly a billion dollars will result in a half-scale prototype that will launch vertically and land horizontally. The wedge shaped vehicle will be used to test advanced systems in 15 sub-orbital flights beginning in March of 1999. Their proposal features seven linear aerospike engines, 45-foot-long payload bay that will house removable cargo canisters, and a metallic thermal protection system (Flatoday, Spacef, AW&ST). The follow-on full-scale vehicle is slated to become operational around 2006 or 2007 and will completely replace the shuttle by 2012. The impact to the frontier cannot be underestimated. Dropping the price per pound to orbit to around $1,000 per pound will lower the threshold for economic activity in space. The fast turn-around and ability to launch over land will also spur additional economic development as bottle-necks to launching are removed. While the ink on the X-33 contract is still wet, work is also proceeding on the EELV system. This system is a modification of the expendable launch (ELV) systems now in use. Utilizing parachutes, portions of expendable rockets containing key components such as the actual rocket engines are lowered to water landings. Previously a 20,000 pound test article has been dropped from a stand into a canal. Boeing is now conducting parachute drop tests of the system using a Mississippi Army National Guard CH-47D Chinook. The tests will culminate in July with drops of up to 4,000 feet of inert and live shuttle main engines. The live engines will be recovered from the water, refurbished and placed on a stand for test firing. This technology is expected to save 50 percent in the cost of the recovered components (AW&ST). Two launches of radically different systems occurred this week. Orbital Sciences Corp. launched a Pegasus XL rocket from a L-1011 early Tuesday morning. The rocket carried NASA's Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer-Earth Probe spacecraft successfully into orbit. Although the launch was several days late, the three stages performed flawlessly and the satellite's separation from the third stage was confirmed at 4:05 a.m. EDT by a Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (Justin Ray, Flatoday) The other launch was a supposedly secret military mission onboard a Titan IV. This rocket was originally slated to launch on Monday, but weather delayed it until Tuesday evening. The rocket did not have an upper stage which allowed some insight into its possible cargo. It is likely to be a recon satellite developed by the CIA to be launched on the shuttle, but has been modified to launch on the Titan IV in the wake of the Challenger. This particular Titan IV was the second ever made and came off the assembly line in the late 1980s. It was the third of its kind to be launched this year (Todd Halverson, Flatoday). Space science advanced in both the ground, Mir Station and on the Space Shuttle Columbia. On the ground four engineers at Johnson Space Center who are living in a specially equipped chamber to test of regenerative life support systems. The airtight facility will recycle air and water using both plants and mechanical/chemical means. The three week test designed to collect information on recycled air and water will end July 12. A previous one person test was conducted in 1995 which utilized wheat to recycle air and water. Two longer tests are scheduled for next year (Flatoday). Columbia is now on track for a record breaking 17 days in orbit. After a brief respite to recharge the crew, the mission continues with its Spacelab experiments. Some small problems were worked around by the crew, but the mission remains remarkably problem free. On Mir, the two cosmonauts and one astronaut are testing Static Random Access Memory (SRAM) cards, continuing work on the Queens University Experiment in Liquid Diffusion (QUELD) payload and plan to conduct conversations with the space shuttle today (July 3). Lucid has completed 102 days in space. The crew will conduct candle flame experiments in the coming week (Flatoday). There has also been some activity in missions to explore the wilderness of space and to extend our knowledge of space / time physics. Galileo reached a milestone passing close to Ganymede on June 27th. The craft came within 524 miles of the moon with 9 of its 10 instruments functioning. The missing instrument, the energetic particle detector was inadvertently shut down, but is expected to be functional for the next swing by the moon. Pictures from the flyby should be available on July 10 (Flatoday). NASA has exercised an $75 million option on a contract with Stanford University to continue developing the Gravity Probe B mission slated to be launch on a Delta II in the year 2000. The mission will investigate two aspects of Einsteins theory of General Relativity (Flatoday). As it turns out, the tethered satellite experiment on the February shuttle mission was not the only tether experiment to be conducted this year. Apparently a recent classified mission launched on a Titan IV had a tethered experiment piggy-backing. The 2.14 nautical mile tether was deployed on June 20. Tether Physics and Survivability (TiPS) spacecraft was officially developed and built by the Naval Center for Space Technology in Washington, but paid for by the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). This is the first mission to be announced by the NRO in its 35 year history. The mission seeks to gather information on controlling a tether system and to study longevity of the system (AW&ST). Two events have also altered the political climate of the frontier. "The House on Wednesday evening approved a $14.1 billion budget for NASA as part of a huge money bill. The final vote was 267 to 147. NASA's 1997 fiscal budget includes $13.6 billion in regular appropriations and $558,000 for the purchase of communication satellites. NASA's budget is part of an $84.6 billion appropriations bill for the departments of Veterans Affairs and Housing and Urban Development and Independent Agencies (Pamela Brogan, GANNETT). Today also marks election day for the next Russian President. Yeltsin is expected to win if voter turn out is above 60 percent. As polls close, turn-out is slightly lower than expected. Yeltsin's re-election will do much to solidify the Russian commitment to the International Space Station (NPR). The investigation into the cause of the recent Ariane 5 failure has resulted in an ESA prepared statement on the cause "At Ho +36.7s, both inertial reference systems failed virtually simultaneously due to overloading of their storage registers. This overflow was reproduced by simulation and confirmed by inspection of the inertial reference system memories recovered after the launcher exploded. This phenomenon seems to be the cause of the failure." (SPACEF) Work on the space station is also in the news. Boeing has designed a system of 8 struts to run between the four radial ports of the connector node that failed a pressure test earlier this spring. The struts will redistribute stress away from hardware in the port areas. This fix would enable Boeing to proceed with construction without having to resort to the less preferable alterative of re-writing the test standards. Boeing is about 2 months behind schedule, but expects to catch up by adding additional shifts. The decision to install the struts can wait until mid August when McDonald-Douglas is scheduled to install interior structures on the nodes (AW&ST). The Russian Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center developing their components for the station has not been paid in some time and work on the station has virtually stopped. NASA has determined that for the station to remain on schedule, work has to begin in earnest by mid-September. Like Boeing, the Russians can return to schedule by working additional shifts (AW&ST). The population of the Space Frontier stands at 10. This includes 6 Americans, 2 Russians, 1 Canadian and a Frenchman. This has been a busy week so several other interesting developments have been omitted such as developments in the military anti-satellite systems and third-world interest in expanding the GPS system for air traffic control. Your comments and additions are invited. A copy of my frontier model is available by private posting or E-mail. DG >>While the ink on the X-33 contract is still wet, work is also proceeding on the EELV system. This system is a modification of the expendable launch (ELV) systems now in use. Utilizing parachutes, portions of expendable rockets containing key components such as the actual rocket engines are lowered to water landings. Previously a 20,000 pound test article has been dropped from a stand into a canal. Boeing is now conducting parachute drop tests of the system using a Mississippi Army National Guard CH-47D Chinook. The tests will culminate in July with drops of up to 4,000 feet of inert and live shuttle main engines. The live engines will be recovered from the water, refurbished and placed on a stand for test firing. This technology is expected to save 50 percent in the cost of the recovered components (AW&ST).<< Hey! That sounds just like a shuttle-C "boattail!" Next thing we know, Boeing will be building a heavy-lifter! BTW, Boeing's stock has been going through the roof lately. It's up about 10 percent in the last few weeks. Tom Abbott External Tank space station Web page: Space Studies Institute Web page: National Space Society _____ Shh Tom. If anyone finds out, they won't let Boeing do it. <g> ++rich (Kolker) >>Shh Tom. If anyone finds out, they won't let Boeing do it. <g> ++rich<< Oopps!! TA >>Today also marks election day for the next Russian President. Yeltsin is expected to win if voter turn out is above 60 percent. As polls close, turn-out is slightly lower than expected. Yeltsin's re-election will do much to solidify the Russian commitment to the International Space Station (NPR).<< I wouldn't be too sure about that, Dale. Yeltsin may not live long enough to do us any good and may not be able to do us any good if he does live. Winning the election didn't put any more money into building space station hardware. But, it's certainly better than a communist victory. It's kind of amazing to me: I remember watching Kruschev pounding his shoe on the table at the U.N. in the 1960's, saying the Soviet Union would bury the United States. Today I watch communism buried in Russia. Amazing. And good riddance! Of course, there's always the old standby of totalitarianism. :) If Yeltsin is not able to continue as President, I would expect former General Lebed to replace him. I would classify Lebed as a "nationalist." In a speech the other day he said Russians were the smartest people in the world and had created 80 percent of the modern world's technology, which had subsequently been stolen from Russia. In another speech he said he thought all Russia needed to regain its former glory was just a little more discipline. Lebed looks to me like just the man that can provide that "discipline" for them! Now, had Dan Goldin not assigned the Russians the most crucial part of the space station, the FGB/Service Module which keeps the space station from crashing back to Earth, and instead had assigned them to building habitation modules, then we wouldn't have to be worrying about who gets elected in Russia or whether Russia has any money or not, because the US could carry out a space station program without them. The way Clinton and Goldin set this deal up, we are subject to space station disruption every time Russia sneezes. And for no good reason. Dan Goldin was not required to assign the critical space station guidance and propulsion module to the Russians. He did so voluntarily. Why did Dan Goldin put the United States in this obvious bind when he didn't have to? Next question: Do we want this guy to continue screwing up our space program? Tom Abbott External Tank space station Web page: Space Studies Institute Web page: National Space Society Index for Frontier Status Report 1996
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