[Okay, the moving is over and I've found the AW&ST pile. Moreover, in the process I found the missing issue from August -- the regular summaries left off in late Sept.]
SDIO awards $58.9M two-year contract to McDonnell Douglas to build a 1/3-scale prototype, the DC-X, of a manned single-stage-to-orbit launcher. The DC-X, about 12m high and 4m in diameter [looks like an artillery shell wearing a maxiskirt] will be demonstrated in suborbital flight early in 1993. At that point, DoD will decide whether to fund a full prototype, intended to carry 20klbs into orbit at $500/lb on a week's notice.
H-1 launch carrying the BS-3B broadcastsat slips (again) due to Typhoon Gladys.
Nuclear rocket enthusiasm is breaking out everywhere, it seems... DoD strategic nuclear people propose an ICBM with a nuclear upper stage, to replace Minuteman 3 with an ICBM weighing about half as much.
New NASA launch manifest. There are open shuttle slots in Aug 1993 and 1994. HST servicing slips from late 1993 to Feb 1994. Astro 2 is reborn, with a launch slot in Sept 1994. And the secrecy on military shuttle missions is relaxed a bit, with timing and orbit for STS-53 (set for Dec 1992) revealed; the numbers suggest a spysat launch.
Everyone holds breath due to Soviet coup. US orders Goddard team, engaged in activating the NASA ozone mapper aboard a Soviet Meteor-3 weather satellite, home -- partly out of fear over their safety, partly as a snub to the hardliners. Soviet cosmonaut leaders appear shaken, but say they will proceed with current plans until situation is clarified. White House orders NASA to put cooperative space projects on hold for the moment, although in the wake of the coup's failure the restrictions are expected to be lifted. Soviet space program continues on momentum for the moment, with a Progress freighter launched to Mir Aug 20 while the uproar in Moscow was at its worst. As soon as the junta confirmed that international contracts would be honored, German officials confirmed plans to fly a German cosmonaut to Mir next March.
Progress M8, the previous Progress freighter, separated from Mir Aug 16. The Soviets have not said whether it had a recoverable capsule like the one lost in March, and some analysts read this as indicating another loss.
The Goddard crew had to cut a few corners, but report that the ozone mapper seems to be working. They will probably return to Moscow in October to compare data with Soviet scientists.
Soviets say that Glonass will not employ "selective availability", the Navstar technique of messing up navsat signals to deny civilian users the full accuracy of the system. This may put additional pressure on the Pentagon to renounce use of s.a. in the US system.
Martin Marietta proposes two designs for the No Launches Scheduled, er excuse me the National Launch System. Unsurprisingly, they are based on the shuttle external tank, which MM builds. MM says it could start bending metal today, with delivery in 55 months and operational status in under 72. Plan A puts six of the proposed NLS 580klb hydrogen engines under an ET, with four of them jettisoned halfway up. Plan B puts four of those engines under an ET plus two SRBs, to put 80klbs into the 220nmi Fred orbit. Various improvements being studied for the ET, notably cutting 4-7klbs off the weight by replacing aluminum alloys with aluminum-lithium, would also be applicable to NLS.
Mars Observer project heads are worried that they are going to be the very first customer for OSC's Transfer Orbit Stage upper stage. Originally the Advanced Communications Technology Satellite was going to be first, but it has had schedule slips. Ideally the first flight of a new upper stage would carry some series-production satellite with backup hardware coming down the line, but TOS's customers are both expensive one-of-a-kind birds with no backup at all. JPL has asked Marshall to do a special reliability review of TOS.
Mars Observer itself is running late, with various small problems causing several weeks slippage in bus testing. There is some margin left, but not a lot. Some of the instruments are also behind schedule. MO, which was supposed to be more or less an off-the-shelf Tiros metsat, has grown to a $470M program as more and more of the standard hardware got redesigned. It launches in late September next year... assuming there is a pad to launch it from, a matter of some concern because Titan 3 pad work at the Cape was included in the USAF Titan 4 budget, which has not fared well in the House. It is expected that this will be fixed up; the alternative is a $100M slip to Oct 1994.
OSC Aries sounding rocket destroyed 23s after launch at the Cape as its guidance malfunctions. First indications point to a software problem.
Latest attempt to unstick Galileo's antenna fails, with further efforts postponed to December to avoid interfering with the Gaspra encounter. The antenna did not get as cold as expected during the August cooling turn. The same thing will be tried again in December, with some more drastic equipment shutdowns; that and the greater distance from the Sun should cool things down better.
Galileo's fuel margin for its full scheduled activities at Jupiter is estimated at between 0 and -10kg, under fairly conservative rules and assuming the Ida encounter is flown. Each cooling turn eats up about 4kg of fuel. Deleting the Ida encounter would save 35kg.
SVR4: the first system so open that | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology everyone dumps their garbage there. | henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry