[This one is the "aerospace perspectives" issue, meaning that it is long on semi-editorial overviews and light on news.]
Editorial supporting the Commercial Space Competitiveness Act, which would require NASA to try out launch vouchers for experimenters, with which they could buy launch and payload-integration services anywhere instead of having them assigned by a bureaucracy. "NASA gives away so much launch capacity -- mostly in the form of shuttle Get Away Special, Hitchhiker, and middeck locker space -- that it may well be impeding the development of private space transportation. Small payloads are launched by private enterprise so rarely that the niche for them remains small and high priced."
The Titan 4 launch from Vandenberg apparently carried a secondary payload in addition to the imaging spysat that was its main load. Three smaller satellites have been sighted, using an orbital pattern like that of previous ocean-surveillance missions.
Aerospace Ambassadors announce a new deal with the Russians: a small US educational satellite will be launched in 1993 by having it tossed out Mir's airlock. AA is already sponsoring a rather higher-profile project, flying a US educator to Mir, with selection due in July. The two will be coordinated, with the educator involved in the satellite deployment. The (small) science payload will be selected from student entries. [Now the question is: will NASA hastily dust off the Citizens In Space program it shelved after Challenger, or will the first US teacher in space go up in a Soyuz?]
Magellan has temporarily stopped mapping because its primary transmitter has died. Engineers are experimenting with the backup transmitter, which is flakey but should be usable.
Long March 3 launch last month from Xichang failed to get its domestic- comsat payload into Clarke orbit. The third stage gradually lost helium pressure, and hence thrust, during its second burn. The satellite's apogee motor has been fired to improve the orbit somewhat, and it may be useful in small ways, but the launch is basically a failure.
USAF to unveil Timberwind, a little bit. They will say that it is a four-year project that has spent $130M so far and would spend perhaps $800M total to finish ground tests of an initial engine. The engine would have 75klbs of thrust, a 30:1 thrust-weight ratio, and specific impulse of 1000 seconds, with the reactor running at 5000F+.
CIS space pact begins organizing a joint space effort along the lines of ESA's, under the control of an Interstate Space Council. Military space operations will remain under the same "Joint Strategic Armed Forces" that holds ex-Soviet nuclear weapons, although exactly how this is going to work is very unclear. Analysts observe that the commonwealth appears to give a relatively high priority to spaceflight, since they spent time on it ahead of a lot of other issues. All CIS states other than Moldova are believed to have signed, although the Ukraine was slow about it.
The Dec 30 space pact calls for "proportionate contributions" to the ISC's activities, although just how large these contributions are going to be in countries with tottering economies is uncertain. It prohibits individual state from impeding use by others of space facilities on their territories, which is noteworthy since it means that Baikonur in particular is open to all. The pact does not spell out details of organization, and an important first step will be settling who is in charge of specific elements of the program (for example, the Energia Design Bureau claims ownership of Mir, while the Russian air force is running the cosmonaut program, and it's not clear who's boss). Among the areas where the pact calls for financial cooperation is in paying for damages caused by space operations, which undoubtedly makes Kazakhstan happy, since Baikonur drops a lot of junk on them.
The pact authorizes independent space programs by individual states who desire them.
Picture of the second Buran orbiter sitting in workstands at Baikonur.
Russian space officials say Mir will continue manned for the near term, but no decisions have been made yet beyond that. The next Mir crew, Alexander Viktorenko and Alexander Kaleri, will go up in March to relieve Volkov and Krikalev. A German guest cosmonaut will go along. They will in turn be relieved in July by Anatoly Soloviev and Sergei Avdeiev, who will be up for 5-6 months; their flight will carry a French guest cosmonaut. Plans for 1993 are unsettled. The Russians say that the basic philosophy of a permanent manned base is unchanged, but they are worried about the practical problems.
The two remaining building blocks of Mir have been postponed, primarily due to technical difficulties although finances are a factor. Officially both have slipped into 1993, but one might end up in 1994.
Apparently the small reentry capsule designed for use with Progress has not been as much of a failure as some in the West thought. One of the two attempts to date succeeded, and Energia plans to continue using it. (Energia is managing Mir at the moment.)
Changes recommended/ordered in a letter from appropriations chairmen to NASA would cause significant problems for NASA. This is a new chapter in the battle between authorization and appropriation groups for NASA; the appropriators took it on the chin this year over Fred and seem to want a fight. It is not yet clear how Truly will react. The letter tells NASA not to transfer another $15M to NASP -- which will probably kill the program -- and not to transfer anything to NLS either. They also told NASA to spend no more than $25M in 1992 and $35M in 1993 on Spacehab, which has a high probability of wrecking the project since Spacehab can't even keep up the payments on its loans with these limits. The cause cited for all this is expected inability to adequately fund these projects in later years. Various other minor shufflings are ordered, including spending half of the $6M allocated for station-lifeboat studies on looking at using a Soyuz. [All this surely ranks as a new high in micromanagement.]
Administration support for the shuttle seems to be shrinking further; there are hints that the 1993 budget will not fund structural spares production for the orbiter fleet. [Now this is just stupid, with no replacement yet in sight.]
Truly orders a major reorganization of NASA centers to clarify roles and eliminate duplication. Lenoir is the big winner in terms of turf: he lost the station when development and operations were split, but he is now the representative of the station customers (and the Spacelab customers). Station management will shift toward the field centers, but less drastically than previous attempts at this: once the next round of reviews is done next year, Washington people move to Reston and Reston people move to the centers. JSC will run station operations while it is man-tended, but Marshall will be in charge once permanent manning starts [now this is a bit bizarre]. Marshall gets the lead role on NLS [boy, lucky for them, lead role on the project that can't get any funding past Congress], Goddard on Earth sciences, JPL on planetary science, Langley on NASP [another lucky bunch].
Crippen to order contractors to trim shuttle manpower by 20% to reduce budget requirements. It will be done gradually over the next five years, but attrition probably will not suffice. He says safety will not be compromised: some of the post-Challenger complications are now simply considered excessive. Shuttle flights will remain at 8-10 per year; eight are set for 1992, although there is hope for a ninth.
Article on Oliver Harwood's proposed alternative space-station design, built of a few standard parts so it can be expanded as needed. He is strongly critical of the contractor "innovation" in Phase B: all their designs were carbon copies of NASA's "reference configuration". He calls this "toadying to NASA", commenting that it's a vicious circle because NASA gets harder and harder to argue with when everyone always tells them they're right.
Article criticizing the military, NASA, and especially Congress for stifling innovation... by refusing to reward it while heavily penalizing anything that they define to be a "problem". The article notes that the number of crashes experienced in the development of either the Blackbird or the F-117 would be cause for cancellation of almost any unclassified program today.
SVR4: proving that quantity is | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology not a substitute for quality. | henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry