[As I mentioned earlier, I never got the Jan 27 issue, so no summary of it.]
Brookhaven study says that the extremely high power density in a Timberwind-type reactor could make it suitable for transmuting high-level nuclear waste to less-dangerous isotopes.
Canadian Space Agency awards the major contracts [finally] for the space station's Mobile Servicing System, to Spar Aerospace.
NASP contractors expect 15% layoffs due to the FY1992 budget crunch, with near-term development work now to focus almost completely on the engines. NASP managers say there are no technological reasons for further delay on a full-scale go-ahead.
L. Eugene Root, instrumental in getting Lockheed into the missiles-and- space business, dies at 81.
Russia has been flying experimental hydrogen-fueled scramjets atop missile tests from Baikonur. Four flights to date, the first two being preliminary tests with no engine ignition, the third firing for 20 seconds at Mach 3.5 (with subsonic combustion) and then accelerating to achieve supersonic combustion at Mach 5.6, the fourth not detailed but possibly involving flight at Mach 7-8. A fifth is expected in February, possibly to Mach 10, but the program -- one of the last advanced flight-test efforts mounted by the USSR -- is running out of money.
NASA FY93 budget request calls for about 5% growth, slightly ahead of inflation. Losers are ASRM (requested by NASA but cut by the White House on grounds of "significant cost growth, schedule delays and diminution of benefits"), CRAF (requested by NASA but killed by the White House to protect Cassini), and Magellan operations after mid-1993. Winners are NASP ($80M), development start on a pair of $100M-class lunar orbiters for 1995 launch on Deltas with a primary mission of lunar mapping ($31M), ALS ($125M each from NASA and DoD, tripling current funding and starting major development work), EOS ($308M, not counting $82.6M for the data handling end on Earth), small "Earth Probe" missions to supplement EOS (starting with a Tropical Rainfall Mapper and an ozone-spectrometer mission, both collaborations with Japan) ($90M), and Landsat 7 ($25M to start development).
SDIO FY93 budget rises sharply, and this is thought to be the first SDI budget request that won't be "dead on arrival" at Congress, since there is growing support for limited missile defences. There will still be friction over priorities. Doubts are being raised about whether SDIO can meet the Senate's 1996 target for limited US defences even at this funding level, and there might be pressure to cut some of its longer- term efforts, some of which would probably be strangled by any further budget reductions. SDIO is due to report in June about the technical feasibility of 1996. Also up for debate is where 1996 sites would be; SDIO says it would need six, which would require amendments to the ABM Treaty.
Yeltsin suggests the US scrap SDI in favor of a cooperative ABM program, suggesting it would be a good way to put Russia's nuclear engineers to work [subtle, that :-)].
Mir flight controllers threaten strike but instead just drape protest banners in the mission-control center. The banners included comments like (in Russian) "Our work is cosmic, but our pay is comic.". These folks are currently being paid $5-10/month, not very good since prices have risen sharply. The controllers say that they will take no action that would endanger the Mir cosmonauts (who reportedly support them). Docking of Progress M-11 to Mir was unaffected.
Dryden begins SR-71B operations in preparation for research work (the B is the trainer with the second raised cockpit) with it and the two SR-71As. NASA says operations costs should be considerably lower than the USAF ones, citing prepositioning of aircraft and support equipment for overseas operations as a major USAF expense that NASA will not incur. Various projects are being considered, including carrying a Pegasus-like space launcher that could potentially be rather smaller than the current one with a similar payload.
Temperature/load tests begin on a subscale NASP fuselage section built by McDonnell-Douglas. There is also some relevance to Delta Clipper.
Caltech shock tube begins hypersonic tests on NASP components, in place of Rocketdyne's much-larger RHYFL facility, which was quietly cancelled in late 1990 due to rising costs and disagreements among NASP companies about its location.
Substantial story on SSTO, aka Delta Clipper. The DC-X suborbital demonstrator is committed to fly April 1993, 20 months after the award of the $58M contract. Pencilled-in date for the first DC-Y orbital flight is late summer 1996. A bare-bones launch site for DC-X is being prepared at White Sands.
DC-X engines are being built. P&W is producing four RL10A-5s by modifying existing engines for throttling and low-altitude operations. By a happy coincidence, P&W had surpluses of most components because of Atlas-Centaur delays; they say "This is not a normal delivery schedule that we could build and deliver an RL10 by any stretch of the imagination." They are actually loaning the engines to McDD rather than selling them: "By not having them deliverable engines we avoid a lot of signoffs and operate more like a `Skunk Works'. We will get the hardware back. It may be in pieces in a box." Their subcontract is for $12M for four engines and enough spares to build a fifth if necessary. They are also working on a DC-Y engine design. DC-Y engines have not yet been selected, but it has been fairly definitely decided that they will use a conventional bell nozzle with a rectractable outer nozzle, rather than a plug nozzle; performance is thought to be similar but the bell nozzle involves fewer unknowns. Liftoff thrust will be 85% of nominal full power, with landing at 15%. DC-Y will use eight engines, four with the extendable nozzles.
DC-X flights are expected to check out launch and landing, basically, and will also give some initial feedback on whether quick turnaround is feasible -- DC-X turnaround goal is three days. Three flight "programs" are planned. It is not yet clear whether a program will be one flight or several. Test 1 will be a "bunny hop", a vertical 500ft ascent to take off, check controls, and land. Test 2 will go to 30000ft and involve a realistic turnover during descent. Test 3 will stop engines during ascent to 30000ft and restart them for landing.
DC-Y gross weight will be just over 1Mlbs, empty weight 79810lbs, and payload capacity 10klbs. The cargo space will be 15x15x20ft amidships.
SSTO prime contractor is McDonnell Douglas Space Systems, with DC-X engines by P&W, reaction control system and some DC-Y engine work by Aerojet, airliner-derived support aspects by Douglas, cryogenics and NASP materials by Martin Marietta, military aircraft technology by McDonnell, landing gear by Messerschmitt-Boelkow-Blohm [!], and the composite airframe [for DC-X I assume] by Scaled Composites [!].
The Almaz radarsat system's future is in doubt due to the breakup of the USSR and financial chaos in its wake. Almaz 1A will reenter about March 1993, but it's not at all clear that there will be cash to build and launch Almaz 1B before then. The major funding will have to come from Russia. One possible minor source of income for the project: it has been approached by both US business and government officials over the possibility of buying one of the radar systems for aircraft use.
Russian consortium plans to test small solar sail on a Progress-M freighter this October. After it flies a routine resupply mission to Mir, the Mir cosmonauts will install the sail package into Progress's docking port. After separation from Mir, a 25m dia 5um thick sail will deploy and be tested near Mir.
Magellan mapping resumes at a lower transmission rate after workarounds for transmitter problems were successfully tested. The resumption was in time for stereo mapping of Maxwell Montes, of special interest due to steep slopes that may be of recent origin.
The bad news for Magellan is that its funding has been zeroed in the FY93 budget. The remaining FY92 funds would be used to finish the fourth mapping cycle, ending in May 1993, which would concentrate primarily on gravity measurements. It is likely that there will be lobbying to shift funds from other programs to keep Magellan going, which is what has been done in the last couple of fiscal years.
Samples from the International Microgravity Lab Spacelab mission to go out to researchers. The mission landed at Edwards Jan 30 after spending an extra day in orbit -- primarily for materials work -- thanks to lower power consumption than expected.
GCC 2.0 is to C as SVR4 is to Unix. | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology -Dick Dunn | henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry