Scott Crossfield gets NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal on his retirement. [Not really space-related, but never mind. Crossfield was one of NASA's long-time test pilots, and was the first man to Mach 2.]
STS-55 slips again due to hydraulic leak in engine compartment.
Chaos continues in NASP, as Robert Barthelmy, long-time head of the Joint Project Office [and, to hear some people tell it, the single biggest disaster in the whole program], is reassigned to a new job elsewhere in the USAF. No replacement named.
AsiaSat picks Long March to launch AsiaSat 2.
Six-member industry team, led by Lockheed, preparing an unsolicited NASP proposal to the USAF: cutting costs a fair bit by scaling down the X-30 to a modest hypersonic research vehicle, dubbed NORA (National Orbital Research Aircraft), to fly in 1998.
John Gibbons [Clinton's science advisor] comments that it would be easier to do something about Spacelifter if it had a mission.
USMC plans to incorporate a limited anti-tactical-missile capability in its Hawk medium SAM system by 1995. Range will be limited, but it will be better than nothing, and cost will be minimal: the Army has already developed an improved Hawk warhead, electronics changes will be modest, and providing higher tilt angles for the Hawk radar and launcher will not be complex. The USMC officially expects longer-range coverage to be provided by the Army (Patriot) or the Navy (Aegis), but wants some ATBM capability of its own.
First intercept test of Israel's Arrow ABM deemed successful.
JPL to reduce staff by 1000, mostly by transferring work to contractors, over the next five years. Several reasons, notably a desire to fit JPL within its two main sites and close several leased buildings. JPL will also close down its propulsion lab at Edwards.
"Forum" piece by Malcolm LeCompte of Aerodyne Research, urging development of SSTO technology instead of more costly expendables. "[The shuttle's] expense has fostered the perception that manned spaceflight has limited practicality. The shuttle's unfortunate legacy may be a space catch-22: A commercial motive to place humans in space must await creation of an inexpensive launcher, which cannot be justified without a commercial motive."
Space station in trouble, as substantial cost overruns surface, mainly but not exclusively in the notorious Work Package Two. Poor management is largely blamed, although development-budget cuts without significant schedule changes did not help.
Independent goverment/industry "task force" assessing shuttle main engines finds them safe for flight, *if* the elaborate inspection procedures are followed to the letter by qualified crews, but urges early implementation of potentially-significant improvements, preferably as a "block change" doing them all at once. The most important improvements would be a single-tube heat exchanger (eliminating internal welds with LOX on one side and fuel-rich hot gas on the other), Pratt&Whitney's new LOX turbopump (which is having development problems, but would fix a number of trouble spots in the worst part of the engine), and the large-throat combustion chamber (which would improve throat cooling and roughly triple the chamber's life). Lower priorities are a new fuel turbopump and a two-duct powerhead [not explained]. The task force conceded that the complete set of changes would add about a ton to the orbiter's weight, cutting payload by almost that much, but said the safety gain is worth it.
France to transfer most responsibility for its military space program to CNES (which will now report to both the Research ministry and the Defense ministry), centralizing expertise as several major military intelligence satellite projects ramp up.
Arianespace gets the contract to launch the first two Intelsat 8s, with options on three more.
SVR4 resembles a high-speed collision | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology between SVR3 and SunOS. - Dick Dunn | henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry