Letter from Rock Roberson:
"One teenaged summer, the Apollo 11 telecast and the movie 2001 led me to an aerospace career... Today's NASA balks at minimal funding for Galileo tracking upgrades, Magellan aerobraking or SEI. Engineering debacles, accounting lunacies or management fiascoes aren't NASA's greatest threat; bright youngsters shunning the current aerospace swamp are."JCSat will absorb SAJAC by merger, producing Japan Satellite Systems, JSS. In the process, Hughes Communications will cease to be involved in JCSat.
NRC panel report says shuttle software-development procedures could do with some improving. "Many of the same kinds of mistakes that played a role in the Challenger accident are now being repeated with the shuttle flight software." In particular, the panel urged that NASA set safety standards for software and apply them consistently. [I've got a copy of the report, although I haven't had a chance to more than skim it yet. It looks well done.]
Great Wall Industries teams with Hong Kong businessmen, forming China Satellite Launch Agents as a marketing agent for Long March. CSLA does not have exclusive marketing rights, but its expertise in marketing and finance is expected to make Long March a more effective competitor.
ESA and NPO Energia sign agreement on terms for training and launch of ESA astronauts to Mir in Sept 1994 and Aug 1995.
Alexis is back from the dead. Its VHF radio-propagation experiment is returning data, and is expected to fulfill most of its objectives. Whether the X-ray telescopes can be made usable is not yet clear.
NASA is hurrying to fill the blanks in the station redesign, which are supposed to be at least sketched in by 7 Sept. O'Connor says that contracting and management have priority over technical issues for the moment. Rumor hath it that Boeing will be prime contractor and JSC prime supervisor, but Goldin's office denies any decision has been made.
Station director Bob Kohrs says completing the redesigned station on $2.1G/yr probably is not possible: he says that when payloads, shuttle integration, and other expenses get added in, the financial juggling will get hairy enough that permanent manning may slip and keep on slipping.
NASA requests comments on draft RFP for a mid-size expendable launch buy that could be as many as 16 launches. Formal RFP likely around the end of Aug.
British defence cuts postpone startup work on their medium antiaircraft missile competition (MSAM). The word is that MoD wants to rethink the project with an eye on tactical missile defence.
Hercules qualifies the stretched solid motors for Pegasus XL, clearing the way for first flight in Nov. Motor performance was as planned, giving Pegasus XL about 40% more payload than the original Pegasus. The first- and second-stage motors have each been stretched about 10%. Hercules is interested in possible other applications of the motors.
The sixth Raduga payload-return capsule, sent up with Progress M18 on 22 May, is recovered in Russia 4 July. The landing site was near the Kazakhstan border [whereas I believe previous recoveries were in Kazakhstan itself]; all future Radugas will be recovered in Russia like this one. Program officials say that only the second Raduga (in spring 1991) was unsuccessful; the others have returned payloads of 106-147kg (nominal max is 150kg).
ICAO comes out strongly in support of building a new global air-traffic control system using satellites. One specific prerequisite mentioned was guarantees of continued availability of military-operated satellite services. IATA [the airlines] likes the idea, but thinks the highest priority should be getting benefits, even limited ones, to operators installing satellite equipment; in particular, it is not acceptable to postpone benefits until the entire world airline fleet has converted, so any satellite-based control system has to be able to handle a mixture of equipped and unequipped aircraft.
Discovery crew preparing for their mission: deploying the Advanced Communications Technology Satellite, flying formation with the German SPAS free-flyer (which will be carrying far- and extreme-UV spectrometers for six days of astronomical observations), and doing another spacewalk testing Hubble-repair equipment. Also on the agenda is testing a new, longer-range communications system for the shuttle-SPAS link, and the first space test of the Trajectory Control Sensor, a lidar system that should provide more precise navigation data for the final stages of rendezvous operations.
"Every time I inspect the mechanism | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology closely, more pieces fall off." | henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry