Letter from Jim Waugh of Naperville IL, predicting that the Titan IV will go the way of the Saturn V, given rising costs and shrinking user base, and the US will be left with derivatives of 1950s missiles to compete against more modern launchers designed elsewhere.
Social events at the Oceanic Airspace Conference in Fiji will include a GPS navigation rally, with teams of attendees using handheld GPS receivers on a specially-designed course. (The Fiji area is being used as a testbed for GPS-only air navigation.)
US and Russian governments agree to build Space Station Fredovitch together. [Well, that isn't *their* name for it...] The notion is to combine SSF and Mir 2 into a single station at 51.6 degrees. Prior commitments to international partners will be honored. [The international partners' response has been "let's see some details".]
In phase one, starting immediately, the US will pay $100M/year up to 1997 for substantial use of Mir facilities. Details are yet to be defined, but ideas include refitting the yet-to-be-launched Priroda and Spektr modules with US experiments, flight testing of a jointly-developed solar-dynamic power system, and development of a common spacesuit and common life-support gear.
In phase two, an interim man-tended science capability will appear with the combination of the Mir 2 core and a US lab module. Both the shuttle and Proton will be involved in launching hardware, and this phase will be a crucial test for combined operations.
In phase three, that will be elaborated into a joint permanently-manned station, using much of the hardware already proposed for Mir 2 and son-of-Fred.
Also signed at the same time were agreements on joint aeronautical research and the formalization of the US-Russian restraint-of-trade agreement limiting Russian competition in the launcher market.
DoD's "bottom-up" report recommends a substantial program in tactical missile defence plus relatively small efforts to demonstrate technology for continental defence (the latter to include continuation of the Brilliant Eyes program). It also calls for continuing Milstar and scrapping plans for a new launcher.
Tests demonstrate that differential-GPS guidance for aircraft landing approaches is substantially easier to follow than the old ILS landing system -- right at the end, the narrow ILS beams get hard to follow without overcorrecting, but GPS-based guidance lacks this problem.
Moscow's Central Research Institute of Machine Building proposes a three-stage launcher using engines developed for the N1 lunar booster. The RS-9 "Norma" would have a launch weight of 5.24Mlbs and a payload to low orbit of 168klbs. It would have extensive engine-out capability, being able to complete the mission even if several first-stage engines failed. The first stage would be reusable, flying back for a runway landing using folding wings and jet engines. The third stage would also be reusable. All three stages would use LOX/kerosene. The institute says development costs would be about $750M, rising to $1.3G if it includes a new universal launch-complex design that would also accommodate Titan IV, Ariane 5, Zenit, or Energia. (Western sources are, predictably, a bit skeptical of the cost estimates.)
NASA is pondering ideas for recovery from the loss of Mars Observer. BMDO is proposing flying Clementines 2 and 3 and MSTI-2 and 3 to Mars, carrying MO backup instruments, with launches on Titan 2 and Delta. LLNL is proposing three Clementine derivatives. Etc. [All sorts of weird ideas came out of the woodwork, I'm told.] JPL has established a team to look at possibilities, with an eye to getting most or all of the same science return. The major effort is going into three possibilities: build another Mars Observer from the spares, buy a commercial Earth-orbit spacecraft and fit it with the MO instruments [hm, *that* was the theory behind MO itself in the beginning...], or use a spacecraft design from another NASA center. Also up in the air is choice of launcher, with Proton a definite contender. Current feeling among experts is that taken in isolation, it would be hard to beat building a second MO... but the current push for smaller and cheaper spacecraft may influence the outcome.
JPL has pretty much run out of ideas on salvaging MO itself. All the obvious things have been tried, including sending nothing for a few days in hopes of activating MO's built-in recovery procedures.
NASA is checking paperwork carefully to be sure that ACTS, now ready for launch on Discovery, is free of the defective transistors that may have killed MO -- or any other common element that might be responsible, for that matter. There are two of the suspect transistors in ACTS's TOS upper stage, and tests are being run to determine whether they are a danger. Discovery launch is set for Sept 10. (If it slips much more, TOS's batteries may get low enough to require replacement.)
ETA for the first Galileo image of Ida is mid-Sept. The flyby went well despite a couple of anomalies, including one that mispointed the camera just 4.7h before encounter (JPL controllers reacted quickly, with an estimated loss of only 3 images). The anomalies are being studied to make sure they do not cause trouble for future Galileo events. Sampling of the taped images indicates 18 successful images, including a high-resolution mosaic taken a few minutes before closest approach that should give 35m resolution on the 53km asteroid. (The best Gaspra image had 54m resolution.) Images were also shot right at closest approach, with estimated 24m resolution, but only part of the asteroid was caught due to remaining uncertainties in the exact timing of the closest approach. The 35m mosaic, five frames total, is now being returned -- it takes about 30h/frame using DSN's biggest antennas, at 40bps. After 22 Sept, image transmissions will be suspended until March, because greater distances will cut the data rate to an impossibly tedious 10bps.
Study it forever and you'll still | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology wonder. Fly it once and you'll know. | henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry