The cover picture is an Imax shot of Discovery in orbit, taken from SPAS.
Simulations suggest that it may be possible, at low temperatures, to form fullerene structures out of nitrogen atoms. They would decompose violently on heating, and might be useful as a rocket fuel.
JPL group develops a highly-porous glass that changes color when exposed to various chemicals. It's meant for planetary-atmosphere work, but other applications are possible.
LDEF materials database to be made available to the public. [No details.]
Clinton signs executive order creating the National Science and Technology Council, replacing (among other things) the National Space Council.
NASA waives a launch rule to permit Endeavour to fly with a faulty pressure sensor on an elevon actuator. (Three other sensors on the same actuator are working properly.)
ESA is very unhappy about the space-station situation and is reconsidering its role. "We are being considered second-rate partners... the question arises... what role do the Europeans plan to play..." ESA would like to see some involvement early -- "we do not want to wait, sitting on the fence, until Phase 3 and the year 2000" -- and also has a long-term interest in building a manned capsule, and the Columbus module is being squeezed between. "There is now quite a lot of discussion about whether Europe is interested, willing, or able to contribute an attached laboratory in Phase 3..."
A further complication in all this is that Deutsche Aerospace is proposing Plato, a small unmanned lifting body that would function as sort of a self-recovering Eureca. It would be 12m long and carry up to 1300kg of payload, with the design oddity that its vertical fins would contain its landing gear, and it would roll 180 degrees just before landing to point the fins downward.
[For a long time I've been including missile-defence stuff as space-related, but increasingly little of it actually is, and I'm going to drop the non- space side of it to save time. Apologies to BMD fans. The first missed item is an article on THAAD development in this issue.]
The usual NASA factions saying "we need a shuttle replacement" and "nobody will fund anything like that anyway" are being joined by a third, which is pushing radical upgrades to the shuttle as the preferred approach. NASA is taking one of their ideas seriously: replace the SRBs with flyback LRBs. [About time...] The current FLRB notion would use a pair of F-1 engines for launch and a commercial turbofan for return after a steep reentry. A development version might be manned for testing. Max Faget is pushing this idea and another: at least one orbiter either built for or heavily modified for unmanned operation, eliminating crew-support equipment to increase payload.
Also being urged are improved-technology tiles, a better RCS (either with better valves to minimize leaks, or with less toxic fuels), elimination of hydraulics or at least replacement of the APUs with electric pumps, modernized communications and navigation electronics, and a separate payload computer. The group decided that it was overly ambitious to forgo overhauling the SSMEs after every flight, however. [Which is dumb, because I'm told that the shortest-lived components are now cleared for three flights without inspection.]
Others urge reexamination of the whole shuttle program, in particular making some decisions about operations objectives and then building the organization around them, streamlining procedures and eliminating overlap and complicated certification. "If we took a look today at how many steps we've got in our procedures that are non-value-added, some of the things that you'd see are staggering..."
Current shuttle operations are generally improving, slowly, with manpower requirements and costs declining slowly, at the cost of less flexibility and reduced tolerance for last-minute changes.
Work on replacing the shuttle's cockpit instruments with modern LCD-based systems is well advanced, with work on the orbiters to begin in 1995. Cost benefits are now seen as minimal due to lower-than-projected flight rates, but spares are becoming scarce for the current systems, and the new systems will have extra computing power that may have other uses. The computers will have a lot of spare capacity, and are being built with provisions for add-in boards separate from those used for the main job. One suggestion is to move PILOT -- the flight simulator used to help maintain pilot proficiency on long flights -- into the displays, which would make it more realistic.
Hubble repair mission imminent. One tricky issue is what happens if the first rendezvous attempt fails: under standard flight rules, there would not be enough fuel to try again (because the high orbit limits reserves), but in practice there would be intense pressure not to abandon the mission so easily. There are practically no secondary payloads because of the fuel issue, but two that *are* along are Imax cameras in the cabin and the cargo bay.
TOPEX/Poseidon radar-altimeter maps spot a "Kelvin wave", 10-15cm high, moving across the Pacific, possibly heralding another minor El Nino event.
Belief is no substitute | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology for arithmetic. | henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry