Date: Mon, 1 Mar 93 05:23:46 From: Space Digest maintainer Reply-To: Space-request@isu.isunet.edu Subject: Space Digest V16 #241 To: Space Digest Readers Precedence: bulk Space Digest Mon, 1 Mar 93 Volume 16 : Issue 241 Today's Topics: Apollo Moon Missions ? Battery help needed! JPL's 'faster, better, cheaper' goal LOCAL DISTURBANCE - a new method of quantutative flow visualization Nobody cares about Fred? payload return from Fred Proposed Mercury Mission Refueling Centaurs Reliable Source says Freedom Dead, Freedom II to be developed SSF Resupply (Was Re: Nobody cares about Fred?) (2 msgs) The NASA Budget Myth Ulysses Mysteriously Shuts Down Welcome to the Space Digest!! Please send your messages to "space@isu.isunet.edu", and (un)subscription requests of the form "Subscribe Space " to one of these addresses: listserv@uga (BITNET), rice::boyle (SPAN/NSInet), utadnx::utspan::rice::boyle (THENET), or space-REQUEST@isu.isunet.edu (Internet). ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 26 Feb 1993 16:29:00 GMT From: "E. V. Bell, II - NSSDC/HSTX/GSFC/NASA - (301" Subject: Apollo Moon Missions ? Newsgroups: sci.space In article <1mh72oINNdu8@elroy.jpl.nasa.gov>, tjt@Jpl.Nasa.Gov writes... > I am ignorant, I admit it. My memory has failed. Can someone refresh my >tired brain cells, and tell me (us) which Apollo mission to the Moon was the >last one? There couldn't have been too many. > > Mille Mercis > >--- >------------------------------------------------------------ >Timothy J. Thompson, Earth and Space Sciences Division, JPL. >Assistant Administrator, Division Science Computing Network. >Secretary, Los Angeles Astronomical Society. >Member, BOD, Mount Wilson Observatory Association. > >INTERnet/BITnet: tjt@scn1.jpl.nasa.gov >NSI/DECnet: jplsc8::tim >SCREAMnet: YO!! TIM!! >GPSnet: 118:10:22.85 W by 34:11:58.27 N > Apollo 17. Also the only flight to include one of the scientist-astronauts. ------------------------------ Date: 26 Feb 93 16:06:10 GMT From: "T. Andy Frakes" Subject: Battery help needed! Newsgroups: sci.space,sci.electronics,sci.aeronautics,sci.chem,sci.engr In article <1993Feb26.050045.2277@cbnewse.cb.att.com> mckiou@cbnewse.cb.att.com (kevin.w.mckiou) writes: >In article <1mjbakINN781@gap.caltech.edu> bjmccall@cco.caltech.edu (Benjamin John McCall) writes: >>Does anyone have any information on alternative battery technologies, or >>even suggestions about who I might get in touch with (by phone or by email)? >> > >You might look into Ni-Cads. 100 lbs of Sanyo high-capacity cells >KR-2800CE could deliver ~163 amp-hours at 12 volts. That's just >19% short of your goal. I would try contacting Sanyo directly to >get some idea of what else might be available. > >Good Luck! I'd second this motion. Sanyo, Gates, and a few other companies make high quality Ni-Cads of varying sizes. Write or call them and they'll send you nice pretty tables of their batteries (sizes, weights, storage, etc.) I used them in a design for a senior project on a battery-powered hang-glider/sailplane during my undergrad. Weight was the determining factor for our project. -Andy ================================================================ = T. Andy Frakes (joltman@ai.mit.edu) = = = = This user does not believe in smiley faces. Insert your own = ------------------------------ Date: 26 Feb 1993 17:27 UT From: Ron Baalke Subject: JPL's 'faster, better, cheaper' goal Newsgroups: sci.space,sci.astro,alt.sci.planetary From the "JPL Universe" February 26, 1993 The future is now for JPL's `faster, better, cheaper' goal The Caltech Management Association recently brought together leading JPL experts for a panel discussion entitled, "Faster, Better, Cheaper: How JPL Is Doing It?," which sought to inspire, encourage and motivate a standing room only crowd about the changes ahead for the Laboratory. The moderator was Deputy Director Larry Dumas, who began the forum by giving the von Karman Auditorium audience a dose of reality. "NASA's budget over the next several years will not permit any new starts except for small or moderate-sized missions," he said, "and JPL and its contractors need to be believably faster, better, cheaper." The panel, whose job it was to address this issue, included E. Kane Casani, former manager of the Miniature Seeker Technology Integration (MSTI) project; Tony Spear, manager of the Mars Environmental Survey (MESUR); Donna Pivirotto, team leader for the Microrover; and Robert Staehle, preproject manager of the Pluto Fast Flyby. Casani has the distinction of having tackled the first JPL mission that falls into the faster, better, cheaper category -- MSTI -- which was recently completed on time and under budget. "We did MSTI for $15 million and we did it on schedule," Casani told the audience. Part of the secret of MSTI's success was involving everyone who worked on the project and achieving a consensus early on about how the mission was going to be completed. "We set the schedule for one year and we all knew what we were talking about," Casani said. Backing up that schedule was also important. "Every subsystem was fully funded," he said. "Every division had the money to do the job. We didn't have any cost overruns." Casani had some advice for his colleagues. "The challenge is to do things with rapid development," he said. "We've got to learn not to reinvent the wheel. It's important to contain the scope of the job to the customers' requirements." Tony Spear heads up the next "small" mission to be undertaken at the Lab. He told the crowd that MESUR/Pathfinder will be the first of NASA's Discovery series of faster, better, cheaper missions and it is due for launch in 1996. Spear said one of his biggest challenges is figuring out how to do things differently. Such changes will require JPL to reinvent itself, he said, and rethink the way the Lab currently does business. "It takes hard work, and everyone at JPL must participate," Spear continued. "We have a lot of theory that now needs to be brought into practice. "It will take daring and continuous effort" to make a low-cost MESUR a reality, Spear said. "We're a fixed-price project. We need to maintain sufficient reserves, but we also need to accomplish a productive mission and at the same time, we have to be attractive enough to justify the mission. It's important to communicate the risks involved with low-cost missions and to mitigate risk we will assemble quickly and then test, test, test before we launch," he concluded. One person who hopes Spear's team succeeds is Donna Pivirotto, whose microrover is set to fly onboard MESUR/ Path- finder as a technology experiment. The microrover's goal is to evaluate the performance of small rovers on Mars' terrain. To get that job done, Pivirotto explained, "the Lab has had to undergo a paradigm shift away from big rovers to small, short-range rovers. "We've taken out some performance and added risk," she said, "but we hope to get a big bang for a small buck." The microrover will use a majority of commercial parts, and it will pick up where the development of Rocky IV left off. Pivirotto prefers to call the rover a micro-spacecraft, because it has all the functions of a typical planetary spacecraft, plus it must interact with an uncertain and relatively hostile environment. But it is not only the rover that is changing. The project's management is daring, too. "We have no managers on this project, so there is nobody in the way," she quipped as she explained that she technically is the project's "team leader," not its "manager." "What we are doing is flying the first autonomous rover, and it's really a culture shock to the operations people," Pivirotto continued. Rob Staehle knows what that feels like as he tries to put together the first mission to Pluto. It will not be easy. With a cost cap of $400 million, Staehle has tried to keep the objectives very clear. "JPL has the people, the facilities and the experience to do planetary exploration that is second to none. But we must eliminate unnecessary work along the way," he said. Staehle and his team must figure out a way to control mission operations costs, get to Pluto within eight years and get the data back quicker. Such goals require taking greater risks. "There is no 100 percent reliable mission," Staehle continued. He said he already has learned some lessons about how not to get bogged down in the process. "One thing I have found valuable has been to frequently and informally keep my managers and sponsors aware of what's happening." The launch of the two spacecraft appears feasible for 1999, with arrival at Pluto in 2007. After the two-hour discussion, many in the crowd seemed buoyed by what they had heard and some expressed hope that these projects would indeed become a reality. Key ingredients to success, Dumas observed, appeared to be teaming with suppliers and customers and having fun while taking on really tough challenges. ### ___ _____ ___ /_ /| /____/ \ /_ /| Ron Baalke | baalke@kelvin.jpl.nasa.gov | | | | __ \ /| | | | Jet Propulsion Lab | ___| | | | |__) |/ | | |__ M/S 525-3684 Telos | If you don't stand for /___| | | | ___/ | |/__ /| Pasadena, CA 91109 | something, you'll fall |_____|/ |_|/ |_____|/ | for anything. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 26 Feb 1993 08:01:41 GMT From: "Dmitry V. Stepanov" Subject: LOCAL DISTURBANCE - a new method of quantutative flow visualization Newsgroups: sci.space LOCAL DISTURBANCE - a new method of quantitative flow visualization! Method is very effective for high temperature flows up to 5000K ( tested in the range 1000K-3500K), but can also be used at a lower tempe-ratures. Workable in dusted and chemically active flows not transparent for light. In some modifications applicable for visualization on the burning surfaces, solid propellant surface for example. Range of velocities testedfrom 5-10 m/s up to 1000 -1500m/s. In most cases direction and module of velocity vector are got simultaneously on a grid of test points, covering the surface under examination. Special equipment needed for realization no more complicated then for oil specters method. Examples of realizations can be presented. Searching for method application for solving different problems. Dr. Sergey K. Savelyev For letter use E-Mail : Dmitry@ElbimBank.spb.su or : EMBC,Box 222,St.-Petersburg,197022,Russia phone. (812) 2513951 or (812) 2344930 or Home: Altayskaya str., 12,34,St.-Petersburg,196066,Russia Home phone. (812) 2933370 ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 26 Feb 1993 17:12:52 GMT From: fred j mccall 575-3539 Subject: Nobody cares about Fred? Newsgroups: sci.space In <76485@cup.portal.com> BrianT@cup.portal.com (Brian Stuart Thorn) writes: >>You seem to be assuming fueling as a dedicated mission to arrive at >>the 'no difference in cost' conclusion. Either that, or you are >>assuming that an entire removable thruster module is not going to >>weigh any more or take up any more space than a large tank of fuel to >>fill it. I don't think either of those are good assumptions, hence >>replacing thruster modules rather than refueling them costs more >>(because you have t lift more weight and volume to accomplish the >>refueling in the replacement case, and hence can't carry something >>else that will have to be brought up or accomplished on another >>mission). > I've read this paragraph a few times and still can't figure out > what you're trying to say. >:-( Well, let me see if I can spell it out, then. A tank of fuel and a refueling rig are going to weigh and cube much less than the same amount of fuel installed in a module that includes tankage, engine, attachment points, etc. What that means is that you can lift more stuff at a time on a given launcher if you use refueling as opposed to using replaceable thruster modules. In order to say that the two methods 'cost the same', you have to assume one of the following things to get around the preceding reasoning: 1) Fueling will always be a dedicated mission, so excess lifting capacity of the vehicle is irrelevent; we're going to launch a mission regardless, and that costs us the same no matter what we lift. 2) Fuel pre-installed in replaceable thruster modules will bulk and mass no more than the same amount of fuel in a refueling tank, plus the hardware to do the refueling. I don't see why you should necessarily assume either one of those things. > What I was trying to say, however, is that a refueling mission and > a module replacement mission are both likely to be dedicated flights. Why? There seems no reason for this to be the case. Wouldn't it be more economical to bring up food, replacement parts, new equipment, etc., all on the same flight? If the preceding reasoning makes sense, then it is a net win to use refueling technology as opposed to replacing entire thruster modules. > Therefore, I don't see how a module replacement is more expensive > than a refueling mission. At least not if both missions are Shuttle > based. Given that assumption, it isn't. However, as I said, I think that is a poor (or at least a wasteful) assumption. > Allen said something, I think, about replacement method needing > a bunch of extra modules (one on Fred, one on ground in overhaul). > This is true, but offset by the need to develop orbital refueling > technology for the alternative, and refueling will still need some > type of fuel carrier, pumps, etc. Shuttle is coming home anyway, so > I don't see how carrying back empty modules is particularly expensive. I don't consider the cost of bending some extra metal to be particularly burdensome. However, the inspection you would probably want to put the 'used' thrusters through likely would be. The military learned a long time ago that in a lot of cases it makes more sense to *not* do 'maintenance' on something that is working properly. Opening it up for maintenance necessitates a certain risk of breaking it, and hence for critical components pretty much says you rebuild, whether it needs it or not. Better to provide a certain amount of redundancy and service them when their performance starts to deviate from optimium. >>And if the Shuttle is grounded and the station is forced into >>free-drift for lack of replacement thruster modules (which is the same >>thing as saying that it ran out of fuel), then where are you? It all >>comes down to just how much money and opportunity cost is a small >>incremental change in safety worth. It is this failure at rational >>risk analysis that has earned parts of NASA the poor reputation for >>performance and cost effectiveness that they have. > Its clear there are arguments both for and against the module > swap-out method. In my previous post, even I said I would like > to see a backup refueling capability. However to keep costs down > (ahem, har har) NASA could chose only one method. As I said, and > you ignored, I cannot fault NASA for choosing the safer of the > two methods, which swap-out unquestionably is. Why is this safer? Seems to me that an on-orbit accident involving a 12k thruster/fuel package crashing into Freedom would be much more serious than the worst 'fuel leak' I can imagine. The *technological* risk is probably smaller, but avoidance of all technological risk is hardly the sort of behaviour I want to see from an organization whose charter is, at least in part, to push technology development. -- "Insisting on perfect safety is for people who don't have the balls to live in the real world." -- Mary Shafer, NASA Ames Dryden ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Fred.McCall@dseg.ti.com - I don't speak for others and they don't speak for me. ------------------------------ Date: 26 Feb 93 17:59:08 GMT From: Anthony J Stieber Subject: payload return from Fred Newsgroups: sci.space In article henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes: >Why not? Most of it will be more useful up there than down here. And >a heavier station is *better*, because it reduces the frequency with >which reboost is needed; even trash is more useful as station ballast >than as return cargo. Trash could be even more useful as reaction mass for a steam cannon running off waste water from an orbiter. I'd like to think of a space station as something that has an advantage in being stationary (as much as something in orbit can be so). Oh well. -- <-:(= Anthony Stieber anthony@csd4.csd.uwm.edu uwm!uwmcsd4!anthony ------------------------------ Date: 26 Feb 1993 17:29 UT From: Ron Baalke Subject: Proposed Mercury Mission Newsgroups: sci.space,sci.astro,alt.sci.planetary From the "JPL Universe" February 26, 1993 New way of doing business encourages Mercury team By Mark Whalen It's becoming clear that the catchphrase "faster, better, cheaper" is more than just a slogan at JPL. It is, indeed, a new way of doing business, a new philosophy that has now paid off for a small but ambitious JPL-led team working on a proposed mission to Mercury. The 20-member team -- headed by Principal Investigator Robert M. Nelson of JPL's Geology and Planetology Section 326 and 11 other Lab staff members -- combines science, engineering and management disciplines to form the backbone of the Hermes Global Orbiter mission concept, which was selected by NASA earlier this month as one of 11 new projects in the agency's Discovery Program to be funded for additional study. Nelson said Hermes was the only JPL project selected (with a Lab scientist as principal investigator) out of 13 submitted. Lab staffers are serving as co-investigators on some of the other 10 named by NASA. The Hermes mission and the other 10 Discovery class missions each received $100,000 to support further development and to "encourage further work," according to Nelson, who added, "It's a morale booster" that NASA headquarters considered the project worthy of further investigation. The 11 potential projects were selected out of an original roster of 73 submitted to NASA at a workshop held at the San Juan Capistrano Research Institute last November. Those selected were those considered to have the highest scientific value as well as a reasonable chance of meeting strict budgetary guidelines of no more than $150 million. Nelson said the proposed mission -- with a targeted launch date of September 2002 -- calls for a single spacecraft launched by a Delta II rocket to be placed in an elliptical orbit around Mercury for one Earth year (four Mercury years) after orbital insertion. With two gravity assists each from Venus and Mercury to minimize propulsion requirements, the spacecraft would begin orbiting Mercury in August 2005. The mission's goals are to understand Mercury's surface and interior structure. It would serve as a long-awaited follow-up to the Mariner 10 flyby mission in 1974, when only half of the planet was observed. "Hermes' first objective," said Nelson, "is to survey and map the half of Mercury that has never been seen, and then to determine the surface composition." Team member Rosaly Lopes-Gautier, a planetologist in the Atmospheric and Cometary Sciences Section 324, underscored the importance of Hermes' proposed objectives by drawing comparisons to the results from early Mars missions, when "people talked of a very cratered, moon-like planet. Then when Mariner 9 came along and mapped the whole planet, it showed that (Mars') northern hemisphere was totally different. It proved that just because you have seen half of a planet, you can't assume you can extend your knowledge to the other half. "There could be some considerable surprises on the other side of Mercury," she said. Team member Linda Horn, a planetary scientist in Section 326, added that there are additional incentives to continue study of the closest planet to the sun. "Radar measurements from Earth have shown bright regions at Mercury's poles," she said, "and it has been suggested that there might be ice deep in the planet's polar craters, where sunlight doesn't hit." Because Mercury is so close to the sun -- an average distance of 58 million kilometers (about 36 million miles) away -- protecting the spacecraft's instruments will pose a major challenge. Plans call for shading devices, insulation and thermal inertia to protect the spacecraft when the solar radiation and the thermal flux from Mercury are most difficult to manage. The mission's payload contains an optical observation facility, an ultraviolet spectrometer and a magnetometer. The mission utilizes a "clever orbital design," said Nelson. "It will have a highly elliptical orbit, spending a short amount of time close to Mercury. The spacecraft will take a lot of science information while it is close to Mercury (and warming up), and then it will go a great distance away from the planet and spend long periods of time cooling off and sending back the data." The Hermes spacecraft is one "that has flown many times before," said Nelson, "but it will be modified to accommodate Mercury's environment. We will do some instrument modification also, but that will be done fairly early. In some cases we're taking instruments that have flown before and making copies of them. "Those are the principal ways we're going to perform the mission cheaper than in the past," he added. The organization of the Hermes team may be the most interesting facet of the proposed mission. "Most of the time," said Nelson, "scientists don't have a major role in mission development, spacecraft design, ground systems design and operations planning -- all those things you need to do to fly a spacecraft. "From the start," he added, "we had engineers saying to scientists, `you just can't do that observation with the spacecraft and instruments we've got available. Let's think of another way. '" Team member Adriana Ocampo, a planetary geologist in Section 324, said, "I think our team is comprised of `Renaissance-type' people. We have a lot of different talents, and most of the team not only has had first hand experience working with flight projects, but they're scientists who understand the engineering aspects of a mission." "There are a lot of advantages to having a small team," added Lopes-Gautier. "People are much more willing to work together and chip in to do whatever needs to be done, rather than say, `I'm a scientist; I'm not going to get involved in the engineering aspects,' or vice versa. This can happen on the bigger missions." In addition, six of the 20 team members are women, "an extraordinarily high percentage," noted Ocampo. "We picked who we thought were the best people, and with the number of women professionals in physical science at 7 percent, I was really pleased that this many women were selected," said Nelson. The next step for the Hermes team will come sometime next year, when NASA conducts a more formal process to determine final selection of missions to be conducted. The other Hermes team members from JPL are San-San Kuo, Section 326; Arthur Lane, Section 732; Ken Manatt, Section 326; Ray Morris, Section 317; William Smythe, Section 324; Brad Wallis, Section 326; James Weiss, Section 326; and Chen Wan Yen, Section 312. ### ___ _____ ___ /_ /| /____/ \ /_ /| Ron Baalke | baalke@kelvin.jpl.nasa.gov | | | | __ \ /| | | | Jet Propulsion Lab | ___| | | | |__) |/ | | |__ M/S 525-3684 Telos | If you don't stand for /___| | | | ___/ | |/__ /| Pasadena, CA 91109 | something, you'll fall |_____|/ |_|/ |_____|/ | for anything. ------------------------------ Date: 26 Feb 93 18:41:34 GMT From: Josh Hopkins Subject: Refueling Centaurs Newsgroups: sci.space prb@access.digex.com (Pat) writes: >(Brian Stuart Thorn) writes: >| Pluto Fast Flyby: Not on that budget, they don't. Hell, they are >I am glad to know you speak for staehle and the JPL. He doesn't. That doesn't mean he's wrong. There's no way the PFF mission would get funded if they asked for an on orbit refueling mission. This is supposed to be the archetypal "faster, cheaper, better" mission. >| >| It doesn't seem likely to me that in 1994 NASA will decide to launch >| a Mars Sample Return Mission in 1995. More reasonably, a big mission >I believe planners work from what's in hand, not what might be >done assuming people get some nerve and backbone. Besides, >MO and it's sister birds could have planned on it. Huh? What "sister birds?" >| like that will be years in the making (say, 5 at least) leaving >| considerable time for developing cryo refueling capabilities. When >| we need it, we'll develop it. Hasn't that *always* been the way? >| They didn't mate Titan and Centaur until Voyager needed it. >I think it's easy enough to put a stage onto a rocket. Then apparently you've never done it before. -- Josh Hopkins jbh55289@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu You only live once. But if you live it right, once is enough. In memoria, WDH ------------------------------ Date: 26 Feb 93 16:59:48 GMT From: "Kenneth C. Jenks [GM2] (713" Subject: Reliable Source says Freedom Dead, Freedom II to be developed Newsgroups: sci.space Allen W. Sherzer (aws@iti.org) wrote: [...] : Dime a dozen Dennis. Hell, I have friends at the Reston Program office : who do that to amuse themselves on coffee breaks. Anybody who thinks : a little about it can save $20 billion or so in life cycle costs without : breaking a sweat. : Getting the change implemented, THAT'S the hard part. : Allen Change costs money. Even if the change saves money in the long run. Maybe more important is the idea that changing something which has already been approved implies that the managers who originally approved it made a mistake, and now you're correcting that mistake, putting egg on the faces of those going before you. See quote below. -- Ken Jenks, NASA/JSC/GM2, Space Shuttle Program Office kjenks@gothamcity.jsc.nasa.gov (713) 483-4368 "Good ideas are not adopted automatically. They must be driven into practice with courageous impatience." -- Admiral Hyman G. Rickover ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 26 Feb 1993 17:05:32 GMT From: Frank Crary Subject: SSF Resupply (Was Re: Nobody cares about Fred?) Newsgroups: sci.space In article <1993Feb26.001132.28457@aio.jsc.nasa.gov> munoz@sweetpea.jsc.nasa.gov (tomas o munoz 283-4072) writes: >|> A Titan IV should be able to deliver an extra ACRV. I also don't >|> see why you couldn't put a few people in that extra ACRV, and >|> thereby both deliver and retrieve humans. >I'd like to hea the astronaut office express their views on >putting crew on top of a Titan IV in a vehicle with no >manual control capability. Do you mean vehicles like the Atlas, Titan and Saturn rockets used to launch astronauts during the 1960s? I don't think manual controls during a launch add much to safety. Certainly astronauts have been launched without them (in fact, the Soviets did this exclusively, and never lost a kosmonaut during launch...) >|> >How do you perform the actual payload transfer from the expendable >|> >to the SSF if the SSF is unmanned? - You really need IVA for this >|> >operation. >|> Which sort of unmanned: After MTC, you just need to get people to >|> the station, and there are only a few launches (low risk) before >|> MTC. >No, after MTC you still 11 assembly flights and 8 utilization >flights. I don't quite understand your definition of low risk. Perhaps I should be more clear: _After_ MTC, any vehicle which can deliver a crew to the station (e.g. a crewed, Titan launched ACRV) can provide transfer expendables to the station. Before MTC, whatever vehicle transported the crewmen to the station would also need a week or so of autonomious life support capability (so the crew would have somewhere to live while transfering cargo.) Therefore, a crewed ACRV launch would be inadaquate for this task. So, resupplying the station after MTC should be possible with only Titan IVs. But before MTC, it would not. Is this inability to resupply the pre-MTC station a serious risk? Unlike the post-MTC station, this situation occupies only a short period: To be a problem, the Shuttle would have to be grounded sometime between the first and sixth construction flight, as opposed to any time over a thirty-year period for the post-MTC situation. Therefore, the problem of supporting the pre-MTC station without the shuttle is less likely. Second, the pre-MTC station represents an investment of only a few launches. If the shuttles were grounded, and the pre-MTC station lost, it wouldn't be a complete disaster: The few elememts lost could be replaced. Therefore, the costs and probability of pre-MTC station loss are much lower than those of the post-MTC station; a back-up resupply system (to guard against shuttle failure/groundings) which would only work after MTC still gurads against the bulk of that risk. Frank Crary CU Boulder ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 26 Feb 1993 17:32:37 GMT From: fred j mccall 575-3539 Subject: SSF Resupply (Was Re: Nobody cares about Fred?) Newsgroups: sci.space In <1993Feb25.145255.18392@ke4zv.uucp> gary@ke4zv.uucp (Gary Coffman) writes: >As was noted, Shuttle sized payloads can go up on Titans in the >short run. As for the thruster modules, since they are swapped >out every 180 days, it would be a simple matter to *add* valving >and fittings to a replacement pack to allow on orbit fueling at >any time. We aren't locked in to module replacement for the entire >30 year life of the station. If the Shuttle replacement can't >convienently recycle thrusters, we can easily modify them not to >require recycling. And how much is *that* going to cost? Ever heard the phrase "Do it right the first time"? >Since we *are* counting on Shuttle for the >short run, there's no reason to incur the upfront costs of modifying >off the shelf thruster packs now. 'Off the shelf thruster packs'? Are you telling me that these are some kind of standard item; on-orbit replaceable thruster packs? Why is it that that just sounds questionable to me? If they're 'off the shelf' now, it's because of the design decision to use them, I would think. -- "Insisting on perfect safety is for people who don't have the balls to live in the real world." -- Mary Shafer, NASA Ames Dryden ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Fred.McCall@dseg.ti.com - I don't speak for others and they don't speak for me. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 26 Feb 1993 17:33:16 GMT From: Joe Cain Subject: The NASA Budget Myth Newsgroups: talk.politics.space,sci.space In article <1993Feb26.141736.4941@aio.jsc.nasa.gov> Dr. Norman J. LaFave writes: > > AMOUNT FY 1993 OUTLAYS > (BILLIONS) (PERCENT OF BUDGET) > > 2. DOD Military and Civilian 317.0 19.1 > >What NASA gets 14.2 0.85 > >.. concentrating on NASA and other civilian science >appropriations as your main target for cutting the deficit is >ridiculous.. I agree. Now how do we go after DOD? Joseph Cain cain@geomag.gly.fsu.edu cain@fsu.bitnet scri::cain (904) 644-4014 FAX (904) 644-4214 or -0098 ------------------------------ Date: 26 Feb 1993 17:31 UT From: Ron Baalke Subject: Ulysses Mysteriously Shuts Down Newsgroups: sci.space,sci.astro,alt.sci.planetary From the "JPL Universe" February 26, 1993 Ulysses mysteriously shuts down By Diane Ainsworth The Ulysses spacecraft mysteriously shut its science instruments off and stopped sending data to Earth on Feb. 14, leaving ground controllers incommunicado for more than five hours. The problem, which has occurred once before, was considered "a glitch" by the Ulysses' operations team, not too serious but also not minor, because the cause of the anomaly was unknown. "Certainly (the anomaly's) effect on mission operations is serious, because it took several days to get everything back up and running," said Peter Beech, European Space Agency (ESA) mission operations manager for the ESA spacecraft. "But we're 99 percent back to normal now, and the spacecraft is performing perfectly." Ground controllers spent three days turning the spacecraft's science instruments back on, said Donald Meyer, NASA's deputy mission operations manager at JPL. All but one instrument -- the Solar Wind Ion Composition (SWIC) experiment -- were fully operational as Universe went to press. SWIC operates at high voltage and required several days of incremental voltage increases before it was operating normally, Beech said. The spacecraft was being tracked by the Deep Space Network antenna near Madrid, Spain, when the anomaly occurred at about 4:50 p.m. PST Feb. 14. The spacecraft went into a safe mode, shutting off all instruments and switching to a backup radio transmitter. Engineers continued to receive Ulysses' radio signal, but received no science data or telemetry about the spacecraft's condition and performance. New commands took about 40 minutes to reach the spacecraft, Beech said. Science data and engineering telemetry resumed five hours and 10 minutes later. An investigation of the problem has begun, although operations team members are not optimistic that an answer will be found. "We investigated this the last time it occurred in June 1991 and never reached a conclusion," Beech said. "The anomaly could have been anything -- transient events out in space or onboard the spacecraft. I don't think this is anything that we will be able to identify positively." Ulysses, a joint NASA-European Space Agency mission to study the poles of the sun, is about 18 degrees south of the ecliptic plane, slowly looping its way back toward the sun. The spacecraft will begin its primary mission in June 1994, when it starts a four-month pass over the sun's southern pole. ### ___ _____ ___ /_ /| /____/ \ /_ /| Ron Baalke | baalke@kelvin.jpl.nasa.gov | | | | __ \ /| | | | Jet Propulsion Lab | ___| | | | |__) |/ | | |__ M/S 525-3684 Telos | If you don't stand for /___| | | | ___/ | |/__ /| Pasadena, CA 91109 | something, you'll fall |_____|/ |_|/ |_____|/ | for anything. ------------------------------ End of Space Digest Volume 16 : Issue 241 ------------------------------