🚀 go-pugleaf

[Next in the multi-way tie for third place in space-related periodicals
is a pair:  Planetary Encounter and World Spaceflight News.  These are for
people who want the nitty-gritty details.  No glossy color photos or
quotations from Chairman Carl to be found here, just page after page of
real hard solid information.  PE covers planetary missions, WSN covers
near-Earth spaceflight.  Aviation Leak spent one paragraph discussing
Joe Kerwin's medical report on the deaths of the Challenger crew; WSN
printed the whole thing.  The NRC report on shuttle flight frequencies
etc. got about one column in AW&ST; WSN printed the whole thing.  The
so-called International Comet Explorer got some polite coverage in various
journals (no exciting photos to be had, since it had no camera); PE spent
an entire issue on it, with diagrams, lists of experiments, an interview
with the mission director, etc.  When the shuttle was flying regularly,
WSN printed things like payload manifests, activity schedules, and post-
mission assessment reports for EVERY mission.  The same crew also puts out
a succession of extra-cost "special reports", containing things like NASA
technical documents on related topics.  (Example:  although I think they
may have had second thoughts due to poor sales on this, at one point they
were going to put out a multi-volume special report reprinting the entire
Critical Items List from the shuttle.)  Highly recommended if you are
tired of the babytalk in newsstand magazines and want to know the gory
details.  PE and WSN are at Box 98, Sewell NJ 08080.  Each is nominally
monthly, although in fact they've been coming out less frequently for the
last year or so due to lack of news.  Each is $30 for 12 issues sent First
Class to the US or Canada, elsewhere $45 for 12 issues sent Air Mail.]

Editorial commending the Ride report, and urging that it not get buried
in the White House bureaucracy.  The National Commission on Space is
re-submitting its report in hopes that it will get attention this time.

Intelsat prepares for RFP for Intelsat 7 series.  They will be smaller
than the enormous Intelsat 6s.  The first 2-3 will be for the Pacific,
for launch in 1992-3, with possibly more for the Atlantic 3-4 years later.

Predictions of shortage of engineering talent in the Washington DC area
as NASA's space station contracts start hiring hundreds.

[*Just* what the space program needs, more bureaucrats.....]

Oops:  the Shuttle-C shuttle-derived heavylift launcher may end up in
competition for funds with the advanced-SRB project.

Official release of the Ride report, calling for aggressive action and
[gasp] planning.  "Without an eye toward the future, we flounder in the
present."  NASA is giving it a lukewarm reception at best.  NASA people
have been ordered to downplay it, and there was debate over whether it
should be released at all.  (NASA is afraid of the reaction from the
Office of Mismanagement and Beancounting.)

Ride report endorses shuttle and station, but as tools rather than goals.
Shuttle-derived cargo vehicle should be developed immediately.  Strong
consideration of a new *manned* expendable urged, for station logistics.
Strong emphasis on technology development, notably the Pathfinder program.

Ride report says US could return to Moon by 2000, base by 2005-2010.  Mars
would take longer.  Mars is clearly the ultimate near-future goal, but
"...we should avoid a `race to Mars'.  There is a very real danger that if
the US announces a human Mars initiative at this time, it could escalate
into another space race.  This could turn an initiative that envisions
the ultimate deployment of a habitable outpost into another one-shot
spectacular...  Settling Mars should be our eventual goal, but it should
not be our next goal... We should adopt a strategy of natural progression
which leads step-by-step, in an orderly unhurried way... towards Mars.
Exploring and prospecting the Moon... would provide the experience and
expertise necessary for further human exploration of the solar system.
[We found] considerable sentiment that Apollo was a dead-end venture,
and that we have little to show for it.  Although this task force found
some who dismissed [the lunar] initiative because `we've been to the
Moon', it found more people who feel that this generation should continue
the work begun by Apollo."

Meanwhile, the Soviet Union plans to launch by the mid-1990s one or more
dedicated asteroid missions with surface probes.

SDI's Innovative Science and Technology group to launch first space
experiment on sounding rocket in November, looking at problems of using
high-power electrical equipment in space.  IST is looking at the "small
satellites" ideas and lightweight launchers, although it isn't funding
them yet.  Advanced propulsion work includes a proposal to replace the
inert binder in solid rockets with a combustible fuel, and another to make
solid fuels with continuous rather than batch processes.  Materials work is
looking at thin-film diamond as a semiconductor (it might be better than
gallium arsenide) and as a tough coating for optical surfaces.

Arianespace delays Ariane launch four days to give the launch teams some
rest.  [Launch successful.]

Launch of Japanese H-1 booster carrying engineering test satellite slips
four days due to valve problem in second stage.  [Launch successful.]

Chinese reentry capsule, carrying French experiment package, recovered
after five days in orbit.  [Also, I made a mistake in reporting this one:
the capsule was of the type used for film-recovery spysats, but this
particular mission was all scientific.]

Inmarsat planning R&D program on navigation satellites.

AW&ST is running a multi-part series on South American aerospace, including:

Chilean space activity is modest but significant.  Prominent in it is the
shuttle emergency-landing runway on Easter Island; this involved extending
the airport's runway and adding approach lights and landing aids.  Chile
hopes to fly an astronaut on the shuttle eventually.  Also of note are an
ozone-depletion experiment done jointly with the US and UK, and the first
South American ground station for the Sarsat (search and rescue) program.

Brazil's larger space program continues progress on building its own
launcher (roughly Scout-class), environmental and Earth-resources
satellites to go up on it, and a near-equatorial launch site for it.  First
launch tentatively 1989.

ESA awards contract to British Aerospace for feasibility study of mobile
communications satellite system, possibly using Molniya orbits for good
coverage at high latitudes.
-- 
"Mir" means "peace", as in           |  Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
"the war is over; we've won".        | {allegra,ihnp4,decvax,utai}!utzoo!henry