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发信人: bage (网事如疯·春心萌动), 信区: AerospaceScience
标 题: SpaceViews -- 2000 November 20(转载)
发信站: 哈工大紫丁香 (2000年12月22日22:21:19 星期五), 转信
【 以下文字转载自 bage 的信箱 】
【 原文由 hitsma@0451.com 所发表 】
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S P A C E V I E W S
Issue 2000.47
2000 November 20
http://www.spaceviews.com/2000/1120/
*** News ***
Mir Space Station to Be Brought Down to Earth in February
Dennis Tito Says It's "Highly Likely" He Will Go to the ISS In
April 2001
Mir De-Orbiting Welcomed in Washington
Supply Ship Makes Dicey Docking With Station Alpha
Arianespace Scores Another Success for Heavy Lifting Ariane 5
Booster
Interferometry Mission Sent Back to Drawing Board
Senator-elect Bill Nelson Keeps Eyes On Space
Hot Flares Found on Cold Stellar Embryos
Cape Canaveral Spaceport Makes Slow Progress Toward Reality
"Beanie Baby" Satellites to Ride Russian Rockets
SpaceViews Event Horizon
Other News
*** Articles ***
Astro Architects: Designing Our Future in Space
*** News ***
Mir Space Station to Be Brought Down to Earth in February
by SPACE.com staff
The Russian space station Mir will be crashed into the Pacific
Ocean on February 27 or 28, the general director of the Russian
Aerospace Agency said Thursday.
The station will be brought out of orbit and back to Earth
over the Pacific Ocean 1,500-2,000 km from Australia, Yuri Koptev said
at a news conference, according to the Interfax News Service.
"Right now we are at such a stage in the operation of Mir that
any of its systems could well fail at any time," Koptev said.
Also, Dennis Tito, the American who planned to be the world's
first space tourist and began preparations for the trip at the Gagarin
cosmonaut training center, is very unlikely to ever visit Mir, Koptev
said.
Tito's trip was arranged through Netherlands-based MirCorp,
which leased time on the station and wanted to use it for commercial
purposes. MirCorp has been trying to persuade the government not to
abandon Mir. MirCorp's President Jeffrey Manber was not available for
immediate comment.
"We are awaiting official notification from the Russian
government. We will put out statement after receiving that," said
MirCorp staffer Kristin Oland.
Koptev briefed the Russian Cabinet on the space agency's plan
for closing down Mir. The Cabinet supported the plan overall, Koptev
said. In January, another cargo ship will be sent up to Mir to begin
shutting down the station and prepare it for deorbiting, he said.
One Progress cargo ship already was sent to Mir to prevent the
station from falling out of orbit in December, he said.
The day before the government session, Koptev told Interfax
that the Foreign Ministry, Emergency Situations Ministry, Defense
Ministry and other agencies are expected to submit to the Russian
government a package of documents regulating the way Mir's operations
will end and how it will be safely taken out of orbit.
In accordance with international agreements, Russia is
responsible to foreign countries for the safety of its research in
space, Koptev said, particularly when it comes to safely taking old
space vehicles out of orbit.
Koptev's colleague Anatoly Kiselyov, general director of the
Khrunichev State Space Research Center, had told Interfax earlier that
it is practically impossible to give a 100 percent guarantee that Mir
will come down in the pre-determined region of the Pacific Ocean and
nowhere else.
"When a multi-module orbital complex weighing 130 tons and
having enormous surface area brakes, enters the dense atmosphere,
passes through the atmosphere and falls into the ocean, it is
practically impossible to make a highly precise mathematical model for
this process," he said.
At the same time, specialists have a very good idea about what
elements of Mir will not burn up in the atmosphere and fall to Earth.
These elements are fragments of the large main frames of the Mir's
main module, of the Kvant, Kristall, Spektr, and Priroda modules, as
well as the rocket engines.
Experts have determined a fairly vast area where the station's
elements will fall, (an area some 8,000-10,000 km long and 200 km
wide), the head of the Khrunichev Center said. However, some fragments
of Mir could also come down over land. According to experts'
calculations, the probability of this is not very high, but does
exist.
For now, Mir is under control, the Russian experts say. Having
orbited Earth for more than 14 years, Mir has exceeded its initially
planned lifespan by almost five times. Mir has hosted 28 long
expeditions and another 16 lasting from one to four weeks. Fifteen of
the long missions were international, including participants from
Syria, Bulgaria, Afghanistan, France, Japan, Great Britain, Austria,
Germany, the European Space Agency and Slovakia.
In addition, there have been nine expeditions involving U.S.
space shuttles. During these expeditions, 37 American astronauts
visited the station. In summer 1997, an emergency occurred that had a
considerable impact on Mir's fate: while docking with the Mir, a
Progress cargo ship failed to respond to commands and rammed the
Spektr scientific module.
As a result of this first collision between operating space
objects, one of Mir's modules was punctured and leaked oxygen, and the
international crew (Vasily Tsibliyev, Alexander Lazutkin and NASA
astronaut Michael Foale) aboard their station retreated to a docked
Soyuz spacecraft to prepare for emergency evacuation.
However, the situation was brought under control; the
punctured module's hatch was closed and the oxygen leak was stopped.
For the next two years, Mir crews did extensive maintenance and
brought the station back into full working order.
Dennis Tito Says It's "Highly Likely" He
Will Go to the ISS In April 2001
By Anthony Duignan-Cabrera
Managing Editor
and Yuri Karash
Moscow Contributing Correspondent
SPACE.com
The death knell may have tolled for the Mir space station, but
for Dennis Tito, the man intent on becoming the world's first space
tourist, it's music to his ears.
"I believe the chance of me going to Mir is less than 1
percent," Tito said in an exclusive interview with SPACE.com, "but I
think it is highly likely that I will end up flying to the
International Space Station (ISS) on April 30."
"If Dennis Tito intends to fly to ISS, good for him," said
Rosaviakosmos (Russian Aviation and Space Agency) spokesman Sergei
Gorbunov. "However, I don't know what he is basing his intention on."
Tito, an investment manager from Santa Monica, California, had
hoped to make a trip to the aging Russian spacecraft early next year.
The former NASA engineer had already paid part of the $20 million
price tag for the trip -- including almost $1 million that was
earmarked for living and training in Russia's Star City.
However the trip appeared to be canceled Thursday when
Rosaviakosmos, the Russian space agency, announced that after almost
15 years of operation the station would be dumped into the Pacific
Ocean on February 27, 2001.
Speaking from his apartment in Star City, an upbeat Tito said
he was happy with the agency's decision.
"Today's decision is positive for me because at least it
clarifies the future," Tito said. "I feel a lot more certain about my
future than George Bush and Al Gore does right about now. Prior to
this decision I was closer to feeling like they do. I'm pleased with
the decision."
Tito, whose contract to fly to Mir is with both MirCorp and
RKK Energia, the Russian company that operates Mir, said he believes
he will be the third passenger on board a Russian Soyuz spacecraft
being sent to the ISS on April 30. That launch, referred to as a taxi
mission, will be done in order to "swap out" the Russian spacecraft
moored at the outpost for use as escape vehicles.
NASA spokeswoman Kirsten Larson refused to comment on Tito's
alternate plan to rocket to the ISS but said the agency has not
discussed such a proposal with the Russians.
"I guess, all the questions regarding Tito's maybe-mission
should be addressed to RKK Energia," said Gorbunov. "It is a part of
MirCorp, the company that started all this adventure [with the space
tourist]."
Gorbunov made it clear that Rosaviakosmos still has not
received any formal application from Tito regarding his enrollment in
the cosmonaut's training.
"Rosaviakosmos has no official relationship with Tito,"
maintained Gorbunov, and the third seat on the Soyuz is a point of
discussion between the Russian space agency and foreign government
agencies, including those participating in the ISS program.
"[The agency] is the only government body that can make a
decision regarding somebody's flight in a Russian spacecraft,"
Gorbunov said.
Soyuz spacecraft, unlike the space shuttle, are not reusable
and are only good for a finite number of days in space.
Tito said that because of the April mission's short duration,
his presence would not interfere with the ongoing construction of the
station. And while he is hopeful that NASA will not attempt to
dissuade the Russian government from approving his participation in
that mission, he believes that sending him would not be a waste of
time or resources.
"It's only a six-day mission. The value of that [length
mission] to a NASA or ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut would be
limited," argued Tito. "I'm also a very qualified person with a
scientific background and I think I can hold my own."
"If I were the average Hollywood-type, vanity-astronaut-to-be,
that might be a problem. But my interest in space began in 1957. My
interest goes back before a lot of people who are involved today in
the space program were born."
An aerospace engineer, Tito joined NASA抯 Jet Propulsion
Laboratory in Pasadena, California in 1964, where he developed
trajectories for the Mariner 4 mission to Mars and the Mariner 5
mission to Venus. He later moved onto a career on Wall Street in
investment management consulting.
As for the skeptics who are worrying about the whereabouts of
his $20 million, Tito said they shouldn't.
"My investment is in an escrow account so financially I'm not
at risk," said Tito. "Besides, my investment of time has been amply
rewarded. If I were to walk away at this moment without ever flying to
space I would have no regrets from this experience because I gained a
tremendous amount personally."
Tito, who has lived and trained for almost four months in
Russia, said the Mir deorbiting saga, which has been going on for
years, only came to a head in the last six weeks when it became clear
that Russia could not maintain two ongoing space station projects --
Mir and the ISS.
"The Russians had never maintained two space stations
concurrently," Tito recalled. "There was some overlap but they moved
from one to another. There was an overlap from Salyut 7 to Mir, but
Salyut 7 was inactive during that time."
The Russian space agency made the best choice this week, said
Tito: "It's a serious, responsible decision to provide the safe
deorbit of Mir and to prevent any harm to persons or property on
Earth. I commend them on their decision."
Besides, he pointed out, "which space station would you rather
go to?"
Mir De-Orbiting Welcomed in Washington
By Alex Canizares
for SPACE.com
Russia's decision to abandon the Mir space station, long
feared to be draining resources from the International Space Station
(ISS), was welcome news in Washington.
The 130-ton Mir, the precursor to the ISS, had been criticized
as no longer useful after exceeding its original life span almost five
times, and was accused of soaking up Russian funds from going towards
building the space station.
After a 14-year orbit, the death of Mir is unsurprising but
welcome, said agency officials and space experts.
NASA spokeswoman Kirsten Larson said the decision was Russia's
to make. "Our concern at NASA is that the Russians always have
adequate resources for space station," she said.
"It is an end of an era," said John Logsdon of the Space
Policy Institute at George Washington University. "It marks a move on
to a next stage."
Russian officials announced Thursday they would crash Mir into
the Pacific Ocean on February 27 or 28. The decision came after
private investors failed to devise a way to keep it in orbit. MirCorp
leased the station and sought to use it for commercial purposes, but
failed to come up with funds.
Dropping Mir frustrates plans for commercial ventures,
however. Such business opportunities are less clear for the ISS, even
as NASA plans to open the international complex to a non-governmental
organization.
"It would have been nice to have some experience with
commercial operations aboard Mir before doing commercial operations
aboard [the] station," said Scott Pace, senior policy analyst at RAND.
Downing Mir frees up the limited amount of Soyuz and Progress
vehicles needed to ferry parts and supplies to the ISS. The vehicles
are the primary Russian contributions necessary to complete the
outpost by 2006, and are especially needed in a glut of near-term
missions.
Given the economic uncertainty, dropping Mir is "probably a
necessary and good thing in order for them to support the
International Space Station," said one NASA official, speaking on
condition of anonymity.
The Russian commitment to the ISS continues to be politically
sensitive on Capitol Hill, however. Congress recently voted to crack
down on Russia to uphold its end of the bargain. A recent bill urges
the next NASA administrator to take a tougher stand and demand that
Russia meet its requirements or face the loss of its scientific use of
the ISS upon completion.
The Mir has been a source of national pride for Russia, and
has served as a training ground for American and Russian astronauts.
One benefit to life sciences studies provided data used to analyze the
effects of space on the bone structure of Mir astronauts over several
months in orbit.
Supply Ship Makes Dicey Docking With Station Alpha
By Todd Halvorson
Cape Canaveral Bureau Chief
SPACE.com
A wobbling Russian space freighter linked up with Space
Station Alpha Friday after a failed automatic docking system forced
the outpost crew to take control of the high-flying hook-up.
With the Progress supply ship flying erratically some 100
meters (330 feet) from the station, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gidzenko
eased the craft up to the outpost with a back-up manual docking system
used as a last resort.
The link-up came at 10:48 p.m. Eastern Standard Time Friday
(Saturday, 0348 UT) -- or 40 minutes later than planned - as the
international outpost soared beyond contact with Russian ground
tracking stations.
Another 40 minutes passed before anxious ground controllers
regained communications with the station crew and verified a link-up
some 384 kilometers (240 miles) above Earth.
"I want to congratulate you on your bravery, your heroism,"
Victor Blagov, deputy chief flight director of the Russian Mission
Center outside Moscow, told the crew after the successful docking.
"You guys have used a lot of adrenaline."
To say the least.
The Progress cargo carrier -- which is designed to dock
automatically with the station -- simply failed to do so.
Its navigation system for some reason did not lock on to its
target -- a docking port on the Russian space tug Zarya, one of three
permanent, pressurized wings that now make up the 13-story station.
Gidzenko and his crewmates -- cosmonaut colleague Sergei
Krikalev and U.S. astronaut Bill Shepherd -- were watching from inside
the station as the bug-shaped Progress began its final approach to the
station.
Floating in front of a black-and-white TV screen at the
station's central command post, the crew was quick to note that the
eight-ton cargo carrier was in the midst of a fitful flight.
"It's wandering all over the screen," Gidzenko told ground
controllers. "You're observing this, right?"
The response from the Russian Mission Control Center: "We see
it. We're watching it."
On the TV screen: a fuzzy image of the international station,
wavering in and then out of the picture. The point of view: A camera
aboard the Progress spacecraft.
The Progress "seems to be stabilizing slightly, and then it
seems to wander off again. It seems to be oscillating," Gidzenko
reported. "It's still rocking around -- it's sort of an inelegant
rocking of the image here. We seem not to be going over into a lock or
capture mode."
With the hefty spacecraft closing in on the station, Blagov
gave Gidzenko the go-ahead to take over manual control of the docking.
His prime tool: A remote-control docking system comprising the
black-and-white TV monitor, a joystick-like hand controller and
computer-equipment installed on the station last week.
Similar "manual dockings" have been carried out many times at
Russia's Mir space station. But one that went amiss led to a 1997
Progress collision that punctured the hull of the aging outpost,
nearly killing U.S. astronaut Michael Foale and two cosmonaut
colleagues.
And as it turned out, the manual Progress docking at the new
Alpha station was no easy task.
Gidzenko first used the remote-control system to maneuver the
supply ship within a scant 5 meters (16.5 feet) of the station, but
then glaring sunlight washed out the TV picture, making it impossible
for the crew to adequately eyeball the approaching spacecraft.
So Gidzenko sent computer commands to fly the Progress to a
point 50 meters (165 feet) from the station, buying time until the
outpost could circle around to the dark side of Earth.
The veteran cosmonaut "put the brakes on, if you will," said
NASA Mission Control spokesman Rob Navias, until the sun could set,
providing better lighting conditions.
Not too long after that, the station passed out of range of
Russian ground communications stations. And while sporadic bursts of
telemetry data showed the Progress made contact with the station, a
long wait ensued until officials were able to verify a safe and
successful link-up.
The nail-biting docking, meanwhile, started up a 13-day time
clock key to the upcoming launch of NASA's shuttle Endeavour and a
visiting outpost construction crew.
The Progress is carrying some 2,420 kilograms (5,335 pounds)
of fuel, oxygen, equipment and supplies for the international
station's first full-time tenants, who boarded the outpost early this
month.
Among the supplies: fresh food, water, clean clothes and a
sleeping bag for Gidzenko, who is setting up a makeshift camp in the
Russian Zarya tug. Shepherd and Krikalev, meanwhile, are staying in
closet-like "staterooms" in the station's crew quarters.
Among the equipment: Medical instruments, a variety of tools,
laptop computers, alarm system components and spare parts for the
station's crucial life support systems.
The Alpha crew this weekend will begin unloading all of the
gear and stowing it in an already cramped outpost -- and they'll have
less than two weeks to finish the job.
The reason: The Progress must be unpacked before shuttle
Endeavour and a visiting station construction crew can be cleared for
a planned November 30 launch from Kennedy Space Center.
The Progress, meanwhile, is destined for a fiery finish.
The supply ship ultimately will be loaded with trash and then
jettisoned from the station the day after Endeavour's launch -- and a
day before its scheduled arrival at the station.
Doubling as a garbage scow, the Progress will be destroyed
during an intentional plunge back through Earth's atmosphere.
Arianespace Scores Another Success for
Heavy Lifting Ariane 5 Booster
By Jim Banke
Senior Producer, Cape Canaveral Bureau
SPACE.com
Increasing its worldwide reputation for reliability as a
heavy-lift space booster, an Ariane 5 rocket lofted a quartet of
satellites into Earth orbit after launching Wednesday night from the
edge of the Amazon jungle in South America.
Liftoff from the Guiana Space Center near Kourou, French
Guiana, was at 8:07 p.m. Eastern Standard Time (0107 UT, Nov. 16), one
day later than planned because of a minor problem with some ground
support equipment at the launch pad that was quickly repaired.
With its twin solid-fuel rocket boosters responsible for most
of the initial lifting power of the giant rocket, the commercial
Ariane 5's brilliant exhaust plume could be seen for miles along the
Atlantic coast as it climbed toward space on an easterly path.
Quickly zooming out of sight, the satellite-delivery mission
was successfully completed 42 minutes later after all of its cargo had
separated from the rocket's upper stage.
Wednesday's launch marked the fourth commercial mission for
Ariane 5 since the first of this next evolution of the Ariane family
of rockets was launched in 1997. The Ariane 5 directly competes with
the U.S. Atlas and Russian Proton rockets marketed by International
Launch Services.
It was also Arianespace's 10th flight for the year, with three
more missions still targeted to fly by the end of 2000, including an
Ariane 4 launch scheduled for Monday.
Flying on Wednesday aboard the European-built launcher was a
high-powered communications satellite, an international amateur-radio
satellite and a pair of small British research spacecraft.
Weighing more than 4,536 kilograms (10,000 pounds), the
principal payload on this flight was PAS-1R, a high-powered
communications satellite built by Boeing Satellite Systems for
PanAmSat that will serve customers in North and South America, Europe
and Africa.
The satellite has 72 transponders, twice the capacity of PAS-
1, which this satellite will replace. PAS-1 was launched on the
inaugural voyage of the Ariane 4 rocket in June 1988.
Once operational, PAS-1R will offer a broad range of services
to customers that include ImpSat, Cisneros Television Group, CTC
Mundo, Telef髇ica Data Colombia, Citibank, Reuters, Zona Franca
Montevideo, Latinet, Suratel, Vitacom and Galaxy Latin America.
Although smaller and less powerful, a no-less-interesting
satellite sent into space on Wednesday was AMSAT P3-D, the largest
amateur-radio satellite ever built. Ham radio operators in North
America, Europe and Asia will use the satellite's five receivers and
eight transmitters to bounce their radio signals around the globe.
Rounding out the spacecraft orbited by Arianespace on
Wednesday were a pair of tiny Space Technology Research Vehicles built
and operated by Great Britain's Defense Evaluation and Research Agency
to test new communications technology.
Interferometry Mission Sent Back to Drawing Board
By Andrew Bridges
Pasadena Bureau Chief
SPACE.com
NASA has ordered the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) back to
the drawing board in an effort to shrink the cost of its ambitious
Space Interferometry Mission from an estimated $1.5 billion.
NASA hopes JPL will bring the price for the mission -- one of
three the agency aims to launch in an effort to take the science of
interferometry into space -- down to something close to $930 million.
"We said we cannot afford that," said Lia LaPiana, program
executive at NASA Headquarters, of the higher number that would carry
the mission through design, manufacture, launch and orbital checkout.
The Space Interferometry Mission, or SIM, project would
combine the light from various telescopes working in unison to mimic
the behavior of one, larger telescope. The mission won't launch before
2009 at the earliest.
Specifically, the SIM spacecraft would use interferometry to
measure the positions and distances of stars hundreds of times more
accurately than ever before, giving astronomers a cosmic yardstick to
gauge distances throughout the galaxy. The mission would also probe
nearby stars for Earth-sized planets. NASA also hopes to launch two
other space interferometry missions, Space Technology 3 and the
Terrestrial Planet Finder.
Originally, JPL claimed it could pull off SIM for just $600
million in 2001 dollars. Now, in the wake of more exhaustive studies
of what sorts of technologies are required to pull off the mission, an
independent analysis pegs its true cost at nearly three times that
much.
"The major driver is when we developed these rough estimates
of what this mission would cost four years ago, we hadn't done any of
[those studies]," LaPiana said.
JPL will have until April or later to present to NASA
Headquarters one or more less-costly plans for the mission.
Ed Weiler, NASA's associate administrator for space science,
said that asking JPL to rework the SIM project falls under the same
rubric of what the agency did to its campaign to explore Mars
following the loss of the Mars Climate Orbiter and Polar Lander
probes.
"I'm basically doing what we did with Mars -- except with Mars
we had to lose two missions first," Weiler said.
SIM's reworking will likely involve a fresh look at the
mission's design concept, including a possible change of launch
vehicle. Originally, a next-generation rocket was to launch SIM. Now,
LaPiana said, NASA is encouraging JPL to look at using a space shuttle
instead. That plan, for instance, would allow NASA to equip SIM with a
fixed, 11-yard (10-meter) beam required to separate its various
telescopes, rather than a more costly hinged contraption necessary,
were the spacecraft to be stuffed aboard a rocket for launch.
Although the technique of interferometry has been around for
more than a century, only now is it coming into widespread use in
ground-based facilities. Those include the Center for High Angular
Resolution Astronomy on Mount Wilson, California, the Keck
Interferometer in Mauna Kea, Hawaii and the Very Large Telescope
Interferometer in Paranal, Chile.
Although it will be costly to make it work in space, LaPiana
said NASA has faith it can be pulled off for a price NASA can afford.
"We think it's certainly possible to do it in that cost range,
" LaPiana said of the $930 million figure. "We're giving JPL that
challenge."
Proposed missions to visit Pluto for the first time and to
orbit Jupiter's moon Europa will undergo similar budget-shaving
exercises this fall as well.
The two missions, the Europa Orbiter and Pluto Kuiper Express,
were originally budgeted at a total cost of roughly $650 million. That
number has since soared to more than $1.4 billion, prompting NASA to
suspend work on the Pluto probe.
Weiler said he has given JPL until later this year to sharpen
its pencil, reshape the missions and lower their cost. Although the
Europa mission is now being prioritized, it's no shoo-in at an
estimated price tag of $850 million, Weiler said.
"Right now, I'm looking for anything because we can't afford
them as it is," Weiler told SPACE.com at a recent meeting in Pasadena,
California of the American Astronomical Society's Division for
Planetary Sciences.
One possibility, Weiler said, is that NASA put out the Europa
mission for competitive bid in an effort to lower its price.
Currently, the mission would not launch before 2007.
Senator-elect Bill Nelson Keeps Eyes On Space
By Joe Guinan
for SPACE.com
The only former astronaut in Congress apparently has not lost
interest in space. Senator-elect Bill Nelson (D-Florida) beat U.S.
Rep. Bill McCollum, (R-Florida) after a tight race for the Senate
seat.
Senator-elect Nelson said he is interested in a seat on one of
the two committees overseeing the space program and its funding.
In a meeting with reporters in the office of Sen. Bob Graham,
(D-Florida) on Tuesday, Nelson said he believed he could be most
effective as a member of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee,
where funding decisions are made for federal agencies, including NASA.
His other top choice was the Senate Commerce, Science and
Transportation Committee, chaired by Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona),
which crafts space policy.
"The nation's space program is not a partisan issue," he told
reporters, recalling the success he had in reaching out across party
lines to Republicans as chair of the space subcommittee of the
science, space and technology committee in the House during the 1980s.
He pointed to the historically bipartisan cooperation over the
space program as a model for how Congress might move forward on key
national priorities.
During his time as chairman, the ranking Republican was Bob
Walker of Pennsylvania, whom Nelson described as a man who "gave
Democrats fits." But by putting the success of the program above party
politics, Nelson said, he and Walker learned to work well together and
much was accomplished. Walker has since retired.
The highly coveted positions are the latest challenge for
Nelson -- there's only a single seat expected to be open on each panel
that he is eyeing, and more senior members are interested.
But Nelson does have this edge: there's only one Southern
Democrat on the Appropriations panel, Sen. Ernest F. "Fritz" Hollings
(D-South Carolina).
Nelson ducked questions regarding a third choice. "Let me
concentrate on my first two choices," he said.
"I think that for a moderate Democrat, a centrist, for someone
in the mainstream, this is a time of exceptional opportunity and
challenge," he said.
In 1986, Nelson underwent intensive training, and flew as a
crew member on the 24th flight of Space Shuttle Columbia. His six-day
flight became the topic of a book, Mission, published in 1988.
Since leaving Congress, Nelson has served as Florida's State
Insurance Commissioner.
Hot Flares Found on Cold Stellar Embryos
By Robert Roy Britt
Senior Science Writer
SPACE.com
Taking their closest look ever inside the womb where a star is
born, astronomers found surprisingly hot flares coming from otherwise
cold stellar embryos.
These stars-to-be -- also called protostars, and sometimes
just considered baby stars -- are less than 100,000 years old and
still gathering themselves together. They will use their gravity to
accumulate more material from a surrounding womb of gas and dust. And
eventually they will be massive enough to contract, become more dense
and jump-start thermonuclear fusion.
Then they will have an internal furnace like the one that
drives our Sun, a more mature star.
But these bambinos probably aren't even in diapers yet. And
without an interior furnace, they are cold -- as much as minus 240
degrees Celsius (minus 400 degrees Fahrenheit).
So researchers were surprised to catch them emitting powerful
flares of energy that were 10 times hotter and up to 100,000 times
brighter than flares on our Sun. Temperatures in the flares reached
100 million degrees Celsius (180 million degrees Fahrenheit).
"We peered at newborn stars deeply embedded in their cradle
and found that their crying is much more tumultuous than we expected,"
said Yohko Tsuboi of the Pennsylvania State University, lead
researcher in the study.
Out of hiding
A stellar embryo lives in an envelope of gas and dust, a womb
that is consumed to feed the fledgling star. Our own Sun was born in
such a "molecular cloud," as were the nine planets.
These clouds block astronomers' views of what's going on
inside. But the powerful orbiting Chandra X-ray Observatory peered
straight through the clouds and measured energy in the X-ray spectrum,
which is not visible in normal telescopes, or to the eye.
Why the hot temper?
"The X-ray flares from protostars occur most likely due to the
same mechanisms as those on the Sun," Tsuboi told SPACE.com.
The process involves large loops of magnetic energy that reach
out into space and, somewhat mysteriously, snap back. Scientists are
just beginning to understand how this works on the Sun. In the newly
observed stellar embryos, these loops were enormous: up to 10 times
the radius of our Sun.
"How such huge magnetic loops are formed and how the
reconnections occur might be deeply linked with how a star contracts,"
Tsuboi said.
Scientists say our own infant Sun was prone to similar
tantrums 5 billion years ago, when it was just a protostar. After a
few million years, however, fusion took over and the Sun's emissions
became more stable -- one of the preconditions for life as we know it.
Where the stars are
Tsuboi and her collaborators at Kyoto University in Japan
looked at the two youngest types of protostars: Class 0 (zero)
protostars, about 10,000 years old; and Class 1 protostars, about 100,
000 years old.
They detected X-rays from 17 Class 1 protostars in the rho-
Ophiuchi molecular cloud, 500 light-years from Earth in the
constellation Ophiuchi. The astronomers saw nearly a dozen X-ray
flares over a 27-hour period.
"Virtually all the Class 1 protostars in the rho-Ophiuchi
molecular cloud may emit X-rays with extremely violent and frequent
flare activity," said Kensuke Imanishi of Kyoto University.
In a different star-formation region, 1,400 light years from
Earth in constellation Orion, the researchers observed for the first
time activity from the youngest protostars, the Class 0 variety.
The findings were presented at the recent meeting of the High-
Energy Astrophysics Division of the American Astronomical Society in
Honolulu.
Cape Canaveral Spaceport Makes Slow Progress Toward Reality
By Jim Banke
Senior Producer, Cape Canaveral Bureau
SPACE.com
It's called the Cape Canaveral Spaceport.
The idea: create a single facility much like a major
international airport in which state and federal government agencies,
the military and all of the U.S. commercial launch providers can
operate together more efficiently and less expensively than anywhere
else in the world.
And for the sixth year in a row, top officials representing
each of those groups convened on Tuesday a two-day symposium on
Florida's Space Coast to continue discussing the best way to make it
happen -- if it's possible at all.
"We can't keep kicking the can down the road the way we have
been," Col. Greg Pavlovich, deputy director of operations at Air Force
Space Command Headquarters, said of ongoing efforts to find the best
model under which a new spaceport would operate.
But after years of studying whether and how to evolve the
Kennedy Space Center (KSC), Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS)
and the Eastern Range into a single operation -- with hopes of
becoming a role model for others around the nation to follow --
officials say some progress finally is being made.
"This vision we have is not just a piece of paper. It's
something that we are marching to and we are getting things done every
month, every year," said KSC Director Roy Bridges.
Among recent accomplishments:
* KSC and CCAFS now share single police and fire departments,
and recently introduced a new mobile command post that would allow the
centers to handle emergencies with the same set of guidelines.
* Work has begun on a new $30 million Space Experiments
Research Processing Laboratory, a home for science experiments
destined to be shuttled to Space Station Alpha or flown on other
rockets. The Florida legislature last year approved paying for $14
million of the cost and the remaining $16 million is included in Gov.
Jeb Bush's next budget. Groundbreaking is expected early in 2001.
* Officials last week cut the ribbon on a new $5.8 million
helium pipeline that runs between KSC and the air station's new Launch
Complex 37, where Boeing is constructing a new launch pad for its
Delta 4 rocket that is part of the Air Force's Evolved Expendable
Launch Vehicle program.
The next major step for the spaceport is to write a
comprehensive master plan, a two-year study that will be led by NASA,
the Air Force and the Spaceport Florida Authority, which is the
Sunshine State's official space agency empowered by the governor.
"What we're trying to do with the concept of a spaceport is
bring all of these entities together, make it easier to run the
spaceport, hopefully get the price down and make our launch providers
more competitive on a global basis," Bridges told SPACE.com.
"Beanie Baby" Satellites to Ride Russian Rockets
By Robert Myers
Multimedia Producer
SPACE.com
One Stop Satellite Solutions (OSSS) is hoping to do for space
access what Henry Ford did for the automobile -- make it cheap enough
for average folks.
Combining a 10-centimeter (4-inch) "CubeSat" developed by the
University of Stanford, and a horde of demilitarized Russian
Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) launchers, OSSS can launch
your 1-kilogram (2.2-pound) payload for about $45,000. Launching a
more traditional satellite can cost from $3 million to $5 million for
the same weight.
Of course, you can't exactly bundle yourself into a CubeSat.
But scientists, small businesses and creative, well-heeled individuals
could loft just about anything they can think of. Considering that a
Palm III weighs in at 193 grams (6.8 ounces), a lot of computing power
could be fit into that small space.
"You might call this a 'Beanie Baby satellite,'" said Robert
Twiggs, a Stanford University professor and CubeSat's inventor, since
the satellite is about the size of a Beanie Baby box.
Anything larger, "even the size of a lady's hatbox," would
have driven costs back into the stratosphere, Twiggs said.
He developed the satellites so that graduate students and
universities could launch small experiments more frequently.
Commercial applications became apparent later. But the package didn't
come together until they met with Kosmotras, the Russian firm putting
Cold War-era ICBMs to commercial use. As part of a nuclear disarmament
agreement, former Soviet SS-18 ICBMs, now called Dneprs, are slated to
either be used for commercial purposes, or destroyed outright by
December 31, 2007.
Twiggs has no end of ideas for ways his cheap and tiny
satellites can be used -- from secure storage of sensitive computer
records that could also be accessed by radio anytime the satellite was
in view, to creating a personal "Sputnik" broadcasting your message
around the world. Some ham radio operators are already on board to
launch into orbit "repeaters," to bounce their radio signals around
the globe. A constellation of the tiny craft could scatter small
instruments over large areas in orbit for broad views.
"Or they could work as an absentee-vote ballot collector,"
added Twiggs wryly.
To avoid adding to the space junk problem though, the CubeSats
would have a short life span: lasting from six months to a year.
"You know with college students, we can't keep their attention
longer than six months," joked Twiggs. To make sure the CubeSats don't
stay up indefinitely, they would normally only be launched up to about
200 kilometers (125 miles).
But if they're launched to a higher orbit, boosting a small
payload to the Moon or even Mars is relatively easy, Twiggs said.
"If you want to put something around Mars, this can do it
affordably," he added.
SpaceViews Event Horizon
Note: You can now add these events to your Palm handheld by clicking
on, or copying and pasting into a Web browswer, the URL below each
event. Visit Coola's Web site at http://www.coola.com/ for more
information about this free service.
November 20 Kosmos-3M launch of the QuickBird 1 commercial high-
resolution imaging satellite from Plesetsk, Russia
http://www.coola.com/cgi-bin/addinfo.cgi?pid=10003&rid=974685648&type=D
November 21 Delta 2 launch of the Earth Observing 1 and SAC-C
science satellites from Vandenberg Air Force Base,
California at 1:24 pm EST (1824 UT).
http://www.coola.com/cgi-bin/addinfo.cgi?pid=10003&rid=973486398&type=D
November 21 Ariane 4 launch of the Anik F1 communications
satellite from Kourou, French Guiana at 6:56 pm EST
(2356 UT).
http://www.coola.com/cgi-bin/addinfo.cgi?pid=10003&rid=974072657&type=D
November 30 Launch of the shuttle Endeavour on mission STS-97 from
the Kennedy Space Center, Florida, at 10:01 pm EDT
(0301 UT Dec. 1)
http://www.coola.com/cgi-bin/addinfo.cgi?pid=10003&rid=974072725&type=D
Other News
Leonid Meteors: The Leonid meteor shower arrived this past weekend
with considerably less fanfare -- and concern -- than the past two
years. The peak of the shower was far below the "storm" levels
predicted for the past two years, with a maximum "zenithal hourly
rate) of just over 450 observed in North America in the early morning
ours of November 18. While astronomers didn't expect a major storm
from the Leonids -- which have shown a pattern of storms every 33
years, the orbital period of its source, comet Tempel-Tuttle -- some
spacecraft operators still took measures to protect against any damage
the meteors could cause. NASA planned to point the Hubble Space
Telescope in the direction opposite the meteors during a six-hour
period at the peak of the storm. An effort by scientists at NASA's
Marshall Space Flight Center to observe the Leonids from a balloon at
high altitudes -- something successfully attempted the last two years
-- failed this year when high winds blew the balloon towards
commercial flight paths during its ascent, forcing the team to abort
the flight and parachute its payload back to Earth.
EUVE Mission to End: NASA announced Friday it will shut down the
long-running Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer (EUVE) mission next month.
Launched in 1992, EUVE has provided astronomers with their best look
yet at the universe at extreme ultraviolet wavelengths, light that is
absorbed by the Earth's ozone layer. Those astronomers lobbied NASA
to keep the mission going for another year, but the space agency
decided the money that would be spent on EUVE -- originally planned
for only three years of operations -- would be better spent on other
projects. EUVE will reenter the Earth's atmosphere in an uncontrolled
manner in late 2001 or early 2002, but should not pose a threat to
anyone on the ground.
Iridium Deal? Iridium Satellite LLC announced last week that it had
reached an agreement to purchase the assets of the bankrupt satellite
phone company Iridium. The new company said at the time it would work
to resume satellite phone service within the next 60 days; however,
the release announcing the deal was withdrawn several hours after its
release. It's unclear whether the release was simply premature or if
the deal was off altogether. If there is no deal, Motorola, the
company currently operating the Iridium satellites, will likely
proceed with plans to deorbit the constellation of more than seventy
small low-Earth orbit spacecraft over the next few years.
Briefly: Loral said Friday it purchased a $500 million line of credit
troubled satellite phone company Globalstar had used to finance its
operations. Loral, which owns a significant fraction of Globalstar,
had previously guaranteed the credit line with some of its assets as
collateral; those assets will be used to secure a three-year line of
credit Loral obtained to purchase the original loan. The move is seen
as a way to give Globalstar additional breathing room from its
creditors as it seeks to become profitable... The movie "Red Planet"
might be better named "Red Asteroid" or even "Red Dust", given its
poor performance at the box office this past weekend. In its second
weekend of release the film about the first human mission to Mars
earned a paltry $2.7 million according to estimates, good enough for
only tenth place.
*** Articles ***
Astro Architects: Designing Our Future in Space
By Yasha Husain
Special to SPACE.com
"Every single aspect of space is conspiring at every moment to
pretty much kill humans."
And this is part of what motivates Madhu Thangavelu to be a
space architect.
He and others in his profession love the challenge: they
thrive on designing and building launch pads, rockets and spacecraft
to carry humans to outer space. But doing it safely is the hard part.
"So, it's very important that architects are extremely safe,
though daring at the same time," explains Thangavelu.
Larry Bell, who contributed years of design work to the
construction of the International Space Station (ISS), more recently
dubbed "Space Station Alpha," says space architects have special
challenges that others in the design field do not. "When designing a
building on Earth, do architects build a toilet? No. The space
architect looks at how it's going to come together and how well people
like the design. One can't be involved in a problem and not have an
idea of all of the pieces that make the system work."
The late Dr. Wernher von Braun is considered a forefather of
space architecture and exploration. The Saturn rockets that carried
Apollo crews to the Moon and lifted the space station Skylab and it's
crew into orbit were developed and built under Von Braun's leadership.
But calling von Braun, the first director of NASA's Marshall Space
Flight Center, just an engineer and not a space architect would be a
disservice, Thangavelu says.
Like many space architects who follow in his footsteps, von
Braun took that jump from analyzing mathematical problems, the way
engineers do, to building complex systems. Thangavelu says this
"incredible" leap of faith -- from analyzing to building -- is what
defines a space architect.
Designing for the inside and outside
Designing for outer space turns most elements of traditional
architecture on its head, literally.
When you are dealing with zero gravity, everything changes,"
Bell says. "It affects the way you design everything. The notion of up
and down is arbitrary. You have to try to purge yourself of the biases
we have from living on Earth."
Bell says that when he designs, he takes more than the
structure itself into consideration, he thinks of the people who will
dwell inside the structure.
"There's the psychology, physiology and biology of the
astronaut that must be considered," he explains. "You have to account
for changes in body posture. And sitting isn't comfortable because you
need to use your stomach muscles to sit down. Your feet are usually
restrained, because everything needs to be secured. And there's a lot
of opportunity for algae and fungi to grow, so you even have to think
about what kind of detergent would work best up there."
Not exactly what design firms in Manhattan typically consider.
"You don't want the shuttle to look like a shiny bus and you
have to watch out for switches that could be kicked and sharp corners.
It's also important to figure in some privacy and space to exercise
for the astronauts as well. And, you are constantly having to fight
weight, making things as lightweight as possible."
Sounds like a near-impossible task. But with a growing history
and design portfolio, the job of "space architect" is actually
becoming more doable. Much of what made the ISS a success were
elements borrowed from the Mir and Skylab space stations. And Skylab
was built from many Apollo elements.
Bell says space architects are now able to build more
amenities into shuttles and increase the comfort level for future
space travelers.
Visionaries in the field
Just last month, on October 31st, a three-man crew blasted off
to the ISS. They are the first full-time tenants of the station, and
may well give the human race a permanent foothold in outer space. How
did we come this far?
It couldn't have happened without renowned architects,
industrial designers, artists and visionaries.
The 20th-century visionary Buckminster Fuller, who coined the
phrase "Spaceship Earth" and popularized the word "synergy," laid
critical groundwork for our modern vision and look of spacecraft and
stations.
Before Stanley Kubrick began depicting space life on the big
screen, artist and illustrator Chesley Bonestell was creating
renditions of astronomical scenes and spaceflight missions. Many space
enthusiasts believe these had a profound effect upon the space
architecture of the 1960s, including the work of John Frassanito of
Frassanito & Associates.
Frassanito was a key player in convincing NASA that the ISS be
a modular -- rather than a fixed -- design, so its design could be
updated as needed. Working as a NASA contractor at the time,
Frassanito based this proposal on his experience working on the
interior of Skylab with well-known industrial designer Raymond Loewy,
known for his classic 1940s Lucky Strike cigarette ads and other
designs. He is also credited for helping develop the X-33, a prototype
for a new reusable launch vehicle, and concept craft for lunar and
Martian missions.
Two space architects, and Nader Khalili, are taking an
environmentally sensitive track in their space designs. Both are
developing structures that could help reduce space junk.
Soleri is an architect who lives and works outside of Phoenix,
Arizona, where he has been building a prototype urban dwelling, called
Arcosanti, since 1970. He developed Arcosanti based on a concept he
calls "arcology," which embodies the fusion of architecture and
ecology. Soleri proposes building highly integrated and compact three-
dimensional urban communities that are the opposite of urban sprawl
and much less wasteful. He would like to see these concepts be applied
to future space civilizations.
Soleri envisions future space cities "are of a very compact
and miniaturized life. The idea is that we eventually will capture an
asteroid or a small planet to contain human [habitats] into capsules
which you can compare to a placenta."
Nader Khalili has devoted the last 25 years to the growing
field of earth architecture. He lives and works in Hesperia,
California, where he founded the Cal-Earth Institute of Earth Art and
Architecture (Cal-Earth). He is the innovator of "Superadobe" homes,
dwellings made from 95-percent natural materials. In 1984, he proposed
to NASA a way to build lunar colonies using indigenous Moon materials
rather than transporting man-made materials from Earth. Building in
space with materials already in space cuts down on both cost and
pollution.
Like Soleri, Khalili believes humans have to learn to do more
with less on Earth and in space. NASA and other space organizations
are showing interest in their designs.
If they can dream it, they can build it
With increasing interest in commercializing space and in
manned space missions, there is now a spate of offerings in
universities that allow advanced students to delve into this field.
Madhu Thangavelu aims to inspire students of his space
architecture class at the University of Southern California (USC) that
"if they can dream it, they can build it."
In Aerospace Engineering 599, a "Space Exploration
Architectures Concepts Synthesis Studio" at USC, a mix of space
professionals and graduate students enroll. In one term, the class
focused on the exploration of Mars. The midterm exam task was for each
student to come up with a concept for a phase of Mars exploration. The
final exam of the term had students pulling each of their concepts
together to build one coherent system of models, evaluated by experts
from the space industry.
At the University of Houston, space architect Larry Bell
founded the highly successful Sasakawa International Center for Space
Architecture (SICSA) in 1987 with a $3 million gift from Japan
Shipbuilding Industry Foundation, headed by Ryoichi Sasakawa. SICSA is
a research and design organization that has become a primary financial
and teaching resource in Houston's Experimental Architecture masters'
program. Many of its graduates have taken challenging and high-ranking
jobs with leading aerospace companies. With Larry Bell as the
Director, SICSA -- which has a full-scale space habitat design mock-up
and mission simulation module -- has also undertaken a number of
projects for the NASA Johnson Space Center.
"It's a candy store for designers; it's as good as it gets,"
gloats Bell like a proud dad. "I'm excited about teaching at SICSA
because I am surrounded by incredibly nice and bright people who are
exploring horizons and trying to make sense of the world," adds Bell.
A recent gift from Bigelow Aerospace has allowed SICSA to
develop the Artificial Gravity Science and Excursion Vehicle (AGSEV).
The vehicle is meant to meet special requirements for future lunar and
Martian excursions.
These groundbreaking space programs will enable a new crop of
space architects to build greater and more complex structures. They
will do more and go further, and bring the next generation of space
explorers there in the process.
SPACE.com Assistant Managing Editor Katy Ramirez contributed to this
report
========
This has been the November 20, 2000, issue of SpaceViews.
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