Return-path: X-Andrew-Authenticated-as: 7997;andrew.cmu.edu;Ted Anderson Received: from hogtown.andrew.cmu.edu via trymail for +dist+/afs/andrew.cmu.edu/usr11/tm2b/space/space.dl@andrew.cmu.edu (->+dist+/afs/andrew.cmu.edu/usr11/tm2b/space/space.dl) (->ota+space.digests) ID ; Sun, 31 Mar 91 01:26:40 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: Precedence: junk Reply-To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU From: space-request+@Andrew.CMU.EDU To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU Date: Sun, 31 Mar 91 01:26:32 -0500 (EST) Subject: SPACE Digest V13 #329 SPACE Digest Volume 13 : Issue 329 Today's Topics: Commercial Space news (11 of 12) NASA Headline News for 03/27/91 (Forwarded) Re: Shuttle Velocity Thanks to Wales and others (email not working) Re: EM Launchers and G loads Commercial Space news (7 of 12) Commercial Space News (3 of 12) Administrivia: Submissions to the SPACE Digest/sci.space should be mailed to space+@andrew.cmu.edu. Other mail, esp. [un]subscription requests, should be sent to space-request+@andrew.cmu.edu, or, if urgent, to tm2b+@andrew.cmu.edu ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 26 Mar 91 05:30:01 GMT From: sdd.hp.com!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!zardoz.cpd.com!dhw68k!ofa123!Wales.Larrison@ucsd.edu (Wales Larrison) Subject: Commercial Space news (11 of 12) CBO STUDY RELEASED ON PRIVATE INVESTMENT IN SPACE The Congressional Budget Office (one of the advisory and analytical offices which support Congress) has released a report entitled "Encouraging Private Investment in Space Activities". The objective of the report was to investigate whether more federal support for space would spur private space investments, with the ultimate goal to cut the costs of the governmental space program. . Of specific interest was their analysis of the commercial space launch market. The CBO projected the launch service market to remain flat for the next several years with the launch of 15-20 satellites per year. However, this demand was projected to fall to 12-17 satellites per year in the late 1990's. The size of the market was expected to range from $800 M/yr to $1.2 B/yr, depending upon the year, and the mix of payloads to be launched. During this same period, CBO's analysis indicated the international competition for space launches was going to increase as the Ariane-5 enters the launch services market, with other players entering from China, Japan, and the Soviet Union. CBO said these tough market conditions could force at least one of the major U.S. launch providers out of the market. To keep U.S. launch firms competitive would require fairly large investments in facilities and new technologies - which the CBO estimate would probably not be made without federal assistance because of the market risk and uncertainty in payback to commercial investors. In the near term, the report estimated that the cost of launching government payloads could be reduced by requiring all unmanned government payloads to be launched through commercial launch service agreements, which would increase the pressure on the commercial firms to lower costs. Another option investigated was to create a national U.S. launch company which would provide a national consortium of major U.S. launch vehicle manufacturers and suppliers to internationally market the U.S. fleet of launch vehicles. This consortium would also act as a vehicle to use federal funds to develop a new generation of launch systems, their subsystems, and components. However, the CBO report also points out this approach, if chosen, could eliminate some of the diversity from competing contractors, and might prove "expensive and chaotic". [Commentary: These market projections are pretty much in line with mine and other's market projections (see other articles in this set of postings). The estimate of at least 1 major U.S. producer possibly going out of the commercial side of the business within a few years also matches my projections. However, I would rank the firms as Martin Marietta (almost out of the business now...), McDonnell-Douglas (desperately seeking business for the Delta), and then General Dynamics (holding on with current losses from operations...). Moving payloads to "commercial" launch service contracts is already almost fully under way, so I don't see that doing anything for the U.S. commercial launch industry to help it since virtually of the dollars will go to the same companies in either case (since they are going to be using Deltas, Titans, or Atlases anyway). What we need to do is figure out a way to encourage private investment, or failing that, to figure out a way to channel federal development funds to the commercial industry. One way of encouraging private investment is for the government to provide a more stable market - signing multi-year, multi-launch contracts with -- Wales Larrison Internet: Wales.Larrison@ofa123.fidonet.org Compuserve: >internet:Wales.Larrison@ofa123.fidonet.org -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------ Date: 27 Mar 91 20:06:00 GMT From: usenet@ames.arc.nasa.gov (Peter E. Yee) Subject: NASA Headline News for 03/27/91 (Forwarded) Headline News Internal Communications Branch (P-2) NASA Headquarters Wednesday, March 27, 1991 Audio Service: 202 / 755-1788 This is NASA Headline News for Wednesday, March 27, 1991 NASA management today selected April 5 as the target date for launch of the Atlantis STS-37 Gamma Ray Observatory mission. This will be the 39th space shuttle flight and is scheduled as a five-day mission. The launch window opens at 9:18 am on Friday April 5. The flight readiness test on Atlantis' three main engines went well yesterday. All hydraulic servicing on the orbiter is now finished. Activity on the pad today includes servicing of one auxiliary power unit and pressurization of the liquid hydrogen tank inside the external tank. Installation of the space suits and ordnance devices, and final aft closeout activities will take place Friday. The Gamma Ray Observatory is presently powered-down and configured for launch. Crew and flight control team members from Johnson Space Center and Goddard Space Flight Center today are engaged in a joint integrated simulation of the mission. Yesterday, Discovery was soft-mated to its tank inside the Vehicle Assembly Building. Hard-mating will take place today and will be followed by power-up activities in preparation for tomorrow's interface verification test. Rollout of Discovery to launch pad 39-A is still set for Monday, April 1, beginning at 4:00 am. Activity on Columbia, inside the Orbiter Processing Facility, is also progressing smoothly. The interface verification test between the orbiter payload bay and the Spacelab Life Sciences habitable module begins tonight, following the completion of electrical connections between the module and the orbiter. The pressurized tunnel assembly will be installed between Columbia's airlock and the Spacelab module tomorrow. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * NASA and Kennedy Space Center officials yesterday broke ground for the new Space Station Processing Facility at Kennedy. Weather was excellent for the ceremony and press turnout was reported to be very good. Space Station Freedom will highlight NASA's exhibit at the 39th Paris Air Show, Le Bourget, France, June l3 through 23. The centerpiece of the 7,000 sq. ft. exhibit will be a full scale mock-up of a Space Station Freedom module. Air Show visitors will enter a module that represents combined habitat and laboratory facilities. Other NASA programs featured at the exhibition will be Mission to Planet Earth and aeronautics research. The NASA exhibit also will commemorate 30 years of manned U.S. space flight with a large mural at the exhibit's entrance. NASA has been a major participant in the Paris show for over twenty years. Here's the broadcast schedule for Public Affairs events on NASA Select TV. All times are Eastern. NASA Select TV is carried on GE Satcom F2R, transponder 13, C-Band, 72 degrees W Long., Audio 6.8, Frequency 3960 MHz. Wednesday 3/27/91 8:00 am STS-37 Joint Integrated Simulation of Mission Day 3 activities, deployment of the Gamma Ray Observatory. Goddard Space Flight Center and Johnson Space Center flight control team members are participating. The simulation will run 11 hours. Coverage of the sim will be interrupted for the Magellan report and continue afterwards. 1:15 pm Magellan-at-Venus status report live from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. 1:30 pm Continuation of coverage of STS-37 Joint Integrated Simulation, through 7:00 pm conclusion. All events and times may change without notice. This report is filed daily, Monday through Friday, by 12:00 pm, Eastern. It is a service of NASA Headquarters Office of Public Affairs. Contact: CREDMOND on NASAmail or at 202/453-8425. ------------------------------ Date: 28 Mar 91 03:32:40 GMT From: sun-barr!olivea!samsung!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!utzoo!henry@apple.com (Henry Spencer) Subject: Re: Shuttle Velocity In article <1991Mar28.001059.21109@zoo.toronto.edu> I wrote: >number is nevertheless wrong, because liftoff accelerations generally are >lower than that... Suspicions confirmed. Shuttle takeoff thrust:weight ratio is about 1.5, so initial acceleration is half a gee and velocity on clearing the tower is in the vicinity of 30 m/s, i.e. circa 60 mph. -- "We must choose: the stars or the dust.| Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology Which shall it be?" -H.G. Wells | henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry ------------------------------ Date: 27 Mar 91 16:41:06 GMT From: usc!sdd.hp.com!spool.mu.edu!news.nd.edu!mentor.cc.purdue.edu!f3w@apple.com (Mark Gellis) Subject: Thanks to Wales and others (email not working) I'm sorry to waste bandwidth on this, but some of the thank you messages I sent to people answering various technical questions did not go through due to local mailer daemons. Anyway, thanks; I appreciate the help. Mark ------------------------------ Date: 27 Mar 91 17:44:31 GMT From: agate!bionet!uwm.edu!rpi!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!utzoo!henry@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Henry Spencer) Subject: Re: EM Launchers and G loads In article RANCK@VTVM1.CC.VT.EDU ("Wm. L. Ranck") writes: > Now, my question is this. Why does everyone assume that you want >maximum acceleration from the system in the shortest possible distance. Basically, because accelerating something to orbital or near-orbital velocity takes *tremendous* distances at low accelerations. Distance and acceleration are inversely proportional to each other, and it turns out that orbital velocity equals about 3300 G-km. So at 3G, your catapult needs to be a mere 1100km long. This is a *formidable* civil engineering project. (High-tech structures one or two kilometers long are truly major projects.) There is also a small problem with finding a place to put it; a thousand kilometers of right-of-way in a straight line with no bends or dips allowed is hard to come by. >something running along the desert and then gradually curved up the side >of a mountain... Building that last curve will be a civil engineering project to end all civil engineering projects -- a large mass moving at 7-8 km/s tries very hard to keep on moving in a straight line. Assume a bend radius of 10km, which is pretty generous, and the side force at 7km/s is a mere 500G. Wasn't this supposed to be a low-acceleration device... :-) What you want, actually, is to build a rather shorter catapult along a long, high mountain ridge sloping up to the east. Then you can make it straight and still shoot into relatively thin air. You don't actually need the upward angle -- the Earth's curvature will take it out from under your payload quickly enough -- but getting out of the atmosphere is important. -- "[Some people] positively *wish* to | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology believe ill of the modern world."-R.Peto| henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry ------------------------------ Date: 26 Mar 91 05:25:37 GMT From: sdd.hp.com!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!zardoz.cpd.com!dhw68k!ofa123!Wales.Larrison@ucsd.edu (Wales Larrison) Subject: Commercial Space news (7 of 12) ARIANESPACE FORECASTS SLOWING SATELLITE LAUNCH MARKET IN LATE '90s Arianespace has recently released the results of their most recent market survey. From their assessment, the number of commercial satellites to be launched worldwide will peak at 26 this year, and then gradually decline, bottoming out in 1998 at about 15 satellites per year, according to Arianespace. This slump in the annual market demand is attributed by Arianespace the end of the current U.S programs to replace existing GEO satellite networks, mostly launched in the mid-1980's, with new, improved satellites, and the consolidation of existing satellite networks under a fewer operators. Outside of the U.S., the number of satellites launched annually is also expected to drop due to the completion of European satellite networks, and a consolidation in the European space industry which is reducing the number of satellite system operators. Arianespace estimates there are now 32 satellite operators worldwide - consisting of 7 U.S. government or private organizations (down from 12 of so a few years ago), 10 European, and 12 elsewhere. While the number of satellites to be launched is declining, Arianespace does not expect the total mass into orbit to decrease. This is based upon a projection the average size of the satellite to be launched is increasing, to over 2000 Kg into GEO. By the mid 1990's they project 45% of the satellite market will be satellites weighing between 2,000 and 3,000 Kg, with only 20% of the satellites in the 1,400-2000Kg size. (In comparison they noted that 2/3 of the satellites in the 1980's were 1400 Kg or less). They expect to launch almost 60,000 Kg per year by 2000, in comparison to the 40,000 pounds being launched this year. Similarly, Arianespace does not expect the activities in the satellite market to decrease. While the number of launches per year might decrease, the number of satellites on orbit will increase, due to longer lifetimes ot today's satellites. Current generation satellites are expected to last 10-12 years in GEO and carry about 60,000 equivalent telephone circuits. In the next generation these satellite are projected to have about 100,000 equivalent circuits and an orbital life of about 16 years. [Commentary: This market projection by Arianespace seems to fit with other market surveys I have seen, as well as with my rough estimates from a year or so ago - I had actually projected a higher dropoff in the late 1990's, but I had not included several of the new networks now being talked about. A couple of interesting points can be drawn from this - the new Ariane-5 is being designed to carry up to 3 of the larger communications satellites on one launch. If the number of satellites are decreasing, and the capability of the launch vehicles are increasing - will the number of launches needed by Ariane decline? This would remove some of the flights needed to support the "commercial viability" of the Ariane. Similarly, as the number of satellite launches is decreasing, the competition for this launch market will intensify - and it is my opinion that there will be a reduction in the number of firms who can capture enough business to stay profitable. As the number of launches drops, it reduces the amount of money firms are willing to invest, and pumps up the level of competition for launch contracts on the larger satellite constellations (Inmarsat, Intelsat, GPS, etc.) which offer some longer term business. Also, the competition for the satellite manufacturing market will intensify as the number of "build" contracts decreases annually. Each satellite will be larger and cost more, but there will be fewer built, such that I would not expect the size of the market to decrease, but the importance of winning a contract with an individual customer (who's -- Wales Larrison Internet: Wales.Larrison@ofa123.fidonet.org Compuserve: >internet:Wales.Larrison@ofa123.fidonet.org -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------ Date: 26 Mar 91 05:21:26 GMT From: swrinde!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!zardoz.cpd.com!dhw68k!ofa123!Wales.Larrison@ucsd.edu (Wales Larrison) Subject: Commercial Space News (3 of 12) GEOSTAR SECURES FINANCING TO STAY IN BUSINESS Geostar corp, which had filed for bankruptcy on 27 February, has managed to secure financing to keep the firm operating for some time. Geostar's two-way messaging and positioning services had seen some setbacks, and the firm had taken a 30% cut in personnel (from 70 to 50) at the end of last year. However, as announced by Geostar, 3 to 5 high-tech firms have committed to cover Geostar's operating costs while they negotiate for permanent ownership of the company - expected to take place in the next 30 days or so. Geostar is currently in Chapter 11 of the U.S. Federal Bankruptcy Act, since it has about $77 M in assets, with about $80 M in debts. [It looks like Geostar will remain as an operational entity for the near term - although this looks like there will be a drastic reorganization of the firm and substantially revamping of their business. Geostar has gotten whipsawed by several factors - not the least being the availability of simple and cheap GPS receivers due to the accelerated and more precise signals being transmitted for use by U.S. forces in Operation Desert Storm. Their primary market, large U.S. trucking firms, cut back their purchases dramatically in the current recession and as rising fuel prices have reduced their available funds, while competing systems using GPS or Loran or even cellular radio technology increased their penetration of the market. I've heard a couple of speculations on who the "high-tech" firms are that might buy into Geostar. Probably the most interesting speculation is that Sony, who manufactures Geostar receivers, might be interested in getting more control of this market. Similarly, Geostar has licensed their technology to Locstar in Europe, and that Matra or Loral, both of which have major interests in European communications and navigation systems might be interested in buying into Geostar. Geostar had committed to buy 7 percent of Locstar for about 55 M francs ($11 M), and had purchased about $3-4M of the stock before going into chapter 11. From this perspective, a European firm might be interested in an equity position with Locstar, particularly if it gave them leverage for the eventual sale of comm/nav systems to users in Europe. We'll have to see who is biting at this .... ] OSC WINS AIR FORCE EXPERIMENT CONTRACT It was announced by Orbital Sciences Corp that they have been selected to design and product the Advanced Photovoltaic and Electronics Experiments (APEX) test bed for the Air Force, This would be a $9.6 M contract to design and built a test bed satellite for in-space experiments with advanced solar arrays. The experiments would test the efficiency and life characteristics of the advanced solar arrays, as well as measure the effects of cosmic ray radiation caused single event upsets (SEUs) on microelectronics and measure the impact of long-term exposure to space radiation on ferroelectric devices. [Commentary: chalk up another win for OSC. This is a good contract for them that they demonstrate they can build and launch a small experimental satellite for less than $10 million and 24 months. Nothing strange or really unusual about this contract - except that these small, space test contracts have been awfully sparse the last few years.] -- Wales Larrison Internet: Wales.Larrison@ofa123.fidonet.org Compuserve: >internet:Wales.Larrison@ofa123.fidonet.org -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------ End of SPACE Digest V13 #329 *******************