Newsgroups: sci.space.news Path: geraldo.cc.utexas.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!ames!dont-s end-mail-to-path-lines From: hvanderbilt@BIX.com Subject: Space Access Update #21 Addendum Message-ID: <9309291438.memo.26864@BIX.com> To: sci-space-news@uunet.uu.net Followup-To: sci.space Sender: daemon@cs.utexas.edu Organization: UTexas Mail-to-News Gateway Date: Wed, 29 Sep 1993 18:40:04 GMT Approved: sci-space-news@ames.arc.nasa.gov Lines: 63 Space Access Update #21, Last-Second Addendum, 9/28/93 Copyright 1993 by Space Access Society and Henry Vanderbilt DC-X Plans The DC-X test pencilled in for an October 27th flight to 7000 feet is supposed to do a "gimbal controlled rotation at apogee". That might or might not be an initial approach to the long-awaited end-for-end flip maneuver. We should have more info on that early next week. As that would be five flights in the future, both date and flight profile are very approximate for now -- plans for each successive flight of course depend to some extent on results from the previous. There have been indications that the DC-X people expect DC-X flight test may not be funded beyond October; the current tentative test schedule may well be aimed at extracting as much useful data as possible in the time left. The tentative schedule's intensity certainly suggests that may be the case. This is however speculation on our part. We'll see what actually happens. DC Politics Congress is fickle, that's all there is to it. Latest word is that Senator Inouye's Senate Appropriations Committee, Defense Subcommittee has postponed their markup once again, this time until Monday October 4th. Reportedly they're waiting for the House Defense Appropriations bill to be finished before they mark up their Senate version. Meanwhile, the House still hasn't finalized their Defense Authorization bill either, so the House-Senate Defense Authorization conference is still hanging fire. We frankly don't quite understand what the holdup is here, though it probably involves some of the thrashing going on over Gays-in-the-military and the effort to get US troops out of Somalia. These delays are probably good news for us, as they give us more time to get our point across. SAS's action recommendations remain essentially the same as they've been the last two weeks -- see SAU #20 or #21 for details. According to someone on C-Span last night, Congress will probably take another three weeks to finish with the Defense budget this year. We have no reason to doubt this. Beyond the two events mentioned above, the final key event will likely be a House-Senate Defense Appropriations conference in mid-October. On the face-to-face politics front, we hear that key figures in DC are now aware of the staffer-introduced problems with the House Defense Appropriations report language. (See SAU #21 for details; briefly, the report revives the "Spacelifter" new-design expendable and relegates SSTO to long-term never-fly research, when these were far from the intent of the HAC Defense subcommittee.) As for whether and how they'll fix things, we'll just have to wait and see. And keep letting them know what we want, of course. Henry Vanderbilt "Reach low orbit and you're halfway to anywhere Executive Director, in the Solar System." Space Access Society - Robert A. Heinlein hvanderbilt@bix.com "You can't get there from here." 602 431-9283 voice/fax - Anonymous -- Permission granted to redistribute the full and unaltered text of this -- -- piece, including the copyright and this notice. All other rights -- -- reserved. In other words, intact crossposting is strongly encouraged. --