Aug 1 1994
From The Space Library
Space News reported on the financial and other difficulties con-fronting the Russian space program. Few of the staff of the Russian Space Agency (RSA) were receiving pay checks; many space workers were on unpaid leave and other scientists and engineers had left RSA; unlike NASA, RSA had oversight responsibility but did not manage space projects, leading to power struggles with companies engaged in space work and with the military with whom RSA must negotiate such matters as rental fees for using military facilities for launches. (SP News, Aug 1-7/94)
NASA announced that its Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, had signed an agreement with McDonnell Douglas Aerospace in Huntington Beach, California, to reconfigure the Delta Clipper experimental vehicle (DC-X) using advanced lightweight materials and advanced auxiliary propulsion systems. NASA was acquiring the DC-X from the Department of Defense to test new technologies needed to develop a reusable launch vehicle that could assist NASA's ultimate goal of gaining low-cost access to space. (NASA Release 94-125)
NASA announced that it would conduct a joint campaign with Brazilian space agencies to study the Earth's space environment over the magnetic equator from August 15 through October 20, 1994, as part of the International Equatorial Electrojet Year. During the campaign, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center's Wallops Flight Facility, Wallops Island, Virginia, was scheduled to launch 33 rockets from the Centro de Lancamento de Alcantara launch range in the northeastern state of Maranhao, Brazil. (NASA Release 94-126)
NASA was experiencing difficulties finding sufficient amounts of materials to fill the Shuttle's cargo bay in order to justify a planned ten Shuttle flights to Russian Space Station Mir. It might develop that only six or seven flights would be needed according to NASA Shuttle Chief Bryan O'Connor. (Phillips Business Information, Aug 1/94)
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