February 1990
From The Space Library
Daniel Brandenstein, NASA's chief astronaut, returned from a tour of Soviet space facilities and said the original untended Russian shuttle, maiden voyage in 1988, would never fly again. He also reported that the Soviets planned to launch a second untended Space Shuttle in 1991 and automatically dock it with Mir. The station's crew planned to run some tests. Again untended, it would undock and reenter the atmosphere. (UPI, Feb 21/90)
A Chicago Tribune article reported on the progress of commercial space launch ventures that were born out of the Challenger disaster in 1986. McDonnell Douglas and Martin Marietta made their first successful launches of satellites in 1989, and Orbital Sciences and General Dynamics were expected to follow this year. Hundreds of millions of dollars were invested by the corporations, and a backlog of missions was seen until 1995 when Japan, Russia, and China were predicted to compete with U.S. and European systems. The threat of so much competition was unnerving for the industry, but the promise of U.S. military contracts offered enough compensation for the continuation of their projects. (C Trib, Feb 19/90)
The Los Alamos National Laboratory urged NASA and the National Space Council to fund a multibillion dollar nuclear propulsion project that the group believed would reduce the Mars journey by half of the expected time. The proposed system would draw on a 1970s technology, Rover and Nerva programs, that circulated liquid hydrogen through a solid reactor core, thereby heating the hydrogen and creating thrust. The reactor engine could operate only in a vacuum, so testing it on Earth would prove difficult. The program, reported Space News, would likely receive substantial money. (Sp News, Feb 19-25/90)
In an unreleased report, NASA determined that the proposed untended Shuttle-C would prove too costly for use in building the Space Station. The original plan called for 18 Shuttle flights at a cost of $1.5 billion to erect the $25 billion station. Although using the Shuttle-C would reduce the number of required flights to 10 because of its more than doubled cargo space, the price tag would jump to $3.7 billion, not including the $2 billion needed to develop the vehicle. (Sp News, Feb 26-Mar 4/90)
Three SR-71 Blackbird aircraft, reconnaissance planes being retired by the Air Force, were Scheduled to arrive in February at Edwards Air Force Base in California, for "flyable storage." NASA hoped to use the high-speed aircraft, capable of Mach 3 at 80,000 feet, for tests relating to the Space Plane later in the year. (Daily News, Jan 30/90; NASA Release 90-24)
NASA reported on the completed computerized medical reference system, a project engendered by computer and medical experts at the University of Florida and the Kennedy Space Center in Florida in 1979 and known as the Clinical Practice Library of Medicine (CPLM). The system contains nearly all of the text and graphics of seven commonly used medical reference books that are considered essential for practicing medicine. Being lightweight as well as offering high speed access to references, the CPLM has great potential for both space travel and Earth uses alike. (NASA Release: 90-30a)
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