Jan 25 1985
From The Space Library
FBIS reported that the USSR planned to build before the end of the century an orbiting power plant equal in size to a small town to provide electricity by solar energy. The craft would also carry panels of solar batteries. Soviet cosmonauts had already tested in outer space assembly methods for such a plant. (FBIS, Moscow World Service in English, Jan 25/85)
The Celestis Group, an organization of Florida undertakers, signed a contract with Space Services, Inc., headed by Donald K. (Deke) Slayton, one of the original seven U.S. astronauts and based in Houston, to orbit a payload of cremated human remains at 1,900 miles high, the NY Times reported. The mission, scheduled for late 1986 or early 1987, would cost about $15 million. The Department of Transportation (DOT), which must approve the contract, indicated it had no immediate objections.
In 1982 Space Services had become the first private company to launch its own rocket, the 36-foot Conestoga, into suborbital flight. The company's original liquid-fuel rocket had exploded on the launching pad a year before. The space-burial mission would use a second-generation Conestoga capable of putting 1,500 lb. into orbit.
John Cherry, who had formed the Celestis Group, said that a Conestoga nose cone could contain as many as 13,000 capsules, each 3/8 inches by 1/4 inches, holding ashes reduced in volume by a Celestis-developed technique. Burial price would be $3,900 a customer. A reflective material would cover the nose cone in the first launch, enabling viewing of the satellite mausoleum as it passed overhead. Later missions would be deep-space burials, in which the nose cone would eject the capsules for dispersion into the cosmos.
The Commercial Space Launch Act of 1984 empowered the DOT to license all commercial space launchings. DOT examined proposals for their effect on public safety, national security, and international treaty obligations. (NYT, Jan 25/85, A13)
The Mutual Broadcasting System announced plans to use its excess satellite space to deliver messages at rates low enough to compete with the postal service, the Washington Post reported. The company estimated that telecommunications business from the new Mutual Satellite Services division would generate 50% of its revenue by 1990. Mutual's principal business was the Mutual Radio Network, which owned receiving dishes at more than 700 locations nationwide.
Mutual planned starting in mid-1985 to send audio and data transmissions over a little-used portion of the FM radio spectrum to specially tuned radios in clients' offices. Cassette tape recorders attached to the radios would receive voice communications and send them to high-speed printers. Called MultiComm, the system would allow any organization to create its own private network for sending encrypted audio, data, printed material, or computer software to a number of locations simultaneously. Senders could relay a 300- to 450-word message to 500 receivers for 25 to 30 cents per recipient, compared to a first-class letter at 22 cents. Other electronic mail systems use a wire hookup between the company providing the satellite link and the message recipient; Mutual would provide the first system in which the signal was transmitted by radio. (W Post, Jan 25/85, D2)
NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) would launch in 1986 Ulysses, previously known as the International Solar Polar Mission, to explore behind and around the sun beginning in July 1987, the JPL Universe reported. JPL managed the U.S. mission phases and was responsible for part of the magnetometer experiment. The Space Shuttle would take Ulysses into orbit; a modified Centaur upper stage rocket would send it on a trajectory toward Jupiter, where it would gain energy from Jupiter's gravity field to pull it out of the ecliptic plane (the plane of the earth's orbit) and back over the sun.
Researchers would incorporate into the spacecraft bus instruments shipped to the European Space Research Technology Center near Amsterdam, Holland; after extensive testing scheduled for completion in August, an international board would review the spacecraft's readiness. After a mission operations review, ESA would ship Ulysses to KSC for flight tests and preparations. At a June meeting in Switzerland, a team of scientists would decide whether Ulysses would approach the sun over its north or south pole. (JPL Universe, Jan 25/85, 1)
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