Jun 21 1985
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The USSR today launched a secret rocket from its Tyuratam launch site that may have been an antisatellite weapons test or the first launch of a new Soviet rocket that used liquid hydrogen fuel instead of kerosene, the Washington Post reported. The rocket later broke into three pieces, the largest of which was three feet long, the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD) said. One piece fell out of orbit June 24 and burned up in the atmosphere; the two other pieces came down June 28.
The objects were in an orbit 121 miles high at the lowest point and 215 miles at the highest. The orbit was inclined at 64.4°, a course only slightly off the one the Soviets use to test new rockets and satellites, because it passed directly over a highly instrumented corridor in the Soviet Union.
U.S. intelligence sources said they were baffled by the small size of the three pieces. One source suggested the launch may have been a test of a new Soviet rocket that used liquid hydrogen fuel that resulted in the launch vehicle exploding with most of the debris falling to earth out of radar contact. Another source speculated it might have been a test of a new antisatellite weapon that failed or was deliberately blown up.
The June 21 mystery launch followed that same day the launches of Cosmos 1663 and Progress 24. The Soviets launched Cosmos 1664 June 26, resuming their numbered Cosmos series after skipping the June 21 "no-name" launch. NORAD gave the secret launch the designation 1985-53-A. (The "53" stood for the 53rd object put into space that year; "A' meant NORAD classified it as a payload, not a rocket launcher. NORAD gave the suffix "B" to launch vehicles that went into orbit.) (W Post, July 5/85, A2)
The National Science Foundation (NSF) in its Science Resources Studies Highlights reported that since 1980, annual increases in federal support of industry-performed research and development, primarily as a result of Department of Defense funding, had outpaced growth in company-financed R&D expenditures.
In 1983 federal funding of industrial R&D performance amounted to $20.4 billion, 11% more than the 1982 level (7% in constant 1972 dollars), whereas industry's own R&D spending increased 8%. Federal and company funds together in 1983 were up 9% to a total of $62.9 billion. An NSF projection for 1984 placed total industrial R&D expenditures at $70.5 billion, 12% over the 1983 level.
Companies in aircraft/missiles and electrical equipment industries received more than three-fourths of all R&D funds provided by the government.
Industrial firms spent $42.5 billion of their own funds on R&D in 1983; between 1975 and 1980 the average annual constant-dollar rate of growth in company R&D financing was 6.6%, which slowed to 4.9% over the following 3-year period.
The number of full-time-equivalent (FTE) R&D scientists and engineers in industry rose 3% during 1983 to 538,000. The electrical equipment industry, which employed over one-fifth of industrial R&D scientists and engineers, showed the highest gain-6%. (Science Resources Studies Highlights, June 21/85, 1)
For the first time since the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz project, liquid-hydrogen rocket fuel flowed through the lines at Kennedy Space Center's launch pad 39-8, the Spaceport News reported. Nearing its January 1, 1986, deadline for completion of pad B renovations and improvements, NASA was entering final work stages including functional testing for such installations as the new 100-foot-tall flare stacks that would replace the old burn pond for disposal of vented gaseous hydrogen. NASA planned first use of pad B for the 51-L Space Shuttle mission scheduled for launch no earlier than January 22, 1986.
One of the flare stacks, 26 inches in diameter, would vent off and burn gaseous hydrogen from the Space Shuttle's external tank and the orbiter fuel cells service system; the other, 18 inches in diameter, would handle hydrogen from the Centaur upper stage, the facility storage tank, and the mobile launcher platform.
Also new to the complex were two rooms on the rotating service structure, one of which was designed for storage of equipment used in the payload changeout room in order to avoid the necessity for temporary removal of the equipment from the site for each launch. The other was a new clean room/ suit changing room.
Another major new item was the rolling beam that would supply liquid hydrogen to the Centaur upper stage. Plans called for use of the Centaur upper stage during the Galileo and Ulysses missions scheduled for May 1986. Work began on pad B renovations about seven years previously; total cost would be approximately $150 million. (Spaceport News, June 21/85, 4)
The first test of a Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) component on June 19 ended in failure when crew members of the Space Shuttle Discovery found themselves 180° out of position to receive an Air Force signal beamed at them from Maui, Hawaii; another beam of laser light was sent on June 21 from the same spot, and it successfully bounced off a reflecting mirror on Discovery, which was flying at 17500 miles per hour and 230 miles high, the Washington Post reported.
It was not clear why Discovery was out of position for the first attempt or why the crew had not realized it in time to correct it. Flight directors at Johnson Space Center took the blame for what the newspaper called easily one of the worst navigating mistakes in more than 20 years of American manned space flight.
After the successful attempt, the Air Force noted the test was not intended to solve any of the most difficult problems of setting up an SDI defense system, nor was it the first laser tracking test. Air Force Lt. Col. Thomas Meyer, manager of the laser test program, said the experiment was more a test to see how the atmosphere distorted the laser beam than a test of the beam's ability to track the Space Shuttle, as atmospheric distortion could limit the usefulness of ground-based lasers against targets in space.
In the June 21 attempt, the laser beam "painted" a blue-green light on the nose of Discovery for at least two-and-one-half minutes, three times longer than the minimum time set by the Air Force. So tight and steady was the beam that it never wavered from the nose of orbiter, which measured 110 feet from nose to tail. "We were able to pulse the beam and change the size of the beam from a fine point a quarter of an inch across to a beam 30 feet across at the point where it tracked the shuttle," Meyer said. "We did everything we wanted to do." Discovery's crew observed from the port windows the beam shining on them, which they could do without danger to their eyes due to the low power output of the four-watt beacon.
"We demonstrated today that we can track a fast-moving target with a laser on the ground," Meyer said. "Our next step is to perform the same kind of test with rockets fired to an altitude of 260 miles to see if ground-based lasers can stay with them all the way to altitude." A far more difficult and important goal than tracking objects with lasers was the Pentagon's plan to develop more powerful lasers as weapons. The Defense Department would test a 2-million-watt laser soon at White Sands Missile Range, and it was building a 5-million-watt laser. (W Post, June 20/85, A3, June 22/85, A3)
"The Dream Is Alive," a new IMAX movie that was perhaps the most advanced film of its kind ever made, opened today at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum, the Washington Post reported. The $3.6 million production, narrated by Walter Cronkite, was the first ever shot almost completely on location in space and was an informal sequel to "Hail, Columbia," the story of the U.S.'s first Space Shuttle.
Because the film was shot on three of the most dramatic and action-packed Space Shuttle flights of the previous year, it was essentially a video yearbook full of special happenings, the Washington Times reported.
The film showed the rescue and repair of the Solar Max satellite, the deployment of the 100-foot-tall solar array that someday could help power the space station, launching of two communications satellites, and the first spacewalk by an American woman.
Among what appeared to be special effects produced in Hollywood were the immensity of Hurricane Josephine as seen from 200 miles overhead and the silence of a satellite drifting noiselessly in the blackness of space.
The astronauts who shot the footage said the IMAX format came as close to capturing the real view and the true feel of spaceflight as any format ever had. IMAX expert Graeme Ferguson, who produced and directed the film, said the next step was to modify an IMAX camera so it could be taken outside the Space Shuttle. (W Post, June 22/85, Dl; W Times, June 20/85, 3B)
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