Dec 5 1994
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New Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich indicated in an interview that he favored a NASA confined to research and development, with remaining functions contracted out to the private sector as far as possible. His overriding mission for NASA was drastically reducing the cost of getting into space. Gingrich praised NASA Administrator Daniel S. Goldin's efforts to reshape NASA but considered the agency still to be "a people-heavy, obsolescent bureaucracy." (Av Wk, Dec 5/94)
Jack Mansfield, who was named in September 1994 as NASA Associate Administrator for Space Access and Technology, discussed his position and the Reusable Launch Vehicle (RLV) program in an interview. Previously he served as a Republican staff member on the Senate Armed Services Committee but he did not consider this past affiliation a problem because NASA deserved and got strong bipartisan support. With regard to the RLV program, Mansfield said that in the past NASA had been able to solve all technical problems but not always all operability problems, such as high cost-this was where the use of a RLV came in. (SP News, Dec 5-11/94)
According to NASA Administrator Daniel S. Goldin, NASA received 28 outstanding proposals from universities, the aerospace industry, and government laboratories for smaller, less expensive planetary science missions under its new Discovery program. By January 1995 NASA was to select a few to pursue seriously with the expectation that one or two would be developed and launched by the period 1999-2001. NASA set forth specific funding limitations and wanted models of streamlined management of such projects while demanding high quality. (Av Wk, Dec 5/94)
Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) was making components and expected to integrate the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) by early June 1995. NEAR was the second mission approved in NASA's Discovery program but would be the first to be launched. To make a scheduled January 1999 encounter with 433 Eros-a silicate rock asteroid-NEAR would need to be launched within a two-week period beginning February 17, 1996. It would be launched on a Delta 2 and would swing by Earth in 1998 so that its plane could be changed to match that of Eros. The spacecraft would carry four instruments: a visible imager, an X-ray/gamma-ray spectrometer, a near infrared spectrograph, and a magnetometer. In entrusting to APL its first planetary science mission to be developed outside the Agency, NASA turned to a laboratory experienced in rapid, inexpensive space programs. APL was responsible for three other proposals that NASA was considering under the Discovery program. (Av Wk, Dec 5/94)
Mars Pathfinder, the first of NASA's Discovery missions, was beginning construction in preparation for launch in two years' time. Anthony J. Spear, project manager for the Mars Pathfinder project at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, said fabrication of the cruise portion's structure had begun; final assembly of the spacecraft was to begin in June 1995. Testing of various kinds would follow with the spacecraft being shipped to Cape Canaveral for launch by early September 1996. The primary goal was an engineering demonstration of a low-cost Martian landing system. (Av Wk, Dec 5/94)
Lockheed said it could arrange private financing for a low-cost, reusable launch vehicle (RLV) if the U.S. government would give it all the Space Shuttle and Titan business for at least five years. In return, Lockheed estimated that the government would get $2 billion a year savings. To make such a RLV, Lockheed would call on Rocketdyne for propulsion, Rohr Corporation for high temperature structures, and Martin Marietta-Denver for tanks for liquid oxygen and hydrogen. (Av Wk, Dec 5/94)
The French national space agency CNES proposed for government approval developing a series of small spacecraft to broaden science mission opportunities at lower cost. If approved in 1995, France would invite other European countries or the United States to participate. According to Pierre Contreras, head of the System Engineering Division at the CNES Toulouse Space Center, satellites weighing about 500 kilograms were contemplated. The first flight would be a radar altimeter spacecraft designed as a follow-on to the NASA/CNES TOPEX/Poseidon sea surface topography mission currently underway. The chairman of the European Space Agency's (ESA) Space Science Advisory Committee, Lodewijk Woltjer, said that all ESA members "like the idea of small missions because of their low costs, but for most of ESA's objectives small satellites are too small." (Av Wk, Dec 5/94)
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