Dec 20 1985
From The Space Library
NASA announced that a cubic crystal art work, the first nonscientific payload to fly aboard a Space Shuttle, would go into space in the spring of 1986. “The Boundless Aperture,” created by artist Lowry Burgess, was one in a series of seven works in a project entitled “Quiet Axis,' intended to express through art the scientific observation of order and harmony in the universe.
The De Cordova Museum, the New Works Program of the Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities, and the Massachusetts Artists Foundation funded and would pay for launch of “The Boundless Aperture,” which was a six-lb. five-inch sq. cube of bronze-tinted transparent glass. The cube contained such materials as water from 18 of the world's rivers and minute amounts, or an appropriate substitute, of each of the elements in the periodic table.
After flying in a middeck locker of the Space Shuttle orbiter, the work would be placed inside a petrified sycamore tree obtained from the Grand Canyon; and both would hover in a permanent magnetic field inside a rock formation on the grounds of the De Cordova Museum.
Burgess was a professor at the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston and was director of its graduate program in fine arts and design. He was also a fellow and senior consultant at the Center for Advanced Visual Studies of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. NASA would determine the final cost of flying the work when it arrived at Kennedy Space Center. (NASA Release 85-175)
Scientists at the Air Force Geophysics Laboratory's (AFGL) Space Physics Div. developed a computer program that predicted the electrical effects of the highly charged polar space environment on spacecraft. These effects could range from the production of noise in circuits to system failure in extreme cases, the Air Force Systems Command's (AFSC) Newsreview reported. Called Potential of a Large Object in the Auroral Region (POLAR), the code simulated in three dimensions the electrical interaction of the Space Shuttle or any other space vehicle with the polar space environment in the region from 100 to 600 miles above earth. Space Shuttle launches from Vandenberg Air Force Base would orbit through the polar region, and the polar charging code could provide important data for the design of large space structures such as space stations.
Lockheed Corp. used POLAR to predict the effect of charging on the Space Shuttle in low-altitude polar orbits with payloads funded by the Air Force Space Test Program Directorate and other Air Force and NASA programs. RCA performed calculations with POLAR for the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program vehicles.
NASA's Spacelab 2 mission scientists used POLAR to predict the electrified gaseous environment, or plasma, of the Space Shuttle when the Plasma Diagnostics Package, a free-flying satellite, deployed. And NASA's LAGEOS Satellite Project Office would use POLAR to study charged particle drag on this laser reflecting satellite.
POLAR was a successor to NASCAP (NASA Charging Analyzer Program), the computer code AFGL developed with NASA to model charging of Air Force satellites at geosynchronous altitude. The European Space Agency (ESA) had used that code to design weather and TV relay spacecraft, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory used it to design the Galileo satellite.
POLAR would incorporate data derived from future spacecraft flights and would become a computer-aided design tool for the construction of the advanced extravehicular mobility unit, the manned maneuvering unit, the NASA-proposed space station, and the Strategic Defense Initiative. (AFSC Newsreview, Dec 20/85, 7)
The U.S. Air Force's Aeronautical Systems Div. (ASD) issued in December a request for proposals to supply a wide-body jet aircraft to replace two aircraft known as Air Force One, which was used by the president and his staff, the Air Force Systems Command's (AFSC) Newsreview reported. Current candidates included the Douglas DC-10 and Boeing's 747SP and 747-300. The Air Force planned to award a contract for the plane by May 1986. Military Airlift Command's 89th Military Airlift Wing at Andrews Air Force Base would receive the first jumbo jet in late 1988; the second in 1989.
Existing Air Force One aircraft were deficient in three basic ways, Air Force officials said. They were getting more difficult to maintain; they were so crammed with equipment that there was no room for new communications equipment, an emergency medical treatment facility, or improved work areas for the president and staff; and they did not meet Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) standards and had limited performance, especially range.
The Air Force said the new aircraft must be certified by the FAA, have three or more engines, and be a model that had at least two years of airline service time. “The two-year in-service requirement guarantees a performance record will be available to evaluate the maturity of aircraft design relative to safety, reliability, and maintainability,” said Col. Robert Black, program manager of ASD's Deputy for Airlift and Trainer Systems. Other Air Force One performance requirements under evaluation would call for the aircraft to take off from a 9,300-foot runway and fly 6,000 nautical miles nonstop. The new plane had to have a minimum cruising speed of about 528 mph while flying between 36,000 and 45,000 feet and a high-speed cruise capability of about 575 mph.
On the new Air Force One the president and staff would have state-of-the-art communications complete with secure voice terminals and cryptographic equipment for writing and deciphering classified messages. The cabin areas would provide seating for 80 passengers and 23 crew members; and presidential accommodations would consist of an office, stateroom, and adjacent dressing room and lavatory.
Other features would be a conference room; guest, staff, press, and Secret Service compartments; and a complete medical treatment facility. Onboard galleys would allow stewards to prepare and serve about 50 meals from each galley. (AFSC Newsreview, Dec 20/85, 4)
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