Sep 16 1986
From The Space Library
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), in Pasadena, California, studied a program that would send a nuclear-powered spacecraft hurling into deep space traveling 225,000 miles per hour. The mission, said JPL Director Lew Allen, could be launched by 2005. The craft was expected to travel 1,000 astronomical units-1,000 times the distance between the Earth and Sun-sending back data for more than 50 years. The Voyagers 1 and 2 spacecraft were expected to eventually reach deep space, but their slow rates of speed, about 36,000 miles per hour, would put any data gathering activity too far in the future. (LA Times, Sep 16/86)
The Senate Appropriations Committee approved a plan for a new orbiter that diverted $2.9 billion in defense funds for a reserve to be used by NASA. The proposal asked the Navy to reduce production of the F/A18 fighter and delay construction of a Trident submarine, the Air Force to delay construction of the C17 transport plane, the Army to buy fewer Ml tanks, and defense con-tractors to shoulder the burden of the cost of tools in its manufacturing. Although the plan called for NASA to oversee construction, the At Force would launch and operate the new Shuttle. (W Post, Sep 11/86; Sep 12/86; WSJ, Sep 11/86; LA Times, Sep 17/86)
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