| T.R | Title | User | Personal
Name | Date | Lines |
|---|
| 211.1 | Extra, extra, read all about it | GALLO::AMARTIN | Alan H. Martin | Wed Aug 27 1986 17:25 | 6 |
| Aw, c'mon, this is all media crap. If it can't be compared to past
performance, ignore it. You are only reading about this because it sells
newspapers. BTW, how long and heavy is an Aries, anyhow?
Does "guidance system failure" mean they exceeded the speed of balsa?
/AHM
|
| 211.2 | Used rockets for sale? | GODZLA::HUGHES | Gary Hughes | Wed Aug 27 1986 17:43 | 31 |
| Yes, it is media crap (an oxymorom most of the time).
The Aries is made from old Minuteman I stages. I think it is the
second and third stages. I have no idea what the guidance system
used is but it may Air Force surplus as well.
The Aries program came about when someone at NASA Goddard discovered
that the Air Force was dumping old Minuteman I stages in a pit and
burning them (thats military imagination for you, although it could
be fun). They were thought to have exceeded their shelf life and
therefore too unreliable for anything 'useful' (i.e. weapons testing).
It is possible that they are using the guidance electronics that
went with the third stage and one would expect an occasional failure.
It is more appropriate to look at how successful the Aries program
has been at getting moderately heavy payloads to high altitudes
for very little $$$.
The Air Force has since used some old Minuteman I's for their Homing
Overlay Experiment (HOE), part of SDI. For HOE, take a complete
Minuteman I, add (I think) a Lance engine and a special upper stage
with guidance. When it gets near the warhead, it unfurls a huge
net that snags the warhead, destroying it without a nuclear explosion.
The tests have been successful.
[Special trivia note for model rocketeers: One DC area rocketeer's
father worked on Aries. One of the flights had his NAR number added
in big strips of tape so he could build a scale model with his number
in big print on the side and not lose scale points]
gary
|
| 211.3 | Aries info | CRVAX1::KAPLOW | There is no 'N' in TURNKEY | Fri Aug 29 1986 17:53 | 26 |
| "Media Crap" isn't an oxymoron, but a baby puppy! Gary is right
thou. NASA and the DoD often experience various rocket failures.
They never get any press coverage. Niether did recent shuttle
launches, till AFTER the January disaster occured (remember NONE
of the 3 networks covered the launch live). Now every little
problem becomes big news. In a few years, I'm sure the media will
forget all about NASA again.
The Aries/Minuteman is a single solid grain of some sort of
composite propellant. The strange difference is that it has 4
steerable nozzles for that single grain. Space Vector designed and
built the Aries for NASA. BTW, the Conestoga-1 is nothing more
than a clone of the Aries vehicle, also built by Space Vector. I
have a reprint of an article that I got from the SV team in
request for information on the Conestoga-1 several years back. It
may have more information.
The engineer on the Aries project was none other than Jim
Barrowman, former NAR president and author of the report on
computing center of pressure for model rockets (the "Barrowman
Equations"), not his father. He put his NAR # and team number on
the first round with black electrical tape. The launch sequence
photo shows one of the numbers peeling off in flight. At any rate,
the "T13 6883" was there, and in 1975 it appeared as the "serial
number" on a friends scale model! Later he found out what it
really was.
|
| 211.4 | WHERE'S THE CONESTOGA? | EDEN::KLAES | Avoid a granfalloon. | Fri Aug 29 1986 18:18 | 7 |
| Can anyone tell me what progress has been occuring
lately with the Conestoga rocket and the private space firm which
developed it?
Are they taking advantage of NASA's misfortunes?
Larry
|
| 211.5 | Nothing definite | LATOUR::DZIEDZIC | | Fri Aug 29 1986 18:38 | 5 |
| AWST mentioned in a recent article that the Conestoga folks have
received some inquiries about launch services but haven't written
any contracts yet. Check this week's AWST - I think they covered
several of the ELV potential suppliers.
|
| 211.6 | | AKOV68::BOYAJIAN | Forever On Patrol | Sat Sep 06 1986 08:48 | 9 |
| Well, at least we aren't 0-5 this year. A Delta successfully
launched from Canaveral.
I disagree that the media will forget all about NASA in a year.
I'm sure they're going to watch them like hawks until the next
shuttle lift-off that doesn't end in disaster (which, one hopes,
will be the next one).
--- jerry
|