Space Forum / Space Policy / January 2006

Take advantage of a great deal

Anyone know why the cost cap for the discovery missions have grown so much?
When the program was first announced the cost cap was $250m - the recent
2006 announcement of opportunity has the cap at $425m. Why?
Why can't they keep the cap at $250m? Surely decent missions can still be

Very interesting article:
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/lunar-05zzy.html
Bell basically states that much of the pork in the VSE is due to ISS
considerations.

This get's my vote.
http://somafm.com/

Iran is pressing forward with its
plan for satellite developments,
with a new comm test bird
('Mesbah') set for a Russian

Adaptive optics have allowed Earth-based telescopes to rival the
performance of space telescopes in some respects. But it is still true
that this is an imperfect measure, and it certainly can't do anything
about the fact that some wavelengths are blocked by Earth's atmosphere.

What's the current status of Vasimr, and what problems need to be solved
before Nasa can flight test a unit?

(This One Is For Pat)
At
<http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-blimp17jan17,0,1946470.story?coll=la-headl
ines-business>,
the Los Angeles Times is reporting:

http://www.space.com/news/060120_cev_overhaul.html
 CEV Makeover: NASA Overhauls Plans for New Spaceship
By Brian Berger
Space News Staff Writer

It's reported in full in the latest edition of Flight International,
along with a time table of NASA's plans for it up to 2018 and a return
to the Moon.
--

The AIAA has published the following book:
http://www.aiaa.org/content.cfm?pageid=360&id=1280
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1563476967
The book is intriguing and seems to deal with many of the issues we

is there some kind of compass available for space traveller? how would the
future astronauts stop from getting lost once they venture out of earth's
orbit?

Shuttle a deathtrap, says astronaut
Robin McKie, science editor
Sunday January 22, 2006
The Observer

Anything odd going on with sci.space.history? I am unable to get any
messages from later than around midday yesterday, and unsubscribing and
resubscribing generates nothing at all. Is their server down?
Pat

A rotovator can sling a payload into a higher Earth orbit but not
directly into LEO itself. This largely prevents the use of rotovators
for LEO destinations. A possible solution to this is to reel the payload
into the hub, but this has serious adverse effects on the tether and