Word: nasa
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Spending on the manned orbiting space station, the next major NASA project, would be sliced by $1.2 billion over three years, possibly pushing back its scheduled launch date in the early 1990s. Subsidized school lunches would be restricted to children from needy families, for a saving of $2.2 billion. Similar proposals in the past have foundered on the question of applying means tests to the 23 million students in the program. The Administration would also require that veterans seeking free medical benefits after 1987 either be disabled or have proven financial need. Projected saving: $400 million...
Nobody had been aboard, of course; the doomed jet was piloted by remote control for its final, 9½-minute flight last Saturday, and the crash was an elaborately designed, $11.8 million "controlled impact demonstration" that the Federal Aviation Administration and NASA had been planning since...
Price is another category in which the Europeans are closing in on NASA. Arianespace's total fee for a shared launch, in which two satellites can be carried for clients who split the cost, runs between $25 million and $30 million. NASA, which does not allow sharing, charges each customer a flat fee of about $10 million, though prices are scheduled to rise by 80% next October. Arianespace's fees are not expected to change until 1989. In addition, Arianespace has found ways to ease the burden of flying European. Among the firm's 51 shareholders...
...insist that Ariane lacks the flexibility of the U.S. craft, and they point to last week's retrieval as an example of its wide range of capabilities. "That's the kind of thing you can't do with an expendable system like Ariane," says Miles Waggoner, NASA's spokesman for international affairs. Beyond all that, the shuttle is reusable, a feature that should help NASA hold down its costs as the program continues...
...space shuttle will be weight. Ariane V 11 carried a payload of 2.5 tons last week, while Discovery carried only 1.4 tons. The Europeans are planning to put more powerful rocket engines on the next Ariane, scheduled for 1986, allowing it to handle a payload of 4.2 tons. NASA's plans call for a more modest increase in capacity, to between 1.75 and 2 tons by 1986. In addition, Arianespace officials expect that by the mid-1990s they will be able to place heavy loads with great precision into low orbit, which would be a direct challenge...