Word: orbitals
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...Reagan Administration has already started to reverse a disastrous decision made in 1972 by the Nixon Administration to develop the shuttle as the sole vehicle for putting both humans and payloads into orbit. Instead, the U.S. will move to a mixed launch fleet including both shuttles and expendable rockets. Ten new advanced Titan 34D7 rockets are already on order, and the Air Force wants at least ten more to provide an increased launching capability beginning in 1988. Within a week or so, a National Security Council-led Interagency Group on Space is expected to recommend that NASA severely restrict...
...build another orbiter when the whole purpose of the shuttle program has been thrown into question is illogical," contends Caltech's Murray. "The shuttle has become a substitute for a goal instead of a means of obtaining a goal." Murray and many other space specialists argue that manned flights should be confined to those missions that require a human presence. Placing satellites into orbit, they argue, rarely requires that astronauts go along on the dangerous ride...
...systems division. His firm and its chief competitor, General Dynamics, have long experience in producing rockets for the Air Force and NASA and, with the unexpected new demand for such launchers, would like to reverse their role. They would rent Government launching facilities and use their own rockets to orbit commercial satellites. The potential benefit: providing competition that would force lower launch prices and, in turn, lure more private business...
...Colonel Louis Kouts, Air Force deputy for space plans and policy, some 2.6 million lbs. of SDI weapons, sensors and other gear would have to be rocketed up. That, says Kouts, would grow to 4.4 million lbs. annually around the year 2000, as more exotic weapons are put in orbit...
...estimates go much higher: 4 million lbs. per year to start and vastly more than that if, for example, satellites were armored and made maneuverable to protect them against Soviet attack. SDI officials, says John Pike of the Federation of American Scientists, "are looking at increasing their annual to-orbit weight by a factor of ten to 50 times, and that assumes survivability apart from armor. If they go to armor, the numbers quickly become bizarre as opposed to just daunting...