Word: orbits
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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NASA's opposition was probably foredoomed. At $700 million, ISF not only is much cheaper than the big station but could go into orbit by 1991 -- five years after the successful Mir orbiter was launched by the Soviets, but six years before NASA's maxi-station becomes operational. Besides, say ISF proponents, it poses no threat to NASA. Designed primarily for materials research and automated manufacturing, it will use little new technology and carry no life-support systems for visiting astronauts. Explains Space Industries CEO Maxime Faget, an ex-NASA engineer: "We're an interim step toward the space station...
...this seems to have been accomplished on a shoestring. Farrar, Straus is well known for skimpy salaries. It has occupied the same dingy office space in downtown Manhattan -- far out of the midtown orbit of most of the giant firms -- for more than 20 years. Wolfe politely describes the low-rent decor as a "nice saggy-book look." The waiting area contains a desk and a single metal chair. But then no one waits very long. The thing authors like best about FS&G is that they get to meet the people who work there. Says Brodsky: "Other publishers could...
James Oberg, a veteran U.S. Soviet space watcher, is impressed by Moscow's achievement but points to other serious physical dangers inherent in extended flights deeper into space. Perhaps the most significant: cosmic rays and high- energy radiation from the solar wind. Earth-orbiting space travelers like Romanenko are protected from this potentially deadly radiation by the earth's magnetic field. But, says Oberg, "there is no real experience anywhere on the effects of long-term, deep-space radiation exposure." Even so, with Romanenko's performance the Soviets bolstered their commanding lead over the U.S. in long-duration space flights...
...which Washington does not have basing agreements at the moment, including Morocco and Israel, in part to "reduce the negotiating leverage" of current partners. Some highly advanced future technologies, including the Strategic Defense Initiative (Star Wars) and the proposed National Aerospace Plane, which is designed to maneuver both in orbit and in the atmosphere, might eventually allow the U.S. to operate out of domestic bases for some purposes. Yet such systems will take years, and billions of dollars, to develop...
...construction went to Boeing ($750 million), McDonnell Douglas ($1.9 billion), Rockwell International ($1.6 billion) and General Electric ($800 million). Nineteen shuttle missions -- only six fewer than have been flown since the program began in 1981 -- would be required to carry the station's 200 tons of hardware into orbit...