Word: payloaders
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Besides putting the orbiter itself through a rigorous series of maneuvers, Engle and Truly conducted several successful tests of a 50-foot mechanical arm, which on future missions will be used to retrieve satellites for in-flight servicing or later repairs on earth, and to deploy payloads from the shuttle's cargo hold. On this mission, the 15-foot by 60-foot cargo bay held its first scientific payload, with experiments designed to study a variety of geologic, atmospheric, and oceanic features...
...less intriguing but so far less precise are the shuttle's commercial possibilities. It is a working truck with a 65,000-lb. payload, but who is going to buy space in it? Communications companies, for one, are already lined up to use the shuttle for satellite launches. One advantage is price: $35 million for a shuttle launch vs. $48 million for a boost into space from a conventional Atlas-Centaur rocket. Another is that the shuttle can carry several satellites at a time. What is more, says A T & T 's Robert Latter, "you can test...
...exchange for this crucial backing, the space agency was compelled to change the shuttle's design, vastly complicating the job of building it. The Air Force insisted that the payload capacity be expanded to 65,000 lbs. (the better to carry big spy satellites). NASA also had to extend the orbiter's "cross range" so that it could glide a full 1,200 miles either to the right or left of its original orbital trajectory after re-entering the atmosphere. That would enable a Florida-launched shuttle, which travels about 1,000 miles south of Vandenberg...
...early as next year, during the shuttle's scheduled fourth flight, it will carry an experimental military payload in its cargo bay: infra-red and laser tracking devices designed to guide future shuttle pilots to orbiting satellites for repair or retrieval-or perhaps for destruction. The experiment's disclosure has already brought a pained outcry from the Kremlin. Though the Soviets are actively experimenting with military lasers, they charge that the U.S. is planning to introduce laser weaponry into space...
...many future flights the shuttle's payload will carry a small laboratory called Spacelab to house Morre-ede's experiments as well as others in biology, physics, and astrophysics...