Word: payloads
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...traveling get a special dispensation: they are required to pray only three times a day instead of the usual five. For seven days next month, however, one itinerant supplicant may find it difficult to perform the ritual of touching his forehead to the floor during prayers. As a "payload specialist" on the next voyage of the space shuttle Discovery, Saudi Prince % Sultan ibn Salman ibn Abdul Aziz al Saud, a nephew of King Fahd's, will help supervise the launch of Arabsat 1B, a communications satellite funded by 22 Arab countries. Says he: "My flight has great significance. More young...
...crowded press conference in Washington last week, Brigadier General Richard Abel, public affairs director for the Air Force, announced a new set of restrictions on press coverage of manned space shuttle flights carrying purely military payloads. Mission 51-C is the first such flight; dozens more are scheduled in coming months and years. The aim of the new rules, declared General Abel, is to "deny our adversaries"-i.e., the Soviets-information about the shuttle launch and its payload. The effort to keep the lid on promptly provoked a rush of news leaks and reignited the simmering debate between the press...
...would be on board or how long the mission would last. He promised that touchdown will be announced 16 hours in advance, and that the press would be informed about any emergencies. Far more ominous was his warning that any "speculation" by the press about the mission and its payload could set off an investigation for breach of national security...
...Ariane, simplicity is an Important virtue. The European rocket releases a satellite directly into orbit, dumping the payload at the correct height. The shuttle is launched by conventional rocket and then depends on rocket boosters to maneuver the satellite to its destination. That two-step process, critics say, is so complicated that the possibility of mishap is increased. Shuttle loyalists, however, 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...
Perhaps the next avenue of competition between Ariane and the 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...