Word: rocketings
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...Bryen warned Loral President Robert Berry not to give China any technical help without first getting State Department permission. Berry had just announced the assignment of top company engineer Wah Lim to head a panel of Western scientists who would advise China on possible causes of three rocket failures, the most recent of which had destroyed a Loral satellite. Fixing glitches in China's rocket-guidance system was in Loral's interest, but, Bryen cautioned, it could also improve the reach and accuracy of the country's ballistic missiles, in violation of U.S. laws...
Just what that something was may be hard to pinpoint. Of the six launch fiascoes, three involved new, profit-driven rockets: the bulked-up Delta 3, with twice the lift-off muscle of its Delta 2 ancestor; and the Athena 2, a smaller rocket with less propulsive oomph but a bargain price tag. The most recent Titan flub appears to involve misfirings of the rocket's upper stage, a $1.23 billion mistake that may have been caused by badly loaded software. Other miscues have included everything from an electrical short, which caused another Titan to explode, to faulty guidance, which...
...that they probably have a little breathing room before things really start to close in. Satellite makers know that space flight is a tricky business, and they must factor in a 5% to 10% launch-failure rate. And hitching a ride into space aboard some other country's rocket is not easy. Russia knows the space game, but federal quotas limit the number of U.S. satellites that can ride Russian rockets. Europe's Ariane provides a far better alternative, but that rocket appears to be a victim of its own success, booked all but solid for the immediate future...
...customers are making it known that they won't put up with failure for long. Recently the U.S. Air Force informally approached NASA about launching national-security payloads aboard the shuttle. And last week the Administration apparently okayed the launch of a private satellite aboard a Chinese Long March rocket...
...Bryen warned Loral president Robert Berry not to give China any technical help without first getting State Department permission. Berry had just announced the assignment of top company engineer Wah Lim to head a panel of Western scientists who would advise China on possible causes of three rocket failures, the most recent of which had destroyed a Loral satellite. Fixing glitches in China's rocket-guidance system was in Loral's interest, but, Bryen cautioned, it could also improve the reach and accuracy of the country's ballistic missiles, in violation of U.S. laws...