A commentary on low-cost transportation.
Low cost rate transportation as mandatory goal for future space program, discussing recovery and reuse, launch system costs, hardware development, etc
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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.
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Low cost rate transportation as mandatory goal for future space program, discussing recovery and reuse, launch system costs, hardware development, etc
Lightweight large area solar cell arrays for space programs with multikilowatt predicted performance, noting rollup array orbital flight testing
Research achievements in computer technology and applications to space programs including design, parallel processing methods, automatic malfunction analysis, and storage scope graphics
Communication technology development applied to NASA space programs
Apollo reliability and quality requirements, reviewing changes due to cost reductions in space program
National Space Program relevance to human society, discussing solar system exploration, applications in meteorology, communication, etc
Satellites application to studying and monitoring earth ecology, discussing environmental space research and space program priorities
Reusable nuclear shuttle /RNS/ for space program providing low cost transportation beyond earth orbit
International space program cooperation, discussing NASA projects, Apollo 11 flight and European and Soviet programs
Free-flying modules interface and operation in conjunction with space station for orbital research into manned space program
Recommendations for future US space program
Planned launching of San Marco C satellite in joint Italian-US cooperative space program
Space station, shuttle and tug as post-Apollo space program, discussing objective, designs and systems analysis
New plastics technology bred out of the space program has moved steadily into the U.S. economy in a variety of organized and deliberate ways. Examples are presented of the transfer of plastics know-how into the plants and eventually the products of American business.
The fire safety field is considered as being composed of three parts: an industry, a technology base, and a user base. An overview of the field is presented, including a perspective on the magnitude of the national fire safety problem. Selected NASA contributions to the technology of fire safety are considered. Communication mechanisms, particularly conferences and publications, used by NASA to alert the community to new developments in the fire safety field, are reviewed. Several examples of nonaerospace applications of NASA-generated fire safety technology are also presented. Issues associated with attempts to transfer this technology from the space program to other sectors of the American economy are outlined.
Events leading to the development of the San Marco Equatorial Range are presented. Included are background information leading to the cooperative space program between the United States and Italy, conceptual planning, training activities, equipment design and fabrication, and range utilization. The technical support provided the San Marco Program by Scout Project Office, and other NASA installations is described.
The conceptual design of a highly reliable 10 to the 8th power-bit bubble domain memory for the space program is described. The memory has random access to blocks of closed-loop shift registers, and utilizes self-contained bubble domain chips with on-chip decoding. Trade-off studies show that the highest reliability and lowest power dissipation is obtained when the memory is organized on a bit-per-chip basis. The final design has 800 bits/register, 128 registers/chip, 16 chips/plane, and 112 planes, of which only seven are activated at a time. A word has 64 data bits +32 checkbits, used in a 16-adjacent code to provide correction of any combination of errors in one plane. 100 KHz maximum rotational frequency keeps power low (equal to or less than, 25 watts) and also allows asynchronous operation. Data rate is 6.4 megabits/sec, access time is 200 msec to an 800-word block and an additional 4 msec (average) to a word. The fabrication and operation are also described for a 64-bit bubble domain memory chip designed to test the concept of on-chip magnetic decoding. Access to one of the chip's four shift registers for the read, write, and clear functions is by means of bubble domain decoders utilizing the interaction between a conductor line and a bubble.
The development of a computerized capability to depict views from the Apollo spacecraft during a lunar mission was undertaken before the Apollo 8 mission. Such views were considered valuable because of the difficulties in visualizing the complex geometry of the Earth, Moon, Sun, and spacecraft. Such visualization capability originally was desired for spacecraft attitude verification and contingency situations. Improvements were added for later Apollo flights, and results were adopted for several real time and preflight applications. Some specific applications have included crewmember and ground control personnel familiarization, nominal and contingency mission planning, definition of secondary attitude checks for all major thrust maneuvers, and preflight star selection for navigation and for platform alinement. The use of this computerized visualization capability should prove valuable for any future space program as an aid to understanding the geometrical relationships between the spacecraft and the celestial surroundings.