Conference 7.286::space

    yes it was carring a FLEETSAT UHF Com Sat for a geo. position
    somewhere over the Pacific Ocean, but as you said about 1 min
    after launch it had to be destroyed as it was going off course.
    
    This AM news showed NASA pictures of a lighting strick that hit the
    pad just 30 some odd sec after launch.   When asked MC said it
    is normal to launch if  no ligthing reports within 5 miles
    
    I forget if there are 4 or 5 Fleetsat now in use, all but one
    have exceded its design goal of 5 years
    
    Fleetsat has been used by other then the US Mil, the Voyager
    mission used UHF Fleetsat.
    
    This makes me wonder how our communication system and Rockets
    would suvrive a ESD and other Radiation hits, I would also
    think NASA would have to change the condition for launch for
    non ESD protected launch to clear wx only.  Even Noaa is looking
    for a commercial launch comp. to put up its wx sat.
    
    jb
    

    forgot one more thing, if you have a video tape of any recent Soviet
    launch you will see what seems to be a radio tower, it is not it
    is a simple ligthing rod.
    
    live and learn
    
    jb
    

    It was an Atlas Centaur. It was destroyed by the RSO when telemetry
    had been lost at about T+51sec and tracking indicated the vehicle had
    started to pitch over.
    
    FWIW, one of the Apollos (12, I think) was hit by lightning during
    ascent.
    
    gary

        It was Apollo 12 that was hit by lightning, I believe at +37
        seconds. It messed up and forced recalibration of a lot of
        equipment, like gyros. I don't recall if they spent extra time in
        Earth orbit checking out all the equipment, before proceding with
        TLI or not.
        
        Afterwards, NASA changed its policy about launching into low level
        clouds. Must have been a manned mission constraint, or they
        wouldn't have launched yesterday. 

    ***I*D*I*O*T*S***  What will it take to teach our favorite government
    agency to not launch in the middle of a blinding rain storm?  Isn't
    Apollo 12 good enough?  Or do you have to throw in the wind shear
    that may have pushed Challenger over the edge?  Or maybe the Delta
    crash at DFW a year or 2 ago (caused by flying into a thunderstorm)?
    
    The launch director justified himself by saying that (1) they already
    had held for weather and that it had improved <great...so it was
    raining 2 inches per hour rather than 3>, and (2) the weather service
    had assured them that there was no lightning within 5 miles <great
    again...since when do you listen to the weather service rather than
    looking outside with your own eyes?>.
    
    bah.
    
    <flame down a bit>
    
    The only good thing about this is that it was not a commercial payload,
    so it was not insured.  Insurance rates are bad enough without yet
    another crash.
    
    Burns

    BTW, Apollo 12 did spend at least one extra orbit checking
    out/recalibrating before TLI.  The hit popped whole bunches of circuit
    breakers all over the CM, and the astros switched them back on during
    the ascent. Heaven only knows why it did not fritz the instrument unit
    on the Saturn V. I guess IBM built it robustly!
    
    Burns
    

    re .5
    
    Ah, but this is the age of 'routine access to space'. Neither rain
    nor sleet etc will keep NASA from its appointed rounds.
    
    Most likely, some dipstick is measured on number of successful
    launches, where successful means it cleared the tower, or something
    equally stupid.
    
    re .6
    
    The Centaur 'astrionics' unit (which also controls the Atlas) was
    built by Honeywell, the same company that keeps sending me warnings
    for doom and disaster for various propane thingies that I don't
    have.
    
    You are right. Launching an earth orbital mission under adverse
    weather is just plain stupidity.
    
    gary

Any launch failure will effect insurance rates because it effects
the insurance companies assessment of the risks involved in a
launch.

Also I can't get too happy about the insurance companies not
having to pay out when I am stuck paying for this one. (Taxpayer)

	Tony 

    Re: lightning strikes....
    
    The Saturn V launch of Skylab was also hit by lightning during launch.
    I seem to remember that was the primary reason for part of the shroud
    and one solar panel/wing not deploying.

    It is truly astonishing that NASA did this, again.  There was MAJOR
    electrical storm activity all around central Florida (still is).
    
    According to one of the Orlando television stations there had been
    over 2,000 lightening strikes in the 24 hours before the launch.
    
    There was some videotape showing a lightening strike which appeared
    to hit the vehicle right after liftoff as well.
    
    NASA closed a few beaches to the public the day after so that they
    could gather the wreckage that floated in.  They would not allow
    the television crews near the beach.
    
    The reason given - the weather was too unstable for NASA to assure
    their safety.  Does this sound like an organization to which YOU
    would want to trust YOUR life?
    
    I believe and HOPE that the few millions of taxpayer money lost
    due to this gross incompetence will help get congress to get serious
    about looking at NASA and realizing that little has been improved
    since Challenger.  Of course, congress appears less reliable than
    NASA doesn't it?
    
    Trying to be positive,
    
    Don

    "5 miles" seems like a pretty thin margin - I myself have seen
    lightning come out of a cloud, spring sideways for a couple of miles,
    then go for the ground. This was a few summers ago when New England
    was having some heavy-duty electrical storms....  -Tom R.

    re 269.19  (concern about ESD and missiles... I replied here since it
    applies to the base topic... 269 was about the successful Delta launch) 
    
    Your concern may be very well founded. The Centaur D-1 (the launch
    that failed would have been a D-1A) included a new guidance system
    that replaced 'seperate mechanical and electrical systems'. I can
    easily imagine that studies around ESD were done with the original
    Centaur and not repeated when they installed the new astrionics.
    
    I don't know about operational missiles. There is less of a tendency to
    replace electronics in operational missiles. Certainly not making
    changes as significant as the Centaur changes. The last thing I recall
    reading about upgrading Minuteman electronics was a thing called the
    command buffer and that was external to the missile. One hopes they did
    their homework when the missile was originally designed.
    
    gary
    
    p.s. FWIW, Teledyne built the Centaur guidance computer. Honeywell
    built the interial reference unit. 

    I just heard part of a news report that an Atlas Centaur was damaged
    either during assembly or prelaunch checkout today. Apparently part
    of the Atlas tankage was damaged and several people were injured.
    
    The Atlas has a balloon skin that has to be pressurised for structural
    strength. At least one Atlas ICBM was a write off when a worker
    dropped a screwdriver through the skin very early on in Atlas history.
    
    It is depressing to see all of these unrelated accidents striking
    the US space program. Or maybe they are not unrelated; could all
    of this be related to the sloppy management that seems to pervade
    NASA and its contractors?
    
    gary
    
    (I couldn't resist the title...)

    More details.
    
    The vehicle was on the launch pad and was undergoing troubleshooting
    for a leak from the Centaur LH2 tank. Workers swung an access platform
    into the LH2 tank which was pressurised at the time (it did not
    contain LH2) and ruptured it. Several workers received minor injuries.
    The Atlas Centaur cost about $77 million!!!
    
    This is the last Atlas Centaur in storage and was being readied to
    launch a Fleet Satcom later this year. It is unclear whether it can be
    repaired. General Dynamics do not have any Atlas Centaurs or Centaur
    D-1A stages in production. They are busy building Centaur G stages for
    the Titan 4. 
    
    The satellite was not on the launch vehicle at the time. Another
    payload looking for a carrier.
    
    gary

The news report I heard on "All Things Considered" that day also mentioned that
no spare parts for the $4M bladder (spare bladders?) were available.

From: [email protected] (Mark Perew)
Newsgroups: sci.space
Subject: An Atlas Story (1 of 2)
Date: 24 Jan 91 00:49:59 GMT
Organization: Universal Electronics Inc.
 
The following was posted to the Unisys A Series Mail Network
back when CRRES was launched.  With the recent discussion of
pre-historic computers I thought it would be timely to cross-
post it here.
 
=============================================================
 
Reading about the Atlas-Centaur launch vehicle for the CRRES brought
to mind a long-ago experience and a particularly interesting (at least
to me) episode. 
 
When I first came to Burroughs (Great Valley Labs) in the late 50's I
was leader of the logic design group for the Atlas Ground Guidance
Computer for the Atlas ICBM program.  This was all highly classified
stuff, and were the days when every few months a thing would be shot
up from Cape Canaveral and hopefully splash down in the right place in
the South Atlantic.  Our system provided the launch guidance for this.
It has been a long time, so some of the details I recall may be
inaccurate, but the gist is right. 
 
The process for each test flight (our part) was this: first the
Technical Director, at that time the Ramo- Wooldridge Corp., the
predecessor of TRW, would send us the "guidance equations" and flight
parameters and we would "program" them.  Actually a big part of the
programming was scaling to preserve the significance of the operands; 
the machine only had fixed point, single precision arithmentic
instructions.  (This was partly the state of the art, but more
importantly for reliability -- we would SWEAT BLOOD to eliminate a
couple of and-gates or a flip-flop to reduce the component count.) 
 
Then we would wire the program into re-usable program trays (yes,
hard-wired each program for each flight, again for reliability --
*nothing* could corrupt that code) and ship them out to RW in
California, where they put them in a test bay hooked up to a large IBM
system which simulated the flight, with variations, to test the
programming. 
 
Then the trays were sent to Cape Canaveral (we had a big team there),
and ultimately used for the flight.  As I recall, the cycle for each
test was about 9 months to a year and a half. 
 
The gist of the equations was to calculate the present predicted
impact point on the earth's surface from the radar inputs, and issue
continuous steering commands, and the engine cut-off command when the
present predicted impact point matched the target point.  (Actually
there were several; booster cut-off, booster jettison, ... until
finally sustainer engine cutoff.)  This Atlas launch vehicle (we
called it a missile) was the first version of the one being used with
Centaur for CRRES.  
--  
Mark Perew
Internet: [email protected]
Compuserve: >internet:[email protected]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: [email protected] (Mark Perew)
Newsgroups: sci.space
Subject: An Atlas Story (2 of 2)
Date: 24 Jan 91 00:55:41 GMT
Organization: Universal Electronics Inc.
 
Another of our machines was used for range safety; it displayed
present predicted impact point to the Range Safety Officer, the guy
with his hand poised over the big red DESTRUCT button in case the bird
veered toward a populated area. 
 
Anyway, a new set of equations came to the programming group (in the
next set of offices to me), and they were screwy -- the impact point
wouldn't calculate.  Message to RW (via classified courier): there's a
mistake! Answer back: do it anyway! 
 
So, some months later, comes the day of the test flight; the bird
lifts off, goes up, up, and away -- and doesn't come down, it's in
orbit!  Wow, hot damn, and WE DID IT! (Even if we didn't know what we
were doing.)  And ours was a BIG payload (a thousand pounds??), not a
measly little basketball like Sputnik or Werner von Braun's Redstone
Arsenal satellite. 
 
An afterthought:
 
I enjoyed working on the Atlas project; it was interesting and
exciting and really pushing the frontiers of technology (and I was
young and bushy-tailed).  I tried not to think too much (because it
bothered me) that what we were really doing was working on a weapon
that would be the worst intrument of mass destruction that had ever
been created (at the time). 
 
Being a real sci-fi addict (I still am), I saw this launch, with a
real payload, as my own dawn of the space age -- a boon for mankind;
surely we would have Moon colony in a few years; I might even in my
lifetime be able to take a trip to the Moon!  (Where in hell did the
last thirty-odd years go?) 
 
*This* purpose of the machine that I was working on was soooo much
more satisfying than merely as a weapon delivery system!!  And as it
turned out, this Ground Guidance Computer system did guide the launch
of all of the Mercury and Gemini flights, but was not used for the
Apollo program.  I understand that the range safety system continued
to be used for a few more years for many launches (yes, several birds
were blown up by the RSO.) 
 
I was surprised (and disappointed) by the reaction of some of my
colleagues to our unexpected satellite launch: Sure it's interesting,
but what's the big deal?  A job's a job, isn't it? 
 
Ah well....
 
Jim Hopkins, S220 Devon
--  
Mark Perew
Internet: [email protected]
Compuserve: >internet:[email protected]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

RE: .16

Reading the last reply really brings back some interesting memories about
the Burroughs computer and the orbiting Atlas that I will share.

The computer was a control subsystem of a radar guidance and command system
designed and built by G. E.  One of these systems was at Cape Canaveral and
in the late 1950's a second one was installed on the island of San Salvadore
while I was there with the RCA Communications group that maintained all 
communications for the base.  Normally the Range Safety Officer sat at a console
in the Central Control Operations room where he had the local "destruct" switch
and communications circuits to talk to the primary RSO at the Cape.  But the
Burroughs computer was so sensitive it was located in a "screen room" at the
G.E. radar site about two miles from Central Control.  They would not allow any
wiring tied to the computer to leave the screen room so the RSO's switches were
mounted on the control rack of the computer.  When we installed a small
communications console next to that control rack it had to be completely 
insulated from the computer - the Burroughs people would not allow us to ground
the communications console to their internal rack.  So the responsible
design engineers ran an oversize cable to the rack and shorted together a whole
bundle of twisted pair wires together to form a "ground buss" so that the
console could be grounded in the telephone equipment room in Central Control.
Tests showed that all communications circuits worked perfectly - or so we thought
until the first launch that the facility was scheduled to actually support.
   The local RSO was at his post by the computer rack within reach of his
destruct switch.  As the countdown reached T-0 he rested his had on the rack so
that he could quickly flip up the safety cover and flip the destruct switch if
it became necessary.  Then the primary RSO at the Cape called the local RSO who
reached over to flip a switch on the communications console so that he could
respond.  The electrical shock he got was not a laughing matter, at least to
him!  On investigation we found that there was a 55 volt differential between
the Burroughs ground system and our communications ground two miles away.  After
much discussion about how to correct this Burroughs remained adament that we
could not use their ground and the "final fix" for the problem was to include
in the RSO's instruction manual the statement that "Under no circumstances
will you touch the communications console while you are touching the computer
control panel."  And that's the way it stayed throughout the life of the
G. E. Guidance facility!

Some time later I was the Range Safety Systems engineer for RCA at Cape
Canaveral was on duty one evening to support a scheduled Atlas launch.  We had
installed some new equipment in the Range Safety Officers' console in Central
Control and as launch time approached I was there near the console to be
available if needed.  The RSOs were Air Force Captains and their group commander
was a Colonel who was also there standing behind the seated RSO on duty.  When
the Atlas was launched all present could watch the plot on the radar plot boards
as it veered off toward the dfety limit drawn on the chart.  Naturally, the RSO
flipped up the safety covers of his destruct switches in anticipation of blowing
the Atlas out of the air.  As he did this the Colonel leanded over behind him
and said very quietly "Don't touch those switches, and thats a direct order."
It turned out this was the orbiting Atlas which put a tape recorder with a 
message from President Eisenhouer into orbit.  At the time of launch, there
were only twelve men on the whole missile range that knew what was going to
happen!

					Bill

    re: .17
    
    The RSO in the second story was placed in a very difficult position.
    He has been given an order which directly contradicts his duty.  If
    he obeys, and the officer later claims that no such order was given,
    he will be in serious trouble.  On the other hand, disobeying a direct
    order is also serious.
    
    If I had been in his position I would have asked for the order in
    writing.
        John Sauter

John:

What you suggest would be the right way to do it under other circumstances.
However, the impactor predictor computer driving the plotting board pens had
only a 10 second lead time built into the plot, so with only 15 to 30 seconds
reaction time available it would have been a moot point by the time the
commanding officer could have taken his pen from his pocket.  Perhaps the
commander should have anticipated this and had a written order pre-prepared in
his pocket.  In addition to myself, there was at least one other person close
enough to the console to hear the order given and we could have been witnesses
in the event of a hearing.

Range Safety Officers did their duty under such unpredictable circumstances and
they were required to have almost instant reaction time, so they were spelled
out as being the final authority in any situation so long as they were within
the guidelines published in their SOP manuals.  Perhaps receiving a direct
order verbally was covered there - I don't know.	

					Bill

    re: .19
    
    The purpose of requesting that the order be in writing would not be to
    get such an order---I agree that the time scale is too short for that.
    The purpose would be to cover _my_ posterior in the event that I felt
    obliged to destroy the craft.
    
    I agree that a well-prepared command officer would have the order
    already in his pocket.  I also agree that if the SOP covers this
    situation then there's no problem.
        John Sauter