| Title: | Space Exploration |
| Notice: | Shuttle launch schedules, see Note 6 |
| Moderator: | PRAGMA::GRIFFIN |
| Created: | Mon Feb 17 1986 |
| Last Modified: | Thu Jun 05 1997 |
| Last Successful Update: | Fri Jun 06 1997 |
| Number of topics: | 974 |
| Total number of notes: | 18843 |
Article: 82998
Newsgroups: sci.space
From: raptor!rlove (Robert B. Love )
Subject: More on Launch Sites
Sender: [email protected]
Organization: Rocky Mountain NeXT Users' Group
Date: Sun, 13 Feb 1994 19:07:04 GMT
The recent spate of discussions on launch sites has prompted me to
look at Kelso's list and make a map of the world plotting launch sites.
This brings up 2 questions:
a) Where can I post this map? Are there any appropriate anonymous
ftp sites where I can put this? I've done it as simple post
script document--are there any other formats preferred?
b) Help me fill in the table below:
Launch Sites
--------------
ID Lat Long (deg) Country/Affiliation
--------------------------------------------------------
AFETR 28.5 80.5 W USAF Eastern Test Range, Florida, USA
AFWTR 34.7 120.6 W USAF Western Test Range, California, USA
CHINA Chinese Launch Complex, PRC
FRGUI 5.2 52.8 W French Guiana
HGSTR 30.8 Hammaguira Space Track Range
KSCUT 31.2 131.1 E Kagoshima Space Center - U of Tokyo, Japan
KYMSC 48.4 45.8 E Kapustin Yar Missile and Space Complex, Russia
PLMSC 62.8 40.7 E Plesetsk Missile and Space Complex, Russia
SCMTR Shangchengtze Missile Test Range, PRC
SRILR 13.9 80.2 E Sriharikota Launching Range, India
SNMLP -2.9 40.2 E San Marco Launch Platform, Indian Ocean
TANSC 30.2 131.1 E Tanegashima Space Center, Japan
TYMSC 45.9 63.3 E Tyuratam Missile and Space Center, Kazakhstan
WLPIS 37.9 75.5 E Wallops Island, Virginia, USA
WOMRA -31.1 136.6 E Woomera, Australia
WUZLF Wuzhai Launch Facility, PRC
XICLF 28.2 102.3 E Xi Chang Launch Facility, PRC
YAVNE 31.5 34.4 E Yavne Launch Facility, Israel
Poker Flats? Canada? Kwajelein? White Sands? Others?
--
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Bob Love [email protected] (NeXT Mail OK)
BIX: rlove
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Article: 83022
Newsgroups: sci.space
From: [email protected] (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: More on Launch Sites
Date: Mon, 14 Feb 1994 18:08:20 GMT
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
In article <[email protected]> raptor!rlove
(Robert B. Love ) writes:
>Poker Flats? Canada? Kwajelein? White Sands? Others?
None of the above, if you stick to orbital launch sites.
Poker Flats is working on becoming an orbital launch site, but hasn't yet.
In Canada, the Churchill rocket range (northern Manitoba) has been talked
about for polar-orbit launches, but nothing is happening yet.
Kwajalein is primarily a missile-range target area, which occasionally
launches target rockets etc. in support of missile tests.
White Sands would like to be a launch site, but isn't likely to achieve
that ambition unless SSTO launchers become a reality. Its inland location
is unacceptable for multistage expendables.
--
Belief is no substitute | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
for arithmetic. | [email protected] utzoo!henry
Article: 83025
From: [email protected] (Dick Buenneke)
Newsgroups: sci.space
Subject: Re: More on Launch Sites
Date: Mon, 14 Feb 1994 11:32:56 -0800
Organization: RAND -- Santa Monica, Calif.
You could include the South African facility at Armiston (near
Bredasdorp), which is scheduled to be operational in 1995.
You also could add the Brazil's Alcantara Launch Center [Centro de
Lancamento de Alcantara (CLA) in Portuguese] at 2 deg, 7 min N, 44 deg
29 min W. However, it's not sure when (if ever) this facility will
become operational.
The formal name for the facility near Kourou French Guiana is the Guiana
Space Center [Centre Spatial Guyanais (CSG) in French].
The facility in Kazakahstan is still called (albeit inaccurately)
Baikonur. Tyuratam was the name assigned by the U.S. intelligence
community.
--
Richard H. Buenneke Jr. Tel: (310) 393-0411, Ext. 7382
RAND Graduate School Fax: (310) 393-4818
1700 Main Street Internet: [email protected]
P.O. Box 2138 "All opinions are mine alone,
Santa Monica, Calif. 90407-2138 All facts speak for themselves"
"Aim for Heaven and you will receive Heaven and Earth.
Aim for Earth and you will receive neither." - C. S. Lewis
Article: 83052
Newsgroups: sci.space
From: [email protected] (Stephen Horan)
Subject: More on Launch Sites
Sender: [email protected]
Organization: [via International Space University]
Date: Tue, 15 Feb 1994 17:55:31 GMT
In reference to R. Love's question about launch points:
White Sands (WSMR)located at latitude 33 N, longitude 106.4 W
(approximately due to the large extent of the range), has not been
used for human-rated flight but it has been used for other activities
other than DoD crash tests and the now-popular DC-X testing. It has
also been used by the commercial launch folks, NRL and NASA for
science missions, etc. Despite Henry Spencer's comments, the range
safety folks at WSMR are laying the ground work for showing that
orbital launch from WSMR is a reasonable risk. Why not include it in
the list?
In reference to where to place the map, the Space Grant Universities
around the country are developing archival material to be accessed via
anonymous ftp. We would be willing to make a spot for this
information in the archive and post how to access it. Contact me at
the address below to arrange a deposit in the archive.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Stephen Horan [email protected]
New Mexico State University & New Mexico Space Grant Consortium
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Article: 83093
Newsgroups: sci.space
From: [email protected] (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: More on Launch Sites
Date: Wed, 16 Feb 1994 17:21:35 GMT
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
In article <[email protected]> [email protected] (Stephen
Horan) writes:
>... Despite Henry Spencer's comments, the range
>safety folks at WSMR are laying the ground work for showing that orbital
>launch from WSMR is a reasonable risk. Why not include it in the list?
Note carefully what I said and didn't say. I didn't say that orbital
launch from White Sands was out of the question; I said that
multistage expendables appeared to be out of the question. Where do
the expended stages hit?
White Sands is a promising future spaceport, but only if you don't
have pieces falling off the launchers on the way up. WSMR's safety
people seem to be reasonable folk, unlike their counterparts at
certain other places, so an acceptable compromise can probably be
reached on the possibility of things falling off *accidentally*. But
it's going to be pretty difficult to launch from there if you *plan*
to jettison big lumps of metal en route, unless you do it very early
or very late in the ascent.
--
Belief is no substitute | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
for arithmetic. | [email protected] utzoo!henry
| T.R | Title | User | Personal Name | Date | Lines |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 891.1 | Poker Flat Research Range in Alaska | MTWAIN::KLAES | Be Here Now | Thu Apr 28 1994 15:26 | 97 |
Article: 5365 From: [email protected] (AP) Newsgroups: clari.local.alaska,clari.tw.science,clari.news.education Subject: Alaska Students Build Rocket Date: Sun, 24 Apr 94 9:10:17 PDT FAIRBANKS, Alaska (AP) -- A year and a half's worth of work for less than a minute's worth of thrills: You don't have to be a rocket scientist to know that's delayed gratification to the extreme. The work has been building a rocket from scratch, and for those involved with the Student Rocket Program at the University of Alaska Fairbanks the hard labor is almost over. Next come the thrills -- launching their creation and seeing how it flies. The 20 or so budding rocketeers have been transforming aluminum, fiberglass, steel, silicon, nylon and other materials into a tubular vehicle about 12 feet tall and 5 inches in diameter. If execution follows plan, a powerful solid-fuel engine will take 53 seconds to propel the 75-pound rocket and its 25-pound payload of navigation equipment 13 miles up into the air before peaking and falling back to the tundra. The launch, scheduled next month at UAF's Poker Flat Research Range, 30 miles northeast of Fairbanks, would be the second of a student-built rocket since the program started three years ago. The first, sent up in 1992, had more than its share of problems. The coupling that connected the rocket's motor to its payload of weather-monitoring equipment came undone too soon. The payload was never found. The objective this time is simply technical performance -- to get the $20,000 rocket into Earth's stratosphere and to keep in contact with it over the course of its brief flight by satellite-relayed signals. ``The idea is to test out if the stuff we've built works,'' says Joe Hawkins, a UAF assistant professor of electrical engineering and one of the program's advisers. ``This is a low-cost way of testing before we use more expensive, higher-tech equipment in future launches.'' The $6,500 engine, which accelerates to about 3,000 miles an hour within six seconds, was purchased. The rest is custom made. The engineering students, all undergraduates, have designed the rocket components, written software programs, milled metal, assembled circuit boards and built parachutes and various other parts. For most, the work hasn't been for money or academic credit but instead for the hands-on fun of it. ``You have to get an integrated system going,'' says Jeff Alexander, who is working on the computerized communications link between the rocket and the ground station. ``It's more practical experience than you can get in the (classroom) lab.'' The students have had access to sophisticated equipment and computers, but perhaps the best symbol of the rocket program is the worn foam sleeping pad rolled out under one of the workbenches. Hawkins says 20 hours a week in the rocket lab is probably par for each of the students, and even more time is spent there as a design or production deadline draws close. That's where the sleeping pad comes in. ``We're really dedicated,'' says Sanjay Kumar, an aerospace engineering student and rocket project manager. ``You don't always see that in other (academic) areas.'' ``We're committed people ... or should be committed,'' wisecracks Eric Klingler. Their scientific sensibilities leave little time for wistful musings so often part of a layman's view of the heavens. Instead of the romance of space, they talk about G-forces, pyrotechnic actuators and pushing back the design envelope. Liftoff will happen when NASA radar technicians travel north to Poker Flat for other planned launches. NASA and other federal agencies, including the Air Force, have invested millions of dollars in recent years to upgrade 25-year-old Poker Flat, the world's only university-owned rocket range. Rockets studying the aurora borealis and polar air pollution have been sent up from Poker Flat, taking advantage of its desirable far-northern location. The university is also trying to carve out a niche in the growing small-satellite industry. The rocket-building experience, Hawkins says, has helped students win coveted internships at such institutions as NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and the federal Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. | |||||