Friday, 5 July 1991 Washington, DC
1. WHAT OVER-COST, BEHIND-SCHEDULE SATELLITE GIVES FUZZY
IMAGES?
Even as NASA was revealing plans to fit Hubble with
a corrective lens in 1994, it was disclosed that NASA's
replacement weather satellite, GOES-NEXT, may not go at all. The
five-year design life of the current weather satellite, GOES-7,
is up early next year. Officials of the National Weather Service
were dismayed to learn at this late date that GOES-NEXT, which
was supposed to be launched two years ago, may be so riddled with
flaws that it will have to be scrapped. GOES-NEXT was intended
to incorporate new technology, but NOAA, which pays the bill, had
in mind technology that works. Loss of GOES-7 could create a
national emergency. The military does have weather satellites in
operation, but none of them are in geostationary orbit over the
United States.
2. 50 SENATORS WILL URGE COMMITMENT TO "A BALANCED SPACE
PROGRAM"
in a letter to Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) on Monday, but Space
Station Freedom is the only program the letter pushes. The House
approved full funding for the orbiting tomato seed repository at
the expense of key space science programs and the Earth Observing
System (WN 7 Jun 91). Mikulski's
appropriations subcommittee will not disclose its plans, but a
high NASA official said privately that he expects the space
science problem to be "fixed." That may not be good news for the
NSF, which competes with NASA for the subcommittee's limited
allocation. The Senate letter promoting the space station was
initiated by Senator Richard Shelby (D-AL), whose state is
budgeted for $860M of the $2B budgeted for space station Freedom
in FY 92--more than any other state. Meanwhile, in the House, a
Budget Committee Task Force will hold hearings next Thursday on
the squeeze created by the station and the SSC.
3. FIRST TEST OF THE SSC BY THE FULL SENATE COULD COME NEXT
WEEK.
According to a story in Inside Energy, Sen. Dale
Bumpers (D-AR) is considering introduction of an amendment to
kill the collider during floor consideration of the energy and
water appropriations bill. Such an amendment is not considered
likely to pass, but it would measure the depth of SSC support in
the Senate. In the House, former NSF Director Erich Bloch, whose
hostility to the SSC occasionally crept into public comments when
he was part of the Administration, testified on the role of basic
research in competitiveness; he put the collider at the bottom of
his list of priorities. Peter Likens, President of Lehigh and
member of the President's Council on Science and Technology,
agreed with Bloch. Lehigh has in the past specialized in pork-
barrel projects, which avoids the embarrassment of being
prioritized (WN 22 Feb 91).
4. NASA MAKES ROOM ON EOS FOR JAPANESE OIL EXPLORATION
INSTRUMENT
according to a news release from Rep. Barbara
Boxer (D-CA), chair of the House Government Affairs Subcommittee.
Boxer asked NASA head Richard Truly whether American taxpayers
will be subsidizing the Japanese oil industry in the name of
environmental research?
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