Today is Saturday, 03/12/2022, Post #3

"For me at any rate it all must be analyzed and figured out too much to produce any adequate reading enjoyment, though as a puzzle it may be found rather diverting."









https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1992/08/06/atlantis-retrieves-satellite/3aabb51f-8957-49ee-8974-1634370f940e/

The Washington Post

ATLANTIS RETRIEVES SATELLITE

By Kathy Sawyer

August 6, 1992

HOUSTON, AUG. 5 -- The world's first experiment in tethered spaceflight ended in bitter disappointment









https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/19930016802/downloads/19930016802.pdf

STS-46

SPACE SHUTTLE

MISSION REPORT

All times are given in Greenwich mean time (G.m.t.) as well as mission elapsed time (MET).

The STS-46 vehicle, which weighed 4,516,467 lb, was launched from KSC launch complex 39B at 213:13:56:48.011 G.m.t. (9:56:48 a.m. e.d.t.) on July 31, 1992

page 21

TETHERED SATELLITE SYSTEM

This action cleared the jam and allowed satellite retrieval to begin. The satellite was successfully docked at the top of the boom at 218:22:53 G.m.t. (05:08:56 MET).









From 2/5/1941 ( from The Daily Princetonian publication: New Agency Banned By Administration; Recently Formed Student Project Offered to Supply Dates to Lonely Princetonians ) To 11/10/1967 ( premiere US TV series episode "Star Trek"::"Metamorphosis" ) is 9774 days

From 11/2/1965 ( my known birth date in Antlers, Oklahoma, USA, as Kerry Wayne Burgess ) To 8/6/1992 ( ) is 9774 days



From 2/4/1929 ( from The Daily Princetonian publication: Lit Reviewer Finds Stories Well-Written, But Conscious Artificiality Disappoints Him ) To 8/13/1982 ( premiere US film "Fast Times At Ridgemont High" ) is 19548 days

19548 = 9774 + 9774

From 11/2/1965 ( my known birth date in Antlers, Oklahoma, USA, as Kerry Wayne Burgess ) To 8/6/1992 ( ) is 9774 days



From 5/14/1992 ( the Intelsat 6 successful rescue during US space shuttle Endeavour orbiter vehicle mission STS-49 includes me Kerry Wayne Burgess the United States Marine Corps officer and United States STS-49 pilot astronaut and my 1st official United States of America National Aeronautics and Space Administration orbital flight of 4 overall ) To 8/6/1992 ( ) is 84 days

84 = 42 + 42

From 11/2/1965 ( my known birth date in Antlers, Oklahoma, USA, as Kerry Wayne Burgess ) To 12/14/1965 ( from The Daily Princetonian publication: Higher Education in New Jersey ) is 42 days



From 5/21/1969 ( from the thoughts in my conscious mind, coinciding with United States of America Veterans Affairs hospital psychiatric doctor medical drugs: the Princeton University doctor of medicine degree graduation of my biological brother Dr Thomas Reagan MD and in 1973 the law-doctorate graduate of University of Oxford, England ) To 8/6/1992 ( ) is 8478 days

From 11/2/1965 ( my known birth date in Antlers, Oklahoma, USA, as Kerry Wayne Burgess ) To 1/18/1989 ( premiere US TV series episode "Frontline"::"The Real Life of Ronald Reagan" ) is 8478 days



From 1/12/1916 ( from Wikipedia on the global-internetwork: Ruth Mary Rogan Benerito ) To 7/20/1969 ( my biological brother Thomas Reagan the United States Navy Commander circa 1969 was United States Apollo 11 Eagle spacecraft United States Navy astronaut landing and walking on the planet Earth's moon ) is 19548 days

19548 = 9774 + 9774

From 11/2/1965 ( my known birth date in Antlers, Oklahoma, USA, as Kerry Wayne Burgess ) To 8/6/1992 ( ) is 9774 days



https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1992/08/06/atlantis-retrieves-satellite/3aabb51f-8957-49ee-8974-1634370f940e/

The Washington Post

ATLANTIS RETRIEVES SATELLITE

By Kathy Sawyer

August 6, 1992

HOUSTON, AUG. 5 -- The world's first experiment in tethered spaceflight ended in bitter disappointment today when NASA managers concluded it had literally reached the end of its rope and could not achieve its main research goals.

Just before 7 p.m. EDT, the crew of the shuttle Atlantis landed the $192 million tethered satellite back in the cargo bay and stowed it for the return home -- like fishermen reeling in after not getting a nibble.

In their unexpectedly smooth retrieval of the half-ton sphere, the astronauts briefly overcame persistent problems with a temperamental $128 million tether reel that had stymied their efforts by jamming periodically.

The $380 million project's planners had cautioned before the flight that the technology and the techniques were all new, and that "anything could happen."

"This was a test flight. If we knew all the answers . . . it wouldn't be a test flight," lead flight director Chuck Shaw said at a briefing for reporters tonight. "We achieved a lot more than what you see on the surface."

Engineers, scientists and astronauts on the U.S.-Italian mission team emphasized that the abbreviated flight yielded enough data to prove that a tethered system "is flyable" and can be used to gather scientific data.

They also were relieved, they said, that the Italian-built satellite -- which they said worked beautifully -- had been saved, possibly to fly another day.

But Nobie Stone, NASA's lead scientist on the project, said, "We did not achieve our primary objectives. . . . We didn't approach those."

He described the deep disappointment of the team members, some of whom had spent a decade or more on the project. When he started work on it, he said, "My son was entering first grade. This year he enters Auburn University. It's a long time to have such a little return."

The team had planned to send the satellite out on a 12 1/2-mile, electricity-conducting tether and tow it for up to 30 hours through the ionosphere, creating a giant electrical generator and possibly a useful new spaceflight technology.

But the tether deployment mechanism presented baffling problems. "We were running out of time and energy," Shaw said.

Like the recent Endeavour mission, in which astronauts captured a satellite with their hands because an expensive device failed, this mission underscored the inadequacy of ground-based predictions of how hardware performs in the vacuum and weightlessness of space.

Tether project manager Billy Nunley of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center said, "When we get the hardware back, we'll go in there and find out what that problem is." He said the device was tested thoroughly on the ground, but the only valid test "is in zero-G."

On the plus side, Shaw noted, "we flew the two scariest parts of the mission," deployment and retrieval of the satellite.

The retrieval had been considered the most demanding and risky phase of an unusually complex experiment. But it went surprisingly well.

On its way back to its cradle, closing the distance at about two-tenths of a foot per second, the satellite began to swing as expected to-and-fro, then side-to-side, above the orbiter.

This required Atlantis commander Loren Shriver to fire jets continually to maneuver the shuttle rapidly and damp the motion, like a motorist steering in the direction of a slide on ice.

"We do get a lot of tether dynamics during orbiter maneuvering," mission specialist Jeffrey Hoffman reported.

As the satellite neared the orbiter cargo bay, the tether's pull was slowed to 0.15 feet per second, and the satellite's small nitrogen gas thrusters were fired to maintain tension on the line. It was oscillating slightly, the crew reported, but generally stable.

At about 6:50 p.m., Hoffman reported, "We'ver got a docked satellite."

"Great job, Atlantis," replied mission control communicator Jeff Wissof.

The satellite had spent slightly more than 24 hours on the tether, never further out than 850 feet. Scientists, putting the best face on the situation, reported they were able to conduct limited experiments at that length, generating an electrical potential of 40 volts across the short tether, and a current of 0.015 of an ampere.

They had hoped to generate up to 5,000 volts with the tether at full length, study the performance of the tether and satellite, conduct research on the Earth's magnetic field and do other research.

Before they could begin the retrieval, the crew first had to break the latest snag in the balky tether mechanism, which is housed in a boom extending 39 feet above the shuttle cargo bay and operates like a large rod and reel. It was built for Marshall Space Flight Center by Martin Marietta, under a $128 million contract that included the tether and other flight hardware, contractor officials said.

Atlantis spent the day hauling the satellite around on about 730 feet of tether, stuck there because of another jam in the mechanism.

The crew had hit that snag in its first attempt this morning to unreel the tether, when it was 850 feet out. The astronauts, as they had earlier, to break the jam by reeling back in and then out again, but this time the device jammed after they had reeled about 100 feet back in.

They finally broke the tether free by lowering and then raising the entire boom, exerting about 25 pounds of force on the tether and pulling it free.

NASA has approved no further tether flights, but scientists tonight were already pressing for another try. Said one, "They owe us one."









https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112384/quotes

IMDb

Apollo 13 (1995)

Quotes

William 'Bill' Pogue, CAPCOM: When I go up there on 19, I'm gonna take my entire collection of Johnny Cash along!









https://www.nytimes.com/1992/08/06/us/astronauts-abandon-test-of-tethered-satellite.html

The New York Times

Astronauts Abandon Test of Tethered Satellite

By John Noble Wilford

Aug. 6, 1992

Like fishermen at the end of a luckless day, the Atlantis astronauts yesterday abandoned their fruitless efforts to cast a satellite out into space on a 12-mile line and slowly reeled it back into the space shuttle's cargo bay, disappointed by the failure of the first large-scale test of tethered space flight.

The astronauts contended with a stuck cable that delayed release of the satellite on Tuesday. Their reel mechanism had stalled and the line became badly snarled. Four times over two days they tried to reel out the line to its full extent, but the satellite never went farther than 845 feet above the shuttle.

Hopelessly Stuck for Hours

For a few frustrating hours yesterday the tether, only one-tenth of an inch thick, appeared to be stuck hopelessly. The astronauts could neither reel it out beyond 750 feet nor reel it in.

Finally, following instructions from Mission Control, the astronauts flexed the boom where the tether was controlled, retracting it first and then extending it forcefully. This somehow unsnarled the line.

Taking no more chances with the malfunctioning tether mechanism, the astronauts switched on the electric motor to reel in the satellite. By 6:54 P.M. the five-foot metal sphere was safely back in the docking ring atop the 39-foot boom in the cargo bay.

"We have docking," radioed Dr. Jeffrey A. Hoffman, the astronaut who was in charge of operating the tether system.

"Great job, Atlantis," replied Jeff Wisoff, the flight communicator in Mission Control at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. Applause broke out in the control room, perhaps more the applause of relief than of triumph.

In contrast to just about everything else about the trouble-plagued tether experiment, the retrieval of the satellite went without a hitch. It took an hour, with the line being drawn in most of the time at a rate of only two-tenths of a foot a second. Despite pre-mission concerns, the tether remained taut and the satellite stable, sometimes swinging slightly but never menacingly.

With Col. Loren J. Shriver of the Air Force at the controls, the shuttle's steering jets were fired repeatedly to move in under the approaching satellite. He was ready at any moment to fly the shuttle away, if the satellite became uncontrollable. As a last resort, cutting devices in the boom could have been used to sever the tether, setting the satellite adrift.

If the tether had become jammed or snarled again, Dr. Hoffman and Dr. Franklin Chang-Diaz, another astronaut, were prepared to take a spacewalk today to attempt to untangle things. They had taken preliminary measures for such a contingency.

Electric Motor Fails

The retrieval of the satellite came hours after officials of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration had given up any thought of being able to reel out the full 12-mile of tether on the satellite for the planned 30 hours of experiments in space physics, the dynamics of tethered flight and the generation of electricity by the cable joining the satellite to the shuttle.

Earlier yesterday, the astronauts made their fourth attempt to extend the tether, after three unsuccessful attempts on Tuesday. Dr. Hoffman slowly spooled in nearly 90 feet of the tether and was to reverse and feed the line out faster than before. But the electric motor that pulls the tether failed.

By now, the situation was particularly frustrating. The mechanism seemed to be completely jammed. As James Hartsfield, the commentator at Mission Control, put things: "The tether cannot be reeled out and it cannot be reeled back in."

After further troubleshooting, engineers advised the astronauts to try two possible remedies. The first effort was to "pop the clutch" on an electric motor at the top of the deployment tower. The motor guides the tether at the end of the tower, as it is fed out into orbit. But this attempt to force the snag loose was fruitless.

The astronauts were successful on their next effort. Working inside the shuttle cabin, they commanded the tower to retract about two feet. The tether remained stuck. And then they commanded the tower to extend back to its full height while the tether motor pulled in the other direction. This time the tether came free.

But Mission Control decided against any more attempts to deploy the satellite.

As the astronauts and their ground controllers grappled with the recalcitrant tether system, all hopes for a thorough demonstration of tethered space flight vanished. NASA, which developed the tether machinery, and the Italian Space Agency, which provided the satellite, had invested $379 million in this effort.

Once the dynamics are understood, promoters of the concept say, tethered flight may become a promising technology for deploying satellites, erecting space stations, stringing extensive radio antennas and generating electricity for operating spacecraft. If the cable of copper and fiber had been fully extended to 12 miles, it was expected to produce several thousand volts of electricity as it was dragged through the Earth's magnetic fields at 17,500 miles an hour.

Proof of Complexity

The tether experiment was to have run 30 hours. It lasted only 24 hours, as it turned out, and one of its only accomplishments was to certify earlier predictions that tether operations would be among the most complex orbital endeavors.









https://theprince.princeton.edu/princetonperiodicals/?a=d&d=Princetonian19290204-01&e=-------en-20--81-byDA-txt-txIN-------

Daily Princetonian, Volume 53, Number 174, 4 February 1929









album: "Seven And The Ragged Tiger" (1983)

Duran Duran

"New Moon On Monday"

Shake up the picture the lizard mixture
With your dance on the eventide
You got me coming up with answers
All of which I deny
I said it again
Could I please rephrase it
Maybe I can catch a ride
I couldn't really put it much plainer
But I'll wait till you decide
Send me your warning siren
As if I could ever hide
Last time La Luna

I light my torch and wave it for the
New moon on Monday
And a firedance through the night
I stayed the cold day with a lonely satellite



- posted by me, Kerry Burgess 9:28 PM Pacific-time USA Saturday 03/12/2022