----- Original Message -----
From: "David M Harland" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Monday, October 08, 2001 4:07 PM
Subject: Re: More jolly Space Station news
>
> For anyone who wants to know....
>
>
>
>
>
> INDUSTRIAL SPACE FACILITY
>
> As the prospects of microgravity research grew in the early 1980s, it
> began to look as if there would soon be a role for a free-flying
> facility on which longer-term experiments could be performed or,
> better yet, applications run. The development in 1985 by McDonnell
> Douglas of a pallet in the Shuttle's payload bay for 'Electrophoresis
> Operations in Space' (designed to refine biological products such as
> insulin) seemed to be a clear sign that sooner, rather than later,
> the company would seek to expand its orbital operations. Perhaps it
> would lease time on a semi-permanent multi-role platform? Perhaps by
> the early 1990s there would be an ever-increasing call for time on
> orbital platforms. In this lucrative service-provider market it would
> clearly pay to be the first in the field. It would also be of benefit
> to be seen to have close links with NASA.
> Space Industries Incorporated (SII) had been set up in
> Houston in 1982 by Max Faget, the chief designer of the Mercury
> capsule. When Joe Allen resigned as an astronaut, he had joined the
> company. SII was therefore familiar with how NASA conducted business,
> but nevertheless, set out to transform the way that microgravity
> payloads were developed. A decade before Dan Goldin made it the norm,
> SII was an advocate of a 'faster-cheaper-better' approach. In the
> mid-1980s it noted the future for a large orbital facility for
> long-running experiments, and proposed the Industrial Space Facility
> (ISF) as an automated materials processing factory to be deployed and
> tended by Shuttles. A docking system set in the front part of the bay
> would be linked to the middeck's airlock by a short tunnel and the
> ISF would have a hatch and, when raised from the bay by the RMS,
> could be rotated and mounted on the docking system. After deploying a
> pair of solar panels, the commissioning crew would enter the module
> and activate its systems. When everything had been verified, the
> Shuttle would withdraw and leave the ISF to execute its predefined
> programme, perhaps with telerobotic assistance. When the programme
> was complete, the 'product' would be retrieved by another Shuttle,
> the applications serviced (or superseded upon the expiry of a
> specific lease) and a new batch of raw material loaded onboard. On
> these servicing missions a logistics module would be carried in the
> payload bay. Unlike the space station that NASA was proposing, the
> ISF was to be self-contained. The design was sufficiently flexible to
> allow several modules to be joined together and, if necessary, a
> module could be returned to Earth for refurbishment. In the long
> term, ISF modules might be integrated into the space station as
> interim factories.
> The ISF proposal was well received, Westinghouse, Boeing and
> Lockheed backed the engineering studies, and NASA announced an
> agreement in August 1985 guaranteeing two flight opportunities so
> that SII could assure prospective clients that it had agency support.
> Furthermore, to obviate SII having to raise capital to cover launch
> costs, NASA introduced a 'fly-now-pay-later' deal whereby the company
> would reimburse the cost of flying from the revenues earned from
> renting time on its module. The company's close association with NASA
> had paid off. In reality, however, this revolutionary start-up deal
> had its origins in the Reagan administration's July 1984 call for
> commercialisation of space operations, and this was NASA's way of
> helping private ventures make commercial headway in their most
> crucial formative years.
> In April 1989, however, NASA effectively killed off the ISF
> when a specially commissioned panel advised against leasing the
> commercial free-flying module for microgravity work. It added a
> caveat that if the development of the station was signficantly
> delayed then it would be worth reconsidering the free-flyer as an
> interim vehicle.
Well, of course, the development of the Station WAS "significantly delayed"
(to put it mildly) and also multiplied several times in cost. Which NASA
knew it would in 1989.
==
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