Nov 18 1985
From The Space Library
Britain and the U.S. in the last week of October reached an outline agreement on British participation in the U.S.'s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) program that did not guarantee Britain any specific share in SDI research, development, or production contract awards, but did provide assurances on technology transfer acceptable to Michael Heseltine, British Secretary of State for Defense, Aviation Week reported. However, Defense Daily later reported that Britain decided to delay signing its formal agreement of participation.
The delay apparently stemmed from Britain's political embarrassment over loss of the United States Army's Mobile subscriber equipment (MSE) program. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Heseltine had intervened in the MSE competition, although reportedly unaware that the disparity in the bids was beyond the ability of political influence to set right. Also, Britain's Department of Trade and Industry was said to be objecting to certain provisions of the agreement, including property rights to certain technologies developed during Britain's SDI participation. (Av Wk, Nov 4/85, 26; D/D, Nov 18/ 85, 81)
Many of the experiments carried in Spacelab D-1 aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger on Mission 61-A [see Space Transportation System! Missions, Oct. 30] achieved more than 100% of mission goals, due in part to the continuous cooperation between experiment teams who coped with hardware problems and changing conditions on board the space laboratory, Aviation Week reported. Peter Sahm, Spacelab D-1 mission scientist, said this coordination allowed a rescheduling of experiment activity during the final mission days, maximizing the overall scientific return in spite of delays caused by hardware problems.
In one of the repairs, Spacelab D-1 crew members used a saw to cut off a plastic cap on a valve that fed liquid into the fluid physics module's experiment zones. "The valve had an incorrect setting, which perhaps was made before launch," said Berndt Feuerbacher of West Germany's Deutsche Forschungs und Versuchsanstalt fur Luft und Raumfahrt's (DFVLR) Institute for Space Simulation. The DFVLR executed and controlled the mission on behalf of West Germany's BMFT ministry of research and technology. "They tried to reset the valve with a wrench, but they couldn't put the wrench to the nut because there was a plastic cap over it. So they asked for, and received authorization, to cut away the plastic cap, then were able to use the wrench." Feuerbacher said other repair/troubleshooting work by the Spacelab D--1 crew members included West German payload specialist Dr. Ernst Messerschmidt using a vacuum cleaner to collect debris from a heating facility in the Werkstofflabor material science double rack and writing a software patch on the Werkstofflabor to work around a malfunctioning vacuum sensor that incorrectly indicated a lack of vacuum. NASA mission specialist Dr. Bonnie Dunbar also used the vacuum to clean up metallic dust particles from a sample that broke in the Spacelab D-1 Medea's gradient furnace with quenching device.
These corrective actions demonstrated the need for trained crew members in complex spaceflight operations and for positive control from the ground, Wolfgang Finke, head of space program activities at the West German BMFT ministry of research and technology, indicated. "I think it also underscored the good working relationship between the German Space Operations Center here and NASA in the U.S. to overcome problems as they occurred," Finke said. (Av Wk, Nov 18/85, 55 and 65)
The Space Shuttle Enterprise arrived the afternoon of November 18 at Washington Dulles International Airport after a two-hour delay due to inclement weather, the Washington Post reported. NASA had announced earlier that it would transfer title to Enterprise to the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum [see Smithsonian Institution, Nov. 8]. NASA delayed Enterprise's takeoff from Kennedy Space Center until an early morning fog burned off so more people along the route could see the craft. Enterprise, atop a Boeing 747, was visible to onlookers in Annapolis and Baltimore before it began a counterclockwise circuit over Washington's Capital Beltway.
Officials at Dulles would store the spacecraft in a temporary shed about two miles from the airport terminal until a permanent facility was constructed. (W Post, Nov 19/85, B1)
The 3M Corp. and McDonnell Douglas joined as a team to produce and market a proprietary drug that McDonnell Douglas produced on board the Space Shuttle to treat patients who had lost their ability to produce red blood cells, Aviation Week reported. The ability of the drug erythropoietin to stimulate the body to produce red blood cells could benefit persons who were anemic or had a variety of other disorders in which red blood cell levels were a factor. And it had the potential in a number of medical situations to reduce the need for blood transfusions that carried the risk of complications. Erythropoietin was not widely used because current production techniques could not filter out by-products harmful to the body.
A batch of the material to be produced in an electrophoresis machine on the next flight of Space Shuttle, mission 61-B, would be given to the first human test patients soon. It was expected the drug could be available for sale in 1988 pending Food and Drug Administration approval.
McDonnell Douglas was completing arrangements to bring 3M's Riker Laboratories Div. into the program as the drug company that would market the product in place of Johnson & Johnson's Ortho Pharmaceuticals Div., which recently dropped out of the program in favor of producing the substance through earth-based bioengineering. Ortho believed it would be able to bring the drug to market a year sooner, while McDonnell Douglas believed space processing would be far more efficient and less costly.
McDonnell Douglas was also completing arrangements with a French drug company, Roussel Pharmaceuticals of Paris, to begin processing starting the next summer of a French drug on the Space Shuttle as a second commercial space product. The French product would be purified in the same mid-deck unit that brought erythropoietin to the animal and human test phase. NASA and McDonnell Douglas were completing arrangements to keep the mid-deck system operational for research and to help generate new products under their joint endeavor agreement. (Av Wk, Nov 18/85, 16)
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