Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!bonnie!akgua!sdcsvax!sdcrdcf!hplabs!sri-unix!mfci!mishkin%UUCP@YALE.ARPA From: mishkin%UUCP@YALE.ARPA Newsgroups: net.space Subject: More on Satellite Retrieval Message-ID: <11810@sri-arpa.UUCP> Date: Sat, 27-Oct-84 19:52:24 EST Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.11810 Posted: Sat Oct 27 19:52:24 1984 Date-Received: Mon, 29-Oct-84 03:22:53 EST Lines: 26 From: Nathaniel MishkinWhile we're all wondering about some details of the satellite recovery schedule for the next shuttle mission, I'd like to add my own wonders: What are the constraints on the rendezvous? According to the PBS show, the satellites are in quite an elliptical orbit. I got the impression that the apogee of the orbit is well higher than the maximum possible shuttle apogee. So presumably they have to time the rendezvous so that the shuttle meets the satellite when the satellite is at a low point in its orbit. How long do the astronauts have before the satellite drifts too far away? How elliptical can the shuttle's orbit be made? How much force needs to be applied to the satellite to get it into the shuttle bay? (After all, it DID fire an engine so it does have some momentum that has to be overcome, right? My physics is, er, a bit rusty.) How dangerous is all this? I mean, in the most recent shuttle mission during the refueling experiment people commented on the "danger" of dealing with the fuel in that environment. Mightn't there be some unexpended fuel sitting in the satellite's booster? Would you want to be staring down the gullet of an engine that didn't behave as expected in the first place? -- Nat -------