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Technology Stocks : Loral Space & Communications -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RMiethe who wrote (6056)	5/6/1999 8:47:00 PM
From: Rocket Scientist	Respond to of 10852

RMiethe: Regarding satellite rescues after failures of upper stages, quite a few have been done, with a lot of technical fanfare and excitement, but little financial relevence, in my opinion. I know of at least three, though I believe there were others, and some details below may be garbled. 1. In the mid '80s (1984?) two Hughes built spinners deployed from the shuttle failed to reach intended orbit when a solid rocket on their payload assist module malfunctioned. Hughes was able to return (one or both?) of the sats to a shuttle compatible orbit, from which they were eventually retrieved and returned to earth. Note the retrieval mission was many months, probably more than a year, after the initial failure, because these things take a long time to plan. And those satellites were shuttle compatible in the first place, which the Orion 3 likely is not. Anyway, (at least one of) the sat's was eventually returned to Hughes, refurbished and I believe resold, but all this was long after the original customers' insurance had paid off. The salvage operation was negotiated between the insurers, NASA and Hughes, to my understanding. 2. There was another satellite placed in low orbit by mistake to which NASA's shuttle eventually brought a new booster motor, mounted the sat to it and lifted it into proper orbit, again several months after the initial failure. 3. Most recently (last year?) another Hughes bird put in the wrong orbit was rescued through a series of exotic maneuvers involving lunar flybys. That worked quite well and earned Hughes a lot of technical praise, though I expect the satellite's life was substantially used up in the course of all the maneuvers. The initial failure for that satellite resulted in a much higher orbit than Orion 3 appears to be in, however, so I don't think a similar maneuver doable in the present case. Well, other posters (Mr. Adrenaline, for example) may remember other instances or correct/elaborate on above, but the bottom line for investors is that any rescue attempt is expensive, time consuming and likely to result in a satellite worth a lot less than a new one. It's better for Loral to get the insurance proceeds, and let the new satellite owners (the insurance companies) try to salvage something, if they can. As a spectator, I'll applaud any heroics in that regard.

To: RMiethe who wrote (6056)	5/6/1999 9:00:00 PM
From: Clarksterh	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10852

RM - Apparently NASA can place this GEOsat in the Shuttle bay, and move it to where it should be-- if they decide to do it. Looks like NASA has done this for military satellites in the past, as I am told. Just FYI, this is not possible. The space shuttle does not have the oomph to do much of anything other than sit in whatever orbit it initially flies to. However, there are some options, but they are pretty expensive: 1) Attach a booster to Orion and zap it up to a low inclination GTO. But first the satellite will use up a lot of its fuel bringing itself down to shuttle orbit, and then afterwards it will use up even more fuel circularizing when it gets into GTO. 2) Burn Orion dry in the process of bringing it down to shuttle orbit and then load it onto the shuttle and bring it back to earth. Refurbish it and try again. Both of these options are very expensive since anything to do with NASA costs money. And they may not be technically feasible for a variety of reasons. Or NASA may no longer allow them. In any case I wouldn't count on much NASA help for Orion. Clark PS An out-of-this-world concept is that Hughes has, in the past, gotten a satellite up to GEO from GTO by flying to the moon. I don't have enough info to say whether that is feasible in this case, but ... .