Thus it seems that the SLW will have no serious environmental impact from a pollution standpoint, and that the observations of Grishin and Chekalin [6] on the emission levels of the US STS are well founded, as a single STS launch produces more pollution than might be expected from several thousand SLW launches. (b) Recoverability. The interpretations of some COSMOS flights indicate that early tests have already been performed on the recoverability of the system. Calculations show that the ‘strap-on' boosters could be recovered downrange (about 620 km) and returned to the launch site by rail or air and that the core vehicle could be recovered from LEO, after several orbits, directly to the launch site. (c) Resonant Geostationary Transfer Orbits. It is possible that the Soviets may be planning a resonant transfer orbit to GEO. This would account for their interest in the otherwise difficult to explain 300 km LEO orbit altitude. Calculations suggest that both the shuttle payload and other elements of the SLW system are optimally sized for the use of these techniques. The propellant to payload ratio for this type of mission is 6.67. A single stage vehicle without this system, consuming the same amount of propellants would need an exhaust velocity of 6 kms-1 and an initial LEO mass of over 320t. If the same logistics were applied using L0X/LH2, the overall system performance would be better than a solid core nuclear stage. As the GTO node is unmanned in the system as deduced the fact that it has to traverse the Van Allen belts is not operationally important. 5. The Impact on the SLW on USA and European Programmes 5.1 The US response to the SLW It will be unacceptable to the USA for the Soviets to have the capability for a space station complex in GEO and a permanent Lunar presence from 1988 onwards and the capability to reach Mars from the early 1990s without competition. It is ironic that, just when there seems no way out of the USA's currently desperate space transportation problem, hence the whole space station project seems doomed to a 1994-at-the-earliest implementation date, the scientific community, which has contained some of manned space flight's main detractors, is finally beginning to show some whole-hearted support for the project [14]. Since long-term man-in-space experience of the sort only available with space stations holds the key to space exploitation through the understanding it gives on how to solve the biomedical problems, the US space station delays represent a serious, possibly critical, gap between Western and Soviet space programmes. Because of the long past experience of the Soviets with long-term manned spaceflight, this gap may turn out to be wider and more difficult to make up than that in launcher and propulsion capability, since all Western space programmes incorporate to a greater or lesser extent the US space station. With Soviet long-term manned flight experience already accumulated being seven years (since 1979), this gap could be greater than 15 years. Also, the whole US programme will have to be re-thought as six (US) men for one week does not equal one Soviet man for six weeks, in space biomedical terms. The USA could achieve some heavy lift capability from Shuttle technology but this could only be about 40% of the Soviet capability. However, we have confidence that, as in 1957, the USA could achieve as much with the lower lift weight as the USSR can with its greater capacity.
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