Fun_People Archive
15 Apr
NASA Headline News for 04/31/94

Date: Fri, 15 Apr 94 13:16:53 PDT
To: Fun_People
Subject: NASA Headline News for 04/31/94

Forwarded-by: lanih@info.Berkeley.EDU (J. Lani Herrmann)
Forwarded-by: Cal Herrmann <arminius@nature.Berkeley.EDU>

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Tuesday, April 31, 1994                       Audio: 202/555-1788
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This is NASA Headline News for Friday, April 31.....

The Congressional Budget Explorer Module (CBEM) is scheduled for
installation in the orbiter Titanic's payload bay this afternoon.
Technicians resolved an earlier problem with hydraulic line pressure
when it was discovered that several fragments of lobbyist had become
stuck in a flapper valve.  The 127-ton CBEM payload will mark the
beginning of NASA's ambitious decade-long "Mission to Fort Knox."

A Flight Eagerness Review is scheduled for tomorrow and Thursday.  The
current target launch date is Friday, May 11.  If no further problems
are uncovered in the FER, the launch will probably be pushed back a few
days anyway just for the heck of it.  The CBEM launch window ends on
Tuesday, May 21, when Venus rises in Aquarius and Neptune's influence is
no longer balanced, violating critical Astral launch criteria.

                       *                    *

Meanwhile, the Velikovsky spacecraft is in good health on its journey to
Venus.  It's now 122 million miles from Venus and about 28 feet from
Earth.  Engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory report that failure
to actually launch Velikovsky has had little impact on its ability to
perform the primary pseudoscience missions.  Earlier problems with
voltage fluctuations in the Wide Eyed/Credulous Subject Scanner are
being monitored carefully.  "I'm pretending this is really exciting,"
says JPL team leader Geraldo R. Spencer.

In other planetary mission news, technicians at the Deep Space Network
installation in Canberra, Australia have identified the probable cause
of signal weakness in the primary 90-meter antenna: the dish was
apparently mounted upside-down.  A tentative schedule and budget
estimate for correcting the mount is underway.  DSN Australian
Coordinator Michael J. Dundee was quoted in the Australian weekly "P***
Off Mate" as saying that this mystifying problem had never been
encountered before, but was probably due to reliance on American antenna
design parameters.  "I'm still not convinced that anything's wrong, but
we'll try it the other way and see."

                       *                    *

Leak checks are underway on the Contractor Information Network (CIN) at
Huntsville, Alabama.  Technicians at the Huntsville Program Survival
Facility (PSF) expect to begin CIN closeouts by Thursday.  The system
will then be purged for use.

Aerobuck Weekly reports that in testimony last Thursday before the House
Space and Storm Door Subcommittee, NASA Administrator Roald Sagdeev
testified that a recent re-re-reshuffling and "options devaluation"
would enable Space Station to proceed despite the latest round of budget
cuts, but warned this was "absolutely the last cut that can be
sustained."  Citing internal NASA studies, the publication listed
several cost cutting measures under consideration, including a two year
stretchout of the Ground Telerobotic Administrator (GTA) subsystem, and
eliminating atmospheric pressure in the one remaining crew module, which
would also be downsized from 23 feet to 16 feet.  The name of the station
would be officially changed from "Freedom" to "Fred" to fit the new
bulkhead dimensions.

                       *                    *

The Soviets and Japanese jointly announced a contract with Hilton Hotels
last week, to provide a 335-room passenger module for the international
Sakharov Space Station currently under construction in Earth orbit.

Malawi became the 78th nation in space Sunday, launching an 1820-pound
satellite into orbit atop an Indonesian Merlata II booster.  This
launcher now has a record of 69 successes in 71 launches.

The last remaining Scout rocket was lost in a launch pad accident near
Wallops Island Proving Ground last week, according to a NASA spokesman.
Technicians apparently made an error in connecting a hydraulic feed line
to the rocket as it awaited payload checkout, connecting it to the
purge valve for a nearby Toxic Waste Holding Facility instead.  The
first stage appears to have partially dissolved and melted itself to
the concrete apron; EPA officials have ordered the site sealed pending
checkout by an Emergency Response team.

                         * * * * * * * *

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Here's the broadcast schedule for Public Affairs events on NASA
Deflect TV.  All times are Eastern.

Tuesday, April 31.....

    11:30 A.M.      "Budget Cut Spinoffs" - classroom teaching aid

Monday, May 0....

   9:00 A.M.       Colloquium on Soviet Inferiority

    10:00 A.M.       Three Letter Acronym (TLA) List Update (LU)

    11:00 A.M.       Pre-launch News Conference

    12:00 A.M.       Post-scrub News Conference

Friday, April 35....

    4:00 A.M.        Replay of the Administrator's Good Friday speech:
                     "The Crucifixion: A Lesson for NASA?"

    5:30 A.M.        Livestock Report

    6:00 A.M.        Astronaut Aerobics/Morning Workout

All events and times and missions and appropriations are subject to
change without notice.
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These reports are filed daily, Monday through Friday, at 12 noon,
EDT.  My god, CNN, when do you want me to file?  Last April?
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A service of the Infernal Communications Branch, NASA HQ.
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Help -- I am being held hostage in the Public Affai<MMMMPPHHH>

--------------------------- END OF REPOST --------------------------------

OK, for those of you who need to know where this actually came from,
it was posted back in 1990 or so.  Here's the original headers:

From: p515dfi@mpirbn.UUCP (Daniel Fischer)
Subject: Just for fun!
Date: 20 Apr 90 09:09:36 GMT
Organization: Max-Planck-Institut fuer Radioastronomie, Bonn

I think this fool's joke beats all astronomical/space ones I've seen this
year. It was just delivered in the SPACE Digest - but it's fun even on 20 Apr.
For those who do not know the NASA Headline News: this fake is *perfect*!
 
--------------------------- START OF REPOST ---------------------------------
Date: 30 Apr 90 03:59:59 GMT
>From: trident.gum.nasa.guv!isuzu@uunet.uu.net  (Joseph P. Isuzu)
Subject: NASA Headline News for 04/31/90 (Forwarded)

-- 
Current rates of population growth will result in 1 human per m^2 of land on
Earth in 450 years (200,000 Billion people).  This being obviously infeasible,
we can act now to decrease population growth, or wait for other processes
(disease, famine, war) to do it for us. -- Wayne Hayes, wayne@csri.utoronto.ca

© 1994 Peter Langston