October 21, 1996 Dear Mr. Eliuk: I have received the fax of October 17 from C. Mack, outlining vehicle options and payload and launch considerations, in response to the preliminary requirements Ted Llewellyn provided to you last month. After discussing it with Ted, I would like to ask a few (actually, many) questions. The fax makes a strong case that the Super Arcas mass budget is insufficient to get our payload to the required 80 km apogee. Therefore, I must conclude that the Orion is the right vehicle for us. It mentions that either an end user agreement with the U.S. Navy or a joint CSA/NASA project would be required. I would prefer to pursue the end user agreement option rather than take on the complexity of finding and accomodating a U.S. experimenter in the limited time available. The additional cost we would incur in buying the vehicle outright appears to be manageable within our overall project budget. My questions are: 1. What is involved in concluding an end user agreement with the U.S. Navy? 2. What are the Navy's requirements? 3. Do we have time to put it in place before submitting our proposal to CSA? 4. Is that required, or must we simply show that there are no critical obstacles to such an agreement being concluded if our proposal is accepted? It appears that a telemetry rate of 10 Mbps is the best for which we can hope. I believe that by implementing data compression we can live with this rate. My questions are: 5. Does current CSA inventory include enough GSE to support three (or more) launches with 10 Mbps telemetry? 6. If not, what cost would be incurred in acquiring GSE to support three launches? 7. What is the additional cost of full tape backup of telemetry? We estimate of the order of 10 GB total data output from the experiment. We would like to maximize our time on the parachute, subject to payload size/mass restrictions, the need to despin the payload to a rate below 10 rpm, and the need to eliminate pendulum-type oscillations of the payload as far as possible. The science will begin essentially at apogee and continue almost to impact, with extended time above 40 km being of key importance. This is why we require a high-altitude parachute deployment. We will not require attitude control as such, although our intent to acquire star images from the payload creates the requirements to minimize spin rate and oscillations as mentioned above. We intend to determine the payload attitude from the acquired star images. My questions are: 8. Who will provide the lugs and fins for the rockets? 9. Who will install and set the fins? 10. Given the expected 4 rps spin rate for the Orion vehicle at burnout, how low can the spin rate be reduced with the 2 lb despin hardware mentioned in the fax? 11. How much weight would it take to despin to around 0.1 rps? 12. Are there parachutes capable of deployment at high altitudes, that are able to bring a payload down at a (predictable) low spin rate with good attitude stability? 13. Can you provide any information or pointers to information for our engineers to work on? Achievable spin rates and typical parachute data (canopy size, shroud line lengths) would give us a feel for the problem. Regarding launch support, I understand that responsibility for the preparation and launch of the vehicle will be divided between Bristol and Akjuit (for a launch from CRR). My first question is: 14. Would Bristol prefer to subcontract the launch from Akjuit or have us deal directly with Akjuit for launch services? A quick glance at the map shows that possible additional launch sites with reasonable infrastructure are limited to Chesterfield Inlet, Rankin Inlet, and Gillam. 15. Are sets of GSE suitable for additional launches currently on CSA inventory? 16. If not, what would be the ROM cost for each additional set? 17. Apart from this cost, what ROM costs would we incur in executing such launches (or is this a question for Akjuit)? 18. What regulatory issues would have to be addressed (or is this another one for Akjuit)? 19. Could Bristol be of service in addressing these issues (or ...)? Our industrial partner, Sci-Tec Instruments Inc. of Saskatoon, would be responsible for building, integrating, and testing the science experiment, GPS receiver, internal mounting structure and batteries. The remainder of the payload would be Bristol's responsibility, as we see it now. My questions are: 20. What type and level of information would you require in order to be able to determine a realistic cost for Bristol Aerospace's provision of payload, vehicle, and launch services for our project? 21. When would you require this information? Please feel free to contact me to discuss these matters further. I can be reached by telephone at 306-966-6447 (voice) and 306-966-6400 (fax), and by e-mail at David.Steele@usask.ca. I look forward to hearing from you. Yours truly, David Steele, Ph.D. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ David P. Steele Ph: (306) 966-6447 ISAS, University of Saskatchewan Fax: (306) 966-6400 116 Science Place David.Steele@usask.ca Saskatoon SK S7N 5E2 DANSAS::STEELE