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EDITORIAL INFORMATION

The sessions of the 26th Safety and Rescue Symposium continued the recent Symposia focus on Systems Safety and Rescue, Quality Management, and Space Debris, and, notably, extended them to considering the cost consequences of failures of launch vehicles and to weighing the costs of collision avoidance against the value of the space assets at risk.

(Extracted from the Foreword, by Gloria W. Heath).

GENERAL TABLE OF CONTENTS

-Foreword. Gloria W. Heath.

-Contents.

-SPACE SYSTEM SAFETY AND CREW RESCUE.

-Spaceflight Hazard Analysis: "The Devil Hides in the Details".
-Quality Assurance of Safety and Risk Analysis in Space Projects.
-Space Vehicle Safety Problem: Reentry with Subcircular Speeds.
-Implementation of the Soyuz ACRV for the Space Station Freedom.
-European ACRV: A Solution for Space Station Crew Assured Return.
-What is Acceptable Risk?
-Total System Costing of Risk in a Launch Vehicle.

-QUALITY MANAGEMENT IN SPACE PROJECTS.

-Criticality Management.
-Risk Management: Decision Support When Exposed to Risk.
-Experiences Concerning the Quality Management of Space Projects in a Planned and Market Economy.
-Evaluation of Space Software Systems Based on Computer Generated Quality Analysis.
-Space System Risk Management - The Aerospace Corporation Mission Readiness and Verification Process.

-SPACE DEBRIS 1.

-Summary of the First European Conference on Space Debris.
-DISCOS - The European Space Debris Database.
-A Project of Systems for Disposal of Space Debris from Near-Earth Space.
-Review of Various Models Used to Describe the Orbital Debris Environment.
-Orbital Debris Enviroment Predictions Based on a Long-Term Orbital Debris Evolution.
-Debris: A Computer Program for Debris Cloud Modeling.
-Modeling and Measuring the Debris Environment - An Interrelation to Reduce Uncertainties.

-SPACE DEBRIS 2.

-Remarks on Orbital Environment Protection at Geostationary Latitude: Results from Long Term Breakup Simulation.
-Decoding of the Particle Population from LDEF Crater Distributions.
-A Simple Case Study of Space Environmental Effects: The "Sofora" Experiment.
-Protection of Space Asssets by Collision Avoidance.
-Orbital Characteristics of Debris at Space Station Operational Altitudes.

-APPENDICES

-Publications of the American Astronautical Society.
-Advances in the Astronautical Sciences.
-Science and Technology Series.
-AAS History Series.

-INDEX.

-Numerical Index.
-Author Index.

OUR REVIEW

The periodic celebration of this kind of symposia can only indicate one thing: the intense concern existing among these enterprises and astronautics institutions around the problem of security, the space debris and rescue. This book contains a good part of the presentations realized before the International Academy of Astronautics, during the 44 International Astronautical Congress, in Graz, Austria, between the 16 and the 22 October, 1993.

In the group of articles compilated here diverse aspects of security in space are treated in depth, but the theme that takes the lion's part is precisely the space debris. Thus, more than half the book is devoted to this sensitive issue, which, left to its own devices, could complicate and even prevent the future exploitation of the terrestrial orbital medium. The authors contribute studies on the current situation, methods to alleviate the problem or to eliminate it, and even a global vision that sets the red alert on before the orientation and the growth it is having. Even though some of the articles contain a considerable technical load, most of them are within reach of the interested reader thanks to its agile, divulgative narrative. As is usual in all annual Symposia of the International Astronautical Federation, the papers have a most varied origin, their authors being experts in the matter who wish to divulge their research to the rest of the scientific community in their area of influence.