The Complete Book of Spaceflight: From Apollo 1 to Zero Gravity

136 FAIR (Filled-Aperture Infrared Telescope)
research on the heat shield of the Mercury spacecraft. In
1958 he joined the Space Task Group in NASA, the forerunner
of the NASA Manned Spacecraft Center—which
eventually became the Johnson Space Center—becoming
its assistant director for engineering and development in
1962 and later its director. Faget contributed many of the
original design concepts for the Mercury Project’s manned
spacecraft and played a major role in the design of virtually
every American-crewed spacecraft since that time, including
the Space Shuttle. He retired from NASA in 1981 and
became an executive for Eagle Engineering. In 1982, he
was one of the founders of Space Industries and became its
president and chief executive officer.
FAIR (Filled-Aperture Infrared Telescope)
An orbiting telescope designed to study the evolution of
the circumstellar dust disks from which planetary systems
may form. Using a sensitive infrared telescope, FAIR
would be able to probe deeper than ever before into protostellar
disks and jets to investigate the physical
processes that govern their formation, development, and
dissipation, as well as those that determine their temperature,
density, and compositional structure. FAIR is identified
in NASA’s Office of Space Science Strategic Plan as
a potential mission beyond 2007 but remains in the stage
of early concept definition.
fairing
The area of a launch vehicle where a payload is attached
until it is released into orbit.
fall-away section
A section, such as a lower stage, of a rocket vehicle that
separates during flight—especially a section that falls back
to Earth.
FAST (Fast Auroral Snapshot Explorer)
A satellite designed to observe and measure rapidly varying
electric and magnetic fields and the flow of electrons
and ions above the aurora; it is the second SMEX(Small
Explorer) mission. FAST’s data is complemented by
Launch
Date: August 21, 1996
Vehicle: Pegasus XL
Site: Vandenberg Air Force Base
Orbit: 353 × 4,163 km × 83.0°
Size: 1.8 × 1.2 m
Mass: 187 kg
those from other spacecraft, which observe fields and particles
and photograph the aurora from higher altitudes.
At the same time, auroral observatories and geomagnetic
stations on the ground supply measurements on how the
energetic processes FAST observes affect Earth. Although
made ready for a mid-1994 launch date, FAST was put in
storage for a couple of years until a series of problems
with the Pegasus launch vehicle could be corrected.
faster-than-light (FTL) travel
Although Einstein’s special theory of relativity insists
that it is impossible to accelerate an object up to the
speed of light and beyond, there has been no shortage of
speculation on how ways may be found to circumvent
this natural speed restriction. First, Einstein’s theory
allows in principle the creation of bizarre particles,
known as tachyons, that have speeds permanently greater
than that of light. Second, an object may be able to
travel, apparently superluminally, between two far-flung
points in the cosmos, providing it does not make the
journey through conventional space-time. This opens up
the possibility of using space-time gateways and tunnels
known as wormholes as a means of circumventing the
normal relativistic constraints. 206
Fastrac Engine
A low-cost rocket engine, with a thrust of 270,000 N, propelled
by liquid oxygen and kerosene, that is being developed
at the Marshall Space Flight Center. It is only the
second of about 30 new rocket engines built over the past
quarter of a century to originate in the United States. Fastrac
is less expensive than similar engines because of an
innovative design approach that uses commercial, offthe-shelf
parts and fewer of them.
Feoktistov, Konstantin Petrovich (1926–)
A Soviet spacecraft design engineer and cosmonaut.
Together with Sergei Korolev, Feoktistov began conceptualizing
a manned space vehicle that could travel into
orbit and return safely to Earth as early as June 1956. He
helped design the Vostok spacecraft and its subsequent
conversion to the multiseater Voskhod. For this he was
rewarded with the dubious pleasure of flying alongside
two crewmates in the extremely risky Voskhod 1 mission
in 1964, thus becoming the first scientist-engineer in
space. As head of his own bureau, he played a major role
in the design of the civilian Salyut and Mir space stations
and served as flight director on the Soyuz 18/Salyut mission
in 1975. Although assigned to fly on Soyuz T3, he
was grounded a few days before launch because of medical
problems. Later he joined Energia NPO before retiring
in 1990. Feoktistov graduated from E. N. Bauman
Moscow Higher Technical School (MVTU) with a doctorate
in physics. 142