Last week's Aviation Week has a two-page article on the
tethered satellite. Interesting. I have the complete
article, if anyone's interested.
The best quote, though, is from the astronauts on-board
the shuttle at the time of the failure.
Here's the relevant excerpt from the article:
Because of thermal limits, the electron guns could be used
only 30% of the time. It was during one of the gun's cool-down
periods, with 3,500v of potential in the tether but no current
flowing, that the tether snapped.
"The tether has broken at the, uh, at the boom," Hoffman
declared to Houston. "The tether has broken and it's going
away from us."
With the speed of TSS-1R's separation, Allen and Horowitz had
to take no evasive maneuver, although Columbia did move toward
Earth at about 0.3 fps. as its center of mass shifted with the
loss of the sphere and tether.
