From ota Fri Jun 3 03:04:40 1988 Received: by angband.s1.gov id AA02935; Fri, 3 Jun 88 03:04:24 PDT id AA02935; Fri, 3 Jun 88 03:04:24 PDT Date: Fri, 3 Jun 88 03:04:24 PDT From: Ted Anderson Message-Id: <8806031004.AA02935@angband.s1.gov> To: Space@angband.s1.gov Reply-To: Space@angband.s1.gov Subject: SPACE Digest V8 #242 SPACE Digest Volume 8 : Issue 242 Today's Topics: Re: Mars Re: Shooting the Moon Re: Shooting the Moon Vocabulary lesson #6: Joint Mars Mission Re: Shooting the Moon Mars Landing Re: Radar (was Shooting the Moon) Re: Shooting the Moon Re: Question about Richard Hoagland/Mars Project Re: Radar (was Shooting the Moon) When in doubt, nuke it... Re: Shooting the Moon Re: Shooting the Moon Shooting the Moon Re: When in doubt, nuke it... Re: When in doubt, nuke it... Re: When in doubt, nuke it... ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 5 May 88 16:45:20 GMT From: mnetor!utzoo!henry@uunet.uu.net (Henry Spencer) Subject: Re: Mars > If any of the probes sent there weren't properly sterilised before > launch, colonies of bacteria could still be living in the remains of > the (hard or soft) lander. I believe that at least one of the early Soviet hard-landers is thought *not* to have been sterilized. Oh well. Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology {ihnp4,decvax,uunet!mnetor}!utzoo!henry ------------------------------ Date: 6 May 88 17:43:34 GMT From: paul.rutgers.edu!styx.rutgers.edu!masticol@rutgers.edu (Steve Masticola) Subject: Re: Shooting the Moon In article <5045@nsc.nsc.com> ken@nsc.nsc.com ({JOAT}) writes: > Why does it have to be a nuclear explosion?, why not a small chemical > charge. Serious answers: Thermite might work better than explosives, because an explosion (as was pointed out earlier) might just uncover buried rock. On the other hand, the explosives or thermite required would be massive, maybe prohibitively so. Maybe the cheapest answer is radar imaging on the lander and fine enough steerability to avoid the boulders. If there's a way to use the radar after it landed, great! But then again, two Vikings got down without landing on a boulder, didn't they? So maybe imaging radars and fancy boulder-avoidance hardware isn't really needed. (Flame anticipation: Yeah, I know they could have come down on a rock. The point is that they didn't, twice. I think this conclusively proves that it's possible to land unmanned vehicles on Mars without nuclear pyrotechnics.) Flippant answer: The use of a technically elegant solution would prevent the Curtiss LeMays from using atom bombs on the Koreans _sorry_ Vietnamese _er_ the Iranians _whoops!_ Mars. Let the big kids have some fun once in awhile, why dontcha? Just a little one? Aw, come on, it's just a little city _I mean_ planet... ------------------------------ Date: 6 May 88 08:49:50 GMT From: sj1f+@andrew.cmu.edu (Steven Kent Jensen) Subject: Re: Shooting the Moon I personally would not support the detonation of an atomic weapon on Mars because of the amount of scientific data that we would lose. BUT as a concept I approve whole-heartedly. Part of the problem with the space program is that the imagination has bled from NASA, in fact it has bled from the whole country. If you ask someone why they do something a certain way they will most likely tell you that that was the way it had always been done. America needs to start THINKING, and not just along the same, old lines. Steven Jensen ------------------------------ Reply-To: pnet01!jim@trout.nosc.mil Date: Fri, 6 May 88 19:31:34 PDT From: jim@pnet01.cts.com (Jim Bowery) To: crash!Space@angband.s1.gov Subject: Vocabulary lesson #6: Joint Mars Mission Joint Mars Mission, n, a diabolically clever Soviet plot to destroy American leadership in space by allowing NASA to take credit for Soviet space accomplishments and thus lulling the American populace into believing that they have a space program. ARPA: crash!pnet01!jim@nosc.mil ------------------------------ Date: 6 May 88 20:57:15 GMT From: tektronix!reed!douglas@ucbvax.berkeley.edu (P Douglas Reeder) Subject: Re: Shooting the Moon Is 1m resolution the only way to tell if there are 1m rocks at your Martian landing site? Is there no computer processing method that could dectect surface roughness and tell you there are 1m rocks without being able to say exactly where they are? ------------------------------ Date: 6 May 88 18:37:31 GMT From: ganelon.usc.edu!robiner@oberon.usc.edu (Steve) Subject: Mars Landing All this talk about nuclear detonations on Mars sounds totally unnecessary. No accurate data on landing sites? How did we land the Viking which tolerates much less than 1m boulders? If Viking did its own maneuvering, which I don't think it did, at least we know that terrain very well now, why not land the rover right next to it, and go for a walk. =Steve= ------------------------------ Date: 7 May 88 20:18:29 GMT From: pioneer!eugene@ames.arc.nasa.gov (Eugene N. Miya) Subject: Re: Radar (was Shooting the Moon) In article masticol@styx.rutgers.edu (Steve Masticola) writes: >massive, maybe prohibitively so. Maybe the cheapest answer is radar >imaging on the lander and fine enough steerability to avoid the >boulders. If there's a way to use the radar after it landed, great! I'm amazed that you guys are so infatuated with radar (imaging). Sure for the final decent, but 1 and 3 meter mapping? We have a ways to go to understand how it works. Mars is one of the last planets RSAG wants to image. Processing equipment is very heavy. Seasat images took 2 weeks to process adequately. The DC-8 up here is just about ready for JPL missions I occasionally see some of the guys up here. On Curtis LeMay: I just saw "Wild Blue Yonder" this morning before driving into work. Drop that phorphous! --eugene miya, NASA Ames Research Center, eugene@ames-aurora.ARPA ------------------------------ Date: 7 May 88 15:58:39 GMT From: portal!cup.portal.com!Daniel_C_Anderson@uunet.uu.net Subject: Re: Shooting the Moon Aside from the technological considerations of nuking Mars to provide a landing site, there is the matter of aesthetics. Nuking Mars would be a crudity akin to spray-painting directions to your party in 100-ft letters on the Grand Canyon. A cosmic act of inconsideration by a F-T-Universe species. It'd make us look bad. Even if it works. --Daniel ------------------------------ Date: 9 May 88 15:55:52 GMT From: mike@ames.arc.nasa.gov (Mike Smithwick) Subject: Re: Question about Richard Hoagland/Mars Project > Hoagland is generally regarded as a nut. Ahhhhh, but a very entertaining nut! I saw him at a local L-5 meeting a few years back, and found his talk utterly preposterous, but fun. >NASA is to spaceflight as | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology >the Post Office is to mail. | {ihnp4,decvax,uunet!mnetor}!utzoo!henry Perhaps, but the PO is largely independent, whereas NASA is run by a bunch of lawyers (read : "congresscritters") who think they know about science. ------------------------------ Date: 9 May 88 17:33:22 GMT From: phri!dasys1!tneff@nyu.edu (Tom Neff) Subject: Re: Radar (was Shooting the Moon) In article <8444@ames.arpa> eugene@pioneer.UUCP (Eugene N. Miya) writes: >... Mars is one of the last planets RSAG wants to image. Processing >equipment is very heavy. Seasat images took 2 weeks to process >adequately... Good, another reason for a joint mission. Ivan eats heavy payloads for breakfast. And why does a 2 week processing turnaround matter in this context? If the imaging is being done in support of an unmanned lander mission, just park the orbiter/lander assembly in orbit until JPL can decipher the data and make a decision. If it's in support of a manned mission, you could ALMOST do the same thing (hell, it takes them a year to get there, there ought to be two weeks' worth of stuff to do before landing), but more appropriately you could use an unmanned orbiter launched to arrive months beforehand. Anyway if this were part of an actual Mars mission you have to believe that more supercomputer resources would be online for you guys, and more manpower too. Would it REALLY still take 2 weeks? Tom Neff ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 16 May 88 14:46:59 PDT From: Dana Myers To: paulf@shasta.stanford.edu Cc: space@angband.s1.gov Subject: When in doubt, nuke it... >Date: 29 Apr 88 16:27:42 GMT >From: paulf@shasta.stanford.edu (Paul A. Flaherty) >Subject: Shooting the Moon > >I'm currently involved with the joint Stanford - JPL mission to Mars; >for those of you who don't know about this, we're looking at placing an >orbiter in sun - sync, two repeaters in "Molniya" orbits, and landing a >pair of rovers. > >The biggest problem we're faced with at the moment is landing site >selection, and crash landing aviodance, eg., not putting down on top of >a large boulder. This is a rather difficult proposition, since the >best hi-res photography we'll be able to get will have about 3m >resolution (pessimistically), and we can, at best, tolerate 1m >boulders. How did Viking accomplish this? Luck? >For this reason, my design partner and I have proposed a radical >approach: build a landing site. The site would consist of a two >kilometer wide flat landing strip, which will be easily visible to the >lander. Construction benefits would include knowledge of regional >atmospherics, seismic data generation, and lander simplification. >Unfortunately, since Mars is currently uninhabited, we cannot simply >hire a construction crew. Therefore, we are forced to consider a >simple, engineered solution to landing field construction. Mars may not be currently uninhabited. We (Earthlings) currently view it as such. This is a very important difference. The bottom line is that it is not inhabited by know contractors. >The explosion of a 35 kiloton nuclear device, optomized for heat blast, >at approximately 100m above the Martian surface, would create a >glass-smooth landing pad, with the required dimensions, and the above >stated benefits. I am not convinced that you would get the "glass smooth" landing pad you expect. Also, the integrity of the pad may not be too wonderful. There could be "soft spots" in the middle of your landing pad waiting for your lander to fall in. In terms of science, detonating a nuclear device isn't exactly a low impact incident on ANY planet's ecology. You would get one benefit for sure. You would distinguish yourself as the one to make the first act of nuclear violence on another planet. >No, this is not a joke. We're very serious about this. Go ask someone who lived through Hiroshima or Nagasaki -- imagine if someone decided YOUR backyard was going to be a nuke-prepared landing pad and they couldn't see anything in the way 'coz their cameras couldn't see anything smaller than 10 feet big. How would you feel? You'd probably be upset enough if someone landed a big helicopter in your back yard, much less a spacecraft without nuking your yard first. Try to keep a "do unto others (other planets, lifeforms, etc.) as you wish them to do unto you" attitude. It would ruin your (not to mention my) day if the (currently undiscovered) Martians retaliated for the nuclear attack with attimatter weapons. At the very least, you may corrupt some otherwise interesting scientific data. >I'd appreciate comments / suggestions on this proposal. Dana H. Myers, WA6ZGB | "The proposal to nuke Mars for a landing Locus Computing Corp. | pad is clear evidence that STANFORD Santa Monica, CA | isn't doing any in-house drug testing." | -- Dana Myers ------------------------------ Date: 17 May 88 18:56:40 GMT From: killer!tness7!tness1!sugar!peter@eddie.mit.edu (Peter da Silva) Subject: Re: Shooting the Moon In article <5181@cup.portal.com>, Daniel_C_Anderson@cup.portal.com.UUCP writes: > Nuking Mars would be a crudity akin to spray-painting directions to > your party in 100-ft letters on the Grand Canyon. A cosmic act of > inconsideration by a F-T-Universe species. It'd make us look bad. Why? What good is Mars? It doesn't even have an ecosystem. There's a lot to be said for just busting the thing wide open and making a bunch of useful asteroids. Venus, too... in fact you could make a better case for Venus. But there's really no hurry. There are plenty of asteroids out there yet. Let Mars lie fallow for a while. Hell, we haven't even gotten a decent start on the moon. -- Peter da Silva ------------------------------ Date: 16 May 88 20:23:24 GMT From: uflorida!novavax!midas!mkraiesk@umd5.umd.edu (Mark Kraieski) Subject: Re: Shooting the Moon in article <2739@Shasta.STANFORD.EDU>, paulf@Shasta.STANFORD.EDU (Paul A. Flaherty) says: > No, this is not a joke. We're very serious about this. > > I'd appreciate comments / suggestions on this proposal. Great idea! But one warhead may not be enough. I know, since we are cozying up to the Ruskies so much on space stuff, lets combine all of our warheads and all of theirs and ship the whole load to Mars. We could even send high government officials along to make sure it works! Seriously, if the best our scientists can come up with for landing a craft on uneven terrain is thermo nuclear destruction then I fear the end is near! This is like using a rocket launcher for geese. Mark E. Kraieski Gould, CSD Ft. Lauderdale ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 19 May 88 14:53:57 EDT From: loeb@BOURBAKI.MIT.EDU To: paul.rutgers.edu!styx.rutgers.edu!masticol@rutgers.edu Cc: Space@angband.s1.gov Subject: Shooting the Moon Not only that but the resolution of a spysat going around Mars is bound to be better than the same resolution around Earth. The reason for this is that LMO (Low Mars Orbit) is much lower than LEO (Low Earth Orbit). Danny ------------------------------ Date: 19 May 88 19:58:57 GMT From: pacbell!cogent!uop!todd@ames.arc.nasa.gov (Dr. Nethack) Subject: Re: When in doubt, nuke it... Why not use a "Daisy cutter"? Worked well in Vietnam, and non nuclear! I would rather they use X-ray imaging to explore the landing zone first, maybe with some other specrtal things thrown in for good measure. I hardly think this is a supreme problem necessitating a nuclear device. ------------------------------ Date: 19 May 88 19:28:17 GMT From: devvax!jplpro!leem@elroy.jpl.nasa.gov (Lee Mellinger) Subject: Re: When in doubt, nuke it... In article <8805162352.AA17060@mordor.s1.gov> bilbo.dana@SEAS.UCLA.EDU (Dana Myers) writes: | How did Viking accomplish this? Luck? Mostly, yes. The Viking orbiters surveyed the surface for several weeks prior to choosing a landing site. I don't remember the resolution, but it certainly wasn't 3m. The most benign location was chosen from the pictures made during that survey. You've probably seen the pictures from these "benign" locations. Lander 1 came down about 10m from a boulder that would certainly destroyed it had it landed there. Lee |Lee F. Mellinger Jet Propulsion Laboratory - NASA| ------------------------------ Date: 20 May 88 16:37:43 GMT From: concertina!fiddler@sun.com (Steve Hix) Subject: Re: When in doubt, nuke it... In article <1477@uop.edu>, todd@uop.edu (Dr. Nethack) writes: > Why not use a "Daisy cutter"? Worked well in Vietnam, and non nuclear! Do you remember how much one weighs and how big it is? You'd do better to haul 1500 pounds of foam rubber for a self-carried landing mat. :} ------------------------------ End of SPACE Digest V8 #242 *******************