Return-path: X-Andrew-Authenticated-as: 0;andrew.cmu.edu;Network-Mail Received: from andrew.cmu.edu via trymail for ota+space.digests@andrew.cmu.edu ID ; Mon, 11 Jul 88 23:25:19 -0400 (EDT) Received: by andrew.cmu.edu (5.54/3.15) id for ota+space.digests; Mon, 11 Jul 88 23:23:10 EDT Received: by angband.s1.gov id AA11576; Mon, 11 Jul 88 20:23:36 PDT id AA11576; Mon, 11 Jul 88 20:23:36 PDT Date: Mon, 11 Jul 88 20:23:36 PDT From: Ted Anderson Message-Id: <8807120323.AA11576@angband.s1.gov> To: Space@angband.s1.gov Reply-To: Space@angband.s1.gov Subject: SPACE Digest V8 #269 SPACE Digest Volume 8 : Issue 269 Today's Topics: The U.S. Virtual (or Imaginary) Space Program Launch Sequence Details Re: Cometesimals Re: Bureaucracy vs. space MOOSE Re: Bureaucracy vs. space Re: Bureaucracy vs. space Re: Mars Underground News Re: Recycling Pershing-II's ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 7 Jun 88 21:23 PDT From: William Daul / McAir / McDonnell-Douglas Corp Subject: The U.S. Virtual (or Imaginary) Space Program message It struct me as being a bit humorous the SPACE news today. The primary story was the launch of the 3 Soviet cosmonauts (1 actually Bulgarian) and the secondary story was the successful imaginary (CBS did use that word to describe the simulation) launch of the shuttle. It got my imagination going... The US is so far ahead of the soviets in the imaginary space program. They can't even dream how far ahead. The imaginary launch even had a imaginary problem causing a imaginary early return. Imagine that! Our virtual space program is on the verge of great accomplishments. Perhaps we could have a virtual manned mission to Mars. The program would cost so much less. Virtual dollars are almost unlimited if we DO need to spend anything on it. The program would only be limited by the imagination. I am a bit jealous of the Soviet program...that is why I make light of ours here. I do hope we find the path to return to space. --Bi(( ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 8 Jun 88 08:10:09 MDT From: ZSYJKAA%WYOCDC1.BITNET@cunyvm.cuny.edu (Jim Kirkpatrick 307 766-5303) Subject: Launch Sequence Details Where might I find detailed launch-sequence specifications for, say, the Space Shuttle? I'm interested (just curiosity) in details such as have recently shown up on the amateur radio list: (paraphrasing from memory) "At H0 minus .38 seconds propellant valves are opened" and "at H0 plus 63 seconds the pad hold-down clamps are blown open." I have long thought a fascinating short movie (15-30 minutes) could be made that chronicles the launch sequence with detailed verbal explanations accompanied by appropriate photography and computer-generated animation. Such a movie would probably begin long before launch (begin with fueling and arming perhaps), and as it gets closer to actual launch, where things get real busy real quick, the time scale would obviously have to shift. I have no doubt many technical people would find this a fascinating insight. I also have few doubts it would never get done. So, is there at least a publicly-accessible document/article that details a real sequence? ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 8 Jun 88 20:38:15 CDT From: kistler%Iowa.Iowa@romeo.caltech.edu (Allen C. Kistler) Subject: Re: Cometesimals For those interested in the small comet theory of Lou Frank, John Sigwarth, and John Craven (all here at the University of Iowa), these are the references (not in bibliographic form, but good enough) which some of you have requested. All of these are in _Geophysical_Research_Letters_, a monthly publication of the American Geophysical Union covering research in space science, atmospheric studies, geology, hydrology, and oceanography. AGU is a non-profit organization, equal-opportunity employer, and all those other good things. Someday I'll be a member. {I've got some text of my own afterwards.} Original papers are in the April 1986 GRL ----------------------------------------- [1] On the Influx of Small Comets in the Earth's Upper Atmosphere: I. Observations [2] On the Influx of Small Comets in the Earth's Upper Atmosphere: II. Interpretation Replies to Comments (NOTE: Titles listed below are my own designation. Usually published titles run like "Reply to .") ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] June 1986 Atmospheric transport of extraterrestrial water; and effects of cometesimals on Venus and Mars [2] June 1986 Dusty mantles of the cometesimals [3] Sept 1986 Cometesimal signatures for in situ ionospheric measurements [4] Sept 1986 Thermal stability of cometesimals in the inner solar system [5] Oct 1986 Statistical possibility of instrumentation fluke [6] Nov 1986 Estimation of maximum lunar seismic event amplitude [7] Dec 1986 Crustal deposition rate of extraterrestrial iridium; and comparison of cometesimals to larger comets [8] Feb 1987 Calculation of optical detection rate [9] May 1987 More statistical consideration of instrumentation flukes [10] July 1987 Recapitulation of extraterrestrial iridium deposition ## And now for a different tactic... ########################################## >From: mtunx!whuts!sw@rutgers.edu (WARMINK) > > .... It is generally accepted that water once flowed >on Mars, but cycles of thawing and freezing? I would immagine that such cycles >would have a drastic impact upon the Martian surface, which does not fit in >with the large number of craters observed. I would be interested to find out >where the evidence for multiply thawing/freezing cycles comes from. Does >water vapour have the same greenhouse effect as CO2? Why water vapour anyway? >The Martian atmosphere contains a significant percentage of CO2.... There are not freezing/thawing cycles. Water arrives at Mars via the cometesimals. The same thing happens at Mars that happens at Earth: the atmosphere heats the snowballs until they are clouds of vapor. However the Martian atmosphere cannot support the water, so most of it freezes on the surface. What does remain in the atmosphere generates a greenhouse effect. Water DOES have the same effect as CO2. The planet heats up; the atmosphere can support more water; the heating rate increases, etc., until the ice melts, rivers flow, and Mars has Spring, such as it is. But Mars is a smaller planet. With all this heat, it essentially blows its stack. The water escapes out into space, including the liquid water which is now evaporating. There is no longer enough greenhouse effect to keep the planet warm. Mars cools down, waterless. The CO2 stays because it's heavy by comparison. But there are still the cometesimals bringing water in from the Oort disk.... There are maybe THAWING cycles, if you want to call them that. "Periodic Spring" is a more common designation. It's an idea that's been kicked around previously, but nobody ever figured out a way that it could happen. The cometesimal theory hardly turns on this point, however. If you would like the authors' own words, read Reply [1] above. >From: mcvax!ukc!its63b!bob@uunet.uu.net (ERCF08 Bob Gray) > >In article <1002@aicchi.UUCP> dbb@aicchi.UUCP (Burch) writes: >>... Could this explain (neatly) the occasional reports that >>lunar observers have made of clouds of water vapor? I recall that these >>have been from near the terminator, logical if a snowball hit during the >>night, and was being vaporized by the sun.... > >.... A comet or small comet or snowball is in orbit round the sun. If the >moon gets in the way, the snowball would hit the lunar surface at a velocity >measured in kilometers per second. (or miles per second if you are observing >from the Space Station :->) > >Any snowball would be ionised by the impact, which would >also make a large hole in the surface.... >From: Peter Scott > >Well, hold on a moment. Using the authors' figures of 12m diameter and >0.1 g/cm**3 density, such a snowball travelling at 6 km/sec impacts with >1.5 *10**12 joules, a yield of about a quarter of a kiloton.... If >someone can explain how such an impact could not leave a crater at least >10m in diameter, I'd like to hear from them. By my calculations, at >most one-fifth of the energy would be used in vaporizing the snowball. >From: oliveb!3comvax!michaelm@ames.arc.nasa.gov (Michael McNeil) > >I also believed that the lack of lunar craters constantly being created >was a flaw in this idea, but then one newspaper report I read implied >that what was happening was that tidal forces would break up the very >fragile snowballs well before they got near the Earth or the Moon. If >the matter were sufficiently dispersed by the time it arrived at the >Moon, creation of a crater could be avoided.... Tidal forces help break up the cometesimals as they approach the Earth, but are insufficient to break them up as they approach the moon. They hit the moon with about a kiloton of TNT equivalent energy. It is an important point that the cometesimals are water instead of rock. They are vaporized within about 5 msec (read "instantly"). The shock of impact compression heats them to more than just sea-level boiling. The deepest depression would only be about 20 cm deep. I wouldn't call that a crater, but if you want to... okay. For the authors' own words, see Reply [6] above. ------------------+------------------------------------------------------------ Allen Kistler | kistler%iowa.iowa@Iago.Caltech.edu Internet <-use sparingly University of Iowa| kistler::iowa SPAN <-NASA pays ------------------+------------------------------------------------------------ Disclaimer: Any mangling of the above concepts is my own mistake, otherwise it's not MY fault if it's true! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------ Date: 6 Jun 88 22:52:25 GMT From: mnetor!utzoo!henry@uunet.uu.net (Henry Spencer) Subject: Re: Bureaucracy vs. space > Comparing the Space Shuttle with a cargo airplane is utterly pointless > since they provide a completely different service. Strange, I had always thought they were rather similar except for different operating regions. Certainly NASA has said so in the past. Can you elaborate on how, say, delivering a satellite into low orbit is *completely* different from delivering a load of instruments to Antarctica? > In case you haven't figured it out yet, there is a world of difference > between building airplanes and building space launchers. Of course there's a real difference, the same way there's a difference between building trucks and building airplanes. Oddly enough, I do not find this to be sufficient explanation for the sad state of spaceflight at the moment. Especially since the Long March is built by a refrigerator company and works just fine as a space launcher. > The fact that > we went from Orville and Wilbur to the 747 and affordable air transport > in a single human lifespan is not "proof" that the same rate of progress > in space transportation could occur "if only the Government would get > out of the way"... No... but it suggests what might, perhaps, be possible if the government stopped trying to run the show and concentrating on *helping*, the way it did for aviation. If agreeing with people like Max Hunter and Del Tischler that progress could be much quicker makes me a Space Cadet, so be it. (For those who don't recognize the names: Hunter took the Thor missile [today's Delta launcher is a somewhat souped-up Thor] from initial design to initial deliveries in something like two years. His entire staff was smaller than the current government *launch crew* for a Delta. Tischler wrote the specs for the F-1 [definitely the US's most successful big rocket engine] in 24 hours, had them reviewed in a couple of weeks, and had full- scale development underway within three months.) -- "For perfect safety... sit on a fence| Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology and watch the birds." --Wilbur Wright| {ihnp4,decvax,uunet!mnetor}!utzoo!henry ------------------------------ Date: 8 Jun 88 01:16:19 GMT From: ecsvax!dgary@mcnc.org (D Gary Grady) Subject: MOOSE Anyone remember the Man Out Of Space Easiest (MOOSE) project? As I recall, this was a 60s effort to develop a reentry vehicle usable by individuals. It comprised a spacesuit, something to generate a foam heatshield (inflated in the fashion of a life vest), a retro pack, and a parachute. Seems to me it would be useful for certain space shuttle emergencies. -- D Gary Grady (919) 286-4296 USENET: {seismo,decvax,ihnp4,akgua,etc.}!mcnc!ecsvax!dgary BITNET: dgary@ecsvax.bitnet ------------------------------ Date: 7 Jun 88 16:31:46 GMT From: mnetor!spectrix!tmsoft!utgpu!utzoo!henry@uunet.uu.net (Henry Spencer) Subject: Re: Bureaucracy vs. space [If you think you've seen this before, it's because the first version contained a *serious* typo that I didn't notice until just now. I've sent out a cancellation for it.] > Comparing the Space Shuttle with a cargo airplane is utterly pointless > since they provide a completely different service. Strange, I had always thought they were rather similar except for different operating regions. Certainly NASA has said so in the past. Can you elaborate on how, say, delivering a satellite into low orbit is *completely* different from delivering a load of instruments to Antarctica? > In case you haven't figured it out yet, there is a world of difference > between building airplanes and building space launchers. Of course there's a real difference, the same way there's a difference between building trucks and building airplanes. Oddly enough, I do not find this to be sufficient explanation for the sad state of spaceflight at the moment. Especially since the Long March is built by a refrigerator company and works just fine as a space launcher. > The fact that > we went from Orville and Wilbur to the 747 and affordable air transport > in a single human lifespan is not "proof" that the same rate of progress > in space transportation could occur "if only the Government would get > out of the way"... No... but it suggests what might, perhaps, be possible if the government stopped trying to run the show and concentrated on *helping*, the way it did for aviation. If agreeing with people like Max Hunter and Del Tischler that progress could be much quicker makes me a Space Cadet, so be it. (For those who don't recognize the names: Hunter took the Thor missile [today's Delta launcher is a somewhat souped-up Thor] from initial design to initial deliveries in something like two years. His entire staff was smaller than the current government *launch crew* for a Delta. Tischler wrote the specs for the F-1 [definitely the US's most successful big rocket engine] in 24 hours, had them reviewed in a couple of weeks, and had full- scale development underway within three months.) -- "For perfect safety... sit on a fence| Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology and watch the birds." --Wilbur Wright| {ihnp4,decvax,uunet!mnetor}!utzoo!henry ------------------------------ Date: 8 Jun 88 15:36:47 GMT From: mike@ames.arc.nasa.gov (Mike Smithwick) Subject: Re: Bureaucracy vs. space In article <1988Jun7.163146.14733@utzoo.uucp> henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes: ... delete ...... delete ...... delete ...... delete ...... delete ... >. . .since the Long March is built by a refrigerator >company and works just fine as a space launcher. > And remember, the Space Shuttle was built by a company that also makes power tools! :-> >(For those who don't recognize the names: Hunter took the Thor missile >[today's Delta launcher is a somewhat souped-up Thor] from initial design >to initial deliveries in something like two years. His entire staff was >smaller than the current government *launch crew* for a Delta. Tischler >wrote the specs for the F-1 [definitely the US's most successful big rocket >engine] in 24 hours, had them reviewed in a couple of weeks, and had full- >scale development underway within three months.) >-- Some time ago I remember reading an article in SpaceFlight I think, about a sounding-rocket project carried out in Austrailia. (I read this a year ago, and I forget most of the details) The rockets were very successful, reaching altitudes of several hundreds of miles I believe. The entire team consisted of not much more than a dozen engineers. An American army type toured the facility and couldn't believe what they did with so few people, considering that the army had over a hundred working on a similar project. The secret? None of the engineers would think twice about picking up a broom, and sweeping up if necessary. That is, the phrase "but it's not my job!" was not in their vocabulary. (Henry may want to fill in the details, otherwise I could look them up) Randumb observations by. . . -- *** mike (starship janitor) smithwick *** "Being a dwarf does have it's shortcomings" [disclaimer : nope, I don't work for NASA, I take full blame for my ideas] ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 9 Jun 88 10:15:18 PST From: Peter Scott Subject: Re: Mars Underground News X-Vms-Mail-To: EXOS%"space@angband.s1.gov" Maybe I'm confusing this with another Mars Underground News, but I seem to recall paying $10 (to the Planetary Society, I believe), for the privilege of receiving this newsletter (of which I only remember seeing one). Is this newsletter in Space Digest the same thing? If so, I don't begrudge the society the money - I'd contribute anyway - but it doesn't seem right to publish something for free that people have paid for. ------------------------------ Date: 7 Jun 88 18:27:53 GMT From: thumper!karn@faline.bellcore.com (Phil R. Karn) Subject: Re: Recycling Pershing-II's > > Another story, also by the same writer, describes the atmosphere > > at the Hercules, Inc. plant west of Salt Lake City, where Soviet > > inspectors will be stationed for the next 13 years. Don't forget that the treaty gives the US similar rights to inspect Soviet manufacturing facilities. Any agreement that gives equal inspection rights to both countries is likely to work in our favor, since the Soviets are normally so much more secretive than we are. I would like nothing better than a treaty so comprehensive and providing for so much intrusive on-site verification that military contractors doing classified work are actually forced out of business, assuming of course that the same happens to their Soviet counterparts. Stop thinking about "saving jobs" and start thinking about the effect that the products of those jobs are having on the world. Good old financial greed and narrow self-interest (on both sides) has driven the arms race as much as any genuine Soviet threat. Phil ------------------------------ End of SPACE Digest V8 #269 *******************