Return-path: X-Andrew-Authenticated-as: 7997;andrew.cmu.edu;Ted Anderson Received: from holmes.andrew.cmu.edu via trymail for +dist+/afs/andrew.cmu.edu/usr1/ota/space/space.dl@andrew.cmu.edu (->+dist+/afs/andrew.cmu.edu/usr1/ota/space/space.dl) (->ota+space.digests) ID ; Fri, 24 Mar 89 03:16:42 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: Reply-To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU From: space-request+@Andrew.CMU.EDU To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU Date: Fri, 24 Mar 89 03:16:34 -0500 (EST) Subject: SPACE Digest V9 #309 SPACE Digest Volume 9 : Issue 309 Today's Topics: Room Temperature Fusion - possible indication? Space News RE: Black hole trolling Re: Solar cells on the moon Re: Congressional Blame Re: Discovery's return-to-flight photographs record many firsts (Forwarded) Re: Discovery's return-to-flight photographs record many firsts (Forwarded) Re: Moronic Television Coverage ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 23 Mar 89 16:42:23 EST From: Glenn Chapman To: XB.N31@forsythe.stanford.edu, space-editors-new@andrew.cmu.edu, yaron@astro.as.utexas.edu Subject: Room Temperature Fusion - possible indication? A very astounding breakthrough just may have been made in nuclear fusion. According to both the Financial Times (Mar 23, pg. 1, 26, and 22) and the Wall Street Journal (Mar. 23, b1 & b8) two scientist will announce indications of room temperature fusion of heavy hydrogen (deuterium) inside a solid material today at the University of Utah. These are not off the wall guys - the FT points out that both are experimental experts in electrochemistry (Dr. Martin Fleischmann of Southampton University UK, Dr. Stan Pons of University of Utah). Fleischmann is also a fellow of the Royal Society in London. I will summarize the articles but suggest that you get hold of the FT one (the WSJ was written by someone who really does not know the details). I have added some physics info to make it more understandable. The process they are using consists of the following. Consider an electrochemical cell (like a battery) with a platinum electrode, a heated palladium electrode in a bath of heavy water (deuterium oxide). Flow current from the palladium (negative electrode) to the platinum electrode (positive one). At some current the deuterium flow into the palladium, combined with the effect of the material itself, causes the deuterium nuclei to come together and fuse into helium 3 plus a neutron (with 3.27 MeV of energy) or tritium plus hydrogen (with 4.03 MeV, 1 MeV = 1.6E-13 Joules of energy). (My speculation the fusion processes here are not certain). To show the real strangeness here note that the repulsive forces from the positive charges on the two nuclei normally require temperatures of 50 - 100 Million degrees to overcome (high temp. mean the atoms are travelling very fast and so when they collide they overcome the repulsion to get close enough together to have fusion occur). This room temp. result is obviously very unusual. What really indicates that fusion has occurred is that the FT article states they saw fusion products, gamma rays, tritium and neutrons, none of which are generated by chemical processes. It is especially the neutrons that are important - that shows that fusion occurred. People at the UK Atomic Energy Authority say they know of the work and are treating it seriously. The article has been submitted to the British science journal Nature. Just my own speculation but one thing that may agree with this is that there is a material called Zeolite which stores hydrogen at densities higher than that of liquid hydrogen. This shows that solids can force hydrogen atoms closer together than they normally would be. There is a news conference that will be held today at U of Utah. If there is anyone who can get more information on this please send it to me. Glenn Chapman MIT Lincoln Lab glenn@ll-vlsi.arpa ------------------------------ Date: 22 Mar 89 14:40:01 GMT From: cfa!cfa250!mcdowell@husc6.harvard.edu (Jonathan McDowell) Subject: Space News Jonathan's Space Report Mar 21, 1989 (No. 8) Space Shuttle Mission STS-29 ended on Mar 18 with the landing of Discovery on concrete RW 22 at Edwards. Atlantis has been mated with the STS-30 stack at Kennedy Space Center; it has been in the VAB since Mar 12 and is due to be moved to pad 39B tonight (Mar 21/22). The Soviet Union has launched the Progress-41 robot cargo tanker, and docked it with the Mir orbital station on Mar 19. The SDIO Delta Star launch has been delayed. ------------------------------ Date: 21 Mar 89 17:38:10 GMT From: killer!pollux!ti-csl!m2.csc.ti.com@ames.arc.nasa.gov (Dane Meyer) Subject: RE: Black hole trolling The following response was generated by a physicist who wishes to remain anonomous to avoid megabytes of mail being sent to him. But he agreed to let me post his comments for your information. Dane Meyer (Texas Instruments, Dallas) ARPA/CSnet: dmeyer@csc.ti.com UUCP: {convex!smu im4u texsun pollux iex rice}!ti-csl!dmeyer ------------------------------------------------------------------------- <<< Easy. The forces that hold a macroscopic object together are <<< electromagnetic. They require the exchange of virtual photons between <<< the particles to be held together. When the object extends across the <<< event horizon, the photons can no longer go from the atoms inside the <<< black hole to the atoms outside. Thus the tether is neatly sliced. Too simplified! The answer below is actually more accurate. < Formerly: National Bureau of Standards Sub-Organization: National Computer and Telecommunications Laboratory Disclaimer: Opinions expressed are those of the sender and do not reflect NIST policy or agreement. Subject: Re: Solar cells on the moon >From: pitt!cisunx!jcbst3@cadre.dsl.pittsburgh.edu (James C. Benz) >Subject: Re: Solar cells on the moon >In article <8902280411.AA08018@cmr.icst.nbs.gov> roberts@CMR.ICST.NBS.GOV (John Roberts) writes: > >>power storage (3 weeks or more). A pivoting solar array would cost much >>more than one just laid flat on high ground, and would only collect about >>60% more power (at the equator). It would, however, provide full power >*ONLY* 60% ? seems like a lot of power to give up to me. It may seem like a lot, but you should remember that land area and solar energy are now effectively unlimited on the surface of the moon, so the figures of greatest interest are the cost and reliability of a total system to provide the power needed. For an initial lunar station, with components manufactured on earth and transported to the moon, structural members cost about as much per pound as solar cells. In spite of the low gravity and lack of wind, it would be very difficult to design and build a large tracking system that could be easily transported and assembled on the moon. If use of a tracking solar array raises the peak power cost by a factor of 2-4 (a cautiously pessimistic estimate), but you only get ~60% more total power, then it may be a poor economic decision to choose a tracking system. There are many factors going into the choice of a lunar power system, some of them discussed in the original posting. A tracking system provides a longer period of peak power output, but can be expected to be much less reliable. (In calculating power collection, I use a simplifying assumption from a book on solar power, that the power produced by a solar cell, as a ratio to peak power, is directly proportional to the sine of the angle of the incident light. By integration over 180 degrees or pi radians, the energy gathered by a passive collector is 2 / pi, or ~64% of the power gathered in the same time by a collector pointed directly at the source.) If the tracking collector gets stuck pointed at the horizon, it will gather power only 25% of the time, with total energy collection half that of a passive system pointed straight up. Passive or active reflectors are another option to consider. Some people feel that the best initial lunar power system would be a solar thermal system, with heat storage underground for use during the lunar night. John Roberts roberts@cmr.icst.nbs.gov ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 21 Mar 1989 13:32-EST From: Dale.Amon@H.GP.CS.CMU.EDU Subject: Re: Congressional Blame > Not exactly. Congress , while by no means blameless, did not turn the > shuttle into a hodgepodge of fiscal compromises. Blame Dick Nixon, who If you want to see what congressional micromanagement does to government agencies, I recommend you read "The Unexpurgated Grace Commission Report". I believe it is available from the Cato Institute in DC. The version released by the Reagan administration was sanitized so as not to offend powerful men. But the original authors had rights to their work and later published the original, WITH names of all the very guilty parties. If you want to see how corrupt your government is (and very nonpartisanly corrupt) read this report. I recommend you have nothing breakable or crushable near you while your read it. I still don't believe NASA can lead us into space, but this book shows clearly one of the reasons they and other agencies do such atrociously poor jobs. And PS: I do basically agree with Marc's article. ------------------------------ Date: 22 Mar 89 05:33:05 GMT From: urania.CS.ORST.EDU!willitd@cs.orst.edu (Don Willits) Subject: Re: Discovery's return-to-flight photographs record many firsts (Forwarded) I had the privlege to meet Pat Jones who works at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, and conducts much of the preliminary work on Shuttle photography, as well as astronaut briefings. As a result, I have two comments: 1) The Great Wall *IS NOT* the only man-made object visible from orbit. If I remember correctly, it is the only one visible *FROM THE MOON*. Many of the slides taken from shuttle (that Pat showed in the lecture series she held here at Oregon State) show CLEAR and RECOGNIZABLE signs of human habitation. From tankers dumping oil at sea to cities themselves (such as Moscow, Rome, New York, and a personal favorite of the astronauts: Houston) 2) For anyone wishing to obtain copies of photos taken from Shuttle, the Lunar and Planetary Institute sells several excellent slide sets (put together by Pat). For more information, contact: Lunar and Planetary Institute 3303 NASA Road One Houston, TX 77058-4399 U.S.A. LPI also offers a number of other slide sets as well as a number of interesting books. Write them for a catalog. Don Willits willitd@urania.cs.orst.edu ------------------------------ Date: 22 Mar 89 03:36:59 GMT From: beowulf!carraghe@sdcsvax.ucsd.edu (Robert Carragher) Subject: Re: Discovery's return-to-flight photographs record many firsts (Forwarded) In article <22768@ames.arc.nasa.gov> yee@trident.arc.nasa.gov (Peter E. Yee) writes: >Charles Redmond >NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C. March 14, 1989 > >James Hartsfield >Johnson Space Center, Houston > > >RELEASE: 89- > >DISCOVERY'S RETURN-TO-FLIGHT PHOTOGRAPHS RECORD MANY FIRSTS >[lots of stuff on pictures deleted] Can we actually get these? (free/$$$) If so, what is the place to mail requests? Thanks. Please reply via email to avoid flooding the net with answers to these (probably) oft-asked questions. Bob Carragher Reply: rcarragher@ucsd.edu These opinions represent those of my OR rcarragh@ucsd.edu company! -- Representative if the above didn't work. Me, Myself, and I, Inc. ------------------------------ Date: 21 Mar 89 23:37:26 GMT From: naucse!rrw@arizona.edu (Robert Wier) Subject: Re: Moronic Television Coverage If you'd like better coverage of the shuttle flights, you might try your local cable-tv company. Back before the FCC deregulated cable, most systems had to devote a certain number of channels to "public interest" and "local interest" programming. Some still do this in order to maintain good will with local regulating agencies (although they can no longer really regulate). When I was at my last school in Fort Worth, Texas I beat on the local cable company for about a year to provide continuous coverage of manned missions taken from the NASA Select satellite transponder. It was a real hassel, since the cable company didn't really want to do it, and required me to do things like get permission from NASA in writing that is was ok to rebroadcast. At any rate, by invoking the use of the school's public access channel, getting IEEE to sponsor (in a political, not fiscal way) the coverage, and generally pointing out that there were a large number of scientific and engineering type subscribers in the area (due to the presence of General Dynamics, etc) I got it going. I was gratified to see that the coverage was listed in the local newspaper as a "special service" to the community. - Bob Wier College of Engineering Flagstaff, Arizona Northern Arizona University ...arizona!naucse!rrw | BITNET: WIER@NAUVAX | *usual disclaimers* ------------------------------ End of SPACE Digest V9 #309 *******************