Return-path: X-Andrew-Authenticated-as: 7997;andrew.cmu.edu;Ted Anderson Received: from corsica.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, 30 Jun 89 00:25:26 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <8YejMau00UkV4PB04p@andrew.cmu.edu> Reply-To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU From: space-request+@Andrew.CMU.EDU To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU Date: Fri, 30 Jun 89 00:25:13 -0400 (EDT) Subject: SPACE Digest V9 #522 SPACE Digest Volume 9 : Issue 522 Today's Topics: Re: Excerpts From Acting Administrator Truly's remarks at the National Space Outlook Conference (Forwarded) Re: Outer Space Committee Re: [Russians] Lost in Space Re: ADA and space station Re: Moon landing nostalgia Re: Super strings Re: Vaguely-space-related queries ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 21 Jun 89 04:28:43 GMT From: bfmny0!tneff@uunet.uu.net (Tom Neff) Subject: Re: Excerpts From Acting Administrator Truly's remarks at the National Space Outlook Conference (Forwarded) Admiral Truly's remarks ably illustrate everything that's wrong with the US space program. Let me point out a few words that were NOT mentioned in that text. "Mars" "Soviets" "Venus" "Jupiter" "Moonbase" "Mercury" "Uranus" etc. The primary problem is that there is no damn *mission* here except place-holding in LEO and in the budget. We're not shooting for *anything* in space except a meal ticket. Let me read into the record some of Jack Kennedy's words from May 1961. To do so all I have to do is crack Buzz Aldrin's wonderful new book, MEN FROM EARTH (written with Malcom McConnell, who did the definitive Challenger book A MAJOR MALFUNCTION). I recommend this book enthusiastically to all space buffs as a must-have for the bookshelf. (If all you can afford is paperback, start watching carefully in summer 1990 or so.) The President said it was time "...for a great new American enterprise... I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth. No single space project in this period will be more exciting, or more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish." I would like readers of this newsgroup to contemplate *carefully* these words for a moment. They are not idle boilerplate -- they hold within them the seeds of the entire space effort that followed, and in fact drove *two* nations' energies for nearly a decade to come. You could practically parse it phrase by phrase. Imagine it being *time* for a *great new American enterprise.* Imagine us actually *starting something new* in 1989, not a pale follow-on of something we did five years ago, or something the Japanese are already doing, but something *terrifying* that we're not sure *anyone* can do, including us. Just think about that for a moment. Now imagine us *committing ourselves* to *achieving a goal.* Not just sort of limp wristedly agreeing to interim funds for some exploratory studies, but COMMITTING ourselves to ACHIEVING a GOAL as a nation. Don't overlook the President's clause in there -- "returning him SAFELY to Earth." Who remembers that this all important caveat was in there from the very challenge that started the program. We need to think about astronaut SAFETY and COMFORT and DIGNITY rather than stupid comsat SCHEDULES. Right Mr Mulloy? Now look at what our President saw in his challenge. He saw *excitement* (remember when our plans were exciting? Not the bare fact of orbit, which can't help but thrill, but rather what we were *doing* with it?), he saw *difficulty*, and he was totally unafraid to say that he saw *expense* involved. ...They may have been artifacts of an earlier era (aren't our leaders, always) but dammit Spock, we had *leadership* in space back then, and we had *diligence* in LBJ's crucial followup. Nowadays we have Rotarian boilerplate recited listlessly in underattended subcommittee hearings, while an entrenched and subsidized LEO contractors' plutocracy waits for its crumbs. If you could waft Robert Goddard, N. Tsiolkovsky, Hermann Oberth, Willy Ley and W. Von Braun via time machine into the visitors' gallery at one of these House subcommittee chambers, they would be on the next flight to Beijing or Tokyo faster than you could say "Peenemunde". I am frankly not sure whether I am making the desired impression with readers of this article. It's a hard topic. What the past thirty years suggest to me is that we not only need CONCRETE goals in space, we need EXCITING and SCARY goals in space to achieve greatness. Yet the folks who say "a one-shot land and return from Mars repeats the mistakes of Apollo and doesn't build an infrastructure for future expansion" have a good point. So I suggest a goal that takes care of this. LET'S BUILD A PAIR OF MARS STATIONS, IN ORBIT AND ON THE SURFACE, BY 2040. Let's do it cooperatively -- US, USSR, EEC, Japan, India, Israel, Indonesia et cetera. LET'S REDEEM OUR DREAMERS, and END RUN OUR DOUBTERS. Let's let *everyone* with the means and desire to do something in space have a hand in this -- use it to promote world UNITY and world PRIDE. Is this daring? Do the means exist to convince today's President to utter the words? I am totally open to discussion and debate on this point, I don't claim to have all the answers, I just want people to think about it. I am a feed off UUNET so it's 100% reliable to mail me as uunet!bfmny0!tneff. -- You may not redistribute this article for profit without written permission. -- Tom Neff UUCP: ...!uunet!bfmny0!tneff "Truisms aren't everything." Internet: tneff@bfmny0.UU.NET ------------------------------ Date: 19 Jun 89 17:53:06 GMT From: portal!cup.portal.com!hkhenson@uunet.uu.net (H Keith Henson) Subject: Re: Outer Space Committee Although it is almost forgotten (back in the days of Carter--remember him) the US did not go along with the Moon Treaty. Now, that was an interesting document for human rights! No property rights, searches without cause at any time, and defectors must be handed back. I should find an electronic copy of Star Laws and post it to the net. Keith Henson ------------------------------ Date: 27 Jun 89 17:32:44 GMT From: eugene@eos.arc.nasa.gov (Eugene Miya) Subject: Re: [Russians] Lost in Space This comes up frequently. The best information you will find anywhere in the public literature is published by the Congressional Record every two years on the status of astronauts, cosmonauts, and spacenauts. Write your Congressman, or visit a public library. You might see interesting surprises (like Gen. James Abrahmson of the SDI office had astronaut status), various stats on who died in various programs, accidents, etc. The information is moderately complete (short of getting into political arguments: => talk.politics) and raises a few things to consider when making claims for falsifying people's flights or deaths. Another gross generalization from --eugene miya, NASA Ames Research Center, eugene@aurora.arc.nasa.gov resident cynic at the Rock of Ages Home for Retired Hackers: "You trust the `reply' command with all those different mailers out there?" "If my mail does not reach you, please accept my apology." {ncar,decwrl,hplabs,uunet}!ames!eugene UNIX Live free or die. ------------------------------ Date: 27 Jun 89 17:15:05 GMT From: eugene@eos.arc.nasa.gov (Eugene Miya) Subject: Re: ADA and space station In article <4847@mtuxo.att.com> tee@mtuxo.att.com (54317-T.EBERSOLE) writes: >>Discussion on Ada and European origins and possible uses in space.... >One wonders what languages are used for Ariane, Spot, other ESA projects. >Do they have a version of Ada? I don't think the launch vehicle specifically uses computers. Maybe ground controlling instruments. You sort of have to makes these distinctions. SPOT was planned years before Ada existed so I suspect lots of its function is either hardwired or assembly language coded, it's documented some where in remote sensing literature. I think you will see its use increasing, but I think you will also see increased use in C [because of Unix and workstations], LISP [AI interest], and several other languages, and oh, yes, a decrease in the use of PL/1 and HAL/[SG]. If you are going to continue the space aspects follow up to sci.space, but if you are going into Ada, remove sci.space and use comp.lang.ada. If you can't read, please return to school 8). Another gross generalization from --eugene miya, NASA Ames Research Center, eugene@aurora.arc.nasa.gov resident cynic at the Rock of Ages Home for Retired Hackers: "You trust the `reply' command with all those different mailers out there?" "If my mail does not reach you, please accept my apology." {ncar,decwrl,hplabs,uunet}!ames!eugene Live free or die. ------------------------------ Date: 21 Jun 89 04:51:23 GMT From: bfmny0!tneff@uunet.uu.net (Tom Neff) Subject: Re: Moon landing nostalgia In article C476721@UMCVMB.MISSOURI.EDU ("Bill Ball") writes: > [Man in Space, A Time Television Special], like the >Air & Space issue, brings home what a fluke the Apollo program >was--having more to due with the Bay of Pigs than with the exploration >of space. I emphatically disagree with this assertion. The moon race was not a fluke offshoot of the Bay of Pigs failure. The Soviets were at that time giving every indication of dominating space, including a pervasive ICBM threat which we sort of take for granted nowadays but which was Big News back then. Jack Kennedy was fascinated with space as a political tool as a Senator, Presidential candidate (remember the "Missile Gap," subject of all those Boris Badinov cartoons when Rocky & Bullwinkle [my patron saints] visited Frostbite Falls, Minnesota?), and later as President. The moon race was a natural outgrowth of JFK's geopolitical contest with the vigorous USSR leader Krushchev. And Apollo itself from a technical viewpoint was already on the boards and in the brains of the US team in the mid-50's. All that remained was to flesh it out and suffer the birth pangs of contractors assembling actual hardware, once the overall strategy (LOR, Lunar Orbit Rendezvous) was agreed to. This fleshing out makes a marvellous story, one I never cease to be engrossed in -- but it would be a horrible mistake to dismiss it as a side effect of some transitory political expediency. There is no political goal of expedience on the planet that cannot be solved more cheaply than a moonshot. -- You may not redistribute this article for profit without written permission. -- Tom Neff UUCP: ...!uunet!bfmny0!tneff "Truisms aren't everything." Internet: tneff@bfmny0.UU.NET ------------------------------ Date: 25 Jun 89 22:43:08 GMT From: portal!cup.portal.com!Keith_Jeffrey_Kushner@uunet.uu.net Subject: Re: Super strings On 20 June 1989, BOCHANNK at DB0TUI11 writes: :Dear space friends! :Does anyone have some informations (books, articles, scripts) about the :super string theory? :Alex May I suggest the book "Beyond Einstein - The Cosmic Quest For The Theory of The Universe" by Dr. Michio Kaku (Bantam, 1987)? It's mostly about superstring theory, though not written on a technical (i.e. no equations) level. ------------------------------ Date: 27 Jun 89 06:09:45 GMT From: ogccse!blake!wiml@husc6.harvard.edu (William Lewis) Subject: Re: Vaguely-space-related queries In article wmartin@ST-LOUIS-EMH2.ARMY.MIL (Will Martin) writes: >There are several questions that have arisen in my mind based on postings in >the Space list over the past, and I solicit answers, comments, or explanations >from those out there who know about such things. They aren't specifically >and uniquely space-related, but the topics have all been mentioned here from >time to time: > >1) Regarding X-ray astronomy -- the X-ray detectors must be placed into space, > .... But WHY are >X-rays absorbed by the atmosphere when they can penetrate materials that are >opaque to visible light? I think it's just that X-rays are more penetrating than normal light, even in something opaque to them. I.E., X-rays travel further through X-ray-opaque objects than visible light does through visble-opaque objects. I think this has something to do with the frequency and hence energy of the photons. And I'm *pretty* sure that the range (of penetration) is inversely proportional to the density of whatever it's penetrating. But this constant is larger for X-rays than for visible light. >2) Regarding elementary particles -- one of their characteristics is called >"spin". Is this REALLY "spin" the way a top or gyroscope spins -- that is, >the particle is actually physically rotating in space? Or is it a term that >is convenient and used to describe a quality of the particle, like "charm". >"color", and "strangeness", which does NOT correspond with anything in >normal human experience? I think it originally referred to the fact that a spinning charged object generates a magnetic field, a dipole, like the field generated by these particles. . (Think right-hand rule.) But it now refers to the rotational symmetry of the particle. (?) It is the reciprocal of the symmetry, er, a spin-1/2 particle has 180-degree symmetry, a spin 1/3 particle has 120-degree symmetry, and a spin-2 particle must be rotated twice before it comes back to its original, er, state. [Who knows. Not me.] >4) Black hole temperature -- Are medium-sized black holes hot or cold? I have >read that small black holes would be very hot, putting out radiation, due to >the Hawking Effect and the tunnelling of particles through the event >horizon and the business of pairs of virtual particles being formed out >of the vacuum right by the event horizon, and one of the pair maybe being >sucked inside the hole, leaving the unmatched other particle to come out >as radiation. At some size, does this stop and the black hole become >very cold, being an infinite energy sink? [The main problem with a >black-hole-powered refrigerator is carrying it up the stairs... :-) ] Another back-of-the-spinal-cord calculation (read gut reaction) is that the energy emitted by a black hole (through Hawking evaporation) would be proportional to its surface area, because the energy emitted is limited by the number of virtual pairs created in the zone right outside the event horizon. (I may be flamed for the use of 'event horizon'. Do it in mail.) (I can think of some more complicated [general] scenarios for that pair production, but they still look like they boil down to 'energy proportional to surface area'.) So larger black holes would emit more total radiation. But the volume of a black hole grows much faster than its mass, the larger a black hole is, the less dense it is. (I have seen calculations saying that a black hole the size of the observed Universe would be about as dense as the observed Universe...) Presumably the surface area also grows faster than the mass, or large black holes would evaporate as quickly (or faster) than small ones. Which I am assured is not what Hawking says is the case. [And you wouldn't carry a black-hole 'fridge up the stairs. You would carry the stairs down past the 'fridge... =8)] --- phelliax "Oh. Wait a second. If that were true I couldn't exis --" ------------------------------ End of SPACE Digest V9 #522 *******************