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 ; Tue, 22 Aug 89 05:19:47 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: Reply-To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU From: space-request+@Andrew.CMU.EDU To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU Date: Tue, 22 Aug 89 05:19:38 -0400 (EDT) Subject: SPACE Digest V9 #613 SPACE Digest Volume 9 : Issue 613 Today's Topics: Re: Does This Proposal Make Sense Re: Eggs & baskets Re: Space telescope - why only 1200 hours? Re: Questions about Apollo 11 Re: What is the Solar Impact Mission? Re: Cheerleading (was Re: Henry's (not Weinhards)) Re: Quick and Dirty Won the Race Re: Quick and Dirty Won the Race Re: Eggs & baskets News of the Week, Aug 4 Re: NSS Elections -- Comments anyone? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 4 Aug 89 15:20:09 GMT From: skipper!shafer@ames.arc.nasa.gov (Mary Shafer) Subject: Re: Does This Proposal Make Sense In article <1989Aug4.050706.22309@utzoo.uucp> henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes: It may not have come to your attention, but the sexiest new launcher, due to fly most any time now, is a purely private venture that is costing OSC and Hercules a total of about $70M. (They have some government customers, and said customers are supplying the launch aicrcraft for carrying Pegasus up to altitude for their launches, but Pegasus itself is all-private.) NASA is providing a B-52 and all its support for the 7 or 8 initial test flights, at a price ridiculously below what it would cost to buy their own airplane, modify it and maintain it. It may be private, but it's subsidized by NASA and hence our taxpayer dollars. No benefit other than testing and demonstration of flight-worthiness will come from those first 7 or 8 flights. They aren't government launches or mission. They're just being undertaken to prove that Pegasus works and to make it marketable. NASA will also provide the B-52 for the _one_ DARPA mission. -- M F Shafer shafer@elxsi.dfrf.nasa.gov NASA Ames Research Center arpa!elxsi.dfrf.nasa.gov!shafer Dryden Flight Research Facility Of course I don't speak for NASA ------------------------------ Date: 4 Aug 89 15:48:04 GMT From: mailrus!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!utzoo!henry@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu (Henry Spencer) Subject: Re: Eggs & baskets In article <14504@bfmny0.UUCP> tneff@bfmny0.UUCP (Tom Neff) writes: >-- this is pretty much what I was trying to convey. You won't be likely >to find someone who's been brought up to understand what it means to >sail the waters off Martha's Vineyard or hike the Sierras or attend >opening night at Radio City Music Hall or attend an English coronation >or snorkel with a school of bottlenose, choosing the ant tanker's life >in space exile instead... "Speak for yourself, son." Or as Arthur C. Clarke puts it, when asked what life in a space colony would be like: "I'll have to refer that question to my friend Isaac Asimov, who lives in New York City." -- 1961-1969: 8 years of Apollo. | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology 1969-1989: 20 years of nothing.| uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu ------------------------------ Date: 4 Aug 89 18:23:15 GMT From: haven!uvaarpa!hudson!astsun.astro.Virginia.EDU!gsh7w@purdue.edu (Greg S. Hennessy) Subject: Re: Space telescope - why only 1200 hours? In article <14513@bfmny0.UUCP> tneff@bfmny0.UUCP (Tom Neff) writes: #Speaking of HST, there was a very interesting squib in this month's #ASTRONOMY. Seems a team has taken the Palomar 5-meter scope to the #*diffraction limit* using optical interferometry (a technique adapted #from radio astronomy), easily splitting two different double stars with #separations of a small fraction of an arcsecond. It is nice, but you need bright stars to do it with. HST is STILL the only way to get the high resolution images on a faint source. -Greg Hennessy, University of Virginia USPS Mail: Astronomy Department, Charlottesville, VA 22903-2475 USA Internet: gsh7w@virginia.edu UUCP: ...!uunet!virginia!gsh7w ------------------------------ Date: 4 Aug 89 09:03:30 GMT From: jacobs.CS.ORST.EDU!kstclair@cs.orst.edu (Kelly St.Clair) Subject: Re: Questions about Apollo 11 In article <3879@shlump.nac.dec.com>, hughes@gary.dec.com wrote: >it had more than its share of inflight catastrophic self disassemblies. In other words, it went boom. Geez, you guys...gotta have a long buzzword for EVERYTHING! 8 ) ------------------------------ Date: 4 Aug 89 16:30:07 GMT From: bfmny0!tneff@uunet.uu.net (Tom Neff) Subject: Re: What is the Solar Impact Mission? If you can use a Venus gravity assist to do a Mercury flyby, I bet you could use it to do a Solar re-entry. -- "We walked on the moon -- (( Tom Neff you be polite" )) tneff@bfmny0.UU.NET ------------------------------ Date: 4 Aug 89 07:25:17 GMT From: portal!cup.portal.com!PLS@uunet.uu.net (Paul L Schauble) Subject: Re: Cheerleading (was Re: Henry's (not Weinhards)) I was a bit hasty in posting my last message. I really should have explained my choice of dates. John W Campbell said that the US became a democracy with the passage of the Constitutional amendment that provided for the direct election of Senators. I incorrectly gave this as 1906, it was actually 1913. I claim that the US became a democracy in 1964 with the passage of the Civil Rights Act that effectively remove qualifications from voters, thus establishing universal sufferage, at least for those who bothered. I think that the second date matches up rather will with the start of the decline in US politics. ++PLS ------------------------------ Date: 4 Aug 89 17:42:01 GMT From: js9b+@andrew.cmu.edu (Jon C. Slenk) Subject: Re: Quick and Dirty Won the Race God, how true. What, pray tell, is the use of the Shuttle? "Reusable." Big fat hairy deal. The only parts that are (right now) resues are the booster pods and shuttle. Bye bye main tank. The Shuttle is too expensive as far as I am concerned. Any "space plane" is too expensive, as far as I am concerned. We don't need to take up payload with a plane! We need to toss it into orbit as simply as possible. I posit that the Shuttle is not the simplest (sp?) way to do it. Laser Launchers. This would put mass into orbit cheaply and easily. Admittedly the accelerations woulSincerely, Jon Slenk / js9b CMU. ----------------------------+----------------------- `Land property marked the | Capitalism: beginning of civilization.' | Every man for himself. d make mince meat out of astronauts, but the point of a l. l. is not to get people into orbit, but mass. If you want people, *then* you take the Shuttle, with the 'bay packed with bodies. We should not use the Shuttle for simply putting satellites into orbit. I believe there are more effiecient ways of doing it: ways that are cheaper and put up more mass per shot and per $. My $0.02. ------------------------------ Date: 4 Aug 89 20:48:43 GMT From: mailrus!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!utzoo!henry@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu (Henry Spencer) Subject: Re: Quick and Dirty Won the Race In article <2386@basser.oz> the Sydney Morning Herald writes: >The cannon ball was the preferred means during the space race. It was >the quick and dirty approach. The necessary technology had already >been mastered by both the Americans and the Russians for transporting >their weapons of mass destruction. However, a new vehicle is required >for every flight, so the cost is high. The cannon ball is still the preferred means if you are interested in doing things cheaply. Mass production can bring costs down drastically. (This is true even of reusable rockets -- it would have cost NASA very little more to have had 20 production-line shuttle orbiters instead of 4 hand-built ones.) The economics of reusability are badly hurt by the need to build everything to last many missions, and the need to check it all over to make sure it's still okay for the next one. (After each shuttle flight, some 5000 parts need to be removed, inspected, and either replaced or refurbished... on each SRB! The situation on the orbiter does not bear thinking about, with (for example) *every tile* requiring inspection, bond testing, and gap measurement.) Wings look nice, but they are heavy and difficult to protect against heat. >In the long term, reusable winged craft are more economical for routine >access to space... This is undoubtedly true, given adequate technology and high flight rates. It is not at all clear that we have the technology to do it well; it is very doubtful that we are anywhere near the required flight rates. >The US achieved the dubious honour of being first to the moon by >constructing the largest rocket that would ever fly... Nope, the third largest, after Energia and the abortive "G" booster. >... In short, NASA >should have opted for the sort of space program the Russians run. No argument on this one. Expendables and cannonballs all the way, with volume production for high flight rates. >Believers in the one true winged path into space convinced President Reagan >to fund the X-30 National Aerospace Plane. It will be completely reusable; >it won't require booster rockets; it will scoop up air to burn its hydrogen >slush fuel, resorting to rockets only for the last small push into space. And, to approximately quote Gary Hudson, "you expect a cross between the Space Shuttle and the Concorde to be on time, on budget, and fully working?". -- 1961-1969: 8 years of Apollo. | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology 1969-1989: 20 years of nothing.| uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu ------------------------------ Date: 4 Aug 89 23:56:32 GMT From: rochester!dietz@cu-arpa.cs.cornell.edu (Paul Dietz) Subject: Re: Eggs & baskets In article <1989Aug4.211615.9990@utzoo.uucp> henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes: >As Gerry O'Neill pointed out rather a long time ago -- how quickly we >forget! -- space is actually quite a benign environment in many ways. >It is not, by itself, as suited to us as the *average* conditions on >Earth's surface. However, it is much more *controllable*; the difference >between average case and worst case is much less severe. This doesn't change the basic point. On Earth, essential elements like hydrogen, carbon and nitrogen are ubiquitous. Gravity is available for free. Breathable air can be readily obtained anywhere on the surface. Space doesn't have weather or temperature extremes, but it does have occasional lethal radiation the requires shielding all habitable and agricultural areas. I suggest that the engineering required to make earthquake/flood/weather/fallout resistant structures on Earth is easier than that needed to make space colonies. >>I have a hard time imagining how a nuclear war or chemical pollution >>could render the Earth any less habitable than space already is. > >There are areas of Earth which are already as uninhabitable as space, >for all practical purposes. Surely this is hyperbole. Whether an unprotected person would die is a poor measure of the habitability of a region. A better measure is the cost of surviving there. Certainly by that measure just about all areas on Earth are currently more habitable than space. > [space station could be 100x cheaper] Sigh. I wish these people who make these kind of statements would put their capital where their mouths are. As far as I can tell, existing private space efforts are going to be somewhat cheaper than NASA, but not 100x cheaper. Feel free to offer concrete contradictory evidence. Also, to be rigorous, a self-sufficient space colony would have to be beyond LEO (there's no ET resources in LEO), which boosts the cost beyond existing LEO space stations, and requires shielding. Also, the ratio of the proposal I criticized to the NASA space station is 3000x the population, not 1000x as I stated. I think eventually you could build a multi-thousand person space colony much more cheaply than now. Prices go down in the long run. I don't think you could do it now, from a standing start, for only $35G. > Self-sufficiency I am a bit less certain about, although large >size helps -- it is known that a large ecosystem can be self-sufficient >without major development costs. (Proof by example -- look out your window.) >Doing it on a small scale is trickier, but there are encouraging signs >that it may not be that hard. The Biosphere people should be able to >tell us within a few years. I was refering to self-sufficiency in technology. A space colony that cannot propagate itself, after being cut off from Earth, doesn't increase the species' survival odds at all. Paul F. Dietz dietz@cs.rochester.edu ------------------------------ Date: 4 Aug 89 16:41:26 GMT From: frooz!cfa250!mcdowell@husc6.harvard.edu (Jonathan McDowell) Subject: News of the Week, Aug 4 Jonathan's Space Report Aug 4, 1989 (no. 21) --------------------------------------------------------------------- OV-102 Columbia is on pad 39B. The payload is a new imaging recon satellite, presumably KH-12. Mission STS-28 is due for launch on August 8. The Hipparcos astrometry satellite is ready for launch by Ariane, also due on Aug 8. Kosmos-2033 was launched on Jul 24 by the military version of the Tsiklon booster from Baykonur. It is an ELINT (Electronic Intelligence) ocean reconnaissance satellite, which picks up transmissions from US Navy ships. The satellite carries a low-thrust ion engine to maintain a precise orbit. Kosmos-2034 was launched on Jul 25 by Kosmos launch vehicle from Plesetsk. It is the Soviet Navy variant of the Nadezhda-class navigation satellite, a clone of the US Navy Transit system. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Contest for readers: 8 nations plus one international agency have launched their own satellites. Can you name all 9, in chronological order of first successful orbital launch? (Entries by email, no prizes except fame). .----------------------------------------------------------------. | Jonathan McDowell | phone : (617)495-7144 | | Center for Astrophysics | uucp: husc6!harvard!cfa200!mcdowell | | 60 Garden Street | bitnet : mcdowell@cfa.bitnet | | Cambridge MA 02138 | inter : mcdowell@cfa.harvard.edu | | USA | span : cfa::mcdowell | | | telex : 92148 SATELLITE CAM | | | FAX : (617)495-7356 | '----------------------------------------------------------------' (c) 1989 Jonathan McDowell ------------------------------ Date: 4 Aug 89 20:53:12 GMT From: mailrus!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!utzoo!henry@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu (Henry Spencer) Subject: Re: NSS Elections -- Comments anyone? In article <1989Jul29.223849.8413@cs.rochester.edu> yamauchi@cs.rochester.edu (Brian Yamauchi) writes: >I just received my ballot for the NSS Board of Directors Election. >While I am familiar with a few of the names (Ben Bova, Hugh Downs, >Eric Drexler, and Christine Peterson), I am completely unfamiliar with >most of the candidates. Does anyone have any comments ... One algorithm you can use, which is probably significantly better than random choice, is to vote FOR people nominated by petition and AGAINST people nominated by the nominating committee. The worst excesses of said committee have been toned down a bit this year, but it's still a lousy idea. I haven't studied most candidates carefully yet myself, but Mark Hopkins quite definitely gets a NO from me -- too many unanswered questions about his connections, too much involvement with some of NSS's worst stupidities (like the way last year's election was run). -- 1961-1969: 8 years of Apollo. | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology 1969-1989: 20 years of nothing.| uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu ------------------------------ End of SPACE Digest V9 #613 *******************