Return-path: X-Andrew-Authenticated-as: 7997;andrew.cmu.edu;Ted Anderson Received: from beak.andrew.cmu.edu via trymail for +dist+/afs/andrew.cmu.edu/usr11/tm2b/space/space.dl@andrew.cmu.edu (->+dist+/afs/andrew.cmu.edu/usr11/tm2b/space/space.dl) (->ota+space.digests) ID ; Fri, 1 Dec 89 01:30:27 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: Reply-To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU From: space-request+@Andrew.CMU.EDU To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU Date: Fri, 1 Dec 89 01:29:20 -0500 (EST) Subject: SPACE Digest V10 #290 SPACE Digest Volume 10 : Issue 290 Today's Topics: oceans as alternatives the affordable cost may change Re: Re: Why NASA wants to go to Mars Galileo Update 11/29/89 (Forwarded) Still space images on videodisc NASA Headline News for 11/30/89 (Forwarded) Gary Hudson and the Phoenix Re: Mir expansion ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 30 Nov 89 17:47:41 GMT From: cs.utexas.edu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!utzoo!henry@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu (Henry Spencer) Subject: oceans as alternatives In article <1989Nov29.232912.18598@cs.rochester.edu> yamauchi@cs.rochester.edu (Brian Yamauchi) writes: >Imagine actually wanting to *utilize* undersea resources -- Rifkin and >friends would have apoplectic fits. (All the more reason to go ahead >and do it :-). Ever wonder why nobody's done it? It's because the oceanic equivalent of the infamous Moon Treaty was *not* intercepted by an oceanic equivalent of L5. The oceans are the "common heritage of mankind"... which means that any private corporation that wants to make money out of them runs into a long string of bureaucratic roadblocks written into the rules by socialist countries. -- Mars can wait: we've barely | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology started exploring the Moon. | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu ------------------------------ Date: 30 Nov 89 09:27:32 GMT From: voder!dtg.nsc.com!andrew@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Lord Snooty @ The Giant Poisoned Electric Head ) Subject: the affordable cost may change perhaps if the eastern europe upheavals result in a perceived non-threatening bloc to the US government in the near future, then... the affordable cost of getting into space may change for the better. that is, we may have more cash to throw around. hitching a ride on the back of communism's downfall... -- ........................................................................... Andrew Palfreyman a wet bird never flies at night time sucks andrew@dtg.nsc.com there are always two sides to a broken window ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 30 Nov 89 11:28:09 PST From: Peter Scott Subject: Re: Re: Why NASA wants to go to Mars bbn.com!ncramer@bbn.com (Nichael Cramer) writes: >It is one thing to >use ones own sources or to say to an individual or some organization >"Please give me money to do this" and allow them the choice of doing so, >whatever their motives are. It's something else altogether to simply >inform someone --say the lady who just came through to empty the >wastebasket in my office-- that she is going to have to pay for this >whether she likes it or not. > >Being expected to supply her with sensible justifications for something >like this doesn't seem to be at all unreasonable. We all have to pay for a whole bunch of things whether we like it or not. It's called income tax. You don't have any legal way of avoiding it unless you make a hideously large amount of money. There is no requirement that any item which federal money is spent on be justifiable to everyone on down to the cleaning lady. I doubt there is a single item on the federal budget which everyone paying taxes approves of. The process (supposedly) is that if we don't like the decisions they're making about how to spend our money, we don't vote for them again. I don't think it's even appropriate that a majority of tax payers approve of a particular expenditure -- minorities have rights too -- but even stipulating this, have we any idea whether a majority of the population would support a federally-funded Mars mission? No, we don't know one way or the other. It would appear that the only way to find out is to do it and then see who stays in office :-) Peter Svott (pjs@grouch.jpl.nasa.gov) ------------------------------ Date: 30 Nov 89 16:01:20 GMT From: zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!usc!henry.jpl.nasa.gov!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!jato!mars.jpl.nasa.gov!baalke@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu (Ron Baalke) Subject: Galileo Update 11/29/89 (Forwarded) GALILEO WEEKLY STATUS November 29, 1989 As of Wednesday, November 29, the Galileo spacecraft is 8.15 million miles from Earth (round-trip light time 88 seconds, almost 1 1/2 minutes); it is now more than 50 million miles along its 185-million-mile path to Venus. The last week was a relatively uneventful period for Galileo's flight team; owing to the holiday only a few activities were scheduled, including Sun-pointing Saturday, yesterday, and today, and an RPM maintenance (flushing the propulsion system plumbing) on Monday. The spacecraft is still in the dual-spin mode, with the spun section rotating at approximately 3 rpm. It is transmitting telemetry at 1200 bits per second via LGA-2, the low-gain antenna attached to a boom pointing down (away from the Sun) from one of the RTG booms. The DSN tracking data are clear enough to show the back-and-forth motion of this antenna as the spacecraft rotates. The third operational sequence (of six covering the period from launch through Venus encounter) will be sent to Galileo Friday and take effect Saturday, December 2. It consists of continued cruise operations including further spacecraft characterization. The second trajectory change maneuver (removing the rest of the original bias) and the four-day science checkout, scheduled for late December, will be part of EV-4, the next sequence. Ron Baalke | baalke@mars.jpl.nasa.gov Jet Propulsion Lab M/S 301-355 | baalke@jems.jpl.nasa.gov 4800 Oak Grove Dr. | Pasadena, CA 91109 | ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 30 Nov 89 14:03 CST From: Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey Subject: Still space images on videodisc Original_To: SPACE I just received a catalog of aviation history books from the Smithsonian Institution Press. It includes six videodiscs full of stills at fifty-five bucks apiece. I don't have a player, but maybe some readers will be interested. "The National Air and Space Museum is reproducing its entire photo archives aon videodiscs. Ten discs are currently planned...[these laser NTSC 525-line discs] can be played on all laser videodisc players." Two of the six discs are relevant to students of spaceflight. Quoting from the catalog: ============================================================================ Archival Videodisc 6 The Lunar Missions Imagery Disc documents the history of manned and unmanned lunar missions with over 70,000 images. The unmanned Ranger, Surveyor, and Lunar Orbiter missions are represented with a selection of over 6,000 black-and-white images on side A, followed by 23,000 color and black-and-white images taken by the Apollo astronauts. Because many of these images were shot in rapid sequence, they provide an "animated" re-creation of many aspects of the Apollo missions when played in an auto forward mode. Each image is referenced with an index. Also on Side A are chronologies of American and Soviet lunar missions, photodocumentaries of lunar explorations, and biographies of the Apollo astronauts. Details of lunar mapping are provided as a cross reference to the Apollo photographs. Side B stores roughly 47,000 frames of Apollo panoramic photography from Apollo 15, 16, and 17. A mapping index is provided for Side B. ISBN: 0-84747-939-5S $55.00 (Smithsonian members $44.00) Archival Videodisc 5 [NASA history, U.S. space program, Shuttle Hasselblad photography from STS-1 to STS-61C.] Index included. ISBN: 0-84747-936-0S $55.00 (Smithsonian members $44.00) ====================================================================== The other discs are of interest to aviation buffs: #1 Aircraft, alphabetical by manufacturer (100,000 images) #2 More aircraft, personalities, events #3 USA(A)F through 1954, including 50,000 WWII images #4 USAF pre-1954, Korea, art collection (Single-sided, 50,000 images) If you're interested, contact: Smithsonian Institution Press Dept. 900 Blue Ridge Summit, PA 17294-0900 (717)794-2148 /// Bill Higgins E /// |8D:O: occc))))<)) Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory E /// /// Bitnet: HIGGINS@FNALB.BITNET Bumper sticker seen on a Soyuz: SPAN/Hepnet/Physnet: 43011::HIGGINS DON'T LAUGH-- IT'S PAID FOR Internet: HIGGINS@FNALB.FNAL.GOV ------------------------------ Date: 30 Nov 89 22:50:28 GMT From: trident.arc.nasa.gov!yee@ames.arc.nasa.gov (Peter E. Yee) Subject: NASA Headline News for 11/30/89 (Forwarded) ----------------------------------------------------------------- Thursday, Dec. 30, 1989 Audio: 202/755-1788 ----------------------------------------------------------------- This is NASA Headline News for Thursday, November 30th...... A federal grand jury met in Birmingham, Alabama yesterday to hear charges that improperly inspected and possibly inaccurate sensors on booster rockets made by the Thiokol Corporation were used on the first three shuttle flights following the Challenger accident. The new sensors were added to monitor things like pressure within the redesigned joints and the operation of new heaters wrapped around joints. Thomas Lee, Director of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, which oversees work on the booster rockets, emphasized that shuttle safety has not been compromised, and that the equipment in question has nothing to do with the operation of the shuttle itself. Lee said that Marshall engineers quickly determined through a variety of ground tests and the success of recent missions, that the boosters are operating as anticipated. NASA officials said yesterday that the Solar Maximum satellite dropped 7.5 miles in 24 hours and is expected to re-enter earth's atmosphere about 1:49 a.m. Eastern time on Saturday. Most of the satellite will be destroyed by fire, but some debris could possibly survive the re-entry. That is expected to occur somewhere between 28 degrees north and 28 degrees south of the equator...80 percent of which is water. At Kennedy Space Center, a two-day dress-rehearsal countdown for the upcoming STS-32 mission is underway. Columbia's crew will participate in the final hours of the test tomorrow morning. A formal flight readiness review for the mission is scheduled next week. ************ ----------------------------------------------------------------- Here's the broadcast schedule for public affairs events on NASA Select television. All times are Eastern. Friday, Dec. 1..... 6:00 A.M. Coverage begins of the concluding 6-hours of the STS-32 countdown demonstration test. Thursday, Dec. 7... 11:30 A.M. NASA Update will be transmitted. All events and times are subject to change without notice. ----------------------------------------------------------------- These reports are filed daily, Monday through Friday, at 12 noon, Eastern time. ----------------------------------------------------------------- A service of the Internal Communications Branch (LPC), NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C. ------------------------------ Date: 30 Nov 89 07:16:40 GMT From: genbank!agate!shelby!portia!doom@apple.com (Joseph Brenner) Subject: Gary Hudson and the Phoenix I just attended a talk by Gary Hudson (sponsored by the Stanford Libertarians). His current project is a company called Pacific American Launch Vehicles (soon to be re-named Pacific American Spaceship Company). The vehicle design he's working on (the Phoenix) is a version of the project that the National Citizen Advisory Council on Space was pushing to the government. I noticed Pournelle dropping some hints about it in a "computer" column, but outside of that, I'd heard nothing about it. The concept is a single stage to orbit vehicle, which is NOT an expendable (he makes the point that it's difficult for a small company to establish the reliability of an expendable booster, since you have to throw them away to demonstrate them). The idea is bring it down under power (or rather, let it drop and fire up the engines to stop it just before it hits). The design uses an aerospike engine with over a hundred burners (I think that's the term he used) radially distributed around the plug. He mentioned something about using air tight seals over the burners on re-entry so that the bottom can function as a heat shield (cooled, not ablative). According to Hudson, the aerospike design was originally developed by Rocketdyne in the late 60s (he flashed a picture of a ground test from 1968) as a successor to the J-2s in the Saturn V. They were also planned for use on the space shuttle, until NASA flaked out on them in the early 70s. Hudson says the only reason they could discover for not using them was that NASA wanted a competitive bid, and Rocketdyne would've been the only supplier. An interesting safety feature is that the vehicle is split into two stages, the lower half being dedicated to the engine and fuel tanks, and the upper half the cargo/crew section. In the event that something goes wrong with the lower section, they can separate and the upper stage lands using parachutes. Total vehicle height is something like 52 feet. The diameter is about half the height. Supposedly, no new technology is involved in this design, only integration of some old technology into a new configuration. However, he did say that they had figured out 2 or 3 "little tricks" that he didn't want to talk about. Hudson's previous project, the Liberty vehicle now looks dead. He said they'd essentially built the first stage, and invested about $2 million in the project, when the venture capital backing pulled out because "they weren't sure about the size of the market". He seemed pretty disgusted at the use of venture capital in general, and instead is focusing on finding (rich) private investors for his current project. He claimed that he'd been in touch with "an individual on the east coast, whose name would be know to you all, with extensive connections in the investment community"... Hudson said something like "you know, it's really a trip to talk to someone only a few years older than you who is worth billions." Hudson's main intended market at this point is evidently space tourism. He sited some study that showed that if you could bring it down to $10,000 per ticket you can expect a million customers a year, or 10 billion a year in business. In comparison, he says that the total current commercial launch industry only does about $800 million per year. (Japan's plans for a space hotel assume $50,000 per person and expect about a half billion a year in business.) He flashed an artists conception of the interior cabin of a tourist ship: twenty seats arranged radially in pairs with small windows in front of them (lots of space between seats) and a narrow isle running behind them. -- Joe Brenner (J.JBRENNER@MACBETH.STANFORD.EDU Materials Science Dept/Stanford, CA 94305) ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 30 Nov 1989 15:23 EST From: Donald F. Simmons <0C109%AECLCR.BITNET@vma.cc.cmu.edu> Subject: Re: Mir expansion To: I have read on several posting on how the new module that has docked with Mir will be moved to another docking port with some mechanical arm (sorry, postings lost). How exactly is this done, and how fast do they do it? The new module must mass (not weigh) tons, and is comparable in size to the original Mir. Wouldn't the act of swinging it to another port start the whole station spinning, or is this corrected for in some fashion? ################################################################################ # With mystical divinity of unashamed felinity ## Donald Simmons 0C109@AECLCR # # Round the cathedral, cry 'Viva!' ## Chalk River Nuclear Labs # # Life to the everlasting cat. ## Chalk River, Ontario # ################################################################################ ------------------------------ End of SPACE Digest V10 #290 *******************