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 ; Tue, 12 Dec 89 01:27:46 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: Reply-To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU From: space-request+@Andrew.CMU.EDU To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU Date: Tue, 12 Dec 89 01:27:14 -0500 (EST) Subject: SPACE Digest V10 #336 SPACE Digest Volume 10 : Issue 336 Today's Topics: Pilgrimage to KSC Re: Multi-national (MANNED) Mars Mission ESA bulletin (how to get it) V10 No.327 and inflammatory ephithets Re: NASA Headline News for 12/08/89 (Forwarded) Re: Mars rovers Re: Scientific value of Apollo (was Re: Motives) Solar vs. Nuclear energy (forwarded) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 11 Dec 89 14:24:49 GMT From: rochester!kodak!ektools!armenia@rutgers.edu (Peter Armenia) Subject: Pilgrimage to KSC Well the time has come for me to make my pilgrimage to KSC to see a shuttle launch. I am sure that this question has come up before, and I know that many of you have posted about your own experience of seeing a launch. I would appreciate any info that would be helpful in getting as close as possible to the launch sight, photographing the launch, KSC tours, lodging etc. I plan on going sometime early next year (possibly for the HST launch). Any help would be greatly appreciated!!! ** * * * *** ** *** * * **** * **/** [][] *\\ **//* [][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][] [] \| | [] In the spring, Charley, when the valley is [] [] | | [] carpeted with blue lupines like a flowery [] [] */ | \*** [] sea, there's the smell of heaven up here, [] [] ******************** [] the smell of heaven. - John Steinbeck [] [][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][] [] Peter Armenia ...!rochester!kodak!ektools!armenia [] [][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][] ------------------------------ Date: 11 Dec 89 21:14:03 GMT From: zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!samsung!shadooby!sharkey!itivax!vax3!aws@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu (Allen W. Sherzer) Subject: Re: Multi-national (MANNED) Mars Mission In article <1989Dec9.233516.13216@Solbourne.COM> stevem@Solbourne.COM writes: > The World Space Agency formed to oversee a Mars mission would serve > as the foundation for a more agressive exploration/colonization > effort with ( hopefully ) more vision and commitment then any one > nation could possibly keep up by itself for long. Actually, what I think would happen would be: The World Space Agency formed to oversee a Mars mission would serve as the feeding trough for a more agressive boondoggeling/porkbarreling effort with ( hopefully ) more $$ going into my trough then any one nation could possibly shovel in by itself for long. Such is the nature of politics. If you seek to go to space for political reasons, your effort will acomplish political goals: transfering money and power from the politically weak to the politically strong. If you want people to go to space, just allow them to make a buck off it and it will happen. Allen ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- | Allen W. Sherzer | Is the local cluster the result | | aws@iti.org | of gerrymandering? | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 11 Dec 89 10:33:29 SET From: ESC1325%ESOC.BITNET@cunyvm.cuny.edu Comment: CROSSNET mail via SMTP@INTERBIT Subject: ESA bulletin (how to get it) Date: 11 December 1989, 10:24:03 SET From: Lutz Massonne +49 6151 886 701 ESC1325 at ESOC To: SPACE@ANGBAND.S1.GOV Subject: ESA bulletin Someone asked me how to access the ESA bulletin. Unfortunately I lost the note somewhere in the write-only memory, therefore I answer via the list (maybe more people have the same question but did not dare to ask :-) ) The ESA bulletin is a fashionable couloured periodical published by the ESA publications division four times a year ( in February, May, August and November) (At least in Europe) you can receive it free of charge from ESA Publications Divison ESTEC 2000 AG Noordwijk The Netherlands I don't know how to subscribe to in the US, perhaps you can ask either ESA Publications division at ESTEC or contact ESA U.S.A. Washington Office 955, L'Enfant Plaza 7th floor Washington D.C. 20024 Regards, Lutz Massonne +===================================+===============================+ | Lutz Massonne | ESC1325@ESOC.BITNET | | mbp Software&Systems GmbH | +49 6151 886 701 | | Orbit Attitude Division | | | European Space Operations Centre |This mail expresses my personal| | Robert-Bosch Str. 5 |opinion only, neither ESA's nor| | D-6100 Darmstadt, FRG |mbp's. | +===================================+===============================+ ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 11 Dec 89 10:00:43 EST From: "Lee S. Ridgway" Subject: V10 No.327 and inflammatory ephithets > Jon Leech (leech@cs.unc.edu) __@/ > ``Are there any more questions, besides the ones from the > liberal communists?'' > George Uribe, natl. director of "Students For America" Please, in the spirit of the moderator's appeals for some civility in this forum, would contributors refrain from the red-baiting implied by such a quote as the one above. Not all of us "liberals" are not anti-space. Also, does this imply that "conservative capitalists" should not ask questions? Let's get back to space discussions. ------------------------------ Date: 11 Dec 89 20:35:46 GMT From: ingr!boley@uunet.uu.net (Kirk Boley) Subject: Re: NASA Headline News for 12/08/89 (Forwarded) In article <37642@ames.arc.nasa.gov>, yee@trident.arc.nasa.gov (Peter E. Yee) writes: > > Propulsion engineers at Marshall Space Flight Center successfully > tested an advanced Space Shuttle Main Engine for 160 seconds, > yesterday. Engineer Steve Richards said one of the prime > objectives of the test series is to evaluate the liquid fuel > engine's enlarged throat main combusion chamber performance. > Richards said initial data looked good. > I got to see this test, albeit from several miles away. I work in a building on a hill that overlooks MSFC (I can see the test stands from my office window). At the time of the test, my officemate and I were in another office working on a PC to prep it for delivery, when we heard a rumble. "Is that thunder?" he said. (It was overcast that day.) "I don't think so," I said. The rumble hadn't stopped yet. We got up and walked to vacant office with windows facing MSFC. It was a cloudy, overcast day, and it was also drizzling. The test stands were barely visible, grey ghosts against the backdrop of the cloudy sky. I noticed a white cloud coming from the base of one of the test stands. It was almost the same color as the sky, which made it hard to see. We watched for awhile as the cloud grew, and then the sound of the engine firing grew in intensity, and then suddenly died. Not as exciting as an F-1 test, which shook the ground, but still pretty neat! -- ******************************************************************************* Standard disclaimer. | Kirk Boley, Intergraph Huntsville, UAH Witty .sig message. | 52 hours to go and counting... ...!uucp!ingr!boley ******************************************************************************* ------------------------------ Date: 11 Dec 89 19:56:35 GMT From: bfmny0!tneff@uunet.uu.net (Tom Neff) Subject: Re: Mars rovers We're debating the degree of fine -detail- of teleoperation desired in a Mars rover. Clearly any rover will be "teleoperated" on some level. At one extreme is the "fully manual" rover, where you compensate for the long Earth-Mars feedback loop either by moving the human controller to Mars (orbit or surface) or by slowing down the rover tremendously and controlling him a bit at a time from Earth. At the other extreme is the "all autonomous" rover where you say, "Go collect some rocks" and sit back (wherever) while it does it. Somewhere in the middle is a "semi autonomous" rovers with the capability to do drudge things like "go to point B" or "move 30km east" or "put dirt from THERE into hoppers C, D and E" on its own, but no overall "pick the best things to do and do them" strategies. The CMU Rover project summarized by Marc Ringuette is fascinating and promising -- I had read snippets about it in the popular press but it's refreshing to read some primary material, even if outdated. The only thing that worries me about it is the whiff of "AI for AI's sake" emanating from its description of the problems and solutions. Of course we want to advance the art, but is that the PRIMARY purpose of the endeavor or should the mission come first, even if something looking LESS than stellar on the team's CV's will suffice. Some of this relates to the worry I expressed in another posting. If you try to do too much, elegantly, you can look good in your field even if it doesn't fly. In this case, though, CMU deserves nothing but credit. If what they're building isn't the right thing, the responsibility is NASA's because they decided whom to fund. -- "NASA Announces New Deck Chair Arrangement For \_/ Tom Neff Space Station Titanic" -- press release 89-7654 \_/ tneff@bfmny0.UU.NET ------------------------------ Date: 9 Dec 89 02:16:21 GMT From: bbn.com!ncramer@bbn.com (Nichael Cramer) Subject: Re: Scientific value of Apollo (was Re: Motives) In article <11042@thorin.cs.unc.edu> leech@homer.cs.unc.edu (Jonathan Leech) writes: >In article <3240@ibmpa.UUCP> szabonj@ibmpa.UUCP (Nick Szabo) writes: >>Not surprisingly, Apollo ended up contributing little to either industry >>or science... > "Scientists are still unraveling the immense treasure trove of new > knowledge returned by the Apollo program." > ... > Dr. French spent years studying Apollo and Luna 16 samples. >Where does your opinion come from, Nick? I don't know the full context of Nick's statement, and I hesitate to put words in his mouth, but I suspect what he intended was something like: "Not surprisingly, Apollo ended up contributing little to either industry or science THAT WAS UNIQUE TO APOLLO; I.E. THAT COULDN'T HAVE BEEN ACCOMPLISHED JUST AS WELL AND MUCH MORE CHEAPLY IN OTHER WAYS." Look, nobody denies that Apollo accomplished a lot. Nor that it was neat to have men on the Moon. The point is that it all could have been done a lot more cheaply. Or, to put it another way, a lot more science could have been accomplished for the same dollar amount. As far as what Dr French says: Again, I don't know Nick's creditials, and I --whose undergraduate degree is in astrophysics-- am certainly not going to presume to debate him on the quality of the Nasa findings. But I have no reason to doubt that everything he says is correct. But whether 1] Apollo did good science is not the point here and the issues Dr French is addressing above are not really relevant. And 2] whatever Nick's personal credentials may be, his statement --at least as I rephrased it-- certainly reflects the opinion of the majority of working astronomers that I've known. N ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 11 Dec 89 09:00:48 SET From: ESC1325%ESOC.BITNET@cunyvm.cuny.edu Comment: CROSSNET mail via SMTP@INTERBIT Comment: File ULY NOTE A Subject: Solar vs. Nuclear energy (forwarded) Subject: Solar vs. Nuclear energy I found this article on the BIOSPH-L list on UBVM listserv and thought that it might concern the SPACE list also. Date: Fri, 8 Dec 89 19:38:53 -0800 Reply-To: "Biosphere, ecology, Discussion List" Sender: "Biosphere, ecology, Discussion List" From: tgray@CDP.UUCP Subject: Space Probes: Solar v. Nuclear To: Lutz Massonne /* Written 4:55 pm Dec 8, 1989 by tgray in cdp:en.energy */ /* ---------- "Space Probes: Solar v. Nuclear" ---------- */ [reprinted without permission] [from _The Boston Globe_, 11/27/89] NASA FEELING HEAT ON SOLAR Little effort, money spent to find option to plutonium power By David L. Chandler Globe Staff After the unprecedented controversy that threatened the October launch of the Galileo spacecraft to Jupiter, NASA is facing increasing pressure to reexamine its longstanding reliance on plutonium generators for many of its planetary probes. Just last week, critics disclosed that the space agency's own 1981 study, previously unpublicized, had concluded that solar power, with suitable development, might have been a viable option for the Galileo mission. It was an embarrassing revelation in light of the agency's insistence just a few weeks earlier that there was no feasible alternative to power plants fueled by toxic plutonium. Having downplayed the solar option for so long, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration now faces the prospect of a rerun next fall of the protests and court challenges it faced with Galileo. The agency plans in October to launch the plutonium-powered Ulysses probe to study the sun. Even if a solar alternative were ready to fly today, agency spokesmen said, it is far too late to modify Ulysses without adding years of delay to the already much-postponed mission. The critics charge that NASA's response to the plutonium controversy is uncomfortably reminiscent of the agency's lack of candor in the immediate aftermath of the Challenger disaster, for which it received a stern rebuke from the presidential commission investigating the accident. NASA's claims that there was no alternative to plutonium for Galileo left most people -- including some scientists who had studied the issue -- with the impression that it was physically impossible to power such spacecraft any other way. The truth, it now appears, was quite different: alternatives might exist, but they were unavailable partly because little money or effort had been spent to develop them. In theory, at least, the 1981 study by scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA, showed that, contrary to the space agency's claims, solar energy might indeed prove a practical alternative power source to the Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators, or RTGs, for spacecraft like Galileo. Despite the conclusion reached by that preliminary study, no further work was done to develop the type of solar array the study found to be so promising, the study's principal author said in an interview last week. Other JPL studies have concluded that, with sufficient funding such a power source could be developed in just a few years. But no such development work has taken place, although work on another kind of solar power supply has been under way at the laboratory for four years. The problem, according to some analysts, has been in part a reflection of the slashing of funds for alternative energy programs that took place during the Reagan administration. In an interview last week, astronomer Carl Sagan offered what he called the "perfect symbol of this policy debacle." In Jimmy Carter's administration, he said, "the President put a solar thermal heater in the White House roof" to provide some of the building's hot water. "One of the first acts that followed the arrival of his successor was to remove that heater." Carter was a strong supporter of alternative energy research, Sagan said, and "Mr. Reagan found it ideologically objectionable." Federal research funding supports the anecdote. According to Department of Energy spokesman Roger Meyer, funding for research on solar cells amounted to $150 million in 1980; last year, it was $35 million. Even with this drastic reduction, significant progress has been made in improving the efficiency and lowering the costs of solar cells, Meyer said -- potentially making them an even more attractive option now than at the time of the 1981 study. Sagan says it is quite possible that "Galileo could have benefited by this research, had the funding continued." Galileo's critics, including a coalition of five peace and antinuclear groups led by the Christic Institute, unsuccessfully sought a federal court injunction to stop the launch. They contended that an accident similar to that of the Challenger might release some of the 50 pounds of plutonium on board and endanger the lives of Florida residents. Or that three years from now, when Galileo comes whizzing back past Earth on its way enroute to Jupiter after a sidetrip to Venus, an accident could cause it to burn up in the atmosphere, vaporizing the plutonium or dispersing it over a wide area. Space agency managers and many scientists dismissed the concerns as the groundless fears of a tiny vocal minority. Sagan takes the issue much more seriously. As president of the Planetary Society, a space exploration advocacy group, and as a longtime researcher and promoter of planetary exploration, Sagan might be expected to strongly support a mission like Galileo. He did support the launch, but he found it a close call. "I'm a scientist working on Gailieo with a long-time investment in planetary exploration," he wrote before teh launch. "I'm also a long-time supporter of the Christic Institute...I've felt torn on the Galileo RTG issue for years. I still do...I believe there is nothing absurd about either side of this argument." NASA's response to its critics was exemplified by the response of agency spokesman Charles Redmond in an interview last week: "Our premise is that the proper use of nuclear material is not an issue." RTGs remain "the NASA standard power supply for deep space...missions" to hazardous destinations. Galileo was so far along when the 1981 study was concluded that a switch to solar power would have been infeasible, other scientists agree, but what about the dozens of planetary missions scheduled for the 1990s and beyond? Is there time to eliminate the plutonium generators planned for some of them? Plutonium-powered spacecraft scheduled to follow Ulysses are Cassini, a probe to Saturn planned for 1995; and CRAF, a comet rendezvous/asteroid flyby mission planned for 1996. Cassini seems destined to use plutonium. Even the optimistic JPL study concluded that at distances farther from the sun than Jupiter -- and Saturn is much farther -- solar power remains impossible because the sunlight is so much dimmer. But for CRAF, which [would] be working closer to the sun than Jupiter, the problems are different. It would be close enough to use solar power, but it will pass through the dusty tails of two comets -- a potentially disastrous environment for solar cells because of high-speed impacts with dust particles. "It would be a very different mission," said Marcia Neugebauer, chief scientist for the CRAF mission. She said JPL is studying how CRAF and Cassini might use solar power, but "it's not a pretty picture...We would have to cut way back" on the planned scientific objectives for the missions. That assessment, however, is based on a solar cell research program primarily aimed at developing power supplies for satellites in Earth orbit, not deep-space probes. The type of solar array envisioned by the preliminary 1981 study has not been researched further; it lost out in the competition for funds. "At the time," said Donald Rockey, one of the scientists who wrote the 1981 study, "we hoped the work would permit some kind of technical demonstration" -- that is, the construction of a prototype. But no such project was funded at the time, and in 1985, research began on a different kind of solar energy. "This agency is not an energy-creation agency," NASA spokesman Redmond explained last week. "The agency is not blind or closed- minded to new technology," but must spend its limited resources where they will produce the most benefits. NASA is actively pursuing many power alternatives, he said, including advanced solar thermal generators that might be used by the space station. One of NASA's most vocal critics says it is unfortunate the agency hasn't pushed solar technology harder. Karl Grossman, a journalism professor who brought NASA's 1981 study to light last week, recalls that NASA played a major role in developing solar cells in the 1950s. "The Japanese have [since] moved in and virtually captured the market," hs said. "If NASA committed itself to solar energy, we would see the same kind of quantum leap" in the technology as took place in the 50s. +===================================+===============================+ | Lutz Massonne | ESC1325@ESOC.BITNET | | mbp Software&Systems GmbH | +49 6151 886 701 | | Orbit Attitude Division | | | European Space Operations Centre |This mail expresses my personal| | Robert-Bosch Str. 5 |opinion only, neither ESA's nor| | D-6100 Darmstadt, FRG |mbp's. | +===================================+===============================+ ------------------------------ End of SPACE Digest V10 #336 *******************