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 ; Wed, 13 Dec 89 01:33:20 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: Reply-To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU From: space-request+@Andrew.CMU.EDU To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU Date: Wed, 13 Dec 89 01:32:57 -0500 (EST) Subject: SPACE Digest V10 #340 SPACE Digest Volume 10 : Issue 340 Today's Topics: Re: space news from Oct 23 AW&ST Payload Summary for 12/12/89 (Forwarded) Re: Mars rovers NASA Headline News for 12/12/89 (Forwarded) proposed "space-mail" incentive Satellites in E-W orbits Hughes vs GM/NASA Planetary position software: summary of replies. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 12 Dec 89 17:58:04 GMT From: idacrd!mac@princeton.edu (Robert McGwier) Subject: Re: space news from Oct 23 AW&ST From article <1989Dec12.043047.9089@utzoo.uucp>, by henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer): > > Ariane V34 slips from Oct 5 to Oct 27 due to relay problems; the payload > is the first Intelsat 6. This will be followed by V35 on Dec 13, carrying > Japan's Superbird B and BS-2X. That is a change from earlier manifests, > which showed Spot 2 (and its piggyback amateur-radio microsatellites) > on V35, due to a contractual commitment to get the Japanese payloads up > this year. Spot 2 and friends are now scheduled for the next flight, Jan 19. > The current schedule for launch for Spot-2 is January 11, 1990 at 0135 UTC ( That is 8:35 PM EST on January 10). First time in a long time I have ever heard of a launch authority moving a launch UP from a scheduled date within a month of launch time, but there it is. The AMSAT birds are ready along with the UOSAT birds. There are seven satellites on board that launch including Spot-2, four AMSAT Microsats and two University of Surrey UOSAT's. Bob McGwier -- ____________________________________________________________________________ My opinions are my own no matter | Robert W. McGwier, N4HY who I work for! ;-) | CCR, AMSAT, etc. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------ Date: 12 Dec 89 18:24:28 GMT From: trident.arc.nasa.gov!yee@ames.arc.nasa.gov (Peter E. Yee) Subject: Payload Summary for 12/12/89 (Forwarded) PAYLOAD STATUS REPORT Dec. 12, l989 Missions STS-35 and 42 STS-35 -- ASTRO-1, BBXRT Members of the STS-35 crew joined KSC payload processing team members in testing operations during the continuing prepara- tion of the Astro payload scheduled for flight in April, l990. Commander Vance Brand, Pilot Guy Gardner, Mission Specialists John "Mike" Lounge, Jeff Hoffman, and Bob Parker, plus Payload Specialist Sam Durrance participated in payload simulations and integrated verification testing as part of the "build-up" process for the payload. The work was performed in the Operations and Checkout Building (O & C) in Test Stand 3. Referred to jointly as ASTRO, the payload consists of four optical instruments. They are: 1) three ultraviolet (UV) tele- scopes aligned to each other on an Instrument Pointing System (IPS) and mounted to two Spacelab pallets; and 2) and x-ray tele- scope mounted on a Two-Axis Pointing System (TAPS) secured by a special support structure. The payload, which will fly aboard Columbia, is the first of a series of Astro missions that will make precise astronomical measurements. STS-42 -- IML-1 The International Microgravity Lab (IML) is a microgravity mission scheduled for flight in December, l990. About 15 dif- ferent instruments will be mounted on a Spacelab long module. An IMAX camera will also fly aboard the mission, as will the Get- Away Special (GAS) bridge. Work on drawings and racks to support payload build-up are in work. Hardware cleaning, harness installation, and other routine items, including electrical work, are in progress. ------------------------------ Date: 12 Dec 89 04:36:14 GMT From: portal!cup.portal.com!PLS@uunet.uu.net (Paul L Schauble) Subject: Re: Mars rovers With all of this discussion, someone must have worked out how to make a remote control rover work without considering the delay. Both the Earth and Mars rotate. It seems to me that in order to keep a rover operating you need a network of communications satellites around both planets to get constant communication. You also need a network of satellites in solar orbit to keep things operating when Mars is on the other side of the sun. Has anyone seriously evalused what is needed? How did Viking do this? Or did they just figure that the mission was short enough that they can ignore the conjunction problems and just ignore the loses to planetary rotation? Henry? ++PLS ------------------------------ Date: 12 Dec 89 18:21:13 GMT From: trident.arc.nasa.gov!yee@ames.arc.nasa.gov (Peter E. Yee) Subject: NASA Headline News for 12/12/89 (Forwarded) ----------------------------------------------------------------- Tuesday, December 12, 1989 Audio: 202/755-1788 ----------------------------------------------------------------- This is NASA Headline News for Tuesday, December 12.... Workers at Kennedy Space Center continue to prepare the Columbia for the STS-32 mission. Preflight launch preparations are running on a tight schedule with hypergolic fuel loading now scheduled to be completed early Wednesday and pad validation checks to begin immediately after. The launch window opens at 7:29 P.M., Eastern time, Monday. A Delta II rocket successfully boosted a Navstar navigation satellite into a transfer orbit yesterday from Cape Canaveral. The launch vehicle lifted off at 1:10 P.M., Eastern time, 16 minutes after the window opened. An apogee kick motor aboard the Navstar will circularize the orbit on Wednesday. It's the eighth Delta launch this year. A commercial Titan III launch carrying two communications satellites has been delayed to no earlir than December 20. The launch was originally set for December 8, but poor weather and a busy launch schedule at the Cape is forcing the setback. A NASA high-altitude balloon will carry four astronomical instruments aloft from Ross Island in the Antarctica later this month. The New York Times says one of the instruments is a large new-type cosmic ray telescope. The experiment will exploit Antarctica's unique physical qualities for research. The balloon will take the instrument package up to 100,000 feet altitude and then drift westward along the 78th parallel completing a trip around the Earth in about two weeks. Space News Magazine reports this week that Vice President Quayle has asked the aerospace industries association to poll its members on new ideas for a U.S. program to return to the moon and go on to Mars. The publication says the Vice President, Chairman of the National Space Council, was critical of the effort made by a NASA study team on ways to carry out the administration's space initiative. NASA's space activities in Florida provided that state's economy with a $1.24 billion boost in fiscal year 1989. Over 18,000 workers were employed during the year at the NASA field center. Of that number 2400 were civil service. * * * * ----------------------------------------------------------------- Here's the broadcast schedule for public affairs events on NASA Select TV. All times are Eastern. Thursday, December 14... 10:00 A.M. Coverage begins of NASA B-52/Pegasus air launch booster captive flight from Dryden Flight Research Facility. 3:00 P.M. NASA Update will be transmitted....delayed from its normal transmission due to Pegasus captive flight. Monday, December 18...... STS-32 mission television begins. All events and time 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: 12 Dec 89 15:55:17 GMT From: groucho!steve@handies.ucar.edu (Steve Emmerson) Subject: proposed "space-mail" incentive henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes: >On the whole, I tend to agree: the "space mail" approach is a better >scheme. For one thing, it's a lot cheaper. And as you point out, there >is less room for cheating and other complications. It would make cheaper >launch technology a much less chancy investment, promoting new development >in a field that's been stalled badly for a couple of decades. I'm curious about this analogy and wish to explore it further. Does anyone know of a currently desirable service (or services) that is analogous to the early demand for more rapid mail delivery? Note, I'm wondering about a "currently" desirable service; not "proposed" (continuing the analogy with the early airmail incentive). If you know of one; can you quantify the demand for it in financial terms? --Steve Emmerson steve@unidata.ucar.edu ------------------------------ Date: 12 Dec 89 18:34:28 GMT From: eru!luth!hagbard!bj@bloom-beacon.mit.edu (B|rje Josefsson) Subject: Satellites in E-W orbits Hi! (I have used the term "satellite" below - even if it might just be any orbiting object) This is something I have been thinking about some time: I live far up in the northern part of Sweden ( Lat 65 35' - not so far from the arctic circle). When we have dark nights here (no moon or aurora (yes there is aurora outside right now - but the full moon takes off the spectacular effect) there is no problem seeing "satellites" orbiting. If You stand outside, looking up, for 15 minutes there are always several of them. Now to my question: It seems that they are going mainly in two directions - either north-south (or vice versa) or east-west. I dont know very much about orbits for satellites but I can understand the N-S orbits. What I'm wondering about is if it is possible for an object to have an E-W orbit lying 2/3 from the equator?? One solution I have thought about is that what I'm seeing is just satellites on the top of their "sine"-shaped orbits (whatever they're called). This is just a guess - what is the answer? --Borje ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Borje Josefsson, Computer centre, University of Lulea, S-951 87 Lulea, Sweden Tel: +46 920 91 262 (direct), +46 920 91 000 (operator). Fax: +46 920 972 88 Domain: bj@dc.luth.se Path: {uunet,mcvax}!sunic!dc.luth.se!bj ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 11 Dec 89 12:07:40 PST From: mordor!lll-tis!ames!scubed!pnet01.cts.com!jim@angband.s1.gov (Jim Bowery) To: crash!space@angband.s1.gov Subject: Hughes vs GM/NASA Henry Spencer quotes AW&ST: >Hughes considers commercial venture to build small ocean-monitoring satellite, >to be financed by sale of data to fishing and environmental interests. It >would weigh about 250lbs, could be up by 1991, and would be launched by >Pegasus. Hughes and NASA are negotiating a deal to give NASA R&D rights >and Hughes commercial rights. Total costs for six-year life would be >"under $50M". Data returned would be similar to that from Nimbus 7's >coastal-zone color scanner; the project grew out of old proposals to >put an ocean sensor on a future Landsat. It would be a relatively >wide-angle sensor gathering low-resolution images in eight narrow bands. >The satellite would be in a sun-synchronous orbit with equator crossing >at noon. Hughes wants to sign up some startup customers before go-ahead, >on contracts offering ongoing access to the data stream rather than sale >of single images. The venture will be based in Canada, where Hughes is >finding the government much more helpful than in the US. I just can't believe Hughes is putting together a space mission within 2 years for under $50M and selling the data. Such a scenario is totally implausible. :-) The history of NASA vs Hughes is even worse than that of NASA vs AMROC. Hughes, being enormously successful in the only area NASA was barred from anticompeting in (comm satellites) has had a lot of money to put into satellite technology -- the one area in space technology where the US really does still outshine everyone else in the world. The only real problem is that Hughes is now owned by GM -- a rather ugly state of affairs which could result in the loss of the Hughes-edge. If you don't know what Howard Hughes thought of GM, go see "Tucker". "What's good for GM is bad for the country." Have you folks also noticed that the only high tech industries where the US has maintained a trade surplus (biotech, chemical industry and comm sats) are areas where there has been virtually no government funded development for the last 20 years? And those industries of lost promise, (semiconductors/VHSIC, nuclear power/Atoms for Peace, supercomputers/NSF supercomputer network, space transporation/Shuttle et al) were areas of big federal "initiatives" which started PRIOR to the decline of those industries? This pattern can't have escaped the attention of the KGB existing, as it does, within a society which is relatively good at keeping "government initiatives" from being totally destructive. They shoot their corrupt bureaucrats. Our founding fathers did give us a tool to deal with this situation -- right in the Constitution: Treason as a Capital Offense. Lessee.... Reagan and most of his administration, NASA and most of its bureaucrats, DoE and most of its bureaucrats, just about everyone (including IBM lobbyists) clamoring for nonenforcement of antitrust statutes because of the threat from "Japan, Inc." and most of the "Great Physicists" (I actually heard someone say that) who are chewing the hell out of NSF, DoE and DoD by creating the illusion that they are peers of Oppenheimer et al. That will probably be enough to get the message across. I wonder how much of our federal budget is financing KGB sleepers who are there for the sole purpose of lobbying for more corruption of this type and preventing the appropriate application of the death penalty. It's almost enough to make a guy wanna go out and leverage some palladium futures at the risk of being labeled "one of those anti-big-science types." But since I can't handle disapproval from KGB agents enjoying large U.S. government cashflows, I'll restrain myself. --- Typical RESEARCH grant: $ Typical DEVELOPMENT contract: $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ ------------------------------ Date: 11 Dec 89 15:14:16 GMT From: mcsun!ukc!strath-cs!cs.glasgow.ac.uk!memex!peter@uunet.uu.net (Peter Ilieve) Subject: Planetary position software: summary of replies. Here is a summary of the replies to my request for planetary position software a few weeks ago. The clear winner is ephem, a program written by Elwood Downey. It doesn't do any astrology, but then I was not really expecting that from sci.* newsgroups. The author mailed me, and coincidently the latest version just appeared in comp.sources.misc. Another program mentioned was Voyager, for the Mac, authors/agents unknown. One specifically astrological program mentioned was BlueStar, for which I do not yet know the source, but which has the drawback that it is commercial and costs about $500. Other suggestions were any decent public domain/shareware PC software catalog and the PD1: directory on simtel.army.mil. I can't ftp to anywhere so I can't vouch for this last one. Thank you, normal service will now be resumed ... Peter Ilieve peter@memex.co.uk ------------------------------ End of SPACE Digest V10 #340 *******************