Return-path: X-Andrew-Authenticated-as: 32766 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, 9 Jan 90 13:34:13 -0500 (EST) Received: from beak.andrew.cmu.edu via qmail ID ; Thu, 4 Jan 90 19:49:55 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: Reply-To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU From: space-request+@Andrew.CMU.EDU To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU Date: Thu, 4 Jan 90 19:46:16 -0500 (EST) Subject: SPACE Digest V10 #365 SPACE Digest Volume 10 : Issue 365 Today's Topics: An organising principle for 1g ? Re: An organising principle for 1g ? Air to orbit launch in 1985? Re: Launching AUSSAT on Chinese rockets Re: Air to orbit launch in 1985? Re: The time thread that won't die. SR-71 (Was: Re: space news from Nov 13 AW&ST) Re: Antigravity Payload Status for 12/19/89 (Forwarded) Re: Big Bang: Did it happen? Re: New years eve 1999 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 27 Dec 89 13:59:29 GMT From: voder!dtg.nsc.com!andrew@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Lord Snooty @ The Giant Poisoned Electric Head ) Subject: An organising principle for 1g ? While reading the yearly washup of planetary science in "The Economist", I converted a table of mass and equatorial radii of the planets into gravity at the surface. I was surprised that even the giants, Jupiter and Saturn, did not deviate by much from 1g. Here is the data: (r = equatorial radius [earth=1], m = mass [earth=1]) r m m/r^2 ------------------------------------------------------- mercury 0.38 0.056 0.4 venus 0.95 0.81 0.9 earth 1 1 1 moon 0.27 0.012 0.15 mars 0.53 0.107 0.4 jupiter 11.2 318 2.5 saturn 9.42 95.1 1.1 uranus 4.11 14.5 0.85 neptune 3.96 17.2 1.1 pluto 0.17 0.006 0.2 ------------------------------------------------------- r ranges over 2 orders-of-magnitude, m even more. But the gravitation at the surface is constrained within about one order-of-magnitude. Is there a theory of planetary formation which accounts for what appears to be an organising principle here? -- ........................................................................... 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: 27 Dec 89 21:03:27 GMT From: moonzappa!loren@lll-winken.llnl.gov (Loren Petrich) Subject: Re: An organising principle for 1g ? In article <430@berlioz.nsc.com> andrew@dtg.nsc.com (Lord Snooty @ The Giant Poisoned Electric Head ) writes: >While reading the yearly washup of planetary science in "The Economist", >I converted a table of mass and equatorial radii of the planets into >gravity at the surface. I was surprised that even the giants, Jupiter >and Saturn, did not deviate by much from 1g. Here is the data: >(r = equatorial radius [earth=1], m = mass [earth=1]) > r m m/r^2 >------------------------------------------------------- >mercury 0.38 0.056 0.4 >venus 0.95 0.81 0.9 >earth 1 1 1 >moon 0.27 0.012 0.15 >mars 0.53 0.107 0.4 >jupiter 11.2 318 2.5 >saturn 9.42 95.1 1.1 >uranus 4.11 14.5 0.85 >neptune 3.96 17.2 1.1 >pluto 0.17 0.006 0.2 >------------------------------------------------------- >r ranges over 2 orders-of-magnitude, m even more. But the gravitation >at the surface is constrained within about one order-of-magnitude. > >Is there a theory of planetary formation which accounts for what appears >to be an organising principle here? Not at all. The mass is approximately (density)(4*pi/3)*r^3, making the surface gravity proportional to (density)*r. Furthermore, the inner planets are made of rocky materials and iron, making their densities between 3 and 5 g/cc. On the other hand, the outer planets are made largely of hydrogen, with a much lower density. The density of Saturn is less than that of water, for instance. These two factors combine to put the surface gravities of most of the planets into a very small range. ^ Loren Petrich, the Master Blaster \ ^ / loren@moonzappa.llnl.gov \ ^ / One may need to route through any of: \^/ sunlight.llnl.gov <<<<<<<<+>>>>>>>> lll-lcc.llnl.gov /v\ lll-crg.llnl.gov / v \ star.stanford.edu / v \ v "I'm just a spud boy looking for that real tomato" -- Devo ------------------------------ Date: 26 Dec 89 16:39:25 GMT From: crdgw1!sixhub!davidsen@uunet.uu.net (Wm E. Davidsen Jr) Subject: Air to orbit launch in 1985? Just caught a documentary on the F15 fighter. Among other things described was a report of the F15 shooting down a dead US satellite with a missle... in 1985. Now I realize that it is not impossible to throw something slow moving into orbit and let a satellite "run into it" as it were, but it is certainly not the reliable way to do it. I would doubt that anyone would design a production defense system which involved a crossing shot on something at orbital velocity. My question is, did this air to orbit missle achieve orbital velocity itself? The naration didn't say, while the footage certainly *looked* like an overtaking, low deflection angle, approach. Since the show was on cable TV the program is obviously not classified, although the details may be. Does anyone know more about this? There are better things of that size to place in LEO than 50kg of explosive if you can do it (a) cheaply and (b) on short notice. Emergency repair and relief comes to mind. -- bill davidsen - sysop *IX BBS and Public Access UNIX davidsen@sixhub.uucp ...!uunet!crdgw1!sixhub!davidsen "Getting old is bad, but it beats the hell out of the alternative" -anon ------------------------------ Date: 29 Dec 89 03:31:50 GMT From: zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!usc!cs.utexas.edu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!utzoo!henry@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu (Henry Spencer) Subject: Re: Launching AUSSAT on Chinese rockets In article <2462@moondance.cs.uq.oz.au> anthony@batserver.cs.uq.oz.au writes: >Recently, President Bush approved the sale of three communication satellites >to China... Well, not quite -- what has happened is that Bush has dropped the post-Tiananmen embargo that prevented completion of sales which had already passed the full US-government approval process. >... The money that the Chinese government received >for the launch of the AUSSAT satellites is used to further the research >in rockets in the Chinese Army... >By lauching AUSSAT at half the price of the shuttle, the Chinese government >is clearly trying to artifically force down the prices of the launch >industry and to beat the competition. This is clearly an unfair trade >practice... I wish the opponents of launching things on Long March would be consistent about what their objection is. Half the time they say that China is selling launches far below cost and this is unfair competition, and half the time they say that China is making a large profit which supports rocket research, thereby somehow contributing to atrocities like Tiananmen Square. I'm afraid Anthony Lee has set a new record, with both arguments in one article. C'mon, folks: if they're selling below cost, they can't be supporting anything with the proceeds. Beating the competition and forcing prices down is normal, fair trade practice, engaged in every day by a wide variety of US companies, often to the considerable sorrow of their competitors in other nations. It only becomes unfair if money stolen from taxpayers at gunpoint is used to subsidize it, as the US did for most of its commercially-available launchers in their early days. (The classic example is the old shuttle commercial prices, set so low that the development of Ariane looked like a huge gamble.) I don't know for sure whether the Chinese are subsidizing foreign launches on Long March, but I doubt that they're subsidizing it much. They simply have cheaper hardware and less costly operations than their high-tech competitors. It's quite true that bloated military contractors -- the ones who build all current Western launch systems, including Ariane -- have a hard time competing with people who build heatshields out of wood and set launch azimuth by rotating the pad with hand cranks. We need more such people, preferably in free countries, not an international launcher cartel determined to squeeze them out of the market. Which is what we have now: if the US-China agreement limiting foreign access to Chinese launches had been between two US companies instead of two countries, there would be a restraint-of-trade antitrust suit pending against them. >Beside political considerations, what is the record of launches for the >Long March rockets ? Excellent, actually. It's simple, reliable hardware. >Bush is bowing to the Chinese government. Insofar as he's bowing to anyone, it's to the US satellite builders, who want freedom to launch their birds on the lowest bidder's rockets and to hell with the ideologies. -- 1972: Saturn V #15 flight-ready| Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology 1989: birds nesting in engines | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu ------------------------------ Date: 30 Dec 89 20:03:07 GMT From: jds@mimsy.umd.edu (James da Silva) Subject: Re: Air to orbit launch in 1985? In article <1989Dec29.211745.2553@utzoo.uucp> henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes: >In article <246@sixhub.UUCP> davidsen@sixhub.UUCP (bill davidsen) writes: >>... a report of the F15 shooting down a dead US satellite >>with a missle... > >Something I forgot in my previous posting... Just to set the record >straight, that US satellite was *not* dead, and the science community >was somewhat annoyed about its destruction -- it was still returning >useful data. (It *was* DoD property, so there was no gross impropriety >involved, but it's still a pity they couldn't use something else.) This incident was mentioned in the December 89 issue of Sky and Telescope, in a review of "The Restless Sun" by Donat G. Wentzel. Reviewer Mark S. Giampapa writes: "Wentzel cites the destruction of the Air Force satellite P78-1 and its on-board coronagraph during an antisatellite test as a particularly frustrating example of how reduced visibility can have detrimental consequences for solar science. But he fails to state the other side of the coin, namely, that the DoD had supported the installation and subsequent operation of the coronagraph on its satellite, even after the initial defense-related objectives had been fulfilled. (How many NASA astronomy missions carry DoD experiments?) Furthermore, solar scientists had allowed themselves to fall several years behind in the analysis of the coronagraph's data, thus casting doubt on the high priority claimed for this instrument by the solar community." Interesting. Jaime ........................................................................... : domain: jds@cs.umd.edu James da Silva : path: uunet!mimsy!jds ------------------------------ Date: 2 Jan 90 12:42:31 GMT From: netnews.upenn.edu!linc.cis.upenn.edu!rubinoff@rutgers.edu (Robert Rubinoff) Subject: Re: The time thread that won't die. In article <9440001@hpcilzb.HP.COM> fish@hpcilzb.HP.COM (John Fisher) writes: >Correct me if I'm wrong (I'm not completely sure of this), but >doesn't the new millennium begin on January 1, 2001? Actually, since the current year is 5750, the new millenium won't begin for another two and a half centuries... (what do you mean, this isn't soc.culture.jewish?) Robert ------------------------------ Date: 2 Jan 90 18:02:09 GMT From: zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!jarthur!aqdata!sullivan@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu (Michael T. Sullivan) Subject: SR-71 (Was: Re: space news from Nov 13 AW&ST) From article <1990Jan1.040623.28415@utzoo.uucp>, by henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer): > > [marginally space related] SR-71 operations terminated due to high cost > and continued USAF confusion about reconnaissance plans. But not before doing a few flybys over the Lockheed plant in Burbank where it was built, tying up traffic for miles. Wish I was there. Sigh. -- Michael Sullivan uunet!jarthur.uucp!aqdata!sullivan aQdata, Inc. San Dimas, CA ------------------------------ Date: 31 Dec 89 02:02:48 GMT From: voder!dtg.nsc.com!andrew@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Lord Snooty @ The Giant Poisoned Electric Head ) Subject: Re: Antigravity Re gyroscope thread: Professor Eric Laithwaite, well-known British eccentric at Imperial College, London, did a lot of weird stuff with gyros in black boxes about 15 (?) years ago. They would sit around and then "inexplicably jump sideways", and similar stuff. He was doing this in the context of engineering lectures, his intention being for you to apply creative methods to work out what could possibly be inside the black box. Perhaps someone over in the UK can fill in the blanks here - i.e. references - as this may be germane to the Japanese results? -- ........................................................................... 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: 19 Dec 89 21:28:49 GMT From: trident.arc.nasa.gov!yee@ames.arc.nasa.gov (Peter E. Yee) Subject: Payload Status for 12/19/89 (Forwarded) Daily Status/KSC Payload Management and Operations 12-19-89 - STS-31R HST (at VPF) - All scheduled ops are on hold due to a live wasp found early Monday morning in the VPF highbay. Additional sealing off of the areas where the wasp penetration is coming from has been performed and an every four hour inspection of the highbay has been instituted. Engineering is evaluating the use of a "bug tent" that would allow for the wide field planetary camera installation. - STS-32R SYNCOM (at Pad A) - Battery conditioning was performed yesterday and is being assessed based on the launch slip to 8 January 1989. - STS-35 ASTRO-1/BBXRT (at O&C) - Software validation for cite in test stand four continues. Aft flight deck equipment removal from test stand three and the igloo mechanical GSE disconnect were completed. Payload centering and transfer of the BBXRT to test stand four was completed yesterday. Plan to pick up this morning with transfer of ASTRO-1 to (cite) test stand four. - STS-40 SLS-1 (at O&C) - Connector protective cap re-identification is complete. Rack 4 cable tie strut installation is complete. Rack 3 and 11 front mods and rack 7 side mods were all completed yesterday. Back panel removal on rack 11 was accomplished and rack 9 RSS installation began. - STS-42 IML (at O&C) - No activity. Plan to pick up with rack mod work and staging on Wednesday. ------------------------------ Date: 20 Dec 89 02:46:07 GMT From: ncrlnk!ncrcae!hubcap!panoff@uunet.uu.net (Robert M. Panoff) Subject: Re: Big Bang: Did it happen? In article <822@tahoma.UUCP>, jpg3196@tahoma.UUCP (James P. Galasyn) writes: > > I just heard from a fairly reliable source that CalTech has demonstrated > the Big Bang never happened. Cjeck out the latest issue of The Sciences, published by the New York Academy of Science. There are a number of fine articles, including one by Anthony Peratt of Los Alamos which discusses how the universe could have come to be the way it is without postulating a Big Bang. This is a far cry from sayong that it ``proves'' the Big Bang never occurred. If there is enough interest, I will summarize this article for the net. The article is titled, ``Not With a Bang -- The Universe May Have Evolved from a Vast Sea of Plasma.'' One quotation is worth including: ``Many physicists believe the time is fast approaching when the big bang must prove its worth anew or step out of the limelight.'' -- rmp, for the Bob's of the World ------------------------------ Date: 21 Dec 89 00:41:28 GMT From: milton!dancey@beaver.cs.washington.edu (Mikel Stromberg) Subject: Re: New years eve 1999 You are right that a millenium ends every year, but the CENTURY ends with the final second of the 00 year. See, we're in the 20th century, derived from the year 2000, the final year of this century. Thus, Jan 1, 2001, will be the first year of the 21st Century, and also the 3rd Millenia. ------------------------------ End of SPACE Digest V10 #365 *******************