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 ; Thu, 25 Oct 1990 02:03:13 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: Precedence: junk Reply-To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU From: space-request+@Andrew.CMU.EDU To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU Date: Thu, 25 Oct 1990 02:02:39 -0400 (EDT) Subject: SPACE Digest V12 #485 SPACE Digest Volume 12 : Issue 485 Today's Topics: Re: Launch cost per pound NAVY WITHOLDING EVIDENCE!!! Re: Theories needed on life Re: Deep Space Network use (Was: Ulysses Update - 10/06/90) Re: Pluto Administrivia: Submissions to the SPACE Digest/sci.space should be mailed to space+@andrew.cmu.edu. Other mail, esp. [un]subscription notices, should be sent to space-request+@andrew.cmu.edu, or, if urgent, to tm2b+@andrew.cmu.edu ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 23 Oct 90 20:40:11 GMT From: hub.ucsb.edu!ucsbuxa!3001crad@ucsd.edu (Charles Frank Radley) Subject: Re: Launch cost per pound In article <1293.2710C090@ofa123.fidonet.org> David.Anderman@ofa123.fidonet.org (David Anderman) writes: >Actually, it might be cheaper to launch the Soviet rockets from the Cape >(Canaveral) than Baikonur. Yes, workers here get paid more $, but the >decrease in Delta V needed to get into orbit from Florida may make up >the difference..... >-- >David Anderman >Internet: David.Anderman@ofa123.fidonet.org It depends on the destination orbit. For LEO, KSC is a superior site because you can get from 28 deg to about 55 deg inclination. From Baikonur they are limited to about 45 deg or greater inc. But for Geosynchronour orbit, the plane change penalty is relatively small, and outweighs any advantage of relocating infrastructure to a different location. : >-------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------ Date: 23 Oct 90 03:09:00 GMT From: sgi!cdp!nec@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU Subject: NAVY WITHOLDING EVIDENCE!!! "UFO CENTRAL" The Forbidden City Area# 51 Produced by: Audrey Lauin Reported by: Bill McGowen both of "Current Affair(10/11/90)8:00p.m. Just afew miles from Las Vegas, there exists a "TOP SECRET" installation called area# 51. This area is run by the U.S.Dept of Energy. Jaime Shandera calls the top secret area within area# 51: "DREAMLAND"! A ring of mountains surrounded by another ring of mountains. An Electro Physicist named: Bob Lazar known for his work with Los Alamos Meson Physics facility along with his many years with NASA has come forward with information on the Navy's (9) captured disks(U,(UFOs). He was employed and/or assigned to analize one of these crafts. He Says: 'these things were not built by human hands as the technology is far beyond anything we have; Just the reactor & power source alone put out a tremendous amount of power! It was very obvious what was in the hanger---a typical flying saucer! The fuel that the reactor uses is a SUPER heavy element, something described as 115 on the periotic charts! It's a material that we cannot create here on earth, nevertheless find naturally in nature. It just doesn't exist!!! Ten years ago this was the place where the top secret stealth bomber & fighters were designed and flight tested, along with countless under- ground nuclear bomb testing. Many researchers state that if the military wanted to hide an alien space craft; this would be the place to hide it!!! Mr.Lazar brought friends to the parimeter of the base on the evening of March 29th,1989 @ 8:29p.m. & photographed the first "TEST FLIGHT" of said alien space craft by our own military scientists!!! Soon thereafter Mr.Lazar became a modern man without a country! His birth certificate, records of government jobs, coworkers, everything vanished.....................As if I was never born!!! Doesn't this piss you off to realize that our own government(CRIMINALS), are withholding evidence from the American public on things such as the discovery of life outside our own universe and the hardware thereof???? Something should be done to force these criminals to release these glorious things that belongs to the American people; NOT THE GOD DAMBED NAVY!!!! ------------------------------ Date: 22 Oct 90 13:05:48 GMT From: uceng!minerva!dmocsny@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu (Daniel Mocsny) Subject: Re: Theories needed on life In article <806@demott.COM> kdq@demott.COM (Kevin D. Quitt) writes: >In article <3996@3comvax.MCD.3Com.Com> michaelm@vax.MCD.3Com.Com (Michael McNeil) writes: >>It's highly likely that humanoid life wouldn't exist even on a planet >>just like the Earth -- if life were to independently evolve again. >>There are just too many other possible pathways for it to follow. > Either that, or the humanoid form is like a chaotic attractor, and >almost all evolutionary forms end up with it - which seems a whole lot >more likely to me. (Not that I feel it's all that wonderful, I just >don't see anything wrong with it, and I doubt we're really all that >special). Precedent exists of distinct evolutionary lines converging on a common form. E.g., compare the dolphin, the swordfish, and the ichthyosaur. The laws of hydrodynamics and physiology guarantee that medium-sized aquatic predators have to have a certain shape if they are to succeed, regardless of whether they are mammal, fish, or reptile. The hydrodynamic penalty for the wrong shape is so large that significant variation is unlikely. (Although I see no reason to rule out mammallian or reptillian analogs of something like, say, the manta ray.) Also consider the bat and the pterosaur. But the human form is not especially adapted for maximum mechanical performance in any environment that I know. Humans seem to succeed because they are so adaptable, and this is mostly a function of mobility, intelligence, communication, binocular vision, and manual dexterity. An extraterrestrial creature capable of science and civilization would have to duplicate some of the capabilities of the human (or substitute something equivalent). Mobility appears to be essential for the development of intelligence (see "The Rovers", by Hans Moravec, in "Robotics", ed. by Marvin Minsky, Omni Press, 1985). Successfully mobile creatures must have some method of rapidly sensing their changing environment (vision, sonar), and the brain development to match. Alternative senses that could provide similar information about the environment may be possible, but are somewhat hard to imagine. For example, olfactory and tactile senses are very important to lower animals, but these do not seem as generalizable as vision and hearing, so we would not expect them to be as important to a creature capable of developing a human-like culture. The versatility of carbon chemistry seems to rule out life evolving from anything else, and I doubt that we will be seeing a protein-based radar set! I would be surprised to see our humanoids depending on much other than vision and hearing, the way humans do. Sonar appears to be popular only in environments where vision doesn't work too well, such as underwater (cetaceans) or in darkness (bats). Some good evolutionary reason may exist for this, but I couldn't guess what that might be. Higher vertebrates overwhelmingly use binocular vision (although invertebrates have many other arrangements), and this may represent some fundamental optimum. And the higher the vertebrate, the greater the overlap between the visual fields of the eyes. This may also be unavoidable, but who knows? Manual dexterity would require something like the hand, with its exquisite motor control and tactile feedback. Without this, technology would be impossible. However, the humanoid's manipulator need not resemble the hand exactly, beyond the need for opposable grippers. Something like the elephant's trunk might do as well, although the need for more than one of them seems fairly clear. For communication, speech is hard to beat. Chemical communication on the insect model is probably too specific to be generalizable to an advanced culture. Visual communication on the animal model (plumage display, etc.) has mostly to do with mate selection and would not seem to generalize readily. Although one wonders about the possibility of an intelligent chameleon-like creature with pixel-addressible pigment cells developing a visual language by displaying symbols on its skin! (Squids may have a rudimentary communication based on pigmentation changes. This might conceivably replace speech in our humanoids, given that vision is probably going to be necessary anyway. However, acoustic signalling has many advantages for coordinating group action in emergencies, since it does not rely on line-of-sight or focused attention.) Bipedal stance exists in humans probably as a side effect of the need to free up the manipulators (hands), of which at least two must exist, and having only four limbs to work with. Why four limbs, we can't say, given that invertebrates do well with any number of limbs. The number of limbs will probably be even, as this seems to be preferred, unless we count prehensile tails. So our humanoid could wind up looking like almost anything, except that it would probably have at least two hand-like things, and probably two forward-facing eyes. It would be mobile, but not especially good at it compared to other creatures in its environment. It would probably be unspecialized for combat, speed, digging, or any other mechanical function, forcing it to rely on its wits and cooperation with others of its kind. -- Dan Mocsny Snail: Internet: dmocsny@minerva.che.uc.edu Dept. of Chemical Engng. M.L. 171 dmocsny@uceng.uc.edu University of Cincinnati 513/751-6824 (home) 513/556-2007 (lab) Cincinnati, Ohio 45221-0171 ------------------------------ Date: 23 Oct 90 02:07:17 GMT From: zephyr.ens.tek.com!tektronix!sequent!crg5!szabo@beaver.cs.washington.edu (Nick Szabo) Subject: Re: Deep Space Network use (Was: Ulysses Update - 10/06/90) In article <1990Oct13.033850.29726@zoo.toronto.edu> henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes: >>the biggest gap is between Madrid and Canberra. Maybe they could >>put one is, say, India? ... > >Why bother? In principle two would suffice, if you put them precisely >180 degrees apart and didn't mind working right down on the horizon >just before switchover. In practice you don't want to work at that >low an angle, and the choice of positions is limited, but three is >quite adequate to give complete coverage for anything not enormously >out of the ecliptic. If you just want to add more antennas, it is >almost certainly more cost-effective to add them at existing sites and >make use of existing support facilities. There are scheduling advantages to putting new antennae in, say, India and Brazil instead of adding to exisiting sites. The DSN is typically scheduled in several-hour long blocks; it usually takes 15 minutes to two hours to reconfigure an antenna and associated equipment for a different mission. There are many constraints due to round-trip light time and mission requirements. For example, Magellan in "continuous coverage 70m" mode requires Magellan always be covered by at least one of the large antennae, due to Magellan's relatively small on-board data storage. (Magellan can't store its data long enough to skip an antenna). I can't do it over news, but draw a circle representing the earth with tangents through points 90, 210, and 360 on the circle representing the three DSN sites. (In reality horizon constrains to around 150 degrees, not 180 tangent, depending on horizon, and the earth is 3D, but this model will illustrate the point). We get 6 regions of space, 3 viewable from 2 sites, and 3 viewable from 1. The regions viewable from only 1 site are a significant fraction of deep space. Now try 4 sites, evenly spaced at 90 degrees. The regions covered by only 1 antenna are now merely earth-diameter cylinders, an infinitesimile fraction of deep space. With the 4 evenly spaced sites (or, in reality, 5 oddly spaced sites, with one in India and one in Brazil) we always have 2 dishes to choose from instead of 1. In the Magellan example, currently there are several hours per day per site that an (often specific kind of) antenna *must* be pointed at Magellan. With 5 sites this requirement is eliminated, and we can always cover another important mission or emergency at any site without losing a chunk of Venus. This flexibility may or may not be enough to offset the added costs (economic and political, as was pointed out) of building at new sites. The most flexible arrangement of all would be a nice large antenna in GEO..... Nick Szabo *** NEW ADDRESS *** uunet!sequent.com!szabo These are my opinions, not Sequent's. ------------------------------ Date: 24 Oct 90 15:47:25 GMT From: munnari.oz.au!uhccux!tholen@uunet.uu.net (David Tholen) Subject: Re: Pluto In article <1990Oct22.135534.5505@jato.jpl.nasa.gov>, baalke@mars.jpl.nasa.gov (Ron Baalke) writes: > I did a little further research on this. In the 1990 Astronomical Almanac, > page F2, it lists Pluto of having a 94 degree orbital inclination to the > planetary equator of 1950. In the book called "Planets Beyond, Discovering > the Outer Solar System", 1990 edition, page 296, Pluto is also listed as > having a 94.0 degree inclination of equator to orbit. However, in the > "The New Solar System", 3rd edition, page 291, Charon is listed as having > an orbital inclination of 98.8 degrees. The Astronomical Almanac stills uses my 1985 orbit, which is quite out of date (doesn't include ANY of the new mutual event data). The New Solar System is more recent, but still out of date. I'll be introducing the new 99.0 degrees inclination in a few hours at the Division for Planetary Sciences meeting. Planets Beyonds probably took their figure from the Astronomical Almanac, which is usually a reliable source, but they don't update their data every year. ------------------------------ End of SPACE Digest V12 #485 *******************