Return-path: X-Andrew-Authenticated-as: 7997;andrew.cmu.edu;Ted Anderson Received: from hogtown.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 ; Sat, 20 Apr 91 01:49:59 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: Precedence: junk Reply-To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU From: space-request+@Andrew.CMU.EDU To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU Date: Sat, 20 Apr 91 01:49:52 -0400 (EDT) Subject: SPACE Digest V13 #430 SPACE Digest Volume 13 : Issue 430 Today's Topics: Re: Galileo status reports Re: Atlas Centaur bites the big one, 4/18 Re: comsat cancellations and lawsuits Source of Einstein Quote? Launch Costs XXIV -- Wright Bros. Flyer to carry tanks to Kuwait! NERVA vs. other nukes Re: Galileo status reports Re: Advancing Launch Technology Re: Uploading to alpha Centauri Re: Saturn V blueprints Re: Advancing Launch Technology Administrivia: Submissions to the SPACE Digest/sci.space should be mailed to space+@andrew.cmu.edu. Other mail, esp. [un]subscription requests, should be sent to space-request+@andrew.cmu.edu, or, if urgent, to tm2b+@andrew.cmu.edu ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 19 Apr 91 18:26:52 GMT From: agate!bionet!uwm.edu!cs.utexas.edu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!watserv1!watdragon!watyew!jdnicoll@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (James Davis Nicoll) Subject: Re: Galileo status reports moersch@theory.tn.cornell.edu (Jeff Moersch) writes: >So how come the Galileo status reports stop just as soon as the spacecraft >starts having problems? I would think this is a time people would be very >interested in having up to date information on what's going on. The people >who paid for the mission deserve to know what's up! I doubt the folks who post NASA related news are paid to do so. Is it possible that whatever problem Galileo is having falls within their area of responsibility and they are now busy fixing the problem and will post when they have time? James Nicoll ------------------------------ Date: 19 Apr 91 14:57:57 GMT From: rochester!sol!yamauchi@rutgers.edu (Brian Yamauchi) Subject: Re: Atlas Centaur bites the big one, 4/18 In article <1991Apr19.055759.4781@nas.nasa.gov> ranma@noc.arc.nasa.gov (Robert Gutierrez) writes: >I wrote: >> Aside from the usual news reports, does anybody have any better details >> on the Atlas Centuar KSC self-destructed??? >> >> I know the payload was a Japanese satellite, but I'd like to know >> if anybody knows which one it was? >I'll bet those Arainespace launchings are looking better and better >every day to everybody else ... According to CNN, this comsat was to take the place of one that was destroyed when an Ariane IV exploded. Multiply your $100 million dollar ouch by a factor of two... -- _______________________________________________________________________________ Brian Yamauchi University of Rochester yamauchi@cs.rochester.edu Department of Computer Science _______________________________________________________________________________ ------------------------------ Date: 20 Apr 91 02:26:58 GMT From: rex!rouge!dlbres10@g.ms.uky.edu (Fraering Philip) Subject: Re: comsat cancellations and lawsuits In article <1991Apr19.192219.25895@porthos.cc.bellcore.com> rdm2@chaucer.uucp (25362-roe mcburnett(H053)m000) writes: >OK-- What in the world is R100 and or R101, Can you give any references >where one could read up on them. >I don't wish to flame anyone here but suggesting that *WE* read something >about something without the least reference as to what it is or where to >even find references to it is, IMHO, impolite at the least. Then please accept my abject apologies. The R100 and R101, as I thought everyone knew (but I was mistaken), were airships built in Britian in the late 20's or early 30's (I think). Wait, here's a totally inadequate reference from World Book encyclopedia, which says: ''The British constructed two other large airships, the R-100 and the R-101. The R-101 crashed against a hill in France in 1930, killing 47 persons. This ended active British interest in airships, and the R-100 was dismantled.`` Totally inadequate, because, the reasons for the crash of the R-101 were directly traceable to extremely bad design, mismanagement, and negligence. There were two different consortiums building the craft. I believe the R-100 was designed by the same person who designed the Lancaster bonber (but I'm not sure). After the R-101 crashed in France after being barely able to cross the channel, the R-100 was ordered scrapped, "because of the unsafety of airships, etc., etc., and if we the bureaucrats can't build one, then noone else should be allowed to..." The order to scrap it was (I think, but again, I'm not sure) was sent to Canada, where the R-100 had gone on its maiden flight, which pretty much took place without a hitch. I suppose any good book on the history of airships would have more and more accurate details than myself. Henry might also want to interject some cold hard facts that are probrably counter to my beliefs. -- Phil Fraering dlbres10@pc.usl.edu "The reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extermes, in which the fear of being contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost all sense and meaning." - Winston Churchill, _The Birth of Britian_ "X-rays are a hoax." - Lord Kelvin ------------------------------ Date: 19 Apr 91 14:51:58 GMT From: agate!bionet!uwm.edu!rpi!masscomp!daved@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Dave Davis) Subject: Source of Einstein Quote? [Followups to rec.arts.books, please.] I'm trying to track down an exact citation for this quote, which I have reason to think is by Albert Einstein: "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler." If anyone could post a context & source for this, that would be wonderful. BTW, I've been through most of the standard quotations dictionaries, and all of the books by & about Einstein that I could lay my hands on. Thanks (and admiration) in advance. Dave Davis -These are my views, and not those of Concurrent. {harvard,uunet,petsd}!masscomp!daved QOTD: Some say love, it is a hunger, an endless aching need. I say love, it is a flower, and you its only seed. Lyrics from The_Rose ------------------------------ Date: 16 Apr 91 15:39:03 GMT From: unisoft!fai!sequent!crg5!szabo@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Nick Szabo) Subject: Launch Costs XXIV -- Wright Bros. Flyer to carry tanks to Kuwait! In article dlbres10@pc.usl.edu (Fraering Philip) writes: [Some proposals for lower chem launchers, and Wright Bros. w/C-5 payload] I agree with the general gist of your comments, that going towards high up-front cost, heavier lift vehicles is harmful, not helpful, to developing new technology. IMHO, if an organization can greatly lower development costs (eg <$500 million for GEO satcom carrying launcher) _and_ cut operation cost by a large factor, then it would be worthwhile to build. If we want to cut costs we need to cut costs, not propose yet more $billions in the name of cutting costs. It is well nigh impossible that government could do such a thing, much less want to do such a thing. If industry wants to spend their own money on such a project, I'm every bit in favor of that. Meanwhile, government should concentrate on advancing the state of the art, not developing and operating chemical rockets. -- Nick Szabo szabo@sequent.com "The biscuits and the syrup never come out even" -- Robert A. Heinlein The above opinions are my own and not related to those of any organization I may be affiliated with. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 19 Apr 91 03:56 EST From: "JOHN E. PERRY" Subject: NERVA vs. other nukes X-Envelope-To: space+@andrew.cmu.edu Someone last week really panned NERVA as a concept for nuclear propulsion. Theree were, however, good reasons for the NERVA configuration. Above all, graphite is the only material that is strong and maintains that strengh right up to its sublimation point (it doesn't melt). All other "refractory " materials--tungsten, molybdemum, SiN, BN, etc.--have the strength of mashed potatoes (and some have that consistency) at just a couple of thousand C. The great advantage of graphite is that if you can keep oxidizing gases away from it, you don't have to worry about whether it gets too hot. I don't doubt that there were problems to solve with NERVA, but I really don't see how you can call an accident that scatters a few million highly radioactiveparticles less worrisome than one that scatters a few thousand hoghly fadioactive rods. Please excuse the lack of editing; I haven't yet figures out how to make our VAX recognize my CoCo's charactrs. --John P. ------------------------------ Date: 19 Apr 91 17:02:26 GMT From: rochester!dietz@cu-arpa.cs.cornell.edu (Paul Dietz) Subject: Re: Galileo status reports In article <1991Apr19.163908.17489@infonode.ingr.com> hychejw@infonode.ingr.com (Jeff W. Hyche) writes: > What kind of problems is the Galileo having? The news reports said the main antenna did not fully deploy. If true, the mission could be in big trouble. Paul F. Dietz dietz@cs.rochester.edu ------------------------------ Date: 19 Apr 91 19:01:04 GMT From: mojo!SYSMGR%KING.ENG.UMD.EDU@mimsy.umd.edu (Doug Mohney) Subject: Re: Advancing Launch Technology In article <21561@crg5.UUCP>, szabo@crg5.UUCP (Nick Szabo) writes: >In article <009471E1.DF607D00@KING.ENG.UMD.EDU> sysmgr@KING.ENG.UMD.EDU (Doug Mohney) writes: > >[I write -- launch cost curve doesn't give efficient space colonization >until beyond 2500] > >>You are asserting this? 2500? Are you smoking something? Funny, soon after I posted my message, someone else also wondered if you had recently participated in drug testing. >I am sorry it violates your wishes. Now sit down, get the data for >launch costs between 1957-1991, and fit the curve for yourself. >You will find no more than a two order of magnitude drop by 2500, >still well above the cost needed for affordable manned travel >to GEO, L-5 and beyond (3-4 orders of magnitude, depending whose >argument you use). > >The way we break out of the curve is by working towards more advanced >launch and upper stage technology, not by wishful thinking and rehashing >of the same old ideas and technologies. Nick, if you are so blind as to use a concocted example to support your arguements, I can't see why you just don't shoot everyone at NASA above the level of technical manager and hope that they are randomly replaced with brilliant people who are willing to espouse your ideas. I'm quite sure the data is correct. However, it is laughable to try to project out the curve for 500 years (can I round off 1990 to 2000 for the sake of arguement?). It is the same sort of GARBAGE which was used to by the Club of Rome clique in the late '70s to say the world is going to hell in a handbasket in 20 years, due to increases in population and limited resource allocation, with NO ACCOUNTING WHATSOEVER for A) Incremental technological advances B) New technological advances C) New Technologies applied to old problems and D) Technological advances which we have no way of predicting, but which come together due to circumstances. You can smugly point at the "fitted curve" all you want. As others have pointed out, there ARE efforts to look at laser launching, tethers, and other New And Improved technologies aside from chemicals. They all have drawbacks. You want to throw money at them to make them work NOW. TODAY. In the Long View, our technological approaches of today are going to be different from those in 2100. Fundmental advances in physics, chemistry, computer science, materials, and biology (will we find a way to grow fuel? :-) will make your "curve" irrelevant. However, patience here is required. Evolution, not revolution, will get us into orbit, and it is the things which we cannot see, or project, which will provide the most radical revolutions in space exploration. Signature envy: quality of some people to put 24+ lines in their .sigs -- > SYSMGR@CADLAB.ENG.UMD.EDU < -- ------------------------------ Date: 18 Apr 91 19:21:10 GMT From: ssc-vax!bcsaic!hsvaic!eder@beaver.cs.washington.edu (Dani Eder) Subject: Re: Uploading to alpha Centauri In reference to the time dilation effect making relativistic space travel seem like faster then light... The ultimate in apparent time dilation would occur if you travel to another star at the speed of light. Now, how does one do this? Imagine an improved scanning tunneling microscope that can tell you what atoms it is seeing. Freeze the crew solid, and scan their entire bodies atom by atom. Then send a radio message reading "carbon,oxygen,hydrogen,hydrogen..." to a receiving station at the destination. There a set of drexler-style nano-machines build a copy of the crew atom by atom. Finally, you unfreeze the crew. The energy it takes to send the description of a human is about a million times less than the energy to physically send that human. The advantage is greater if you use data compression (a lot of protein molecules are repeated through the body, etc.). Of course, you first have to deliver the nanomachines to another star, but they could be a lot smaller than the life support system to keep a crew alive for years, and the nano-machines could use a propulsion system that was too violent for living people (like a gigantic version of a particle accelerator). I think of this process as 'uploading' people on an interstellar net. ------------------------------ Date: 18 Apr 91 19:09:52 GMT From: ssc-vax!bcsaic!hsvaic!eder@beaver.cs.washington.edu (Dani Eder) Subject: Re: Saturn V blueprints In article <1991Apr10.201212.922@herbert.uucp> doug@jimi.cs.unlv.edu (Doug Phillipson ) writes: >of data they could be drawing on for a real station. I heard that we can't even >recreate Apollo because the blueprints are missing. Thats utterly criminal. Heads >should roll just for that. To think the American taxpayers spent 25 Billion >on a moon program, a quite successful one at that, and we can't recreate it or >come close to doing it again after we have already done it once! > I wish the rumor that the Apollo program blueprints are gone could be laid to rest. I have been in the room at the Marshall Space Flight Center where they keep copies of all the drawings. On aperture cards. These are IBM punch cards with a square of microfilm embedded in them. There are about 2 million cards in this room. They not only have the Saturn V, but everthing ever done by MSFC (I was looking for External Tank drawings at the time). The problem in re-creating the Saturn V is not finding the drawings, it is finding vendors who can supply mid-1960's vintage hardware (like guidance system components), and the fact that the launch pads and VAB have been converted to Space Shuttle use, so you have no place to launch from. By the time you redesign to accommodate available hardware and re-modify the launch pads, you may as well have started from scratch with a clean sheet design. ------------------------------ Date: 16 Apr 91 18:36:58 GMT From: unisoft!fai!sequent!crg5!szabo@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Nick Szabo) Subject: Re: Advancing Launch Technology In article <009471E1.DF607D00@KING.ENG.UMD.EDU> sysmgr@KING.ENG.UMD.EDU (Doug Mohney) writes: [I write -- launch cost curve doesn't give efficient space colonization until beyond 2500] >You are asserting this? 2500? Are you smoking something? I am sorry it violates your wishes. Now sit down, get the data for launch costs between 1957-1991, and fit the curve for yourself. You will find no more than a two order of magnitude drop by 2500, still well above the cost needed for affordable manned travel to GEO, L-5 and beyond (3-4 orders of magnitude, depending whose argument you use). The way we break out of the curve is by working towards more advanced launch and upper stage technology, not by wishful thinking and rehashing of the same old ideas and technologies. -- Nick Szabo szabo@sequent.com "The biscuits and the syrup never come out even" -- Robert A. Heinlein The above opinions are my own and not related to those of any organization I may be affiliated with. ------------------------------ End of SPACE Digest V13 #430 *******************