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 ; Mon, 22 Apr 91 01:37:38 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: Precedence: junk Reply-To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU From: space-request+@Andrew.CMU.EDU To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU Date: Mon, 22 Apr 91 01:37:32 -0400 (EDT) Subject: SPACE Digest V13 #438 SPACE Digest Volume 13 : Issue 438 Today's Topics: NASA Headline News for 04/17/91 (Forwarded) Re: Saturn V blueprints NASA, industry to develop remote sensing firefighting aid (Forwarded) Re: Government vs. Commercial R&D POTENTIAL GEOMAGNETIC STORM WARNING - IMPACT EXPECTED Re: Why the space station? 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: 22 Apr 91 01:07:13 GMT From: usenet@ames.arc.nasa.gov (Peter E. Yee) Subject: NASA Headline News for 04/17/91 (Forwarded) Headline News Internal Communications Branch (P-2) NASA Headquarters Wednesday, April 17, 1991 Audio Service: 202 / 755-1788 This is NASA Headline News for Wednesday, April 17, 1991 . . . Atlantis made it as far as Columbus, Mississippi, yesterday on the return flight from California following its STS-37 landing. Because of its late departure from Edwards Air Force Base, the 747 shuttle carrier aircraft crew couldn't refuel in San Antonio and make it to the Shuttle Landing Facility during the allotted daylight period. Instead, they opted to lay over at Columbus Air Force Base, and are expecting to leave this morning for Kennedy Space Center. There are some weather concerns for the flight path near the Mississippi-Georgia border, thunderstorms mostly. However, the 747 crew expects to have Atlantis back at Kennedy by early afternoon. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Goddard Space Flight Center flight controllers report that instrument turn-on began yesterday on the Gamma Ray Observatory. At 11:29 am yesterday, the Oriented Scintillation Spectrometer Experiment successfully detected charged particles as the spacecraft flew the South Atlantic anomaly, a positive indication that the OSSE instrument is alive and well. Science operations with GRO are expected to begin the third week of May. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * The Stennis Space Center reports that nearly 2,300 guests toured its visitor center last week. The center also notes that its Early Education Monday, an innovative educational program for grade school children, was conducted for 137 students from three schools in Picayune and Kosciusko, Mississippi, and Lacombe, Louisiana. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * NASA yesterday issued a request for proposals to establish six Regional Technology Transfer Centers to replace the ten Industrial Applications Centers, whose contract expires this year. This restructuring is intended to upgrade and revitalize the current technology utilization network and to broaden its geographical coverage. The new program also expects to forge new partnerships with state and local government technology transfer centers and to establish close ties with the NASA Centers for the Commercial Development of Space in their respective regions. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Marshall Space Flight Center commemorates the 10th anniversary of the first flight of the shuttle this Friday with a special luncheon at the Redstone Arsenal Officer's Club. Honored at the luncheon will be John Young and Robert Crippen, commander and pilot, respectively, of the shuttle's pioneer mission -- STS-1. Also honored will be individuals from Marshall who, at that time, played a significant role in enabling Columbia to take that historic first step, including then-Center Director Bill Lucas, then-Center Deputy Director Jack Lee, then-Marshall Shuttle Project Manager Bob Lindstrom, then-External Tank Project Manager Jim Odom, and then-Solid Rocket Booster Manager George Hardy. Current Marshall Director Jack Lee will host the luncheon, which starts at 12:00 pm EDT. The press has been invited to cover the luncheon and to interview participants following its close. Here's the broadcast schedule for Public Affairs events on NASA Select TV. All times are Eastern. NASA Select TV is carried on GE Satcom F2R, transponder 13, C-Band, 72 degrees W Long., Audio 6.8, Frequency 3960 MHz. Wednesday, 4/17/91 10:00 am STS-40, Spacelab Life Sciences-1, live Joint Integrated Simulation between Marshall Space Flight Center and Johnson Space Center. Simulation activities continue through 10:00 pm. 1:15 pm Magellan-at-Venus status report and science update live from Jet Propulsion Laboratory. 1:30 pm STS-40 Joint Integrated Simulation activities continue live from Johnson and Marshall centers. Thursday, 4/18/91 8:00 am STS-40, Spacelab Life Sciences-1, live Joint Integrated Simulation between Marshall Space Flight Center and Johnson Space Center. Simulation activities continue through 2:00 pm. Friday, 4/19/91 9:00 am Senate Subcommittee on Science, Technology and Space (Albert Gore, D-Tenn, chairman) hearing on NASA Fiscal Year 1992 budget request and findings of the Advisory Committee on the Future of the U.S. Space Program. NASA Administrator Richard Truly and advisory committee chairman Norman Augustine are witnesses. (This hearing will be covered live at the beginning, and picked up again in progress following the STS-37 briefing. The entire hearing will then be replayed.) 10:00 am STS-37 flight crew post-mission press conference live from Johnson Space Center. Mission commander Steve Nagel, pilot Ken Cameron, and mission specialists Jerry Ross, Jay Apt and Linda Godwin will describe their recent flight and show and narrate video highlights of the mission, which included two spacewalks. 11:00 am Continue live coverage of Senate Subcommittee hearing on NASA budget request. approx. 12:00 pm Replay entire hearing of Senate Subcommittee on NASA Fiscal Year 1992 budget request and advisory committee findings. All events and times may change without notice. This report is filed daily, Monday through Friday, by 12:00 pm, Eastern. It is a service of NASA Headquarters Office of Public Affairs. Contact: CREDMOND on NASAmail or at 202/453-8425. ------------------------------ Date: 21 Apr 91 18:15:14 GMT From: mintaka!think.com!samsung!cs.utexas.edu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!qucdn!gilla@bloom-beacon.mit.edu (Arnold G. Gill) Subject: Re: Saturn V blueprints In article , mvk@aix01.aix.rpi.edu (Michael V. Kent) says: > >Rebuilding the Saturn V will give you an old, expensive, unreliable system. >Better to take what we've learned and start anew. Old -- of course. Expensive -- unknown until it is actually built. Unreliable -- perhaps I am being forgetful here, but were there not exactly 0 Saturn V failures, no launch delays? Compare that to the shuttle, where launch delays are the rule. Old and simple does not necessarily mean bad and unsafe. But new gadgets are what powers the industrial feeding trough. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- | Arnold Gill | - If I hadn't wanted it heard, | | Queen's University at Kingston | I wouldn't have said it. | | InterNet: gilla@qucdn.queensu.ca | - Astrophysician in training | -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- ------------------------------ Date: 22 Apr 91 01:27:45 GMT From: usenet@ames.arc.nasa.gov (Peter E. Yee) Subject: NASA, industry to develop remote sensing firefighting aid (Forwarded) [See, we do more than space probes. :-) -PEY] Barbara Selby Headquarters, Washington, D.C. April 18, 1991 (Phone: 703/557-5609) Diane Stanley Ames Research Center, Mountain View, Calif. (Phone: 415/604-3934) RELEASE: 91-56 NASA, INDUSTRY TO DEVELOP REMOTE SENSING FIREFIGHTING AID NASA's Ames Research Center and Terra-Mar Resource Information Services, Inc., both of Mountain View, Calif., will jointly develop a system to allow firefighters to merge elevation and vegetation data with live pictures of forest fires to enable the firefighters to quickly "see" through a smoky forest fire and plan their strategy. The data will be available to firefighters in a matter of minutes, compared with current systems which take 6 to 12 hours to obtain similar data. The disaster assessment system also could be used during floods, earthquakes, oil spills and similar events. The system will be used to retrieve maps containing information about location, land cover, roads and water sources from distant sites and to merge this data with up-to-the-minute aerial images of the fire area. The digital image of the fire will be transmitted from an airplane flying over the fire to a mobile ground station near the fire lines. The system will give firefighters a picture of the fire intensity and borders, overlaid with drawings of roads, water sources and map coordinates. If needed, elevation data will be displayed in images that appear three dimensional to model the fire's spread. The 3-year project calls for NASA to expand existing remote sensing technology and for Terra-Mar to develop portable computer work stations and advanced software for the system. The $600,000 project is funded by NASA's Office of Commercial Programs, Washington, D.C., under the Earth Observations Commercialization Applications Program (EOCAP), based on a proposal submitted by Ames and Terra-Mar. The ultimate goal of the effort is to develop, test and market a commercial remote sensing system for real-time assessment and management of natural disasters. EOCAP promotes partnerships between government, industry, educational institutions and non- profit organizations to increase commercial applications of NASA- developed remote sensing technology. The agreement also funds development of data bases on California's vegetation, roads and water sources by the State of California's Teale Data Center. The U.S. Forest Service Forest Fire Laboratory will coordinate system testing and use during actual fires. Hewlett-Packard, Ft. Collins, Colo.; VITec, Inc., Plano, Texas; and ESL, Sunnyvale, Calif., a subsidiary of TRW, will provide hardware and software support to the project. ------------------------------ Date: 21 Apr 91 19:07:10 GMT From: carroll@a.cs.uiuc.edu (Alan M. Carroll) Subject: Re: Government vs. Commercial R&D In article <330.28100E11@nss.FIDONET.ORG>, Paul.Blase@nss.FIDONET.ORG (Paul Blase) writes:` > [ research costs too much for private companies ] > Look at superconductors as a good example. For years, nobody did > much work on them, they were too expensive to use. Now that the new > ceramic compounds promise large commercial payoffs, there is a lot of > private-sector work going on (as well as a lot of government-funded work). Good example. Weren't the ceramic superconductors first discovered in the IBM Zurich lab, i.e. a _private_ research lab? -- Alan M. Carroll <-- Another victim of applied metaphysics Epoch Development Team Urbana Il. "I hate shopping with the reality-impaired" - Susan ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 21 Apr 91 01:46:46 MDT From: oler <@BITNET.CC.CMU.EDU:oler@HG.ULeth.CA> (CARY OLER) Subject: POTENTIAL GEOMAGNETIC STORM WARNING - IMPACT EXPECTED X-St-Vmsmail-To: st%"space+@andrew.cmu.edu" /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\ POTENTIAL GEOMAGNETIC STORM WARNING 21/22 APRIL, 1991 /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\ WARNINGS ISSUED: - POTENTIAL LOW LATITUDE AURORAL ACTIVITY WARNING - POTENTIAL MINOR TO MAJOR GEOMAGNETIC STORM WARNING - POTENTIAL GIC WARNING - POTENTIAL MAJOR SOLAR FLARE WARNING (PROTON) ALERTS IN PROGRESS: - MAJOR SOLAR FLARE ALERT (X1.0/3N ON 20 APRIL) ATTENTION: A minor to major geomagnetic storm warning has been issued. A major long-duration class X1.0/3N Tenflare occurred at 10:31 UT on 20 April and was associated with a moderate to strong Type IV sweep. This event is expected to produce a minor to major geomagnetic storm beginning anytime after about 21:00 UT on 21 April. The main phase is not expected to begin until sometime on 22 April. The intensity of this storm could push the planetary A-index above 40. High and northerly middle latitudes are expected to feel the brunt of the storm, with possible magnetic A-indices between 35 and 60. Planetary K-indices are expected to reach 5 and 6, with possible brief excursions of 7. A LOW LATITUDE AURORAL ACTIVITY WARNING has been issued for 22 April. There is a chance that geomagnetic and auroral storming could become intense enough to be seen over southerly middle and low latitudes, particularly during the moonless hours of the early morning. Activity is expected to be moderate to high over all northerly middle and high latitude locations. If this storm materializes, the activity could be quite intense and more impressive over the middle and high latitudes than the storm of last March, primarily due to the waxing phase and reduced luminosity of the Moon. However, the overall intensity of the geomagnetic and auroral storm is not expected to be as intense as last March. There is a risk for geomagnetically induced currents (GIC's) if this storm materializes as expected. The intensity of the storm likely will not be as strong as the storm of last March, but isolated magnetic activity could be sufficient to produce induced currents. All industries and organizations which might be affected should be aware of the increased potential for GIC's. HF propagation conditions are expected to become degraded late on 21 April or early on 22 April. Significant periods of absorption, flutter, noise and distortion could be observed over most paths, but particularly over the middle and high latitude paths. The intensity of the degradation will not be as bad as the major geomagnetic storm which occurred one month ago, but could still significantly disrupt HF communications. There is a high probability for VHF auroral backscatter communications on 22 and possibly 23 April. VHF auroral backscatter should become possible over the northerly low latitudes, middle latitudes and high latitudes on 22 and possibly 23 April. The duration of this storm is expected to be around 36 hours, although this is only a very rough estimate. A geomagnetic storm alert will be issued if the SSC arrives as expected late on 21 or early on 22 April. PLEASE SEND ANY REPORTS OF AURORAL ACTIVITY, AURORAL BACKSCATTER COMMUNICATIONS OR SIGNIFICANT HF RADIO DEGRADATION TO: OLER@HG.ULETH.CA PLEASE INCLUDE THE LOCAL AND UT TIME OF OBSERVATION, GEOGRAPHICAL LOCATION (LATITUDE/LONGITUDE) AND A BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE PHENOMENA OBSERVED. /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\ ------------------------------ Date: 22 Apr 91 04:41:49 GMT From: rochester!sol!yamauchi@louie.udel.edu (Brian Yamauchi) Subject: Re: Why the space station? In article <1991Apr22.034722.676@ariel.unm.edu> prentice@triton.unm.edu (John Prentice) writes: >In article yamauchi@cs.rochester.edu (Brian Yamauchi) writes: >> >>A well-designed space station could be useful for life sciences >>research and as a assembly platform/staging area for interplanetary >>missions. >Is this something that life scientists (whatever that means, biologists, >doctors, etc...) are really calling for or is this something that NASA >has dreamt up as yet another one of their applications of space? I was thinking in terms of the application of life sciences to space exploration rather than vice versa. A properly configured station could study the long-term affects of microgravity and artificial gravity on human beings. For manned interplanetary missions, such knowledge would be extremely useful -- although perhaps not absolutely necessary, depending on the amount of risk one is willing to take. There are still those who argue that manned interplanetary missions are impossible due to the long-term biological effects of weightlessness. The Soviets have partially disproved this assertion with the long-duration stays of cosmonauts on Mir, but more research is necessary to conclusively determine the best means to deal with this problem -- exercise, artificial gravity, etc. -- _______________________________________________________________________________ Brian Yamauchi University of Rochester yamauchi@cs.rochester.edu Department of Computer Science _______________________________________________________________________________ ------------------------------ End of SPACE Digest V13 #438 *******************