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 ; Tue, 7 May 91 01:50:15 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: Precedence: junk Reply-To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU From: space-request+@Andrew.CMU.EDU To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU Date: Tue, 7 May 91 01:50:06 -0400 (EDT) Subject: SPACE Digest V13 #498 SPACE Digest Volume 13 : Issue 498 Today's Topics: Re: Incentives Re: Teflon (Was Space technology) Re: GIF viewer Free Cray Time to Sisal Users SSC: Big non-Science RE: SPACE Digest V13 #485 Re: Hypersonic Transport Re: Galileo Update On CNN atmosphere probe question Re: New CD-ROMs on-line at Ames Re: Why the space station? Information sources for frequent space questions (1 of n) 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: 2 May 91 01:22:19 GMT From: world!unicorn@decwrl.dec.com (unicorn) Subject: Re: Incentives >irvine@en.ecn.purdue.edu (/dev/null) writes: >> Congress should allocate (through lotteries, appropriations, >> etc) a large cash prize on the order of >> US$100,000,000 for the first person/organization to >> go to the moon and spend an amount of time on the surface. >> >> Any comments as to how to make this work? When the US government wanted to boost airplane manufacture and pilot enployment after WWI, they simply ( and correctly ) offered anyone X dollars to get Y pounds of mail Z miles away. The price/load/mileage could only be economical for planes or a radical new transportation device. Pilots got jobs, plane orders went up and R&D went crazy. ( All the manufacturers new that a more fuel efficient plane with more lift and longer range would sell better ). I think the US should try to buy as many rides on commercial lauch vehicles as possible, as long as they go for the lowest price/best service. This gives the commercial carriers a market ( fairly big ) and a reason to improve. The Wizard of AHs ------------------------------ Date: 24 Apr 91 16:29:34 GMT From: mips!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!unix.cis.pitt.edu!pitt!nss!Paul.Blase@apple.com (Paul Blase) Subject: Re: Teflon (Was Space technology) to: minsky@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU (Marvin Minsky) MM> In article <1991Apr12.162023.1543@eagle.lerc.nasa.gov> MM> banerj@mars.lerc.nasa.gov writes: >>The trick in making non-stick frying pans is to get >>the pan to stick to Teflon as *nothing* sticks to Teflon!! MM> O.K., I give up. What's the trick. The 'Teflon' is chemically modified to make it slightly sticky. --- via Silver Xpress V2.26 [NR] -- Paul Blase - via FidoNet node 1:129/104 UUCP: ...!pitt!nss!Paul.Blase INTERNET: Paul.Blase@nss.FIDONET.ORG ------------------------------ Date: 2 May 91 15:04:55 GMT From: agate!bionet!uwm.edu!spool.mu.edu!sdd.hp.com!news.cs.indiana.edu!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!usenet@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Doug McDonald) Subject: Re: GIF viewer In article <1991May2.035542.18458@menudo.uh.edu> acsls@menudo.uh.edu (Eddie McCreary) writes: >In article <91121.174038GWS102@psuvm.psu.edu> writes: >>Does anyone know where I can get a GIF viewer for a MAC, IBM, and/or UNIX works >>tation. Information on any of these computer formates would be appreciated. >> >> Glenn Szydlowski > >Check in the archives at wuarchive.wustl.edu under /mirrors/msdos/gif. >The best one is probably cshow which is put out by Compuserve, This is not germane to sci.space, but what the hell. Cshow is absolutely certainly NOT the best Gif viewer. There are several better ones, depending on your needs. I recomment Vuimg. Available in the same place. Doug MCDonald ------------------------------ Date: 1 May 91 15:39:15 GMT From: amdcad!military@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Tom DeBoni) Subject: Free Cray Time to Sisal Users From: deboni@fernando.llnl.gov (Tom DeBoni) The Sisal Scientific Computing Initiative Contacts: John Feo and Dave Cann The Computing Research Group at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) announces the Sisal Scientific Computing Initiative (SSCI). The Initiative will award free Cray X-MP time and support to researchers willing to develop their applications in SISAL, a functional language for parallel numerical computation. Members of the Computing Research Group will provide free educational material, training, consulting, and user services. SSCI is an outgrowth of the Sisal Language Project, a collaborative effort by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Colorado State University and funded in part by the Office of Energy Research (Department of Energy), U.S. Army Research Office, and LLNL. SISAL provides a clean and natural medium for expressing machine independent, determinate, parallel programs. The cost of writing, debugging, and maintaining parallel applications in SISAL is equivalent to the cost of writing, debugging, and maintaining sequential applications in Fortran. Moreover, the same SISAL program will run, without change, on any parallel machine supporting SISAL software. Recent SISAL compiler developments for the Alliant FX/80, Cray X-MP, and other shared memory machines have resulted in SISAL applications that run faster than Fortran equivalents compiled using automatic concurrentizing and vectorizing tools. Interested participants should submit a 1-2 page proposal by June 1, 1991 to Computing Research Group, L-306 Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory P.O. Box 808 Livermore, CA 94450 Proposals should describe the research and explain how the work will benefit from parallel execution on a Cray X-MP. We will announce accepted proposals by July 1, 1991. For more information about the Sisal Scientific Computing Initiative please contact John Feo (feo@lll-crg.llnl.gov) at (415) 422-6389 or Dave Cann (cann@lll-crg.llnl.gov) at (415) 423-7875. We look forward to hearing from you. ------------------------------ Date: 25 Apr 91 01:14:47 GMT From: unisoft!fai!sequent!crg5!szabo@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Nick Szabo) Subject: SSC: Big non-Science In article <1991Apr22.072921.10306@ariel.unm.edu> prentice@triton.unm.edu (John Prentice) writes: >By the way, if it any comfort, I very definitely think we should NOT >build the SSC. That I do think benefits too few people and doesn't >serve the larger interests of science in a time of extremely tight >budgets. Like nearly all other incarnations of Big Science, SSC is really Big Engineering and Big Construction and most of all Big Management. The percentage of actual physicists involved is relatively small, and even most of those are actually working more as technicians and engineers than scientists. Followups to sci.research. -- Nick Szabo szabo@sequent.com "Living below your means allows you to live better than living above your means." -- Dave Boyd The above opinions are my own and not related to those of any organization I may be affiliated with. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 3 May 91 13:19 GMT From: AMON Subject: RE: SPACE Digest V13 #485 Re: Tethers The analysis of tethers stating problems with angular momentum and saying it wouldn't work, TAANSTAFL, missed the point. The purpose of tether climbing is not that you gain anything for free, but that you borrow energy when climbing and return it, less entropies bill when you leave. You save on the fuel required to get to the higher orbit and fuel required for reentry, which translates into payload and lower per pound costs. If the payload UP exceeds the payload DOWN, there is a net loss which can also be made by using the tether to steal energy from the Earth's magnetic field. Charged tethers can act as either generators or motors depending on how you use them, and allow you to move up or down in orbit at will, albiet slowly. This is no more a violation of physical principles than the use of flywheels for spacecraft positioning in place of thrusters. ------------------------------ Date: 4 May 91 21:20:57 GMT From: usc!rpi!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!utzoo!henry@apple.com (Henry Spencer) Subject: Re: Hypersonic Transport In article <1991May3.040513.19659@agate.berkeley.edu> fcrary@typhoon.Berkeley.EDU (Frank Crary) writes: >>Pretty much so. Both the airlines and the aircraft manufacturers have >>concluded that hypersonic speeds do not appear to be worthwhile at present. > >They studies you are refering to were by aircraft manufacturers and assumed >thay there would be no changes, by airlines, in the way they operate >aircraft... Largely true. But it is important to remember that *changes cost money*. Unless hypersonics are cheap enough to capture a large fraction of the total traffic -- which appears unlikely -- they are not going to be lucrative enough to justify it. >... passenger-class price tickets ( while a 2-hour flight from >LA to Tokyo could charge twice the current first-class price and fill its >seats)... Not if there were fifty departures a day, they couldn't. The first-class market simply isn't big enough to finance a large new airliner, especially an unusually high-tech one that could be expected to have high development, production, and operating costs. -- And the bean-counter replied, | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology "beans are more important". | henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry ------------------------------ Date: 4 May 91 21:26:45 GMT From: sdd.hp.com!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!utzoo!henry@ucsd.edu (Henry Spencer) Subject: Re: Galileo Update On CNN atmosphere probe question In article <1991May4.075116.13291@agate.berkeley.edu> fcrary@lightning.Berkeley.EDU (Frank Crary) writes: >The Galileo atmospheric probe has no camera... I always thought this was a mistake, actually. I'm glad to see that it has been corrected for Cassini: the Huygens probe going into Titan's atmosphere will have an imaging system. -- And the bean-counter replied, | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology "beans are more important". | henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry ------------------------------ Date: 5 May 91 08:28:19 GMT From: van-bc!oneb!kmcvay@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Ken McVay) Subject: Re: New CD-ROMs on-line at Ames In article <1991Apr30.000003.13883@news.arc.nasa.gov> yee@trident.arc.nasa.gov (Peter E. Yee) writes: >PS For those of you who missed the details of how to access these discs, you >need to use anonymous ftp to ames.arc.nasa.gov. The CD-ROMs are mounted as >/pub/SPACE/CDROM and /pub/SPACE/CDROM2. Use of the first CD-ROM drive is >courtesy of Randall Robinson, Communications Operations Branch, NASA Ames >Research Center. Peter, as you know, I've had no success obtaining any of the images from the system. I use the Princeton email ftp server, and through it obtained the decompression/viewer package, but that's all I've been able to get in spite of literally dozens of attempts. After obtaining the response to DIR, I tried to obtain browse directory information, and specific images from the amalthea directory. All attempts to obtain images fail, either with timeout errors or "no such directory or file" errors, in spite of the existence of both the files and the directories. I've sent you several examples of the problem, and you've been helpful,, but it still won't work... I'd really like to obtain 10-15 worthwhile images, and would deeply appreciate hearing from anyone willing to take the time and effort to uuencode them and send them to me... I'm going to give up on the ftp attempts :-( (I know others have been successful, and the reasons for the failures remain a mystery..) -- Public Access UUCP/UseNet (Waffle/XENIX 1.64) | kmcvay@oneb.wimsey.bc.ca| TB+: 604-753-9960 2400: 604-754-9964 | ..van-bc!oneb!kmcvay | FrontDoor 2.0/Maximus v1.02/Ufgate 1.03 | | HST 14.4: 604-754-2928 | IMEx 89:681/1 | ------------------------------ Date: 5 May 91 21:57:34 GMT From: dog.ee.lbl.gov!hellgate.utah.edu!caen!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!ub!uhura.cc.rochester.edu!rochester!sol!yamauchi@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Brian Yamauchi) Subject: Re: Why the space station? In article mvk@aix01.aix.rpi.edu (Michael V. Kent) writes: >In article <1991May5.192524.2471@agate.berkeley.edu> fcrary@headcrash.Berkeley.EDU (Frank Crary) writes: >>Now, having the shuttle, NASA wants to proceed with their origional plan: >>The "Next Logical Step" is a space station. So NASA, again forgeting WHY >No, NASA knows very well why they want a space station. But the space station >they want must be built incrementally, like the pieces of their overall plan. >Freedom will be expanded into an orbital base as soon as NASA is given the >money to do so. Is it really less expensive to build an orbital microgravity + life sciences lab than an orbital assembly platform? I don't know the answer, but I'd be interested in hearing from those who do. It seems like the original truss + Spar's Mobile Servicing System (and possibly FTS) would have been a good start in the direction of a platform to facilitate on-orbit assembly of larger spacecraft. Of course, FTS is now near death, and the truss has shrunk considerably, but MSS is still alive. Perhaps now that the scientists have said, in effect, that they don't want Freedom, the design could be moved back toward the initial goals of supporting lunar and planetary exploration. -- _______________________________________________________________________________ Brian Yamauchi University of Rochester yamauchi@cs.rochester.edu Department of Computer Science _______________________________________________________________________________ ------------------------------ Date: 1 May 91 11:01:52 GMT From: eagle!data.nas.nasa.gov!amelia!eugene@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Eugene N. Miya) Subject: Information sources for frequent space questions (1 of n) Many space activies center around large Government or International Bureaucracies. In this country that means NASA. If you have basic information requests: (e.g., general PR info, research grants, data, limited tours, and ESPECIALLY SUMMER EMPLOYMENT (typically resumes should be ready by Jan. 1), etc.), consider contacting the nearest NASA Center to answer your questions. EMail typically will not get you any where, computers are used by investigators, not PR people. The typical volume of mail per Center is a multiple of 10,000 letters a day. Seek the Public Information Office at one of the below, this is their job: NASA Headquarters (NASA HQ) Washington DC 20546 NASA Ames Research Center (ARC) Moffett Field, CA 94035 [Mountain View, CA, near San Francisco Bay, you know Silicon Valley 8-) ] NASA Ames Research Center Dryden Flight Research Facility [DFRF] P. O. Box 273 Edwards, CA 93523 NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) Greenbelt, MD 20771 [Outside of Washington DC] NASA Lewis Research Center (LeRC) 21000 Brookpark Rd. Cleveland, OH 44135 NASA Johnson Manned Space Center (JSC) Houston, TX 77058 NASA Kennedy Space Flight Center (KSC) Titusville, FL 32899 NASA Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) Huntsville, AL 35812 NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC) Hampton, VA 23665 [Near Newport News, VA] Not a NASA Center, but close enough: Jet Propulsion Laboratory [JPL/CIT] California Institute of Technology 4800 Oak Grove Dr. Pasadena, CA 91109 There are other small facilities, but the above major Centers are set up to handle public information requests. They can send you tons of information. Manager, Technology Utilization Office, NASA Scientific and Technical Information Facility, Post Office Box 8757, Baltimore, Maryland 21240. Specific requests for software must go thru COSMIC at the Univ. of Georgia, NASA's contracted software redistribution service. You can reach them at cosmic@uga.bitnet. If this gives you problems, tell me. NOTE: Foreign nationals requesting information must go through their Embassies in Washington DC. These are facilities of the US Government and are regarded with some degree of economic sensitivity. Centers cannot directly return information without high Center approval. Allow at least 1 month for clearance. This includes COSMIC. EUROPEAN SPACE AGENCY (O) 202/488-4158 955 L'Enfant Plaza S.W., Washington, D.C. 20024 Arianespace Headquarters Boulevard de l'Europe B.P. 177 91006 Evry Cedex France ARIANESPACE, INC. (O) 202/728-9075 1747 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Suite 875, Washington, DC 20006 SPOT IMAGE CORPORATION (FAX) 703/648-1813 (O) 703/620-2200 1857 Preston White Drive, Reston, VA 22091 National Space Development Agency (NASDA), 4-1 Hamamatsu-Cho, 2 Chome Minato-Ku, Tokyo 105, Japan SOYUZKARTA 45 Vologradsij Pr., Moscow 109125, USSR SPACE COMMERCE CORPORATION (U.S. agent for Soviet launch services) 504 Pluto Drive, Colorado Springs, CO 80906 (O) 719/578-5490 69th flr, Texas Commerce Tower, Houston, TX 77002 (O) 713/227-9000 Additionally information is frequent asked about: Space camp: Alabama Space and Rocket Center 1 Tranquility Base Huntsville, AL 35805 205-837-3400 U.S. SPACE CAMP 6225 Vectorspace Blvd Titusville FL 32780 (407)267-3184 (registration and mailing list are handled through Huntsville -- both camps are described in the same brochure) There is talk of a space camp to be located next to NASA Ames. Watch that space. "It's not a message. I think it's a warning." -- Ripley ------------------------------ End of SPACE Digest V13 #498 *******************