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, 15 Jun 91 06:00:15 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: Precedence: junk Reply-To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU From: space-request+@Andrew.CMU.EDU To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU Date: Sat, 15 Jun 91 06:00:10 -0400 (EDT) Subject: SPACE Digest V13 #654 SPACE Digest Volume 13 : Issue 654 Today's Topics: Refueling Satellites Re: Terraforming Mars? Why not Venus? Re: Privatization Jonathan's Space Report, May 22 Re: SPACE STATION FREEDOM WOUNDED Re: Pregnancy in space (was Re: Rational next station design process) Re: Moonbase movie *Plymouth* to air Sunday? Re: Fred vs. Exploration: head-to-head competition SPACE Digest V13 #580 RE:RE:USF, Inc. : Brought to you by the 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: 26 May 91 03:35:41 GMT From: van-bc!rsoft!mindlink!a684@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Nick Janow) Subject: Refueling Satellites fcrary@lightning.Berkeley.EDU (Frank Crary) writes: > Replacing the station keeping system would invlove, at least, screwing in > bolts. Refueling just requires connecting a hose. Hmm, I thought connecting a hose in zero-g and a vacuum might be a bit tricky. It would involve several moving parts (which may jam, break or otherwise fail) and very tight tolerances (or you get leaks). It's certainly possible, but if you look at the problem from a broader perspective, you may see other possibilities. Stationkeepers themselves might be quite easy to replace. The main force on them is directed inwards, with some side and outward forces (when other jets firing). You could probably stick them in a holder using magnets, tension springs, velcro, etc. Removing them would simply require an outwards force greater than normally encountered by the particular engine. Control signals could be send via direct or indirect coupling (electrical, optical, microwave). Satellites designed for robotic servicing could (should?) be quite different from the present no-maintenance designs. ------------------------------ Date: 27 May 91 15:46:51 GMT From: swrinde!cs.utexas.edu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!utzoo!henry@ucsd.edu (Henry Spencer) Subject: Re: Terraforming Mars? Why not Venus? In article <1991May26.093423.8807@nntp-server.caltech.edu> carl@hamlet.caltech.edu writes: >... You would, of >course, have to have a mass closer to the sun tethered to the sunshield to >offset the pressure... No, that's not necessary. You put the whole sunshield slightly closer to the Sun than L1, and no separate mass is needed. You do need active control of some kind for attitude and stationkeeping. -- "We're thinking about upgrading from | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology SunOS 4.1.1 to SunOS 3.5." | henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry ------------------------------ Date: 27 May 91 13:30:33 GMT From: news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!IRO.UMontreal.CA!matrox!altitude!elevia!alain@rutgers.edu (W.A.Simon) Subject: Re: Privatization In <00949145.AB024240@KING.ENG.UMD.EDU> sysmgr@KING.ENG.UMD.EDU (Doug Mohney) writes: >In article <10602@plains.NoDak.edu>, stinnett@plains.NoDak.edu (M.G. Stinnett) writes: >>Jerry Pournelle says his group could put 40 people on the moon for one >>year for $2 billion. He said he had shown the figures to quite a few >>qualified people and no one had been able to shoot them down. >>He also figured a major aerospace contractor could do the job for about >>$10 billion, but it would take the government $1 trillion to do it. >If it were that cheap, and that worthwhile, the Japanese or the Europeans would >have already done it. Just to thumb their collective noses at us. Even the >Japanese might have bitten on a $10 billion cost figure. The Europeans and the Japanese have the same problem as we do: it is big G. that keeps getting in the way... -- William "Alain" Simon UUCP: alain@elevia.UUCP ------------------------------ Date: 26 May 91 16:28:35 GMT From: cis.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!freedom!xanth!mcdowell@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Jonathan McDowell) Subject: Jonathan's Space Report, May 22 Jonathan's Space Report May 22 1991 (no.74) ---------------------------------------------------- Discovery landed on runway 15 at Kennedy Space Center at 1855 UT on May 6. It is not clear whether or not the MPEC classified subsatellite was deployed. Launch of STS-40/Columbia is scheduled for early June. Soyuz TM-12 was launched on May 18 and docked with Mir on May 20. The crew are Anatoliy Pavlovich Artsebarskiy (Komandir), Sergey Konstantinovich Krikalyov (Bortinzhener) and Helen Patricia Sharman (Kosmonavt-issledovatel'). Artsebarskiy and Krikalyov are the new Mir main crew, replacing Afanas'ev and Manarov who will return to Earth with Sharman in Soyuz TM-11 on around May 26. Sharman is the first British space traveller and her participation in the mission is part of Project Juno, which is financed by the Moskva Narodniy Bank and has no connection with the British government. The Progress M-7 cargo craft undocked and reentered on May 7. The NOAA 12 weather satellite was launched into polar orbit from Vandenberg by an Atlas E launch vehicle with a Star 37S upper stage on May 14. The NOAA satellites are operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which also operates the network of GOES satellites in geostationary orbit. Six Soviet spacecraft, Kosmos-2143 to Kosmos-2148, were launched on May 16 into a 1400 km orbit by a three stage Tsiklon rocket. They are small store-dump communications satellites, the military version of the Gonets satellites recently offered for commercial use by the NPO-PM company. ___________________________________ |Current STS status: | |Orbiters | | | |OV-102 Columbia LC39B | |OV-103 Discovery OPF Bay 1 | |OV-104 Atlantis OPF Bay 2 | |OV-105 Endeavour VAB Bay 2 | | | |ML/ET/SRB stacks | | | |ML1/STS-43 VAB Bay 1 | |ML2 | |ML3/STS-40/ET/OV-102 LC39B | ----------------------------------- 10 years ago: 14-22 May 1981. The Soyuz-40 mission carried Soviet cosmonaut Yuriy Romanenko and Rumanian cosmonaut Dumitru Prunariu on a visit to the Salyut-6 space station. 20 years ago: 12-28 May 1971. Three Soviet Mars probes were launched. The first, Kosmos-419, was stranded in low earth orbit by an upper stage failure. Mars-2 and Mars-3 entered Mars orbit in Nov-Dec 1971 and impacted probes on the surface. The surface probes failed to return useful data. 30 years ago: 24 May 1961. The S-45A ionospheric satellite failed to reach orbit when its Juno II booster malfunctioned. (c) 1991 Jonathan McDowell. Information in this report is obtained from public sources and does not reflect the official views of NASA. .-----------------------------------------------------------------------------. | Jonathan McDowell | phone : (205)544-7724 | | Space Science Lab ES65 | uucp: | | NASA Marshall Space Flight Center | bitnet : | | Huntsville AL 35812 | inter : mcdowell@xanth.msfc.nasa.gov | | USA | span : ssl::mcdowell | '-----------------------------------------------------------------------------' ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 28 May 91 13:04:00 EDT From: "Charles J. Divine" Subject: Re: SPACE STATION FREEDOM WOUNDED Just a few comments on the cancellation of Fred. First, it was not a victory for space science or economy in government. In fact, it was probably a defeat for both. Space scientists have decried, with some justification, megaprojects that squeeze out funding for small, relatively quick projects. Small government enthusiasts (e.g., libertarians) like to denounce large government projects that do not deliver their promised benefits. Let's actually consider what happenned when the Appropriations subcommittee zeroed out space station. They did not simply cut the Federal budget. No, they transferred the money to other programs. One clear winner was the EOS project. EOS is clearly big science. It's a multibillion dollar project intended to gather data on the behavior of the earth's environment. Large (but unmanned) satellites will orbitted to study the earth. We are talking very big science here. While we are considering EOS, let's look at a suspicious aspect of this deal. One major firm bidding on EOS is Hughes Electronics. Hughes is wholly owned by General Motors. GM is losing money in a big time way right now. Bob Traxler, the chair of the committee that voted to cancel Fred, is from Michigan. Finally, a future caveat. I can hear the howls from some environmentalists already. "You want to STUDY the environment? We don't need more STUDIES. WE NEED ACTION!" This argument will probably see growing popularity when Congress looks to cut some more money out of science and technology. Another area where money is being transferred to is HUD projects in NYC. The ranking Republican on the subcommittee is Bill Green from NYC. And, for those of you fortunate to have never seen the inside of many New York City welfare programs (I did as an observer when I was studying social psychology at Columbia University), prepare yourselves for a shock: the money transferred will do the poor of New York little or no good. Between NYC bureaucracies (which seemingly have no natural upper limit on size) that waste money and resources without even thinking about what they are doing and out and out graft involving poverty contractors (you didn't think the government built welfare housing projects, did you?) neither the poor nor the taxpayer will benefit from this action. I will complete this little essay with a comment to those who say "wasting billions on (fill in the blank) does not justify wasting billions on badly run space projects." Unfortunately you are neglecting an important consideration -- the extent to which politics dominates life in late 20th America. The incredible growth of the "service" sector can be laid in part to political activity. Internal political activities play a major part in shaping the activities of large corporations. A very considerable part of the cost in developing and building Fred lies in the current need to play some very nasty political games (e.g., NASA has learned DOD's trick of putting a subcontractor in every Congressional district). To eliminate the very considerable waste one sees in political managed activities, I recommend finding ways of changing the fundamental situation, not wasting time going after a fairly minor player (NASA) in a very nasty game. ------------------------------ Date: 28 May 91 17:45:04 GMT From: cis.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!usc!cs.utexas.edu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!utzoo!henry@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Henry Spencer) Subject: Re: Pregnancy in space (was Re: Rational next station design process) In article <1991May28.163205.12863@linus.mitre.org> sokay@cyclone.mitre.org (S. J. Okay) writes: >... I would think that given the the fetus is already >floating weightless inthe amniotic sac during its development, the absence of >gravity wouldn't be that much of a problem (but then, I'm no MD either). Floating in fluid produces only approximate weightlessness. For example, bones are still heavier than soft tissues, and have some small tendency to try to sink. For that matter, the whole fetus probably doesn't exactly match the average density of the amniotic fluid, and consequently will feel some gravity. Whether any of this matters to development, nobody knows. -- "We're thinking about upgrading from | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology SunOS 4.1.1 to SunOS 3.5." | henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry ------------------------------ Date: 28 May 91 18:52:34 GMT From: cis.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!mips!news.cs.indiana.edu!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!edotto@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Ed Otto) Subject: Re: Moonbase movie *Plymouth* to air Sunday? sokay@cyclone.mitre.org (S. J. Okay) writes: >I'd also be interested in hearing of any general appraisals of the movie for >scientific acuracy, since this one one point of merit that was stressed about >this movie on here. The one glaring item that I noticed was the lack of frost forming on the spacesuits or the airlock during the explosive compression sequence about twenty minutes before the end. Other than that item, I LOVED the show... ******************************************************************************* * * Netmail addresses: * * Edward C. Otto III * edotto@uipsuxb.ps.uiuc.edu * * University of Illinois * edotto@uiucux1.cso.uiuc.edu * * Printing Services Office * UIPSA::OTTO (Decnet node 46.99) * * 54A E. Gregory Dr. * otto@uipsa.dnet.nasa.gov * * Champaign, IL 61820 * Office phone: 217/333-9422 * * * * ******************************************************************************* "As knowledge is to ignorance, so is light unto the darkness." --- GO 'PODS! --- -- ******************************************************************************* * * Netmail addresses: * * Edward C. Otto III * edotto@uipsuxb.ps.uiuc.edu * * University of Illinois * edotto@uiucux1.cso.uiuc.edu * ------------------------------ Date: 29 May 91 06:40:59 GMT From: agate!lightning.Berkeley.EDU!fcrary@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Frank Crary) Subject: Re: Fred vs. Exploration: head-to-head competition In article schumach@convex.com (Richard A. Schumacher) writes: >The study of comets, their fragments, and earth-crossing meteoroids >can be justified in the interest of national security, at the very >least. I don't see any private groups, for-profit or not, rushing >out to do this. > >How much makeup will Mr. Crary's wife be buying if the next >Tunguska event occurs over their house? A few things to clear up: 1: Mr. Crary does not have a wife. 2: Mr. Crary and most of his friends do not worry overly about that sort of very low probability event. 3: I do not recall having objected to the study of comets, cometary fragments, or Earth-crossing meteoroids. Frank Crary ------------------------------ ReSent-Message-ID: Resent-Date: Wed, 29 May 91 17:52:02 EDT Resent-From: tom <18084TM@msu.edu> Resent-To: space+@andrew.cmu.edu Date: Sat, 25 May 91 02:45:17 EDT Reply-To: space+%ANDREW.CMU.EDU@msu.edu From: space-request+%ANDREW.CMU.EDU%CARNEGIE.BITNET@msu.edu Subject: SPACE Digest V13 #580 Comments: To: space+@ANDREW.CMU.EDU To: david polito <15432DJP@MSU.BITNET>, Tom McWilliams <18084TM@MSU.BITNET> Re: Unrestricted Launches; >>>What we need is for the government to allow those who want to do it to >>>do so without restriction from government restrictions. >>Sounds good to me -- what *specific* restrictions are currently >>preventing private and non-profit organizations from pursuing space >>exploration and development? >Essentially any launch must be approved, no matter where it occurs. Speaking of getting beyond this type of restriction, I learned a while back that there were a few proposals that involved creating a space-port somewhere on/near the equator. Not only for the orbital energy advantage, but also as a base to improve international space relations, or even a home for an inter- national space admin. I guess India was quite vocal about their wish to be the place for such a facility (though most equatorial nations recognized the benefit of a space- port for their economies and expressed interest) Who knows more details? Still going? Dead? Tommy Mac Acknowledge-To: <18084TM@MSU> ------------------------------ Date: 29 May 91 21:30:30 GMT From: vax5.cit.cornell.edu!usf@cu-arpa.cs.cornell.edu Subject: RE:RE:USF, Inc. : Brought to you by the It sounds like to me Mr. Fraering Philip is either a Dictator type a Communist, or a Nazi. He takes pride in the fact that the effort to make the Moon and Mars the domain of all mankind (All the peoples of the world) which no single nation could hold claim too was undermined by this L-5 group. If this is what L-5 represents I take back any thing good I ever said about it. Further more Mr. Philip says the NSS should continue these same activities, If I were NSS I wouldn't get near Mr. Philip with a ten foot pole. Real space buffs who want to see real progress in the advancement of space exploratory and developement should stear clear of negitive and destructive people like Mr. Fraering Philip. If people like Mr. Philip have their way only one race and class of people will ever have the opportunity to be part of a space faring civilization. On the other hand an organized international civil space agency would insure that all the peoples and nations of the world community would have a chance and opprotunity to participate in a future space faring civilization. If you want to know the truth about the USFs present activities, write to us and we will send you the facts about the USF in stead of the one side comments by people like Mr. Fraering Philip. I wounder how much Mr. Philip was paid by Planetary Society to promote them as a prospect for an international space organization??! United Space Federation, Inc. International Headquarters P.O. Box 4722 Ithaca, New York 14852-4722 In the United States of America Thank you for your time and support, Godspeed! Sincerely, Rick R. Dobson Executive Director United Space Federation, Inc. ------------------------------ End of SPACE Digest V13 #654 *******************