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 ; Sun, 23 Jun 91 02:36:43 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: Precedence: junk Reply-To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU From: space-request+@Andrew.CMU.EDU To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU Date: Sun, 23 Jun 91 02:36:37 -0400 (EDT) Subject: SPACE Digest V13 #687 SPACE Digest Volume 13 : Issue 687 Today's Topics: Re: Gibson & Sterling More on Freedom Vote Re: Self-sustaining infrastructures * SpaceNews 03-Jun-91 * Re: The Reasons for a Station? Was Re: Rational next station design... Re: RFD: talk.politics.space 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: 3 Jun 91 02:24:28 GMT From: spool.mu.edu!agate!earthquake.Berkeley.EDU!gwh@decwrl.dec.com (George William Herbert) Subject: Re: Gibson & Sterling In article peter@taronga.hackercorp.com (Peter da Silva) writes: >Who cares about Mars missions? Not I. That's the problem with the space >station... and all sorts of other NASA stuff: they have *no* idea what >they want to do. In fact, they don't even have the saving grace of having >a bad goal: they have no goals at all. > >I say, blow off Mars, use the moon as a staging point at most (why do we >need a space station when we've already *got* one?) and get serious about >taking advantage of small matter: asteroids, comets, moons. We don't have >the technology or resources to take on the planet we've got *now*, let >alone starting over on another one. Why Mars? Well...for one, it's energetically easier to go to Phobos or Deimos than it is to go to the Moon... If you want resources then (if they're there) it's better to get them there than anywhere else in the solar system except earth-crossing asteroids (which are even more poorly understood). For two, if you aerobrake, it's cheaper to do a round trip surface-to-surface to Mars than Luna. For three, Mars has WATER 8-) At the poles, we can make rocket fuel, not just part of rocket fuel. And we know, not suspect, that it's there. For four, it's more interesting from a scientific standpoint. There probably is no life as we can find it on Mars. Given that there is evidence of large amounts of water previously having been there, it's possible there was life at one point... which means it's a good place to pry rocks up and look for fossil stromatolites etc. 8-) Admittedly, the science to know for sure wether Phobos & Deimos are good places to use hasn't been done (mostly the fault of Soviet mission software and radio hardware, but it would be nice if the US would get in the act), but they seem promising (some Phobos data notwithstanding). -george william herbert gwh@ocf.berkelely.edu ------------------------------ Date: 3 Jun 91 18:22:20 GMT From: iggy.GW.Vitalink.COM!widener!hela!aws@lll-winken.llnl.gov (Allen W. Sherzer) Subject: More on Freedom Vote They are coming out of the woodwork to get funding for Freedom. McDonnell Douglas has been putting large ads in Roll Call (the House newspaper) and the Washington Times. Rockwell and Boeing are also lobbying big time and it seems to be working. On the floor of the full house Jim Chapman (D-TX) will introduce an amendment to restore full funding. The amendment will 'tax' 3% of all the agencies except Vetrans and NASA which will raise $1.5B for the Freedom space station. In addition, $500M in cuts identified by the NASA Authorization bill (and ignored by the Appropriation Subcommittee) can be enacted to bring Freedom up to full funding. The Democratic Whip says 77 Democrats will vote for the amendment and Rep. Walker says 140 to 160 Republicans will vote for it. The Whip's numbers should be regarded as shakey but walkers numbers are very conservative. If the full house voted today, Freedom would receive full funding. Another interesting note is that the President is playing hardball on this issue. He recently spoke with Jamie Whitten who is the head of the Appropriation Committee. He told him that if Freedom isn't built then there was no reason to build the Advanced Solid Rocket Motor (ASRM) for the Shuttle. ASRM is built in Whitten's district and he consideres it an important project. Bush's veiled threat should have a big effect. Allen -- +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+ |Allen W. Sherzer | DETROIT: Where the weak are killed and eaten. | | aws@iti.org | | +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+ ------------------------------ Date: 3 Jun 91 19:17:46 GMT From: prism!ccoprmd@gatech.edu (Matthew DeLuca) Subject: Re: Self-sustaining infrastructures In article <6098@mindlink.bc.ca> Nick_Janow@mindlink.bc.ca (Nick Janow) writes: >ccoprmd@prism.gatech.EDU (Matthew DeLuca) writes: >> 'And who fixes the fixers?' >The same problem holds true for humans, and humans are probably less reliable >over long trips. They'd certainly be a lot more expensive. Furthermore, you >don't have to bring the robot back. :) Humans are less reliable than machines? When was the last time your joints froze because of a temperature change, or the wires in your head became disconnected, or your balance mechanism got fried, or you forgot where your home was? All these things happen to machines all the time...witness the Phobos missions, Galileo, Magellan, and Voyager. Healthy humans are generally self-repairing...machines aren't. As for 'long trips', the discussion has been geared more towards earth orbit and inner solar system discussions than towards things like Neptune probes, which is why I didn't comment on that scenario. For things within the asteroid belt, there's nothing better than the man on the scene. >> Looking at it in another way, you are counting on what would be the greatest >> revolution (artificial intelligence) since ENIAC was first plugged in to give >> us a routine operational capability in space. >No, I haven't been assuming a major breakthrough in AI. We can do quite a lot >with low level AI: the types we have available now or evolutionary improvements >on them. Basic robotic control, with human intervention when required, should >be able to handle a fairly wide variety of tasks. Oh, I'm sure they can...but when it gets down to the vital, tricky tasks your robot is going to fail. Think of what they're going to have to do when they fix Hubble, for instance; would you like to design a robot to go down that tube and start tearing parts out? Keep in mind that one stuck actuator could send your robot flying into the main mirror, destroying a billion dollar scientific instrument. Mechanical devices will likely *never* be so reliable that you can routinely trust them with valuable instruments in space. >The Voyager team managed >great improvements by reprogramming a fairly aged robot. Modern robots should >be much more capable, especially if designed for versatility. The Voyager probe is in no honest sense a robot; it doesn't manipulate its environment in any way. The Voyager team showed that you could do amazing things from a distance, but it only has marginal relevance to the issue at hand. -- Matthew DeLuca Georgia Institute of Technology "I'd hire the Dorsai, if I knew their Office of Information Technology P.O. box." - Zebadiah Carter, Internet: ccoprmd@prism.gatech.edu _The Number of the Beast_ ------------------------------ Date: 1 Jun 91 16:19:50 GMT From: mintaka!think.com!ocpt!tsdiag!ka2qhd!kd2bd@bloom-beacon.mit.edu (John Magliacane) Subject: * SpaceNews 03-Jun-91 * Subject: * SpaceNews 03-Jun-91 * SB NEWS @ AMSAT < KD2BD $SPC0603 * SpaceNews 03-Jun-91 * Bulletin ID: $SPC0603 ========= SpaceNews ========= MONDAY JUNE 3, 1991 SpaceNews originates at KD2BD in Wall Township, New Jersey, USA. It is published every week and is made available for unlimited distribution. * STS-40 LAUNCH DELAY * ======================= A problem with an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) has forced the postponment of STS-40 and the launch of Columbia at least until Wednesday. The crew for STS-40 is Commander Bryan D. O'Connor, Pilot Sidney M. Gutierrez, Mission Specialists James P. Bagian, Tamara E. Jernigan and Margaret Rhea Seddon and Payload Specialists F. Drew Gaffney and Millie Hughes-Fulford. The purpose of mission STS-40 is to perform medical research in a micro-gravity environment. * RS10 NEWS * ============= Recent poor HF propagation conditions have created some good opportunities for communication through Radio Sputnik 10's Mode A transponder. Contacts can be made with very little uplink power. The auto-transponder is also available on Mode A. Here is RS10's Mode A frequency allocation: 145.860 MHz to 145.900 MHz uplink yields 29.360 MHz to 29.400 MHz downlink. Uplink Downlink ====== ======== 29.357 MHz Beacon 145.860 MHz 29.360 MHz Passband limit, lower 145.870 MHz 29.370 MHz 145.880 MHz 29.380 MHz Passband center 145.890 MHz 29.390 MHz 145.900 MHz 29.400 MHz Passband limit, upper 145.820 MHz 29.403 MHz Mode A Robot (auto-transponder) The Mode A transponder is a 40 KHz wide non-inverting transponder that supports all modes of operation, although AM, FM and other constant carrier, wide bandwidth emissions are not encouraged and should not be used. * SPACENEWS SURVEY RESULTS * ============================ The following is a list of telephone bulletin board systems that carry SpaceNews on a regular basis: BARF-80 BBS Planet Shadowstar BBS (216) 237-8208 (908) 494-3417 Cleveland, Ohio, USA Edison, New Jersey, USA Cathouse BBS Courts Of Choas BBS (501) 376-6909 (501) 985-0059 Little Rock, Arkansas, USA Jacksonville, Arkansas, USA WB2COY "COY Net" BBS Imaging Group BBS (914) 485-3393 (209) 466-1752 300/1200 baud, 8N1 Kingston, New York, USA Stockton, California, USA Kings Korners BBS Ham-It-Up BBS (304) 768-9263 (516) 399-1375 300/1200/2400 baud 300/1200/2400 baud South Charleston, W. 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For information on the amateur radio service, including a list of licensing classes and test sites in your area, please write: The American Radio Relay League 225 Main Street Newington, Connecticut 06111 USA * TNX RPT! * ============ Thanks to the following stations for sending reports ro SpaceNews: G0LIW FD1OZF KA1GOZ KA2AEV KE2NK KF2T N2AAM WA2ISK VK4ZML WB5SXK KB6LQV VE7AUZ WS7Y KB8KAC KB8LBZ KJ9U * FEEDBACK WELCOMED * ===================== Feedback regarding SpaceNews may be directed to the editor using any one of the following paths: UUCP : ...!rutgers.edu!ka2qhd!kd2bd PACKET : KD2BD @ NN2Z.NJ.USA.NA INTERNET : kd2bd@ka2qhd.de.com -OR- kd2bd@tomcat.gsfc.nasa.gov MAIL : John A. Magliacane, KD2BD Department of Electronics Technology Advanced Technology Center Brookdale Community College Lincroft, New Jersey 07738 U.S.A. /EX -- John A. Magliacane FAX : (908) 747-7107 Electronics Technology Department AMPR : KD2BD @ NN2Z.NJ.USA.NA Brookdale Community College UUCP : ...!rutgers!ka2qhd!kd2bd Lincroft, NJ 07738 USA VOICE: (908) 842-1900 ext 607 ------------------------------ Date: 3 Jun 91 14:39:04 GMT From: usc!rpi!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!watserv1!watdragon!watyew!jdnicoll@apple.com (James Davis Nicoll) Subject: Re: The Reasons for a Station? Was Re: Rational next station design... In article <1991Jun3.015723.24835@agate.berkeley.edu> gwh@earthquake.Berkeley.EDU (George William Herbert) writes: >In article <2069@mpirbn.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de> p515dfi@mpirbn.UUCP (Daniel Fischer) writes: >>> * Long-term Human studies >>This kind of study is being performed by the Soviets since two decades; they >>have had people up for 1 year and flown a doctor on a 200+ days mission. What >>could be learned by repeating these boring adventures that they don't already >>know and are likely ready to join? > > While you're confident that the Soviets have learned all we have to >about people in space, I'm not. > First: they have very little nonintrusive biomonitoring equipment. >Having looked over some of the data they have on their cosmonauts, it's >pretty obvious that their data is rough and incomplete. Not only that, >but it's not continuous... it's seperate point samples weeks apart, often. >The US has continuous data on subjects... for a period of a week. We need >detailed long-term studies...and the soviet work so far doesn't go very >far. Material deleted Another point is that what is being proposed is not 'duplicate Soviet research', but rather 'duplicate some aspects of Soviet research *facilities*. Duplicating facilities is not terribly uncommon. For example, the University of Waterloo has an engineering department, and so does U of Toronto, despite the fact that they are within 90 km of each other. The UW chemistry department is even worse: they have multiple chem labs, containing similar equiptment, and multiple chem *profs*, also containing similar equiptment (two basic models). However, the work these labs and profs do is not identical. Mr. Fischer seems to be saying that the Soviets have already done all the biological research possible, in only 20 years of research. Given the man-millenia of research squeezed out of environments we are familiar with, is it not possible the the Soviets have left some questions about biology in free fall unasked and unanswered? James Nicoll ------------------------------ Date: 3 Jun 91 16:32:53 GMT From: bonnie.concordia.ca!clyde.concordia.ca!altitude!elevia!alain@uunet.uu.net (W.A.Simon) Subject: Re: RFD: talk.politics.space In <13108@mentor.cc.purdue.edu> hrubin@pop.stat.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) writes: >In article <1991Jun2.160327.27599@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU>, randall@Virginia.EDU (Randall Atkinson) writes: >> The proposal for talk.politics.space appears to be well-done >> in charter, rationale, and naming. >> I fully support it. I stopped reading sci.space some time back >> precisely because of the flood of "political" postings. >I agree with the first paragraph. However, I do not see that it is >possible to separate the political from the scientific. How would one >class the recent arguments about manned space which hinge on what is >scientifically true or technologically possible? The real world is not divided into discrete class intervals |8-). I agree with you that very little that affect our life can be split from its political underpinnings. But the focus of interest can be legitimately narrowed. Cross-posting will, by necessity, occur. But there are a number of philosophical, or political question that could be best segregated from the main scientific news flow. An L5 pamphlet would definitely belong there, when a study of the properties of Lagrange points would belong in sci.space. A defense of the Lagrange point approach, to the establishment of a space colony, would demand X-posting. A thread on the respective merits of private and public funding, would belong in t.p.space and sci.econ, but not be welcome in sci.space. ps - does anyone know what has the L5 Society become? I have not hear of/from/about them in years. >Herman Rubin -- William "Alain" Simon UUCP: alain@elevia.UUCP ------------------------------ End of SPACE Digest V13 #687 *******************