Date: Mon, 20 Jul 92 05:02:02 From: Space Digest maintainer Reply-To: Space-request@isu.isunet.edu Subject: Space Digest V15 #016 To: Space Digest Readers Precedence: bulk Space Digest Mon, 20 Jul 92 Volume 15 : Issue 016 Today's Topics: Chemical unit operations in space If the sun went out-how long life survive? Manned/Unmanned Solar Power Satellites Space Transportation Infrastructure Costs (Was Re: Interstates) (3 msgs) STS-50 postflight briefings set for July 20 [NTE 92-61] (Forwarded) Support Lunar Resource Mapper Too! Re: Manned/Unmanned (3 msgs) Welcome to the Space Digest!! Please send your messages to "space@isu.isunet.edu". Please do **NOT** send (un)subscription requests to that address! Instead, send a message of the form "Subscribe Space " to one of these addresses: listserv@uga (BITNET), RICE::BOYLE (SPAN/NSInet), UTADNX::UTSPAN::RICE::BOYLE (THENET), or space-REQUEST@isu.isunet.edu (Internet). ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 20 Jul 92 08:09:28 GMT From: Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey Subject: Chemical unit operations in space Newsgroups: sci.space In article , rlbell@babbage.waterloo.edu (Richard Bell) writes: > The point of building a chemical plant in space is not to make the things > that chemical plants make on Earth, ^^^ I disagree. > but to make things that cannot be made > in the Earth's gravity field, things like perfect crystals and foamed steel. Richard, you are half right: This is appropriate, and we may hope that microgravity-produced products are developed which make a nice profit and encourage the growth of near-Earth space manufacturing. However, it is also worthwhile to make boring things like liquid oxygen, aluminum, iron or even concrete (you should hear T.D. "Dr. Concrete" Lin talk about the little sample blocks he made from 40 grams of Apollo moondust) from the Moon, or a wider variety of stuff from the asteroids and Mars, if there is a space-based market for them. You can get these things on Earth, but under the right circumstances they'd be cheaper to use *in space* if they were produced *in space*. O~~* /_) ' / / /_/ ' , , ' ,_ _ \|/ - ~ -~~~~~~~~~~~/_) / / / / / / (_) (_) / / / _\~~~~~~~~~~~zap! / \ (_) (_) / | \ | | Bill Higgins Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory \ / Bitnet: HIGGINS@FNAL.BITNET - - Internet: HIGGINS@FNAL.FNAL.GOV ~ SPAN/Hepnet: 43011::HIGGINS ------------------------------ Date: 19 Jul 92 23:23:07 GMT From: Mark Schlegel Subject: If the sun went out-how long life survive? Newsgroups: sci.bio,sci.misc,sci.space w.p.coyne@newcastle.ac.uk writes: >If the sun went out tomorrow - for sake of argument let's assume it >was "turned-off", and did not blow up - how long would life survive >on Earth? > Does anyone have any idea as to how long roughly it would take >for the atmosphere to liquify then solidify if there was not >any sunlight to heat it up. > I guess that within a few days the surface would become cold >enough to kill most life. An after a week or so even the oxygen >would fall to the ground as snow, but these are just guesses. > Ocean life would survive a long time >because a layer of insulating ice would form over the top of the >ocean. Would the entire oceans freeze solid or would a point be >reached where ice pressure and geothermal heating would keep >significant a volume liquid? > Life in the deep oceanic vents could survive even if the oceans >were to be covered by a 1km layer of ice > Life 5km down utilising methane from oil would perhaps survive >for millions of years? > W.P.Coyne@newcastle.ac.uk If the hydrogen fusion energy source of the sun were turned off, it would begin undergoing gravitational contraction which would keep it luminous for quite a while (on the order of a few millions of years) But hypothetically removing all sources of energy and miraculously removing all the thermal energy from the sun so it's a cold body, we have to remember that the earth is in a state of equilibrium of receiving solar energy and emitting or reflecting visible or infrared radiation. The flux on the top of the atmosphere from the sun is about 1300 W per square meter so the average loss is ~ 650 W per m2 per day (but only a normal temp. at cold temps this is less). So figure out the total heat capacity of the whole mass of the atmosphere, include the latent heat from the liquifaction of all the different gases, water first, then CO2, O2, N2, etc. I'm not going to do it! Then a estimate might be t ~ N*total heat capacity/(650 W/m2/day) where N is some numerical factor, 1 < N <5 or so, that corrects for the 650 W/m2/day being too much towards the end of the cooling. This is back of the envelope, remember. Mark ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 20 Jul 1992 05:57:59 GMT From: Ron Baalke Subject: Manned/Unmanned Newsgroups: sci.space In article , henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes... >CRAF was cut from the NASA budget because CRAF/Cassini appeared to be >firmly on track to overrun its budget cap, and Congress had already >warned NASA that CRAF was the more expendable of the two. Cassini is >still in danger, despite semi-protected status as an international >program, precisely because its funding requirements continue to skyrocket. > The cost overruns were due to the inability of Congress to provide funding at the agreed upon schedule. When the CRAF/Cassini mission was approved, a budget cap and a funding schedule was worked out and agreed upon by NASA and Congress. The project then proceeded along quite well and was underneath the budget cap. Then Congress decided a couple of years ago to not provide the full amount of money that they said they would for that year. This caused the mission to be extended another two years, and the launch date had to be moved from 1995 to 1997. The mission had to be redesigned around the new launch date. All of this increased the overall cost of the mission. >Turning off Magellan *is* a pretty dumb idea. > Can't argue with that one. >Unmanned planetary science has been crippled by its own inability to control >costs and regulate its program starts to survive on stable funding. It would be helpful if you can cite some examples. Of course, unmanned planetary science has never had stable funding. Every year a lot of time and effort is put in to get any kind of funding, and even when the funding is allocated, it is not guaranteed. The CRAF/Cassini case is a classic example of this. ___ _____ ___ /_ /| /____/ \ /_ /| Ron Baalke | baalke@kelvin.jpl.nasa.gov | | | | __ \ /| | | | Jet Propulsion Lab | ___| | | | |__) |/ | | |__ M/S 525-3684 Telos | Most of the things you /___| | | | ___/ | |/__ /| Pasadena, CA 91109 | worry about will never |_____|/ |_|/ |_____|/ | happen. ------------------------------ Date: 20 Jul 92 01:58:14 GMT From: George William Herbert Subject: Solar Power Satellites Newsgroups: sci.space In article <1992Jul19.162911.11057@access.digex.com> rbunge@access.digex.com (Robert Bunge) writes: >[.....] >But, it does bother me when I see "well, by the the time >SPS is developed, perhaps astronomy will be spacebased." I have seen >some SPS stuff that mentions light pollution as a problem. I'm thrilled >to see it mentioned... that means people are thinking about. You're right, and most professional astronomers figure (rightly) that given a miniscule percentage of the launch mass required for even a lunar-materials using SPS, they can do better science from orbit than they'll lose due to light pollution on the ground. They just ask the SPS people for 0.1% or so of the launch mass for on-orbit science applications, the SPS people in general are inclined to give it to them. The SPS people, in fact, try and garner support from other fields by saying "you know, we could piggyback a X for almost nothing... and you'll have all the power you want...". 8-) It's amusing to watch it happen. There's a solution to making astronomers happy. There may or may not be a solution to convincing the public that they wont be microwaved to death and getting over the cost hurdle*. *Re: costs; Interesting new work suggests that it's possible to build a SPS in the 5 gigawat range (sort of standard sized) with about 85,000 tons of mass, 99.4+-% of which can be lunar. Thus the potential cost is as low as 540 tons to GEO, plus lunar & L2 factories, plus the space transportration infrastructure to move stuff from a L2 factory to GEO. Which is half to an eighth of what earlier estimates looked like. The estimated cost of building an SPS is coming down, presuming that lunar materials work... -george william herbert gwh@soda.berkeley.edu gwh@lurnix.com herbert@uchu.isu92.ac.jp until 28 aug ++ copyright (c) george william herbert. All rights except usenet ++ ++ transmission/use and inclusion in followup/reply articles/mail reserved. ++ ------------------------------ Date: 19 Jul 92 21:48:00 GMT From: seds%cspar.dnet@Fedex.Msfc.Nasa.Gov Subject: Space Transportation Infrastructure Costs (Was Re: Interstates) Newsgroups: sci.space In article <143u6fINN6tf@agate.berkeley.edu>, gwh@soda.berkeley.edu (George William Herbert) writes... >In article henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes: >>[...] >>I think the demand is going to have to come from the manned programs. >>Most of the unmanned people are very thoroughly locked into the mindset >>of never depending on new technology if they can avoid it. (As witness >>Cassini being shrunk to fit on a Titan IV without the new SRBs... which >>have now been successfully tested.) An unmanned program that seriously >>proposes things like the MarinerMk2 Neptune/Pluto concept is not going >>to bang fists on tables and demand better propulsion technology -- they've >>forgotten it's possible. > > If NASA were willing to look past the Shuttle, it would realize >that it could redesign the station in 15klb chunks (ugh), develop the >DC SSTO concept, and fly Freedom in it for less than it'll cost to >fly it on Shuttle as is. Yea right. What is your expertise for this wonderful suggestion? Consider the assembly problems for such a tinker toy approach just for starters SSRT is a good idea but it has a specific place and that place is not putting up small chunks of a theoretical space station. > Anyone for shooting the Shuttle program office people >in the name of progress? 8-) > >-george william herbert >gwh@soda.berkeley.edu gwh@lurnix.com gwh@uchu.isu92.ac.jp until 28 aug > > Dennis Wingo, University of Alabama in Huntsville ------------------------------ Date: 20 Jul 92 03:55:21 GMT From: "Phil G. Fraering" Subject: Space Transportation Infrastructure Costs (Was Re: Interstates) Newsgroups: sci.space seds%cspar.dnet@Fedex.Msfc.Nasa.Gov writes: >> >> If NASA were willing to look past the Shuttle, it would realize >>that it could redesign the station in 15klb chunks (ugh), develop the >>DC SSTO concept, and fly Freedom in it for less than it'll cost to >>fly it on Shuttle as is. >Yea right. What is your expertise for this wonderful suggestion? >Consider the assembly problems for such a tinker toy approach just for starters >SSRT is a good idea but it has a specific place and that place is not >putting up small chunks of a theoretical space station. So you finally admit that Freedom is theoretical? -- Phil Fraering pgf@srl0x.cacs.usl.edu where the x is a number from 1-5. Phone: 318/365-5418 "There are still 201969 unread articles in 1278 groups" - nn message "57 channels and nothing on" - Bruce Springsteen ------------------------------ Date: 20 Jul 92 05:26:31 GMT From: George William Herbert Subject: Space Transportation Infrastructure Costs (Was Re: Interstates) Newsgroups: sci.space In article <19JUL199216484071@judy.uh.edu> seds%cspar.dnet@Fedex.Msfc.Nasa.Gov writes: >In article <143u6fINN6tf@agate.berkeley.edu>, gwh@soda.berkeley.edu (George William Herbert) writes... >> If NASA were willing to look past the Shuttle, it would realize >>that it could redesign the station in 15klb chunks (ugh), develop the >>DC SSTO concept, and fly Freedom in it for less than it'll cost to >>fly it on Shuttle as is. > >Yea right. What is your expertise for this wonderful suggestion? Bs Engineering, UC Berkeley; Currently attending ISU; taught big parts of 2 semesters of Spacecraft design at berkeley; own my own (teeny) aerospace company (Retro Aerospace) >Consider the assembly problems for such a tinker toy approach just for starters >SSRT is a good idea but it has a specific place and that place is not >putting up small chunks of a theoretical space station. As if Freedom isn't tinkertoy now? It doesn't matter to a system, generally, how small the module around it is. The cases where it matters are in very large systems that can't be fit into a single module and have to be split among several modules. Someone inside the program can correct me on this, but none of the hardware/systems designs I've seen for Freedom had any equipment systems that I couldn't fit (system and structure) into 15klbs. There's some slight penalty in structure mass due to the smaller size modules (probably 15-25% of structural mass, from various size module designs _I've_ done). If the launch cost is that much less, it won't be a problem. On orbit assembly of pressurized modules is easy. It's things like the truss and associated hardware (ug) that are hard, even if it's mostly preassembled. A lot of hardware still ends up being hand-placed out on the truss in the intermediate stages of assembly. It's nice to build out of big chunks. Structural masses go down, you don't have to route cables and pipes around through openings etc. nearly as much. Makes things conceptually easier and easier to assemble. But it is by no means critical, whereas killing NASA by having Freedom eat all the other programs until it self destructs is. The engineering problems are slight, and the policy and costing benefits are enormous. There's a bottom limit in size (you can't make a reasonable 3 ton module), but we're nowhere near that. -george william herbert gwh@soda.berkeley.edu gwh@lurnix.com herbert@uchu.isu92.ac.jp until 28 aug ------------------------------ Date: 20 Jul 92 07:46:26 GMT From: Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey Subject: STS-50 postflight briefings set for July 20 [NTE 92-61] (Forwarded) Newsgroups: sci.space In article , schatz@chaos.utexas.edu (Mike Schatz) writes: > In article <1992Jul14.200240.22630@news.arc.nasa.gov> yee@trident.arc.nasa.gov (Peter E. Yee) writes: >> The STS-50 U.S. Microgravity Laboratory postflight crew press >> conference will be held Monday, July 20, from 1-3 p.m. CDT >> [...] NASA Select programming is carried on Satcom F2R, >> transponder 13, located at 72 degrees west longitude. > > Can anyone tell me what I need or where I can go to access this program? You need a C-band (plain vanilla) satellite dish, aimed at 72 degrees W on the celestial equator, and tuned to Transponder 13. If you don't have one, and you don't have a friend who has one, bake some brownies, get some blank videotape, and print out this message. Drive around your favorite suburb or rural area until you spot a dish. Knock on the door. Offer the brownies, make a new friend, then ask for a favor... During the first and second stage Bill Higgins flights of the vehicle, if a serious Fermilab irretrievable fault should occur and HIGGINS@FNAL.BITNET the deviation of the flight attitude of HIGGINS@FNAL.FNAL.GOV the vehicle exceeds a predetermined SPAN/Hepnet: 43011::HIGGINS value, the attitude self-destruction =========================== system will make the vehicle self-destroyed. --Long March 3 User's Manual Ministry of Astronautics, People's Republic of China (1985) ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 19 Jul 1992 22:19:00 GMT From: seds%cspar@Fedex.Msfc.Nasa.Gov Subject: Support Lunar Resource Mapper Too! Re: Manned/Unmanned Newsgroups: sci.space In article <1992Jul18.140549.19705@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu>, rkornilo@nyx.cs.du.edu (ryan korniloff) writes... > > > > >The Comet Rendezvous Asteroid Flyby (CRAF) has been cut from the NASA >budget. Megellan will be turned off while in Venus orbit and still fully >funtional next year. Cassini, mission to Saturn, is in great danger of >meeting the same fate as CRAF. And intruments have been stripped from The >Mars Observer Orbiter to further conserve funds. It would be nice if postings of this nature were at least factual. There have been no deletions of Mars Observer instruments, especially only 60 days from launch. Also we will be very lucky to have a functioning Magellan spacecraft by the end of September due to the transmitter problems. I hope they are able to get the gravity data which is unaffected by the transmitter problem. How about posting something about Lunar Resource Mapper? Is it because it is targeted to the moon that you don't care? JPL folks have been wonderfully silent over this issue and the Congress Critters have cut the funding this year by recission and have basically gutted Mike Griffin's budget for next year. Where is the pleas from the likes of Allan protesting this injustice? Sorry, but Lunar Resource Mapper is more important than Magellan, CRAF, and Cassini all put together because it will get us information that can be used to actually make space exploration a viable effort by all of the people instead of just a few scientists. >All this is happening while space station Freedom is being issued all the >funds it is requested. Yet an army of advisers to Congress from many space >interest groups insist that Freedom if poorly designed and not up to par >on the capabilities it is intended to fulfill. Congress has ignored all of >the contrary statements conserning Freedom and approved of the budget that >is crippling unmanned planetary science. Give us your references on this wonderful statement. I know folks like the American Fed of scientist don't like it and even IEEE issued a statment discouraging it, but you do not see the people that will use space station saying that it is not usable. How about asking microgravity materials researchers and medical researchers about its use? >Don't get me wrong, I am very much for our manned space program. I, myself >intend to be walking an Mars in the next 15-20 years, There is no possible way that you will be standing on Mars or even watching it on TV in that time frame unless we can prove some monetarily useful activities that will come from the effort. Going to the Moon before going to Mars is the way to do this. It will not happen at all if Space Station Freedom is cancelled. Why? Because forever more any effort to explore space will be seen by the public who has to pay for it as another useless boondoggle and they will point to SS Freedom's demise at the hands of shortsided people who scream that everything but what they are working on is crap. We need manned and unmanned efforts to generate wealth for the planet or the riots in LA will one day be seen as a mere picnic up against future troubles. but we can't >continue to push forward the manned program at the expence of all other >mothods of getting knowledge about he universe around us. And where does >congress get the idea that they know what makes a space station useful or >not? What do YOU think. > This is what I think. I think that there is more than a little self righteous- ness in some of these posts on unmanned that focus only on what you want and portrays everthing else as bad. Support Lunar Resource Mapper as well if you truly want to support unmanned space flight. Write your Congress critter or call or fax to support that in the 93 budget. It is a low cost planetary probe that will do much to increase our knowledge of our nearest planetary body. Do you know that after Mars Observer's mission is over, that we will know more about Mars and Venus than about the Moon! That is tragic and must be corrected. Call Barbara Mikulski and sound your support of the Office of Exploration and the Lunar Resource Mapper project. This is the first of a new generation of reasonable priced planetary missions that will end up supporting the exploration of the other planets as well by lowering costs. Too many boondoggles and not enough boon for mankind Dennis Wingo, University of Alabama in Huntsville ------------------------------ Date: 20 Jul 92 12:01:57 GMT From: Ron Baalke Subject: Support Lunar Resource Mapper Too! Re: Manned/Unmanned Newsgroups: sci.space In article <19JUL199217191291@judy.uh.edu>, seds%cspar@Fedex.Msfc.Nasa.Gov writes... >Also we will be very lucky to have a functioning Magellan spacecraft by >the end of September due to the transmitter problems. I hope they are able >to get the gravity data which is unaffected by the transmitter problem. Actually, only the radar data is affected by the transmitter problem, and the collection of radar data if unaffected. >How about posting something about Lunar Resource Mapper? Is it because it >is targeted to the moon that you don't care? JPL folks have been wonderfully >silent over this issue and the Congress Critters have cut the funding this >year by recission and have basically gutted Mike Griffin's budget for next >year. Where is the pleas from the likes of Allan protesting this injustice? > The Lunar Resource Mapper is not a JPL mission, and I myself would like to see more details about it. It seems that Congress is very reluctant to fund the Lunar Resource Mapper because it is associated with SEI. There are other missions that haven't recieved any budget support and have fallen to the wayside, Lunar Observer and SIRTF come to mind. Mike Griffin has been doing a great job since he has taken over in his new position, but without the support of Congress, his plans are going to go nowhere. ___ _____ ___ /_ /| /____/ \ /_ /| Ron Baalke | baalke@kelvin.jpl.nasa.gov | | | | __ \ /| | | | Jet Propulsion Lab | ___| | | | |__) |/ | | |__ M/S 525-3684 Telos | Most of the things you /___| | | | ___/ | |/__ /| Pasadena, CA 91109 | worry about will never |_____|/ |_|/ |_____|/ | happen. ------------------------------ Date: 20 Jul 92 09:16:14 GMT From: Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey Subject: Support Lunar Resource Mapper Too! Re: Manned/Unmanned Newsgroups: sci.space In article <19JUL199217191291@judy.uh.edu>, seds%cspar@Fedex.Msfc.Nasa.Gov writes: > In article <1992Jul18.140549.19705@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu>, rkornilo@nyx.cs.du.edu (ryan korniloff) writes... >> >>The Comet Rendezvous Asteroid Flyby (CRAF) has been cut from the NASA >>budget. Megellan will be turned off while in Venus orbit and still fully >>funtional next year. Cassini, mission to Saturn, is in great danger of >>meeting the same fate as CRAF. And intruments have been stripped from The >>Mars Observer Orbiter to further conserve funds. > > It would be nice if postings of this nature were at least factual. There > have been no deletions of Mars Observer instruments, especially only > 60 days from launch. I infer that Ryan was trying to summarize, in a single sentence per project, the status of these projects as he's read them in the aerospace press. There *were* instruments dropped from MO a couple years ago to save money and keep it on schedule. I think one was an infrared mapping spectrometer; I forget the other. The way Ryan put it made it sound like punks were stealing the hubcaps off MO on the pad, though. > How about posting something about Lunar Resource Mapper? Is it because it > is targeted to the moon that you don't care? JPL folks have been wonderfully > silent over this issue and the Congress Critters have cut the funding this > year by recission and have basically gutted Mike Griffin's budget for next > year. Dennis, I won't claim that LRM's turf is not politically sensitive, but I think the *real* problem is that hardly any information about the project is available. If you have access to details of this mission, or can noodge somebody else into posting those details, it would be great. Instruments? Masses? Mission design? Cost breakdown? Expected science return? There really hasn't been very much detail in *AvLeak* or *Space News*. I have access to some of the Lunar and Planetary Institute information on these efforts, but would have to get permission to post it. Guess I should try to do that. > Where is the pleas from the likes of Allan protesting this injustice? Allen Sherzer has been an enthusiastic supporter, so far as I know, of the SEI probe fleet, and has posted information about their progress in Congress. Ryan's statements about Space Station Fred are just poorly informed; there is a case to be made against the project, but he doesn't make it very well. >>All this is happening while space station Freedom is being issued all the >>funds it is requested. Yet an army of advisers to Congress from many space >>interest groups insist that Freedom if poorly designed and not up to par >>on the capabilities it is intended to fulfill. Congress has ignored all of >>the contrary statements conserning Freedom and approved of the budget that >>is crippling unmanned planetary science. I would claim that Fred has *not* received everything it asked for in most years, and that the "contrary statements" have caused quite a stir in Congress. It even came to a floor vote in the House last year; yes, Fred won that one, but it means that the station's opponents have been working fairly hard against it. >>Don't get me wrong, I am very much for our manned space program. I, myself >>intend to be walking an Mars in the next 15-20 years, I was talking about shopping for a house, and 30-year mortgages, with somebody who reminded me that Rolf Wilson once said, "I'm not used to thinking about what I'll be doing in 2022." I said, "I *do* think about what I'll be doing in 2022... but I expected to be picking up ice on the surface of Callisto, not making the last payment on a condo in Warrenville." Who knows, maybe I can squeeze both in. > This is what I think. I think that there is more than a little self righteous- > ness in some of these posts on unmanned that focus only on what you want and > portrays everthing else as bad. Dennis, of course, *never* indulges in self-righteousness. (-: > Support Lunar Resource Mapper as well if you > truly want to support unmanned space flight. Write your Congress critter > or call or fax to support that in the 93 budget. It is a low cost planetary > probe that will do much to increase our knowledge of our nearest planetary > body. Do you know that after Mars Observer's mission is over, that we will > know more about Mars and Venus than about the Moon! That is tragic and > must be corrected. > > Call Barbara Mikulski and sound your support of the Office of Exploration > and the Lunar Resource Mapper project. This is the first of a new generation > of reasonable priced planetary missions that will end up supporting the > exploration of the other planets as well by lowering costs. As I am posting from a government-owned machine, I cannot comment on the above remarks. (-: (-: O~~* /_) ' / / /_/ ' , , ' ,_ _ \|/ - ~ -~~~~~~~~~~~/_) / / / / / / (_) (_) / / / _\~~~~~~~~~~~zap! / \ (_) (_) / | \ | | Bill Higgins Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory \ / Bitnet: HIGGINS@FNAL.BITNET - - Internet: HIGGINS@FNAL.FNAL.GOV ~ SPAN/Hepnet: 43011::HIGGINS ------------------------------ End of Space Digest Volume 15 : Issue 016 ------------------------------