Date: Thu, 8 Apr 93 05:10:31 From: Space Digest maintainer Reply-To: Space-request@isu.isunet.edu Subject: Space Digest V16 #433 To: Space Digest Readers Precedence: bulk Space Digest Thu, 8 Apr 93 Volume 16 : Issue 433 Today's Topics: ANL IPNS and transmutation article (was Re: nuclear waste) Another Kuiper Object Found? Blow up space station, easy way to do it. Comet in Temporary Orbit Around Jupiter? (4 msgs) Mining Deuterium(sp) on Venus? NASA "Wraps" nuclear waste Portable Small Ground Station?dir Sky Surfing Safety. What if you bite the wave! space food sticks What if the USSR had reached the Moon first? (2 msgs) What Minerals are Cheaper on Mars? than earth? (2 msgs) Welcome to the Space Digest!! Please send your messages to "space@isu.isunet.edu", and (un)subscription requests 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: 7 Apr 93 11:09:45 -0600 From: Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey Subject: ANL IPNS and transmutation article (was Re: nuclear waste) Newsgroups: sci.space In article <1pkjge$pi2@access.digex.net>, prb@access.digex.com (Pat) writes: [re using accelerators to transmute long-lived reactor wastes into short-lived wastes] > ABill, > > Is the IPNS still running at Argonne? This can be settled with a quick phone call. So I did. They are still running the Intense Pulsed Neutron Source at Argonne National Laboratory (the *other* Chicago-area DoE lab). I'm sure your dad will be glad to hear his old toy is still being used. I don't believe IPNS is useful for the kind of work we're talking about, but I'm pretty ignorant about it. For a non-technical review of waste transmutation, see *Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists*, July/August 1991, p. 12-17. [Does anybody actually scurry to the library and *read* things when I post pointers like this, or am I shouting into a vacuum?] O~~* /_) ' / / /_/ ' , , ' ,_ _ \|/ - ~ -~~~~~~~~~~~/_) / / / / / / (_) (_) / / / _\~~~~~~~~~~~zap! / \ (_) (_) / | \ | | Bill Higgins Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory \ / Bitnet: HIGGINS@FNAL.BITNET - - Internet: HIGGINS@FNAL.FNAL.GOV ~ SPAN/Hepnet: 43011::HIGGINS ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 7 Apr 1993 16:55:14 GMT From: Anita Cochran Subject: Another Kuiper Object Found? Newsgroups: sci.astro,sci.space In article <5APR199311311910@csa3.lbl.gov>, sichase@csa3.lbl.gov (SCOTT I CHASE) writes: > In article <1piafeINNri5@emx.cc.utexas.edu>, anita@emx.cc.utexas.edu (Anita L. Cochran) writes... > >The orbit for 1992QB1 is being improved and indeed seems to be a Kuiper > >object. The discovery orbit for 1993FW is still too preliminary to know for > >sure. > > Thanks, Anita, for that lucid explanation, most of which I have deleted > to save bandwidth. My question is a subjective one - I am interested in > your opinion, as a worker in this field. How many objects with > "Kuiper Belt compatible" orbits actually make a "Kuiper Belt"? I guess > I mean this in two senses: (1) How many would have to be clearly identified > before you and other experts would move the Kuiper Belt from "speculative" > to "verified", and (2) in the long run, how many objects would you expect > at detectable magnitude, if the Kuiper Belt is the sole source of all > of comets for which it was hypothesized to be the origin? Well, you will get different answers for that question depending on who you ask. I spent Monday at SouthWest Research Institute (San Antonio) and had a 2 hour discussion with Martin Duncan and Hal Levison about this topic. Martin was lead author on the first paper discussing the Kuiper disk and Hal has worked on the problem and they are now working on refining the statistics. At 1 object, the discovery could be a real fluke. 2 objects is more suggestive. But, people would be much happier with a swarm of objects. Especially since these 2 objects are on opposite sides of the sky. We know there are random small bodies out there. Look at Chiron or Pholus. So are these two discoveries the proof of the Kuiper disk? I would say, not quite yet. And really, we want to find the objects which are Halley sized not these big objects but that is tough. As to your second question, that depends on what is detectable magnitude. Let's assume the disk is confined to a thickness of 10 degrees around the ecliptic. Then it would cover 3600 square degrees. The current models say that there should be ~10**9 objects in the disk. That would be ~80/arcmin**2 (if I didn't slip any digits). But we don't know what the mass function is. If those are primarily small bodies, then very few would be observable. If they are primarily Chiron or QB1 sized objects than all are observable. Well, we know the later is NOT true since only 2 objects have been found and the collective searches to m=24 or fainter are more than a square degree. My basic answer therefore is until we search VERY deep or we search to current magnitudes over a VERY LARGE amount of sky, we just don't really know. -- Anita Cochran uucp: !utastro!anita arpa: anita@astro.as.utexas.edu snail: Astronomy Dept., The Univ. of Texas, Austin, TX, 78712 at&t: (512) 471-1471 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 7 Apr 1993 14:44:26 GMT From: Gary Coffman Subject: Blow up space station, easy way to do it. Newsgroups: sci.space In article <1993Apr5.184527.1@aurora.alaska.edu> nsmca@aurora.alaska.edu writes: >This might a real wierd idea or maybe not.. >I have seen where people have blown up ballons then sprayed material into them >that then drys and makes hard walls... >Why not do the same thing for a space station.. >Fly up the docking rings and baloon materials and such, blow up the baloons, >spin then around (I know a problem in micro gravity) let them dry/cure/harden? >and cut a hole for the docking/attaching ring and bingo a space station.. >Of course the ballons would have to be foil covered or someother radiation >protective covering/heat shield(?) and the material used to make the wals would >have to meet the out gasing and other specs or atleast the paint/covering of >the inner wall would have to be human safe.. Maybe a special congrete or maybe >the same material as makes caplets but with some changes (saw where someone >instea dof water put beer in the caplet mixture, got a mix that was just as >strong as congret but easier to carry around and such..) > >Why musta space station be so difficult?? why must we have girders? why be >confined to earth based ideas, lets think new ideas, after all space is not >earth, why be limited by earth based ideas?? Your proposal is somewhat similar to the LLNL balloon station concept. It is a cheap way to get large pressurized volumes. But most uses of a space station require more than just a large pressurized volume. Generally there will be requirements to host experimental equipment and supply power for that equipment. You need structure for equipment mountings, and structure for power systems. You need wiring channels. You need storage lockers, etc. Also you need structure to allow reboost burns against orbital decay. With a large pressurized volume comes a large drag area that requires frequent reboosts. Without structures to hold massive equipment and supplies in place, reboost becomes difficult and dangerous. An open truss design gives lots of mounting points without large drag generating surfaces. Most of the things a space station is good for don't require large pressurized volumes. Most space experiments want exposure to space conditions. Gary -- Gary Coffman KE4ZV | You make it, | gatech!wa4mei!ke4zv!gary Destructive Testing Systems | we break it. | uunet!rsiatl!ke4zv!gary 534 Shannon Way | Guaranteed! | emory!kd4nc!ke4zv!gary Lawrenceville, GA 30244 | | ------------------------------ Date: 7 Apr 1993 15:49:26 GMT From: Jan Vorbrueggen Subject: Comet in Temporary Orbit Around Jupiter? Newsgroups: sci.space In article <1psfan$pj0@access.digex.net> prb@access.digex.com (Pat) writes: > But when they were > imaging toutatis???? Gaspra, you mean... > didn't someone have to get lucky on a guess to > find the first images? Only a little luck was involved (or so I understood). The navigation team was confident it could predict which of the 81 (9 by 9?) frames taken by the SSI the Gaspra image would be in, and even approx. where. So they told Galileo to send a few (10?) lines of that frame. Indeed, it did contain Gaspra's image, and they told Galileo to send the rest of the frame. (Or did you optimize it even further, Ron, and send only those parts containing something interesting?) BTW, I always wondered why they did that. Of course, it's much nicer to see some results _now_ instead of having to wait another 6 or so months, and it sure makes good publicity, but were there any technical reasons? After so many years waiting for Galileo to launch and it taking such a circuitous route to its destination, surely the team had turned resilient to short-term excitement :-) Jan ------------------------------ Date: 7 Apr 1993 17:12 UT From: Ron Baalke Subject: Comet in Temporary Orbit Around Jupiter? Newsgroups: sci.space In article <1put66$2lq@rubb.rz.ruhr-uni-bochum.de>, jan@neuroinformatik.ruhr-uni-bochum.de (Jan Vorbrueggen) writes... >In article <1psfan$pj0@access.digex.net> prb@access.digex.com (Pat) >writes: > >> But when they were >> imaging toutatis???? > >Gaspra, you mean... > >> didn't someone have to get lucky on a guess to >> find the first images? > >Only a little luck was involved (or so I understood). The navigation >team was confident it could predict which of the 81 (9 by 9?) frames >taken by the SSI the Gaspra image would be in, and even approx. where. >So they told Galileo to send a few (10?) lines of that frame. Indeed, >it did contain Gaspra's image, and they told Galileo to send the rest >of the frame. (Or did you optimize it even further, Ron, and send only >those parts containing something interesting?) Some months prior to Galileo's encounter with Gaspra, the project called upon the astronomy community to help provide the best position of the asteroid with Earth-based observations. This information was used to take the optical navigations images. In the optical navigation images, Gaspra was just a point of light against a background of stars. The images were long exposures and the camera was slewed during the exposure resulting in the image with streaks of squiggly lines for Gaspra and the stars. About 3 or 4 nav images were taken before the encounter, and Gaspra's position was improved to an uncertainty of 300km. During the ecounter, enough images were taken around the area where Gaspra was supposed to be to ensure a 99% confidence level that Gaspra would show up in some of the images. The first playback of the data sent only 12 lines from the "center" image, and part of Gaspra showed up in the 12 lines - the aiming was perfect. ___ _____ ___ /_ /| /____/ \ /_ /| Ron Baalke | baalke@kelvin.jpl.nasa.gov | | | | __ \ /| | | | Jet Propulsion Lab | ___| | | | |__) |/ | | |__ M/S 525-3684 Telos | Being cynical never helps /___| | | | ___/ | |/__ /| Pasadena, CA 91109 | to correct the situation |_____|/ |_|/ |_____|/ | and causes more aggravation | instead. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 7 Apr 1993 17:34:25 GMT From: James Davis Nicoll Subject: Comet in Temporary Orbit Around Jupiter? Newsgroups: sci.space How bound is this comet to Jupiter? If one wanted to alter its orbit to cross Earth's,how much delta-vee would we be talking? James Nicoll ------------------------------ Date: 7 Apr 1993 13:33:14 -0400 From: Pat Subject: Comet in Temporary Orbit Around Jupiter? Newsgroups: sci.space In article <7APR199317125459@kelvin.jpl.nasa.gov> baalke@kelvin.jpl.nasa.gov (Ron Baalke) writes: | |Some months prior to Galileo's encounter with Gaspra, the project called |upon the astronomy community to help provide the best position of the |asteroid with Earth-based observations. This information was used to take |the optical navigations For SHoemaker - levy, will galileo follow a similiar activity? HST and ground scopes providing best position data, then a couple of long range navigating images, then a group of closeup images, or do they just change the zoom on the telescopes? |images. In the optical navigation images, Gaspra was just a point of light |against a background of stars. The images were long exposures and the camera |was slewed during the exposure resulting in the image with streaks of |squiggly lines for Gaspra and the stars. About 3 or 4 nav images were taken Was the slewing deliberate, or an unavoidable artifact of the long exposures? If the slewing was deliberate , why? |before the encounter, and Gaspra's position was improved to an uncertainty |of 300km. During the ecounter, enough images were taken around the area where |Gaspra was supposed to be to ensure a 99% confidence level that Gaspra |would show up in some of the images. The first playback of How many images were wasted? Or at least weren't of gaspra? In gaspra's case, My understanding is the main difficulty was they had to send it down through the LGA. Tape recorder space wasn't a problem. When S-L 1993e is imaged, will there be more of a squeeze on tape recorder storage? Of course, if you guys hit it dead on, then that's not such a problem. What prioritzation will S-L get on the science mission? I imagine the probe deploy is highest, continous fields and waves studies, then what? imaging jupiter? or will S-L come higher? |the data sent only 12 lines from the "center" image, and part of Gaspra |showed up in the 12 lines - the aiming was perfect. ^^^^^^^ Of course, you folks do have that reputation. pat ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 7 Apr 1993 15:39:28 GMT From: Henry Spencer Subject: Mining Deuterium(sp) on Venus? Newsgroups: sci.space In article <1993Apr7.024412.1@aurora.alaska.edu> nsmca@aurora.alaska.edu writes: >If Venus has alot of Deuterium(sp) (isetope of Hydrogen) is it worth our while >and energy to go there to "mine" it?? No. There is lots of deuterium in Earth's oceans, slightly harder to purify but a whole lot easier to get to. -- All work is one man's work. | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology - Kipling | henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry ------------------------------ Date: 7 Apr 1993 17:37:29 GMT From: Dave McKissock Subject: NASA "Wraps" Newsgroups: sci.space In a previous article, aws@iti.org (Allen W. Sherzer) says: >In article <6APR199317080334@tm0006.lerc.nasa.gov> dbm0000@tm0006.lerc.nasa.gov (David B. Mckissock) writes: >>Allen Sherzer & Tim Kyger write: >> "Another problem is what are called 'wraps' (or sometimes >> the 'center tax'). When work for a large program like >> Freedom or Shuttle is performed at a NASA center, the >> center skims off a portion which goes into what amounts >> to a slush fund... > >>My dear friends, your mixing fact and fiction here. > >Not according to the sources we spoke with at the Reston Program Office. >They claim that the current design can be built for less than $2B a year >and operated for less than $1 billion per year (including the cost of >the WP 2 bailout). You might also read the anonymous editorial in the >March 22 issue of Space News. BTW, this is the first anonymous editorial >they have ever published. I have read the Space News editorial. I don't believe that simply reorganizing the management structure so the project managers at the centers report to the Reston program manager and eliminating a layer or two of the requirements documents will somehow magically save hundreds of millions of dollars. Sure, the changes would tighten up the management chain, and eliminating documentation would save $, but not anywhere near the scale that is needed to fit within the 5/7/9 $Billion options recently dictated. >>First off, yes, the concept of 'center tax', or 'wrap' does >>exist. If I recall the numbers correctly, the total 'tax' >>for the SSF program for this fiscal year is around $40 Million. > >I'm sure that is what it says on paper. Reality however, is another >matter. For example, The Engineering Directorate has about 8,000 NASA >people and contracotrs working for it. Their only approved project at >the moment is Freedom. Yet only a third of those people actually work >on Freedom. Who is paying for those people and why aren't they working >on what they are chartered to work on? A As I understand it, there is a specific line item in the NASA budget to pay the salaries for all NASA civil servants. So, when people quote a figure like $8 B, or $30 B for SSF, I do not believe those numbers include civil servant salaries. I wasn't aware that the Engineering Directorate at JSC has only one project they are chartered to work on. Let's peek into their organization, by looking at their organization published in the JSC phone book. The Engineering Directorate has 8 divisions: Crew and Thermal Systems, Tracking and Communications, Navigation Control & Aeronautics, Flight Data Systems, Propulsion and Power, Automation and Robotics, Structures and Mechanics, and Systems Engineering. Wouldn't you figure that folks in many of these divisions heavily support the Space Shuttle (JSC does have some small role in Shuttle Operations, don't they :) ], and maybe the folks in "Tracking & Communications" work alot on TDRSS? I don't see why it's such a big deal that only 30% of the folks in the JSC Engineering Directorate directly support SSF. >Any cursory examination will show that NASA is wasting billions on >Freedom while center managers use it as a cover to fund their pet >projects. I guess you didn't get my point. In FY93, only $40 Million is "wasted" in taxes, and I'm not ready to give up the point that of the $40 Million, not all of it goes into the center discretionary fund. (So, it's not "billions", and it's not "wasted".) > >>I should note that your estimate of the tax rate at 1/3 could >>be close to the actual rate. The tax is only charged on funds >>that are spent at the center > >Then where is the money coming from? You mean all those JCS engineers >are working for free? In essence, yes, they are "free", since the whole civil servant salary comes out of one NASA line item. > >>At WP-4, we call these funds we spend in-house supporting >>development funds (as they are supporting the development >>work done by Rocketdyne). > >Looks like your center manager supports Freedom. At other centers >it's a different story. At JSC for example, Shuttle is bigger so >funds are used to support it. I don't get the point. If JSC center management decides they need "X" amount of folks to support shuttle, and "Y" to support SSF, on what basis are you criticizing their management? Yeah, they just had a big cost overrun, but I haven't read anywhere that to keep it from happening in the future more folks from the Engineering Directorate should be supporting SSF. > >>Most of the tax, however, goes to fund the 'general' >>services at the Center, like the library, the >>central computer services division, the Contractor >>who removes the snow, etc. > >Sorry, that is the overhead charge, not the center tax. I have >no problems with reasonable overhead and we specifically didn't >include it. Nither does Reston. I stand behind my statement. I was told, by the guy who does cost analyses in support of Kohrs, the Program manager in Washington, that the "tax" was roughly $40 M this fiscal year, and there is no additional "overhead" charge. Also, as I said above, these funds (at least at Lewis) are used to support "general" center services. -- << You shall know the truth, and it shall set you free >> Quote engraved in the marble wall @ CIA Headquarters dbm0000@tm0006.lerc.nasa.gov ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 7 Apr 1993 16:05:10 GMT From: Gary Coffman Subject: nuclear waste Newsgroups: sci.space In article <844@rins.ryukoku.ac.jp> will@rins.ryukoku.ac.jp (William Reiken) writes: >In article <1pp6reINNonl@phantom.gatech.edu>, matthew@phantom.gatech.edu (Matthew DeLuca) writes: >> >> Greedy little oil companies? Don't blame them; oil companies just supply the >> demand created by you, me, and just about everyone else on the planet. If we >> run out, its all our faults. > > Ok, so how about the creation of oil producing bacteria? I figure >that if you can make them to eat it up then you can make them to shit it. >Any comments? Such bacteria exist, after a fashion, it's just that it's much more efficient to do the synthesis in a chemical plant. Synthetic oil is an established technology tracing it's mass use back to WWII Germany. The Fischer Topish process can make synthetic gasoline at prices competitive with natural oil at $40 a barrel. That's about double today's price, and similar to the price surge during the 1970s embargo. There are other processes available today as well. They mostly fall in the $40-$70 a barrel range. When oil prices rise to those levels, the synthetics will move in to compete. The raw starter materials for synthetic oils range from coal, tar sands, and shale, to biomass and municipal wastes. The available amount of these raw materials is staggering, many thousands of times the amount of crude oil available. There's no resource limitation that would stop synthetic oil products from being available at current consumption levels and at $2-$3 a gallon prices for many thousands of years to come. A doubling of oil prices would only add about $300-$600 to the annual operating expense of a motorist. That's less than insurance, tag fees, and the like. The only concern about oil products is the pollution produced by their use. Availability at reasonable prices is assured far beyond any reasonable projected timescale. The whole idea of importing hundreds of megatons of material a year from outer space is somewhat ridiculous. Eventually, there's no place left to put it. Gary -- Gary Coffman KE4ZV | You make it, | gatech!wa4mei!ke4zv!gary Destructive Testing Systems | we break it. | uunet!rsiatl!ke4zv!gary 534 Shannon Way | Guaranteed! | emory!kd4nc!ke4zv!gary Lawrenceville, GA 30244 | | ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 7 Apr 1993 15:00:58 GMT From: Gary Coffman Subject: Portable Small Ground Station?dir Newsgroups: sci.space In article <1993Apr5.185700.1@aurora.alaska.edu> nsmca@aurora.alaska.edu writes: >In article , henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes: >> In article <1993Apr2.214705.1@aurora.alaska.edu> nsmca@aurora.alaska.edu writes: >>>How difficult would it be to set up your own ground station? >> >> Ground station for *what*? At one extreme, some of the amateur-radio >> satellites have sometimes been reachable with hand-held radios. At the >> other, nothing you can do in your back yard will let you listen in on >> Galileo. Please be more specific. > >SPECIFIC: >Basically to be able to do the things the big dadies can do.. Monitor, and >control if need be the Shuttle... > >Such as the one in Australia and such.... The Shuttle isn't controlled from the ground, and it's communications with the ground is mainly through the TDRS system. It doesn't take a huge antenna to gather the signals relayed by TDRS, but it does take complex and expensive equipment to demultiplex the data streams. Everything is transmitted as a multiplexed multimegabaud digital data stream. The high speed demultiplexers are beyond ordinary amateur reach at this time, though prices are falling rapidly. More importantly, NASA doesn't release specs on what the channels are, so you still probably couldn't make sense of what you receive. Ordinary Shuttle suit communications takes place on UHF, and when conditions are just right you can monitor that directly with rather simple equipment, similar to what amateurs use in the SAREX experiments. Shuttle also has ordinary flight radios for use during landings, but you have to be line of sight to receive those. The DSN stations are different, and aren't used to monitor Shuttle. These stations use huge antennas to gather in the very faint signals from distant probes. They use advanced LNAs, low noise amplifiers, and computer enhancement to pick up signals that are so faint that a flea scratching himself at 2000 km would have more power. You have no hope of duplicating them on an amateur budget. Gary -- Gary Coffman KE4ZV | You make it, | gatech!wa4mei!ke4zv!gary Destructive Testing Systems | we break it. | uunet!rsiatl!ke4zv!gary 534 Shannon Way | Guaranteed! | emory!kd4nc!ke4zv!gary Lawrenceville, GA 30244 | | ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 7 Apr 1993 14:41:58 GMT From: Marvin Batty Subject: Sky Surfing Safety. What if you bite the wave! Newsgroups: sci.space In article <1993Apr2.213024.1@aurora.alaska.edu> nsmca@aurora.alaska.edu writes: >Wierd question, I seem to be good at them.. > >Okay if a person is skysurfing and bites the wave, what is there to get them >safely to ground?? Basically what if they fall of the board and they go nose >first into the atmosphere??? What safety measures are there? available? design >ideas? > >Of course going nose first into the atmosphere is a spectacular way to bite the >ground, but.. I would like to know I might actually live thru the experiance... > > >Surf the atmosphere NOW!!!!!! > >Catch the gravity wave for a earthy experiance. >== >Michael Adams, nsmca@acad3.alaska.edu -- I'm not high, just jacked > As I recall reading in a fiction book called "Orbital Decay", one method is a thermal shield, which may be linked to current NASA research on surviving damage to space stations. The astro is jetted away from the launch sight and a thermal shield (like an umbrella) fans out when hitting atmosphere. At a certain height (after cooling) the shield is discarded and the astro parachutes the rest of the way down. Hope this helps. Marvin Batty -- **************************************************************************** Marvin Batty - djf@uk.ac.cov.cck "And they shall not find those things, with a sort of rafia like base, that their fathers put there just the night before. At about 8 O'clock!" ------------------------------ Date: 7 Apr 93 02:02:07 EDT From: Ethan Dicks Subject: space food sticks Newsgroups: sci.space John Elson (jelson@rcnext.cso.uiuc.edu) wrote: : Has anyone ever heard of a food product called "Space Food Sticks?" This : was apparently created/marketed around the time of the lunar expeditions, along : with "Tang" and other dehydrated foods. I have spoken with several people : who have eaten these before, and they described them as a dehydrated candy. : Any information would be greatly appreciated. I also remember eating (and loving) these during the early '70s. I tried to track them down a few years ago and was informed that they have probably not been manufactured for at least 20 years and that the ones I ate were undoubtably several years old at the time. If you ever find them, I would love to know. -ethan ------------------------------ Date: 7 Apr 1993 16:16:16 GMT From: Baylor Subject: What if the USSR had reached the Moon first? Newsgroups: alt.history.what-if,sci.space >What military value is this? All I can think of is a reduction in >the cost of building an orbital facility, which might have an SDI >system on it. I know nothing about the space race and I'm too young to remember the good old days, but wasn't the big fuss about Russian space technology just the realization of ICBMs? I think that we still had some time after the russians got nuclear weaponry until they could use it as they didn't have any air technology capable of delivering their bombs ( supposedly their bombers were fairly bad). But if they could orbit a dog around the world then they could surely drop a couple of megatons on america. - baylor ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 7 Apr 1993 17:47:11 GMT From: "John E. Curtis" Subject: What if the USSR had reached the Moon first? Newsgroups: alt.history.what-if,sci.space The value of a lunar military base over a satellite station are many the most obvious are 1 not vulnerable to simple tactics like scattering gravel in front of the station. 2 can mine moon for raw materials unlike station which is dependant on resupply 3 can only be shot at from one side john ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 7 Apr 1993 15:37:58 GMT From: Henry Spencer Subject: What Minerals are Cheaper on Mars? than earth? Newsgroups: sci.space In article <1993Apr7.024031.1@aurora.alaska.edu> nsmca@aurora.alaska.edu writes: >... What minerals are there on MArs that would make it cheaper to go >to Mars to get them, versus mining/smelting and processing them here?? Unless you can bring down transport costs *a lot*, there are none. If you could transmute lead to gold in low Earth orbit, it wouldn't pay to do it at current Western launch prices. Mars is rather harder to get to. In general, unless you assume really radical drops in transport cost, the only cost-effective use for extraterrestrial materials is in space, where terrestrial materials are very expensive too. And the problem with that is the lack of any well-established market. -- All work is one man's work. | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology - Kipling | henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 7 Apr 1993 17:38:57 GMT From: Bernhardt Saini-eidukat Subject: What Minerals are Cheaper on Mars? than earth? Newsgroups: sci.space In article <1993Apr7.024031.1@aurora.alaska.edu> nsmca@aurora.alaska.edu writes: >Idea or thought.. > >What materials would a commerical company need or want to get from Mars? > [stuff deleted] > >Michael Adams >NSMCA@ACAD@.ALASKA.EDU >I'm not high, just jacked According to R.G. Burns and D.S. Fisher (Journal of Geophysical Research, vol. B95, p. 14,169-14,193, 1990) "ultramafic Fe-Ni sulfides and perhaps iron-rich sediments (gossans and abiotic banded iron formations) derived from chemical weathering of the basaltic crust, as well as cumulate chromites, are likely to be the only ore deposits present on Mars." -- The opinions expressed are not necessarily those of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the Campus Office for Information Technology, or the Experimental Bulletin Board Service. internet: laUNChpad.unc.edu or 152.2.22.80 ------------------------------ End of Space Digest Volume 16 : Issue 433 ------------------------------