Date: Fri, 23 Apr 93 05:47:17 From: Space Digest maintainer Reply-To: Space-request@isu.isunet.edu Subject: Space Digest V16 #479 To: Space Digest Readers Precedence: bulk Space Digest Fri, 23 Apr 93 Volume 16 : Issue 479 Today's Topics: *** HELP I NEED SOME ADDRESSES *** Boom! Whoosh...... Commercial mining activities on the moon Crazy? or just Imaginitive? DC-X & DC-Y Eco-Freaks forcing Space Mining. (2 msgs) Keeping Spacecraft on after Funding Cuts. Moonbase race, NASA resources, why? PLANETS STILL: IMAGES ORBIT BY ETHER TWIST Sunrise/ sunset times Surviving Large Accelerations? Vandalizing the sky. (2 msgs) Why DC-1 will be the way of the future. 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: 22 Apr 93 13:50:39 GMT From: Doug Egan Subject: *** HELP I NEED SOME ADDRESSES *** Newsgroups: sci.space In <1993Apr20.041300.21721@ncsu.edu> jmcocker@eos.ncsu.edu (Mitch) writes: > I'm trying to get mailing addresses for the following >companies. Specifically, I need addresses for their personnel >offices or like bureau. The companies are: > - Space Industries, Inc. (Somewhere in Houston) 101 Courageous Dr. Leage City, TX 77573 Phone: (713) 538-6000 Good Luck! Doug -- Doug Egan "It's not what you got - Lockheed Engineering and Sciences Co. It's what you give." Houston, TX -Tesla ***** email: egan@blkbox.com ***** ------------------------------ Date: 21 Apr 93 18:09:03 GMT From: Bruce Watson Subject: Boom! Whoosh...... Newsgroups: sci.space In article <1993Apr21.024423.29182@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu+ wdwells@nyx.cs.du.edu (David "Fuzzy" Wells) writes: + +I love the idea of an inflatable 1-mile long sign.... It will be a +really neat thing to see it explode when a bolt (or even better, a +Westford Needle!) comes crashing into it at 10 clicks a sec. + Pageos and two Echo balloons were inflated with a substance which expanded in vacuum. Once inflated the substance was no longer needed since there is nothing to cause the balloon to collapse. This inflatable structure could suffer multiple holes with no disastrous deflation. -- Bruce Watson (wats@scicom.alphaCDC.COM) Bulletin 629-49 Item 6700 Extract 75,131 ------------------------------ Date: 22 Apr 1993 00:01:34 -0400 From: Pat Subject: Commercial mining activities on the moon Newsgroups: sci.space In article <1r46j3INN14j@mojo.eng.umd.edu> sysmgr@king.eng.umd.edu writes: >In article , steinly@topaz.ucsc.edu (Steinn Sigurdsson) writes: | |>Very cost effective if you use the right accounting method :-) | >Sherzer Methodology!!!!!! Let it never be said that an opportunity was missed to put someone down. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 Apr 1993 13:21:29 GMT From: Doug Loss Subject: Crazy? or just Imaginitive? Newsgroups: sci.space In article <1993Apr21.205403.1@aurora.alaska.edu> nsmca@aurora.alaska.edu writes: > >Unfortunately H. Beam Piper killed him self just weeks short of having his >first book published, and have his ideas see light.. Such a waste. > > Piper lived in my town (Williamsport, PA) when he killed himself. It was in the early '60's. He had had more than a few books published by that time, but he was down on his luck financially. Rumor was that he was hunting urban pigeons with birdshot for food. He viewed himself as a resourceful man, and (IMO) decided to check out gracefully if he couldn't support himself. The worst part is that John Campbell, the long-time editor of Astounding/Analog SF magazine had cut a check for Piper's most recent story, and said check was in the mail. If Campbell had known Piper's straits, I'm sure he would have phoned to say hang on. Campbell was like that. I wish it had happened differently. I always enjoyed Piper's stuff. Doug Loss ------------------------------ Date: 22 Apr 93 15:00:05 GMT From: Andrew Broderick Subject: DC-X & DC-Y Newsgroups: sci.space Hi guys, I've been hearing lots of talk on the net about DC-X and DC-Y, but none of the many posts actually explain what they are !!! Sorry if this is a FAQ, but would somebody please explain to me what they are. Reply by Email please . . . thanks. Andy ajjb@adam4.bnsc.rl.ac.uk -- ----------------------------------- Andy Jonathan J. Broderick, | "I have come that they might have | Rutherford Lab., UK | life, and have it to the full" | Mail : ajjb@adam2.bnsc.rl.ac.uk | - Jesus Christ | ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 Apr 1993 13:46:42 GMT From: "G. Patrick Molloy" Subject: Eco-Freaks forcing Space Mining. Newsgroups: sci.space In article <1993Apr21.212202.1@aurora.alaska.edu>, nsmca@aurora.alaska.edu writes: > Here is a way to get the commericial companies into space and mineral > exploration. > > Basically get the eci-freaks to make it so hard to get the minerals on earth.. > You think this is crazy. Well in a way it is, but in a way it is reality. > > There is a billin the congress to do just that.. Basically to make it so > expensive to mine minerals in the US, unless you can by off the inspectors or > tax collectors.. ascially what I understand from talking to a few miner friends > of mine, that they (the congress) propose to have a tax on the gross income of > the mine, versus the adjusted income, also the state governments have there > normal taxes. So by the time you get done, paying for materials, workers, and > other expenses you can owe more than what you made. > BAsically if you make a 1000.00 and spend 500. ofor expenses, you can owe > 600.00 in federal taxes.. Bascially it is driving the miners off the land.. And > the only peopel who benefit are the eco-freaks.. > > Basically to get back to my beginning statement, is space is the way to go > cause it might just get to expensive to mine on earth because of either the > eco-freaks or the protectionist.. > Such fun we have in these interesting times.. > > == > Michael Adams, nsmca@acad3.alaska.edu -- I'm not high, just jacked The current mining regulations and fees were set in the 1800's! What the so-called "eco-freaks" want to do is to simply bring those fees in line with current economic reality. Currently, mining companies can get access to minerals on public lands for ridiculously low prices -- something like $50! The mining lobby has for decades managed to block any reform of these outdated fees. In fact, the latest attempt to reform them was again blocked -- President Clinton "compromised" by taking the mining fee reforms out of his '94 budget, and plans to draft separate legislation to fight that battle. If you want to discuss this further, I suggest you take this to talk.environment. G. Patrick Molloy Huntsville, Alabama ------------------------------ Date: 22 Apr 1993 10:48:31 -0400 From: Pat Subject: Eco-Freaks forcing Space Mining. Newsgroups: sci.space Besides this was the same line of horse puckey the mining companies claimed when they were told to pay for restoring land after strip mining. they still mine coal in the midwest, but now it doesn't look like the moon when theyare done. pat ------------------------------ Date: 22 Apr 1993 10:41:31 -0400 From: Pat Subject: Keeping Spacecraft on after Funding Cuts. Newsgroups: alt.sci.planetary,sci.space,sci.astro In article <1993Apr22.003719.101323@zeus.calpoly.edu> jgreen@trumpet.calpoly.edu (James Thomas Green) writes: >prb@access.digex.com (Pat) Pontificated: >> >> > >I heard once that the voyagers had a failsafe routine built in >that essentially says "If you never hear from Earth again, >here's what to do." This was a back up in the event a receiver >burnt out but the probe could still send data (limited, but >still some data). > Voyager has the unusual luck to be on a stable trajectory out of the solar system. All it's doing is collecting fields data, and routinely squirting it down. One of the mariners is also in stable solar orbit, and still providing similiar solar data. Something in a planetary orbit, is subject to much more complex forces. Comsats, in "stable " geosynch orbits, require almost daily stationkeeping operations. For the occasional deep space bird, like PFF after pluto, sure it could be left on "auto-pilot". but things like galileo or magellan, i'd suspect they need enough housekeeping that even untended they'd end up unusable after a while. The better question should be. Why not transfer O&M of all birds to a separate agency with continous funding to support these kind of ongoing science missions. pat When ongoing ops are mentioned, it seems to always quote Operations and Data analysis. how much would it cost to collect the data and let it be analyzed whenever. kinda like all that landsat data that sat around for 15 years before someone analyzed it for the ozone hole. >>Even if you let teh bird drift, it may get hosed by some >>cosmic phenomena. >> >Since this would be a shutdown that may never be refunded for >startup, if some type of cosmic BEM took out the probe, it might >not be such a big loss. Obviously you can't plan for >everything, but the most obvious things can be considered. > > >/~~~(-: James T. Green :-)~~~~(-: jgreen@oboe.calpoly.edu :-)~~~\ >| "I know you believe you understand what it is that you | >| think I said. But I am not sure that you realize that | >| what I said is not what I meant." | ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 Apr 1993 15:32:46 GMT From: Henry Spencer Subject: Moonbase race, NASA resources, why? Newsgroups: sci.space In article <1993Apr21.210712.1@aurora.alaska.edu> nsmca@aurora.alaska.edu writes: >> So how much would it cost as a private venture, assuming you could talk the >> U.S. government into leasing you a couple of pads in Florida? > >Why must it be a US Government Space Launch Pad? Directly I mean... In fact, you probably want to avoid US Government anything for such a project. The pricetag is invariably too high, either in money or in hassles. The important thing to realize here is that the big cost of getting to the Moon is getting into low Earth orbit. Everything else is practically down in the noise. The only part of getting to the Moon that poses any new problems, beyond what you face in low orbit, is the last 10km -- the actual landing -- and that is not immensely difficult. Of course, you *can* spend sagadollars (saga- is the metric prefix for beelyuns and beelyuns) on things other than the launches, but you don't have to. The major component of any realistic plan to go to the Moon cheaply (for more than a brief visit, at least) is low-cost transport to Earth orbit. For what it costs to launch one Shuttle or two Titan IVs, you can develop a new launch system that will be considerably cheaper. (Delta Clipper might be a bit more expensive than this, perhaps, but there are less ambitious ways of bringing costs down quite a bit.) Any plan for doing sustained lunar exploration using existing launch systems is wasting money in a big way. Given this, questions like whose launch facilities you use are *not* a minor detail; they are very important to the cost of the launches, which dominates the cost of the project. -- All work is one man's work. | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology - Kipling | henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 Apr 1993 13:09:23 GMT From: David McAloon Subject: PLANETS STILL: IMAGES ORBIT BY ETHER TWIST Newsgroups: sci.space,sci.astro,alt.aci.planetary,alt.astrology ETHER IMPLODES 2 EARTH CORE, IS GRAVITY!!! This paper BOTH describes how heavenly bodys can be stationary, ether sucking structures, AND why we observe "orbital" motion!! Ether, the theoretical propogation media of electro-magnetic waves, was concluded not to exist, based on the results of the Michelson-Moreley experiment conducted a century ago. I propose that those conclusions are flawed, based on the fact that the experiment was designed to look for a flow parallel to the earth's surface, not perpindicular. (Due to the prevailing assumption that the earth traveled through the ether as a ball through the wind) The reversal of the that conclusion, a pivotal keystone in the development of modern scientific thought, could have ramifications of BIBLICAL proportions through out the WORLD!! REMEMBER: Einstien said Imagination is greater than knowledge!! 1 I dream like this: ether based reality The ether is like a fluid out of phase with our reality. Creations start as a lattice placed into the ether. Given a spin, the lattices both drag the fluid, like a margarita blender, and ingest it, converting it, distilling localized mass, time and energy. (non-spinning lattice = "dark matter") The earth isn't exactly spinning, around the sun. Picture an image of a galaxy; we haven't any videos of them spinning. Picture us being stationary, and the sun's image being dragged across the sky by the spinning ether field. (Picture an onion, each layer of which is spinning a little faster than the next. A thread shot at the inner kernel would be stretched diagonally sideways, its head being in a faster shell than its tail, until it finally intersected the ground of the inner kernel, its direction vector being straight down, but its "foot print" being a line, not a point. [sunrise, sunset]) The moon isn't exactly orbiting us. It is a parasite, (non self spin sustaining ) being dragged in the earth's ether field, which is itself in the sun's much more powerful field. Our seasons are the wobble of earth's axis, like a top slowing down. The "orbit" of the earth around the sun is all of the stars' images being dragged around by the sun's ether feild. The earth, moon and sun are about the same size and "distance" apart. Its just that the time between them varies greatly, because the "path" is not the same. The moon's lattice in the ether is like sticking a fork in a plate of spaghetti and giving the plate a half turn. The sun's lattice has so much spin that its like the fork has got the whole plate of noodles wound up. The piece of light going to the moon can slide down the spaghetti and maybe make a "j" hook at the end. The piece of light going to the sun has to go around the whole plate, like a needle in a record, before it gets there. With a pencil, compass, and rule, draw a diagram of how the moon can be about as big as "earth's" shadow upon it, and at other times totally eclipse the sun. Look in the sky. except for your Knowledge, would you guess that they are about the same size, just because they look about the same size? O . - - E O O O S E / \ M | | OR M \ _ _ / S The full moon, quarter moon etc. is the difference between rate of ether spins. What we are looking at is a rotating "turntable view" of the moon, only half of which is facing the sun. ( I've seen a half moon within about 120 degrees (of sky) of the sun, during the day. Try and draw that "earth shadow.") Its only the moon's image which appears to orbit us. No matter where it is, the light part is the part facing the sun, and the dark part is the half facing away from the sun, even when it appears to be behind us. "Light-Years" between galaxies is a misnomer. The distance is closer to zero, as time and matter are characteristics of this phase of reality, which dissipates outward with each layer of the onion. (defining edge = 0 ether spin) What we are seeing could be essentially happening now. The "piece" of light may have experienced many years, but the trip could be very quick, our time. To time travel or warp space I might consider learning to de-spin myself. (phase out my mass) Good luck trying to design a propulsion system to drag around a space-time locality. (its like trying to move a balloon by shooting a squirt gun from within) To find out about all of this, I recommend studying history. I'd look in the book of life. (or holy grail etc.) Brain waves just might carry decipherable data. I'd start looking on some part of the spectra said to be unusable, due to all the background noise. (4+ billion humans?) I'd totally isolate myself, record me thinking DOG backwards, and learn to read what I got. (Microsoft Holy Grail card for Pentium!) Next, concluding that my thoughts were recorded on a non time-bound media, the ether, and that it is I who move forward (in time). I would try to temporarily locally reverse the flow, (of time, which I'd start looking for as flowing opposite magnetism, pole to pole. [Why not?]) perhaps by passing a LARGE, FLAT DC current through a two foot diameter. coil or choke or something, and seeing what I could get with my machine's receiver next to it. If you don't think you'll live to see it, consider this: QUIT PUTTING THE REPRODUCTIVE KEYS OF OTHER LIFE IN YOUR BODY! All of life's data could be written on the wind, (ether) not just our thoughts. DNA could be a little receiver or file access code. By eating SEEDS, we could be jamming our reception, or receiving plant instructions. Try eating seed bearing fruit. Maybe those Greek or biblical guys did live hundreds of years. I'm curios to see what they did and ate. Don't worry if your hair stops growing. (Maybe we don't need to eat at all, the cosmos are formed from nothing, and that is creating matter! I only need enough to bounce around. Where did the household concept 'immortal' come from? Wheat is a weed, it is programmed to pull from the soil, reproduce like hell, and then die) Warning about writing to the past: I had a little dream of being in a world, in the near parallel future, lying along a path of history which we have diverged from. There were; twelve telepathic, glowing beings, who looked like an Oscar award and who had always been, a dark one who looked like us, and then myself. The dark one was in the process of making the others into gods, (he had to teach them what that meant) by "advising" them in their past. Basically, he manipulated them into reproducing, and raising their children on his seed. He said that the little ones who looked different were a sub-species, meant to provide service. He carefully combed through history, rewriting it in his favor, pulling like a weed anything that compromised his control. He enticed recruits by sending them his visions, saying that there was immortality at the end of the road for only twelve souls: kill or be killed. The amount of control he could exert was finite, though, as at every change he made, a void would appear in our reality. The universe one day ended 100 meters from us: it seemed odd, but we couldn't remember how else it should be. Then some of the twelve were no more. Finally, when he could prune no more, and reality stopped just beyond his fingertips, he stepped through his portal to the past, to bask, over and over, in all that he had created. I made a few more changes, and lost my body, existing only on the wind. MORAL: Its very possible to eliminate from your reality the souls whose will's are not in harmony with yours (Golden Rule - treat others as you wish to be treated) I.E., you could end up along a lonely thread of time with murderers or flowery brown-nosers for playmates. (its not eternal, there's more than one way back) Accepting rides to the past: Once here, the one who looks like us sells rides, he can make you a Prince, or a Queen, or you can live as a god in ancient Greece. Go ahead, repeat the third grade as often as you like, Adam henry. I Hope you like inspecting your socks. Careful though, if he likes your work, but thinks you're getting wise, he can direct you to cross paths with your old self, and you'll vanish as you rewrite your own course of history, none the wiser. As we pass the point along the parallel line where he stepped back in time, his hierarchy will lose its direction. He can still make changes while he's here, its just that that is work, and with every 'adjustment', this becomes less the world he cultivated, which loosens his grip, and his organization is suddenly one branch less. But he can't see the change. The basic nature of man is good. He had to apply his hand to achieve his world. As he now tightens his hand to retain what he built, the more sand slips through his fingers. How about public computer access to the I.R.S. ? Its our country, our money, and they're spending it on us, RIGHT? Imagine this: Washington marks the next cost at 8, IRS collects 10, gives 5 to congress, and just absolutely buries 5. Congress borrows 2. The banks are making, what, a 30% margin (interest) on our government? Big corporations are ecstatic if they can do a 10% margin. What do the banks do with it? Hold some on a carrot to the world, sure, but mostly, bury it. WHY? Food production is 2% GNP?, construction 6% ? 14 hours to build your auto? The people are spending all of their time to buy back a tenth of what they produce. Have we been deceived? If we are more efficient, why is it getting harder to get by? What if the point is just to keep the people busy making widgets? In that other reality, I shouted to the twelve, "its chaos!" They said, "no, its order." He defined chaos as that which is he was not able to control. Rain forest: The problem could be that all the water in its canopy would hide the location of an indigenous people who have no language. (telepathic; and 'vanishing' the closest knowledge of death) (think of the spine as a transceiver, if it is on the ground and pointed up, you can locate it from above) These people are probably naive as children, but very, very tough to kill. Also, They should be able to tell you stories about the dark one that I talk about. They can hear him. I think that Ham and world band radio old timers might have a story to tell on this. These people would be on a different frequency than us as they aren't eating seeds. Famine relief: When I make my diet almost all whole wheat, I get a huge belly, lose muscle mass, sleep A LOT, and get sick. When I eat only fresh fruit, I get more energy, a Hollywood-flat belly, and need a lot less sleep. UN. Peace Keeping; There is fighting and killing all over. The troops go in when there is no bread on the shelf. (its OK to kill each other, just make sure there is enough to eat.) Somalia: What is disturbing is energetic, gun carrying, three foot tall sixteen year-olds, who eat nothing but some roots that they suck on. It is not so much that their growth is stunted, it is that they aren't dying at a rate of 50 of 60 years per life. Women with children, Babes in arms: Historical references to women and children as a single unit could mean that infants were not cut from the umbilical cord. (and hence, were not breast fed) I think that there may be some very interesting results to this, such as mother-child telepathy, and blue blooded infants. There are examples of this practice in the aquatic mammal kingdom to investigate. That guy is the master of illusion, and the ultimate liar. He tells it first, and then just follows the thread of time in which the people are willing to buy it. (in which he can make it so) He'll play a poker face up until he thinks he's cornered, and then he'll whine, beg and grovel. All it means to him is that you're willing to live on the ground work that he has laid, that is, that he was right, and he didn't over play his hand, and he won't need to go back and try another thread of time. You have ultimate control over your destiny, just don't live along a path that leads to a reality in which you don't want to be a part of. I don't claim to be the first to think these things, its just that the others could have been 'pruned' from our path. Maybe these thoughts given to me were laid down on the track of time, after him. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 Apr 93 12:20:07 GMT From: Nikan B Firoozye Subject: Sunrise/ sunset times Newsgroups: sci.misc,sci.math,sci.space A related question (which I haven't given that much serious thought to): at what lattitude is the average length of the day (averaged over the whole year) maximized? Is this function a constant= 12 hours? Is it truly symmetric about the equator? Or is there some discrepancy due to the fact that the orbit is elliptic (or maybe the difference is enough to change the temperature and make the seasons in the southern hemisphere more bitter, but is far too small to make a sizeable difference in daylight hours)? I want to know where to move. -Nick Firoozye nick@sfb256.iam.uni-bonn.de ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 Apr 1993 15:35:39 GMT From: Henry Spencer Subject: Surviving Large Accelerations? Newsgroups: sci.space In article Amruth Laxman writes: >... here's my question finally - Are 45g accelerations in >fact humanly tolerable? - with the aid of any mechanical devices of >course. If these are possible, what is used to absorb the acceleration? This sounds a bit high to me. Still higher accelerations have been endured *very briefly*, during violent deceleration. If we're talking sustained acceleration, I think 30-odd gees has been demonstrated using water immersion. I doubt that any of this generalizes to another order of magnitude. -- All work is one man's work. | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology - Kipling | henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry ------------------------------ From: "Phil G. Fraering" Subject: Vandalizing the sky. Newsgroups: sci.astro,sci.space Message-Id: Sender: Anonymous NNTP Posting Organization: Univ. of Southwestern Louisiana References: Date: Thu, 22 Apr 1993 02:10:27 GMT Lines: 49 Source-Info: Sender is really news@CRABAPPLE.SRV.CS.CMU.EDU Source-Info: Sender is really isu@VACATION.VENARI.CS.CMU.EDU hoover@mathematik.uni-bielefeld.de (Uwe Schuerkamp) writes: >In article enzo@research.canon.oz.au >(Enzo Liguori) writes: >> hideous vision of the future. Observers were >>startled this spring when a NASA launch vehicle arrived at the >>pad with "SCHWARZENEGGER" painted in huge block letters on the >This is ok in my opinion as long as the stuff *returns to earth*. >>What do you think of this revolting and hideous attempt to vandalize >>the night sky? It is not even April 1 anymore. >If this turns out to be true, it's time to get seriously active in >terrorism. This is unbelievable! Who do those people think they are, >selling every bit that promises to make money? I guess we really >deserve being wiped out by uv radiation, folks. "Stupidity wins". I >guess that's true, and if only by pure numbers. > Another depressed planetary citizen, > hoover This isn't inherently bad. This isn't really light pollution since it will only be visible shortly before or after dusk (or during the day). (Of course, if night only lasts 2 hours for you, you're probably going to be inconvienenced. But you're inconvienenced anyway in that case). Finally: this isn't the Bronze Age, and most of us aren't Indo European; those people speaking Indo-Eurpoean languages often have much non-indo-european ancestry and cultural background. So: please try to remember that there are more human activities than those practiced by the Warrior Caste, the Farming Caste, and the Priesthood. And why act distressed that someone's found a way to do research that doesn't involve socialism? It certianly doesn't mean we deserve to die. -- Phil Fraering |"Seems like every day we find out all sorts of stuff. pgf@srl02.cacs.usl.edu|Like how the ancient Mayans had televison." Repo Man ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 Apr 1993 15:23:17 GMT From: Nick Haines Subject: Vandalizing the sky. Newsgroups: sci.space In article <1993Apr21.162800.168967@locus.com> todd@phad.la.locus.com (Todd Johnson) writes: As for advertising -- sure, why not? A NASA friend and I spent one drunken night figuring out just exactly how much gold mylar we'd need to put the golden arches of a certain American fast food organization on the face of the Moon. Fortunately, we sobered up in the morning. Hmmm. It actually isn't all that much, is it? Like about 2 million km^2 (if you think that sounds like a lot, it's only a few tens of m^2 per burger that said organization sold last year). You'd be best off with a reflective substance that could be sprayed thinly by an unmanned craft in lunar orbit (or, rather, a large set of such craft). If you can get a reasonable albedo it would be visible even at new moon (since the moon itself is quite dark), and _bright_ at full moon. You might have to abandon the colour, though. Buy a cheap launch system, design reusable moon -> lunar orbit unmanned spraying craft, build 50 said craft, establish a lunar base to extract TiO2 (say: for colour you'd be better off with a sulphur compound, I suppose) and some sort of propellant, and Bob's your uncle. I'll do it for, say, 20 billion dollars (plus changes of identity for me and all my loved ones). Delivery date 2010. Can we get the fast-food chain bidding against the fizzy-drink vendors? Who else might be interested? Would they buy it, given that it's a _lot_ more expensive, and not much more impressive, than putting a large set of several-km inflatable billboards in LEO (or in GEO, visible 24 hours from your key growth market). I'll do _that_ for only $5bn (and the changes of identity). Nick Haines nickh@cmu.edu ------------------------------ Date: 22 Apr 1993 10:57:12 -0400 From: Pat Subject: Why DC-1 will be the way of the future. Newsgroups: sci.space I once read an article on Computer technology which stated that every new computer technology was actually lower and slower then what it replaced. Silicon was less effective then the germanium products then available. GaAs was less capable then Silicon. Multi-processors were slower then existent single processors. What the argument was, though was that these new technologies promised either theoretically future higher performance or lower cost or higher densities. I think that the DC-1 may g=fit into this same model. ELV's can certainly launch more weight then a SSRT, but an SSRT offers the prospect of greater cycle times and lower costs. This is kind of a speculative posting, but I thought i'd throw it out as a hjistorical framework for those interested in the project. pat ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 Apr 93 17:35:45 EST From: MAILRP%ESA.BITNET@vm.gmd.de Press Release No.19-93 Paris, 22 April 1993 Users of ESA's Olympus satellite report on the outcome of their experiments "Today Europe's space telecommunications sector would not be blossoming as it now does, had OLYMPUS not provided a testbed for the technologies and services of the 1990s". This summarises the general conclusions of 135 speakers and 300 participants at the Conference on Olympus Utilisation held in Seville on 20-22-April 1993. The conference was organised by the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Spanish Centre for the Development of Industrial Technology (CDTI). OLYMPUS has been particularly useful : - in bringing satellite telecommunications to thousands of new users, thanks to satellite terminals with very small antennas (VSATs). OLYMPUS experiments have tested data transmission, videoconferencing, business television, distance teaching and rural telephony, to give but a few examples. - in opening the door to new telecommunications services which could not be accommodated on the crowded lower- frequency bands; OLYMPUS was the first satellite over Europe to offer capacity in the 20/30 GHz band. - in establishing two-way data relay links  OLYMPUS received for the first time in Europe, over several months, high-volume data from a low-Earth orbiting spacecraft and then distributed it to various centres in Europe. When OLYMPUS was launched on 12 July 1989 it was the world's largest telecommunications satellite; and no other satellite has yet equalled its versatility in combining four different payloads in a wide variety of frequency bands. OLYMPUS users range from individual experimenters to some of the world's largest businesses. Access to the satellite is given in order to test new telecommunications techniques or services; over the past four years some 200 companies and organisations made use of this opportunity, as well as over 100 members of the EUROSTEP distance-learning organisation. As the new technologies and services tested by these OLYMPUS users enter the commercial market, they then make use of operational satellites such as those of EUTELSAT. OLYMPUS utilisation will continue through 1993 and 1994, when the spacecraft will run out of fuel as it approaches the end of its design life.  ------------------------------ End of Space Digest Volume 16 : Issue 479 ------------------------------