Space Digest Thu, 22 Jul 93 Volume 16 : Issue 906 Today's Topics: ACRV return cheap space computers Clementine COOKIE CUUTTER PROBES (WA DC-X Prophets and associated problems (3 msgs) DC-X thermal protection EJASA Network Addresses GPS in space (was Re: DC-1 & BDB) Head NASA Select Guy (was Re: NASA SELECT and scrambling.) Hubble SOlar Arrays, How'd they fould up. Hubble solar arrays: how'd they foul up? Info about old Diamant wanted Perseid publicity Russian/French crew set to leave Mir space station Very basic questions about dark matter Waste Management aboard Skylab and Shuttle 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: 20 Jul 93 17:48:36 GMT From: Ralph Buttigieg Subject: ACRV return Newsgroups: sci.space Original to: henry@zoo.toronto.edu G'day henry@zoo.toronto.edu 17 Jul 93 19:18, henry@zoo.toronto.edu wrote to All: hte> Look at the parts of the globe within 28.5 degrees of the equator. Lots hte> of ocean, lots of desert and jungle, lots of underdeveloped countries hte> with slightly-dubious governments. You'd really like to aim an emergency hte> return at somewhere like the great plains of North America or the Russian The primary return area for the ACRV is central Australia. Big, dry and flat. With resonably non-dubious governments.There were NASA people out here late last year checking the facilities out. ta Ralph --- GoldED 2.41+ * Origin: VULCAN'S WORLD: Astro/Space BBS (02) 635-1204 3:713/635 (3:713/635) ------------------------------ Date: 21 Jul 93 22:13:02 GMT From: Henry Spencer Subject: cheap space computers Newsgroups: sci.space In article <22k5aq$3b8@access.digex.net> prb@access.digex.net (Pat) writes: >>A much bigger practical problem is that the off-the-shelf hardware is >>designed to be air-cooled... > >WOuldn't Mil-SPec Rad Hardened Commercial chips resolve this problem? >I think a lot of USAF and USN stuff have to either cool on a sealed >system, or use low pressure... No, rad-hardened chips don't help this at all. They have exactly the same cooling problems as commercial chips. The cooling problems for military gear are solved at the board or box level, not at the chip level. It boils down to providing a flowing fluid to carry heat away, providing sufficiently wide conductive paths to conduct it away, or making sure that components can radiate well enough to keep their temperatures within limits. The reason why Earth-based systems all use flowing-fluid cooling (with air, freon, whatever) is that it's a whole lot easier than the alternatives. It can be done, as witness the Apollo electronics -- all of it vacuum-rated because the airlock was the whole capsule -- but it requires very different design from run-of-the-mill commercial hardware. -- Altruism is a fine motive, but if you | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology want results, greed works much better. | henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry ------------------------------ Date: 22 Jul 93 00:33:23 GMT From: Dan Durda Subject: Clementine Newsgroups: sci.space In article <22k2kgINNqk7@no-names.nerdc.ufl.edu> durda@astro.ufl.edu (Dan Durda) writes: > >I have seen photos of the LM's taken by panoramic cameras aboard the CM's. >Particularly, the CMP on Apollo 15 observed the landing sight with 20x-30x >gyro-mounted binoculars and I believe he was able to see the LM itself. He >certainly noticed that there was a bright halo about 150 meters across, >which was most likely material disturbed by the exhaust plume. This was >discussed as a good indicator for helping to locate the position of the LM >on future flights. The LM and LRV parked right next to it are visible as >bright spots with shadows on a 50x enlargement of the panoramic camera >photgraphs. Pretty interesting... > On the first pass over the Apollo 14 landing site the CMP noted a white spot that was obviously foreign to the lunar surface. When he saw the shadow of the LM he realized he had indeed identified the LM. The next day the shadow had dimished quite a bit, but he could still identify the LM, and by that time the ALSEP package had been deployed. He could easily see the glint coming off the ALSEP! --Dan -- Daniel D. Durda Department of Astronomy University of Florida durda@astro.ufl.edu ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 21 Jul 1993 21:21:04 GMT From: Zvi Lev Subject: COOKIE CUUTTER PROBES (WA Newsgroups: sci.space Steve Linton (sl25@pmms.cam.ac.uk) wrote: : |> So back to my crazy idea - imagine an EISA compatible spacefhcraft bus, : |> so that any existing card could be just plugged in. : |> As pat says, sure, you have to check it for enviro etc, and probably : |> some won't work. But I believe most will. : I think you're wrong. I think roughly NONE will. The space environment, : especially ine LEO (where you clip the Van Allan belts occasionally, let alone in : Jupiter orbit or Mercury orbit, is incredibly hostile to electronics. Also : they're way too heavy. I do not agree. Space environment in LEo of below 1000 Km (where most interesting things happen for Leo sats) is not very radiative ('hostile' sounds bad to me - it meand one doesn't know what it does , which is not the case at all). For orbits near Jupiter etc. you may be right. But let's concentrate on the 'close by ' environment for now. Weight is of course not a problem , and could not possibly be - today's electronics can do everything the electronics in probes/sats did 5 years ago for a fraction of the weight/power consumption, (and of course, power consumption IS WEIGHT). I'll bet any laptop size PC nowadays has more power than the most powerful space computer flown until 2 years from now. ANd of course it's weight (including power consumption) is totally negligible in the weight of the sat. The weight added in making the cards themselves stronger , and wiring for heat sinks, is also not a major problem. On the other hand, there is the big weight saving of having all your major instruments on a single bus, instead of having for each of them all the communication circuitry, power supplies etc. This part is the largest in any stand alone box. Back to 'hostile environment' - cpu's etc do not get eaten alive in space by green aliens. they get SEU'd (Single Event Upset), latch up etc. Sometimes they can get out of their sockets if shaken badly, or fouled up by excessive outgassing. Radiation effects one can predict without testing (standard procedure for any sat). As to the rest - nothing more than is required of any military/flight hardware. Again, I too believe there are problems - such as taking out the massive amounts of heat produced, and probably standard plugs are not all that good under massive shaking/outgassing. Again, this is of course not a simple way to go. Anyone who knows about electronics and may enlighten me with facts about it? Zvi ('honey, I flew my PC to satrun') Lev ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 21 Jul 1993 22:28:19 GMT From: Edmund Hack Subject: DC-X Prophets and associated problems Newsgroups: sci.space Allen W. Sherzer (aws@iti.org) wrote: [regarding the "ease" of man-rating the DC-1] : Your putting the cart before the horse. FAA certifies aircraft based on : operational testing. Spacecraft are man rated largely based on paperwork. I beg to take exception with you here. With the exception of Shuttle, all US launchers and manned spacecraft had a fair amount of flight and/or ground testing. As I recall, severe pogoing by at least one stage of the Satrun V DQed it from being man-rated at first. Fortunately the problem was diagnosed and fixed. The entire Apollo CSM stack was thermal vacuum tested at JSC in week-long tests with a crew inside. Similar tests were made on the LM. Practice shots of the Mercury and Gemini systems were also made. The CSM gas mixture was change in life support. Man-rating is not just adding a few escape and safety packages to a booster. It includes g-level and jolt limits, acoustic load limits, etc. Note also that the level of maturity in aircraft design and spacecraft design are not anywhere near each other, so the FAA has a much easier task to perform - the accumulated wisdom of the century is available. Note also that despite the certification tests, engines fall off of their mounts, hydro power is lost due to single point failures, flaps deploy unexpectedly, the general aviation aircraft business is on life support and slipping fast, etc. : There is no reason a DC couldn't be certified just like any airliner. As I stated above, that may or may not be true. [stuff deleted] : Sure : it will be more dangerous than an airliner but so what? We will never get : the experience you are talking about with Shuttle, there simply isn't : enough money in the world. Here is what the _real world_ test on "safety" will be: Will my insurance policy pay off if I die in a DC-1 accident while flying in one as a paying passenger? BTW - I fully support the BMDO's SSRT project and have been sending faxes and making calls as the calls for same have come. -- Edmund Hack - Lockheed Engineering & Sciences Co. - Houston, TX hack@l44c4-2.jsc.nasa.gov - I speak only for myself, unless blah, blah.. "Everybody wants prosthetic foreheads on their real heads" "I'm not an actor, but I play one on TV." ------------------------------ Date: 21 Jul 93 23:23:59 GMT From: Paul Dietz Subject: DC-X Prophets and associated problems Newsgroups: sci.space In article <1993Jul21.211205.4151@ee.ubc.ca> davem@ee.ubc.ca (Dave Michelson) writes: > I feel compelled to note that the Space Shuttle that NASA got is *NOT* > what they wanted. It wasn't even their second choice. Or their third. > When all the money was counted, and after the Air Force imposed its > requirements, the shuttle we have now is all that was left. This doesn't excuse NASA. The fundamental problem was that it made no sense to develop a reusable shuttle unless there was a lot of traffic over which to amortize the development. So NASA had to get customers whereever it could, including from an ambivalent military. If they had not promised to meet the military requirements, the pretense that the shuttle would pay for its development would have been unsustainable, and it would have been cancelled. Having prostituted itself, NASA can hardly complain about its virtue being damaged, or about being made to keep its word about keeping development cost low enough to be repaid by supposed cost savings. What is most galling about all this is that cheaper, simpler alternatives that could have reduced launch costs considerably were under development in the 1960s. For 1/2 the price of running the shuttle for 1 year (in inflation-adjusted dollars) we could likely have had a Big Dumb Booster that would launch shuttle-size payloads for 1/10 to 1/20 the cost of the shuttle. The development risk would have been much lower. It would not have been as much of a jobs program for California, though. Paul F. Dietz dietz@cs.rochester.edu ------------------------------ Date: 22 Jul 93 00:30:01 GMT From: Dave Michelson Subject: DC-X Prophets and associated problems Newsgroups: sci.space As a point of comparison, the Shuttle and the B-1/B-1B bomber were developed in approximately the same time frame and somewhat similar circumstances. While the Shuttle is disappointing for all the reasons previously noted, the B-1B is arguably an outright failure. Perhaps I'm being to lenient on NASA but I figure they did rather well considering all the interference and second guessing from without. Hindsight is 20/20.... Having said that, DC is clearly being developed in a different time frame and under a different set of circumstances. Let's hope that it works out. There are many reasons that it might. -- Dave Michelson -- davem@ee.ubc.ca -- University of British Columbia ------------------------------ Date: 21 Jul 93 22:35:08 GMT From: Henry Spencer Subject: DC-X thermal protection Newsgroups: sci.space In article <1993Jul20.123250.21745@iti.org> aws@iti.org (Allen W. Sherzer) writes: >>It [crossrange] *is* a silly requirement, for an SSTO. > >Depends on how much it costs. I agree it was silly for Shuttle since it >added so much cost and weight. But for DC it doesn't seem to be that big >a problem due to the MDC MARV work. This is a debatable point; the alternate view is that they had to design their whole vehicle around achieving a relatively unimportant capability, at the cost of compromising other characteristics. (For example, much of DC's skin is potentially in "windward" positions and requires good thermal protection. In an orthodox Bono SSTO, like the GD proposal, most of the skin is in a "lee" position. Thermally, DC is "all nose", and the nose is the worst case for heating.) (For another, the whole tricky business of the flip maneuver is dictated by nose-first reentry.) >>Making a landing after a >>single polar orbit is no big deal, assuming you aren't stupid enough to >>launch from the West Coast... > >... Consider two SSTO's one with crossrange and another >without. Both have equal operational costs and both require 5 ground days >of servicing to fly again. Both take off from White Sands Spaceport >to polar orbits and return after ASAP to pick up another payload. > >The first SSTO is back at port 90 or so min. after launch and flys five >days later for a total of 73 flights per year. The second SSTO because >it lacks any crossrange takes maybe a day to get back to port so it >only flies 61 times a year... Why does it take a day to get back to port? Land at a suitable port 1500km to the west and do a suborbital hop to get back. The return hop is short and flown at very light weight, so you don't need major servicing before doing it. The extra cost and delay should be slight. Covering that 1500km as a low-speed suborbital ballistic hop is a whole lot easier than doing it with lift at reentry speeds. That's if you insist on flying the mission as one orbit. In civilian applications, you are probably better off waiting 12 hours for a pass over White Sands. Among other things, this will let you take your time with orbital operations, instead of having to scramble through them in 30-40 minutes (you need to make retrofire about half an orbit before landing, remember). -- Altruism is a fine motive, but if you | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology want results, greed works much better. | henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 21 Jul 1993 21:55:11 GMT From: Larry Klaes Subject: EJASA Network Addresses Newsgroups: sci.astro,sci.space,sci.misc There are two main network addresses for writing to the EJASA: Mine (see end of message) and a general ASA address - asa@chara.gsu.edu There is also an ASA BBS - (404) 321-5904, 300/1200/2400 Baud If you want to send regular mail to the ASA: Astronomical Society of the Atlantic (ASA) P. O. Box 15038 Atlanta, Georgia 30333-9998 U.S.A. or telephone the Society Recording at (404) 264-0451 to leave your address and/or receive the latest Society news. Larry Klaes klaes@verga.enet.dec.com or - ...!decwrl!verga.enet.dec.com!klaes or - klaes%verga.dec@decwrl.enet.dec.com or - klaes%verga.enet.dec.com@uunet.uu.net "All the Universe, or nothing!" - H. G. Wells EJASA Editor, Astronomical Society of the Atlantic ------------------------------ Date: 21 Jul 93 19:16:22 GMT From: Gary Coffman Subject: GPS in space (was Re: DC-1 & BDB) Newsgroups: sci.space In article henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes: >In article <229kmb$e5i@access.digex.net> prb@access.digex.net (Pat) writes: >>Why is it, cheaper for me to drive to work in DC (Home to the best >>public transit system in AMerica) then to take metro. > >Bad management. :-) I assume "AMerica" refers to the country, not the >continent -- Toronto has the best public transit system on the continent, >and it's certainly the cheapest way for me to get to work, if you exclude >bicycling. (Might be different if I needed a car for other things, but >in Toronto you don't.) Bad management is certainly true, fares don't pay a tenth of MT costs, yet it's still expensive. Also bad routing, bad scheduling, no end to end service for most trips, and the ever present bugaboo of crime and lack of privacy and feeling of loss of control that mass transit engenders. Mayor Maynard Jackson wants to make Atlanta's MARTA *free* to encourage use. Ridership has been declining even as more of the system comes on line. The MARTA board even decided not to open one recently completed section because the ridership had disappeared in the period between start of construction and completion. Where will the money come from to replace the fares? Why from Uncle Sap of course, where 90% of MARTA funding already originates. I'd like to say thank you to you folks in Iowa for paying for our nice French built choo-choos. (Note: Rohr Industries, the largest railcar manufacturer in the world, is 30 miles outside Atlanta, but they didn't get the contract because Maynard wouldn't get a trip to Paris out of that.) 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: 21 Jul 1993 18:00:25 -0400 From: Pat Subject: Head NASA Select Guy (was Re: NASA SELECT and scrambling.) Newsgroups: sci.space nothing prevents a local cable channel from shoving a commercial in along the SELECT programming. Select is free, i don't believe it forbids commercial activity. pat -- God put me on this Earth to accomplish certain things. Right now, I am so far behind, I will never die. ------------------------------ Date: 21 Jul 1993 18:05:35 -0400 From: Pat Subject: Hubble SOlar Arrays, How'd they fould up. Newsgroups: sci.space Everyone knows in aching detail the who's how's and whatfor's of the Main mirror problem of the HST. However a larger problem has received very little attention. That is the Solar Array vibration problem. THese were fabricated under contract to ESA by British Aerospace? and now spend about 20% of the mission time shaking the damn thing around enough that guidance is disrupted. What i was wondering is how could this kind of design flaw sneak past any sort of reasonable test procedure? I would think that thermal/vacuum testing would show this kind of behavior of the solar arrays? what happened. did NASA not spec out any testing? or did the ESA people bury the problem? pat -- God put me on this Earth to accomplish certain things. Right now, I am so far behind, I will never die. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 21 Jul 1993 22:39:29 GMT From: Leigh Palmer Subject: Hubble solar arrays: how'd they foul up? Newsgroups: sci.space In article <22kejf$ogn@access.digex.net> Pat, prb@access.digex.net writes: >What i was wondering is how could this kind of design flaw >sneak past any sort of reasonable test procedure? Good grief, man. How can you ask such a question, even rhetorically, when the most conspicuous related example of our time is the mirror on the same spacecraft? The answer to your question is, no doubt, the same. There was not a reasonable test procedure in place, or if there was, some committee decided not to believe its negative results, which amounts to the same thing. Leigh ------------------------------ Date: 21 Jul 93 19:17:42 -0600 From: Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey Subject: Info about old Diamant wanted Newsgroups: sci.space In article <1993Jul14.162041.15579@il.us.swissbank.com>, andreas@black_uster (Andreas Forrer) writes: > I'm looking for ANY kind of information about a French rocket called > "Diamant BP-4" from 1975. Any hint is welcome, including pointers to > possible sources. Hate to post this feeble hint, but Andreas's address seems un-reply-able. I think there was a review of French launchers in one of the history issues of *Journal of the British Interplanetary Society* within the past two or three years. In our town, the U. of Chicago and Northwestern University libraries get *JBIS*. Possibly the Adler Planetarium does too. Don't have my own collection organized well enough to find it-- sorry! > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > Andreas Forrer, Swiss Bank Corp., 141 W. Jackson Blvd., Chicago, IL 60604 > If you believe, I'm speaking for my company, then you really have no clue > what a bank is all about. Andreas, *please* put your Internet address in your signature. Your mailer is breaking the "From:" address in the headers. -- O~~* /_) ' / / /_/ ' , , ' ,_ _ \|/ - ~ -~~~~~~~~~~~/_) / / / / / / (_) (_) / / / _\~~~~~~~~~~~zap! / \ (_) (_) / | \ | | Bill Higgins Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory \ / Bitnet: HIGGINS@FNAL.BITNET - - Internet: HIGGINS@FNAL.FNAL.GOV ~ SPAN/Hepnet: 43011::HIGGINS ------------------------------ Date: 21 Jul 93 18:43:56 GMT From: Gary Coffman Subject: Perseid publicity Newsgroups: sci.astro,sci.space In article <1993Jul18.174504.1811@sfu.ca> Leigh Palmer writes: >I do like to watch with other people, but there seems to be little >point to assembling vast numbers, unless by so >doing you can evengelize successfully about light polution. I have >given up on this cause in cities like Vancouver. Too many of my congeners >are Yahoos who will never care. I wish you success, Mr. Ryan. If you >succeed in raising public support for, say, shielded outdoor lighting >I'll be impressed. California's ruined. I've failed miserably here. Maybe >I should emigrate to Ireland next. So gather your astronomer buddies and buy a Pacific island. If Marlon Brando can do it, so can you and a few of your friends. When your nearest neighbor is a thousand miles away, it can get real dark. Dull, no night life, you say? Well, them's the breaks, as the Yahoos say. A neon sky is more to their liking. It makes it easier to see the mugger sneaking up to rob you. Gary 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, 21 Jul 1993 17:08:44 -0700 From: Glenn Chapman Subject: Russian/French crew set to leave Mir space station Onboard the Mir space station the Russian/French mission is preparing to depart for a landing on July 22. Long term cosmonauts Gennadiy Manakov and Aleksandr Polishchuk, who arrived at Mir on Jan. 24th, will be flying French Spationaut Jean-Pierre Haignere in the older Soyuz TM-16 capsule. Manakov and Polishchuk will have spent 174 days in orbit during this mission, while Haignere will have had 22 days in orbit. Manning the Mir complex will be cosmonauts Alexander Serebrov and Vasily Tsibliev (mission commander). They are slated to do several space walks in September to modify the power systems on the Mir space station. The International French video station TV5 has shown several news conferences with the combined Mir crew, including one with the French Prime Minister. Interestingly for most of these a huge French flag was in the backdrop. These appeared to be broadcast from one of the large Star modules extending perpendicular from the front ball docking adaptor of Mir. Views were show of the Soyuz TM-17 during from a window during one of the conferences. In other news according to a Radio Moscow report on July 19th the US and Russia reached an agreement on the selling of Russian space hardware to other countries. The problem arose over the sale of liquid hydrogen/oxygen rocket technology to India for use in an upper stage. This was considered by some to violate the missile control treaty which prevents the sale of ICBM hardware. Russia will be allowed to sell upper stages, but not the technology to build them. Another agreement was signed in Washington on July 20, for cooperation in manned space missions. This calls for the flight of a Russian cosmonaut on the space shuttle, and an 1995 visit to Mir by a US astronaut. This second agreement was being held up until the Indian export problem could be solved. (Radio Moscow and French TV5) Glenn Chapman School Eng. Science Simon Fraser Univ. Burnaby, BC Canada ------------------------------ Date: 21 Jul 93 20:14:34 GMT From: Gary Coffman Subject: Very basic questions about dark matter Newsgroups: sci.space In article steinly@topaz.ucsc.edu (Steinn Sigurdsson) writes: >Just have enough "S"s in you TLA! I surmise a SSS would >be pretty much guaranteed $100 billion+ It would have to be. The SuperSonic Subway project from NY to LA is a monumental undertaking, but it can get you there faster than DC-XYZ. Gary -- Gary Coffman KE4ZV | You make it, | gatech!wa4mei!ke4zv!gary Destructive Testing Systems | we break it. | uunet!rsiatl!ke4zv!gary 534 Shannon Way | Guaranteed! | emory!kd4nc!ke4zv!gary Lawrenceville, GA 30244 | | ------------------------------ Date: 21 Jul 93 19:53:37 GMT From: Gary Coffman Subject: Waste Management aboard Skylab and Shuttle Newsgroups: sci.space In article dogbowl@dogbox.acme.gen.nz (Kennelmeister) writes: > >Fred is big(ish). There's anough room (figuratively speaking) to swing a >cat inside. > >How about a centrifuge based toilet compartment? > >It wouldn't have to spin very fast - just enough to provide >"artifical gravity" for the occupant and his/her waste products. >It could be spun up after the occupant enters, rather than trying to >have some complicated entry procedure... > >This would enable the use of fairly basic chemical toilets, >until the basic issue of real zero-g toilets has been solved. > >This wouldn't be a viable shuttle solution for obvious reasons, >but is there any reason it can't be used for larger installations? Er, ever ride a dryer? The centrifuge would have to have a short enough moment arm to fit inside, and that's short enough to make you very sick. Blowing chunks while doing number 2 could be unpleasant. Gary -- Gary Coffman KE4ZV | You make it, | gatech!wa4mei!ke4zv!gary Destructive Testing Systems | we break it. | uunet!rsiatl!ke4zv!gary 534 Shannon Way | Guaranteed! | emory!kd4nc!ke4zv!gary Lawrenceville, GA 30244 | | ------------------------------ Newsgroups: sci.space From: Dave Michelson Subject: Re: DC-X Prophets and associated problems Message-Id: <1993Jul21.211205.4151@ee.ubc.ca> Organization: University of BC, Electrical Engineering References: <22jbtb$lj8@voyager.gem.valpo.edu> Date: Wed, 21 Jul 1993 21:12:05 GMT Lines: 22 Sender: news@CRABAPPLE.SRV.CS.CMU.EDU Source-Info: Sender is really isu@VACATION.VENARI.CS.CMU.EDU In article <22jbtb$lj8@voyager.gem.valpo.edu> mjensen@gem.valpo.edu (Michael C. Jensen) writes: >I feel compelled to note a historical similarity in recent posting to an >event in the recent past, and hopefully help aviod a repeat. Currently, >those DC-X/1 Prohpets are fortelling of a glorious time when the DC >is flying. Cost per pound will be unbeleivably low. Man-ratings will be >simple and easy. The system will be so remarkable as to completely >revolutionize the world and all we know.. or at least something roughtly >along those lines. > >Those that can, think back to the post-apollo days. A great mythical >project was underway to produce the world's first cargo truck to space. >There'd be 80 launchs a year. Hundreds upon hundreds of people would be >able to fly into space. Cost per pound would be very very low. Reliabiity >would be immesurable. Well, we got the shuttle. I feel compelled to note that the Space Shuttle that NASA got is *NOT* what they wanted. It wasn't even their second choice. Or their third. When all the money was counted, and after the Air Force imposed its requirements, the shuttle we have now is all that was left. -- Dave Michelson -- davem@ee.ubc.ca -- University of British Columbia ------------------------------ End of Space Digest Volume 16 : Issue 906 ------------------------------