Return-path: X-Andrew-Authenticated-as: 7997;andrew.cmu.edu;Ted Anderson Received: from holmes.andrew.cmu.edu via trymail for +dist+/afs/andrew.cmu.edu/usr1/ota/space/space.dl@andrew.cmu.edu (->+dist+/afs/andrew.cmu.edu/usr1/ota/space/space.dl) (->ota+space.digests) ID ; Fri, 24 Feb 89 03:17:11 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: Reply-To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU From: space-request+@Andrew.CMU.EDU To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU Date: Fri, 24 Feb 89 03:17:00 -0500 (EST) Subject: SPACE Digest V9 #257 SPACE Digest Volume 9 : Issue 257 Today's Topics: Phobos II probe to take next pictures of Phobos on Feb 28 Mir surpases other Soviet space stations in February Soviets outline crew plans for Mir question.shuttles Re: 1992 moon base Re: SPACE Digest V9 #247 Government/Commercial Research, Development and Operations First Phobos image in 1969 Re: 1992 moon base First concert from space--update Re: question.shuttles ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 23 Feb 89 10:41:33 EST From: Glenn Chapman Subject: Phobos II probe to take next pictures of Phobos on Feb 28 The USSR's Phobos II probe completed the first pass pictures of the Martian moon and will take a second pass on Feb. 28th. This new set will be photographed at a distance of 100 to 150 Km (63 - 94 mi.) according to Radio Moscow, indicating that the new circular orbit (done by a Feb. 19th burn - see my posting of Feb. 21) is closer than the initially planed 320 Km (200 mi.). This may represent a change in the calculated burn, or the uncertainty in the position of Phobos. Either way it will certainly allow much better pictures of the moon during this 30 day period before the final encounter attempt. Based on the stated resolution of the surface mapping camera at closest approach 6 cm at 50 meters (2.5 in. at 162 ft.) this suggest that objects 120 to 180 meters (394 ft. to 590 ft.) in diameter can be resolved during the next picture set (take that number as rather uncertain - other articles talk about surface resolutions of 1 cm.) This should be less than the current Viking Orbiter 1 photographs taken on Oct. 19, 1978 from 612 Km (382 mi.) with a resolution of 15 meters (49 ft. - as taken from the one reference I could find). Note that as Larry Klaes said in Space Digest V9 #252, pictures of the Martian moons were indeed taken by Mariner 9. The dates were Nov. 29/30 1971 for Phobos and Nov. 26/27 for Deimos (these were taken in part due to a dust storm on Mars at that time, which meant that there was little point in looking at the planet itself). I could find no reference to pictures by Mariner 6/7 of the moons but maybe I was not looking at complete enough reports. Note also that Deimos' orbit is at 23,500 km (14,600 mi.) from Mars center while Phobos is only 9378 Km (5827 mi). Unfortunately, this shift to an early attempt at Phobos will certainly degrade the pictures of Mars itself which were to be taken at the 4200 Km x 79,000 Km (2610 mi x 49,100 mi) injection orbit, just 800 Km (500 mi) from the Mars surface, compared to the present 6300 Km (3940 mi) altitude. However, there is some compensations as the present orbit is circular rather than highly elliptical, allowing more time for close up pictures of Mars, though at 1/8 the resolution of the best possible previously. Yes Russian equipment is not as good as the US could have made. But then they are there and this country is not. Glenn Chapman MIT Lincoln Lab ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 23 Feb 89 10:23:28 EST From: Glenn Chapman Subject: Mir surpases other Soviet space stations in February This month saw two significant anniversaries for the Mir/Kvant space complex. Little noticed by the media (including the professional press such as Aviation Week, Defense Daily and Areospace Daily) Feb. 6 marked the second anniversary of permanent manned presence in space, while Mir itself has been continuously occupied since Feb. 9, 1987. In the second "birthday" Feb. 20 was the third year of Mir's orbital life. Mir is now by far the most useful of the Russian space stations. It has been occupied for 818 days, compared to 676 days for the earlier Salyut 6 (Sept. '77 to July '82) and 712 days for Salyut 7 (Apr. '82 to present). By comparison the US's Skylab (May '73 to July '79) held crews for only 171 days. In terms of the fraction of the orbital time these stations were occupied (taken from launch to the date the last crew left to give a fairer comparison), 75% is Mir's currently manning level, 51% for Salyut 6, 47% for Salyut 7 and 64% for Skylab. Mir has also reached 1962 mandays, exceeding the previous record of 1821 mandays for Salyut 7 (Skylab had 512 mandays, only 26% of Mir's). Indeed occupation of Mir alone exceeds by 20% the total US space experience (1642 mandays) over the past 27 years! The Soviets now have 6105 mandays or 3.7 times the space experience of the USA, and Mir represents 32% of their total time in orbit. On board the space station Feb. 7 saw the ejection of the Progress 39 cargo ship (then filled with garbage) and its reentry destruction. Progress 40 was launched on Feb. 10 to bring up another 2.3 Tonnes of supplies. Alexander Volkov and Sergei Krikalev (Soyuz TM-7) have been up in orbit for 89 days, exceeding the Skylab 4 crew (USA's longest mission) of 84 days, while Dr. Valrey Polyakov (Soyuz TM-6) has 176 days. Cosmonauts, by the way, now hold the first 22 places in terms of personal cumulative orbital time, while the Skylab 4 crew occupies the 23-25 positions. [Sorry about the delay in posting the stuff around Feb. 10th. The mailer ate my message on those events so I combined them with the most recent ones] In spite of statements from certain people in Washington the Soviet program is clearly not at a plateau. These records show it - ignore them only if you want to hide your head in the sand. Glenn Chapman MIT Lincoln Lab ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 23 Feb 89 14:17:30 EST From: Glenn Chapman Subject: Soviets outline crew plans for Mir A report was published in the Soviet publication Turd by the head of cosmonaut training, Lt. Gen. Vladimir A. Shatalov (himself a cosmonaut on Soyuz 4, 3 days in Jan. '69, Soyuz 8, 5 days in Oct. '69, and Soyuz 10, 2 days in Apr. '71 - docked with Salyut 1, but could not enter the first Russian space station). He stated that 10 cosmonauts are in training for Mir missions, each with 2 men per flight. Researcher cosmonauts who are to run experiments on Mir might be added to these crews later on. With the exception of a few long duration missions to expand the research on weightlessness, most missions would last 6 months. However, each flight would have about a 2 month overlap with the previous mission so that each experienced crew could train their replacements. Two to three missions a year would be done this way. Foreign cosmonauts could work on Mir during that overlap period. For example French will be sending a spationaut to Mir every second year. Thus Michel Tognini, the backup for Jean-Loup Chretien's flight in Soyuz TM-7 (Nov. '88) is considered a good candidate for a 1990-91 mission. This would give the USSR between 970 mandays (2 person crews only) to 1456 mandays (3 person crews) of experience per year. He also stated that 7 cosmonauts are in training for Soviet shuttle missions, I. Volk (group leader), V. Zabolotskiy, R. Stankyavichyus, U. Sultanov, M. Tolovoyev, S. Tresvyatskiy, and Yu. Sheffer. The cosmonauts are pushing for the next flight of the shuttle Buran to be manned, but the results of the first flight must be studied before a decision is reached. No women crews are currently being trained. Svetlana Savitskaya (Soyuz T-7, 8 days in Aug. '82, and Soyuz T-12, 11 days in July '84) the second woman cosmonaut, was to head an all female crew of engineer Ye. Ivanova and physician Ye. Dobrovakshina in about 1985, but the flight was delayed. There problems with Salyut 7 at that time, control systems failed early in 1985, resulting in the requirement to send a repair mission of Soyuz T-13 in June '85. Unfortunately, by the time the situation stabilized Savitskaya had become pregnant and the stand by crew was all male due to the lack of a qualified women cosmonaut with space flight experience (one experienced cosmonaut is required on each mission). A. Viktorenko and A. Alexandrov from that stand by flew the Soyuz TM-3 mission with the Syria guest cosmonaut in June 1987, while the other, A. Solovyov, went up on the Soyuz TM-5 in June 1988. (This does not explain why they did not have a mixed crew of two rookie women and one experienced man to generate other exerienced women - they probably were just not interested.) He also said some of their recent problems with the Soviet program came from the large number of new personal being brought in due to the expansion of their space operations. Not all of them were as well trained as they should have been. They are working on systems to guard against this. (from Aerospace Daily, Feb. 7). Sounds like in spite of their troubles the Russians are planning an expansive space program for the next few years. Glenn Chapman MIT Lincoln Lab. ------------------------------ Date: 19 Feb 89 18:42:30 GMT From: pacbell!sactoh0!tree!guest@ames.arc.nasa.gov (Lord Shadowhawk) Subject: question.shuttles I'm just curious if anybody knows whether or not two space shuttles can be launched simultaneously.....like the Atlantis and Discovery?? ------------------------------ Date: 20 Feb 89 08:30:56 GMT From: vsi1!v7fs1!mvp@ames.arc.nasa.gov (Mike Van Pelt) Subject: Re: 1992 moon base In article <1989Feb19.154324.513@cs.rochester.edu> dietz@cs.rochester.edu (Paul Dietz) writes: >I noted with interest that the quotes from the document describing the >moon base mentioned teleoperated rovers. This is a wonderful idea. I >assume the teleoperation is from Earth. If so, isn't their use >independent of whether a manned base is set up? I don't think that teleoperation from Earth would work out very well, given a 3-second or so round-trip delay. It would certainly slow things down quite a bit. Of course, teleoperation of a rover on Mars would be even more of a problem. -- ...Defending the truth...is not something one | Mike Van Pelt does out of a sense of duty or to allay guilt | Video 7 complexes, but it is a reward in itself. | ..ames!vsi1!v7fs1!mvp -- Dr. Petr Beckmann ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 20 Feb 89 12:12:06 EST From: Eric Harnden Subject: Re: SPACE Digest V9 #247 re: telecope stories what about: there's a guy i know who uses his cat to clean his instrument. he removes the optical component package at the viewing end and slides the animal through the tube to pick up the dust. Eric Harnden EHARNDEN@AUVM ------------------------------ Reply-To: mordor!rutgers!pnet01.cts.com!jim@angband.s1.gov Date: Mon, 20 Feb 89 17:52:41 PST From: mordor!rutgers!pnet01.cts.com!jim@angband.s1.gov (Jim Bowery) To: ucsd!nosc!crash!space@angband.s1.gov Subject: Government/Commercial Research, Development and Operations There are many ways to slice and dice the issue of space policy. One of the least appropriate and most distracting is to portray space policy as a "manned vs unmanned" debate. NASA has succeeded in defining the terms of debate about space policy. This success is most obvious in the pointlessly divisive debate on manned vs unmanned programs between two of the, otherwise, most informed and reasonable people on the net. The real space policy issue is not between manned vs unmanned, expendable vs reuseable, moon vs mars, nor even between GOCO and COCO. The real space policy issue is where, on the spectrum of technical maturity and risk from research to development to operations, should the government be prohibited from stepping in to provide direct support/subsidy and what controls should be put on that support so as to avoid self-serving porkbarrel and good-ole-boy networks? Various dogmatists such as Libertarians or NASA-socialists, place the boundary at one end or the other. Most of us, however, have enough freedom of thought to allow a more multidimensional discussion. Let's focus our limited energies on that phase-space. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jim Bowery Phone: 619/295-8868 PO Box 1981 Join the Mark Hopkins Society! La Jolla, CA 92038 (A member of the Mark Hopkins family of organizations.) UUCP: {cbosgd, hplabs!hp-sdd, sdcsvax, nosc}!crash!pnet01!jim ARPA: crash!pnet01!jim@nosc.mil INET: jim@pnet01.cts.com ------------------------------ Date: 19 Feb 89 18:58:53 GMT From: hp-ses!hpcea!hpldsla!oreilly@hplabs.hp.com Subject: First Phobos image in 1969 Some more Phobos trivia; Mariner 9 returned images of Phobos in 1971-72, showing its cratered surface and irregular shape. Granted the resolution was poor by Viking standards, but at the time the images were considered to be spectacular. In fact, the very first image of Phobos was returned by the the 1969 flyby probes Mariners 6 and 7. In this image, Phobos is seen against the backdrop of the Martian surface, as a tiny black blob only a few pixels wide (i.e., the picture was taken from a vantage point "above" Phobos, looking down towards Mars!). Although no features are visible on Phobos' surface, the moon's shape is clearly irregular. I don't remember which of the two probes actually acquired the image. Again, the image was pretty primitive and the information content pretty low, but it sure fired up the imagination of more than one 14-year-old. I think the picture appeared in _Sky and Telescope_ in September of either 1969 or 1970. Tom O'Reilly oreilly@hpldsla.HP.COM ------------------------------ Date: 20 Feb 89 12:59:07 GMT From: rochester!dietz@rutgers.edu (Paul Dietz) Subject: Re: 1992 moon base In article <233@v7fs1.UUCP> mvp@v7fs1.UUCP (Mike Van Pelt) writes: >>I noted with interest that the quotes from the document describing the >>moon base mentioned teleoperated rovers. This is a wonderful idea. I >>assume the teleoperation is from Earth. If so, isn't their use >>independent of whether a manned base is set up? > >I don't think that teleoperation from Earth would work out very well, >given a 3-second or so round-trip delay. It would certainly slow >things down quite a bit. There will also be a communication delay for lunar operators, if they place a comsat at the L1 point. Or were they planning on restricting the rovers to within line-of-sight of the base? While earth-operated rovers may be slower, they could be operated around the clock (at least during the lunar day). Earth-bound operators would be many times less expensive than lunar colonists. Paul F. Dietz dietz@cs.rochester.edu ------------------------------ Date: 19 Feb 89 18:19:53 GMT From: talmy@rand-unix.arpa (Shel Talmy) Subject: First concert from space--update A company in Los Angeles called Orbit Productions has been formed to stage the first ever concert from space. A large portion of the proceeds from this venture is to be donated to various charities. The following is a letter that was sent to Mikhael Gorbachev that explains the current position to date. Chairman Mikhael Gorbachev The Kremlin Moscow, Russia Dear Chairman Gorbachev: We have organized a company in the U.S.A. whose main goal is to produce the first ever musical concert broadcast from space. To that end, we are in negotiations with some of the most famous musical stars in the world, many of whom have expressed an interest in performing while orbiting high above the earth. We of course, have been in touch with NASA, and while they are receptive to the idea, are not booking civilians on shuttle flights for the foreseeable future. We would like to explore the possibility of booking passage for our "star", on one of your spacecraft with a view towards broadcasting the concert live from your space station while a pre-rehearsed band plays the accompaniment on earth from a yet to be determined venue. The boldness of the concept provides a unique opportunity to further stimulate international harmony between our nations, where the artist would be American, but the stage would be Soviet. Our aim is to do this concert as close to Christmas of 1990 as possible. We would appreciate learning what are the available launch dates. We are prepared to pay any price within reason. We intend to donate a portion of the proceeds to further research into the cure of Retinitis Pigmentosa, the World Wildlife Fund and others. We would also be happy to donate some of the proceeds to a charity of your choosing. We await your favorable reply. Yours sincerely, Stanley Ralph Ross Martin Genis Directors -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Stanley Ralph Ross would appreciate any technical suggestions that will make this "space concert" better. Please direct all your suggestions or questions to Stanley Ralph Ross, Orbit Prods., 7865 Willoughby Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90046, FAX #213-656-6446. ------------------------------ Date: 20 Feb 89 22:01:06 GMT From: m2c!wpi!regnery@husc6.harvard.edu (George Regnery) Subject: Re: question.shuttles In article <224@tree.UUCP>, guest@tree.UUCP (Lord Shadowhawk) writes: > I'm just curious if anybody knows whether or not two space shuttles can be > launched simultaneously.....like the Atlantis and Discovery?? I once heard of a plan that wherer there would be simultaneous shuttles in flight- one would be launched from the Cape, the other from Vandenburg I believe. -- George M. Regnery ! Worcester ! Albedo 0.39 ! Going on means regnery@wpi.wpi.edu OR ! Polytechnic ! --Vangelis ! going far. Going regnery@wpi.bitnet ! Institute ! (a good album) ! far means returning. CompuServe: 73300,3655 ! (Worc, Mass.) ! =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=! --Tao Te Ching ------------------------------ End of SPACE Digest V9 #257 *******************