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 ; Thu, 6 Apr 89 04:18:16 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: Reply-To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU From: space-request+@Andrew.CMU.EDU To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU Date: Thu, 6 Apr 89 03:18:06 -0500 (EST) Subject: SPACE Digest V9 #342 SPACE Digest Volume 9 : Issue 342 Today's Topics: Undeliverable mail ---------------------------------------------------------------------- X-Delivery-Notice: SMTP MAIL FROM does not correspond to sender. Date: Thu, 6 Apr 89 07:51 GMT From: PMDF Mail Server Subject: Undeliverable mail The message could not be delivered to: Addressee: DZ1004 Reason: %MAIL-E-NOSUCHUSR, no such user DZ1004 at node CCUAB1 ---------------------------------------- Received: from JNET-DAEMON by ccuab1.uab.es; Thu, 6 Apr 89 07:50 GMT Received: From EB0UB011(MAILER) by EBCCUAB1 with Jnet id 9480 for DZ1004@EBCCUAB1; Thu, 6 Apr 89 07:50 GMT Received: by EB0UB011 (Mailer X1.25) id 2108; Thu, 06 Apr 89 07:47:17 HOE Date: Sat, 1 Apr 89 08:45:51 EST From: space-request+@ANDREW.CMU.EDU Subject: SPACE Digest V9 #329 Sender: space-request+@andrew.CMU.EDU To: Andreu Grau Reply-to: space+@andrew.CMU.EDU Comments: Warning -- original Sender: tag was SPACE@UGA Comments: To: space+@andrew.cmu.edu SPACE Digest Volume 9 : Issue 329 Today's Topics: Soviet Phobos II probe fails just before final approach to moon Soviet Satellite Photos for Sale Re: Success with cold fusion reported Re: Room Temperature fusion, expert skepticism Re: SPACE Digest V9 #321 Re: NASA Select Re: Primordial Hydrocarbons Two questions. Re: Success with cold fusion reported ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 1 Apr 89 00:51:21 EST From: Glenn Chapman To: XB.N31@forsythe.stanford.edu, space-editors-new@andrew.cmu.edu, yaron@astro.as.utexas.edu Subject: Soviet Phobos II probe fails just before final approach to moon On Mar. 29th the Soviet Union's Phobos II probe suffered a fatal failure. On Mar. 21st it had undergone the final maneuver, placing it in synchronous orbit with the Martian moon. On Mar. 26th pictures of Phobos had been taken from about 150 Km (94 mi) from away. On the 27/28th a second close up set was being taken. This was to generate the final orbital measurements to insure the close approach could be done about 1 week later. On the Phobos probes the antenna system is not mounted on its own transport platform (as is done on most US probes). Instead the vehicle was commanded to turn away, take the pictures, then return contact to Earth control. However, in this case the probe rotated away, but never came back. Compounding the problem of regaining command was the fact that it had previously lost its main transponder, a 50 Watt system, and was now operating on this 5 Watt backup. Thus there are two main probable failure points, the first being that the control system broke down thus leaving the probe unable to get back to Earth alignment. The other possibility is that the transmitter died, and there was no backup left. Electronic equipment often fails just when it is turned on again, as would be the case with this observation method (the 30 Megabit memory could hold 1100 picture sets so there was no need to transmit these in real time). It is not obvious which problem occurred here though some reports say that faint signals were received from Phobos II after this failure. The NY Times quotes Nikotal Simyonov as saying "it would be very difficult at this point to get a response form the spacecraft". The more time the craft is without earth command the more likely it will loss the sun alignment for its solar cells, thus suffering a power deficit also. Note that the mission was not a complete failure. Even with the data obtained at this point the probe has produced the "the highest quality images of yet obtained of Phobos". In addition at Mars itself the infrared spectra give much compositionial information about the planet's surface and atmosphere, while the planetary magnetic field has been measured. Never the less there is bitter loss at missing the Phobos landing by only a few days. (Boston Globe and New York Times, Mar. 30) One comment here, the researchers at the Soviet IKI institute, which were in charge of the probe, have been pushing the line that unmanned systems are cheaper and more reliable than manned ones. They have been strongly suggesting that robots would be better to explore Mars rather than a manned mission. After this high profile mission failure they could find their case substantially harder to present in the USSR. [Personal note - why is it that things only go really wrong with the Russian program when I am off on a trip, and hence without my shortwave. At one earlier conference the Soyuz TM-6 re-entry problem occurred. Sorry for the delay in posting this but I just got back.] So the Russians failed in this attempt on Mars. It was a loss to us all (no US probe for Phobos is scheduled yet, and probably would not occur before 2000 AD). It will be interesting to see if they launch a second try in the 1990 or 1992 windows, if they can analyze the failure cause. Glenn Chapman MIT Lincoln Lab ------------------------------ Date: 30 Mar 89 04:05:01 GMT From: crdgw1!steinmetz!sunspot!blackje@uunet.uu.net (Emmett Black) Subject: Soviet Satellite Photos for Sale [reported in April 1989 IEEE Spectrum; summary follows:] The USSR is selling satellite photographs of areas all over the world (with the notable exception of their own back yard) through a subsidiary of the Continential Grain Company, based in New York City. The photos boast a resolution as fine as 5 meters (16.4 feet for those people still hung up on archaic measurements; (they can handle decimals, can't they?)) -- prices range from $300 to $1200 each. The New York Times reported that "U.S. experts believe that the photos were taken by spy satellites" ... Most of the available photos are of areas of reasonably heavy military activity; places like North Dakota (missile silos), Seattle, WA (subs), and even some nice shots of the Peoples Republic of China. Rumor has it that the US Government is now considering releasing some of its OWN nice photographs; ... operators are standing by ... The Soviet photos are available from Sojuskarta; contact ContiTrade Services Corp, 277 Park Ave., New York, NY 10172, or call them at 212/207-5588 (what? no 800 number?!) ... --Emmett J.E.Black; GE Research/K1-3C26; Schenectady, NY 12345 blackje@crd.ge.com; ...!uunet!steinmetz!crd!blackje ------------------------------ Date: 29 Mar 89 22:43:45 GMT From: salt.uucp!dan@uunet.uu.net (Dan Williams) Subject: Re: Success with cold fusion reported from (Miroslav Kocic) > The discussion in this newsgroup has so far been about the authenticity > of the Utah breakthrough, but I have two different concerns. First, what > if fusion turns out to create problems we don't foresee? We didn't > foresee radioactive waste or meltdowns back when fission was at this > stage, and, if history teaches anything, it teaches that every benefit > has a proportional price. Second, what if cold fusion becomes the > crack-cocaine of energy production? I can imagine a thousand fanatics in > 750 terrorist cells making an H-bomb in their kitchen. We don't even know if a chemical H-bomb is a feasable idea with this technology. I think it may be a little premature to start talking about the sky falling. Any way the word is out and at this point there is probably no way you can shut this discovery down. Once people kown that a thing is doable then they will find a way to do it. If the price for the technology is too high then it won't be used. There will be a price. Nothing comes for free. In an interview I heard, one of the researchers was talking about a period of twenty years while they look into the possiblities of this discovery, like scaling up the size, investigating changes, enviromental impact, and anything else their fertile little brains can come up with. I think twenty years is a little pesimistic on their part since there will be a lot of presure to speed up development. But on the plus side you can bet that there will be not a little money thrown their way. I think this will tell you that they are approaching this discovery with all appropriate caution. There will be enough people looking at this to enumerate any problems we can think of. If we can't think of a problem that may manefest itself in the future then there is no way we could have known and we will deal with it when it comes. Now if only this is for real then these postings have some meaning. _______________________________________________________ | fusion is a reality | | Dan Williams uunet!salt!dan | | MCDONNELL DOUGLAS Denver CO | | Any opinions expressed by me are not the | | opinions of McDonnell Douglas. |up. ------------------------------ Date: 30 Mar 89 04:23:34 GMT From: mailrus!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!utzoo!henry@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu (Henry Spencer) Subject: Re: Room Temperature fusion, expert skepticism In article <7486@thorin.cs.unc.edu> symon@lhotse.cs.unc.edu (James Symon) writes: >I'm inclined not to. My father is a theoretical physicist who worked >for years in plasma research. I called and asked him "Say Dad, do you >suppose if I squeezed some deuterium into a metal lattice it might >fuse?" He just said, "No." Whatever is going on inside that palladium -- assuming that there is anything going on in there -- it is *not* a plasma phenomenon, so asking a plasma physicist won't necessarily give a meaningful answer. Better would be to ask a chemist specializing in the subject just how close hydrogen atoms get inside palladium, and then ask a physicist just how close they have to get for interesting things to happen. Unfortunately, this may -- repeat, may -- be like asking a 19th-century physicist what he thinks of the possibility of a single bomb capable of destroying an entire city. There may, pure and simple, be some new and hitherto-unsuspected effect involved, in which case *any* expert opinion is valueless. If you had asked a superconductivity expert, several years ago, whether complex copper oxides would superconduct at liquid-nitrogen temperatures, the odds are pretty good that he would have said "no". There is still no theoretical understanding of how liquid-nitrogen superconductors work; the old BCS theory, which quite successfully explained superconducting metals, cannot possibly be stretched to cover the new superconductors, and there is no replacement theory in sight yet. Remember that example when assessing theoretical opinions about this issue. -- Welcome to Mars! Your | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology passport and visa, comrade? | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 30 Mar 1989 12:18-EST From: Dale.Amon@H.GP.CS.CMU.EDU Subject: Re: SPACE Digest V9 #321 >... My question is why were there no cabin views during >the launch? Come to think of it, I don't recall cabin views at launch I have seen two different films with out of the window pictures during launch. Both were quite impressive. The earlier one was in a film from Rockwell, and you could watch the horizon as the sky turned darker and darker blue.... and then suddenly the sky was BELOW you, a thin film visible on the horizon. The other showed more clearly than any numbers how fast the shuttle picks up speed. The shots were from the last Spacelab flight (Chang Diaz, monkey shit, etc) and was in a northerly trajectory that seemed to parallel the East coast of the US. You could watch the coast of Florida slowly appear and then Georgia slide into view, and then in rapidly increasing succession you passed everything up to Boston. Marvelous piece of film. Incidentally, a scientist crew member who was on the flight was giving a talk and told of the problems of prefitted trojan-like male urine collection devices. The fit tends to not be very good under several g's and stress. Remember that there are crewmembers in seats above other crew members during the boost phase. Space flight isn't ALL glory you know. ------------------------------ Date: 30 Mar 89 00:19:53 GMT From: ames.arc.nasa.gov!mike@ames.arc.nasa.gov (Mike Smithwick) Subject: Re: NASA Select [] In article <1989Mar27.213437.22701@utzoo.uucp> henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes: >In article BISURFAC@ECUVM1.BITNET (Lou Surface) writes: >>... My question is why were there no cabin views during >>the launch? Come to think of it, I don't recall cabin views at launch >>on any mission - from Apollo to STS. Is this due to G-force limits >>on operating cameras? - that would be suprising. Or is there some >>classified ritual that occurs at T minus 0? Several reasons I can think of: 1) The ground controllers probably don't want to clutter up the shuttle's comm channels with an unecessary wide-band transmission, otherwise known as TeeVee. Since the launch is perhaps the most communications intesive portion of the flight, I sure that all conceivable channels are reserved for more valuable information. 2) The shuttle's cameras are pretty big dudes, long boxes around 6"x6"x18" or so. They have got to be pretty heavy (>15 pounds) once you add in the electronics, massive zoom lenses and motors to drive them, etc. The mounts for the cameras are petty flimsy, and would never work in 1G. Launch video would require the manufacture of special mounting brackets. 3) No classified ritual, as I've seen many a film taken of the crew during launch. (Unless they scratch themselves in certain interesting places that might not be too appealing :-). There were two U.S missions which did have video during launch : Gordon Cooper's Mercury flight, Faith 7. They were trying out an experimental slow-scan tv system which transmitted back pictures at about 2 seconds/frame. The other was the Apollo-Soyuz launch. There was a camera tucked under the right control panel looking up at the crew during the launch sequence. It's quite an interesting sequence. On STS-30, they'll be trying out a Sony cam-corder. This might pave the way for small, lightweight cameras which might conceivably be left on during the launch sequence. >There's no special problem with it that I'm aware of. I'd assume that >the reason is (a) the view would be boring, Any more "boring" than 38 minutes of a crewmember throwing switches in the Aft flight deck? :-) >and (b) the astronauts' >conversations are considered private unless explicitly transmitted. The cameras do not come equipped with microphones, so any internal conversations would not be transmitted. >-- >Welcome to Mars! Your | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology >passport and visa, comrade? | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ <-great signature Henry *** mike (cerbral GURU, insert M&Ms to restart) smithwick*** "Oh, I'm just a NOP in the instruction set of life, oh, ohhhh, hmmmmm" [disclaimer : nope, I don't work for NASA, I take full blame for my ideas] ------------------------------ Date: 28 Mar 89 03:20:36 GMT From: hpda!hpcuhb!hp-ses!hpcea!hpldsla!oreilly@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU Subject: Re: Primordial Hydrocarbons Mike Van Pelt writes; > The outfit in Sweden found methane... the gas > had been verified as being of non-biological origin, but they > didn't explain how they had verified this. Carbon contains two stable isotopes, carbon-12 and carbon-13. During photosynthesis, the carbon retained in plant tissue is enriched in carbon-12 (relative to non-biogenic carbon, such as diamond). Thus methane of biogenic origin is usually enriched in carbon-12. Tom O'Reilly oreilly@hpldsla ------------------------------ Date: 30 Mar 89 05:52:49 GMT From: nunki.usc.edu!sawant@oberon.usc.edu (Abhay Sawant) Subject: Two questions. 1. I thought the idea of having spacecraft merely 'nudge' asteroids towards earth was really neat. Question: won't it be awfully hard to get the exact trajectory of the asteroid correct? Even if we're going to be satisfied with getting it within (say) 15k km. from the center of the earth (assume we can easily recover anything in this range), isn't it going to be awfully hard to give the asteroid the correct velocity vector? Especially when you consider the awkward shape, distribution of mass of the critter (i'm thinking engineering here). 2. If it's not very hard getting some kind of hot fusion going, isn't it a easy solution to the radioactive waste problem to chuck it into a merrily burning fusion reaction? Alternatively, shoot it into the center of the sun. Alternatively, shoot it at the stars. Why have we only thought of earth-based solutions to radioactive wastes so far? -ajay ------------------------------ Date: 30 Mar 89 09:30:26 GMT From: shelby!csli!cphoenix@decwrl.dec.com (Chris Phoenix) Subject: Re: Success with cold fusion reported In article <1113@gvgpsa.GVG.TEK.COM> johna@gvgpsa.gvg.tek.com.GVG.TEK.COM (John Abt) writes: >>[quotation deleted] >With unlimited cheap and pollution-free energy available, we won't be >talking about the greenhouse effect, it will be the furnace effect. Not necessarily. Imagine how cheap it would be, with unlimited power, to turn large areas of land into mirrors. Just find any sandy area such as a desert, then melt it smooth, then sputter on some shiny metal. I don't know the statistics on the amount of energy in sunlight falling on the earth, but it's some amazing number of times greater than the amount of energy we use. In other words, we could compensate for all the energy we use by covering a relatively small part of the earth's surface with mirrors to reflect all the heat back out into space. The greenhouse effect probably traps much more heat than would be produced by any fusion we could use. Worrying about a "furnace effect" from fusion is almost as groundless as worrying about one from solar energy. (That came up in sci.nanotech a while ago, and I gave the same answer except, "Imagine how cheap it would be, with nanotechnology, to...") Chris Phoenix cphoenix@csli.stanford.edu ------------------------------ End of SPACE Digest V9 #329 ******************* ------------------------------ End of SPACE Digest V9 #342 *******************