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, 21 Apr 89 05:16:48 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: Reply-To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU From: space-request+@Andrew.CMU.EDU To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU Date: Fri, 21 Apr 89 05:16:37 -0400 (EDT) Subject: SPACE Digest V9 #386 SPACE Digest Volume 9 : Issue 386 Today's Topics: Re: SETI: When and where to look Conte's Bill (was NSS update) Re: Planitary Positions vs short wave radio propagation NASA selects flight telerobotic servicer development contractor (Forwarded) Equations of artificial satellites' motions wanted CALL FOR DISCUSSION: Creation of a sci.earth newsgroup. Cold fusion neutron flux anomaly explained Re: Geostar Space shuttle acceleration limits (was RE:Unmanned shuttle advantages) Re: Unmanned shuttle advantages Re: URGENT -- SPACE STATION FUNDING VOTE ON TUESDAY!! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 19 Apr 89 13:58:09 GMT From: mcvax!ukc!etive!bob@uunet.uu.net (Bob Gray) Subject: Re: SETI: When and where to look In article <4739@pt.cs.cmu.edu> dep@ius3.ius.cs.cmu.edu (David Pugh) writes: >on detecting a major event, start broadcasting immediately in the opposite >direction (on the assumption that anyone "farther away" will aim their >radio telescopes at 1987a and detect us). Another would be to generate You mean like something like broadcasting pulses at twice the (theoretical) maximum that a pulsar could? Like the pulses detected for a short time from 1987a and which haven't been seen again since? Wouldn't work. People would find some explanation unless it was so unambiguous to be judged a fake. Bob. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 20 Apr 89 14:28 EDT From: John Taylor Subject: Conte's Bill (was NSS update) >An amendment to the fiscal year 1989 supplemental appropriations bill has >been introduced by the committee's minority leader, Massachusetts Rep. >Silvio Conte. Isn't Barney Frank from Mass. too? What is it with these guys? Maybe someone needs to take an offensive approach: accuse them of discrimination against... uh ... those who want to explore space!?! >Conte's amendment would transfer nearly $600 [million?] >of station funding to other domestic programs. Just out of curosity, has anyone noticed a correlation between left/right political leanings and support of space and science? Or is it just random? ------------- John Taylor -- SUNY at Buffalo Bitnet : v131q5cg@ubvmsc Internet: v131q5cg@ubvmsc.cc.buffalo.edu P.S. W. Baxter (Oakland), send e-mail! I lost your address... ------------------------------ Date: 20 Apr 89 01:52:04 GMT From: erc@tybalt.caltech.edu (Eric R. Christian) Subject: Re: Planitary Positions vs short wave radio propagation In article <890418-181721-109@Xerox> "Robert_Swenson.osbunorth"@XEROX.COM writes: > >Items ran in Space Digest v9 nos 371 & 373 about someone who could predict >inteference in long distance short wave radio transmission. > >There was an article about this in Analog many years ago. >This is from memory, so I may not have all the facts correct. If anyone >can locate the original, it would help this discussion. > ... Deleted are several steps explaining that Jupiter and Saturn can change The distance from the Earth to the Sun and therefore change the charged particle flux. >Conclusion: Short wave radio propigation is changed by the relative >positions of Earth, Jupiter and Saturn. > >According to the article, this person had about 93% success in predicting >interference. He never missed, but sometimes the interference he predicted >did not, in fact, occur. He, according to the item, made his living by >forcasting these disturbances to the radio communications companies. > >I make no claim as to the accuracy nor to the spelling of the above. > >Bob Swenson >Swenson.osbunorth@Xerox.COM This is easily proved wrong. Jupiter is about 1 thousandth the mass of the Sun and so therefore moves the center of mass of the system about 1/1000 of its distance from the Sun, or about 800,000 km. Saturn's effect is about half of that. Combined Jupiter and Saturn have less than a one percent effect on the 150,000,000 km distance from the Earth to the Sun. The eccentricity of the Earth's orbit changes this distance by more than 3 percent. However, these efects are overshadowed by the variability of the solar wind. Both the solar wind speed and the number of particles change by about 50% over the 11 year solar activity cycle, and there are lots of short term variations. On top of this, solar flares can increase the flux of particles by orders of magnitude. Solar flares are the real culprit when it comes to radio interference. Eric R. Christian RADIO INTERFERENCE CAUSED BY ALIEN erc@tybalt.caltech.edu SPACECRAFT EXHAUST! -- Future echristian@lheavx.gsfc.nasa.gov Weekly World News article ------------------------------ Date: 20 Apr 89 18:17:47 GMT From: trident.arc.nasa.gov!yee@ames.arc.nasa.gov (Peter E. Yee) Subject: NASA selects flight telerobotic servicer development contractor (Forwarded) Mark Hess Headquarters, Washington, D.C. Michael Braukus Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. RELEASE: 89-54 NASA SELECTS FLIGHT TELEROBOTIC SERVICER DEVELOPMENT CONTRACTOR NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., has selected the Martin Marietta Space Systems Co., Denver, Colo., to negotiate a cost-plus-award-fee contract for the flight telerobotic servicer (FTS) for use in the assembly and maintenance of Space Station Freedom, scheduled to be deployed in the mid-1990's. The contract, expected to be effective on July 1, 1989, will consist of the delivery of flight hardware and software for three missions which consist of two demonstration test flights (DTF) aboard the Space Shuttle and an operational system for Space Station Freedom. In addition, the contract will contain an option for engineering support during the life of the contract. The total cost, excluding fee, as proposed by Martin Marietta for the basic effort, is approximately $297 million with an additional cost of almost $6 million for the option. The contract will provide for the design, development, test, integration, launch support, training and ground support systems, mission operations support and sustaining engineering of all hardware and software required for the FTS program missions. It also includes two Space Shuttle DTF's and the launch of the final FTS on one of the S.S. Freedom assembly flights. This effort, anticipated to extend through 1998, will be performed primarily at Martin Marietta's facilities in Denver, Colo. A key element of the Freedom program, the FTS will employ technolgies not used on previous NASA spacecraft. Spinoffs from robotic technologies developed in the FTS program are expected to advance U.S. industrial automation capabilities. Space Station Freedom will be a permanently manned base in low-Earth orbit for conducting scientific research, developing new technologies and enabling human exploration of the solar system. The United States, Japan, Canada and nine European countries, through the European Space Agency, are contributing elements to the program and will share in its utilization. A crew of eight will permanently work and live aboard Freedom, which will be designed to operate for several decades, well into the 21st century. ------------------------------ Date: 18 Apr 89 05:05:40 GMT From: peregrine!ccicpg!cci632!rit!ultb!ritcsh!john@elroy.jpl.nasa.gov (John Bisaillon) Subject: Equations of artificial satellites' motions wanted I am planning to write software that will predict common and useful information about the position and motion of an artificial satellite. I want to be able to just input the time and the current orbital elements of a particular satellite. I need to know the equations of motion that use orbital elements and a given time to predict the three dimensional position of the satellite. Extremely high accuracy in terms of calculations is not needed. Any infomormation on existing equivalent public domain software is also appreciated. Thanks in advance. -- ------------------------------ Date: 21 Apr 89 01:27:52 GMT From: leah!ss6349@csd4.milw.wisc.edu (Steven H Schimmrich) Subject: CALL FOR DISCUSSION: Creation of a sci.earth newsgroup. I would be interested in seeing the creation of an unmoderated newsgroup entitled SCI.EARTH as a forum for discussion of topics within the earth sciences. There currently exist no newsgroups for the discussion of topics within the fields of geology, meteorology, and oceanography other than where they might fit into other SCI newsgroups (groups such as SCI.BIO, SCI.ASTRO, SCI.PHYSICS, SCI.CHEM, SCI.SPACE, etc.). I believe that this would be a broad enough newsgroup (encompassing such disciplines as geology, seismology, paleontology, meteorology, climatology, oceanography, etc.), one that would generate interest among non-professionals in the above fields (I can envison discussions on earthquake risks, the extinction of the dinosaurs, certain claims made by creationists, ice ages, the changing climate, the greenhouse effect, el nino, etc.), and one that would fill a definite gap (there is no analogous newsgroup -- especially for geology-related topics). This posting is to find out if there is enough interest out there in net land for the creation of a SCI.EARTH newsgroup. If there is, a call for votes will be the next step. THIS IS NOT A CALL FOR VOTES -- Don't send them! -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- | Steven H. Schimmrich | Internet : ss6349@leah.albany.edu | | Department of Geological Sciences | "The Rock Men are very primitive | | State University of New York at Albany | Flash, they have no science." | | Albany, New York 12222 (518) 442-4470 | Dr. Zarkhov. | -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 20 Apr 89 17:42:06 PST From: Peter Scott Subject: Cold fusion neutron flux anomaly explained X-Vms-Mail-To: EXOS%"space@andrew.cmu.edu" An article in yesterday's _Los Angeles Times_ reported experiments at Stanford that had detected Helium-4 as a product of the Pons-Fleischmann experiment. This suggests that instead of decaying into He-3 and a neutron, as in "normal" fusion, the He-4 is so tightly contained within the palladium lattice that it transfers its energy to the lattice through heat and only rarely emits a neutron, explaining the low neutron counts. Stanford also reported that they had performed the same experiment with H2O instead of D2O (which P-F had reportedly notdone because it would have damaged the elctrode, which was expensive -- this from _New Scientist_), and detected no heat. This thing is looking better all the time. Peter Scott (pjs@grouch.jpl.nasa.gov) ------------------------------ Date: 19 Apr 89 17:16:32 GMT From: mitel!sce!cognos!geovision!gd@uunet.uu.net (Gord Deinstadt) Subject: Re: Geostar I'm looking for the address (email or regular), or a phone number, for Geostar. They're the people that make a navigation system using satellite transponders. Also, is there anybody else in this business? Send replies to gd@geovision, or post them if you don't mind boring everybody else in sci.space. Enquiring truckers want to know... Thanks. Disclaimer: this has nothing to do with GeoVision. I'm posting this on behalf of another person in my consulting company. -- Gord Deinstadt gd@geovision.uucp ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 20 Apr 89 13:21:12 EDT From: ellis@csd360a.erim.org Sender: ellis@csd360a.erim.org Cc: space+@andrew.cmu.edu Subject: Space shuttle acceleration limits (was RE:Unmanned shuttle advantages) With regard to the 3g acceleration limit, I assume that this is the nominal limit for a mission provided nothing goes wrong. If the mission has to be aborted early in the launch the maneuver required to return to ground results in accelerations up to 7g. I also recall (although this is a little fuzzy) that when we did the vibration testing of the ATMOS experiment for SPACELAB 3 that the accelerations went up to 10g. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 20 Apr 89 15:11:13 PDT From: Peter Scott Subject: Re: Unmanned shuttle advantages mailrus!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!attcan!lsuc!ncrcan!ziebmef!mdf@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu (Matthew Francey) writes: >In article <8904051901.AA12276@aristotle.Jpl.Nasa.Gov>, pjs@ARISTOTLE-GW.JPL.NA>SA.GOV (Peter Scott) writes: >> And then you can fly missions that are outside the envelope of human >> comfort/survivability, e.g. duration (no running out of air), acceleration >> (high g forces), radiation (flying during solar flares),... anyone got any mo>re ideas? [...] > if payload weight is a problem, why not split it into two shuttle > launches? They are, after all, supposed to be cheap... "supposed" is the operative word here... I suspect that there was a :-) missing from your posting. Besides, some large vehicles do not divide easily in half (otherwise we might have been tempted to retain the Atlas-Centaur booster for Galileo). > Remember that the shuttle was designed as a thing to get stuff into >orbit and then come back for some more. Flying a thing like that into really >weird orbits or under "anomalous" conditions is probably not a good idea. The original posting was talking about the *Soviet* shuttle, and I'm not sure that they would have designed Buran in the way you describe given that they also decided to design it free from the need for human presence. A poster appeared to claim that this provided negligible advantage and I was taking issue with them. Peter Scott (pjs@grouch.jpl.nasa.gov) ------------------------------ Date: 21 Apr 89 05:29:03 GMT From: unmvax!polyslo!jmckerna@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (John McKernan) Subject: Re: URGENT -- SPACE STATION FUNDING VOTE ON TUESDAY!! In article <233@umigw.MIAMI.EDU> steve@umigw.miami.edu (steve emmerson) writes: >There are some of us out here who support the exploration and utilization >of space and yet who also believe that the development of the proposed >space station is an inefficient (and hence inappropriate) expenditure of >scarce resources. > >Just a reminder ;-). >-- Another reminder. NASA is a government bureaucracy and so is by its nature inefficient. Furthermore, government is the only current source of the amount money needed to build large scale space hardware (with the possible exception of unmanned satellite launchers). So we're pretty much stuck with that inefficiency. John L. McKernan. Student, Computer Science, Cal Poly S.L.O. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The future is rude and pushy. It won't wait for us to solve today's problems before it butts in with tomorrow's. ------------------------------ End of SPACE Digest V9 #386 *******************