Return-path: X-Andrew-Authenticated-as: 7997;andrew.cmu.edu;Ted Anderson Received: from corsica.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 ; Sat, 24 Jun 89 03:17:06 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <8YcnJby00UkV0IDU5z@andrew.cmu.edu> Reply-To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU From: space-request+@Andrew.CMU.EDU To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU Date: Sat, 24 Jun 89 03:16:56 -0400 (EDT) Subject: SPACE Digest V9 #508 SPACE Digest Volume 9 : Issue 508 Today's Topics: Moon landing nostalgia IAU circulars Re: Computers for the space station Empty file found in mailbox. NASA GIVES ASSISTANCE TO PRIVATE LAUNCH COMPANY!! space station computers Re: Re: Venus & the Greenhouse effect... ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ReSent-Message-ID: ReSent-Date: Tue, 20 Jun 89 14:07:01 -0400 (EDT) ReSent-From: Ted Anderson ReSent-To: Space Date: Sat, 17 Jun 89 18:25:06 CDT From: "Bill Ball" Subject: Moon landing nostalgia Comments on two items celebrating the 20 anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing which I have come across recently: Air & Space magazine June/July 1989. A publication of the Smithsonian. The (almost) entire issue is devoted to a variety of articles on the topic, most of them quite good (although none quite as entertaining as the story of Howard Hughes' first flight in the Lockheed Constellation found in the back of the issue). There is more criticism of NASA than one might expect. Man In Space A Time Television Special (60 min.) Superb. The first 40 min. is a spellbinding review of the trip to the moon with heavy (and IMHO entirely correct) emphasis on the story of human endeavor rather than technological accomplishment. It, like the Air & Space issue, brings home what a fluke the Apollo program was--having more to due with the Bay of Pigs than with the exploration of space. The last part of Man in Space somehow manages to cover every argument about our continuing role in space which has been discussed on this list in the past year including controversies over the shuttle, the space station, a trip to mars, and a manned vs. an unmanned program. How did they do all this in an hour? I don't know but it was *very* impressive. A must see even if you don't spring for the commemorative coins they are pushing in the commercials. Bill Ball Dept. Political Science U. of Missouri - Columbia C476721@UMCVMB.MISSOURI.EDU ------------------------------ Date: 19 Jun 89 14:26:38 GMT From: frooz!cfashap!wyatt@husc6.harvard.edu (Bill Wyatt) Subject: IAU circulars >> International Astronomical Union (IAU) Circular 4767 - 1989 April 7 > >PLEASE keep posting these!!! Does the IAU have any kind of BB where >newly reported astronomical events, SN, Asteroids, etc are posted? That >kind of information would be a data feast for us all. > >I usually have to dig through a number of publications to keep up with >this kind of info. This came up during the postings concerning SN1987A. The IAU circular service is not free, although it is non-profit. It is run by Brian Marsden, here at the Center for Astrophysics, as the `Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams' and the `Minor Planet Center'. There are generally one or two circulars per week. As I mentioned in March of 1987, no one especially minds an occasional reposting of a circular in response to a specific question, but for steady access, the subscription is required. The telegram service is used internationally for timely bulletins and information disbursal, and the subscriptions are what keeps the service going, so please don't undermine the system! The cost for the circulars is US $4.50 per month or $7.50 per month if you require an invoice. For double the above price (you also still get the hardcopy), you can get remote login access to their computer service. It's a VMS microVax, accessable via at least SPAN and TELENET that I know of and probably modems, too. For further information, contact the CBAT at 617-495-7244 or write: Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams 60 Garden Street Cambridge MA 02138 Bill Wyatt, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory UUCP : {husc6,cmcl2,mit-eddie}!harvard!cfa!wyatt ARPA: wyatt@cfa.harvard.edu SPAN: cfa::wyatt BITNET: wyatt@cfa ------------------------------ Date: 20 Jun 89 15:38:09 GMT From: mailrus!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!utzoo!henry@csd4.milw.wisc.edu (Henry Spencer) Subject: Re: Computers for the space station In article <8906191906.AA17183@cmr.ncsl.nist.gov> roberts@CMR.NCSL.NIST.GOV (John Roberts) writes: >In the debate on the choice of Ada for much of the software, I would like to >point out that saying "Ada is undesirable because not many programmers I know >program in Ada" is not entirely reasonable, because Ada is a young language... Um, it's over a decade old, and is showing its age badly, actually... -- You *can* understand sendmail, | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology but it's not worth it. -Collyer| uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 1 Jan 70 0:0:0 EST From: Message Server Subject: Empty file found in mailbox. An empty file was found in your mailbox. This can occur when an attempt to deliver mail to you is unsuccessful. Although the delivery attempt was unsuccessful, the mail is not lost. Further attempts to deliver the piece of mail will be made until it is successfully delivered. Note that delivery attempts will continue to fail if delivery of the mail will put you over your File System quota. The message system will not be able to sucessfully deliver your mail until you have enough space for the message. To check your storage allocation on the Andrew File System, use the `fs quota' command. To reduce disk usage, you might want to compress some of your files (using the compress or compact commands) and/or delete old mail and unnecessary files such as 'core', checkpoint, and backup files. Other reasons for delivery failure are transient in nature, and will clear up without action on your part. In fact, you may already have received the mail that caused the empty file to appear. File name: /afs/andrew.cmu.edu/usr1/ota/.MESSAGES/mail/space/incoming/+IYbQPb200UkVMBLHVC. Written by: user Ted Anderson (7997). Date and time of file writing: Tue Jun 20 01:15:53 1989 ------------------------------ Reply-To: mordor!rutgers!pnet01.cts.com!jim@angband.s1.gov Date: Sat, 17 Jun 89 11:57:26 PDT From: mordor!rutgers!pnet01.cts.com!jim@angband.s1.gov (Jim Bowery) To: hplabs!hp-sde!hp-sdd!crash!space@angband.s1.gov Subject: NASA GIVES ASSISTANCE TO PRIVATE LAUNCH COMPANY!! NASA, AMROC AGREE TO CRITICAL CHEMICAL EXCHANGE > .....NASA provided two drums >(about 600 lbs.) of the chemical to AMROC. Free world production capacity for hydrogen peroxide 882 million kg / year. United States capacity: 226 million kg / year. Current US consumption 150 million kg / year. 76 million kg / year unused US capacity. Approximate wholesale value of 300kg H2O2 is a few hundred dollars. NASA's budget last year was $10 billion. NASA's budget increase to this year's $13 billion has enabled NASA to provide this critically needed chemical to a private launch company. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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: 20 Jun 89 22:53:07 GMT From: mailrus!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!utzoo!henry@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu (Henry Spencer) Subject: space station computers In article <218100025@s.cs.uiuc.edu> carroll@s.cs.uiuc.edu writes: >... NASA should look to the future, not the past. > >A key point here is that none of this is very exotic - I have no doubt that >such work is being done now in various places. NASA used to overpay to get >components _past_ the state of the art, the antithesis of the Big Dumb Booster >concept. Now, they're overpaying to get obsolete components, which combines >the worst of both approaches. In a lot of support hardware, actually, NASA has always been very conservative and has deliberately used the previous generation of hardware when possible. They do this for the same reason AT&T does it for switching systems: maximum reliability. Being at the leading edge of the state of the art -- never mind ahead of it -- tends to cost you a lot of reliability. The attitude many PC users have toward crashes would be grossly unacceptable for a computer center on Earth, never mind one on a space station. Mind you, one can argue -- I have, in other contexts -- that it's better to design the system to recover from errors rather than avoid them in the first place. This massively reduces costs and lead times by permitting off-the- shelf hardware (absolutely nothing on the space station is off the shelf, not even the light bulbs). There are only a very few systems which really must be ultra-reliable because errors in them really are intolerable... especially since the chance of error can never be 0 anyway. -- NASA is to spaceflight as the | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology US government is to freedom. | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu ------------------------------ Date: 19 Jun 89 18:58:14 GMT From: hpfcdc!bayes@hplabs.hp.com (Scott Bayes) Subject: Re: Re: Venus & the Greenhouse effect... > Did they consider a slingshot around the Sun to increase the terminal > velocity? Is that even possible? (If you ain't got enough m, try some v^2). > On the other hand, being closer to the Sun and more rigid, the tidal slowing > effect might be embarrasingly large in the middle run... > > > -- > John Woods, Charles River Data Systems, Framingham MA, (508) 626-1101 > ...!decvax!frog!john, john@frog.UUCP, ...!mit-eddie!jfw, jfw@eddie.mit.edu > People...How you gonna FIGURE 'em? > Don't bother, S.L.--Just stand back and enjoy the EVOLUTIONARY PROCESS... I don't believe you can slingshot from any body if you start within and stay within that body's escape speed. We can slingshot from Jupiter, because we start with more than enough E to escape its gravity well, and escape with even more (having stolen it from Big Jupe). All the actions you describe would take place with Sol's gravity E-well, and should be conservative wrt Sol. But Jupiter might provide some supercharging. Actually, I'd guess you want a reasonably massive body (mass >> body to accelerate) with as high an orbital velocity as possible. Scott Bayes I hope the above is correct... ------------------------------ End of SPACE Digest V9 #508 *******************