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 ; Tue, 22 Aug 89 03:20:17 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: Reply-To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU From: space-request+@Andrew.CMU.EDU To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU Date: Tue, 22 Aug 89 03:20:03 -0400 (EDT) Subject: SPACE Digest V9 #612 SPACE Digest Volume 9 : Issue 612 Today's Topics: space news from July 24 AW&ST Re: It was said Re: Alcor Re: Moonwalk Re: Space telescope - why only 1200 hours? Re: Space telescope - why only 1200 hours? SPACE Digest V9 #580 Re: re does this proposal make sense Re: Catch-A-Planet (was:Re:Curiosity) Re: space news from June 19 AW&ST, and Apollo-anniversary editorial NSS Hotline Update ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 22 Aug 89 03:31:56 GMT From: agate!bionet!csd4.csd.uwm.edu!mailrus!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!utzoo!henry@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Henry Spencer) Subject: space news from July 24 AW&ST Bush sets forth his long-term space plan, minus budget and timetable, and calls for -- did you really expect anything else? -- more study. Congress likes the vision but doesn't care for the lack of budget planning. House Majority Leader Gephardt "noted that when President Kennedy issued the call to go to the Moon, he included the bill". DoD preparing RFP for a new antisatellite weapon. SDI's sounding-rocket particle-beam experiment successful on July 13. Next on the agenda is a larger experiment in orbit, "traceable to weapon performance levels", perhaps 1995. Amroc fires its first flight-weight motor in a full-duration test at the USAF Astronautics Lab [at Edwards]. The test, on July 11, was fully successful, including testing of Amroc's liquid-injection thrust vectoring. A second similar firing is planned before first flight in August. ====================================================================== George Koopman, president of Amroc, killed in automobile accident near Edwards July 19. Amroc will try to launch on schedule in August. ====================================================================== House blocks Rep. Charles Schumer's attempt to shift about half the space station's funding to domestic programs... despite only token support for the station from the White House. More modest cuts were made, however, and an independent analysis of station overhead costs -- i.e., the hefty fraction of the money that disappears into NASA and never turns into visible hardware -- has been ordered. NASA has also been ordered not to pass more than 50% of the cuts on to the contractors. House also defers development of the station crew rescue vehicle, maintaining minimum funding only. France reaches compromise with USSR on French Mir mission price tag. France would also like to expand space cooperation with the US, but says the relationship is difficult when there are constant program changes due to NASA's budget mess and the US's ridiculous attitude on technology transfer. The recent Soviet-French space agreement includes French access to Soviet wind tunnels and related test facilities for Hermes development, because France couldn't get the use of US ones. One French official says, "Dealing with the Soviet Union on cooperative space efforts is not easy, but we find the Americans are not simple to work with either." There are a couple of brighter notes, however. France has agreed to joint development with NASA on an infrared spectrometer for Cassini (although it will also fly on the Soviet 1994 Mars mission!). And the US decision to divert the solid-fuel mixer meant for Kourou has been reversed. Ariane launch planned for this week delayed, pending checks on one of its payloads (Germany's TVSat 2) after the building housing it took a direct lightning hit. New date is Aug 8. Hughes books two comsats on one Ariane for next summer. A launch slot opened up unexpectedly when Intelsat requested a postponement in launch of an Intelsat 6. Arianespace says that the maximum-lift Ariane 4 configuration has been deemed operational after its June launch. There was concern about noise levels when exhaust from the liquid-fuel strap-ons hits the launch platform, but a combination of pad modifications and minor engineering changes to Ariane dealt with the problem. The payload for STS-28 [the August mission] is a new imaging recon satellite, the SRS (Strategic Reconnaissance Satellite). There is a small secondary payload that may be an SDI experiment. -- V7 /bin/mail source: 554 lines.| Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology 1989 X.400 specs: 2200+ pages. | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu ------------------------------ Date: 3 Aug 89 12:11:48 GMT From: b.gp.cs.cmu.edu!Ralf.Brown%B.GP.CS.CMU.EDU@pt.cs.cmu.edu Subject: Re: It was said In article , denver@NARDAC-NOHIMS.ARPA ("DENVER BRAUGHLER") wrote: } [golf ball on the moon] } Of course, contrary to a current happy trash bag commercial on TV, the }ball would not have gone into earth orbit either. What is the escape velocity }needed for a single impulse launch from the moon? What I *really* liked was the way the ball's trajectory curved :-) -- UUCP: {ucbvax,harvard}!cs.cmu.edu!ralf -=-=-=-=- Voice: (412) 268-3053 (school) ARPA: ralf@cs.cmu.edu BIT: ralf%cs.cmu.edu@CMUCCVMA FIDO: Ralf Brown 1:129/46 FAX: available on request Disclaimer? I claimed something? Alan Demers: Here is the promised Fast Fourier Transform example. It worked for the two examples I tried, so I'm fairly sure it is correct. Student: Proof by exhaustive testing? Demers: Well, it sure exhausted me. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 4 Aug 1989 13:11-EDT From: Dale.Amon@H.GP.CS.CMU.EDU Subject: Re: Alcor Keith is not the only one to consider the Cryonics option as an important backup. I too intend to go into space, whether in the next couple decades (Keith has a bit over one on me) or in 200 years. I know many others who are serious about their desire who are also signed on for this. It may be a long shot, but it may also be the ONLY shot... Dale Amon a former director of the L5 Society a former director of NSS ------------------------------ Date: 4 Aug 89 15:38:57 GMT From: mailrus!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!utzoo!henry@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu (Henry Spencer) Subject: Re: Moonwalk In article <8907301944.AA05616@cssun.tamu.edu> hmueller@CSSUN.TAMU.EDU (Harold E Mueller) writes: >... And the balloons >deployed by the CM on splashdown were said to be necessary for flotation >(I think they were for stability indeed)... More precisely, for the right kind of stability. The CM by itself had two stable floating positions: "stable 1", right side up, and "stable 2", nose down. Unfortunately, "stable 2" seemed to happen quite a bit in real life. And of course, "stable 2" put the hatch underwater. So the balloons were added to enforce "stable 1". -- 1961-1969: 8 years of Apollo. | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology 1969-1989: 20 years of nothing.| uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu ------------------------------ Date: 5 Aug 89 00:19:49 GMT From: bfmny0!tneff@uunet.uu.net (Tom Neff) Subject: Re: Space telescope - why only 1200 hours? In article <1846@hudson.acc.virginia.edu> gsh7w@astsun.astro.Virginia.EDU (Greg S. Hennessy) writes: >In article <14513@bfmny0.UUCP> tneff@bfmny0.UUCP (Tom Neff) writes: >#Speaking of HST, there was a very interesting squib in this month's >#ASTRONOMY. Seems a team has taken the Palomar 5-meter scope to the >#*diffraction limit* using optical interferometry (a technique adapted >#from radio astronomy), easily splitting two different double stars with >#separations of a small fraction of an arcsecond. > >It is nice, but you need bright stars to do it with. HST is STILL the >only way to get the high resolution images on a faint source. Is Neptune bright? -- "We walked on the moon -- (( Tom Neff you be polite" )) tneff@bfmny0.UU.NET ------------------------------ Date: 4 Aug 89 15:25:47 GMT From: uakari.primate.wisc.edu!indri!aplcen!haven!uvaarpa!hudson!astsun8.astro.Virginia.EDU!gsh7w@csd4.milw.wisc.edu (Greg S. Hennessy) Subject: Re: Space telescope - why only 1200 hours? In article <1989Aug4.025910.19561@utzoo.uucp> henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes: #Name an unmanned system, except Energia, that could do better for a payload #that big. Wasn't that Mr Neff's point? A Saturn V could probably put HST up pretty high. -Greg Hennessy, University of Virginia USPS Mail: Astronomy Department, Charlottesville, VA 22903-2475 USA Internet: gsh7w@virginia.edu UUCP: ...!uunet!virginia!gsh7w ------------------------------ Date: Friday, 4 August 1989 2:21pm CST Reply-To: space+%andrew.cmu.edu@UTXVM.CC.UTEXAS.EDU From: XDAA405%UTA3081.CC.UTEXAS.EDU@UTXVM.CC.UTEXAS.EDU Subject: SPACE Digest V9 #580 Please unsubscribe my id from the space digest list. Thx. ------------------------------ Date: 4 Aug 89 20:55:17 GMT From: mailrus!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!utzoo!henry@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu (Henry Spencer) Subject: Re: re does this proposal make sense In article <44bb6cda.c9b9@apollo.COM> nelson_p@apollo.COM (Peter Nelson) writes: > ...times 365 (days) = 1.7 billion dollars per year. Is this > enough to design, build and maintain a space station? ... It's enough to design, build, and maintain several, if it's done right. > ... The average American doesn't > give a farthing about space, or science, or anything else having to do > with the future... Not quite right, according to people who've been involved with systematic polling on the topic. The average American supports all these things. He just doesn't think they are particularly high priority. -- 1961-1969: 8 years of Apollo. | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology 1969-1989: 20 years of nothing.| uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu ------------------------------ Date: 04 Aug 89 05:17:27 EDT From: Colin Hunter To: Subject: Re: Catch-A-Planet (was:Re:Curiosity) From: J. Colin R. Hunter In SPACE Digest V9 #580, cwjcc!mailrs!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!csri.toronto.edu!wayne@tut.cis.ohio-stat e.edu (Wayne Hayes) writes: > .............. Sagan cites another tribe in an adjacent valley that > suffered from a rare disease called Kuru, a virus. In 1957, a physician > studying this disease showed the tribespeople what the virus looked like > though a microscope. A few months later, a different phyisician (not > knowing that they had observed the virus through a microscope) asked > them to describe what they know about the disease. Part of the description > told of an "invisible evil", accompanied by a diagram in the sand that > looked very similar to the Kuru virus ............................... This raises more questions than it attempts to answer. The aetiological agent for kuru is *not* a virus, but is a prion; a discovery that was not made until the mid-'80s. Prions in their native state do not contain any genetic material in the conventional sense (neither DNA nor RNA), although they are thought to be able to incorporate certain host nucleotides within their structure during the "infection" process. The host's DNA and cellular machinery is hijacked into manufacturing more prions. Since prions are so small (less than 50nm in diameter), being just protein molecules, I do not believe that microscopy was advanced enough in 1957 to visualise a single prion, even if they had known what to look for. J. Colin R. Hunter Department of Microbiology & Immunology University of Maryland at Baltimore ------------------------------ Date: 31 Jul 89 00:24:29 GMT From: jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!attcan!ncrcan!ziebmef!mdf@rutgers.edu (Matthew Francey) Subject: Re: space news from June 19 AW&ST, and Apollo-anniversary editorial In article <33412@apple.Apple.COM>, leech@Apple.COM (Jonathan Patrick Leech) writes: > How can you design a followup to a mission that hasn't flown yet? > It would be silly to build something else and launch it before Galileo > tells us the next questions to ask. Ask this of any planetary scientist, and no doubt you will get a deluge of possible experiments to send to Jupiter that were never considered for Galileo or were dropped for cost/space/bandwidth/weight/whatever reasons. What upsets me most is that all these probes we are launching seem to be completely unique. Has no one considered the benefits of making a nice standard space probe that can do Everything? Take for example, Galileo. I have no solid information on this machine, but I know it does go into orbit around Jupiter and does have at least 1 atmospheric probe... and that the Cassini mission will do much the same thing... which makes me think that perhaps instead of spending yet another huge sum on Yet Another Unique Space Probe, just build another Galileo (or 10) and fire it off to Saturn... Is this just too radical, or what? -- Name: Matthew Francey Address: N43o34'13.5" W79o34'33.3" 86m mdf@ziebmef.UUCP uunet!utgpu!{ontmoh!moore,ncrcan}!ziebmef!mdf ------------------------------ Date: 4 Aug 89 10:31:57 GMT From: cdp!jordankatz@labrea.stanford.edu Subject: NSS Hotline Update This is the National Space Society's Space Hotline updated August 1st. Response to President Bush's space speech of July 20th, the Apollo anniversary, has run a full range - from critical commentary from the media and Capitol Hill - to lukewarm from the public and interested parties (such as industry) to muted esctasy from NASA and the space advocacy community. Bush's ambitious 30-year plan for NASA has drawn heavy fire from Capitol Hill. Sen. Gore of Tennessee accused the president of offering "not a challenge to inspire us, but a daydream as splashy as a George Lucas movie - - with about as much connection to reality." Rep. Charles Schumer of New York, whose amendment to transfer $714 million from NASA to social programs lost in a lopsided vote on the House floor, also criticized Bush's statement as "space exploration by press release." Space program supporters, such as Sen. Jake Garn of Utah praised Bush for providing "a blueprint for a substantive, visionary space policy," and encouraged Bush to lead the fight to "garner the support of members of Congress." Several newspaper editorials in the week following the presdent's address were harshly critical, with the New York Times stating that the president is "merely giving NASA a nominal goal to justify its vast and so far fruitless investment in the space shuttle and space station." The St. Louis Post Dispatch said that the president's speech was an "exercise in feel-good Reaganesque public relations." Positive media commentary did come from, of all places, the Wall St. Journal. Its editors noted that "Washington's tribe of frightened people (shouldn't) stop the rest of the country from being bold and brave and successful." Public commentary seems to have been muted, something which space advocates can and should change. Spacecause, the grassroots space lobby, suggests letters to the editors of local newspapers praising the president's initiative as the departure point of true space exploration. Calls to the Presidential comment line would also show the Administration that there is support from the public for his initiative. The number is 202-456-7639. The scheduled launch of the DoD STS-28 mission of the shuttle Columbia is set for Tuesday, August 8th. Testing continues on systems for the launch and the top secret cargo, which the NSS has learned will be another in the Lacrosse reconnaissance satellite series. The mobile cargo canister which carried the mission's payload out to pad 39B was the same as that used for a previous DoD mission in which a Lacrosse was placed in orbit. The STS-28 crew will arrive at the Cape on Saturday afternoon. The fight for the Space Station and the NASA budget in general moves from the House to the Senate, but not until after the August congressional recess. The space station came through the House on the 20th anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing with only a $395 million cut to its $2.05 billion request. Sen. Barbara Mikulski's VA, HUD and Independent Agencies subcommittee will next take up the debate over appropriations for the NASA budget. Milkulski, in a speech to a group of senators, NASA officials and industry supporters on July 19th said that she is an "unabashed space enthusiast" who would struggle "to make sure we fund the space station". Sen. Mikulski is apparently stalling the mark-up of the subcommittee's bill in order to keep as many options open as possible. Johnson Space Center Director Aaron Cohen has been temporarily assigned to NASA headquarters to lead the agency's response to the national goal of human exploration of the Moon and the planet Mars as announced by President Bush on July 20th. JSC will be managed by Deputy Director Paul Weitz in his absence. Former NASA General Counsel John E. O'Brien will become an assistant deputy administrator with responsibility of supporting NASA's efforts in formulating plans to implement the president's stated future goals. He will provide "special analysis and management problem solving" skills according to a NASA spokesperson. Cohen and O'Brien will both report directly to the Administrator. Rep. George Brown, Jr. introduced an amendment to the defense authorization bill which would require the administration to investigate and report on problems caused by nuclear reactors orbiting the Earth. The move is an attempt to curb the use of space reactors. A similar measure is to be introduced in the Senate by Sen. Dale Bumpers (D-Ark.). The DOT's OCST has approved an application by Martin Marietta Commercial Titan, Inc. to launch the 1st commercial flight of the two stage booster in September from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Two commercial satellites from Britain and Japan will be the payloads. Vice President Quayle will address employees at Marshall Space Flight Center on Wednesday, August 2nd. This has been the National Space Society's Space Hotline for the week of July 31st. ------------------------------ End of SPACE Digest V9 #612 *******************