Return-path: X-Andrew-Authenticated-as: 7997;andrew.cmu.edu;Ted Anderson Received: from beak.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, 12 Sep 89 19:08:07 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: Reply-To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU From: space-request+@Andrew.CMU.EDU To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU Date: Tue, 12 Sep 89 19:07:45 -0400 (EDT) Subject: SPACE Digest V10 #30 SPACE Digest Volume 10 : Issue 30 Today's Topics: Re: Voyager II Images Available NASA Headline News for 08/31/89 (Forwarded) Re: Voyager: Tape recorder? Galileo Jovian atmospheric probe -- is it sterilized??? Galileo Jovian atmospheric probe -- is it sterilized??? What's Wrong With HR2674. (long) Re: Galileo Jovian atmospheric probe -- is it sterilized??? Re: Magnum snoopsat ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 31 Aug 89 05:45:14 GMT From: bungia!orbit!pnet51!schaper@UMN-CS.CS.UMN.EDU (S Schaper) Subject: Re: Voyager II Images Available How do I obtain any of these images? I am new to modeming ~1 month. If anyone out there has transfered any of these to forms that can be used by the Atari ST, esp. the .IM and .COL used by the PD AIM image processor, or even in Degas or .tny, or even as a Macintosh screen dump, or Amiga .IFF, please e-mail me how to obtain them, if you are willing to make them available. I am *very* interested in playing with image-processing them, or other NASA planetary photos. An additional note: Would this sort of thing make a good educational project if JPL would in time release selected shots for processing for the various home computers that are used in schools and colleges? UUCP: {amdahl!bungia, uunet!rosevax, chinet, killer}!orbit!pnet51!schaper ARPA: crash!orbit!pnet51!schaper@nosc.mil INET: schaper@pnet51.cts.com ------------------------------ Date: 1 Sep 89 03:32:54 GMT From: trident.arc.nasa.gov!yee@ames.arc.nasa.gov (Peter E. Yee) Subject: NASA Headline News for 08/31/89 (Forwarded) ----------------------------------------------------------------- NASA Headline News Thursday, August 31, 1989 Audio:202-755-1788 ----------------------------------------------------------------- This is NASA Headline News for Thursday, August 31...... Yesterday at the Kennedy Space Center, the Jupiter-bound Galileo spacecraft was successfully implemented into the payload bay of the orbiter Atlantis. Pre-launch processing of Atlantis and its two sister ships will continue over the weekend, but will halt on Monday so that workers may enjoy Labor Day. Work will resume on Tuesday. Launch of atlantis and the five member STS-34 crew remains targeted for October 12. A small ceremony was conducted at the Kennedy Space Center yesterday to commemorate the movement of Mobile Launcher Platform number three into the Vehicle Assembly Building. Stacking of STS-32 flight hardware onto MLP 3 is slated to begin next week. MLp 3 has been undergoing modifications for the past few years, and STS-32 will mark the first time this platform will be used for a shuttle launch. Voyager's encounter with Neptune is winding down, but there is a strong possibility that the spacecraft may be used to take a "family photograph" of the Sun and its planets. If approved, the photograph would be taken next spring after Voyager has completed all of its mission-specific assignments. The spacecraft would then continue its infinite journey through the Milky Way galaxy, and beyond. * * * ---------------------------------------------------------------- Here's the broadcast schedule for public affairs events on NASA Select TV. All times are Eastern............ ---------------------------------------------------------------- Thursday, August 31 through Wednesday, September 6........ NASA Update will be shown beginning at 11:30 A.M. today and will repeat several times throughout the afternoon. The next NASA Select coverage will be at 1:30 P.M. on September 5 when the STS-34 Lead Flight Director and Galileo Mission Managers host a briefing and press conference. The five-member STS-34 crew will hold a press conference at 11:15 A.M. on September 6. Transponder 13 on Satcom F2R. All events and times are subject to change without notice. ----------------------------------------------------------------- These reports are filed daily Monday through Friday at 12 noon, Eastern time. ----------------------------------------------------------------- A service of the Internal Communications Branch, (LPC), NASA Headquarters. ------------------------------ Date: 31 Aug 89 14:02:07 GMT From: bobmon@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu (RAMontante) Subject: Re: Voyager: Tape recorder? terry@astro.UUCP (Terry Hancock) <4259@utastro.UUCP> : - - This is what happens when it takes 10 or 20 years for a -spacecraft to get to its destination -- it's obsolete by the time -it arrives! ...proving that "obsolete" is *not* a synonym for "abruptly unusable"! Or, to put it another way, "State Of The Art" is technospeak for "unproven". :-) ------------------------------ Date: 31 Aug 89 17:11:56 GMT From: mailrus!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!csri.toronto.edu!wayne@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu (Wayne Hayes) Subject: Galileo Jovian atmospheric probe -- is it sterilized??? I remember hearing a ruckus awhile ago regarding the sterilization of the the Galileo spacecraft's probe into Jupiter's atmosphere. Aparently they were out of funds to sterilize it. Is this still true? If it is, I think it's a *** MAJOR *** mistake, an incredibly irresponsible mistake, to launch the atmospheric probe. In the remote possibility that Jupiter's atmosphere harbors indigenous life, we may pollute the atmosphere with Earth's life and never know for sure whether the life we later discover is in fact indigenous. The fact that Jupiter may be too hostile for Earth bacteria to survive, or that there may be no life there, are simply risks I consider *much* too large. Thoughts? -- Wayne Hayes INTERNET: wayne@csri.toronto.edu CompuServe: 72401,3525 "To boldly go where no programmer has g readnews: segmentation fault -- core dumped ------------------------------ Date: 31 Aug 89 17:25:53 GMT From: mailrus!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!csri.toronto.edu!wayne@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu (Wayne Hayes) Subject: Galileo Jovian atmospheric probe -- is it sterilized??? [Sorry if this is the second time you've seen this, I'm having problems (again) with Pnews. (I tried to cancel the previous one, doesn't look like it worked...)] I remember hearing a ruckus awhile ago regarding the sterilization of the the Galileo spacecraft's probe into Jupiter's atmosphere. Aparently they were out of funds to sterilize it. Is this still true? If it is, I think it's a *** MAJOR *** mistake, an incredibly irresponsible mistake, to launch the atmospheric probe. In the remote possibility that Jupiter's atmosphere harbors indigenous life, we may pollute the atmosphere with Earth's life and never know for sure whether the life we later discover is in fact indigenous. The fact that Jupiter may be too hostile for Earth bacteria to survive, or that there may be no life there, are simply risks I consider *much* too large. Thoughts? -- Wayne Hayes INTERNET: wayne@csri.toronto.edu CompuServe: 72401,3525 "To boldly go where no programmer has g readnews: segmentation fault -- core dumped ------------------------------ Date: 31 Aug 89 18:10:28 GMT From: mailrus!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!utzoo!kcarroll@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu (Kieran A. Carroll) Subject: What's Wrong With HR2674. (long) Regarding the HR2674 bill that William Baxter has made available for us to read: I am not sure that this bill would, if adopted, help much to achieve a goal sought after by many space activists, to wit: the fairly rapid development of much-less-expensive payload-to-orbit delivery systems than are currently available. I've heard arguments that space flight would become fairly commonplace on its own, in its own time, with or without major government intervention. These arguments also conclude that "in its own time" means "in 50 or 100 years"; this conclusion is arrived at by examining evolutionary improvements in performance of aircraft, and extrapolating them to the performance required of spacecraft. This leads to the conclusion that the moon-landings of the 1960's happened very much before they "should have", in the normal course of events; the reasons for them happening so early were founded in cold war national hysteria on the one hand, and the efforts by a small group of rocketry "believers" (von Braun and company) to manipulate governments to their own ends on the other hand. In other words, without von Braun and Kennedy, a "naturally"-paced aviation industry would only now be discovering space, and sending up experimental aerospace planes (X-15 style) and the like. Foe people like me, this is not enough. We have reasons for wanting the pace of space transportation to be forced into high gear. We want bases on the moon, solar power satellites, space manufacturing facilities and exploration of the planets in our own lifetimes, >>not<< a couple of centuries down the road. It seems to me that HR2674 will do more to restore space transportation development to its "natural" pace, than it will to encourage it to early maturity. This results because the main goals of the bill are (a) to save the US Government money, by buying efficient (through competition) commercial launch services rather than inefficient milspec ones, and (b) to pull a blanket of protectionism over the US launcher industry, by ensuring that a major customer (the US government) is restricted to "buy American". The second goal, protectionism, is usually a Bad Thing. The main reason for including it in the bill seems to be because without it, if the first goal were pursued, the US launcher industry would be killed dead by subsidized foreign competition. There are other solutions possible, of course: for example, the government could be permitted to buy launches from foreign vendors, and tariffs could be put in place to remove the effects of subsidies, to "level the playing field" (a familiar phrase in Canada these days, what with free trade and all...). The main problem, though, is the first goal. Saving the US government money is a Good Thing in most circumstances. However, if we want to artificially speed up the evolution of space launcher development, the way to do it is >>not<< through paying the lowest possible price for launches -- the effects of this would be to have launch companies cut costs to the bone, thus reducing the attractiveness of providing services in this area, probably resulting in only a few companies remaining in the business, probably forming a cartel to keep other companies from springing up, thus living moderately well in a protected-from-foreign-competition (protected-from->>real<<- competition) environment. Through this process the companies that survived >>would<< learn how to make launchers and operate them more efficiently, but would do so >>slowly<< (What's the incentive to do so quickly? Doing so quickly involves spending a fair whack of money on R&D, money that just wouldn't be available in an environment where competition brought launch prices down as-far-as-possible-using-currernt-levels-of-technology). HR2674 would have the effect of restoring the evolution of space launchers to its natural, too-slow-as-far-as-I'm-concerned pace. The way to speed up the pace is through an infusion of cash, to pay for the needed R&D, and for the needed number of spacecraft that must be built in order to test out the many ideas that have been proposed (and others that will be dreamt up in the future) for improving efficiency. Kennedy prompted Congress to provide such an infusion, through NASA's Apollo program. Congress soon got tired of spending money, though, since which time NASA hasn't contributed much to the advancement of the state of the art in launcher design, construction or operations (most of the ideas that went into the Shuttle came out of the Apollo days). How do you infuse money into an area without the recipients becoming greedy, and spending it on yachts and parties instead of rocket development? One way is to hire dedicated people (fanatics like us, and von Braun) for whom getting people into space cheap is a much bigger thrill than having a party on a yacht. Unfortunately, the current crop of aerospace contracting companies is not run by people like us; simply giving them lots of money wouldn't necessarily produce the results we want to encourage. The only proposal I've ever hear for infusing cash into the area in a useful way is one based on the old Air Mail contracts that the US Government signed during the early days of aviation. The government agreed to buy a certain amount of flight services from private operators (in this case to fly mail back and forth). They didn't try to get the best price possible through competition, though; instead, they paid a >>deliberately high<< price, >>regardless<< of the operator's actual costs. The incentive to bring costs down, on the operator's part, was that by doing so his profits could grow to even higher levels. Also, the money was available (through the government-subsidized prices) to fund the R&D necessary to bring costs down over the long term, and the incentive was there to make the long term as short as possible. Could this be made to work for space? Many people believe so. I think that this sort of a thing would do a lot more towards the goals of space enthusiasts, than would HR2674. Of course, there would be a cost to the US Government. But, that cost would end up accomplishing something useful, and that's one of the things that governments are supposed to be there for -- to provide support for things that will provide long-term benefits. Also, I can see protectionism being justifiably applied in this case -- if the government is providing an unashamed subsidy to an industry in its country, why should it provide the subsidy to the industries of other countries as well? As a Canadian, it's not for me to say whether this bill should be supported or opposed. As a space enthusiast, I think that (unless my arguments are fundamentally unsound) I should encourage people to oppose it, >>and to replace it with a bill enacting a space equivalent of the air mail contracts<<, or something that would have similar effects. Comments, anyone? -- Kieran A. Carroll @ U of Toronto Aerospace Institute uunet!attcan!utzoo!kcarroll kcarroll@zoo.toronto.edu ------------------------------ Date: 1 Sep 89 00:34:09 GMT From: stadler@apple.com (Andy Stadler) Subject: Re: Galileo Jovian atmospheric probe -- is it sterilized??? In article <1989Aug31.205251.4711@cs.rochester.edu> dietz@cs.rochester.edu.UUCP (Paul Dietz) writes: > > [..regarding sterilization of Galileo to protect Jovian life..] > >The technophobes might worry, but I'm not going to. > > Paul F. Dietz > dietz@cs.rochester.edu Why must concern for life and environment == technophobe? I program computers for a living, like to play with high-tech "toys", and support a strong program of space exploration; yet the thought of accidentally contaminating or even killing other yet unknown life forms scares and concerns me. --Andy stadler@apple.com ------------------------------ Date: 31 Aug 89 10:33:41 GMT From: mcsun!ukc!icdoc!syma!nickw@uunet.uu.net (Nick Watkins) Subject: Re: Magnum snoopsat In article <11757@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu> palmer@tybalt.caltech.edu.UUCP (David Palmer) writes: >I have heard of a US spy satellite (electronic signal gathering) called Magnum. >What I have heard, from not-necessarily-reliable sources is: > 1) 100 meter dish! See below. > 2) Geosynchronous orbit (presumably at the longitude of Moscow) According to Des Ball in "Pine Gap", (Allen & Unwin Australia,1988) it is at 70 degrees East. READ THIS BOOK !!! [not a flame, just a recommendation] > 3) Sends data to the spy nest at Pine Gap, Australia. Yes. >My questions are: > 0) Really? Apparently so. > 1) Is it really 100 meters in diameter? Ball thinks so. > 2) What wavelengths can it handle? "100 MHz through microwave to >25GHz" says Ball. > 3) How do they deploy such a monster? Launch to GEO on IUS and then unfold it, see p.27 of op. cit. > 4) How much would another one cost? (Put it out way beyond GEO, > etc etc. Bearing in mind the technology has been evolving since 1966 at least (first related launch was in mid 1970, of the first Rhyolite) ask yourself why it hasn't happened already, and draw your own conclusions. In fairness I should also note the large antennae on ATS6 and TDRSS, technology does diffuse somewhat. Nick -- Nick Watkins, Space & Plasma Physics Group, School of Mathematical & Physical Sciences, Univ. of Sussex, Brighton, E.Sussex, BN1 9QH, ENGLAND JANET: nickw@syma.sussex.ac.uk BITNET: nickw%syma.sussex.ac.uk@uk.ac Voice: +44 273 678072 ------------------------------ End of SPACE Digest V10 #30 *******************