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 ; Wed, 27 Sep 89 03:23:57 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: Reply-To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU From: space-request+@Andrew.CMU.EDU To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU Date: Wed, 27 Sep 89 03:23:31 -0400 (EDT) Subject: SPACE Digest V10 #79 SPACE Digest Volume 10 : Issue 79 Today's Topics: Re: Voyager RTGs space organization -- What needs to be accomplished Re: Re: Saturn V & F-1 NASA forced to photo Cydonia Searching for the 10th planet Re: Re: Saturn V & F-1 Re: NSS Dial-A-Shuttle Release Planetary exploration featured in next satellite video conference (Forwarded) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 15 Sep 89 18:43:00 EDT From: John Roberts Disclaimer: Opinions expressed are those of the sender and do not reflect NIST policy or agreement. Subject: Re: Voyager RTGs >From: mailrus!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!utzoo!henry@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu (Henry Spencer) >In article masticol@athos.rutgers.edu (Steve Masticola) writes: >>Can the RTG be conserved by reducing power use, or are the instruments >>being shut off because there won't be adequate power available for >>them at that time? The former seems unlikely... >It is; the RTG decay rate is preordained. I think either the "shutting >down instruments to conserve power" is really "eventually power will get >short, and we might as well turn them off now because they're no longer >useful", or somebody has misunderstood slightly. I believe the cameras had to be kept warm using electric heaters. Are any other instruments kept warm? If so, turning some of the instruments off could be an effort to make use of the limited power supply to keep other instruments alive. John Roberts roberts@cmr.ncsl.nist.gov ------------------------------ Date: 17 Sep 89 01:20:27 GMT From: pezely@louie.udel.edu (pezely) Subject: space organization -- What needs to be accomplished (Was: Corporate Space Admin. Now a non-profit, independant organization.) While trying to come up with a formal definition of our organization, here's a list of concerns which I came up with. 1. Help to get a space station assembled which will eventually have both a rotating and non-rotating section for experiments and a permanent staff. 2. Achieve number 1 (or at least be ready to assemble) by the year 2000. 3. Increase public awareness to the point that every household in USA knows what is happening and knows of at least one benefit of the space station which will directly or indirectly effect them. 4. Have our own engineers (the top in the field) complete designs for a practical space station which is modular and inexpensive. 5. Show the contractors that our designs are worth their money and efforts to construct. This means showing them the vast profit potential for the long run. 6. Find customers for the space station at every stage of its development (each point where more people/labs can move in). 7. Raise vast amounts of money from the general public and private investors (Billions-of-dollars range) to help pay for the station. 8. Become a liaison/lobbying group for industry, government, and organizations. 9. Become the one-stop information service for industry, government, organizations, and the rest of the world. These are the things which must be done. They will most likely be done in the reverse order in which they appear in the list, and the list is in order of importance of the entire space program (to some extent). Comment, please. (e-mail or post) - Daniel -- Daniel Pezely (Home: 728 Bent Lane, Newark, DE 19711) Computer Science Lab, 102 Smith Hall, U of Del, Newark, DE 19716 302/451-6339 ------------------------------ Date: 16 Sep 89 23:46:40 GMT From: cs.utexas.edu!mailrus!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!utzoo!henry@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu (Henry Spencer) Subject: Re: Re: Saturn V & F-1 In article <310016@hpclove.HP.COM> campbelr@hpclove.HP.COM (Bob Campbell) writes: > Without the advantages of existing designs and production > facilities, why not try to build it better? It possibly > could prove cheaper than a redesign and give a better > engine (and better engineers!) It can prove quite a bit cheaper than a slavish imitation of the original. It is reported that, when the time came to build Endeavour, Rockwell said they could build three new orbiters for the same price if NASA would allow them to substitute compatible bits of hardware instead of exactly duplicating all the original systems. Even with the few years of delay since Atlantis, some of the bits and pieces were hard to get and some subcontractors were gone. Predictably, NASA didn't go for it. -- 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: 15 Sep 89 18:15:08 GMT From: hastings!kschmahl@sun.com (Ken Schmahl) Subject: NASA forced to photo Cydonia I'm surprised no one has posted this yet, so I'll do it now: In Thursday's (9/14) Wall Street Journal, page B1, the following article was printed (copied here without permission): ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Here's a space trip that's pretty far out even if it doesn't reach Neptune. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration will soon hunt for pyramids. On Mars. The space agency says it has granted a longstanding request from some space buffs, who call themselves the Mars Project, to photograph the Cydonia region of Mars. Cydonia may be home to a field of pyramids and other rock formations erected by alien beings, speculate Mars Project enthusiasts, who pore over old photos of Mars looking for odd things. They have even found one rock formation that looks like a human face. Richard Hoagland, the Mars Project founder, says he assumes that through the pyramids the aliens are trying to tell us "something significant, something useful." But he doesn't know just what yet. Mr. Hoagland ruminations have long been a source of merriment among space scientists. But NASA started taking him more seriously after he recently recruited Rep. Robert Roe, a New Jersey Democrat who is chairman of the House Science and Space Committee, to help him. Rep. Roe's staff asked NASA whether it planned to photograph Cydonia with it's Mars Observer spacecraft, scheduled for launch in September 1992 - with the clear implication that if it didn't, it should. "With space, there are so many unknowns, why not take a picture?" reasons Robert Maitlin, an aide to Rep. Roe. So now NASA, grudgingly, says it will try to unravel the pyramid scheme with new photos of Cydonia. "We'll try, if only to kill off the rumors," says Arden Albee, the Mars Observer project scientist. The Mars Observer camera can see objects as small as a car. If aliens built in Cydonia, says Michael Malin, the Arizona State University scientist who manages the camera for NASA, there should be small buildings, roads and dump sites. "That would be clear evidence" that the formations aren't just weird geology, he says. But the Mars Project's Mr. Hoagland says that's asking too much. Roads could erode, over time, and aliens might have different ways of building things from those of humans. What he's looking for are unusual geometric patterns that indicate the presence of intelligence. "I don't want to limit ourselves to things we'd expect to see," he says. "How alien is alien?" ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- A good example of how far Congressional influence can reach (all the way to Mars). Ken Schmahl %^) hdwr I/O subsystems, Sun Microsystems, Mtn. View, Ca. kschmahl@eng.sun.com ...sun!eng!kschmahl ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 16 Sep 89 02:13:41 SET From: I0908%DKAFHS1.BITNET@VMA.CC.CMU.EDU Comment: CROSSNET mail via MAILER@CMUCCVMA Subject: Searching for the 10th planet Date: 16 September 1989, 02:03:40 SET From: Cornelius Caesar BITNET / EARN: I0908 at DKAFHS1 To: space+ at andrew.cmu.edu I have read in the past about speculations for the possibility of the exixtence of a 10th planet. Would the deep space probes (Pioneer 10+11, Voyager 1+2) give data (for example gravitational anomalies, visual contact) for this search? What about the Space Telescope? Or am I "behind the moon" and the non-existence has already been proven? Cornelius ------------------------------ Date: 16 Sep 89 22:33:27 GMT From: bfmny0!tneff@uunet.uu.net (Tom Neff) Subject: Re: Re: Saturn V & F-1 In article <310016@hpclove.HP.COM> campbelr@hpclove.HP.COM (Bob Campbell) writes: >The problems I see with rebuilding the Saturn V are: >1: No job for it. > Face it. If we needed them we would have kept building them. ... This verges on circular reasoning. Was it right, or wrong, for the space program to peter out after the Apollo challenge was met? If we wanted to keep our momentum, to keep expanding with Apollo Applications, the orbiting laboratories, more lunar landings and an eventual base, we needed the Saturn V. When we decided to shift the emphasis from can-do to make-do, when the primary mission became how to dismantle a working program with a maximum of face saving and a minimum of boat rocking, we no longer needed them so they weren't built. That doesn't mean there's no job for the Saturn V, it means the USG lacks the political will to tackle it. >2. Missing knowledge and tools > Like they said, it will take a bit of work to try and rebuild it. > Without a strong commitment (see #1) it isn't going to happen. As our ex-S5 engineer poster suggested last week, they ain't dead yet. I bet *anything* it would be cheaper to reconstruct a rocket from what they know than it would be to design a new one from scratch. >3. If we need to redesign anyways . . . > > Without the advantages of existing designs and production > facilities, why not try to build it better? ... This is of course the NASA answer too. Only by rethinking and gold plating everything can we support endless new contractor studies, which are an industry in themselves these days. Meanwhile the Soviets outlaunch us 20 to 1 using 20 year old boosters. What's wrong with this picture! We're in Catch-22. Nobody (Western) can afford to orbit the bulk hardware needed to get anything really major going in space, precisely *because* we mothballed the Saturn instead of reaping the long term dividends of its (very expensive) design. Therefore industry is scared of space and there's no market for a new Saturn. -- 'We have luck only with women -- \\\ Tom Neff not spacecraft!' *-((O tneff@bfmny0.UU.NET -- R. Kremnev, builder of FOBOS \\\ uunet!bfmny0!tneff (UUCP) ------------------------------ Date: 15 Sep 89 15:29:54 GMT From: bfmny0!tneff@uunet.uu.net (Tom Neff) Subject: Re: NSS Dial-A-Shuttle Release In article <1050400010@cdp> jordankatz@press-hype.NSS writes: > The two extraordinary [Galileo-] Earth encounters, which will occur in > 1990 and 1992, will provide the first ever deep space look at our own > planet. I dispute this. If memory serves, it was Mariner 10 in 1973 which turned its cameras backward after orbital insertion to Venus and Mercury, and gave us our first long shot view (a rather famous one) of Moon and Earth together in space. However, it may be that the National Space Society wasn't organized at that time, so it doesn't count. :-) [two points Neff, nice bash job] -- 'We have luck only with women -- ((O Tom Neff not spacecraft!' \\\ tneff@bfmny0.UU.NET ------------------------------ Date: 16 Sep 89 00:02:25 GMT From: trident.arc.nasa.gov!yee@ames.arc.nasa.gov (Peter E. Yee) Subject: Planetary exploration featured in next satellite video conference (Forwarded) Terri Sindelar Headquarters, Washington, D.C. RELEASE: 89-144 PLANETARY EXPLORATION FEATURED IN NEXT SATELLITE VIDEO CONFERENCE On October 3, NASA's Educational Affairs Division, Washington, D.C., through Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, will transmit via satellite an educational, video conference to discuss upcoming solar system exploration missions and the recent Voyager encounter with Neptune. Dr. Lennard A. Fisk, NASA's Associate Administrator of Space Science and Applications, will discuss NASA's upcoming space science and planetary missions. NASA has planned or already has underway over 35 major space science missions during the next 5 years. These include: the Magellan mission, launched from the Space Shuttle last May, will radar map Venus; the Galileo spacecraft, scheduled for launch Oct. 12, which will study Jupiter; the Cosmic Background Explorer, to be launched in early November, which will examine the sun's radiation; Hubble Space Telescope, a free-flying observatory to investigate celestial bodies and study the history and evolution of the universe, is scheduled for launch in March 1990. Dr. Fisk also will discuss NASA's plans for the Craf-Cassini missions to rendezvous with a comet and study Saturn and its moon Titan. Dr. Edward C. Stone, Voyager Project Scientist, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., will discuss the recent Voyager 2 encounter with Neptune and show imagery of the planet and its recently discovered massive dark spot, rings and moons. These live, 1-1/2 hour, interactive, video conferences are designed to update teachers on NASA programs, demonstrate aerospace activities for the classroom and announce new programs, products and activities available to classroom teachers. The nation's participating school districts will receive transmissions from 2:30 to 4:00 p.m. Eastern time. NASA's education satellite, video-conference series, now in its fourth year, have been highly praised by educators throughout the nation. This year more than 20,000 educators in 50 states are expected to participate. The 1989-90 video conference schedule is: Planetary Exploration - Oct. 3, 1989 Flight Testing - Dec. 5, 1989 Space Science in the Classroom (SEEDS) - Jan. 23, 1990 Robotics in Space - Mar. 27, 1990 The Oct. 3 conference will be transmitted on Westar IV, channel 19. There is no charge for registration or participation in the video conference. To register for the series, interested teachers should write to NASA Aerospace Education Services Project, Videoconference Site, 300 North Cordell, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, Okla., 74078-0422, or call 405/744-7015. Registration ensures that announcements, publications and other materials for teacher- participants are received at the school. Media and organizations interested in participating can access the satellite or view the event from NASA Headquarters, 400 Maryland Ave., S.W., room 6004, Washington, D.C. ------------------------------ End of SPACE Digest V10 #79 *******************