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 04:22:36 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <8Z88ApW00VcJA3AU4r@andrew.cmu.edu> Reply-To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU From: space-request+@Andrew.CMU.EDU To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU Date: Wed, 27 Sep 89 04:22:14 -0400 (EDT) Subject: SPACE Digest V10 #80 SPACE Digest Volume 10 : Issue 80 Today's Topics: Tombaugh's Planet Search (was: Alternate Voyager Missions) News of the Week, Sep 15 Re: RTGs for use on earth Re: Galileo Jovian atmospheric probe -- is it sterilized??? Re: Re: Saturn V & F-1 Re: Galileo Jovian atmospheric probe -- is it sterilized??? Galileo Earth fly-bys Re: NASA forced to photo Cydonia ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 16 Sep 89 10:07:23 GMT From: cs.utexas.edu!mailrus!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!utzoo!sq!msb@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu (Mark Brader) Subject: Tombaugh's Planet Search (was: Alternate Voyager Missions) (This being a sci.astro-ish topic, I've added a cross-posting over there, but I've directed followups to stay in sci.space where this thread originated.) > ... Clyde Tombaugh searched most (not all) > of the ecliptic to rather faint limits and found no new outer planets. Tombaugh searched all of the ecliptic and then some. People interested in the search for Pluto should find the 1980 book "Out of the Darkness: The Planet Pluto" by Clyde W. Tombaugh and Patrick Moore. (Paperback by Mentor (New American Library), ISBN 0-461-61997-8.) All the material on the actual search is identified as by Tombaugh, while Moore discusses related topics such as the search for Neptune. Tombaugh writes: # By July 1943 the entire area of sky north of south declination 50 degrees # had been photographed, from Canopus to Polaris. I had finished blinking # all of the accessible southern hemisphere, also all the area between # 1 hour to [sic] 13 hours of right ascension to north declination 60 # degrees (including the Great Dipper). # # ... I had blinked all the plates to over 35 degrees north of the winter # solstice region; much of this was in the Milky Way and very laborious # and time-consuming. # # I intended to blink a few more pairs ... when the planet search came # quickly to a complete stop. I was drafted ... (Of course "blinking" refers to comparing two plates to find an object that moved. The plates north of the blinked area were for other purposes than finding planets.) Tombaugh summarizes the search statistically as follows: # ... the estimated number of stars in the examined areas totalled # 44,675,000 (plus or minus 1 million), or a total of 90 million star # images, counting those on each plate of the pairs. Every one of those # 90 million images were seen individually by me. It required a total of # 7000 hours of work at the Blink-Comparator. # # In this extensive search, the following discoveries were made in order # of importance: one trans-Neptunian planet, one globular star cluster, # one cloud (or super-cluster) of galaxies, several lesser clusters of # galaxies, five "open" galactic star clusters, and about 775 asteroids. # # On the plates, I marked 3969 asteroid images, 1807 variable stars, # and counted 29,548 galaxies. Few astronomers have seen so much of the # Universe to such minute detail. > That would suggest any new planets would be away from the ecliptic. Certainly true. *Well* away from it. Or quite dim. Tombaugh writes: # ... I ... marked several thousand faint planet suspects, all of which # proved to be spurious when checked with the third plate. Over 90% of # those were very faint, within the last magnitude of the limit of the # plate. As a result, I would be willing to guarantee that there were # no more distant planets brighter than magnitude 16.5 at the time the # plates were taken. (Pluto was about magnitude 15 at its discovery.) # ... I could have picked up a planet like Neptune at seven times Neptune's # distance from the Sun ... I could have picked up Pluto at 1.5 times its # average distance from the Sun. A planet with the size and reflecting # power of the Earth could have been detected at 100 astronomical units, # or 2.5 times the distance of Pluto in 1930. ... Jupiter would have been # detectable to a distance of 470 astronomical units. Go find the book. it's good. -- Mark Brader, SoftQuad Inc., Toronto, utzoo!sq!msb, msb@sq.com "[Jupiter's] satellites are invisible to the naked eye and therefore can have no influence on the Earth and therefore would be useless and therefore do not exist." -- Francesco Sizi, quoted by T. Cox This article is in the public domain. ------------------------------ Date: 15 Sep 89 15:41:56 GMT From: frooz!cfa250!mcdowell@husc6.harvard.edu (Jonathan McDowell) Subject: News of the Week, Sep 15 Jonathan's Space Report Sep 15, 1989 (no.25) --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Soyuz TM-8/Mir/Progress M complex continues in orbit, crewed by Aleksandr Viktorenko and Aleksandr Serebrov. Atlantis/STS-34/Galileo is scheduled for launch on Oct 12. Two classified payloads were aboard the Titan 34D launch on Sep 4. They are probably DSCS communication satellites and are now presumably in geostationary orbit. Another classified US satellite was launched on Sep 6. No details yet, but it's a year since the first Titan II SLV launch from Vandenberg, so another of those would be a good first guess. Any details, anyone? Another Resurs-F remote sensing satellite was launched by the USSR on Sep 6. (c) 1989 Jonathan McDowell Off to DC all next week, so next one will be late... ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 15 Sep 89 10:01:01 EDT From: Kenneth Ng :------------------------------ : :Date: 2 Sep 89 03:58:11 GMT :From: agate!shelby!portia!hanauma!joe@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Joe Dellinger) :Subject: Re: Voyager's Interstellar Itinerary : :In article GILL@QUCDNAST.BITNET : writes: :>296036 Closest approach to Sirius - 4.32 ly away. :> 14.64 ly from the Sun. :> :> Personally, I wouldn't trust the numbers past about 60000 years - :>there are still too many unknown possibilities for gravitational influences. :> :I wouldn't trust numbers past 1000 years myself. I'll make a 50$ bet that :within 600 years Voyager will be proudly on display in the Smithsonian, as :a monument to the fading days of the WWII era of world history. (I'm willing :to make a 50$ bet because I know 50$ by then will be the equivalent of 2 cents :now.) Smithsonian? Do you really think an American team will be the first to go out that far? What's the Soviet equivalent of the Smithsonian? ------------------------------ Date: 15 Sep 89 14:36:31 GMT From: frooz!cfa.HARVARD.EDU@husc6.harvard.edu (Bill Wyatt) Subject: Re: RTGs for use on earth >>The Mexican incident [...] > > Just to keep this straight -- there was a separate incident, in Brazil I > believe, involving a discarded radioisotope (Cs) source from a medical > lab, disposed of by tossing into a public dump. [...] > Hundreds of people were permanently injured and several > lives lost, not only because of some Brazilian laboratory's negligence, > but also because people the world over still deal with technology on a > mystical level. My recollection of this is not quite identical. The laboratory went bankrupt, and the owner refused to let the people in to dispose of the radioisotopes, which were stolen during a subsequent break-in. The stuff was then discarded, and later found and distributed by poor people who had little knowledge and less education about radioactivity. My point is that the tragedy was not due to the laboratory's negligence. Bill Wyatt, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (Cambridge, MA, USA) UUCP : {husc6,cmcl2,mit-eddie}!harvard!cfa!wyatt ARPA: wyatt@cfa.harvard.edu SPAN: cfa::wyatt BITNET: wyatt@cfa ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 15 Sep 89 09:46:09 PDT From: Peter Scott Subject: Re: Galileo Jovian atmospheric probe -- is it sterilized??? sco!evanh@uunet.uu.net (Evan A.C. Hunt) writes: > How difficult would it be at this point to sterilize the atmosphere >probe? I have difficulty believing that something designed to withstand >Jovian conditions would be damaged if we ran hot steam over it for a few >hours. I agree that the risk of contaminating Jupiter is small, but if >the cost to make it even smaller is negligible, then I think it's much >more foolish not to try. Well, what's the point in doing it unless you do it right? Some bugs just love hot steam. And was already pointed out, the *surface* of the probe is going to get a pretty thorough dusting en route anyway; some posters were worried about the *interior* of the probe. Wanna take it apart now? Peter Scott (pjs@grouch.jpl.nasa.gov) ------------------------------ Date: 17 Sep 89 01:45:27 GMT From: haven!uvaarpa!hudson!astsun.astro.Virginia.EDU!gl8f@ames.arc.nasa.gov (Greg Lindahl) Subject: Re: Re: Saturn V & F-1 In article <14685@bfmny0.UU.NET> tneff@bfmny0.UU.NET (Tom Neff) writes: >>[someone else] >>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. Of course, the main competition to the S5 would be the shuttle-C. The main engines for the shuttle-C are flying today. By your own argument, it must be cheaper to build shuttle-C using existing components than to reconstruct the Saturn V from rusting originals. What the Shuttle C lacks is the political committment needed to fund it. I think it would be quite a bit cheaper to loft the space station on a few shuttle C flights then a bunch of shuttle flights. If Congress can't back that kind of cost savings, what makes you think they're going to take the more radical step of rebuilding the Saturn V? ------ Greg Lindahl gl8f@virginia.edu I'm not the NRA. ------------------------------ Date: 16 Sep 89 17:39:33 GMT From: cs.utexas.edu!mailrus!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!csri.toronto.edu!wayne@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu (Wayne Hayes) Subject: Re: Galileo Jovian atmospheric probe -- is it sterilized??? In article <470@ctycal.UUCP> ingoldsb@ctycal.COM (Terry Ingoldsby) writes: >I'm baffled. We are losing many species of life each year (the number 2/day >sticks in my mind) here on earth and there seems to be more commotion about >Jovian life that may or may not exist, and certainly isn't as important to >me even if it does exist. I realize that this is a *very* earth centered >viewpoint (for which I will surely be flamed) but I live on this planet and >I'm more concerned about protecting earth's environment than the (exceedingly) >primitive life that *might* exist on Jupiter. If the space probes give us >info that might be of use in predicting/protecting earth's environment then >the possible demise of a few Jovian bugs does not upset me unduly. >-- > Terry Ingoldsby ctycal!ingoldsb@calgary.UUCP > Land Information Systems or > The City of Calgary ...{alberta,ubc-cs,utai}!calgary!ctycal!ingoldsb Ok, flame on :-). First think of the same thing happenning here on Earth about 800 million years ago. Then there was not much more than microscopic multi-celled creatures here. However there *had* been life for nearly 3 *BILLION* years. Ie, it took a *long* time for life to go from nothing just to multi- cellular. Then things really took off. So if there's "bugs" on Jupiter, they're certainly deserving at least as much evolutionary "respect" as anything on Earth, probably having evolved to a large degree as much as we have. So 800 million years ago some extra-terrestrials come mosying by and say of the Earth, "Gee, look, nothing more than sub-insects here. Let's colonize it." The potential loss of an advanced ecosystem totally different than any other is, at the very least, a massive scientific loss in the far future. (Sheesh! Imagine studying the evolution of life on a non-Earth planet for millions of years!! Right here in our own back yard!! Shit, Our ancestors would *NEVER* forgive us for for screwing up an opportunity like that!) I guess it is a somewhat subjective opinion (though one that many people take *very* seriously, both with reason and strong emotion -- just ask any "Trekkie" who believes in Gene Roddenberry's "Prime Directive"), but I just strongly believe that we have no right to go screwing around with an environment we know nothing about. Yes, it's a trajedy what's happeining on Earth due to our stupidity, but certainly does not give us the right to try and fix our stupidity here by just propagating that stupidity to a completely "virgin" environment. I don't think Galileo's atmospheric probe is going to tell us much about how to save our environment. Learning about Jupiter's weather and cloud motion as it pertains to learning about Earth's environment is going to involve deep and long term radar probing of the atmosphere. The Galileo atmospheric probe is doing for Jupiter's atmosphere what Voyager did to it's cloud tops: some very, very basic info to whet our appetites. It is very scientifically exciting, that's about it. As I said in a recent posting, I personnally have been convinced by the posters of sci.astro that the risk of contamination is negligible, and even that the chance of life there is also small. But the philosophy is still strong: don't mess with planet that may have life that we may screw up. I'm still uneasy about it, but not as much as before. -- "If I had only known, I would have been a locksmith." -- Albert Einstein Wayne Hayes INTERNET: wayne@csri.toronto.edu CompuServe: 72401,3525 ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 16 Sep 89 13:31:27 PDT From: Peter Scott Subject: Galileo Earth fly-bys I saw plots the other day of the ground tracks for the two Earth fly-bys of Galileo. I'm sorry to say that they're both over south-western Africa and Galileo is unlikely to be visible from North America anywhere near closest approach. Forgot to check time of day, of course, so don't even know whether it's dark then. Of course, this is good news if you live in Namibia and it's midnight GMT... Peter Scott (pjs@grouch.jpl.nasa.gov) ------------------------------ Date: 15 Sep 89 20:06:42 GMT From: bfmny0!tneff@uunet.uu.net (Tom Neff) Subject: Re: NASA forced to photo Cydonia In article <124798@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> kschmahl@eng.sun.com (Ken Schmahl) writes: >I'm surprised no one has posted this yet, so I'll do it now: >In Thursday's (9/14) Wall Street Journal... Side note - once again, remember news propagation delay. A bunch of people may very well *have* posted it, as we'll soon see :-) >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. It's a nice idea to study chaotic terrain closely, even if airheads are believing face-in-the-rug games (I wish Hoagland had seen the curtains in my bedroom as a kid -- *definite* evidence!). There is a lot to learn. But Albee is fooling him[?]self to think anything NASA can do will kill off the rumors -- such things are made to survive, not go away. >But the Mars Project's Mr. Hoagland says [checking for evidence of >construction with 3-meter resolution] is 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?" Note how he positions himself early for damage control in the event of a negative finding. (This is a pattern common to cannier UFO and "psychic" purveyors.) If common or garden evidence fails to show, it is declared of no interest, and faces-in-the-rug restored to preeminence. With better resolution there will be decades worth of geometrical nonsense to be extracted. It would make a nice control for NASA to deliver Hoagland a digitized image of a segment of actual living room rug mislabeled as Cydonia, just to see what findings he announced, but I doubt they have the guts. :-) -- \\\ 'We have luck only with women -- *-((O Tom Neff not spacecraft!' \\\ tneff@bfmny0.UU.NET ------------------------------ End of SPACE Digest V10 #80 *******************