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 ; Sat, 30 Sep 89 04:22:28 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: Reply-To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU From: space-request+@Andrew.CMU.EDU To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU Date: Sat, 30 Sep 89 04:22:06 -0400 (EDT) Subject: SPACE Digest V10 #92 SPACE Digest Volume 10 : Issue 92 Today's Topics: DSP/Rhyolite San Diego L5 Space Activism Report 9/20/89 Re: Pluto meets Neptune PostScript code for viewing Mars images Re: Galileo Jovian atmospheric probe -- is it sterilized??? Re: Pluto meets Neptune ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 22 Sep 89 13:22:47 GMT From: mcsun!ukc!icdoc!syma!nickw@uunet.uu.net (Nick Watkins) Subject: DSP/Rhyolite Summary of responses to my original query posted to sci.space (and later, in revised form) to sci.military. Hope it is of general interest. > I am researching an article, provisionally for "New Scientist", on > military satellites and have a few queries about the DSP and > Rhyolite/Chalet series of spacecraft. From the work of Des Ball (the > books "Pine Gap" & "A Base for Debate"), plus recent issues of AW&ST > (i.e. all unclassified sources) I have the following list: > 1968-63a 6 Aug 1968 AAD Early Warning Test (Project 949) > 1969-36a 13 Apr 1969 AAD Early Warning Test > 1970-46a 19 Jun 1970 AAD Rhyolite SIGINT > 1970-69a 1 Sep 1970 AAD Early warning Test > 1) Which of 1970-46 or 1970-69 was more likely to be a Rhyolite? Ball is > certain that one was. > Although the former was often cited as having failed to go into GEO, the > reports at the time in AW&ST were contradictory and various sources list > a GEO not GTO. The launcher for both was occasionally described as an Atlas > Agena D plus a kick stage, anyone know anything about this? It seems that 70-46 has to be a Rhyolite, mainly on account of the prevarication about its orbit. What 70-69 was (949 or RH) is not really known. Launcher was probably just an Atlas Agena D but Rhyolite would have had to carry its own apogee motor if the Agena did not circularise the GEO. > 1975-55a 18 Jun 1975 T3C Argus SIGINT This was corrected after the earlier posting to sci.space. I had thought it was a T3C launch, but apparently Patrick AFB, and General Dynamics (who make the Atlas), have confirmed this was an Atlas Agena D. > 1984-09a 31 Jan 1984 T34D DSP11 (failed?) > 1984-37a 15 Apr 1984 T34D DSP12 > 1984-129a 22 Dec 1984 T34D Chalet SIGINT > 1985-10b 24 Jan 1985 STS Magnum SIGINT > 2) Of the launches in 1984, did DSP11 fail to reach GEO as reported by > Ball, and are the identifications of it, DSP12 and the fourth Chalet > (1984-129) correct and in the right order? The order is more likely to be Chalet, DSP 11, DSP 12, Magnum. There is no real reason to believe that 1984-09a failed to reach GEO. The orbit filed with the UN is probably just a parking orbit. > AAD = Atlas Agena D > T3C = Titan 3C > T34D = Titan 34D > STS = Space Shuttle Many thanks to all those who took the trouble to reply. Followups by email or to the Net. 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 ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 22 Sep 89 14:11:39 PDT From: mordor!lll-tis!oodis01!riacs!rutgers!pnet01.cts.com!jim@angband.s1.gov (Jim Bowery) To: ucsd!nosc!crash!space@angband.s1.gov Subject: San Diego L5 Space Activism Report 9/20/89 Members of San Diego L5 met with US Representative Jim Bates Sunday, Sept. 17 in his San Diego office to advocate that he cosponsor HR2674, the Space Transporation Services Purchase Act of 1989. Congressman Bates had his own axe to grind vis HR2699, a clean-air bill introduced by Rep. Bates and other House Democrats in response to President Bush's clean- air initiatives. During a prior visit with Rep. Bates, he mentioned two conditions of cosponsorship of HR2674, 1) that Rep. George Brown (D) of Riverside be a sponsor and 2) that our group advocate reciprocal support of HR2699 with Rep. Ron Packard, the original sponsor of HR2674. Through prior contacts with both Representatives, SDL5 had fulfilled both requirements. Rep. Bates reemphasized his desire for us to continue our advocacy of HR2699 with Rep. Packard which we agreed to do. Upon this agreement, Rep. Bates then agreed to cosponsor HR2674, much to our delight. Two of us (Dr. Andrew Cutler and myself) had prior contact with Rep. Bates on HR2699 through our work on the Sierra Club's Greenhouse Effect policy paper. This history gave our group credibilty with Rep. Bates when we promised to continue to advocate cross-sponsorship with Rep. Packard and points to the fact that activism can be synergistic. The meeting continued with comments on HR2699, particularly as it pertains to NASA's role in atmospheric monitoring. I pointed out to Rep. Bates that the job of monitoring the atmosphere is too critical to be left under the primary juristiction of any one agency -- ie: NASA. Rather support of atmospheric measurement from space as well as within the atmosphere, should be distributed evenly throughout agencies with appropriate purview such as NOAA and NSF as well as NASA for 3 reasons: 1) overlapping purview guarantees independent scientific validation of results 2) competition between the agencies would avoid bureaurcratic inertia in a time-critical arena 3) NASA, having refused to provide Nimbus-7 satellite data to British researchers when those researchers believed they were measuring an ozone-hole in contradiction to NASA reports of Nimbus-7 measurements, proved that NASA could not be entrusted with a sole-source position on atmospheric data, nor could NASA's reassurances to the contrary be trusted given the critical nature of the issues involved Rep. Bates was rather surprised to hear NASA had delayed decisive action on the ozone-hole through their refusal to be open with publicly funded research and asked that we provide him with further documentation before he would pursue corrective legislative action. We agreed to do so (having already done so for the Sierra Club policy paper). He then asked if we were for or against NASA. The consensus was that we were for redirecting NASA to responsible research habits rather than arbiter of access to space transportation and facilities. At one point, in the middle of the meeting, a member of the Planetary Society, who had attended a few of SDL5's events, came into Rep. Bates' office. When Rep. Bates asked us for our vision of how NASA should be redirected, the Planetary Society member began speaking in very mealy-mouthed terms about how he wished to provide NASA with a meaningful goal to refocus its efforts, as had been the case with Apollo. He then began voicing the Joint-US-USSR-Manned-Mars-Mission-For-The-Good- Of-All-Mankind script. I felt compelled to inform Rep. Bates that he was NOT speaking for SDL5, whereupon the other members of SDL5 nodded agreement. He stated this was the Planetary Society vision as articulated by Carl Sagan, and continued to state platitudes about some vague future mission that would be really wonderful. When he finished we didn't have enough time to state our views to Rep. Bates on the matter. Needless to say, this individual is persona-non-grata at all future meetings with Congressmen. The positive aspect of the situation is that we probably couldn't have devised a more effective way of discrediting Carl Sagan's hair-brained "vision" in front of a Congressman. Please post accounts of YOUR visits with your Congressmen and let others see what REAL space activism consists of! If you haven't seen your Congressman recently, DO IT! --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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: 22 Sep 89 20:27:29 GMT From: portal!cup.portal.com!lsheldon@uunet.uu.net (Laurence Larry Sheldon) Subject: Re: Pluto meets Neptune Some times Pluto is closer to the Sun, sometimes Neptune is, right? To a non-astronomer (me) it would appear that (given common centers, the Sun) at some time the orbital "discs" must intersect, and would thus provide for a collision. What am I missing? ------------------------------ Date: 22 Sep 89 02:47:55 GMT From: ogccse!littlei!reed!lclark!wood@ucsd.edu (Lynn Wood) Subject: PostScript code for viewing Mars images Here's the PostScript code that sends the mars images to the LaserWriter. I more or less copied this out of the green PS book and put in into MS Word in Postscript style, then sent it to the printer. sorry, but I still think it's a lump of dirt... -Lynn Wood -----------------------CUT HERE--------------------------- /concatprocs {/proc2 exch cvlit def /proc1 exch cvlit def /newproc proc1 length proc2 length add array def newproc 0 proc1 putinterval newproc proc1 length proc2 putinterval newproc cvx } def /inch {72 mul} def /picstr 3 string def /imagemars {100 100 8 [100 0 0 -100 0 100] {currentfile picstr readhexstring pop} image } def gsave 1 inch 1 inch translate 6 inch dup scale imagemars % PUT MARS DATA HERE grestore showpage -- \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ Lynn S. Wood - wood@lclark.uucp \\ "Darn it! Even in the future \\ (or) !tektronix!reed!lclark!wood \\ nothing works!" -Dark Helmet \\ Lewis & Clark College \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ Portland, OR ------------------------------ Date: 23 Sep 89 01:16:43 GMT From: bfmny0!tneff@uunet.uu.net (Tom Neff) Subject: Re: Galileo Jovian atmospheric probe -- is it sterilized??? In article <1989Sep22.233040.23507@cs.rochester.edu> dietz@cs.rochester.edu.UUCP (Paul Dietz) writes: >I predict that any impact our activities have is going to be >peanuts compared to that of future generations. 1) Only if future generations are as dumb as us. Quite possible! 2) Regardless, it's a tragedy-of-commons class fallacy. Given continually expanding human influence over nature it will ALWAYS be true that what the next fellow does matters more, but ALSO true that what we do matters too. The accumulation of each generation's less-than-the-next- generation impact = everything. Ooh ain't philosophizing grand. :-) -- "Take off your engineering hat | "The filter has | Tom Neff and put on your management hat." | discreting sources." | tneff@bfmny0.UU.NET ------------------------------ Date: 23 Sep 89 15:54:30 GMT From: bfmny0!tneff@uunet.uu.net (Tom Neff) Subject: Re: Pluto meets Neptune Alright, alright, enough! WE ADMIT IT. Neptune and Pluto's orbits intersect precisely in two places, and in fact they go >BONK!< every 3,247.8 years, bounce off each other, and resume their orbits in retrograde. This has been a big hushed up secret in astronomy for years, known only to those who actually crack a book before posting. Sci.space readers evidently have no worries in this regard. :-) -- "Nature loves a vacuum. Digital \O@/ Tom Neff doesn't." -- DEC sales letter /@O\ tneff@bfmny0.UU.NET ------------------------------ End of SPACE Digest V10 #92 *******************