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, 7 Oct 89 04:24:55 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: Reply-To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU From: space-request+@Andrew.CMU.EDU To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU Date: Sat, 7 Oct 89 04:24:32 -0400 (EDT) Subject: SPACE Digest V10 #119 SPACE Digest Volume 10 : Issue 119 Today's Topics: Shuttle-Centaur Re: X-30, Space Station Strangles NASP Re: Magellan summary? Re: Trying to build a fluxgate magnetometer -- help! Re: Electronic Journal of the ASA, Vol. I, No. III Re: Electronic Journal of the ASA, Vol. I, No. III Just Desserts (maybe) HST headed east! RTGs, shuttle launch risks D. D. Harriman Re: The End of Galileo More whining about Galileo HST now in Florida at the cape! AMROC launch coverage ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 4 Oct 89 22:59:58 GMT From: mailrus!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!utzoo!henry@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu (Henry Spencer) Subject: Shuttle-Centaur In article <2275@hydra.gatech.EDU> ccsupos@prism.gatech.EDU (SCHREIBER, O. A.) writes: >... quotes many people >saying the Centaur would have been way unsafe inside the shuttle. Agreed that there were safety problems with Shuttle-Centaur. What I find bizarre is the assertion that these problems could not be solved, given some time (like, say, 2.5 years of no shuttle flights) and effort. -- Nature is blind; Man is merely | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology shortsighted (and improving). | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu ------------------------------ Date: 4 Oct 89 15:02:29 GMT From: skipper!shafer@ames.arc.nasa.gov (Mary Shafer) Subject: Re: X-30, Space Station Strangles NASP In article <9991@venera.isi.edu> raveling@isi.edu (Paul Raveling) writes: Can any of the NASA folks post info on the shuttle's approaches? Isn't the standard pattern a simple 180? What sorts of descent rate or glide slope profile does the shuttle have as a function of altitude & airspeed? The shuttle comes in from the north to north east. It comes "feet dry" at about Mach 7 and 145K ft, it's overhead at Edwards at Mach 1 at about 40K ft. It does a HAC (Heading Alignment Circle) to put it on the runway heading (usually 17 or 22), so essentially the pattern is about a 270 teardrop with a longish final. I think it's a 20 deg glidepath, with a fairly short flair. Final is flown at 285 KEAS, gear deployed at 275 KEAS, touchdown at 185 KEAS. (I'm taking these figures from Young and Crippen's 1981 SETP paper on STS-1, so the speeds may not be exact for any given mission, but they're about right.) -- Mary Shafer shafer@elxsi.dfrf.nasa.gov ames!elxsi.dfrf.nasa.gov!shafer NASA Ames-Dryden Flight Research Facility, Edwards, CA Of course I don't speak for NASA ------------------------------ Date: 4 Oct 89 16:43:58 GMT From: prism!ccsupos@gatech.edu (SCHREIBER, O. A.) Subject: Re: Magellan summary? In article <1989Oct4.035904.22227@utzoo.uucp> henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes: >have sent it there -- Centaur G-prime -- was cancelled due to shuttle safety >hysteria in the wake of Challenger. So Galileo has to make do with the lousy I am almost finished reding "prescription for disaster" by Joseph J. Trento. It is not a very good book I think but it quotes many people saying the Centaur would have been way unsafe inside the shuttle. -- Olivier Schreiber (404)894 6147, Office of Computing Services Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta Georgia, 30332 uucp: ...!{allegra,amd,hplabs,seismo,ut-ngp}!gatech!prism!ccsupos ARPA: ccsupos@prism.gatech.edu ------------------------------ Date: 4 Oct 89 08:10:49 GMT From: emcard!stiatl!rsiatl!jgd@gatech.edu (John G. De Armond) Subject: Re: Trying to build a fluxgate magnetometer -- help! In article <1363@calvin.EE.CORNELL.EDU> johns@calvin.spp.cornell.edu.UUCP (PUT YOUR NAME HERE) writes: > >How many of you circuit dweebs use the "right" term for inverse ohms? >I thought so. > You mean you don't sling your *ahem* Semen(s) around with wild abandon? :-) (I no, I no, it ain't spelled rite but whot the hek?) John -- John De Armond, WD4OQC | Manual? ... What manual ?!? Radiation Systems, Inc. Atlanta, GA | This is Unix, My son, You gatech!stiatl!rsiatl!jgd **I am the NRA** | just GOTTA Know!!! ------------------------------ Date: 4 Oct 89 16:43:28 GMT From: hplabsb!dsmith@hplabs.hp.com (David Smith) Subject: Re: Electronic Journal of the ASA, Vol. I, No. III In article <136@chara.UUCP> don@chara.UUCP () writes: > THE ELECTRONIC JOURNAL OF THE ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY OF THE ATLANTIC ... > The object was still > traversing the Moon at a very steady rate, but it appeared to be > twirling or tumbling.... > Was it a man-made satellite? It had to be ... > I've never won anything, but the odds of being in the right > place and looking at the right time to see the silhouette of an > artificial satellite as it transited the moon must be "astronomical". A friend of mine teaches science in a middle school. A few weeks ago, he was showing sunspots to his class using his telescope, when a satellite transited the sun in a polar orbit. -- David R. Smith, HP Labs dsmith@hplabs.hp.com (415) 857-7898 ------------------------------ Date: 4 Oct 89 17:33:23 GMT From: gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!uwm.edu!mailrus!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!utzoo!henry@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu (Henry Spencer) Subject: Re: Electronic Journal of the ASA, Vol. I, No. III In article <136@chara.UUCP> don@chara.UUCP () writes: > as the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in the U.S. was doing with its > VOYAGER mock-ups (later to be known as VIKING) around the same time. A small error here: Viking was not just a renaming of the original Voyager project. The original Voyager project, which planned large, ambitious unmanned missions to both Venus and Mars, was killed around the same time that the last three Apollo missions died. Viking was an attempt to do a much-cut-back mission at much lower cost. -- Nature is blind; Man is merely | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology shortsighted (and improving). | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu ------------------------------ Date: 4 Oct 89 21:12:23 GMT From: frooz!cfashap!willner@husc6.harvard.edu (Steve Willner) Subject: Just Desserts (maybe) [Excerpt from AP story by Jay Sharbutt in Boston Globe 1989 Sept. 28] This summer, a CBS source said, [producer Perry] Wolff was suspended by CBS News after the disclosure that a July special on man's first walk on the moon identifies footage taken in 1972 as having occurred during the first moon walk in 1969. Wolff called it "an honest mistake" and blamed a mislabeled tape. Both he and CBS News spokesmen have refused to confirm or deny that he was suspended. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Steve Willner Phone 617-495-7123 Bitnet: willner@cfa 60 Garden St. FTS: 830-7123 UUCP: willner@cfa Cambridge, MA 02138 USA Internet: willner@cfa.harvard.edu ------------------------------ Date: 4 Oct 89 12:48:35 GMT From: stsci!sims@noao.edu (Jim Sims) Subject: HST headed east! The HST is headed east at long last! It departed California on 10/3/89 just after dawn. Launch is still set for March 26, 1990. See you there. -- Jim Sims Space Telescope Science Institute Baltimore, MD UUCP: {arizona,decvax,hao,ihnp4}!noao!stsci!sims INTERNET: sims@stsci.edu SPAM: SCIVAX::SIMS ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 4 Oct 89 13:45:10 EDT From: John Roberts Disclaimer: Opinions expressed are those of the sender and do not reflect NIST policy or agreement. Subject: RTGs, shuttle launch risks >From: voder!pyramid!infmx!cortesi@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (David Cortesi) >"Source: Interagency Nuclear Safety Review Panel." I am reproducing the >chart below, not for what it says about plutonium but for the very >remarkable and frightening things it seems to say about the shuttle. >Accident Risk of Risk of Pop. Fatal Individual > Accident Pl. release Exposed* Cancers Risk >External fuel tank >explodes on launch pad 1:256 1:1e6 860,000 40 1:25e9 >Shuttle hits tower >and explodes 1:5,000 1:1e6 670,000 20 1:33e9 ... >* Exposure is more than 1 millirem in 50 years >But what is very clear is that the "Interagency Nuclear Safety Review >Panel" (whoever they are) have published some very scary numbers on the >risk of an unsuccessful shuttle launch. 1 chance in 256 of the external >tank blowing! 1 in 556 of SRB rupture at launch! Where did these >first-column numbers come from? Are they correct? Several people have said that the official estimate for the loss of a shuttle (meaning that the shuttle is in some way damaged to the extent that it can not be used again) is a chance of about 1:78 for a typical mission. I have never seen a breakdown by type of accident, so I can't say whether or not the numbers in the first column are plausible. There are risks associated with any manned rocket launch, which is why the nearest shuttle spectators are over three miles away. Note that the 1:78 figure is small enough that shuttle replacements would make up only a small percentage of operating costs. Potential astronauts should be given the most accurate available figures, and if they are uncomfortable with the risks, they shouldn't fly. The columns for chance of release, number exposed, and number of deaths obviously contain many underlying assumptions, without which it is difficult to judge their correctness. I've always been particularly skeptical of the assertion that "if you expose a large group of people to a certain amount of radioactive material, then 1 out of 20000 [for example] will eventually die as a result". It seems to me that it would be almost impossible to establish the proper controls for any study to ensure that the numbers are anywhere near accurate. Just as a reference, I'd like to see an estimate (using the same techniques) of the number of environmentally-related human deaths one would expect to result from the known toxins and radioactive materials released by a "typical" coal-fired power plant in a year of operation. I suspect the number would be high enough to surprise most people. Since coal-fired plants are not "nukes", the fringe groups tend to leave them alone. John Roberts roberts@cmr.ncsl.nist.gov ------------------------------ Date: 4 Oct 89 09:03:06 GMT From: sjsca4!ukfca1!fraser@uunet.uu.net (Fraser McCrossan) Subject: D. D. Harriman > "Where is D.D. Harriman now, | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology > when we really *need* him?" Working for Glavcosmos, I believe.... -- |Fraser McCrossan | "Impossible, sir. I know from long |Schlumberger ATE Div. Ferndown; UK | experience that my men have all the |fraser@ukfca1 (SINET) | artistic talent of a cluster of |fraser@ukfca1.uk.ate.slb.com | colour-blind hedgehogs...in a bag." ------------------------------ Date: 4 Oct 89 17:08:42 GMT From: bungia!quest!tcnet!questar!al@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu (Al Viall) Subject: Re: The End of Galileo In article , CHRISTOPHER@GACVAX1.BITNET writes: > I have read and heard about the Galileo spacecraft's 22 month mission > at Jupiter, which will end about October 1997. Does anyone know what > will happen then? Will the spacecraft be shut down? Does it plunge > into Jupiter (because of the 10 satellite-gravity assists)? Is this > how long its RTG's are supposed to last? > > Does someone have some information on this? > It's very possible that this is how long the RTG's will last. Or rather, they won't last too much longer than this and any juice that JPL can squeeze out by that time would be heaven sent. Hey! We're talking about alot of years here. - Al - -- | INTERNET: al@questar.QUESTAR.MN.ORG | FLASH: "Dan Quayle's face | | UUCP: ..!amdahl!tcnet!questar!al | seen on Mars" It Looks Puzzled| | "Uhh, Excuse me while I take a moment to adjust my tribble." | ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------ Date: 5 Oct 89 00:47:24 GMT From: agate!shelby!portia!doom@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Joseph Brenner) Subject: More whining about Galileo My emotional reaction to the news of the Christic institute's attack is extreme depression. I'm once again impressed with the extreme stupidity of our society: we don't seem to have anything resembling a rational way of resolving debates like this. We don't even have a halfway reasonable way of ranking what questions are worth debating. We seemed to be ruled by a tyranny of fear, a collection of unthinking reactions to buzzwords and images. You can see people on this newsgroup screaming in frustration, trying to argue in terms of quantitative risk estimates, and qualtitative comparisions to other risks, and in short bringing out the whole range of arguments that have already arisen in the nuclear power debate. But all these arguments have already fallen on deaf ears. The question is now in the hands of the courts-- technically ignorant and notoriously flaky, and all we can do is hope that NASA will bring off the launch by force of authority and momentum, before the hysteria really gets rolling again. And in a way, focusing on risk analysis misses the real point. You wind up dealing with things you can stick numbers on, like probabilities of accidents and potential lives lost, and you underplay the real value of the mission, which to me at least, is close to infinite. We're talking about a probe into the atmosphere of Jupiter! It's not just a fly-by, not more peering through telescopes, but a chance to stick our noses right up against the face of the unknown. If this isn't worth risking our lives, then what is it we're alive for? The problem with the Galileo is nothing new, but it really brings home to me a number of things I suppose I already knew: This is not my world, these people are not my people. We have things in common, but the way I think is not at all the way they do, and the things I care about most strike them as trivial and tedious. The only way I can see to go from this realization is to get away from the mundanes as much as I can. Work private, keep things small, and maybe we can dance around them, if not with them. -- Joe B. (J.JBRENNER@MACBETH.STANFORD.EDU Materials Science Dept/Stanford, CA 94305) ------------------------------ Date: 4 Oct 89 19:15:14 GMT From: stsci!sims@noao.edu (Jim Sims) Subject: HST now in Florida at the cape! HST TRANSPORTED FROM LOCKHEED TO KSC - IT'S OFFICIAL ****************************************************** Official confirmation has been received that this morning, 4th October, 1989, HST arrived at Kennedy 7:45 EDT. -- Jim Sims Space Telescope Science Institute Baltimore, MD UUCP: {arizona,decvax,hao,ihnp4}!noao!stsci!sims INTERNET: sims@stsci.edu SPAM: SCIVAX::SIMS ------------------------------ Date: 4 Oct 89 18:48:30 GMT From: cica!ctrsol!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!ginosko!usc!aero!smith@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu (Thomas F. Smith) Subject: AMROC launch coverage In response to questions: Yes the launch is scheduled for 10:28 am PDT. NO, NASA select will not coverage this attempt. In case you missed the previous post. AMROC, American Rocket Company is scheduled to launch the "Koopman Express" 5 OCT 89, 10:28 am PDT from pad ABRES-a3 at Vandenberg AFB, CA. Access to the launch is by AMROC pass only. ------------------------------ End of SPACE Digest V10 #119 *******************