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/usr11/tm2b/space/space.dl@andrew.cmu.edu (->+dist+/afs/andrew.cmu.edu/usr11/tm2b/space/space.dl) (->ota+space.digests) ID ; Mon, 6 Nov 89 01:31:34 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: <4ZJGIDm00VcJAGeE5w@andrew.cmu.edu> Reply-To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU From: space-request+@Andrew.CMU.EDU To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU Date: Mon, 6 Nov 89 01:30:41 -0500 (EST) Subject: SPACE Digest V10 #208 SPACE Digest Volume 10 : Issue 208 Today's Topics: Re: Design for Luna City Re: galileo and me Re: Design for Luna City Apology regarding posting regarding gravity Re: galileo and me Re: Moon Colonies / Ant Tanks? Re: Balloon Launch attempt of a High Power Rocket (40 Miles). Test msg -- ignore Space Hotel or Donald Trump has missed the boat. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 5 Nov 89 20:38:05 GMT From: uceng!dmocsny@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu (daniel mocsny) Subject: Re: Design for Luna City In article <2553A8FA.EEB@drivax.UUCP>, macleod@drivax.UUCP (MacLeod) writes: > > There are basements and basements. The first lunar cubics will be Spartan, > but later developments - I'll bet - will take your breath away. Let's hope not. I prefer living somewhere where the average disgruntled or emotionally disturbed individual has a relatively hard time depriving me of oxygen. While I agree that dreaming about cities in space is great fun, and probably harmless, I have to wonder about what life would be like in an enclosed, self-contained, and profoundly fragile environment. Face it kids, despite our fancy technologies, we're still in kindergarten when we try to operate civilizations. How many average people give a flying zark about anything other than their momentary convenience? How many people have determined that they can hold entire communities hostile by targeting some point of vulnerability? Even though the Earth is a very forgiving place, we are already growing increasingly vulnerable to disruption by small groups of sufficiently motivated and ruthless individuals. How much more if we were all living in a tank? Even if we could stuff Luna City with enough police to give it some semblance of security, we still have human carelessness to consider. As long as still have people who litter, disconnect their emissions controls, or even burn fossil fuels, for that matter, we'd turn Luna City into a festering wreck in no time flat. (Sure, Luna City wouldn't have the fossil fuel problem, because the Moon doesn't have any fossil fuels. However, the alternatives to fossil fuels are just as available here as they will ever be on the Moon. If people choose to pollute here because it's cheaper and more convenient, they will eventually do the same thing there.) People always take shortcuts whenever possible, relying on the sheer mass of the biosphere to shift the costs of their activities to somebody else's yard. In Luna City there won't be any other yards. So I see Luna City as a place where the individual would have as much liberty as a bee in a beehive. It would have to operate like a police state. Every citizen would be subject to constant surveillance, and would have to constantly monitor her/his fellow citizens. Every act against the fragile environment would be an act against the community that it could not tolerate. Since life there will necessarily be a constant struggle against harsh economic reality, the community will not be able to coddle its criminals. It will have to eliminate them. > Oh, you want to go there >now with you. Our retreat from the sciences is unprecedented and > heartbreaking. I haven't quite been sold yet, but I'm trying to keep an open mind. I do think that a very good way to begin testing the viability of the concept of Luna City is for all space activists to begin weaning themselves away from fossil fuels. As soon as someone can demonstrate to me a viable non-fossil-driven technological community (or significant subset thereof), one which does not require an external ecological subsidy to absorb its wastes, then I will begin to believe that large-scale Moon colonization is possible. (Note: I believe that *eventually* we, or our descendents, will colonize the Moon and/or asteroids. However, I believe that Modern Man, ca. 1989, isn't quite up to the task.) Dan Mocsny dmocsny@uceng.uc.edu ------------------------------ Date: 4 Nov 89 21:12:11 GMT From: unsvax!jimi!herbert!doug@uunet.uu.net (Doug Phillipson 5-0134) Subject: Re: galileo and me For what it's worth: Lets talk about NASA. First of all I love what NASA is tring to accomplish. I have admired all spacecraft to date and love the shuttle concept in spirit. But the practical side of my head tells me the shuttle is too complex to ever be inexpensive. Now I realize that it was our congress (if you can really call it ours any more) that cut funding to the shuttle development effort. The development funding cuts were probably ultimately responsible for the challenger demise. In a recent visit to KSC to support the Galileo launch I observed a couple of severe problems with the way things are done in our space program. 1) NASA like the government runs on paper (low tech). I noticed a strange lack of computers of any kind on desks all over. Don't these people use electronic mail? I visited the LCC (Launch Control Center) and witnessed nothing but old stuff all over, with exception of the control room. There seems to be no networking capability. My god people were still using typewriters instead of word processors. It must take NASA forever to distribute memos and such. I know this can't be NASA's fault. They need a network of SUN's. Come on congress open the purse strings and give these people the right tools to make us proud. Yes I would even pay more taxes if I knew the extra money was going toward modernizing NASA. 2) Contractor attitude problem. Before I visited the KSC I dreamed of working for NASA or a subcontractor of NASA. Well not any more. I had to interface with several people from various companies and got nothing but a "Not by job" attitude. Most of the people I had dealings with were more concerned with filing union grievances and getting their breaks on time than getting Galileo off the ground. What happened to our "CAN DO" attitude toward space. I don't know about you but I want my children to be able to live and work in space exploring the unknown. CYA seemed to be the prevalent attitude there. I honestly believe that half of the contractor personnel could be eliminated and the other half should and could take up the slack. People are after all the ultimate multitasking system you know. I was brought up to get the job done first then talk about problems. UNIONS #%$&@!. It was a thrill to watch the launch and I would work for free to get into space (or atleast for room and board). Let's trade several B2's for several more shuttles since in 5 years or less radar tecnology will render them 500 million dollar spruce gooses. If we are going to spend billions of dollars on technology lets spend it on technology that expands mankind (space) rather than on war toys that can destroy mankind. Is congress going to nickel and dime our space station to death like our shuttle. Please don't let it happen! We need long term stable financing to take us into long complex space projects. I challenge congress to fund a multi decade space effort. But we all know that with the exception of JFK, no or atleast very few politicians have the guts to look past the next election. Disclaimer: I said it, I believe it, I live by it, my company had nothing to do with it. Douglas Phillipson Systems Programmer ------------------------------ Date: 5 Nov 89 18:06:49 GMT From: texbell!sugar!peter@rutgers.edu (Peter da Silva) Subject: Re: Design for Luna City The economic incentive for Luna City is strip-mining without environmental impact statements. Think "company town". You're not going to get any kilometer cube open spaces for the first few decades, or even centuries. -- Peter "Have you hugged your wolf today" da Silva `-_-' ...texbell!sugar!peter, or peter@sugar.hackercorp.com 'U` ``Back off dude! I'm a topologist!'' -- Andrew Molitor ------------------------------ Date: 6 Nov 89 02:34:27 GMT From: munnari.oz.au!bruce!monu1!vaxc!cen466p@uunet.uu.net Subject: Apology regarding posting regarding gravity Sorry. Inverse square law applies only for external points. ( i.e the point considered is outside the body). For internal points (ie inside a particle) the force of attraction varies *linearly * with radial position. Sorry for the mistake. ------------------------------ Date: 5 Nov 89 23:49:06 GMT From: rochester!dietz@pt.cs.cmu.edu (Paul Dietz) Subject: Re: galileo and me In article <1989Nov4.211211.13592@herbert.uucp> doug@jimi.cs.unlv.edu (Doug Phillipson 5-0134) writes: >Lets talk about NASA. First of all I love what NASA is tring to accomplish. >I have admired all spacecraft to date and love the shuttle concept in >spirit. But the practical side of my head tells me the shuttle is too >complex to ever be inexpensive. Now I realize that it was our congress >(if you can really call it ours any more) that cut funding to the shuttle >development effort. The development funding cuts were probably ultimately >responsible for the challenger demise. Let me get this straight -- the shuttle would have been *less* complex if Congress had allocated *more* money to its development? NASA wanted a reusable flyback booster, remember. That may have been safer than the SRBs, but it would have been more complex. I think the only thing Congress can be faulted on is not cutting the shuttle program off completely back in the 70's. Paul F. Dietz dietz@cs.rochester.edu ------------------------------ Date: 5 Nov 89 20:03:21 GMT From: uceng!dmocsny@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu (daniel mocsny) Subject: Re: Moon Colonies / Ant Tanks? In article <127376@sun.Eng.Sun.COM>, jmck%norge@Sun.COM (John McKernan) writes: > In a larger sense man's mass migration into space is exactly like his > migration to other parts of the Earth. Whenever it was possible to move to > an area with new resources to exploit, we have moved there and exploited > those resources. Once it is possible for mankind to move in large numbers > into space, all of man's history shows that it is inevitable that man > will do so. Perhaps we should replace the word "possible" with "(economically) favorable." (I assume this is what you meant.) Certain migrations are or have been possible without occurring. Consider: the technology exists today for significant numbers of people to colonize the ocean floors, at least on the continental shelves. The shelves contain a wealth of exploitable resources, probably far in excess of what we will find on the Moon. People aren't moving to the continental shelves today because doing so is uneconomical and unpleasant. We exploit the biological and mineral resources of the shelves, but we do so in a way analogous to the trappers and traders who preceded the farmers and other permanent residents into the wilds of North America. This exploit-from-a-distance stage in ocean development may last a fairly long time, perhaps indefinitely. This is in part because our improved transportation and communications enable people to work in a location (either physically or virtually) without having to set up permanent residences there. The mass migrations in the past (especially from Europe to the Americas) did not occur merely because they were "possible." Possibility is the province of the motivated explorer. But explorers do not create civilizations, they merely find the way for the masses who will do the real work. The masses don't move until either (1) things get so bad where they are that any move seems like a probable improvement, or (2) the economic rewards of moving become clearly apparent and irresistible. So whether the economic motive is a carrot and/or a stick, it is still economic. I have a very, very hard time imagining that either of conditions (1) or (2) will motivate massive relocations off-planet anytime soon (i.e., within my lifetime). Traveling into space and setting up shop there is phenomenally expensive compared to living on earth. The difference is inherent and should remain approximately the same despite technological advance, e.g., any technological advance that makes life on the Moon cheaper should make life on the Earth cheaper by a comparable factor. Since living on the Moon will be economically disadvantageous compared to living on the Earth for the foreseeable future, forget about mass migrations being driven economics. As far as people leaving earth to escape worsening conditions---this won't happen as long as the cost of going to space remains so high in absolute terms. Space travel is only available to the wealthy, and will remain so for several decades at least. Since the rich are able to shield themselves more effectively from worsening conditions, and even to profit from them, they have always been the last people to migrate in historical migrations. (Historically, emigr\'es have predominantly been the disenfranchised.) The Down and Out aren't going into space today, and they aren't going for at least another 50 years. Further, (and this should be obvious) if we can't make things work down here, where we start with every possible advantage, we can't possibly hope to have a better shot in space. So who is left? Explorers, of course. Explorers are motivated by emotion more than by economics. They want to go places not because doing so necessarily makes any sense, but simply because they want to go. Since few explorers have ever been economically self-sufficient, they must persuade ordinary people to subsidize their activities. Since the explorer is living out a sentiment common to many people, they have been successful as often as not in enlisting support. Dan Mocsny dmocsny@uceng.uc.edu ------------------------------ Date: 4 Nov 89 23:49:49 GMT From: cs.utexas.edu!ut-emx!hutto!henry@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu (Henry Melton) Subject: Re: Balloon Launch attempt of a High Power Rocket (40 Miles). In article <8911022149.AA00914@.next-2.>, scott@mcs-server (scott) writes: > have a huge moon which is one quarter the Earth's size (1/6 the mass), which I waited a while to comment, but no one bit, so; CRC Handbook of Chemisty & Physics 51st edition (pages are yellowing badly) : Mass(E) Diameter(km) Surface Accel(cm/sec^2) Earth 1.0 12756 980 Moon 0.01228 3476 167 So, the moon is about 1/81 the mass, about 1/4 the diameter, about 1/6 the surface gravity of the earth. -- Henry Melton ...!cs.utexas.edu!ut-emx!hutto!henry 1-512-8463241 Rt.1 Box 274E Hutto,TX 78634 ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 5 Nov 89 22:38:33 -0500 (EST) From: "Todd L. Masco" Subject: Test msg -- ignore X-Kibology: Allowed -- ------------------------------ Date: 6 Nov 89 01:00:57 GMT From: milton!maven!games@beaver.cs.washington.edu (Games Wizard) Subject: Space Hotel or Donald Trump has missed the boat. I was up late last nigh, and happened to catch a very interesting piece on CNN. I have heard no mention of it here, so I though I would post most of what I gathered. If any of my figures are wrong I apologize in advance, it was after all 3:00 A.M. There is a Japaneese company ( I don't know what they do ordinarily ) but they have a program consisting of about 2 dozen people who have been working for the last 3 years on a "feasibility" study of certain things in space. This is the Shimizu Corporation. From the stuff I saw, they are a motivated group. They think that thier goals are economically feasable ( PROFIT DRIVEN ), and the seem to have a LOT of money. Shimizu is the main company, apparently in true Japaneese form for all really MAJOR undertakings they have a consortium of three companies. Thier plan is to start with a SPACE HOTEL. We missed the boat when we talked (mostly jokingly) about Donal Trump. These guys are serious. The hotel will be a permanently manned station. I didn't hear if they were going to lease space to scientists or not, but I suspect that they will ( if it brings in money, then it will get done. ) They are planning to design and build a space plane ( true reusable ) to take off, get to the HOTEL, and come back, land, get refulled and do it again. no expendables save fuel. This plane is to carry about 80 passengers. They plan to buy land and build thier own SPACE PORT somewhere in the pacific rim, but they are keeping the location a secret. Probably to keep speculaters from driving the prices sky high. I am not sure of the duration of the stay, but I think it is about 1 week. they said that in todays dollars, the trip would cost about 200,000$ (US?) Stop and think how many people you know that could make that kind of trip. I know at least 3 and I don't know that many rich people..... That figure was also for the start up period. After a while the price will drop when they get into efficiencies of scale. The man in charge is a Dr. Kuroda. The plan is for this hotel to be operational in 2020 ( 30 years from now.) CNN had to go farther and prod them on what would come after that. Naturally they envisioned a vacationland on the moon. But they didn't seem to joke about it. They naturally know that they can't lug tons of concrete to the moon. They have contacted the american concrete association. Together they have formed the LUNAR CONGRETE COMITTE to develop the technology to churn out concrete with the materials at hand on the moon. This is in conjunction with a very large american consulting firm ( i think they are consulting, they might be a concrete company ) In any case the co is the J.M. Begg company. They guy that is in charge of the comitte is James Robertson. Sorry folks but this is all I have. It did NOT seem like a joke, these guys seem to have thier ducks mostly in a row. In fact, the interviews strike me as the sort of thing that the Japaneese would do, in order to test the waters, and gather public opinion. Especially after the Rockefeller? Centre purchase that seemed to piss a lot of americans off. I have two reasons for posting this. First : It is intriguing in and of itself, and worthy of posting. ( Like I said if any of the above is wrong please don't hesitate to correct me. It was late, er.. early? ) Second: I want to know more. More specifics. If these guys are serious, then they really believe that they can make money at this game, and once they sink some money in, they are not going to give up. they have a well defined goal. If they start they WILL continue. With this kind of dedication comes results. I for one will send them a resumee. If I have to learn Japaneese to get into space, that is certainly not too high a price to pay. If the US gets mad at that, fine they can do something. I am however of the opinion that most americans will grumble at the Japaneese, and sit at home and watch the opening ceremonies on thier SONY trinitrons. If the Americans are no longer in the game, and the Japaneese are then I want to play with thier money. (Bottom line is that I want to play. ) I realize that this last section will attract some flames, oh well. Robert A. Heinlein somewhere in the future history series has something to say about pioneers getting thier any way they can, but I can't remember exactly what it was, or exactly where. The jist however was that the people who grumble and sit around, and stay behind deserve to do just that, as they don't have the vision, pioneer spirit, whatever it is called that it takes to get out and LEAVE your comfortable environment and put yourself in danger for a slim chance at a better future. Well, any case enough glory babble on my part. Back to Shimizu Thier initial goal seems achievable, and not a pie in the sky dream. It sounds very interesting to me. Anyone got any further insight/information on their project? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Trendy footer by: John Stevens-Schlick Internet?: JOHN@tranya.cpac.washington.edu 7720 35'th Ave S.W. Seattle, Wa. 98126 (206) 935 - 4384 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- My boss dosen't know what I do. ------------------------------ End of SPACE Digest V10 #208 *******************