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 ; Tue, 12 Dec 89 01:32:15 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: Reply-To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU From: space-request+@Andrew.CMU.EDU To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU Date: Tue, 12 Dec 89 01:31:51 -0500 (EST) Subject: SPACE Digest V10 #337 SPACE Digest Volume 10 : Issue 337 Today's Topics: Re: manned v unmanned (exploration of Mars) Compton named Ames Research Center Director (Forwarded) Re: V10 No.327 and inflammatory ephithets Re: Multi-national (MANNED) Mars Mission precession obsession Payload Status for 12/11/89 (Forwarded) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 11 Dec 89 14:43:17 GMT From: zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!samsung!munnari.oz.au!basser!cluster!ray@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu (Raymond Lister) Subject: Re: manned v unmanned (exploration of Mars) Since the subject has come up, I thought I'd share a newpaper feature article I wrote, but never sold ... ----- SHOULD we, like the crew of the starship "Enterprise", boldly go where no man has gone before? Or should we be content to send a robot? Now, with the recent completion of Voyager II's survey of the outer planets, and as NASA still struggles to launch its shuttle fleet and recover from the the Challenger explosion, the question seems particularly poignant. But the argument is as old as spaceflight itself. NASA has always been split into supporters of manned and unmanned space exploration, but in the early days of the fifties and sixties, the space Budget was large enough to support both camps, so the rivalry was good natured. The friction didn't cause heat until the progressively tighter Budgets of the 1970s. In order to keep shuttle development going, NASA slashed its unmanned program. James Van Allen, the famous space scientist, after whom the earth's radiation belts are named, called the cutbacks "the slaughter of the innocent". The launch earlier this year of the Magellan probe to Venus was NASA's first unmanned interplanetary launch since the Voyager probes twelve years ago. The recent launch of the Galileo probe to Jupiter was years behind the original schedule, due to cut backs in its funding in order to maintain the shuttle program. The rivalry between the manned and unmanned sections of NASA is now far from friendly. NASA's unmanned camp have every reason to be angry with the manned supporters, and to feel very pleased with the performance of Voyager II, but their little champion has not demonstrated that manned space exploration is an unnecessary extravagance. Despite all the excitement about Voyager's Neptune encounter, despite all the computer time consumed in calculating its trajectory, despite all the person hours that went into nursing the geriatric craft along, the fact remains that the tasks Voyager performed are very simple. The scientific return is so great only because Earth based telescopes tell us very little about the outer planets, and no other probe has ever been to Neptune before. Now that Voyager has completed the initial survey, future missions will attempt the much more difficult act of rendezvous and and direct physical contact with the outer planets and their moons. Its a task that will require great intelligence. The question is, should that intelligence be natural or artificial? Thus far, we have only achieved contact with three heavenly bodies -- the moon, Venus, Mars -- and the experience has highlighted the limitations of robots and the power of the human mind. The Apollo 11 lunar module's computer would have crashed the "Eagle" in a field of boulders, had Armstrong not taken control and found a safe landing site. In contrast, even while Tranquillity Base was still manned, the unmanned Russian probe Luna 15 crashed on the moon, in what some believe was Russia's last desperate attempt to grab some moon dust, and some glory, before the Americans. Venus is perhaps the robot's only complete victory. No amount of the "Right Stuff" will protect an astronaut from an atmosphere around 100 times as dense as our own, and temperatures exceeding 400 degrees Celsius. July 20th is not just remembered (at least in American time zones) as the day when the first men landed on the moon. On that day in 1976, the robot probe Viking I landed on Mars, to search for life. Unfortunately, Viking gave the worst possible answer, not that life was absent, but that it wasn't sure. Two of the three life experiments said "yes", and the other (ironically, the one given the best chance of finding signs of life) said "no". Either there is life on Mars, or, as Mr. Spock might have put it, "It's soil chemistry Jim, but not as we know it". Viking wasn't smart enough to decide either way. Contact was lost with one of the two Viking landers when a technician mistakenly transmitted a command to move the radio dish. Viking obliged, contact was lost, and the robot wasn't bright enough to restablish contact. Undaunted, NASA still plans to send a robot rover to Mars. It takes a radio signal several minutes to travel between Earth and Mars, so any vehicle will have to be autonomous. As anyone who has ever driven an off road vehicle would testify, it will take a skilled driver to negotiate the boulders and sand dunes of Mars. The state of the art is a robot called the Autonomous Land Vehicle, and it crawls around a set of specially made concrete paths, attended by a gaggle of computer scientists, at its home in Carnegie--Mellon University, Pittsburgh. The ALV's can "see" through a video camera, and uses it to look for the road. Describing what a road looks like to a robot is only marginally easier than describing it to a blind person. The ALV has been programmed to look for a bright region (the concrete) surrounded by a darker region (the ground). However, at any time, there are probably several bright regions in the camera's field of view, such as the sky. So, the ALV's attendants have programmed in a number of tricks, called "heuristics" in the artificial intelligence business, for telling which bright region is the road. One of these tricks says that the the road should have two near vertical straight sides, and narrow at the top of the image (due to perspective). This heuristic worked very well, until one day when the multi--million dollar ALV mistook a tree for the road. ("Oh well! Back to the drawing board.") Fortunately, there are no trees on Mars. Unfortunately, there are no concrete paths. Recently, I watched my nine month old godson explore his lounge room. He spotted something interesting (try programming "interesting" into your Macintosh!), safely negotiated his way through a maze of chair legs, reached out, grasped the object, and ... put it in his mouth. No student of Artificial Intelligence can watch a baby, and not be humbled. The Mars rover is typical of the American taste for technological overkill. The Russians have a delightfully simple plan for their first survey of the Martian surface, using a solar powered balloon. During the day, the balloon will heat up, expand, and float through the thin orange--yellow Martian sky. At night, it will cool and sink, lowering its instrument package to the red Martian soil. However, neither a rover nor a balloon will settle the old question "Is there life on Mars?" We won't know for sure, at least in our lifetime, unless people go there with a well equipped laboratory. Only people have the necessary flexibility and sophistication. Those who think otherwise watch too much science fiction. The question of unmanned versus manned space travel is really a question of short term versus long term goals. Voyager II is one of the great technical accomplishments of the 20th century, but when compared with the 21st century potential of manned space flight -- the search for life on Mars, for minerals among the asteroids -- the data it returned resembles the work of an amateur photographer on vacation ("See! That's me. Next to Triton."). Robots aren't very good at coping with the unexpected, or as Neil Armstrong once said, in an uncharacteristically poetic way, "man can be amused and amazed and a robot can be neither". "Star Trek" is immensely satisfying entertainment, not because of Klingons and phasors, but because of its message about the power of the human mind. As we peer far into the future it is possible to imagine computers capable of matching Mr Spock's Vulcan logic, but as is shown in every episode of "Star Trek", logic has its limitations, and Captain Kirk's human intuition will prove essential for exploring the final frontier. Raymond Lister Basser Department of Computer Science University of Sydney NSW 2006 AUSTRALIA Internet: ray@cs.su.oz.AU CSNET: ray%cs.su.oz@RELAY.CS.NET UUCP: {uunet,hplabs,pyramid,mcvax,ukc,nttlab}!munnari!cs.su.oz.AU!ray JANET: munnari!cs.su.oz.AU!ray@ukc (if your lucky) ------------------------------ Date: 11 Dec 89 20:21:13 GMT From: trident.arc.nasa.gov!yee@ames.arc.nasa.gov (Peter E. Yee) Subject: Compton named Ames Research Center Director (Forwarded) [A bit of NASA news, even if it isn't quite space related. -PEY] Mary Sandy Headquarters, Washington, D.C. December 11, 1989 Del Harding Ames Research Center, Mountain View, Calif. RELEASE: 89-182 COMPTON NAMED AMES RESEARCH CENTER DIRECTOR NASA Administrator Richard H. Truly today named Dale L. Compton as Director of the NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif. Compton's appointment becomes effective on December 20, the 50th anniversary of the center's groundbreaking. Compton, who succeeds Dr. William F. Ballhaus, has been Acting Director since Ballhaus' resignation on July 15. Compton previously served as Acting Director for the Center from February 1988 to January 1989. He served as Deputy Director of Ames with line management responsibility for the center's facilities, personnel and programs from 1985 to 1988 and from January through July 15, 1989. As Director, Compton will be responsible for all research and development programs and the overall management of the Ames Research Center at Moffett Field and the Ames-Dryden Flight Research Facility at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif. Ames-Moffett and Ames-Dryden, which have more than 5,000 employees, conduct research and development programs in the fields of aeronautics, life science, space science, space technology and flight research. Compton's professional career has been spent with NASA Ames where he served as a research scientist for 15 years and published over 25 papers on aerodynamic and aerothermodynamic subjects. He also has served as Deputy Director, Astronautics; Chief, Space Science Division; Manager, IRAS Telescope Project office; and Director, Engineering and Computer Systems at the Center. Compton was educated at Stanford University where he received a B.S. degree in 1957, an M.S. in 1958 and a Ph.D. in aeronautical engineering in 1969. He was a Sloan Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1974 to 1975 and attended the Harvard Advanced Management Program in 1986. He has received the NASA Outstanding Leadership Medal and is a Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Compton and his wife, Marilyn, have two children. They reside in Cupertino, Calif. ------------------------------ Date: 11 Dec 89 23:58:32 GMT From: thorin!cezanne!leech@mcnc.org (Jonathan Leech) Subject: Re: V10 No.327 and inflammatory ephithets In article <70@uncmed.med.unc.edu> unccab@uncmed.med.unc.edu (Charles Balan) writes: >In article RIDGWAY@MITVMA.BITNET ("Lee S. Ridgway") writes: >>Not all of us "liberals" are not anti-space. > ^^^ ^^^ ^^^^ > Um, could someone from sci.lang please help me out here. What exactly is > being said? All of us "l's" are anti-space? No "l's" are anti-space? > I'm completely befuddled. What's being said is that people who feel compelled to flame signatures that may or may not represent the view of their poster, shouldn't do it in this newsgroup. Followups redirected to alt.flame. Please. -- Jon Leech (leech@cs.unc.edu) __@/ ``There ain't hardly nothin' cuter nor a sleepin' baby tad lessen it's a pork chop'' - Churchy La Femme ------------------------------ Date: 11 Dec 89 19:38:23 GMT From: mentor.cc.purdue.edu!acu@purdue.edu (Floyd McWilliams) Subject: Re: Multi-national (MANNED) Mars Mission In article <1989Dec9.233516.13216@Solbourne.COM> stevem@Solbourne.COM writes: [Speaking of a World Space Agency:] > The World Space Agency formed to oversee a Mars mission would serve > as the foundation for a more agressive exploration/colonization > effort with ( hopefully ) more vision and commitment then any one > nation could possibly keep up by itself for long. The problem is that you're assuming two things: 1. A World Space Agency will have the same goals w.r.t. space exploration that you do. 2. These goals are necessarily the best for all parties interested in space. Establishing an pan-governmental agency receiving funds from many wealthy nations would probably create a super-bureaucracy whose sloth, narrow vision, and pettiness would far surpass anything ever exhibited by NASA. (Stick around sci.space and read what Spencer, Bowery, Neff, Szabo, et al have to say about our space agency. It's bad.) But even if this monolith does somehow retain a vision, and puts together a (presumably enormous) plan to conquer space, who's to say that plan will be correct? Why put all the world's eggs in one basket? Having space agencies and private corporations compete encourages diversity and efficiency. Going even further, what does "correct" mean? Will the Defense Department have the same space transportation goals as a comsat company? Why not let them both develop their programs in parallel, rather than forcing them to compete for the nihil obstat of the WSA? > And foremost (IMHO) it would serve to excite (most) of the worlds > people and bring a vision of a United ( Ok, Confederated) World reaching > out to the planets, then one day the stars, Closer. This is a nice, warm-fuzzy kind of attitude, but the more I think about it the less I like it. To say that a united and visible space program will end war and injustice is to say, in effect, that the criminals of this world -- whether holding positions of power, like Comansceu, Amin, and Pinochet, or roaming on murderous rampages across the countryside, like Ramirez and Bundy -- got that way because they never had a chance to get their rocks off on reruns of "The Right Stuff." -- "You can broadcast any opinion, but it has to be on the opinion hour. You cannot hide it in a song and say it is entertainment." -- Shlomo Kor, Israel Broadcast Authority's deputy chairman. Floyd McWilliams mentor.cc.purdue.edu!acu ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 11 Dec 89 02:15 PST From: Bill Gosper Subject: precession obsession To: "space+@andrew.cmu.edu"@ELEPHANT-BUTTE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Cc: math-fun@RUSSIAN.SPA.Symbolics.COM (Why is it you can never find an orbital mechanic on weekends?) Can one fudge both the 559 mile altitude and the inclination of COBE's orbit so as to preserve the sun-synchronous precession? If the orbit were extremal in either altitude or inclination, would there be two altitude vs inclination curves along which to back away? More likely, the orbit is extremal in inclination to the ecliptic. Just as a sphere has the g field of a point, can you reduce an oblate spheroid to a disk? A hoop? The one through the foci? If not in general, for one altitude? Can someone give data points on the radius vs inclination curve for 1 deg/day ("earth synchronous") solar "polar" orbits? Was such an orbit intended for the solar polar probe? "Three days on the net can save an afternoon in the library." ------------------------------ Date: 11 Dec 89 23:02:00 GMT From: trident.arc.nasa.gov!yee@ames.arc.nasa.gov (Peter E. Yee) Subject: Payload Status for 12/11/89 (Forwarded) Daily Status/KSC Payload Management and Operations 12-11-89 - STS-31R HST (at VPF) - HST power on testing was completed on Saturday. No more testing is planned until after December. There is the removal of a SIC and DH planned for today to gain access to a CU/SDF (electronic box) which has suspect, bad electronics, and solder joints. - STS-32R SYNCOM (at Pad A) - SYNCOM battery charging was performed yesterday and will continue after orbiter hyper load. - STS-35 ASTRO-1/BBXRT (at O&C) - Completed the Spacelab experiment train interface test over the weekend and picked up with the mission sequence test. Mission sequence testing picked up again this morning. - STS-40 SLS-1 (at O&C) - Rack structural mods worked several racks over the weekend. Plan to have eddy current checks and rack rotations performed today. - STS-42 IML (at O&C) - Light weight handling frame mods are three quarters percent complete. Rack bumper removal was worked on the weekend. ------------------------------ End of SPACE Digest V10 #337 *******************