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, 19 Dec 89 01:32:57 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: Reply-To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU From: space-request+@Andrew.CMU.EDU To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU Date: Tue, 19 Dec 89 01:32:34 -0500 (EST) Subject: SPACE Digest V10 #360 SPACE Digest Volume 10 : Issue 360 Today's Topics: Is this true? Re: SPACE Digest V10 #356 NASA Headline News for 12/18/89 (Forwarded) Re: Motives Re: proposed "space-mail" incentive Re: Magellan Update 12/12/89 Re: New years eve 1999 Payload Summary for 12/18/89 (Forwarded) Re: Space industry projects: dismantling moons and asteroids ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 18 Dec 89 22:44:30 GMT From: rp@XN.LL.MIT.EDU (Richard Pavelle) Subject: Is this true? In the latest APS bulletin, Vol.35, No.1 (1990), Page 2, the VP is credited with the following statements explaining why the U.S. should undertake a manned Mars mission: " Mars is essentially in the same orbit. Mars is somewhat the same distance from the sun, which is very important. We have seen pictures where there are canals, we believe, and water. If there is water, there is oxygen. If oxygen, that means we can breathe". -- Richard Pavelle UUCP: ...ll-xn!rp ARPANET: rp@XN.LL.MIT.EDU ------------------------------ Date: 18 Dec 89 17:38:45 GMT From: bfmny0!tneff@uunet.uu.net (Tom Neff) Subject: Re: SPACE Digest V10 #356 In article writes: >As to the topic of "daydreams vs. reality". Getting somethin to LEO is >effectively getting halfway to anywhere in the solar system. (It's delta-v >that we're worried about, not actual physical distance. If we can send >a probe (either manned or unmanned) to Mars, we can send one out to anywhere >in the Solar System. (Or if you follow Dr. Robert Forward at all, even to >nearby stars) Halfway in terms of kinetic energy expenditure != halfway in terms of overall technical difficulty. Let us take a ham sandwich to Pluto, you and I; toss it into the payload canister as a whiteroom joke, latch and launch. LEO is achieved within minutes -- the bread is still warm. (I like my ham sandwiches on light toast. :-) ) Now all you have to do to get to Pluto is spend the other half of your kinetic energy and WAIT TEN YEARS. I hate a stale sandwich. :-) Seriously, the issues of long term survival, radiation shielding and maneuverability at the destination make planetary missions lots more than twice as hard as orbital missions. -- 'We have luck only with women -- not spacecraft!' \\ Tom Neff -- R. Kremnev, builder of failed Soviet FOBOS probes // tneff@bfmny0.UU.NET ------------------------------ Date: 18 Dec 89 21:32:03 GMT From: trident.arc.nasa.gov!yee@ames.arc.nasa.gov (Peter E. Yee) Subject: NASA Headline News for 12/18/89 (Forwarded) ----------------------------------------------------------------- Monday, Dec. 18, 1989 Audio: 202/755-1788 ----------------------------------------------------------------- This is NASA Headline News for Monday, December 18th...... Continuing problems at Pad 39A over the weekend have forced the postponment of plans to launch the space shuttle Columbia on Thursday, December 21st. Shuttle managers are meeting this morning to assess work on the launch pad and the orbiter, and are expected to announce a new launch date later this afternoon. The Martin Marietta Corporation is preparing to launch its first Titan 3 rocket...carrying British and Japanese communications satellites...tonight. Liftoff from Launch Complex 40 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station is scheduled for 7:20 P.M. Eastern time. Forecasters are predicting a 40 percent chance of rain and thick clouds that could violate launch guidelines. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology yesterday released photographs of Soviet equipment designed to land men on the moon. Edward Crawley, an MIT professor who was one of the scientists who saw and photographed the spacecrafts, said, "the existence of this hardware is perhaps the most conclusive evidence to date that there was, in fact, a race to the moon and that the Soviet Union had a concrete plan to land cosmonauts there in the 1960's." Crawley said the equipment--a lunar landing craft and return-to-Earth module--were never used because the Soviets failed to overcome problems with the N1 booster rockets needed to place the spacecrafts in orbit. ************ ----------------------------------------------------------------- Here's the broadcast schedule for public affairs events on NASA Select television. All times are Eastern. Thursday, Dec. 21..... 11:30 A.M. NASA Update will be transmitted. All events and times are subject to change without notice. ----------------------------------------------------------------- These reports are filed daily, Monday through Friday, at 12 noon, Eastern time. ----------------------------------------------------------------- A service of the Internal Communications Branch (LPC) NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C. ------------------------------ Date: 16 Dec 89 21:51:27 GMT From: ibmpa!szabonj@uunet.uu.net (Nick Szabo) Subject: Re: Motives In article <1989Dec12.174223.26995@axion.bt.co.uk> sjeyasin@dalriada.axion.bt.co.uk writes: >From article <3240@ibmpa.UUCP>, by szabonj@ibmpa.UUCP (Nick Szabo): >>The >> days of ten-billion dollar space projects are over. The most productive >> economy on our planet, Japan, engages in no such projects, and has no >> intention to start. >Bit of a sweeping statement isn`t it ? No, it is a probable projection, concatenated to a factual statement, concatenated to a probable projection. >After all Japan is contributing >one of the modules for Freedom. Yes, they will contribute c. $2.5 billion, while the U.S. contributes $30 billion, and the science results are shared equally. This despite the fact that Japan has a higher per capita income and many more engineers per capita than the U.S., and much more capital available for R&D than the U.S. Even at $2.5 billion, it is a marginal proposition for Japan, which should tell us something about how stupid it is for the U.S. to engage in. > Not to mention their HOPE orbiter project Which is much smaller than Shuttle, costs less than $10 billion, and will probably be cancelled anyway. >or their recent invitation to Western firms to join in their SST engine >project. They are also devloping their own cryogenic engine, H II. The SST project is for airliners, and the H II is for unmanned, commercial space activities. Both are properly scaled technologies that can provide saleable products and services. They could put Japan in the #1 position in aerospace, while the U.S. throws its money away on fantasies. The U.S. has a big lead, but then again we had a huge lead in autos in the 1960's, and threw it away in less than two decades. >[Are there any Japanese reading sci.space?] >Perhaps they are all too >busy actually making things happen rather than discuss it on the net! Could be! >I for one would like to know what makes them tick. Caveat: the following is way too simplistic and stereotypical; there are many exceptions. But it gives a good flavor, as the Japanese and American viewpoints are in some cases radically different. Freeman Dyson has a good essay on this in _Infinite In All Directions_, and, having studied Japanese culture myself, and talked to folks in the Japanese space program, I find myself agreeing with much of what he says there. The slogan of their space program echoes a popular slogan in their industries, "quick is beautiful". They won't even think about anything five years out, much less the decades out "long term planning" fantasies we see too often in sci.space and NASA, because there is nothing you can do about anything that far in the future. Many things will have changed by then; it is too unpredictable. So they try to avoid decade-long R&D cycles, preferring 1 or 2 years instead. Also they shy away from space voyages like Voyager that would take too long to pay off. Another current running through Japan is "small is beautiful". Honshu is a very crowded island, and you simply can't live on it and do all that manufacturing unless you are willing to be very, very efficient in how you use space and resources. And careful about what you do with your garbage. Honshu is probably the closest thing we have to a space colony on Earth. The fishing industry is very powerful in Japan (and for good reason; it is the only way Japan can produce protein. Would you be comfortable relying on a country that nuked your cities for your food supply? Not I). Space launch complexes take up large amounts of space, and it turns out the only good one in Japan sits right near large fishing grounds. Needless to say, the space launch facility is not the highest priority, and Japan will have to do what the French do, find some Third World equatorial country to launch from. The Japanese _love_ technology. They have many more robots than the U.S. (does somebody have the latest figures on this?) Vending machines are everywhere and serve everything (beer, sandwiches, shampoo, condoms, you name it). You don't see people running around screaming about how robots are taking peoples jobs, robots aren't as intelligent as people, ad nauseum. They realize machines can do some things and humans others, what machines can do and humans can do changes over time, and that who does what should be based on hard engineering and economics, not philosophy and fantasy. They are, and I stress this is positive and even something we might profit by emulating, _animistic_ about material things and especially technology. The weather speaks to them, it has a personality. The Shinto rituals involving new babies, akin to baptism in Christianity, have been used when setting up robots in their factories. There is no division between "natural" and "artificial"; Japanese gardens are both natural and quite man-made, and quite a bit more beautiful than much of the non-human landscape. For all that, the Japanese are very Westernized as well. Their children study more Greek, Roman, and European history, listen to more Western classical music, learn more mathematics and science, than children in the U.S. Bheetoven's 9th is a New Year's tradition. I'd love to hear comments from Japanese or long-time students of Japanese culture on these observations. *********** These opinions are not related to Big Blue's ************ -- --------------------------- Nick Szabo szabonj@ibmpa.tcspa.ibm.com uunet!ibmsupt!szabonj ------------------------------ Date: 18 Dec 89 23:55:18 GMT From: clyde.concordia.ca!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!utzoo!henry@uunet.uu.net (Henry Spencer) Subject: Re: proposed "space-mail" incentive In article <5711@ncar.ucar.edu> steve@groucho.ucar.edu (Steve Emmerson) writes: >... the original question, viz. a description (preferably financial) >of those currently existing demands for `space-mail' services which are >analogous to the early-aviation demand for more rapid mail delivery. Uh, Steve, I hate repeating myself, but: *what* early-aviation demand for more rapid mail delivery? There wasn't any, not that you could point to and measure in dollars and cents. Why are you asking for analogies to something that didn't exist? (Indeed, the analogy is very close, since cheap launch services have the same problem: there's little demand that can be quantified and sold to venture capitalists.) If there had been solid, quantifiable demand, the Post Office wouldn't have had to subsidize it. -- 1755 EST, Dec 14, 1972: human | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology exploration of space terminates| uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu ------------------------------ Date: 18 Dec 89 19:17:32 GMT From: zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!usc!henry.jpl.nasa.gov!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!jato!mars!baalke@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu (Ron Baalke) Subject: Re: Magellan Update 12/12/89 In article <827@dsacg2.UUCP> nam2254@dsacg2.UUCP (Tom Ohmer) writes: >From article <2402@jato.Jpl.Nasa.Gov>, by baalke@mars.jpl.nasa.gov (Ron Baalke): > >< Thermally, Magellan is stable and temperatures aboard the spacecraft >< are normal as it continues to move out towards the orbit of Earth. Magellan >< is now 179 million miles from Venus which it will orbit next August and > >Ron, this is not a flame. Help me understand this. How is it headed for >Venus and out towards the orbit of Earth at the same time? Thanks >-- Magellan is taking a circutous route to Venus in that it will loop around the sun 1 1/2 times before encountering Venus. It has already passed by its perihelion near Venus's orbit last October 7th, and will return to the orbit of Earth where it was launched, and then intercept Venus in August. Galileo, on the other hand, is headed directly for Venus and will arrive there in February before Magellan does even thought Magellan had a 5 month head start. Ron Baalke | baalke@mars.jpl.nasa.gov Jet Propulsion Lab M/S 301-355 | baalke@jems.jpl.nasa.gov 4800 Oak Grove Dr. | Pasadena, CA 91109 | ------------------------------ Date: 17 Dec 89 19:18:13 GMT From: nis!viper!dave@UMN-CS.CS.UMN.EDU (David Messer) Subject: Re: New years eve 1999 In article <1642.258926e7@cc.helsinki.fi> sundius@cc.helsinki.fi writes: >In article <48@kiere.ericsson.se>, tp_asr@kiere.ericsson.se writes: >> When (western civilisation) enters the next millenium why not celebrate > --------- >> with the BIGGEST fireworks ever. In the last hour of 1999 all MX:s, > > According to what I have read, the coming of the next millenium should > be celebrated towards the end of the year 2000, since there was no year > 0 according to our calendar ... Thus it would more appropriate > to postpone the celebration until new year's eve 2000, but I wonder if > anybody (except for chronology fans) have thought of it? I vote we celebrate BOTH new years. That way we don't have to worry about it. -- Remember Tiananmen Square. | David Messer dave@Lynx.MN.Org -or- | Lynx Data Systems ...!bungia!viper!dave ------------------------------ Date: 19 Dec 89 05:34:57 GMT From: trident.arc.nasa.gov!yee@ames.arc.nasa.gov (Peter E. Yee) Subject: Payload Summary for 12/18/89 (Forwarded) PAYLOAD STATUS REPORT Prepared at 4:15 p.m. Dec.l8, l989 Mission STS-32 STS-32 -- SYNCOM, LDEF RETRIEVAL Today's announcement of a new target launch date for STS-32 of no earlier than Jan. 8, l990 is expected to have no impact on either SYNCOM deployment or the retrieval of the Long Duration Exposure Facility (LDEF). SYNCOM is in Columbia's cargo bay at Launch Pad A. There, the satellite is being trickle charged and maintained in a launch readiness condition. The change of the launch date will not af- fect the scenario planned for deployment of the satellite, which will be known as LEASAT once on station. The scenario, known as Post Ejection Sequencer (PES), calls for a series of manuevers performed over a period of several days. Forty-five minutes after deployment, the solid perigee kick motor will be ignited. Three manuevers will place the satellite in a geosynchronous orbit at l77 degrees west. Retrieval of the LDEF, now a valuable scientific repository, will not be impacted by the revised launch date. Current es- timates are that LDEF will be retrievable through at least the third week of February. ------------------------------ Date: 17 Dec 89 23:47:09 GMT From: portal!cup.portal.com!hkhenson@uunet.uu.net (H Keith Henson) Subject: Re: Space industry projects: dismantling moons and asteroids In article <17442@nuchat.UUCP> steve@nuchat.UUCP (Steve Nuchia) writes: >Start feeding chunks of asteroid >into the nice vacuum furnace at the focus. Form the nice stainless >steel (Ni & Fe, right?) Into structural shapes, and spit the slag About 10 years ago Eric Drexler and I wrote a paper on furnaces to process metals in space. I would be interested if Steve has any new ideas on how to get heat to the metal *without* curding up the mirrors with various rock and metal vapors. Keith Henson ------------------------------ End of SPACE Digest V10 #360 *******************