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 ; Fri, 13 Apr 90 02:02:57 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <0a9KhrC00VcJA0sE5z@andrew.cmu.edu> Reply-To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU From: space-request+@Andrew.CMU.EDU To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU Date: Fri, 13 Apr 90 02:02:31 -0400 (EDT) Subject: SPACE Digest V11 #257 SPACE Digest Volume 11 : Issue 257 Today's Topics: Space Shuttle Development (7 of 7) Re: Interstellar travel Silo Launches etc. Vandeburg Launch Schedules Re: Interstellar travel Re: Comet Austin. Is it visible from Australia ? Re: HST Image Status for 04/01/90 (Forwarded) Re: Ejection seats Space Shuttle Development (3 of 7) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 12 Apr 90 03:04:35 GMT From: pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sdd.hp.com!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!zardoz.cpd.com!dhw68k!ofa123!Wales.Larrison@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu (Wales Larrison) Subject: Space Shuttle Development (7 of 7) It was not until 3 January 1972 that the final approval for the Space Shuttle was communicated to NASA. Appropriately enough, NASA had spent the holidays struggling to answer another set of detailed OMB questions, and had set a 14x45 foot payload bay as the minimum size for the shuttle. To NASA's surprise, they were told the 15x60 foot payload bay had been approved. The decision to use solid rocket motors for the booster stage was made soon afterwards. As part of the extensions of the Phase B contracts, numerous booster propulsion schemes had been examined. The major reason for the choice of solid rocket boosters was the development cost of the liquid boosters. NASA specifically chose to accept a higher recurring cost and a complex operations flow, to reduce the projected development cost. Reusable cryo tanks were also rejected on the basis of a higher development cost and increased technical risk, although they had a lower recurring cost. OMB director George Schultz said "NASA is to be congratulated for its willingness to examine a wide range of alternatives to find a configuration which retains system capability but which reduces the amount of investment required." (Ref: Letter from George Schultz to Jame Fletcher, 17 March 1972, NASA historical archives) In March of 1972, a "request for proposals" was released to the industry for the specified space shuttle system. It had all of the elements of the current design - 15X60 payload bay volume, cross range of 1100 nmi, 65,000 pound payload capability, large external tank, and dual solid rocket boosters. 4 teams of companies replied - each with a proposal of 2000+ pages. These were MDAC, Grumman, North American Rockwell, and Lockheed. Of these, North American Rockwell was chosen, and contract NAS 9-14000 to design, develop, test, and construct the space shuttle was let in late 1972. Between 1972 and 1980, the funding profile for the program changed dramatically - annual budgets for the phase C/D contract effort changed yearly. Each year the effort had to be replanned and rephased by NASA and the contractors. The expected 5 year contract was stretched by Congress to 7, then 9 years. The number of vehicles to be built changed from 10 (1972) to 5 (1975) to 4 (1976) to 1 (1977) to 4 (1978) again, and the delivery schedule stretched out. Each year the contracts for delivery of parts and materials had to be renegotiated with subcontractors and vendors. This doubled or tripled the expected program costs. (Rockwell claimed after 51-L that a block buy of 3 orbiters can be made for the price of 2 - if the dollars are allocated up front). Meanwhile, the NASA budget continued to shrink. In constant 1972 dollars, the NASA budget shrank from $3.2 billion in 1971 to $2.4 billion in 1978. As the budgets decreased, new programs that had been expected to provide the majority of the payloads to be carried on the shuttle were eliminated or severely cut back. Since these programs were not yet established, or not even in existence, they could not defend themselves against budget cuts. This created the vicious spiral of: few missions - high cost transportation - high cost missions - more importance on fewer missions - fewer, more costly missions - higher cost transportation - ... And it is from this "death spiral" that we are trying to extract our national space program. The Challenger accident, the failure of the few alternative launch systems, and the increased attention given to space by the public are all working to extract us from this. Hope you folks find this interesting. I had fun putting it together. (Finis) --- Opus-CBCS 1.10 * Origin: Universal Electronics, Inc. (1:103/302.0) -- Wales Larrison ...!{dhw68k,zardoz,lawnet,conexch}!ofa123!Wales.Larrison Wales.Larrison@ofa123.FIDONET.ORG 714 544-0934 2400/1200/300 ------------------------------ Date: 12 Apr 90 23:37:45 GMT From: kline@arizona.edu (Nick Kline) Subject: Re: Interstellar travel So what is the Fermi Paradox? Is this the equation where you try to estimate various factors which relate to the chances of intelligent life, like say % of suns with planets, % with life, % with intelligent life, % with life that doesn't destroy itself, similar in scope to the equation in Cosmos, by Carl Sagan? -nick kline@cs.arizona.edu ------------------------------ Date: 12 Apr 90 12:11:02 GMT From: mcsun!ukc!icdoc!syma!nickw@uunet.uu.net (Nick Watkins) Subject: Silo Launches etc. In article <11376@june.cs.washington.edu> dfkling@june.cs.washington.edu (Dean F. Kling) writes: > > :Very few USAF programs ever receive every dollar they request, popular > :mythology notwithstanding. Classic case here is Macnamara's reminiscence (in Michael Charlton's book/radio series "The Star Wars History" (BBC)) of an AF general climbing into a taxi and saying to him & (I think) JFK, "well Mr President, when we get the 10000 Minutemen ... "). I think that's what Boeing would call an order of magnitude ... Good book btw, I look forward to reading "The Eagle & the Small Birds". > I believe it is still the case that no > :Minuteman has ever been successfully test-fired from the operational > :type > :of silo. Many have been fired from the Vandenberg test silos, > :but those > :are not representative of the operational ones. There were a series of > :attempts to fire from an operational-type silo at Vandenberg, > :all failures. What about the operational silos at the bases? I remember hearing that a Titan II had exploded in a test launch from an operational silo thus putting an end to them, is this my faulty memory ? Also there was a report a while back of an accidental Titan II launch. Is this an urban legend or is there some truth to it? > :I believe the failures were all minor things, not indicative of > :any sort > :of fatal flaw, and money and official patience simply ran out. > :After all, > :it says in the specs that it will work... It also says it'll fly happily over the popular polar route ... :-) > :-- > :Apollo @ 8yrs: one small step.| Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology > :Space station @ 8yrs: .| uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu Journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step ...:-) > My recollections of attempts to do a test launch from an operational silo >were that they were all quashed due to the prospect of the multi-ton first >stage coming down somewhere in the U.S. , possibly on the head of some >tax-paying (and probably litigating) citizen. I was involved in the other leg >of the triad and we did regular test launches from operational silos >(submarine missile launch tubes) which worked reliably a large percentage of >the time. > Did quashing apply to Minuteman only or Atlas & Titan I/II as well? Our news was down 5th to 10th or so, sorry if above q's answered while I was not looking. Ditto sorry for losing some of 2010 thread, which I've been enjoying. Nick -- Dr. 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: 12 Apr 90 17:31:00 GMT From: acad!johns@uunet.uu.net (John Sergneri) Subject: Vandeburg Launch Schedules I read in the paper this morning that there was an Atlas launch from Vandeburg recently. Because it is much closer to San Francisco than the Cape is, I wonder if there is a way to get advanced notice of launches. I know that Vandenburg is more prone to military secrecy than the Cape but I'd still like to see one of the big rockets go up. Does anyone know the likelyhood of being able to witness such launches? -- John Sergneri "Final Note: Capitalism, for good or ill, is the uunet!acad!johns river in which we sink or swim, and stocks the supermarket." ROZZ-TOX Manifesto - Gary Panter ------------------------------ Date: 12 Apr 90 19:55:37 GMT From: skipper!bowers@ames.arc.nasa.gov (Al Bowers) Subject: Re: Interstellar travel In article <4a8uilO00XobQ5rkVw@andrew.cmu.edu> jb5v+@andrew.cmu.edu (Jeffrey Kirk Bennett) writes: I noticed a lot of talk about interstellar travel a while back, and I'm a little confused. Am I wrong, or is there a point to thinking about such things? It seems to me that there a a couple principles which make it completely impractical- but I'm not a physicist, so please expand or correct me if I'm wrong. I also noticed this disscussion and it seemed to me there was alot of sci-fi type of mentality. I pointed out the near term solution of a Daedalus type of one-way unmanned probe and was immediately _flamed_ for lack of foresight so I withdrew from subsequent disscussion. As an engineer living in the here and now such probes interest me as they will provide the only answer in my lifetime as to whether our solar system evolution is unique or not (Hubble will answer some of the questions, but not as many as a probe). 1. The goal is to find intelligent life and/or a habitable planet. It seems to me that both are extremely rare events. Though I've no doubt I disagree. Finding anything at all will tell us a lot. Just by visiting another star we double our experimental sample ;-). 2. I don't see mankind inventing practical anti-matter propulsion or whatever the current idea is in the next century or two. But, since Nuclear drives are available now, and with a limited development of technology it appears that .12c is possible. This gives a flight time of 30 to 50 years to various stars (Proxima Centauri, Barnard's star, Alpha Centauri, etc.). If I live to be 90 or so it could be done before I die, but we gotta start now! 3. Assuming all the fuel is burned during the acceleration and deceleration phases, how would the craft return? Just crawl first, worry about walking later. Do the fly-by mission. You gotta start somewhere, right? 4. Even if it had the fuel to return, how would it find the Earth again, since it is not exactly standing still, and may have moved unpredictably due to passing stars, black holes, etc. in the path of the Sun. See above. There are some time dilation effects even on this short mission, but readjusting the data rate isn't a _major_ undertaking. So I don't see the point in even talking about it, but comments are welcome. On a related note- can't we dismiss UFO reports out of hand? My reasoning is this: I leave this to the National Enquirer and Star crowd to argue with you. I would not dismiss ETI completely (I do believe SETI is important) as it is utter arrogance to outright assume that we are unique in the Universe. I do discount UFO's as preposterous. These are things which have bugged me forever. I believe interstellar travel is probably impossible and certainly impractical, and UFO's don't exist. Am I missing something here? I think interstellar travel will begin in the next few generation (my grandchildren or great-grandchildren?) at an unmanned probe level. As for flying people, I don't know and I would not hazard a guess (one Einstein in a life time can turn physics upside down on you ;-). -- Albion H. Bowers bowers@elxsi.dfrf.nasa.gov ames!elxsi.dfrf.nasa.gov!bowers `In the changing of the times, they were like autumn lightning, a thing out of season, an empty promise of rain that would fall unheeded on fields already bare.' attributed to Abe Shosaburo by Dave Lowery ------------------------------ Date: 11 Apr 90 12:32:45 GMT From: zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!samsung!munnari.oz.au!metro!bunyip!uqvax!csvax!cszthomas@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu Subject: Re: Comet Austin. Is it visible from Australia ? In article <3119@moondance.cs.uq.oz.au>, anthony@batserver.cs.uq.oz.au (Anthony Lee) writes: > I been trying to find out what area of the sky am I supposed > to be looking at to find Comet Austin. I got this chart from > Sky and Telescope, but since it is for the Northern Hemisphere, > it is useless in Australia. > > Basically the chart got the Pleiades and ARIES visible at SUNSET. I > don't suppose anyone can translate that into the Australian sky ? > > thanks in advance > Anthony I would also like to know where to look to see the comet. Please EMail me seeing as I rarely have time to read this group. Thanks! Au revoir, @~~Richard Thomas aka. The AppleByter -- The Misplaced Canadian~~~~~~~~~~~@ { InterNet: R_Thomas@qut.edu.au JANET: R_Thomas@au.edu.qut } { ACSNet: richard@earth.qitcs.oz.au BITNET: as janet@EAN.AC.UK } { PSI: PSI%505272223015::R_Thomas ARPANet: as bitnet@UKACRL.BITNET } @~~~~~School of Computing Science - Queensland University of Technology~~~~~~@ ------------------------------ Date: 12 Apr 90 17:18:13 GMT From: cellar!ddavey@bellcore.com (Doug Davey) Subject: Re: HST Image Status for 04/01/90 (Forwarded) In article <9507@cbnewsh.ATT.COM> lmg@cbnewsh.ATT.COM (lawrence.m.geary,ho,) writes: > It turns out that Senator Al Gore is quite concerned with NASA sitting > on many terabytes of unprocessed data collected from all the space probes > over the last two decades. Supposedly some of this data is on unlabeled > tapes I presume that Tipper Gore (Al's wife) is really the Gore most concerned about NASA having unlabeled tapes. After all, if they are unlabeled an innocent child might not realize that they are filled with explicit data! It is rumored that Magellan will even be returning venereal data (horrors). What's a parent to do? :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Doug Davey bellcore!cellar!ddavey ddavey@cellar.bae.bellcore.com ------------------------------ Date: 12 Apr 90 15:58:31 GMT From: van-bc!ubc-cs!kiwi!dssmv2!fischer@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Roger Fischer) Subject: Re: Ejection seats Some early jet fighter plane first blew the canopy and ejected the seat after a one second delay. All pilots agreed that this was the longest second in their life. Roger ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Roger W. Fischer fischer@mprgate.mpr.ca fischer@mprgate.UUCP ..seismo!ubc-cs!mprgate!fischer ...ihnp4!alberta!ubc-cs!mprgate!fischer ------------------------------ Date: 12 Apr 90 01:51:19 GMT From: pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sdd.hp.com!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!zardoz.cpd.com!dhw68k!ofa123!Wales.Larrison@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu (Wales Larrison) Subject: Space Shuttle Development (3 of 7) Each of the major aerospace contractors also funded and ran their own conceptual design and costing exercises, in parallel with their contractual efforts. The estimates of these company investments come to about $120 million over the 1968-1970 time period. Unfortunately, much of the data supporting these industry studies is lost, excepting conclusions and summaries of the results. In 1970, NASA let 4 basic Phase B Contracts for a total of $30M, over a 1 year period. Each contractor submitted about 500 pages of technical and cost analyses supporting their proposal. Proposals were submitted from: o Lockheed/Boeing (teamed with TWA, AC Electronics Division, Bell Aerosciences, Bendix Navigation, and Messerschmitt-Boeklow-Bolm) o Grumman (teamed with General Electric, Northrup, Aerojet General, and Eastern Airlines) o MDAC (teamed with Martin Marietta, TRW, PanAm, Raytheon, and United Aircraft Norden Division) o North American Rockwell/General Dynamics (teamed with American Airlines, Honeywell, and IBM) Two proposals were selected (MDAC and NAR), each company team to study a fully reusable system, with both a high (1100 nmi) and a low (600 nmi) cross range orbiter, carrying a 40,000 pound payload. Each was funded at $20 M MDAC, contract number NAS 8-26016 (with MSFC), 1970 North American Rockwell, contract NAS 9-10960 (with JSC), 1970 However, budgetary impacts and external politics began to affect the system. As studies of the Space Station and fully reusable shuttle continued, it became clear to pursuing the Space Station and Space Shuttle as a first step towards longer term objectives (such as the lunar base and Mars mission) would require more than a doubling of NASA's annual budget for some years. This was felt to be unrealistic due to the current budget crunch needed to support increased military expenditures in Southeast Asia and the continuing expansions of programs from "the Great Society" begun in the mid-1960's. (Note: NASA's space budget had peaked at $5.9 billion in 1966, and by 1970 had declined to $3.5 billion.) During Congressional Review of the NASA 1971 budget, it was stated that NASA should first build the Space Shuttle over the Space Station because if they could not be developed simultaneously, the Shuttle could act as a surrogate station in extended orbital missions, and the establishment of the space shuttle was necessary for cost-effective logistics support of a space station. This decision was bumped to the highest level in the administration to President Nixon, by his top domestic policy advisor John Erlichman. (Cont) --- Opus-CBCS 1.10 * Origin: Universal Electronics, Inc. (1:103/302.0) -- Wales Larrison ...!{dhw68k,zardoz,lawnet,conexch}!ofa123!Wales.Larrison Wales.Larrison@ofa123.FIDONET.ORG 714 544-0934 2400/1200/300 ------------------------------ End of SPACE Digest V11 #257 *******************