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 ; Wed, 30 May 1990 02:37:12 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: Reply-To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU From: space-request+@Andrew.CMU.EDU To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU Date: Wed, 30 May 1990 02:36:44 -0400 (EDT) Subject: SPACE Digest V11 #464 SPACE Digest Volume 11 : Issue 464 Today's Topics: Re: Voyager Confirms Relativity Is there a comet coming? Payload Status for 05/29/90 (Forwarded) Re: The Spaceport of the 21'st Century Re: HAWAII AND STAR WARS Re: wooden ships Re: Problems of missing mass Re: US/Soviet Planetary Activity (was Re: Manned mission to Venus) Re: One Small Step for a Space Activist Vol 1 No. 5 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 30 May 90 04:51:11 GMT From: uoft02.utoledo.edu!fax0112@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu Subject: Re: Voyager Confirms Relativity In article <12948@bambam.WELLESLEY.EDU>, tcw@bambam.WELLESLEY.EDU (Tara C. Woods) writes: >>I would rather see confirmation that black holes exist. Recent work with >>quantum gravity suggest such critters may not even be possible (but there >>still could be superdense solutions). > > > Are you saying QUANTUM THEORY OF GRAVITY? I thought this isn't known. I > thought that the whole reason why we can't understand the first 10E-43 sec. > or so of the big bang is because we are missing a quantum theory of gravity. > Please explain where this came from. Who developed it? Who is working with > it? Aaaack! I'm confused. No, you are correct in that a complete theory of quantum gravity has not been worked out. In the past work with black holes and the early universe have been done from a classical point of view which easily leads to singularities and event horizons. There have been a number of attempts to incorporate quantum mechanics into Einstein's equations (I can give some references if people are interested). Unfortunately, it is very difficult. Most of these attempts have been semi-classical by modifying Einstein's equations with a QM correction as in perturbation theory (there are other ways too). One can then get solutions with/without singularities and/or event horizions. We will have to wait for a complete theory to be sure but we should not make assumptions classically when we know QM must be important. Robert Dempsey Ritter Observatory "Publish and perish." - Giodono Bruno ------------------------------ Date: 29 May 90 19:39:24 GMT From: peters@louie.udel.edu (Shirley Peters) Subject: Is there a comet coming? I read a short time ago that there would be a good showing of a comet in the very near future (summer?). Does anyone know when this is going to take place, if it hasn't already? I have no idea where or exactly when I read it. Thanx, Shirley -- -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Shirley Peters peters@udel.edu I'd rather be sleeping! -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------ Date: 29 May 90 23:49:37 GMT From: trident.arc.nasa.gov!yee@ames.arc.nasa.gov (Peter E. Yee) Subject: Payload Status for 05/29/90 (Forwarded) Daily Status/KSC Payload Management and Operations 05-29-90. - STS-35 ASTRO-1/BBXRT (at Pad-A) - Final payload closeouts were completed Sunday. Launch countdown support continues today. - STS-40 SLS-1 (at O&C) - CITE MUE and S/W verifications continue to support CITE testing. MVAK VAS training continues. Closeouts of level III/II and preps are in work to support move to CITE on 1 June. - STS-41 Ulysses (at ESA 60) - CITE MUE installation continues. - STS-42 IML-1 (at O&C) - Module pyrell foam replacement, floor staging, and rack staging continue. - STS-45 Atlas-1 (at O&C) - Cable installations will continue today. - STS-46 TSS-1 (at O&C) - No activities are scheduled for today. - STS-47 Spacelab-J (at O&C) - Rack frames will be unloaded today. - STS- 55 SL-D2 (at O&C) - Rack 12 staging will continue today. - STS-LON-3 HST M&R (at O&C) - ORUC interface testing continues today. ------------------------------ Date: 30 May 90 02:59:18 GMT From: usc!samsung!munnari.oz.au!metro!natmlab.dap.csiro.au!ditsyda!lindley@ucsd.edu (Craig.Lindley) Subject: Re: The Spaceport of the 21'st Century in article <9484@hydra.gatech.EDU>, ccoprmd@prism.gatech.EDU (Matthew DeLuca) says: ... etc. ... > > The original poster, whose message has been dropped from this in the name > of brevity, was suggesting a Canadian-Australian-New Zealand-US (CANZUS) > space alliance. The last time we got into something like that (the ANZUS > military alliance) the New Zealanders decided they didn't like nuclear > thingies on ships and wouldn't let U.S. ships dock. I have this vision > of a RTG-powered probe on the pad, and NZ deciding to pack up and go > home... > > Pesonally, I would like to see a Pacific-Rim space organization, but I'm > just not terribly thrilled with New Zealand... > The world tends to look a bit different from this lat/long. Several points can be made: 1. a decision that nuclear weapons are immoral does not preclude the use of radioactive materials for peaceful scientific and industrial purposes. 2. the issue is also one of sovereignty: _we_ have the right to know whether _your_ vessels are carrying weapons of type X when they are berthed in _our_ ports. 3. I expect those who run the Cape York Spaceport to have the good sense to form international collaborative agreements for sound technical and business reasons, and not for political or military purposes. Since the spaceport is to be a fully commercial venture, good sense should prevail over politics. An _alliance_ would be an inappropriate mechanism. 4. Given the current US attitude towards the spaceport, it is most likely that any such collaborations will be with neighbouring countries in the Asia/Pacific region. This could include Japan (already backing the project), China (already launching our satellites), the USSR (providing the Zenits), Indonesia, etc.. 5. Exclusion of New Zealand from commercial and technical ventures for the sake of satisfying US strategic military goals probably only benefits the USA. craig lindley csiro dit sydney, Australia lindley@ditsyda.oz -- -------------------------------------------------------------------- Craig Lindley ( lindley@ditsyda.oz ) CSIRO Division of Info. Tech., Sydney. ------------------------------ Date: 29 May 90 14:26:33 GMT From: attcan!utgpu!watserv1!maytag!watdragon!watyew!jdnicoll@uunet.uu.net (Brian or James) Subject: Re: HAWAII AND STAR WARS Hawaii already has [I believe] the highest respiratory disease rate in the USA. Something to do with volcanic output... How will the proposed launch rate affect this. Is this a trivial increase in Hawaiian air pollution and are there ways of minimising the effect on the Hawaiians? I think Malaki is now available for use as a housing location for the various SDI researchers :) A while back, I asked how much of a power drain the proposed Hawaiian railgun would be. For those interested, it would need *all* of the current power available in the Hawaiian electrical distribution system at this time; clearly, the rg will need a power source built for it. Could the SDI stuff be worse than tourists? There's something about tourist that turns off the higher intelligence centers in tourists. Normally intelligent folks will ask questions like 'Do Old Order Menonites mind if we walk into their homes uninvited and photogragh them in a state of nature?' [A True Life Example]. The current system to contain the Touring Plague [I am told by my Hawaiian relatives] basically writes off the area around Honalulu [sp? and I might have the region wrong] as Tourist Country and only rents the Tourists distinctive vehicles whose terrain range is limited [No four wheel drives]. Just imagine a Tourist in space. "Anyone mind if I open both doors of this airlock? I wanna photograph explosive decompression' *Whooosh*. JDN ------------------------------ Date: 29 May 90 13:23:20 GMT From: attcan!utgpu!watserv1!maytag!watdragon!watyew!jdnicoll@uunet.uu.net (Brian or James) Subject: Re: wooden ships In article <2961@softway.oz> thos@softway.oz (Thomas Cohen) writes: >In article <1990May24.182621.14527@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> phil@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Phil Gustafson) writes: >>In article <1990May22.131441.1701@watdragon.waterloo.edu> jdnicoll@watyew.uwaterloo.ca (Brian or James) writes: >> >>[British are inept explorers.] >> >That's not all he wrote... > >Besides, some of them were actually quite good, >for example Capt. James Cook. (admittedly getting >killed and eaten by Hawaiian natives was hardly >the high point of his career). >But how do you draw the distinction between 'navigators' >and 'explorers'?. > >Enuff, on with space. > My critique of the British was mainly about their failure to adapt to the climates they found in their travels. Thin, tight clothing is not the ideal gear for the Arctic, unless your goal is to set records for frostbite deaths. It's worth noting that they had one or two other foibles. Captains going on long voyages had to pay for citrus fruits out of their own pockets. I guess the Powers That Were didn't consider scurvy deaths bad enough to budget money for food suppliments. On another note... The Hawaiians Did NOT Eat Captain Cook!!! This slander has been repeated for some centuries now. They definitely killed him. They may have used his remains for raw tool materials, but cannibalism is not part of the Hawaiian culture [My grandfather, born in Hawaii, was told that only the folks down around Fiji eat each other. This is slander, too]. Pop was also told that pre-european Hawaii was chronically short on non-wood or stone resources, and that it was considered a major insult to be used as a source of bone [I have dim memories of hip bones [?] being used for fishing hooks, but, alas, my mempry is dim...] and the boiling of Cook's body probably was related to this. Damned if I can remember if he said Cook ended up as tools or was safely disposed of such that he would not be tooled. Cook had some admirers among the Hawaiians. [I'd like to add that my paternal family *just* missed the revolution in which the Hawaiian Royal Family was deposed in 1880 or so. We keep moving to places the US annexes]. JDN ------------------------------ Date: 29 May 90 03:32:31 GMT From: attcan!utgpu!utzoo!yunexus!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!physics.utoronto.ca!neufeld@uunet.uu.net (Christopher Neufeld) Subject: Re: Problems of missing mass In article <4258@castle.ed.ac.uk> aipp@castle.ed.ac.uk (Pavlos Papageorgiou) writes: > [interesting thermodynamic discussion deleted] > Well, I have a couple of objections to this discussion. First, a thermodynamic treatment like this really isn't appropriate for a very small collection of particles, such as a star and twenty major planets, unless the time scale is very long, so that certain ergodic assumptions can be made. I submit that the time scale imposed by the age of the average solar system is not long enough to make these ergodic assumptions. Second, you omitted the possibility of a close approach by an object approaching from infinity (ie. an unbounded orbit). This can have the effect of ejecting orbiting bodies, depending on the relative positions and velocities of the bodies in question and the intruder. Again, because the time scale is relatively small, this cannot be modeled as an applied heat source, but has instead to be modeled as the occasional injection at random times of a random amount of energy. I do agree with the final conclusion, namely that the mass of Jupiter-like bodies in interstellar space which were ejected from solar systems is small compared to the visible mass in the universe. After all, Jupiter masses only 10^-6 solar mass. Planets much larger than Jupiter would glow under their own light, and we would not be considering them in this discussion of "Jupiter sized objects." I find it unlikely that the average solar system contains on the order of a million Jupiters which would all be ejected in a span of some 10^10 years. A possibly more likely source of dark matter ejected from solar systems comes from cometary clouds like the hypothesized Oort cloud. These particles are very loosely bound, extending out over a light year from the Sun, so they would be more easily affected by close approaches of other stars. The available mass seems quite large, also. > Pavlos Papageorgiou (aipp@uk.ac.ed.castle) -- Christopher Neufeld....Just a graduate student | He's the kind of person neufeld@helios.physics.utoronto.ca | who'd follow you into a cneufeld@pro-generic.cts.com Ad astra! | revolving door and come "Don't edit reality for the sake of simplicity" | out first. ------------------------------ Date: 30 May 90 05:10:45 GMT From: thorin!ornat!leech@mcnc.org (Jonathan Leech) Subject: Re: US/Soviet Planetary Activity (was Re: Manned mission to Venus) In article <3492@calvin.cs.mcgill.ca> msdos@calvin.cs.mcgill.ca (Mark SOKOLOWSKI) writes: >So why don't you guys do something about it???? It's a terrible loss!!!! >(I hope it's not true...) You have things backwards. Something was done about the planetary program in the early 1980's: the Solar System Exploration Committee laid out a strategy for the next few decades (I had the fortune to be at their summary meeting due to being in Bruce Murray's seminar at the time). The major efforts recommended were the first Mariner Mark II missions - CRAF (comet) and Cassini (Saturn/Titan). Mars rover/sample return is the next big wishlist item - with no funding. Magellan in a sense predated the SSEC, being a resurrected on-the-cheap version of the Venus Orbiting Imaging Radar mission which was canned; aside from this, Venus was not deemed worthy of significant effort in the near future. The SSEC had the sense to prioritize, though their priorities have largely been ignored by NASA administration and Congress resulting in a yet slower program. In any case, Venus is not up for major US missions, no matter how much you are dismayed by it. If the Observer-class missions recommended by SSEC are ever funded, it might get another visit in 15 years or so. -- Jon Leech (leech@cs.unc.edu) __@/ ``The tuba recital is one of the most memorable experiences of music school.'' - Seen on a bulletin board in the UNC Music School ------------------------------ Date: 30 May 90 05:18:41 GMT From: thorin!ornat!leech@mcnc.org (Jonathan Leech) Subject: Re: One Small Step for a Space Activist Vol 1 No. 5 In article <5376@itivax.iti.org> aws@vax3.iti.org.UUCP (Allen W. Sherzer) writes: >The attendees also expressed the need for >greater continuity in NASA goals and programs. Hopefully, this will help to >get stable multi-year funding for some of these projects. I keep hearing this idea. Which other, if any, federal programs (a) have any sort of multi-year funding commitment and (b) have actually received the money in the second year and beyond rather than been reshuffled in the next frantic budget summit? E.g., is there any reason to expect a longterm commitment will be either made or kept? -- Jon Leech (leech@cs.unc.edu) __@/ ``Even by the 22nd century, no way had yet been discovered of keeping elderly and conservative scientists from occupying crucial administrative positions. Indeed, it was doubted if the problem ever would be solved.'' - Arthur Clarke, _Rendezvous with Rama_ ------------------------------ End of SPACE Digest V11 #464 *******************