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 ; Sun, 8 Jul 1990 01:35:56 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: Precedence: junk Reply-To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU From: space-request+@Andrew.CMU.EDU To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU Date: Sun, 8 Jul 1990 01:35:24 -0400 (EDT) Subject: SPACE Digest V12 #29 SPACE Digest Volume 12 : Issue 29 Today's Topics: Re: one opinion.... SETI funding cut HST Board Report #1 (Forwarded) Re: NASA Budget Re: grim tidings for the future sensores Re: grim tidings for the future MAIL test Re: realities of testing HST Re: grim tidings for the future Re: grim tidings for the future Re: grim tidings for the future (wasting money) Re: grim tidings for the future Administrivia: Submissions to the SPACE Digest/sci.space should be mailed to space+@andrew.cmu.edu. Other mail, esp. [un]subscription notices, should be sent to space-request+@andrew.cmu.edu, or, if urgent, to tm2b+@andrew.cmu.edu ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 6 Jul 90 20:33:14 GMT From: bfmny0!tneff@uunet.uu.net (Tom Neff) Subject: Re: one opinion.... In article <1990Jul6.032727.15767@eagle.lerc.nasa.gov> tfabian@csd.lerc.nasa.gov (Teddy Fabian) writes: >eg. the Hubble Space Telescope has some problems right now.. or so it >seems.. but maybe, with a little time, and thought, the problems will >result in even greater discoveries.. Maybe we should command the scope to move the secondary even farther out of focus -- then the unexpected discoveries will REALLY pour in. >Why isn't the benefit of the doubt given?? Why is there no trust in the >people doing the research?? The people doing the research are the USERS. Nobody mistrusts the USERS. ------------------------------ Date: 6 Jul 90 21:08:52 GMT From: earthquake.Berkeley.EDU!gwh@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (George William Herbert) Subject: SETI funding cut [paraphrased from an article in San Fransisco Chronicle] The House of Representatives cut all funding for the SETI project in next year's budget. Following a tirade by Rep. Ronald K. Machtley, R-R.I. and Rep. Silvio O. Conte, R-Mass., the funding was cut from 6.1 million (NASA has asked for 12.1) to zero. The house action was preceded by a presentation of tabloid alien articles and a reference to the SCOTI: Search for COngressional Intelligence . The only hope is that the Senate, which has yet to vote on the matter, will restore funds, and the conference budget will override the house funding halt. The SETI people at NASA-Ames, and Frank Drake (UC Santa Cruz astronomer, one of the driving forces in SETI programs) were upset, Drake refering to the congress' members acting in 'juvenile' ways. == George William Herbert == "Well, if an outraged Canadian terrorist was == JOAT for Hire: Anything, == *** to come down and assasinate Quayle, what =======Anywhere, My Price.======= ****** would happen?" -history prof _trying_ == gwh@ocf.berkeley.edu == ************* to explain why WW I started... == ucbvax!ocf!gwh == The OCF Gang: Making Tomorrow's Mistakes Today ------------------------------ Date: 6 Jul 90 22:09:23 GMT From: usc!sdd.hp.com!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!jato!mars.jpl.nasa.gov!baalke@ucsd.edu (Ron Baalke) Subject: HST Board Report #1 (Forwarded) HST INVESTIGATION BOARD STATUS REPORT #1 The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Optical Systems Board of Investigation met for the first time July 5-6, 1990, in Washington, D.C. After introductory remarks by Dr. Lennard A. Fisk, Associate Administrator for Space Science and Applications; Dr. Lew Allen, Director, Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), and board chairman; and Gary Tesch, Board Counsel, the board heard presentations from NASA Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) and Hughes Danbury Optical Systems (DOS) officials. The MSFC personnel summarized the current status of HST systems. The Hughes DOS representatives gave an overview of the manufacture and test procedures for the HST primary and secondary mirrors and the Optical Telescope Assemby (OTA). The presentations were general in nature due to the impounment of original pertinent data under the provisions of the HST Contingency Plan. Hughes DOS officials also proposed some near-term options for further defining and characterizing the spherical aberration. Some of the options which were extensively discussed by the board involve data review; others call for testing of existing back-up and prototype hardware and test equipment. The board heard by telecon the report from the HST Independent Optical Review Panel, concluding that the panel agrees that there is approximately one-half wave of spherical aberration in the OTA. The next meeting of the board is tentatively scheduled for July 25-26, 1990, at Hughes DOS, Danbury, Connecticut. In the next two weeks activities will be carried out in three areas: o Examination and analysis of pertinent data. o Preliminary interviews of knowledgeble individuals. o Design and preparation of appropriate tests. The board has modified the impoundment procedures sufficiently to permit the activites above to begin while taking active steps, including independent supervision, to ensure the integrity of the pertinent data and hardware. At the conclusion of the meeting Dr. Allen said, "The board now has a good base of information from which to proceed with its investigation." ___ _____ ___ /_ /| /____/ \ /_ /| | | | | __ \ /| | | | Ron Baalke | baalke@mars.jpl.nasa.gov ___| | | | |__) |/ | | |___ Jet Propulsion Lab | baalke@jems.jpl.nasa.gov /___| | | | ___/ | |/__ /| M/S 301-355 | |_____|/ |_|/ |_____|/ Pasadena, CA 91109 | ------------------------------ Date: 7 Jul 90 22:38:42 GMT From: uvaarpa!murdoch!astsun7.astro.Virginia.EDU!gl8f@mcnc.org (Greg Lindahl) Subject: Re: NASA Budget In article <9007070115.AA03402@ibmpa.paloalto.ibm.com> szabonj@ibmpa.UUCP (Nicholas J. Szabo) writes: >The pro-NASA response so far has consisted of: > >* A flurry of articles from NASA employees using taxpayer's equipment > to lobby for their employer's cause. That's funny, I've seen a large flurry of postings discussing the technical details of the problems with the HST and what can be done about it. I thought that is what this group is for. I would suggest that you shouldn't classify every posting that disagrees with your political agenda as "lobbying", especially if they are factual. >* NASA fans who mistakenly equate NASA with the space program, and say > we should trust NASA "experts" (some are, some aren't) on how they > should divide up our $14 billion. I haven't seen a single posting suggest this. In fact most posters seem to have some ideas of their own. Chasing straw men is a waste of time. -- "Perhaps I'm commenting a bit cynically, but I think I'm qualified to." - Dan Bernstein ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 7 Jul 1990 19:46:08 EDT From: KLUDGE@AGCB8.LARC.NASA.GOV Subject: Re: grim tidings for the future X-Vmsmail-To: SMTP%"space+@andrew.cmu.edu" I hear a lot of criticism of NASA, saying that it's an inefficient organization and a bureaucratic nightmare. I hear folks saying that space should be commercialized. These people have some points, but they generally seem to miss the point. 1. Nobody is keeping space from being commercialized. NASA is not keeping the pricing down to prevent competition. There are no regulations preventing anyone from picking up a few surplus ICBM's and launching their own craft. The problem is that it's damned expensive and damned difficult to get a reasonable payload into space. If it could be done in a cost-effective way commercially, it would be. Now that launch backlogs are increasing at NASA, the market is increasing and a few private companies are looking at the market. Give it another few years. Because of the difficulty, it's not going to happen soon. 2. NASA is a bureaucratic nightmare. Okay. It's part of the government, so what do you expect? The government is never the most cost-effective organization to do anything (as the postal folks found out). But for things which aren't ever going to be cost-effective, private foundations aren't going to foot all the bill. And pure science (which is most of what NASA does.. launching satellites is a small part of their work) never returns much to the researcher. It returns a whole lot to society at large, though. Lockheed would never be willing to spend the money to do the kind of work that NASA funds, either in large or small projects. They wouldn't get the return they need. Now part of this has to do with the fact that U.S. corporations are quite shortsighted, and part of it has to do with Lockheed also being a bureaucratic nightmare (most of the large aerospace companies are, but all my weekly paperwork goes to the Lackheed office, so I use them as an example). When NASA makes it cost effective, the companies will jump in. In the meantime there's a big cost to the taxpayer, but it gets repaid in the future. Pure research _always_ pays off. Disclaimer: These opinions are mine alone, and while I have been trying to give them to NASA and Lockheed for some time, they won't seem to take them from me. --scott ------------------------------ Date: 29 Jun 90 19:33:22 GMT From: banyc!atina!intiar!ice@uunet.uu.net (Instrumentacion_y_Control_Electronico) Subject: sensores Our research group works in the area of Sensors and Transducers. We have developed a Sensor Data Base and we would like to contact everyone who's working on this subject. Thank you in advance. Waiting for response. ------------------------------ Date: 8 Jul 90 04:25:50 GMT From: groucho!steve@handies.ucar.edu (Steve Emmerson) Subject: Re: grim tidings for the future In <900707194608.23c001fd@AGCB8.LARC.NASA.GOV> KLUDGE@AGCB8.LARC.NASA.GOV writes: > ... And pure science (which is most of > what NASA does.. launching satellites is a small part of their work) never > returns much to the researcher. I have difficulty believing this assertion. May we please have some numbers so that we may judge for ourselves whether or not NASA has spent more than 50% of its funding on basic research (i.e. "pure science") over the, say, past decade? Note: I'm interested in funds spent on basic research -- not engineering, not development. I expect that either the amount is less than 50%, or that "pure science" includes much that isn't. Steve Emmerson steve@unidata.ucar.edu ...!ncar!unidata!steve ------------------------------ Date: 7 Jul 90 19:09:21 GMT From: usc!samsung!emory!hubcap!ncrcae!ncrlnk!ncrwic!wsuiar!aylim1@ucsd.edu Subject: MAIL test this is a test ------------------------------ Date: 8 Jul 90 00:24:39 GMT From: clyde.concordia.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!utzoo!henry@uunet.uu.net (Henry Spencer) Subject: Re: realities of testing HST In article <15640@bfmny0.BFM.COM> tneff@bfmny0.BFM.COM (Tom Neff) writes: >... Did NASA really think that >an integrated optical test was necessary but that it was impossible to >ask for the money? Everything we have heard so far indicates the >opposite, that NASA felt it was not worth the money because the >contractor could be relied to do the mirrors right... This is a false dichotomy. Try "NASA felt it was not worth having to fight for the money because it was unlikely that the contractors would have goofed so grossly". All three considerations -- tight funding, possible difficulty in justifying an expensive test for dumb mistakes, and the unlikeliness of such mistakes -- pointed the same way: no test. -- "Either NFS must be scrapped or NFS | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology must be changed." -John K. Ousterhout | henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry ------------------------------ Date: 7 Jul 90 16:44:35 GMT From: thorin!grover!beckerd@mcnc.org (David Becker) Subject: Re: grim tidings for the future Lee E. Brotzman writes: " " Not all the dollars go to the "Big Science" projects. NASA funds a "lot of little science projects as well, as any cursory glance in the " "-- Internet: brotzman@nssdca.gsfc.nasa.gov " Once consensus opinion on sci.space seems to be that NASA does "Small Science" very well. The whole areonautics side has been cited as an example of the place NASA should have in the launch business. The projects that doesn't cost too much or get very much publicity are far simpler to handle than "Big Science". NASA just hasn't done well in the last twenty years when it comes to handling areas that need mucho PR and/or a billion dollar allowance. The PR deptarment could have managed to ``spin'' the Hubble story better. Instead, the evening news made it a lead story and made it sound dead in space. Ideally, the shuttle should be chalked up to experience and put in a textbook. In reality, NASA has calcified. -- David Becker Gotta love a machine that hangs on beckerd@cs.unc.edu your every word. ------------------------------ Date: 7 Jul 90 17:23:15 GMT From: uoft02.utoledo.edu!fax0112@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu Subject: Re: grim tidings for the future In article <2713@dftsrv.gsfc.nasa.gov>, brotzman@nssdcb.gsfc.nasa.gov (Lee Brotzman) writ Jon Leech (leech@cs.unc.edu) __@/ > And lets not forget COBE and ROSAT. Both of those babies are > returning plenty of good science. I wonder if noone wants to mention > COBE simply because it is giving us the answers we _expected_ to get. > ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Sorry that is quite the opposite of the truth. So far COBE has not detected the anisotropy astrophysicists were expecting to see. The early result are about as smooth as one could imagine. In a few motnhs we should have info on the dipole component. This will put some new wrinkles in cosmological models. Robert Dempsey Ritter Observatory ------------------------------ Date: 7 Jul 90 15:37:07 GMT From: ius3.ius.cs.cmu.edu!dep@pt.cs.cmu.edu (David Pugh) Subject: Re: grim tidings for the future (wasting money) In article <37449@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> gwh@OCF.Berkeley.EDU (George William Herbert) writes: >The argument was that NASA is a bad investment. It isn't. There may >be better investments out there, but that's not the point. Money >spent on space is _not_ wasted. Money spent on space is wasted if: + It generates no (or highly limited) scientific data. + It doesn't provide an infra-structure for future work. + It convinces the public that either: o We have "won" and don't need to spend more money. o We have "lost" and there is no point in spending more money. Given the way NASA "works" (highly public and highly political), NASA projects seem almost doomed to fail on the last two counts (witness the push for the shuttle over either keeping the Saturn-V lines running or building the big, dumb booster). -- ... He was determined to discover the David Pugh underlying logic behind the universe. ...!seismo!cmucspt!ius3!dep Which was going to be hard, because there wasn't one. _Mort_, Terry Pratchett ------------------------------ Date: 7 Jul 90 20:20:55 GMT From: groucho!steve@handies.ucar.edu (Steve Emmerson) Subject: Re: grim tidings for the future In <37449@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> gwh@earthquake.Berkeley.EDU (George William Herbert) writes: >The arguement was that NASA is a bad investment. It isn't. There may >be better investments out there, but that's not the point. Money >spent on space is _not_ wasted. The statement was that NASA was a *good* investment. I disagreed. Furthermore, I stated that such opinions should be labeled as such. I remain unconvinced that NASA is a good investment(%) -- especially in relative terms -- as my previous posting attempted to show. ---- % I do believe, however, that other institutions are far worse. Steve Emmerson steve@unidata.ucar.edu ...!ncar!unidata!steve ------------------------------ End of SPACE Digest V12 #29 *******************