Return-path: X-Andrew-Authenticated-as: 7997;andrew.cmu.edu;Ted Anderson Received: from hogtown.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 ; Sat, 9 Feb 91 02:31:17 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: <0bguJ0u00WBwMPt04l@andrew.cmu.edu> Precedence: junk Reply-To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU From: space-request+@Andrew.CMU.EDU To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU Date: Sat, 9 Feb 91 02:31:13 -0500 (EST) Subject: SPACE Digest V13 #141 SPACE Digest Volume 13 : Issue 141 Today's Topics: Salyut 7 Returns to Earth MIR Lottery Execs Arrested Magellan GIF images New book: Exploring Space Re: Mir Sweepstakes Organizers Arrested NASA Headline News for 02/08/91 (Forwarded) Keplerian elements by anonymous FTP (How to...) Administrivia: Submissions to the SPACE Digest/sci.space should be mailed to space+@andrew.cmu.edu. Other mail, esp. [un]subscription requests, should be sent to space-request+@andrew.cmu.edu, or, if urgent, to tm2b+@andrew.cmu.edu ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 7 Feb 91 22:17:41 PST From: greer%utdssa.dnet%utaivc@utspan.span.nasa.gov X-Vmsmail-To: UTADNX::UTSPAN::AMES::"space+@andrew.cmu.edu" Subject: Salyut 7 Returns to Earth This is from America Online's online news service. Usually they credit AP, UPI, TASS, XINHUA or somebody, but this one has no initial credits. ++++++++++++++++ SALYUT-7 SOVIET SPACE STATION PLUNGES THROUGH ATMOSPHERE OVER ARGENTINA COLORADO SPRINGS, COLORADO (FEB. 7) - The Soviet space station Salyut-7 plunged through Earth's atmosphere over Argentina early Thursday and some of its pieces may strike a lightly populated area, according to the U.S. Space Command. The Salyut-7 and its attached Cosmos-1686 cargo spacecraft together weigh 40 tonnes and are 28 meters (31 yards) long, about the size of a railroad car. Navy Commander Charles Connor, a space command spokesman, said the craft entered the Earth's atmosphere at 0344 GMT, traveling at about 27,200 kilometers (17,000 miles) per hour. (According to the Soviet news agency Tass, the Soviet space control center in Kaliningrad, near Moscow, clocked their reentry at 0347 GMT. The space station plunged over the Argentine pampa several hundred kilometers (miles) west of Buenos Aires, Tass reported.) It was not known whether some of the debris would burn up on their journey through the atmosphere, or survive and fall to earth. Cmdr. Connor said the U.S. Space Command expected the debris to reach earth, which he said was rare. "Usually in satellite break-ups they just don't pass through the atmosphere, but the size of this one and with its shields, we certainly expect it to fall" to earth, he said. The Salyut-7, powered by solar energy and chemical batteries, does not contain any radio-active substances. The seventh and last version of the first permanent Soviet space station, the Salyut-7, launched April 19, 1982, was used in nine cosmonaut missions before technical problems forced it into retirement four years ago. Cosmos-1686, a new model of experimental station, was docked to the station September 17, 1985. Debris from two spacecraft have fallen to earth. In 1978, radioactive debris from Soviet satellite Cosmos-954 struck a lightly populated area of northern Canada; in 1979, pieces of the U.S. Skylab space station fell on unpopulated parts of Australia. +++++++++++++++++++ End of copied article _____________ Dale M. Greer, whose opinions are not to be confused with those of the Center for Space Sciences, U.T. at Dallas, UTSPAN::UTADNX::UTDSSA::GREER "It's not a question of on whose side God is on. The question is, are we on God's side? And I'm confident we are." -- J. Danforth "Not-to-put-too-fine-a-point-on-it,-but-don't-you- sleep-better-at-night-knowing-he's-just-a-heartbeat-away-from- Air-Force-One?" Quayle ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 7 Feb 91 11:53:39 PST From: greer%utdssa.dnet%utaivc@utspan.span.nasa.gov X-Vmsmail-To: UTADNX::UTSPAN::AMES::"space+@andrew.cmu.edu" Subject: MIR Lottery Execs Arrested The Dallas Morning News today reported that David Mayer and James Davidson, president and senior vice president of Space Travel Services, were arrested Wednesday in Houston on charges of violating state gambling laws. STS has been operating a lottery to select an American to go to the Soviet MIR space station. Each chance of being selected costs $2.99 through a 900 number. Lotteries are illegal in Texas. The state attorney general claims to have received assurances that STS would bring operations into compliance with state law, but that said assurances went unfulfilled. Comment: As I understand it, there are plenty of states in the union that allow lotteries, and everybody in Texas knows that gambling is illegal here. So how come STS didn't just set up shop in another state to begin with? _____________ Dale M. Greer, whose opinions are not to be confused with those of the Center for Space Sciences, U.T. at Dallas, UTSPAN::UTADNX::UTDSSA::GREER "I like Dan Quayle. He's young." -- George Bush on his choice for VP ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 7 Feb 91 15:00:55 EST From: John Roberts Disclaimer: Opinions expressed are those of the sender and do not reflect NIST policy or agreement. Subject: Magellan GIF images The GIF-format Magellan radar images are great. Thanks for converting them, Ron! John Roberts ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 7 Feb 91 13:02:23 PST From: hairston%utdssa.dnet%utaivc@utspan.span.nasa.gov X-Vmsmail-To: UTADNX::UTSPAN::AMES::"space+@andrew.cmu.edu" Subject: New book: Exploring Space There is a new book just out that would interest a lot of the SD readers, it is called "Exploring Space: Voyages in the Solar System and Beyond" by William E. Burrows. (He also wrote the book "Deep Black" about the history of spysats.) It's a history of the space program, but what makes this book different from all the others I've read is that it's the first to focus on the unmanned space program. Most histories you see (in both book and tv form) go on forever about the manned program, then toss in a snippet about "Oh yeah, there's Voyager and Viking too." And this is the first book I've read that thoroughly examines and explains the past and ongoing frustrations felt by the space sciences communities towards the manned space program. To give you an idea, here's an excerpt from it (any typos are mine): "And so on May 25 [1961] towards the end of a speech on 'Urgent National Needs' that he delivered to a joint session of Congress, Kennedy announced that he wanted to land Americans on the Moon before the end of the decade and asked the nation to approve such a commitment. 'No single space project in this period will be more exciting, or more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish,' Kennedy averred. "In all ways except one, JFK's statement would prove to be prophetic. Sending men to the Moon would indeed be exciting, impressive, difficult, and expensive. The program's long-range importance for the exploration of space, however, would turn out to be very different from what the young president seemed to have in mind. "In any case, there it was. The United States of America was finally pointed right at the Moon, just as von Braun, Ley, and the others had prophe- sied a decade earlier [in "Collier's" magazine articles]. The decision rested on four fundemental principles that were so important they would constitute the essential underpinnings of the space program for decades to come: "* The crusade to land Americans on the Moon would be unabashedly political, and would be dictated by a perceived competition that the Kennedy administration resolved to win at all costs. The Soviet Union, and specifi- cally its presence in space, would thereby become a force that was used to consolidate, shape, and focus the national will in a patriotic enterprise of unparalleled scope. Competition with the USSR was therefore to become an intrinsic part of the US space program. And if winning was everything, any means of doing so could be justified, even if it involved technologically dubious strategies. The science and technology would have to support the politics, not the other way around. "* Since winning would be measured in terms of prestige--how the world viewed the American space program--favorable public relations would become a fundamental part of the process. Being the best would matter only as it related to popular perception. And that would apply at home no less than beyond the nation's borders because there would be no program without public support. The country would have to have its appetite whetted for the competition--the game--and kept interested enough to finish. That in turn would require a campaign to portray the conflict in epic terms, with the astronauts depicted as true heroes in the Arthurian tradition and the opposition as the embodment of evil. In this regard, "Life" magazine's exclusive converage of the original seven Mercury astronauts would be reminiscent of the "Collier's" series, which in part dealt with the astro- naut selection and testing process, portraying successful candidates as examples of the ideal American male. "* The space program would now be firmly man-centered, since only men could be heroes and heroes were the order of the day. That, too, would prove to be costly. Not only were astronauts incapable of performing even a fraction of the tasks that machines could do, but sending them to space and keeping them there would be extremely expensive becuase their lives had to be protected in an environment that was relentlessly dangerous and poten- tially lethal. Furthermore, while the race to get men on the Moon would usher in a period of robust space science and planetary exploration, the Space Transport System that followed Apollo would force NASA to plunder the budgets of many valuable unmanned programs just to keep the shuttle going. This would have a divisive effect within the space agency itself, not only pitting manned and unmanned programs against one another, but forcing unmanned programs to compete on their own level for the crumbs dropped by the shuttle. The Hubble Space Telescope and other space-based astronomical projects, for example, had to vie with projects involving planetary exploration. "* Finally, Project Apollo would be goal- or mission-oriented, not part of a larger, more comprehensive endeavor. Because landing astronauts on the Moon was to be an end in itself, rather than the means to a greater end, it would conclude abruptly after the sixth trip without realizing its true potential: that of being a sizable step in the larger process of securing an expanding foothold in the solar system. The Apollo experience would therefore leave a confusing void. The morning after the party, so to speak, many thoughtful Americans who remained convinced that the lunar landings were good would find themselves wondering what, in fact, they were good for. "The goal of getting Americans to the Moon would be a sharply focused undertaking, but an exceedingly narrow one, and that too would have telling effects on the space program as a whole. It would haunt both the shuttle and the space station in years to come. The system--NASA, successive administra- tions, and Congress--would prove incapable of creating and sustaining a com- prehensive and ongoing space program. Instead, the program (if, indeed, it could be called that) would be constantly subjected to the vagaries of parti- san politics and a mercurial budget that would leave almost everything severely malnourished. And the most scientifically and technologically pro- ductive of the space agency's programs--space science in all of its manifes- tations on the ground, in Earth orbit, and beyond, and the exploration of the solar system--would be the least nourished of all." pp. 68-70 _________________________________ Marc Hairston--Center for Space Sciences--Univ of Texas at Dallas ...part of the slowly starving space science community... SPAN address UTSPAN::UTADNX::UTD750::HAIRSTON ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 7 Feb 91 14:08:05 -0500 From: "Allen W. Sherzer" Subject: Re: Mir Sweepstakes Organizers Arrested Newsgroups: sci.space Cc: In article Brian Yamuchi writes: >According to a UPI story on Clarinet (clari.tw.space), the organizers >of the Mir Sweepstakes were arrested today (2/6) and charged with >running an illegal lottery by the local DA. This is a felony charge >which carries a penalty of 2-10 years in prison. Well, a while ago the DA threatened to do something like this. A lot of phone calls seems to have changed their minds at that time. Pity it didn't take. It might be a good idea to try some calls again. If you want to call, the Houston DA's number is 713-221-5800. If you call, pe polite and calmly tell them how you feel about it. Don't threaten anything or anybody. If you are from Houston, make sure they know that. You might also tell them if you entered and that you don't feel duped (unless you do) even though you don't expect to win (I myself figure I am five times more likely to be killed in a car crash as fly on Mir). Allen -- +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ |Allen Sherzer |A MESSAGE FROM THE ANTI-WAR MOVEMENT TO THE PEOPLE OF KUWAIT: | |aws@iti.org | "If rape is inevitable, enjoy it!" | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ ------------------------------ Date: 8 Feb 91 17:41:38 GMT From: trident.arc.nasa.gov!yee@ames.arc.nasa.gov (Peter E. Yee) Subject: NASA Headline News for 02/08/91 (Forwarded) Headline News Internal Communications Branch (P-2) NASA Headquarters Friday, February 8, 1991 Audio Service: 202 / 755-1788 This is NASA Headline News for Friday, February 8, 1991 Discovery will be rolled from Kennedy Space Center's Orbiter Processing Facility to the Vehicle Assembly Building Saturday afternoon. Mating of Discovery to its external tank and solid rocket booster stack will follow the rollover. Columbia will be rolled from the VAB into Discovery's vacated spot in the OPF by dusk tomorrow. Activity today on Discovery includes weight and center--of-gravity measurements. The heater problem on Discovery's thruster has been isolated to a cable harness located between the thruster and an associated logic unit. Launch of Discovery for the STS-39 Department of Defense mission is set for early March. Work on Atlantis continues on a schedule which would allow an early April launch for the STS-37 Gamma Ray Observatory deploy mission. Current activity on Atlantis includes the installation of the left-hand orbital maneuvering system pod this weekend, and tests of the right-hand pod today. The STS-37 Atlantis crew equipment interface test will occur tomorrow. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Galileo is now more than 28 million miles from Earth. It has traveled 763 million miles since launch and has gone 120 million miles in its solar orbit since the December Earth flyby. Current spacecraft orbital speed is about 80,300 mph. Galileo's health and performance continue to be excellent. Engineering telemetry and cruise science data are being transmitted through the primary low-gain antenna at a rate of 40 bits per second. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * NASA has scheduled two chemical releases from the Combined Release and Radiation Effects Satellite for February. There are opportunities to make the two releases, one of barium and one of lithium, on the nights of Feb. 9, 11, 13, and 16, and the morning of Feb. 19. There are multiple release opportunities each evening. The CRRES scientists seek to understand what processes cause aurora. The studies are conducted using charged-particle clouds, released by the CRRES spacecraft, which induce aurora. These artificial aurora are then observed to study the interaction between them and Earth's ionosphere and magnetosphere. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * In testimony yesterday before the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, Administrator Richard Truly said that NASA activities make significant contributions to America's competitive posture in the global marketplace, to our national pride and accomplishment, to our creative and intellectual spirit, and to our understanding of the fragile Earth we inhabit. He also said the 1991 budget request reflects Congressional guidance to temper the proposed rate of growth of the agency's budget, and to restructure Space Station Freedom, and responds to recommendations of the Report of the Advisory Committee on the Future of the U.S. Space Program. Truly noted that the budget contains a 17 percent increase for NASA's educational activities, which represents a sustained commitment on the part of NASA and the President to stimulate young people's interest in science, mathematics and engineering, and to provide resources for teachers and support for university activity in these areas. Here's the broadcast schedule for Public Affairs events on NASA Select TV. All times are Eastern. **indicates a live program. Monday, 2/11/91 1:00 pm NASA Radio Program will be transmitted. Tuesday, 2/12/91 12:00 pm NASA Productions will be transmitted. All events and times may change without notice. This report is filed daily, Monday through Friday, at 12:00 pm, EST. It is a service of Internal Communications Branch at NASA Headquarters. Contact: CREDMOND on NASAmail or at 202/453-8425. NASA Select TV: Satcom F2R, Transponder 13, C-Band, 72 degrees West Longitude, Audio 6.8, Frequency 3960 MHz. ------------------------------ Date: 8 Feb 91 15:26:18 GMT From: swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!src.honeywell.com!msi.umn.edu!cs.umn.edu!uc!nachos.SSESCO.com!SSESCO.com!elmquist@ucsd.edu (Chris Elmquist) Subject: Keplerian elements by anonymous FTP (How to...) Satellite Keplerian Elements Available for Anonymous FTP -------------------------------------------------------- For those that are having difficulty receiving the NASA satellite tracking element sets via News postings, I have set up and maintain an archive of these element sets accessable by anonymous FTP. The server is: nachos.ssesco.com [192.55.187.18] T.S. Kelso's element sets (the most current and several previous versions) are maintained in the directory: sat_elements/nasa New element sets are posted weekly. You can also find the Molczan element sets on the same server in the directory: sat_elements/molczan These are also updated weekly. When logging-in to nachos, please use your e-mail address as the anonymous password so that we can trace network problems if they should occur. Thanks go to T.S. Kelso and Mike McCants for providing these element sets on a regular basis. Address problems with the server to: elmquist@ssesco.com ------------------------------ End of SPACE Digest V13 #141 *******************