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 ; Thu, 28 Mar 91 02:02:21 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: Precedence: junk Reply-To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU From: space-request+@Andrew.CMU.EDU To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU Date: Thu, 28 Mar 91 02:02:17 -0500 (EST) Subject: SPACE Digest V13 #311 SPACE Digest Volume 13 : Issue 311 Today's Topics: NASA Headline News - 03/20/91 (Forwarded) Re: "Follies" Re: NASA Headline News - 03/18/91 (Forwarded) Re: railguns and electro-magnetic launchers Re: Value per pound vs. cost per pound Re: railguns and electro-magnetic launchers MAJOR MAGNETIC STORM WARNING - LOW LATITUDE AURORAL ACTIVITY WARNING 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: 20 Mar 91 17:13:04 GMT From: zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sdd.hp.com!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!jato!mars.jpl.nasa.gov!baalke@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu (Ron Baalke) Subject: NASA Headline News - 03/20/91 (Forwarded) Headline News Internal Communications Branch (P-2) NASA Headquarters Wednesday, March 20, 1991 Audio Service: 202 / 755-1788 This is NASA Headline News for Wednesday, March 20, 1991 The terminal countdown demonstration test for the STS-37 Atlantis mission was successfully completed this morning. The flight crew, led by mission commander Steven Nagel, heads back for Houston this afternoon. The Kennedy Space Center launch readiness review for Atlantis' Gamma Ray Observatory deployment mission begins tomorrow. Next Tuesday, March 26, the mission flight readiness review for STS-37 will begin. Atlantis is currently set for launch on a five day mission in early April. Discovery was refitted with one of its two fuel-line door closing mechanisms yesterday. Work to install the other, both of which came from Columbia, is still underway. KSC technicians yesterday began preparations for destacking the STS-40 solid rocket boosters, which had been under assembly in the Vehicle Assembly Building. Routine tests conducted during the stacking process determined that load distribution measurements in the aft skirts did not meet specifications. The right-hand SRB skirt was removed last night. The left-hand skirt will be removed today. Restacking of the STS-40 SRBs is expected to begin this weekend. Any impact to the planned early May launch of Columbia is being evaluated. In the meantime, payload workers are preparing to move the Get-Away-Special bridge and the Spacelab habitable module from the Operations and Checkout Building to the Orbiter Processing Facility early this weekend. Installation of the payloads into Columbia's cargo bay will begin later this weekend. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * KSC Center Director Forrest McCartney will address central Florida community leaders on current KSC operations and future plans at 8:30 am tomorrow at Spaceport USA's Galaxy Theater. The report by Gen. McCartney is an annual presentation made to mayors, city and county commissioners, Chamber of Commerce members and other officials in central Florida. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Office of Space Flight Associate Administrator Bill Lenoir's monthly press briefing has been reset from today to tomorrow, Thursday, March 21, at 10:30 am. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * The 22nd Lunar and Planetary Science Conference will hold a special public session on "Venus, Earth and Moon: New Views from Magellan and Galileo this evening at 9:00 pm EST in the Johnson Space Center Teague Auditorium. This year's annual public session will feature discoveries made recently by the two spacecraft. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * The launch of Joust 1, a commercial suborbital rocket, set to carry 10 materials and biotechnology experiments, has been rescheduled from March 29 to mid-April. The vehicle will lift off from Launch Complex 20, Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Joust 1 managers currently are evaluating new vibration data obtained during a flight using similar systems. They are also reassessing the Joust's guidance system. A new launch date is expected to be determined next week. The Joust 1 mission is sponsored by the University of Alabama- Huntsville Consortium for Materials in Space, a NASA Center for the Commercial Development of Space. Orbital Sciences Corp., Space Data Division, Chandler, Ariz., has a contract with the UAH consortium to provide the rocket and launch services. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * NASA and TW Recreational Services announced they have chosen a world-class design team to provide the conceptual plan for a major new Kennedy Space Center tour site. Morris Architects, Orlando, was selected to design a facility at the Banana Creek launch guest site which will provide a permanent, weather-proof home for the Saturn V rocket and the Apollo-11 lunar mission show. The new facility will free space in the flight crew training building and also remove heavy tourist traffic from the VAB-LCC complex. Estimated cost of the new facility is $30 million, which will be provided from a special fund generated by revenue from tour-bus ticket sales. Construction of the facility is expected to begin sometime in the 1993- 94 timeframe. Here's the broadcast schedule for Public Affairs events on NASA Select TV. All times are Eastern. NASA Select TV is carried on GE Satcom F2R, transponder 13, C-Band, 72 degrees W Long., Audio 6.8, Frequency 3960 MHz. Wednesday, 3/20/91 11:30 am STS-40 Joint Integrated Simulation between JSC, MSFC and GSFC. 1:15 pm Magellan-at-Venus status report live from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. 1:30 pm Continuation of coverage of STS-40 Joint Integrated Simulation between JSC, MSFC and GSFC. Continues through 9:00 pm. ___ _____ ___ /_ /| /____/ \ /_ /| Ron Baalke | baalke@mars.jpl.nasa.gov | | | | __ \ /| | | | Jet Propulsion Lab | ___| | | | |__) |/ | | |___ M/S 301-355 | Change is constant. /___| | | | ___/ | |/__ /| Pasadena, CA 91109 | |_____|/ |_|/ |_____|/ | ------------------------------ Date: 20 Mar 91 22:11:37 GMT From: agate!bionet!uwm.edu!rpi!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!utzoo!henry@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Henry Spencer) Subject: Re: "Follies" In article <7044@mace.cc.purdue.edu> dil@mace.cc.purdue.edu (Perry G Ramsey) writes: >The obvious differences are that both Massachusetts and northern Utah >support human life quite readily. Food, water, building materials, >etc. are all readily and cheaply available. Well, yes and no. As I recall, the Plymouth Rock colony very nearly starved the first winter. And a number of exploring parties into places like California did literally starve to death. Water is decidedly scarce in large areas of the southwest, and building materials are very sparse on the great plains (you don't think homesteaders built sod huts because they *liked* them, do you?). The settlers in all these places needed tools, brains, and effort to live; the necessities of survival often were *not* "readily and cheaply available". >... Salt Lake City quickly could become self >supporting; Luna City won't cut its umbilical for years. There isn't a single self-sufficient city on Earth today, never has been, and probably never will be. As witness the classic siege tactic called "starving the defenders out". The question is not whether crucial supplies have to come in from outside, because that is always true. The question is whether the settlement in question is producing enough goods for export to pay for its imports (including transportation costs). [Actually even that is too stringent a criterion, since (to pick a random example) the United States of America has been living beyond its means for years now, but for a new colony it's a reasonable rule.] So what does the trade balance of Luna City look like? Not too favorable, alas, unless there is extensive space activity elsewhere. Transport is costly -- although arguably the city wouldn't even be founded before that situation improved -- and there are few things it can produce that are worth the shipping costs. Free fall is a better location for industry, for the most part. The Moon's major asset will be access to materials, but that will matter only if there are customers elsewhere in space who will find lunar materials cheaper than ones launched from Earth. >I like to be hopeful, but hoping that a few hundred families are >going to drop everything to go live alone on the moon and pay for it >themselves is going a bit far. Line forms on the right. There would be no shortage of people willing and eager to do it, if it were financially practical. Right now, it is too costly for the families in question to finance themselves (as the Mormons did for Utah) and there is too little prospect of export trade for borrowing the money to be viable (as it was for the Plymouth Rock colonists, who were deep in debt for the first twenty years or so). -- "[Some people] positively *wish* to | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology believe ill of the modern world."-R.Peto| henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry ------------------------------ Date: 19 Mar 91 15:52:09 GMT From: elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!usc!samsung!rex!rouge!dlbres10@ames.arc.nasa.gov (Fraering Philip) Subject: Re: NASA Headline News - 03/18/91 (Forwarded) In article <1991Mar18.233833.19729@jato.jpl.nasa.gov> baalke@mars.jpl.nasa.gov (Ron Baalke) writes:(I should add that he is writing on behalf of Peter Yee, although I don't know why I should add that. Just trying to avoid confusion, I suppose - P.F.) >NASA has terminated the operation of the Dynamics Explorer-1 >(DE-1) spacecraft. The spacecraft, which acquired the first global >images of the aurora, was launched on August 3, 1981. It was >designed to last three years and to study the coupling of energy, >electric currents and mass between the Earth's upper atmosphere, >ionosphere and magnetosphere. Project scientist Dr. Robert Hoffman >said the quality and quantity of data returned from DE-1, and a >companion spacecraft, far exceeded their expectations. The >spacecraft was terminated because it had refused to accept commands >since Nov. 17 and because of operation cost considerations and the >diminishing value of the data returned. Wasn't this the spacecraft whose data touched off (or helped touch off) the mini-comet controversy? Speaking of which, I ask again: has there been any new evidence for or against the theory, such as Galileo was possibly (I'm not sure) supposed to gather? Phil Fraering dlbres110@pc.usl.edu ------------------------------ Date: 20 Mar 91 15:32:07 GMT From: borg!cassatt!leech@mcnc.org (Jonathan Leech) Subject: Re: railguns and electro-magnetic launchers In article <1991Mar20.013858.16326@ariel.unm.edu>, prentice@triton.unm.edu (John Prentice) writes: |> I don't know what accelerations |> are contemplated for EM launchers for putting a payload into space, but |> I would have to assume they are not significantly smaller. Does anyone |> know what accelerations are involved? SSI's Mass Driver III did something like 1500 Gs. The application is sending bulk payload from the lunar surface, however. -- Jon Leech (leech@cs.unc.edu) __@/ "A compact set can be controlled by a finite police force no matter how dumb." H. Weyl ca. 1938 ------------------------------ Date: 20 Mar 91 17:29:53 GMT From: zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!samsung!rex!rouge!dlbres10@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu (Fraering Philip) Subject: Re: Value per pound vs. cost per pound In article <1991Mar19.225606.4954@zoo.toronto.edu> henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes: NS>Sorry, I'm not interested in learning the details of a dead-end technology. HS>Ah, I see. "I've made up my mind, don't confuse me with facts." Nick is stating an argument in his posts and in e-mail that billions upon billions of dollars was spent on the shuttle in an attempt to lower costs and that this has been a failure and that therefore further research money should be spent elsewhere. I have heard this argument many times before from many different people. It is important that we come up with a _very_ convincing counterproposal. 20 billion dollars spent with no real results seems to make arguments based merely on physics and engineering very weak. Phil Fraering dlbres10@pc.usl.edu P.S.: Perhaps we should just research _everything_ with all research projects independent of the outcome of the others. (?) (?) ------------------------------ Date: 21 Mar 91 16:47:06 GMT From: agate!bionet!uwm.edu!wuarchive!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!utzoo!henry@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Henry Spencer) Subject: Re: railguns and electro-magnetic launchers In article <1991Mar21.080855.27560@leland.Stanford.EDU> zowie@leland.Stanford.EDU (Craig DeForest) writes: >Lesse: the bullet of a `typical' hunting rifle comes out at the >speed of sound, after accelerating from rest inside the (1m) barrel. Actually, Mach 1 is a pretty slow bullet, more typical of pistols than modern rifles. 700-1000 m/s is more typical for a high-velocity rifle. That's also a reasonable velocity range for medium-performance artillery. 1000m/s in a 5m barrel is an average of 10000G, and the peak will be somewhat higher. >Can we make precision instrumentation that can undergo 1000 g's? ... The manufacturers of the Copperhead laser-guided artillery shell would undoubtedly tell you "yes"... Gun-launched payloads are going to have to be carefully selected, and bulk materials are clearly going to be favored over experimental animals :-), but many things can be built to take it if the need arises. -- "[Some people] positively *wish* to | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology believe ill of the modern world."-R.Peto| henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 23 Mar 91 13:28:20 MST From: oler%HG.ULeth.CA@BITNET.CC.CMU.EDU (CARY OLER) Subject: MAJOR MAGNETIC STORM WARNING - LOW LATITUDE AURORAL ACTIVITY WARNING X-St-Vmsmail-To: st%"space+@andrew.cmu.edu" /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\ POTENTIAL MAJOR GEOMAGNETIC STORM WARNING /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\ Issued: 16:00 UT, 23 March ------------- WARNINGS ISSUED: - POTENTIAL LOW LATITUDE AURORAL ACTIVITY WARNING - POTENTIAL MAJOR TO SEVERE GEOMAGNETIC STORM WARNING - POTENTIAL SATELLITE ANOMALY WARNING - POTENTIAL ELECTRICAL GEOMAGNETIC INDUCTION WARNING - POTENTIAL MAJOR SOLAR FLARE WARNING (PROTON) ALERTS IN PROGRESS: - MAJOR PROTON FLARE ALERT - SATELLITE PROTON EVENT ALERT (2,500 PFU PROTONS IN PROGRESS AT > 10 MEV) - POLAR CAP ABSORPTION ALERT (RIOMETER MEASUREMENTS > 5.0 DB DEVIATION). - POLAR RADIO BLACKOUT ALERT (IN PROGRESS) ATTENTION: A MAJOR middle latitude geomagnetic storm is expected to begin on 24 March. Periods of severe geomagnetic storming is possible over middle latitudes, while high latitudes should experience frequent severe storm periods (K indices of 8 and 9). The cause of this predicted activity is the major proton flare of 22 March (class X9.4/3B proton flare at 22:47 UT). A high risk exists for major storming. Satellite level protons reached event thresholds of 10 p.f.u. at 08:20 UT on 23 March and skyrocketed from there to moderately high levels of 2,500 p.f.u. thereafter. Some satellite anomalies are possible with proton levels at this intensity. A PCA event with an accompanying polar radio blackout began at 09:31 UT on 23 March and is expected to continue for the next 24 to possibly 48 hours. Riometer measurements indicate an absorption intensity of greater than 5.0 dB's. A Forbush decrease is expected with the magnetic storm. An interplanetary shockwave is expected to impact and produce a magnetic SSC sometime between approximately 09:00 UT and 18:00 UT on 24 March. Minor storm level fluctuations are expected to begin shortly thereafter, increasing to major storm levels by the end of the UT day on 24 March. Significant storming is possible. The flare which is producing this event was significantly more powerful and radio-rich than the flare which produced the previous storm warning a few weeks ago. The probability for magnetic storming from this event is much higher than the last warning, due primarily to the sensitive position of the flare on the sun. Geomagnetic induction will be possible if this storm materializes as expected. Significant magnetic perturbations are forecasted for all latitudes. Higher latitudes (middle northern and high latitudes) will likely experience the most intense storming. Although it is difficult to predict actual expected magnetic activity levels, we are predicting a middle latitude magnetic A-index of 40 for 24 Mar, and 50 or greater for 25 March. There is a good possibility middle latitude A-indices could surpass 75 on 25 March. Magnetic K-indices for middle latitudes are predicted to reach levels of 6 and 7 (a level of 9 is the top of the scale). High latitudes will probably see values of 8 and 9. A LOW LATITUDE AURORAL ACTIVITY WARNING has been issued. Auroral activity will be high to very high over high latitudes, and high over middle latitudes. Significant southward migration of the auroral zone is possible with this event. Low latitude auroral activity is a real possibility. If storm intensities surpass levels expected, auroral activity could possibly be seen as far south as Florida. Significant HF disruptions are possible (if not likely) over all latitudes. Polar regions are already experiencing blackout conditions due to the proton event. High absorption could produce near blackout conditions on many middle latitude paths. Strong fading and distortion is expected for low and middle latitudes. There is a high probability for significant VHF bistatic auroral backscatter communications on 24 and 25 March. Low latitude auroral backscatter communications is also expected to be possible over many areas. Middle latitudes will experience the best opportunities for auroral backscatter communications. The most intense terrestrial activity is expected to last between 12 and 24 hours, with active to very active geomagnetic post-storm activity persisting until 26 March (barring any further major solar flaring). PLEASE SEND ANY REPORTS OF AURORAL ACTIVITY, AURORAL BACKSCATTER COMMUNICATIONS OR SIGNIFICANT HF RADIO DEGRADATION TO: OLER@HG.ULETH.CA PLEASE INCLUDE THE LOCAL AND UT TIME OF OBSERVATION, GEOGRAPHICAL LOCATION (LATITUDE/LONGITUDE) AND A BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE PHENOMENA OBSERVED. /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\ ------------------------------ End of SPACE Digest V13 #311 *******************