Date: Sat, 21 Nov 92 05:00:06 From: Space Digest maintainer Reply-To: Space-request@isu.isunet.edu Subject: Space Digest V15 #442 To: Space Digest Readers Precedence: bulk Space Digest Sat, 21 Nov 92 Volume 15 : Issue 442 Today's Topics: "Jonathan's Space Report, No. 133" `skipping' off an atmosphere COSTAR etc. FREE-ENERGY TECHNOLOGY For Spacecraft Japanese X-ray satellite: Astro_D Mars Simulation in Antarctica Moon Capture Theory NASA Select NASA Town Meetings Schedule Obscure Help Needed (2 msgs) SATELLITE PHOTO Shuttle computers (2 msgs) Shuttle replacement (4 msgs) Skywatch - Nov 15-21 - Meteors Spark up the Night space news from Oct 23 Science (not AW&ST) Space suit research? SSTO viability, Al Gore, Canadian Geese World in danger Welcome to the Space Digest!! Please send your messages to "space@isu.isunet.edu", and (un)subscription requests of the form "Subscribe Space " to one of these addresses: listserv@uga (BITNET), rice::boyle (SPAN/NSInet), utadnx::utspan::rice::boyle (THENET), or space-REQUEST@isu.isunet.edu (Internet). ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 20 Nov 92 00:34:33 GMT From: Bruce Watson Subject: "Jonathan's Space Report, No. 133" Newsgroups: sci.space In article <1992Nov18.234517.12340@news.arc.nasa.gov| mcdowell@head-cfa.harvard.edu (Jonathan McDowell) writes: | |Jonathan's Space Report | |No. 133 1992 Nov 18 |------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | |The first successful Zenit launch in over two and a half years |occurred from Baykonur on Nov 17, after three failures in a row. It |placed a Russian military signals intelligence satellite in an 850 km |orbit inclined 71 degrees. The Zenit launch vehicle is built by NPO |Yuzhnoye in the Ukraine. With the military payload the upper stage remains in orbit. The upper stage (1992-076B) is larger and brighter than the payload. It is a cylinder measuring 3.9 meters in diameter and 10.4 meters in length. There are identical examples launched with Cosmos 1697, 1833, 1844, 1943, 1980 and 2082. Each of these reaches a dependable +2.5 magnitude often brightening to +2. While the earlier cylinders have settled into a gravity gradient mode, length perpendicular to the earth's surface, each spent time tumbling after launch. The expected tumbling of Cosmos 2219 r/b will cause it to vary in brightness as it passes overhead. -- Bruce Watson (wats@scicom) Tumbra, Zorkovick; Sparkula zoom krackadomando. ....alien language from an SF short story on a 78-RPM record I had as a kid. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1992 17:36:44 GMT From: Nick Haines Subject: `skipping' off an atmosphere Newsgroups: sci.space What does this term mean? Is it just a failed re-entry mode where your perigee is too large so you leave the atmosphere again (with a smaller apogee due to retardation)? Or is it more complex and something to do with hot gases? Replies by email, then I'll summarize. Nick Haines nickh@cmu.edu ------------------------------ Date: 19 Nov 92 21:58:23 GMT From: Curtis Roelle Subject: COSTAR Newsgroups: sci.space roberts@cmr.ncsl.nist.gov (John Roberts) writes: >-From: roelle@uars_mag.jhuapl.edu (Curtis Roelle) >-Subject: Re: COSTAR >-Date: 17 Nov 92 15:07:18 GMT >-Organization: Johns Hopkins University >-Has an assessment of potential risks has been prepared and reviewed? >-What could go wrong? Where are the primary risk areas? e.g. failure >-to grapple the telescope, failure to extract the module COSTAR >-replaces, engineering uncertainties that might lead to the new optical >-path missing the aperture opening, etc. [Amusing story about a sticky problem -- compressed ==> $%*& ] >Somewhat more plausible scenario - the mirrors only partially deploy, >blocking the original light paths, but not implementing the new light paths, >and efforts to retract them fail. (I presume they'll try to deploy while >HST is still attached to the Shuttle - if all else fails, a couple of burly >astronauts can try to yank the whole assembly out of HST.) What if they're not burly enough? Is there a contingency plan to retrieve HST from orbit if all fails, or, would it be jettisoned, even if that meant leaving it in a non-usable configuration? Curt Roelle ------------------------------ Date: 19 Nov 92 03:43:51 GMT From: william grimm Subject: etc. Newsgroups: sci.space Mr. McElwaine, the reason the McLintock "Air Motor" isn't being used is that aliens from Tau Ceti hold exclusive patents on it for the next 1/2 galactic rotation period. Low-energy, but hey- those alien patent laws are rough :}. Sorry for the waste of bandwidth. This is from wjg@bluemoon.use.com who doesn't have his (or her) own obnoxious signature yet ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 20 Nov 92 14:23:26 GMT From: amon@elegabalus.cs.qub.ac.uk Subject: FREE-ENERGY TECHNOLOGY For Spacecraft > The only vested interest the utilities have is to their past investment of > money in their power plants. But the above advantages reduce operating costs > SO much that they would jump at it. (imagine an electric plant that doesn't > need to buy any coal, has virtually no cost related to safety equipment, spends > nothing on environmental technology, and still charges what it used to)==profit! > I agree. EPRI (Electric Power Research Institute) funds all sorts of technology, some of it things that government$ and $tati$t$ won't fund because of the politic$ involved. For instance, EPRI are still funding cold fusion experiments because the chance that it might work out is, as you put it, something they would virtually kill for. I have this disturbing impression that this McElwaine fellow sounds like the La Rouchians, although Lyndon's conspiracy theories only had to do with politics and economics. His science was usually not that bad, and Fusion Magazine was actually quite good when it stayed away from his politics. (As an old L5 Society activist, I'm still waiting for my "psycho-sexual gratification" :-) ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1992 05:14:08 GMT From: Robert W Murphree Subject: Japanese X-ray satellite: Astro_D Newsgroups: sci.astro,sci.space slane@head-cfa.harvard.edu (Patrick Slane) writes: >> The US hasn't launched any free-flyers in the X-ray since >> HEAO or Eistein 10 years ago, have they? A few detectors on >> other people's satellites of course, but nothing big since >> Einstein. >Yes, the US space program has had it's difficulties with the concept >behind these "Great Observatories" and this is changing. AXAF, while >still undeniably a "big science" project, has been streamlined and >divided into two missions. AXAF-I will provide the very high angular >resolution mirrors necessary to do arc-second imaging - and will have >spectral resolution like that of Astro-D (using a CCD developed by the >same folks who are providing the Astro-D versions) plus gratings for >higher resolution studies. AXAF-S will provide higher spectral resolution >capabilities, with lower angular resolution mirrors. And though these >missions are long overdue, the US x-ray community has hardly been >sitting on its collective hands. Let's not forget that ROSAT was launched >by the US and carries the HRI which is a US instrument, and that MAJOR >portions of Astro-D (as John noted) were developed by US investigators. >I know this is the "few detectors on other people's satellites" you >were talking about, but between the two missions you've got US mirrors, >CCDs, an HRI and a launch... I guess, as an amateur astronomer and science kibbitzer my perspective is different. After HEAO(Einstein) got all those nice results that were written up for us amateurs, it just seemed there WASN't any extra-solar x-ray results to read about for about 10 years. I know it was probably like IRAS where you had new results from 10 year old data every 6 months from 1983 til the present. But it was very FRUSTRATING to get that rush of results from the 60's and 70's and then this 10 year desert. I know the smaller japanese satellites and shuttle-born stuff was still producing results during that time but there wasn't much in the popular science press describing it. Maybe now some nice scientist will write up ROSAT's results in a lengthy fashion for amateurs and I'll quit making snide comments about The US contribution. I know that US x-ray astronomers and x-ray instrumentalists have not been idle and It's nice to know that new technology like the higher energy resolution ccd detectors is still being developed. But it would also be nice, in paternalistic controlling way, to think that we had a CONTINUOUS window observatory on the x-ray window like the IUE and not these observatories that go up for 2 years and then leave us with no eyes in that spectral window for so long. I also know that professionals whose careers depend on a 10 year mission suffer in a much more real way than thankfully, I ever shall over the delays. Probably as good a way to learn patience as any other, I guess. 1 ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 20 Nov 92 20:32:17 GMT From: amon@elegabalus.cs.qub.ac.uk Subject: Mars Simulation in Antarctica > Antarctica is now a nuclear free zone and the reactors were removed. Another round goes to the nucleophobes. It's enough to make one want to leave the planet... ====== Happiness is the Earth in Dale Amon your rearview mirror. amon@cs.qub.ac.uk ====== ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1992 02:02:22 GMT From: Henry Spencer Subject: Moon Capture Theory Newsgroups: sci.space In article 18084TM@msu.edu (Tom) writes: >Of course, while everyone is discussing cheaper or better ways to colonize >the moon, why not discuss cheaper and better ways to answer these questions >about lunar composition? Seems to me that spending $$ to design a lunar >colony (as I understand NASA did/is doing) without knowing what's available >is the ultimate 'putting-your-eggs-in-one-basket'. Better than discussing it, go visit your Congressthing and ask him to support Griffin's attempts to get low-cost unmanned lunar-science missions into the NASA budget. Griffin, at least, is fully aware of the need to do better geochemical surveys of the Moon before anything more ambitious... but he can't get any *funding* for it. By the way, NASA is not even thinking about a lunar *colony*, much less planning one, although they are interested in lunar bases. -- MS-DOS is the OS/360 of the 1980s. | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology -Hal W. Hardenbergh (1985)| henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry ------------------------------ Date: 19 Nov 92 21:07:00 GMT From: Mike Ditto Subject: NASA Select Newsgroups: sci.space Hi, all! I live in the Denver Metropolitan Area, and I'm a subscriber of TCI cable. TCI does not carry NASA Select TV full time, or even just during launches. How can we, as patrons of this huge cable TV provider, convice them to replace one of their plethora of unused channels or preview guide channels with this educational network? If you have any suggestions, please let me know. Mike Ditto Sysop, People Against Stupidity and Ignorance BBS FidoNet 1:104/240 -- Mike Ditto - via ParaNet node 1:104/422 UUCP: !scicom!paranet!User_Name INTERNET: Mike.Ditto@p0.f240.n104.z1.FIDONET.ORG ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1992 15:24:22 GMT From: Gregory Aharonian Subject: NASA Town Meetings Schedule Newsgroups: sci.space Here's a list of the remaining NASA Town Meetings around the country. I missed the New England because I found out too late (was this stuff ever posted to the NET?). December 3, 2:00-6:30 pm, Ramo Auditorium, CALTECH, Pasadena December 11, 2:00-6:30 pm, Theater 1, Univ. of South Florida Tampa December 15, 2:0-6:30 pm, Student Union, Univ.of Washington Upper Campus, Seattle, WA For more information, call 202-453-3006 For anyone who goes, how about pestering the NASA officials to make more NASA information available over the nets. Greg Aharonian -- ************************************************************************** Greg Aharonian Source Translation & Optimiztion P.O. Box 404, Belmont, MA 02178 ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1992 15:12:57 GMT From: "Mitchell E. Gold" Subject: Obscure Help Needed Newsgroups: sci.space In article <1992Nov11.172831.14882@julian.uwo.ca> jdnicoll@prism.ccs.uwo.ca (James Davis Nicoll) writes: I still find it hard to believe that I could so completely forget a skill I used every day not so long ago. It's also hard to believe no book store seems to stock books on the subject anymore. Are there no slide-rule makers left? -- My high school's physics class used to teach how to use a slide rule even though most people would use calculators. This was stopped in 1984 or 1985 when the last slide-rule company went out of production. Too bad I didn't take physics until 85-86. -- Mitchell Gold, sundance@rpi.edu ------------------------------ Date: 20 Nov 92 16:45:17 GMT From: John Thompson Reynolds Subject: Obscure Help Needed Newsgroups: sci.space Has anybody out there seen any slide rules for sale? The closest thing I've been able to find is a simple circular slide rule included in a "basic navigation kit". |> In article <1992Nov11.172831.14882@julian.uwo.ca> jdnicoll@prism.ccs.uwo.ca (James Davis Nicoll) writes: |> I still find it hard to believe that I could so completely |> forget a skill I used every day not so long ago. It's also hard to |> believe no book store seems to stock books on the subject anymore. |> Are there no slide-rule makers left? |> -- ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1992 15:56:31 GMT From: Andrew Tron Subject: SATELLITE PHOTO Newsgroups: sci.space In article <1992Nov18.203418.13263@ke4zv.uucp> gary@ke4zv.UUCP (Gary Coffman) writes: >In article <16NOV92.12028663.0072@VM1.MCGILL.CA> IEGS@MUSICB.MCGILL.CA (IEGS000) writes: >>COULD SOMEONE HELP ME: SUPPOSE A HURRICANE JUST BLEW IN! WHERE CAN I >>FIND A SATELLITE PHOTOS OF IT'S PROGRESS? > >Try the Weather Channel, or if you don't have cable, your local broadcast >TV station's weathercast. > You can also get North American satellite photos in .gif format via anonymous ftp. The site is "vmd.cso.uiuc.edu". Once you connect, cd to directory "wx". The current visual and infrared high-resolution images are stored in the files "cvis.gif" and "cir.gif". You can also get images from the past 24 hours -- however these are lower resolution to conserve disk space. Be sure to set mode to "binary" before getting the images. A note on interpreting the infrared images: basically speaking, a whiter portion of the image == colder cloud tops == higher cloud tops == more severe weather. This bit of info I got from a weather briefer at Milville Flight Service Station while I was waiting out a line of thunderstorms. -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Andrew Tron at Princeton University | awtron@strawber.Princeton.EDU And of the living ... none, not one who truly loves the sky Would trade a hundred earth bound hours for one that he could fly. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 20 Nov 92 14:31:00 GMT From: amon@elegabalus.cs.qub.ac.uk Subject: Shuttle computers John: TO my knowledge they only load the machines from tape on board. They do have the ability to override and to take out machines manually via a set of buttons at the front of the shuttle. I think they are in the center position, reachable from either left or right hand seat. I'd have to pull out my copy of the control panel documentation (the REAL thing :-) to be sure. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 20 Nov 92 20:38:22 GMT From: amon@elegabalus.cs.qub.ac.uk Subject: Shuttle computers Rob Andrews said he was looking for this reference: Gene D. Carlow, 'Architecture of the Space Shuttle Primary Avionics Software System', CACM 27, 926-936, (1984). ------------------------------ Date: 19 Nov 92 19:20:16 GMT From: "Allen W. Sherzer" Subject: Shuttle replacement Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle,sci.space In article <70y1pmf@rpi.edu> kentm@aix.rpi.edu (Michael V. Kent) writes: >>I don't doubt that much cheaper expendables CAN be build (Zenith Star >>launchers for example cut costs in half). I simply don't believe that the US >>government can build them. >Then why do you propose that the U. S. government build Delta Clipper? I don't. I do propose that government build the DC-Y which is a research vehicle and not an operational vehicle. I believe that the operational Delta Clipper should be build with private funds. Even here you will note that great care is going to find the agency to build DC-Y. Using conventional procurement practices nither NASA nor DoD could build DC-Y. However, SDIO and a few sections within DoD are open enough to execute the program. Allen -- +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Allen W. Sherzer | "A great man is one who does nothing but leaves | | aws@iti.org | nothing undone" | +----------------------156 DAYS TO FIRST FLIGHT OF DCX----------------------+ ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1992 02:07:51 GMT From: Henry Spencer Subject: Shuttle replacement Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle,sci.space In article steinly@topaz.ucsc.edu (Steinn Sigurdsson) writes: > The right question is: why should the DCs be much more complex than > high-performance aircraft? > >Intrinsically I see no reason why an orbital launcher should be >more complex than that - as a matter of practicality though there is the >fact that you have a lot of energy to be controlled in a very short >time... The engines are the one part of the DC birds that really do have to be built to much more severe specs than anything found in aircraft. But this is a solved problem. The RL10 (which DC-X will use) has already demonstrated a dozen (test-stand) firings in a row without maintenance. Most mature liquid-fuel rocket engines are really quite reliable and would not need a lot of maintenance. The SSME is not typical. -- MS-DOS is the OS/360 of the 1980s. | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology -Hal W. Hardenbergh (1985)| henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1992 14:24:45 GMT From: "Allen W. Sherzer" Subject: Shuttle replacement Newsgroups: sci.space In article kentm@aix.rpi.edu (Michael V. Kent) writes: >The Shuttle does many many things that nothing else in the fleet will do. The >most obvious is serve as a manned spacecraft. Nonsense. In a pinch we can stick a Soyuz on an Atlas or Titan. >The original article in this thread listed many more. All of which have existing or near term alternatives. >>Titan IV can lift any existing or planned payload Shuttle can lift. >The Shuttle has twice the payload capacity of the Titan IV. Nonsense. >It can also >launch cargoes the Titan IV can't touch. Would _you_ volunteer to fly a >Spacelab mission in a Titan IV payload fairing? What I would do is to use the Titan to launch it, dock with any of the simple, easially built space station ideas exising today and operate it year round. That way we can use Spacelab 365 days a year instead of a week or so every two years. Let's not forget that one capability of the Shuttle is the ability to insure that key experiments are only done once every few years or so. It is only one of the many ways that the space shuttle is hampering routine cheap access to space. Allen -- +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Allen W. Sherzer | "A great man is one who does nothing but leaves | | aws@iti.org | nothing undone" | +----------------------155 DAYS TO FIRST FLIGHT OF DCX----------------------+ ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1992 14:34:07 GMT From: "Allen W. Sherzer" Subject: Shuttle replacement Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle,sci.space In article steinly@topaz.ucsc.edu (Steinn Sigurdsson) writes: >...but the operation costs do seem quite optimistic, in >particular I'd have thought the early years operation would be higher >while ground support learned some maintenance procedures and >operational experience was developed on what needs inspection and >refurbishing between flights? That is largely what DC-X & Y are for. Things will change with an operational system, but not that much. One goal is five flights without major maintenance. That means all it needs for the second launch is to be re-fueled. Most of the savings are because we are approaching the problem in a different way. The old way costs did need to be high because designs where complex and always pushed the technology. Keeping it simple (the first rule of good engineering), using existing well tested technology, and not pushing envelopes reduces costs. >Hmm, didn't you just say that Congress should just fund the DC-X,Y? A mis-statement on my part. I ment if Congress properly funds DC-Y. I do expect that DC-1 would be built by the private sector. Allen -- +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Allen W. Sherzer | "A great man is one who does nothing but leaves | | aws@iti.org | nothing undone" | +----------------------155 DAYS TO FIRST FLIGHT OF DCX----------------------+ ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 20 Nov 92 07:30:08 GMT From: Glen K Moore Subject: Skywatch - Nov 15-21 - Meteors Spark up the Night Newsgroups: sci.space Yes please. I write a similar newsletter in Australia on a local network and for an interactive science centre. The more information/ideas get out to the public then the greater the suport for astronomy/space science. I look forward to future editions. Glen Moore Science Centre, Wollongong ------------------------------ Date: 20 Nov 92 14:07:09 GMT From: "Wm. Douglas Withers -- math FACULTY " Subject: space news from Oct 23 Science (not AW&ST) Newsgroups: sci.space,alt.sci.planetary In article henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes: >The 23 Oct issue of Science has three very interesting papers, the formal >scientific announcement of the radar discovery of ice at Mercury's poles. >Herewith a short summary... [rest deleted] I wonder why the same techniques can't be used to shed light on the question of the presence of ice at the Moon's poles. Comments, anyone? Followups are directed to alt.sci.planetary. -- Els Withers email: wdw@math2.sma.usna.navy.mil Department of Mathematics phone: (410)267-3192 / fax: (410)267-4883 United States Naval Academy Annapolis, MD 21402-5002 Senri no tabi mo ippo yori... ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1992 16:51:24 GMT From: "Edward V. Wright" Subject: Space suit research? Newsgroups: sci.space In roberts@cmr.ncsl.nist.gov (John Roberts) writes: >-or are there long term bio effects???? >There *may* be. For example, one of the Apollo astronauts, after a busy day >on the moon, had bleeding under his fingernails - thought to be mainly a >result of the low pressure. Little indications like that made NASA uneasy. :-) I can't see any reason why low pressure would cause bleeding under the nails as long as the pressure inside the body was equally low. Sounds like NASA was worried about a pressure leak in the gloves, causing the pressure there to be lower than the pressure in the rest of the suit. That could, quite likely, cause bleeding, with the pressure inside the body pushing a small amount of blood through the skin under the nails (which is quite thin). ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 20 Nov 92 10:56:03 -0600 From: pgf@srl06.cacs.usl.edu (Phil G. Fraering) Subject: SSTO viability, Al Gore, Canadian Geese >I have read statements to this effect, written by persons whose eyes >presumably glow red in the dark (such is their political fervor), but >most people who make an effort to be objective about the matter and >who have actually studied his record would find it hard to ignore >Senator Gore's involvement in non-environmental (especially technical) >issues. Yah, but the nature of the involvement is disturbing. National networks and all that are fine, but who's going to be doing space exploration if NASA ends up building NREN (as I've heard in unsubstantiated rumors left in my e-mailbox from people using STMP protocols to send them)? \What *I'd* like to know is why geese feel it necessary to honk frequently /as they fly along, and what perhaps 50% of them know about Canada, that \they refuse to go there even in the summer! :-) They're afraid of the customs officers apparently. -- Phil Fraering In the country of the blind.... 60 minutes doesn't run stories about people trying to ban hearing ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 20 Nov 92 10:48:38 -0600 From: pgf@srl06.cacs.usl.edu (Phil G. Fraering) Subject: World in danger -From: rjp1@cbnewsc.cb.att.com (be here now) -Subject: world in danger -Date: 19 Nov 92 18:51:33 GMT -Yesterday evening (11/17) on Headline News a short (~1 minute) news -item was read about a group of scientists who had published a document -warning us of the danger we're all in becuase of the rapid depletion -of the ozone and the also rapid extinction of many species of animals. -The news item was very brief and did not mention any names nor even -the title of the paper that was published. -It seems to me that if something as (seemingly) important as this -ought to have had more attention paid to it than a one-minute news -blurb without references. -Bob Pietkivitch | "Moon, my long lost friend, is smiling from above." -rjp1@ihspa.att.com | -- Genesis, Stagnation 1970 Possibly because if it's covered in more than a 30 second blurb they might have to mention that many scientists _don't_ think the world is ending. And CNN isn't any better: they don't have enough time to cover science, they're too busy covering stuff like the men's movement and how you have to get in touch with your spear etc. (I'm serious! Who saw that this morning?) although the political bias of the owner is going to ensure that you won't hear about it when someone finds evidence that the sky _isn't_ falling. -- Phil Fraering In the country of the blind.... 60 minutes doesn't run stories about people trying to ban hearing ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 20 Nov 92 10:16:44 -0600 From: "Kenneth E. Lawrence" SUB SAPACEPACE Kenneth E. Lawrence ------------------------------ End of Space Digest Volume 15 : Issue 442 ------------------------------