Date: Wed, 2 Dec 92 05:03:58 From: Space Digest maintainer Reply-To: Space-request@isu.isunet.edu Subject: Space Digest V15 #484 To: Space Digest Readers Precedence: bulk Space Digest Wed, 2 Dec 92 Volume 15 : Issue 484 Today's Topics: Angle Of Attack -- a quick review Cola rockets (was Re: Pop in space) DC-X status? Environmental group Environmental group to sue NASA to stop rocket motor fuel testing hand grenades HST black hole pix *or* Hubble Hype? (Was: HST black hole pix) NASA has 5 hand grenades still on the moon from Apollo missions Seeking info on Tours of External Tank factory in Louisiana Shuttle replacement (6 msgs) Soyuz escape system (was: Re: Shuttle replacement) Spaceborne Artificial Intelligence, Anyone? tech project 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: Tue, 1 Dec 1992 22:44:36 GMT From: Henry Spencer Subject: Angle Of Attack -- a quick review Newsgroups: sci.space Folks may have noticed that I've been relatively quiet the last few days; I've been ill. I will catch up. :-) Meanwhile, one thing I've done is to read Mike Gray's "Angle Of Attack: Harrison Storms and the Race to the Moon". Since it's been mentioned several times in the group lately, I think it apropos to review it briefly. Summary: disappointing. I sort of pondered for a while about why I disliked the style of the book, the very *way* it was written, and eventually it came to me. This is not a book. It is a novelization of a screenplay. This approach may just be the result of the author's movie background -- I had somewhat the same feeling about Beirne Lay's "Earthbound Astronauts", and he has the same sort of background -- or it may be a deliberate plan with book publication intended purely as a preliminary to a movie sale. For whatever reason, the book shows all the signs of a Hollywood movie. It's not really a biography; Storms' history before and after his Apollo role is barely mentioned. Much is made of dramatic issues like overwork and personality clashes. The coverage is carefully one-sided: the NASA people are the villains (mostly; von Braun himself is more or less exempted, and it's mostly the faceless bureaucracy that gets blamed) and the North American Aviation people are the heroes. When Storms replaces Bill Parker with Bob Greer as head of S-II development, much is made of what a nice guy Parker is and there's a strong implication that unfair NASA pressure is mostly responsible for the decision... and the narrative barely mentions Greer's own retrospective opinion that Parker's group was a disorganized mess that desperately needed better management. When NASA overrules NAA in favor of a pure-oxygen atmosphere for the spacecraft, there is heavy foreshadowing of the fire, an airy brush-off of the safety problems of the complex two-gas system, and no mention at all of the technician who died in an early Mercury test because that capsule did *not* use pure oxygen in ground tests at the time (an accident that played a large part in forming NASA's view that mixed-gas atmospheres were tricky and dangerous). And so on. While there are interesting tidbits here and there, and seeing things from North American's side does shed a new light on incidents like the S-II structural failure, the overall information content isn't even as good as the NASA History books' chapters on the same subjects. In particular, some people have described this book as a technical history. Dead wrong. I have the same complaint about this as about the NASA History books -- too much emphasis on people and organizations, not enough on the technical problems -- only more so. Worst of all, when I did know details of what went on, I noticed errors in the book. Gray hasn't taken the trouble to arrive at more than a superficial understanding of the technical issues, so it's probably just as well that he didn't try to cover them in detail. The book is worth reading, once. It's a new viewpoint on a number of major events, and like a lot of the recent spate of Apollo books, it does have interesting moments. Just not very many of them. -- 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: 1 Dec 92 16:36:37 -0600 From: Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey Subject: Cola rockets (was Re: Pop in space) Newsgroups: sci.space In article <1fdjjgINN6d3@transfer.stratus.com>, det@phlan.sw.stratus.com (David Toland) writes: > torh@syma.sussex.ac.uk (Tor Houghton) wrote: >> If a blob of, say Coke, was floating weightlessly in space (inside a >> spaceship - normal air pressure), would the "fizz bubbles" go from the >> centre to all directions? > [and someone else, I lost the name, discussed nucleation] > > An interesting picture that comes to mind is if the drifting blob of > beverage drifts up against a suitable piece of grit. The fizz is > concentrated at that point on the surface, and the blob goes whizzing > off in the opposite direction, especially if the grit is held by surface > tension for a while. > > I don't claim this is anything but idle speculation... Hey, Dave, good idea for a Getaway Special experiment! When cosmonaut Anatoly Artsebarski visited Chicago last summer I learned that he had tested soda pop aboard Mir. I gather that he didn't like it much, but he didn't talk about specifics. Talk about making history... I was present for the first attempt to launch the first soda pop into space, at the height of the Cola Wars in July 1985. Pepsi and Coke had both designed special containers that were to be tested aboard *Challenger*. I was in the VIP bleachers at the Cape, near the garbage dump. (Since I was a guest and on my best behavior I resisted the temptation to go dumpster-diving for space hardware.) Enterprising Pepsi promoters were giving away free cans of soda and free T-shirts. The Pepsi was in special commemorative cans that said: A GIANT SIP FOR MANKIND I kid you not. I still have the can. The countdown came, the main engines ignited, they shut down again and the launch was aborted. The giant clock stopped. The crowd groaned. Then the roar of the engine startup began, having traveled the five miles from Pad 39A, and grew to a mighty thunder. It was eerie. They finally did get the thing launched a couple weeks later. I was back in Chicago and missed it. I consoled myself with the notion that lots of people have seen a Shuttle launch-- but how many have been privileged to witness a pad abort? O~~* /_) ' / / /_/ ' , , ' ,_ _ \|/ - ~ -~~~~~~~~~~~/_) / / / / / / (_) (_) / / / _\~~~~~~~~~~~zap! / \ (_) (_) / | \ | | Bill Higgins Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory \ / Bitnet: HIGGINS@FNAL.BITNET - - Internet: HIGGINS@FNAL.FNAL.GOV ~ SPAN/Hepnet: 43011::HIGGINS ------------------------------ Date: 2 Dec 92 03:24:41 GMT From: Matthew Kaiser <52kaiser@sol.cs.wmich.edu> Subject: DC-X status? Newsgroups: sci.space if you couldn't tell.. duhh.. what's the status on the DC-X and Y? thanks matthew 52kaiser@sol.cs.wmich.edu ------------------------------ Date: 2 Dec 92 00:42:03 GMT From: Pat Subject: Environmental group Newsgroups: sci.space In article henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes: >In article roberts@cmr.ncsl.nist.gov (John Roberts) writes: >>NASA and its contractors have been testing SRMs for a long time. I had >>presumed that at least some of that was done at Stennis. > >Nope. The SRM tests are entirely done at Thiokol facilities in Utah, >I believe. For some strange reason, those aren't available to non-Thiokol >projects. :-) > You would think that NASA would own the testing facilities at UTAH. given the fact that thiokol mostly builds DOD and NASA rockets. or you would think thiokol would bid to lease out their test range. snit or no snit thiokol would want the money from the testing program. >>(They're not planning to test *beryllium* fuel, are they?) > >No, the ASRMs have nothing so exotic. But Stennis tests have been entirely >liquid-fuel rockets, as far as I know. >-- >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: 2 Dec 92 03:18:52 GMT From: Matthew Kaiser <52kaiser@sol.cs.wmich.edu> Subject: Environmental group to sue NASA to stop rocket motor fuel testing Newsgroups: sci.space,talk.politics.space,talk.environment arromdee@jyusenkyou.cs.jhu.edu (Ken Arromdee) writes: >In article <1992Nov24.180653.21766@Princeton.EDU> phoenix.Princeton.EDU!carlosn (Carlos G. Niederstrasser) writes: >>> ``Each test, according to NASA, will emit over 350 tons of >>> particulates which release two major gases which we consider highly >>> toxic,'' he said. ``They are hydrogen chloride and aluminum oxide.'' >>> Fontana said NASA has claimed these gases will escape into the >>> atmosphere and will not descend to earth. However, he said his group's >>> studies have shown that hydrogen chloride when mixed with water or >>> moisture forms hydrochloric compound which is highly toxic. >They're nuts. >You know, sodium chloride is toxic too. Let's ban the Atlantic Ocean. >Unless the group has some reason to believe that it will be concentrated >enough for the acidity to have some effect--in which case they would _say_ >so, instead of obliquely referring to concentrated acid and implying it >without actually saying it--they must think that chloride ions are toxic, in >which case we should ban the Atlantic Ocean anyway. >Aluminum oxide, of course, is not even a gas. >Sadly enough, there are enough people who will believe anyone who says that the >government is lying. >-- >"the bogosity in a field equals the bogosity imported from related areas, plus >the bogosity generated internally, minus the bogosity expelled or otherwise >disposed of." -- K. Eric Drexler >Ken Arromdee (arromdee@jyusenkyou.cs.jhu.edu, arromdee@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu) the only thing wrong with this arguement is that during the Apollo launches photographers were allowed to get closer to the launch than the Shuttle launches because, when they retrieve there cameras from where they want a shot the camera is pitted and scarred from the HCl and Al2O. That NEVER happened during an Apollo launch besides... the Russians use liquid fueled boosters with no problems why don't we? it's better in the long run and you just can't turn off a solid rocket once it's started. when Challenger blew they waited till the solid rockets began turning towards the coast before they auto-destructed them. solid's are just stupid and lazy. would you use a flammable solid fuel in your car? no, of course not. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 2 Dec 92 01:00:22 EST From: John Roberts Subject: hand grenades -From: hack@arabia.uucp (Edmund Hack) -Subject: Re: NASA has 5 hand grenades still on the moon from Apollo missions -Date: 1 Dec 92 16:02:48 GMT -Organization: Lockheed ESC, Houston -In article <50044@shamash.cdc.com> mpe@shamash.cdc.com () writes: ->What are 5 hand grenades doing on the moon and why would NASA ->send them up with the astronauts??? -The "hand grenades" ar probably the small mortar rounds from the active -seismic systems that were sent up. They had a few mortar rounds that -were fired off (after the crew left, I think) to produce shock waves for -analysis. Similar charges are used in oil exploration, except they are -emplaced in holes drilled in the ground. I don't know about mortars, but Apollo 16 had a hand-held device roughly the size and shape of a pogo stick, used to set off small charges pressed against the ground. John Roberts roberts@cmr.ncsl.nist.gov ------------------------------ Date: 2 Dec 92 00:16:16 GMT From: gawne@stsci.edu Subject: HST black hole pix *or* Hubble Hype? (Was: HST black hole pix) Newsgroups: sci.space,sci.astro In article <1992Dec1.172525.14327@samba.oit.unc.edu>, cecil@physics.unc.edu (Gerald Cecil) writes: > In article 1@stsci.edu, gawne@stsci.edu () writes: >>Well Craig, I've no idea what you saw on TV but there IS a public domain >>image of something that looks a lot like an accretion disk around a >>(suspected -- with pretty good reason) black hole. > > Hey people, stop listening to the Hubble Hype for a moment and *look* at > the image! You will *not* see an accretion disk. You *will* see a bright > ring that ends 170 parsecs (= 1 arcsec for a more reasonable distance of > 35.1 Mpc [Nearby Galaxies Catalog, Tully]) from a bright smudge in the > center. [remainder of good explanation deleted.] > Gerald Cecil cecil@wrath.physics.unc.edu 919-962-7169 > Physics & Astronomy, U of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3255 USA I'd like to make it quite clear that I wasn't propogating any "Hubble Hype" and that I consider the insinuation to have been impolite. I work in the HST Operations division, and I'm as aware as anyone around here of the instruments' limitations. What I said, and what I'll reiterate, is that the image had not been processed using any unusual "computer enhancement" techniques as a previous poster had suggested. Interpretation of the image is left to the user. It is, as I've said before, public domain. If anybody wants to dispute the claim that it "represents a cold outer region which extends inward to an ultra hot accretion disk within a few hundred million miles of the suspected black hole" then please address those questions to Walter Jaffe and Holland Ford. It's their data and their interperetation. -Bill Gawne, Space Telescope Science Institute ------------------------------ Date: 1 Dec 92 19:57:22 -0600 From: kebarnes@memstvx1.memst.edu Subject: NASA has 5 hand grenades still on the moon from Apollo missions Newsgroups: sci.space In article <1992Dec1.213904.2097@sunspot.noao.edu>, bbbehr@sunspot.noao.edu (Bradford B. Behr) writes: > In article <1992Dec1.152624.3587@pixel.kodak.com> dj@ekcolor.ssd.kodak.com (Dave Jones) wrote: >>Wasn't there an Urban Legend to the effect that Armstrong & Co. were >>issued .45 automatics just in case? > > Just in case of bug-eyed moon monsters or giant mutant space goats or > secret Nazi bases? Not likely. It is quite possible that they had > sidearms in the command module in case they splashed/crashed down in > the wilderness somewhere and had to hunt for food or defend themselves > from ravenous but terran beasts. > > Bradford B. Behr bbbehr@sunspot.sunspot.noao.edu > Sacramento Peak National Solar Observatory, Sunspot NM 88349 Ordinary firearms wouldn't work in a vacuum anyhow. The gunpowder couldn't burn. The same might be true at high altitudes on the Earth's surface, as I've heard that in a particular South American city (I think it was La Paz, Bolivia), there's not enough oxygen in the air for them to really require a fire department. --KB -- *.x,*dna************************************************************** *(==) Ken Barnes, LifeSci Bldg. * * \' KEBARNES@memstvx1.memst.edu * *(-)**Memphis,TN********75320,711@compuserve.com********************** "When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President; I'm beginning to believe it."--Clarence Darrow ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 1 Dec 1992 22:26:51 GMT From: "Karl R. Stapelfeldt" Subject: Seeking info on Tours of External Tank factory in Louisiana Newsgroups: sci.space I'll be down in Mobile AL visiting the folks for the Xmas holidays this year. I've already been to MSFC, NSTL (now Stennis), the Naval Aviation museum, and the battleship Alabama military park. One space facility in the central gulf coast I haven't been to is the Michaud assembly facility where the Saturn 1st stage was built and where shuttle external tanks are now built. I checked the sci.space FAQ and there was no info there. So I'm wondering - Are tours of the ET assembly line offered ? Are they interesting ? What do you get to see ? How to I get to Michaud ? Do I need to write ahead for arrangements ? Thanks in advance to anyone on the net who can help. +------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Karl Stapelfeldt Astronomy Department | | krs@titan.ucc.umass.edu University of Massachusetts | +------------------------------------------------------------------------+ -- +------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Karl Stapelfeldt Astronomy Department | | krs@titan.ucc.umass.edu University of Massachusetts | +------------------------------------------------------------------------+ ------------------------------ Date: 1 Dec 1992 22:34:19 GMT From: steve hix Subject: Shuttle replacement Newsgroups: sci.space In article <1992Nov30.171705.11846@ke4zv.uucp> gary@ke4zv.UUCP (Gary Coffman) writes: >In article <17930@mindlink.bc.ca> Bruce_Dunn@mindlink.bc.ca (Bruce Dunn) writes: >> >>For a more accurate comparison with a DC-1 landing, consider that you will be >>landing on a huge flat area which has been cleared of all personnel and > >Well, of course, Bruce, I know this. It's Allen/Henry claims of helicopter >style touchdowns at ordinary airports I'm trying to debunk. Landing at >White Sands or Edwards is a totally different issue with a much larger >margin for error and much less serious consequences in case of disaster. >As long as the DC series sticks to this, I have no complaints. Putting it >down routinely on a small concrete pad in the middle of a metropolitan area >is a totally different thing. I don't know if you fly or not (as a pilot), but it's getting harder and harder to *find* an operational airport in the middle of a metropolitan area. I think you're both right: I doubt if anyone is seriously planning on landing a DC-1 in the midst of Chicago, and I also doubt if anything on the order of Kennedy Space Center's facilities or Edwards' isolated acreage will be required to qualify a DC-1 landing field. Does everyone get this tense every December? -- ------------------------------------------------------- | Some things are too important not to give away | | to everybody else and have none left for yourself. | |------------------------ Dieter the car salesman-----| ------------------------------ Date: 1 Dec 92 23:09:41 GMT From: Henry Spencer Subject: Shuttle replacement Newsgroups: sci.space In article shafer@rigel.dfrf.nasa.gov (Mary Shafer) writes: >If the DC-X is going to be so safe, why are they testing it at White >Sands instead of, oh, say, John Wayne Airport? ... Mostly because it is being treated as a missile, not an aircraft. That is probably appropriate for the first flight of a radically new unmanned demonstrator. With any luck, once experience builds up and the bigger (more redundant) vehicles start being manned, it will become possible to convince the bureaucrats to start treating them as aircraft. We're never going to have cheap, routine spaceflight if fault-tolerant spaceships continue to be subject to the safety rules appropriate to military missiles. This issue worries me, especially since some of the experts who will be consulted about the matter would appear to have a vested interest in the failure of the DC series -- their careers are bound up with vastly more expensive and much less effective launch systems. >I think that Allen is the only one who doesn't think there's any risk. I doubt that Allen thinks that. Myself, I'd be satisfied if I could board a DC-1 with no more than the same twinge of concern I feel when I've got a window seat on a DC-10 and I see one of the wing engines wiggling around in the turbulence... especially when it's an American Airlines DC-10... -- 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: 2 Dec 92 02:22:02 GMT From: Greg Moore Subject: Shuttle replacement Newsgroups: sci.space In article <1992Nov29.183605.25314@iti.org> aws@iti.org (Allen W. Sherzer) writes: >In article <70494@cup.portal.com> BrianT@cup.portal.com (Brian Stuart Thorn) writes: > >Amounts to the same thing. Most of the Shuttle flights which have ever been >scheduled have been cancled. That's not reliable service. > This comment bears a little explaining I think. What exactly has beed cancled that has actually been scheduled. Granted, the shuttle isn't flying 20-30 times a year... but those flights weren't exactly scheduled either. You may argue taht before Resuem to Flight there were several commercial flights scheduled that were canceled. However, this was a political decision, not a technical. >>I believe that Shuttle's performance as an Earth >>satellite launch system was at least as good as any of the expendables >>(again, we aren't talking cost here.) > >Read this again and thing about it. You agree that service A and service >B work just as well. Yet service A costs three times as much. I assert >that makes service A not as good. > Here I would disagree with the first quote. On pure cost, the Shuttle loses. Reliability is a tad higher, though not arguebly so. However, if something DOES go wrong, or for some reason you want a person on sight, then the shuttle wins. For something like Hubble, or some other unique satellites, I'd prefer the Shuttle. I'll agree with you that the shuttle isn't the end all and be-all, but I do disagree that it doesn't CURRENTLY have its place. >Again, if it where YOUR money which would you pick? > >>In reference to your point that we could have put the satellites on >>expendables and *made* money, I agree! Well, mostly agreee. GD, Mc-D, and >>Martin have yet to make a profit with their expendables. > >Maybe if they hadn't been forced to compete with the US government who >was happy to spend OUR money providing subsidies they would be doing >better. At any rate, at least the commercial providers aren't spending >MY money and the money they are spending is REDUCING costs. > Allen, they haven't made a profit in 6 years (since Challanger). For a new company that might be ok, but for an established company that is essentially building the same product, I would begin to wonder. > >But what would have happened if we developed a commercial based infrastructure >back in 1980? Much furthur I'll bet. > And what would have happend if we had proceeded with the ML1a (?) lifting body back in the 60's? or if we had or if we had.. etc. Let's argue today, not the past. > > Allen >-- >+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+ >| Allen W. Sherzer | "A great man is one who does nothing but leaves | >| aws@iti.org | nothing undone" | >+----------------------146 DAYS TO FIRST FLIGHT OF DCX----------------------+ ------------------------------ Date: 2 Dec 92 00:28:50 GMT From: Edmund Hack Subject: Shuttle replacement Newsgroups: sci.space In article fiddler@concertina.Eng.Sun.COM (steve hix) writes: [munch] >I don't know if you fly or not (as a pilot), but it's getting harder and >harder to *find* an operational airport in the middle of a metropolitan >area. Off the top of my head: Chicago Midway, LaGuardia in NYC, Logan in Boston, Newark, DFW (sort of), Houston Hobby, Dallas Love, LAX, Orange County, SFO, Oakland, San Jose, Washington National. Admittedly, not all are open to General Aviation, but all handle 737s and some "heavy" aircraft. In fact, DFW might be large enough to handle an operational DC-1. The Houston city council (or at least a few members) asked NASA to land a shuttle at Houston Intercontinental, so they could rename it Houston Interplanetary or Houston Spaceport. NASA declined, although the main runway might be long enough. >Does everyone get this tense every December? Sometimes - probably has to do with the shortening days and finals approaching. Maybe the phase of the moon. -- Edmund Hack - Lockheed Engineering & Sciences Co. - Houston, TX hack@aio.jsc.nasa.gov - I speak only for myself, unless blah, blah.. "You know, I think we're all Bozos on this bus." "Detail Dress Circuits" "Belt: Above A, Below B" "Close B ClothesMode" ------------------------------ Date: 2 Dec 92 00:37:29 GMT From: Pawel Moskalik Subject: Shuttle replacement Newsgroups: sci.space USSR shuttle Buran did fly ! Only once, unmaned. It perrformed automatic landing. Flight was repoortedly succesfull. Pawel Moskalik ------------------------------ Date: 2 Dec 92 02:48:32 GMT From: Greg Hennessy Subject: Shuttle replacement Newsgroups: sci.space In article strider@clotho.acm.rpi.edu (Greg Moore) writes: #Granted, the shuttle #isn't flying 20-30 times a year... but those flights weren't exactly #scheduled either. Well, off the top of my head, ASTRO was scheduled to fly six times. It will fly twice. Nothing like a 66 percent cut. -- -Greg Hennessy, University of Virginia USPS Mail: Astronomy Department, Charlottesville, VA 22903-2475 USA Internet: gsh7w@virginia.edu UUCP: ...!uunet!virginia!gsh7w ------------------------------ Date: 01 Dec 92 14:22:48 From: David.Anderman@ofa123.fidonet.org Subject: Soyuz escape system (was: Re: Shuttle replacement) Newsgroups: sci.space Nyet - the 1983 Soyuz launch accident took several minutes to develop - the rocket started burning some time before liftoff, and it took Mission control a painfully long time to finally decide to ignite the escape system, and then to figure out how to ignite the system given that many communications cables had been burned through. The 1986 Titan 34-D accident occurred within a little less than 1/30th of a second - in one movie frame the rocket was intact, in the next frame, the entire rocket was a fireball. Nothing near that rocket would have survived. The second Slick 4 pad, almost a mile away, was severly damaged. A manned capsule on top of that rocket would have been demolished. However, your Delta Clipper doesn't use solids, so this thread is rather pointless. --- Maximus 2.00 ------------------------------ Date: 2 Dec 92 00:04:11 GMT From: Kenrick Mock Subject: Spaceborne Artificial Intelligence, Anyone? Newsgroups: comp.ai,sci.space In article <1992Dec1.083805.15266@kronos.arc.nasa.gov> raymond@kronos.arc.nasa.gov (Eric A. Raymond) writes: > >... I am >interested in news of other space related AI projects. > Our group is working on FANSYS (Failure ANalysis SYStem), a system which is capable of reasoning about failures dealing with the Data Management System of Space Station Freedom. It's currently in the very preliminary stages, but we're tackling parsing issues (the input is natural language, English) and memory representation issues using some case based reasoning and parsing techniques. -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ GEnie : K.MOCK Net : mock@madrone.eecs.ucdavis.edu "Don't worry about the world ending today, it's already tomorrow in Australia..." - CMS ------------------------------ Date: 2 Dec 92 03:57:07 GMT From: sean taylor Subject: tech project Newsgroups: sci.space Hello, Hows it going??? I am a student at DeVry taking electronic engneering technology, and I am looking for something to do for a tech project. The reason I am asking here is because I would like to work in the AeroSpace field, and I need something which would look good when I go for a job interview. Throw me any idea. Thanks Rob. Please send me some mail at Sean.Taylor@canrem.com -- Canada Remote Systems - Toronto, Ontario World's Largest PCBOARD System - 416-629-7000/629-7044 ------------------------------ From: Edmund Hack Newsgroups: sci.space Subject: Re: Two stage DC-1 Message-Id: <1992Dec1.220527.2922@aio.jsc.nasa.gov> Date: 1 Dec 92 22:05:27 GMT References: Sender: arabia!"Edmund Hack" Organization: Lockheed ESC, Houston Lines: 65 Source-Info: Sender is really news@CRABAPPLE.SRV.CS.CMU.EDU Source-Info: Sender is really isu@VACATION.VENARI.CS.CMU.EDU In article David.Anderman@ofa123.fidonet.org writes: >An excellent design for an inexpensive launch vehicle! Where I come from, we call this a concept (or conceptual design). A design has blueprints/CAD drawings, systems engineering studies, etc. > >I believe that the Space Echo has proven that the folks here can come >up with better launch vehicles designs than *anyone* at NASA has to >date. Perhaps, but the NASA (and private and DOD) launchers actually have put payloads in space. No SSTO has flown yet. Hopefully, one will in a few years. > Unfortunately, all too many space activists spend more time >designing imaginary launch vehicles than creating the environment for >these vehicles to come to pass. True. > >The inexpensive space launch systems that will allow reliable, safe >and affordable access to low earth orbit will be: > >Financed by folks with lots of money >Built by rocket engineers >Designed by rocket engineers O.K., but in the wrong order. See later in the post. > >Who will only be motivated to do so if there is a financial incentive >to perform. That financial incentive can only exist in the form of >a market for the space launch service they provide. True. > >Space activists won't fund the launcher, they won't build the rocket, >and they won't design the system. They can, however, help create >the market that motivates these folks to do the job. I don't know about you, but I don't have Megabucks (or even 1/10 Megabucks) lying around for purchase of launch services. There seems to exist exactly 3 current markets that a launch provider can service: - Science payloads, paid for by governments - Military payloads, paid for by governments - Communications payloads, paid for by Telcos, consortia and governments. If launch prices were low enough ($10k a passenger or so), tourism might be a market in the future. None of these markets will be enlarged by space activists acting alone. In fact, many schemes for the next leap forward in space travel have foundered and died by depending on space activists for funding. A good analysis is in the current (Nov 23, 1992) issue of Space News, page 15, in an Op-Ed piece by the CFO of Spacehab. He shows that the usual model by space activists (get some great idea, get funding from friends, do a design, go broke because no bank will fund them) is the wrong way to go. -- Edmund Hack - Lockheed Engineering & Sciences Co. - Houston, TX hack@aio.jsc.nasa.gov - I speak only for myself, unless blah, blah.. "You know, I think we're all Bozos on this bus." "Detail Dress Circuits" "Belt: Above A, Below B" "Close B ClothesMode" ------------------------------ End of Space Digest Volume 15 : Issue 484 ------------------------------