Date: Wed, 5 May 93 05:00:34 From: Space Digest maintainer Reply-To: Space-request@isu.isunet.edu Subject: Space Digest V16 #516 To: Space Digest Readers Precedence: bulk Space Digest Wed, 5 May 93 Volume 16 : Issue 516 Today's Topics: Boeing TSTO (Was: Words from Chairman of Boeing) Deep Space Quantum Communication Drag-free satellites (2 msgs) France spied on by the U.S. Gamma Ray Bursters. WHere are they. HST Servicing Mission (2 msgs) HST Servicing Mission Scheduled for 11 Days Letter in Space News May 3-9, 1993 Long term Human Missions NASA budget and STS costs Vandalizing the sky. Will NASA's Mars Observer Image the Face on Mars? (2 msgs) 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: Sun, 2 May 1993 23:22:30 GMT From: Steve LeCompte Subject: Boeing TSTO (Was: Words from Chairman of Boeing) Newsgroups: sci.space In article , schumach@convex.com (Richard A. Schumacher) writes: |> [Description of Boeing study of two-staged spaceplane using |> supersonic ramjets deleted.] |> |> In other words, Boeing is not seriously thinking about |> reliable, less-expensive access to orbit. They just like |> to fool around with exotic airplanes. |> No, it means that Boeing has something called foresight and vision... Boeing became the success it is today by working on what you call "exotic airplanes". ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 3 May 1993 06:38:32 GMT From: Jack Sarfatti Subject: Deep Space Quantum Communication Newsgroups: sci.space,comp.ai,sci.bio,sci.philosophy.tech,rec.arts.startrek.tech,sci.skeptic Teleportation by Quantum Menage a Trois? The seemingly science fiction Star Trek quality to the following has practical applications to cryptography and secure untappable command- control-communications in military technology (e.g., submarine, combat battle-field and deep space), computer-assisted financial transactions, personal privacy etc. It is no accident that Charles H. Bennett, one of the key physicists, works for IBM Watson Research Center. Can this new "teleportation" may allow us to break the speed of light barrier in the transfer of information between different space regions of a computer? Ignoring these physics developments may be catastropically disastrous for world-wide political and financial stability ten years from now. Certain large corporations now in the fore-front of high technology can find themselves out in the cold. nature, 362, 15 April, 1993, p.586, Tony Sudbery "Quantum mechanics: Instant teleportation" Bennett's (et-al includes Peres, Wooters - an all-star cast)) paper is Phys. Rev. Lett 70, 1895 (1993). If some one can post excerpts that would be good for those of us on internet not near a physics library. Sudbery writes: "The idea behind teleportation is that a physical object is equivalent to the information needed to construct it; the object can therefore be transported by transmitting the information along any conventional channel of telecommunication, the receiver using the information to reconstruct the object." Classical examples include the fax machine. "... if one steadily reduces the scale at which it faithfully reproduces detail, one will eventually run afoul of the uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics ... with the consequence that the object in its orginal state is bound to be destroyed by the process of scanning for transmission. This was proved by Wooters and Zurek (Nature, 299, 802, 1982) ... under the slogan 'A single quantum cannot be cloned.'" The Wooter's - Zurek paper was in response to Nick Herbert's 1982 "FLASH" paper in Foundations of Physics which was a gedankenexperiment that gave faster-than-light quantum connection communication provided that non- orthogonal states can be distinguished. In Herbert's case, it was the distinction between circularly-unpolarized-light ("CUP") and plane- unpolarized-light ("PUP") which have the same density matrix. Herbert assumed a nonlocal hidden variable beyond the density matrix. The message bit was encoded by the choice to insert or not insert a quarter wave plate intercepting the "transmitter" photon part of the pair. The message bit was decoded by cloning the twin receiver photon with a laser amplifier. It was this last step that they claimed could not be done because it violated the superposition principle - which is assumed by Bennett et-al. However, Aharonov and Vaidman in a preprint (TAUP 2019-93) "Measurement of the Schrodinger wave of a single particle" introduce a "protected measurement" that casts doubt on the "No-clone" result. Aharonov and Vaidman write: "... it is possible to measure the Schrodinger wave of a single quantum system. This provides a strong argument for associating physical reality with the quantum state of a single system, and challenges the usual assumption that the quantum state has physical meaning only for an ensemble of identical systems." Aharonov and Vaidman explicitly discuss how unitary time evolution between disruptive measurements that collapse the state into an incoherent mixture orthogonal eigenstates of the observable prevent the experimental distinguishability of non-orthogonal state (e.g. |z+> is not orthogonal to |x+> since = 1/rt2 - for spin 1/2). Thus, "... but the unitary time evolution of states in quantum mechanics implies that it is impossible to distinguish two different non-orthogonal states. Different outcomes of a measurement to distinguish these two states correspond to orthogonal quantum states of the composite system (measureing device plus particle). But, the initial scalar product between the states was not zero and remains nonzero under unitary time evolution." Indeed, Asher Peres (vol 8 of Santa Fe Institute Proceedings) shows how distinguishability of non-orthogonal states not only permits quantum connection communication faster than the speeding photon, but also permits Maxwell's Demon to beat the classical limit of the second law of thermodynamics. Aharonov's student, David Albert, as shown us how, in the parallel universes interpretation, a Maxwell Demon can beat the Heisenberg principle if Wigner's Friend hands the Demon a "photograph" of himself in a parallel world. This beating of the Heisenberg limit can only be done by the Demon, not by Wigner's Friend, it is not beyond standard quantum mechanics but a rigorous consequence of it when Godelian strange loops of "self- reference" are added - but it may be enough to avoid the "No clone' limit of Wooters and Zurek. There are interesting cognitive resonances of this complex of ideas to Oxford's David Deutsch's work on parallel quantum computing around globally self-consistent Feynman histories on closed time like world lines permitted by the "traversable wormhole" time machine models of Kip Thorne, Igor Novikov et-al. *For background on the Maxwell Demon see the Princeton Series book Maxwell's Demon, Entropy, Information, Computing edited by Leff and Rex 1990 ISBN 0- 691-08727. However, the "protected measurement" provides a loop hole that may resurrect Nick Herbert's FLASH. Commenting on the standard unitarity barrier to the distinguishability of non-orthogonal states in "collapse" un-protected measurements, Aharonov and Vaidman write: "... it only implies that there is no single universal procedure for observing states. It still allows for the possibility of an appropriate measuring device for any given state." The key word here is "universal". It is the demand for a "universal procedure" which cause Wooters and Zurek to announce that cloning a photon will violate the superposition principle. Nick Herbert thinks that the demand for universality is not necessary. Aharonov and Vaidman appear to agree with Herbert on this particular. It is clear from Sudberry's presentation in nature that Bennett, Peres and Wooters et-al's "teleportation" does not anticipate the "protected measurements" of Aharonov and Vaidman. - an interesting conflict in the works. On the other hand, it may turn out that Bennett et-al "teleportation" is a surprising variation on Aharonov's "protected measurement". Sudberry continues: "The authors divide the complete description of the quantum object into a classical part, consisting of information obtained by an experiment which can be transmitted or broadcast on any conventional channel, and the quantum residue, undetectable and, one would have thought, untransmittable except by sending the object itself. But teleportation provides another way of transmitting quantum information, using the concept of 'entanglement' of two objects. This is the situation .... in which the properties of the two objects are correlated in such a way that an observation of one of them appears to affect the other - instantaneously. In the device of Bennett et al. the object to be described (call it X) is entangled with another object A by a quantum measurement of a joint property of the two particles. Normally this measurement would destroy the full quantum information about X. However, if A is already entangled with a third object B, the effect of the measurement on X and A is to transfer the state of X to B - not faithfully, but after a transformation which depends on the result of the measurement. The transformation can then be undone by someone who knows the result of the measurement leaving B in the state in which X started. It has become the teleported version of X". In terms of breaking the speed of light information transfer limit in computers, David Deutsch's work on parallel world quantum computing suggests a kind of "virtual computing" in which the final step of "erasure" above, while needed for us to use the result, nevertheless, allow the computer to effectively solve problems which are too complex for classical computers. This is also related to Roger Penrose's thesis (e.g., The Emperor's New Mind) that the human mind is "nonalgorithmic" in the sense that it is beyond the limits of classical Turing machines. Penrose's thesis requires that the human mind, and all mind, is some sort of macroscopic quantum process that interacts with the classical mechanism of nerve impulse generation, protein - RNA - DNA couplings etc. Returning to Sudberry: "Thus when the device is used by a sender Alice and a receiver Bob, the sequence of events is as follows. When it is set up, Alice and Bob are provided with an entangled pair of objects, A and B." Obviously Alice (who, like Bob, could be a nuclear submarine communications officer, for example) and Bob are provided with about 10^24 pairs A and B on two tiny A and B cards containing lattices of electrons trapped in long- lived quantum dots. When Alice wants to send an object X to Bob, she performs a joint measurement on X and A." Alice feeds her message into a computer that magnetically scans a sector of quantum dot array in "transmitter" card A. "Bob's object immediately becomes one of the transformed versions of X." Can a "protected measurement" on the receiver card B detect this change before the classical signal from Alice gets there? If so, we have broken the speed of light barrier for computers including, perhaps, the quantum biocomputer generating our consciousness? "Alice then informs Bob of the result of her measurement using a classical channel of communication; this tells Bob which of the transformed versions he has, so that he knows which method to use to undo the transformation and obtain his copy of X. This method of sending the information about X has the advantage over simply sending X itself that Alice does not need to know where Bob is. Once the device has been set up by entangling A and B, Bob can wander around with B without breaking the channel for the lone copy of the quantum information." That is, the quantum information, unlike the classical information, is irreproducible, unique, and cannot be tapped! "The classical information, which is reproducible, can be broadcast so that Bob can receive it wherever he is. ... is there any genuine instantaneous influence or transmission in the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen experiment? Does the quantum state vector (or wavefunction) describe objective physical properties of an object?" Aharonov and Vaidman think so. "The two questions are closely related." Indeed, if, for example Ballentine is right and Aharonov is wrong, that is, if the wave function does not describe individual quantum systems and is no measurable, but only describes ensembles of quantum systems, then the classical signal transmission is really needed and the speed of light barrier cannot be broken. On the other hand, if Aharonov is right, then it is a new ball game and the Fat Lady has not sung her last note yet. However, Sudbery writes of Aharonov's work "... proposed methods to observe the full details of the state vector, converting it all to classical information and leaving no quantum residue; but these observations take a long time and work only when one knows in advance what one is going to observe." On the other hand, this limitation on Aharonov and Vaidman's proposal may be only temporary, an artifact of their unrealistic von Neumann interaction Hamiltonian H = g(t)pA for measuring quantum observable A where p is the "pointer" canonical momentum.Nobel Laureate Willis E Lamb,Jr (vol 480 Annals NY Academy of Sciences pp 407-416 offers us new options in this regard. Commenting on the above H Lamb writes: " ... is very unphysical in all respects... I regard it as unacceptable. I am working on some models with more physically reasonable forms of interaction..." p.410. ------------------------------ Date: 3 May 93 04:41:47 PST From: thomsonal@cpva.saic.com Subject: Drag-free satellites Newsgroups: sci.space isaackuo@jell-o.berkeley.edu (Isaac Kuo), U.C. Berkeley Math. Department. asks: >14:1 resonance with WHAT? It's not like there's any wavelength or frequency >to the Earth's gravitational field. Now, there' might be some interesting >interactions with the Moon's tidal effect--is that what you're talking about? [deletia] >What are the physics of the situation? The only way I can see gravitational >effects being useful in adding energy to an object orbiting Earth is some >sort of interaction with the moon. The "harmonics" are tesseral harmonics: just a decomposition of the geopotential in sines and cosines and Legendre polynomials. Resonance occurs when a satellite's period of rotation allows it to interact repeatedly with one of the terms of the expansion. See Chapter 5 of Desmond King-Hele's scientific autobiography "A Tapestry of Orbits" (ISSN 0-521-39323-X) for more discussion. Further details on the 14:1 resonance and Cosmos 1603 may be found in these references: Analysis of the resonance angle of Cosmos 1603 (1984-106 A) near 14:1 resonance MOORE, P.; GILTHORPE, M. S. (Aston University, Birmingham, England) Planetary and Space Science (ISSN 0032-0633), vol. 39, Nov. 1991, p. 1549-1558. During 1987 the near-circular orbit of the USSR satellite Cosmos 1603 (1984-106 A) was strongly perturbed by 14th-order resonance terms in the earth's gravity field. Due to near minimum solar activity, aerodynamic effects were subsidiary to resonance to the extent that, in a previous paper, lumped harmonics were recovered from the mean motion. The study is now taken a step further with lumped harmonics sought from the variation of the resonance parameter, Phi. An analytical expression is developed for the variation of Phi with time due to the principal resonance term and then extended to include the second-order resonance effect. Airdrag is modelled by a small correction term. Lumped harmonics of order 14 and 28 are extracted from the resonance variable and compared against previous values from Cosmos 1603 and those from global gravity fields. (Author) Analysis of the orbital elements of the satellite Cosmos 1603 (1984-106A) at 14th-order resonance GILTHORPE, M. S.; MOORE, P. (Aston, University, Birmingham, England); WINTERBOTTOM, A. N. (Royal Aerospace Establishment, Farnborough, England) Planetary and Space Science (ISSN 0032-0633), vol. 38, Sept. 1990, p. 1147-1159. The orbital parameters of Cosmos 1603 (1984-106A) have been determined at 43 epochs from over 2900 observations. Orbital elements were determined between January and December 1987, during which time the satellite was close to 14:1 resonance. The satellite experienced the interesting property of being temporarily trapped with respect to a secondary resonance parameter due to the low air-drag in 1987. This effect gave rise to a quasi-secular increase in the eccentricity and libration of the secondary resonance variable. Analysis of the inclination and eccentricity yielded six lumped harmonic coefficients of order 14. Analysis of the mean motion yielded additional pairs of lumped harmonics of orders 14, 28 and 42, the 14th-order harmonics superseding those obtained from analysis of the inclination. The derived values were used to test the Goddard Earth Models, GEM-T1 and GEM-T2, at high order. (Author) Evaluation of 14th-order harmonics in the geopotential (for satellite orbit computations) KING-HELE, D. G.; WALKER, D. M. C.; GOODING, R. H. (Royal Aircraft Establishment, Farnborough, Hants., England) Planetary and Space Science, vol. 27, Jan. 1979, p. 1-18. Values for normalized coefficients of two series of tesseral harmonics of order 14 and degree 14 through 22 are presented. The harmonics were evaluated by analyzing changes in satellite orbits which experience 14th-order resonance. Orbits of 11 satellites were examined for occasions when the track over the earth repeats after 14 revolutions, and variations in inclination and eccentricity of orbits passing through 14th-order resonance under the action of air drag are considered. The coefficient values are compared with coefficients predicted by three recent geoid models, and agreement and discrepancies are noted. (M.L.) If you want to get further into the details, you can contact the U.K. researchers who are most active in the field of orbital analysis by sending mail to Philip Gibbs, slr@gxvf.ro-greenwich.ac.uk ------------------------------ Date: 3 May 93 13:09:39 GMT From: steveg@arc.ug.eds.com Subject: Drag-free satellites Newsgroups: sci.space isaackuo@jell-o.berkeley.edu (Isaac Kuo) writes: > In article <15821.2be3e125@cpva.saic.com> thomsonal@cpva.saic.com writes: >>On Sat, 1 May 1993 23:13:39 GMT, henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) said: >> >>> No. A "dragless" satellite does not magically have no drag; it burns fuel >>> constantly to fight drag, maintaining the exact orbit it would have *if* >>> there was no drag. >> >> Well, almost. It turns out that clever orbital mechanics can >>engineer things so that resonant interactions with the higher order >>harmonics of the Earth's gravitational field can pump energy into a >>satellite, and keep it from experiencing drag effects for periods of >>months to years. > > A harmonic of the Earth's gravitational field? What IS a harmonic of the > Earth's gravitational field? > The earth's mass distribution is not spherically symmetric, so neither is its gravitational field. The small differences from spherical can be expressed as a series of generalised harmonic functions (modified Lagrange polynomials for latitude dependence by sin/cos terms for longitude). ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 03 May 93 15:36:19 MET From: PHARABOD@FRCPN11.IN2P3.FR Subject: France spied on by the U.S. >You mean in the same way french intelligence agents steal >documents from US corporate executives? > >pat (2 May 1993 10:46:43 -0400) No, I meant flying spy planes over the country (fortunately, now we have SPOT) J. Pharabod ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 2 May 1993 22:30:50 GMT From: "Hoyt A. Stearns jr." Subject: Gamma Ray Bursters. WHere are they. Newsgroups: sci.space In article <1rov63INN8gu@gap.caltech.edu> palmer@cco.caltech.edu (David M. Palmer) writes: > >It may be a NEW Physics problem (i.e. a problem involving new >physics). However, the data is not good enough to rule out the >100 >models which use old physics. New physics is a big step, and is only Indeed, it is. The Reciprocal System clearly shows that Gamma Ray bursts, Cosmic Background Radiation, and Cosmic rays all originate in the superluminal "half" of the universe (where most antimatter is), which appears isotropic to us. The gamma ray bursts are from supernovae in the >c sector. One needn't get more complicated that this. The theory is simple, elegant and symmetric. -- Hoyt A. Stearns jr.|hoyt@ | International Society of Unified Science| 4131 E. Cannon Dr. |isus.tnet.com -| Advancing Dewey B. Larson's Reciprocal | Phoenix, AZ. 85028 |ncar!enuucp! | System- a unified physical theory. | voice_602_996_1717 telesys!isus!hoyt The Universe in two postulates__________| ------------------------------ Date: 3 May 1993 03:22:36 -0700 From: Dan Tilque Subject: HST Servicing Mission Newsgroups: sci.space,sci.space.shuttle,sci.astro In article <1993Apr29.100157.1@stsci.edu> dempsey@stsci.edu writes: > >Back in January and February there were several articles (Wash Post, Time...) >saying that NASA was "considering" the option just as it is now "considering" >a followup mission 6-12 months after the servicing mission. However, the >down time was estimated to be a year+ (servicing, checkout, sceheduling >and training another shuttle, orbit verification...) and to be quite >expensive. I think it may have been more a mental exercise than a >real plan. Don't know. Has anyone looked at the cost of taking the second mirror, building another Hubble around it (with modifications for things that weren't right on Hubble I such as the solar panel supports) and launching that? How would that compare with the cost of the repair mission? I wouldn't be surprised if it would cost less than bringing the current one down, fixing it, and relaunching it. --- Dan Tilque -- dant@techbook.com ------------------------------ Date: 3 May 1993 14:04:52 GMT From: John F Carr Subject: HST Servicing Mission Newsgroups: sci.space,sci.space.shuttle,sci.astro In article <1993May2.164716.1@stsci.edu> zellner@stsci.edu writes: >But I still don't know where the idea is coming from that HST _NEEDS_ a >re-boost. We have many problems but our orbit is the least of them. What's the projected lifetime of the HST's current orbit? If the shuttle doesn't raise the orbit this year, will it take more than a delay in the shuttle program (another accident?) and a few solar flares to turn HST into another contribution to the Australian scrap metal industry? -- John Carr (jfc@athena.mit.edu) ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 3 May 93 12:35:59 GMT From: "Harvey Brydon (918" Subject: HST Servicing Mission Scheduled for 11 Days Newsgroups: sci.space,sci.space.shuttle,sci.astro In article , henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes >In article <1993Apr30.101054.1@stsci.edu> hathaway@stsci.edu writes: >>... Also, as implied by other posters, why >>do you need to boost the orbit on this mission anyway? ... > >You don't *need* to, but it's desirable. HST, like all satellites in >low Earth orbit, is gradually losing altitude due to air drag. It was >deployed in the highest orbit the shuttle could reach, for that reason. >It needs occasional reboosting or it will eventually reenter. (It has >no propulsion system of its own.)... If it has no propulsion system, how does it maneuver itself? I don't think viewing targets are chosen by it constantly "staring" at a particular azimuth and waiting for the object to come into view... :-) _______________________________________________________________ Harvey Brydon | Internet: brydon@dsn.SINet.slb.com Dowell Schlumberger | P.O.T.S.: (918)250-4312 There is no such word as "Irregardless". Or "Degradate". ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 3 May 93 22:55:55 PDT From: jim@pnet01.cts.com (Jim Bowery) Subject: Letter in Space News May 3-9, 1993 Jim Bowery PO Box 1981 La Jolla, CA 92038 Phone: 619/295-8868 Space News April 14, 1993 Springfield, VA 22159 To the editor: Sooner or later, we must recognize that the government's best technology investment is no investment at all -- it is the purchase of desired results. Therefore, It would seem that proposals to lease space on privately developed space facilities are the way to go. However, Bruce Webbon's article "Make Station a Private Enterprise" feeds the fallacy in our current technology paradigm when he says private enterprise, rather than government, should build a space station because "the risk inherent in offering the necessary facilities and services is minimal." Mr. Webbon asks us to believe that the public sector is better equipped to take on and manage technical risk than the private sector. This begs the questions: Is the government more intelligent about making technology investments? If not, then do government dollars grow on trees? If so, then why is the government demanding that I send it so much of my income? In truth, the government functions best in proven areas with the least risk such as roads, law enforcement and human capital. Government is the worst where there are many politically acceptable excuses for failure, such as technology development. Since we, unlike our former communist enemies, have qualms about shooting or imprisoning our public sector bureaucrats when they fail, we must leave the risks of failure in those areas where accountability is inherent, such as in the military and commerce. When that happens, our long national malaise will be over. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 3 May 1993 09:52:01 GMT From: Gary Coffman Subject: Long term Human Missions Newsgroups: sci.space,sci.space.shuttle,sci.astro In article <1993Apr28.133101.25145@rpslmc.edu> rek@siss81 (Robert Kaye) writes: > >Just a few contributions from the space program to "regular" society: > >1. Calculators No, we have the Census Bureau to thank for practical calculators, though Babbage was there first. Mechanical and vacuum tube calculators pre-date NASA. Transistor calculators were manufactured independently of the space program. TI is responsible for the IC used in modern calculators. Military and space requirements *indirectly* drove IC development, but aren't primarily responsible for it. >2. Teflon (So your eggs don't stick in the pan) No, Teflon was developed in the 1930s by Dupont. Making Teflon *stick* to frying pans was a development of the sixties, but not a NASA funded development as far as I know. >3. Pacemakers (Kept my grandfather alive from 1976 until 1988) Pacemakers have been around since the 1940s. *Implantable* pacemakers required development of solid state devices and externally rechargable power sources. Bell Labs and Exide had more to do with this than NASA. NASA did fund telemetered biomedical monitoring equipment development in the 1960s. That made development of *adaptive* pacemakers possible. Gary -- Gary Coffman KE4ZV | You make it, | gatech!wa4mei!ke4zv!gary Destructive Testing Systems | we break it. | uunet!rsiatl!ke4zv!gary 534 Shannon Way | Guaranteed! | emory!kd4nc!ke4zv!gary Lawrenceville, GA 30244 | | ------------------------------ Date: 3 May 1993 08:42:38 -0400 From: Pat Subject: NASA budget and STS costs Newsgroups: sci.space In article steinly@topaz.ucsc.edu (Steinn Sigurdsson) writes: > >What fraction of the NASA workforce is civil servant >as opposed to contractor and what are the rules on >reduction in work force for civil servants? > My feel is NASA is about Half contractors these days. Maybe a bit more, if you include all the work they shop out that they used to do in house. THe only rule for terminating civil servants, is you have to open the door, before you boot them in the ass.;-) Usually the Feds, offer buy out packages, or severance pay of 2 weeks/service year, up to1 years pay. it depends what rules are in effect. technically they don't have to offer any severance. >eg, if say the shuttle program is terminated, how >much is payroll reduced and how? set sarcasm bit. That depends on wether or not payroll reduction is part of the deal. Right now we don't have a space program, and we don't see a reduction in force sarcasm mode off. pat ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 3 May 1993 03:15:20 GMT From: "Phil G. Fraering" Subject: Vandalizing the sky. Newsgroups: sci.astro,sci.space rbunge@access.digex.net (Robert Bunge) writes: >That's fine idea, but it only works if the lighting/power company even bothers to supply good light fixtures. For instance, a power company in Virginia >recently asked a state commission for permission to sell more lights of various >type. Yet, all of the different fixture that they sold and wanted to sell Uh, why do they have to ask a state commision? Unless the state's buying... Such a process will only increace the overhead to the power company of selling different types of light, and will decreace the likleihood that they will do so. And any efficient lights they might have been planning in the future, go down the drain..... >were bad designs - one that wasted the light. Thus, you couldn't even buy >a good light from them. In most places, to get a good light, you have to >either order it special at high cost or call a store in Arizona. You could order it special. If enough people did so, it would be low cost. Last I checked, you could use UPS to buy stuff in Arizona before going there. Finally, I'm sure your state has things like small factories and machine shops. You could go into business making lights that are cheaper to use (thanks to their higher efficiency and the fact that they aren't wasting energy on broadcasting to space) and therefore _better_ than the old style... > At some >point, society starts to make rules. Cars have to pass safety tests. Five year plans have to be enacted or the planning for the economy will fall apart. >Companies have to meet pollution standards, etc.. As if the clean air act really cleaned up the air... > There are two ways to achieve this: educate the public so that they demand good lighting or force code >down the lighting companies backs. History seems to suggest that the latter >is more likely to work. _MY_ *experience* seems to suggest that you're trying too hard to *educate* them (with the same methods used in American schools to make any subject whatsoever as relevant and boring as Proto-Ugric) instead of *selling* them on the idea. ... >Agreed, so I won't respond again. It's important for all you spacers out >there to realize that some people will object to various wild ideas that >have been presented. Just like Congress, it would be best to consult >the astronomers/lovers of the night sky before you try some PR stunt >to boost public knowledge about space. Well, wake up. Space is becoming a field of human endeavor instead of just something we can look at from a long long way away. There are practical space projects that could conceivably (although probably not) cause lots of light pollution, and have been argued against on those grounds, even though they might open up such possibilities, that people could vacation on Mars if they wanted really dark skies... >Bob Bunge >rbunge@access.digex.com -- Phil Fraering |"Seems like every day we find out all sorts of stuff. pgf@srl02.cacs.usl.edu|Like how the ancient Mayans had televison." Repo Man ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 1 May 1993 14:53:19 GMT From: Gene Wright Subject: Will NASA's Mars Observer Image the Face on Mars? Newsgroups: sci.space All consipiracy theories aside, (they are watching though :-)), will NASA try to image the Cydonia region of Mars where the "Face " is? If they can image it with the High resolution camera, it would settle the FACE question once and for all. I mean, with a camera that will have a pixel resolution of about 6 feet, we'd know whether all this stuff is real or imagination. Come on JPL and NASA folks, try to image it and settle this thing. -- gene@jackatak.raider.net (Gene Wright) ------------jackatak.raider.net (615) 377-5980 ------------ ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 3 May 1993 14:27:51 GMT From: Richard Ottolini Subject: Will NASA's Mars Observer Image the Face on Mars? Newsgroups: sci.space In article gene@jackatak.raider.net (Gene Wright) writes: >All consipiracy theories aside, (they are watching though :-)), will NASA >try to image the Cydonia region of Mars where the "Face >" is? If they can image it with the High resolution camera, it would >settle the FACE question once and for all. I mean, with a camera that >will have a pixel resolution of about 6 feet, we'd know whether all this >stuff is real or imagination. > >Come on JPL and NASA folks, try to image it and settle this thing. > >-- > gene@jackatak.raider.net (Gene Wright) >------------jackatak.raider.net (615) 377-5980 ------------ Goldin, the head of NASA said "yes" in response to a town-meeting question last December. The questioner was a bit contencious, falsely claimly NASA was encrypting its Mars data to censor evidence of intelligent life it had already found. ------------------------------ End of Space Digest Volume 16 : Issue 516 ------------------------------