Date: Thu, 6 May 93 05:19:18 From: Space Digest maintainer Reply-To: Space-request@isu.isunet.edu Subject: Space Digest V16 #536 To: Space Digest Readers Precedence: bulk Space Digest Thu, 6 May 93 Volume 16 : Issue 536 Today's Topics: ASTRONAUTS---What does weightlessness feel like? (3 msgs) BBS in Space? Billboards in Space (2 msgs) Galileo Update - 04/22/93) Mars Observer Update - 04/30/93 NASA contributions? New gedankenexperiment to test for quantum connection information. saturn image Space Colony Size Preferences Summary Visas for astronauts after an abort 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: Thu, 6 May 1993 02:14:01 GMT From: Dave Michelson Subject: ASTRONAUTS---What does weightlessness feel like? Newsgroups: sci.space In article henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes: > >Nobody has yet found *any* test that can be done on the ground which predicts >spacesickness especially well. There is a great deal of interest in being >able to predict who will get sick, since it hurts productivity on extremely >expensive missions, but so far no way to do it. In particular, there is no >particularly strong correlation between susceptibility to more ordinary >forms of motion sickness and susceptibility to spacesickness. At least, >not that the research people have been able to find -- I don't know if >they've tried roller coasters :-). I'm under the impression that spacesickness was a far more serious problem on Apollo flights than it was on Gemini. Presumably the far larger (!!) cabin had a lot to do with it. Anyone care to confirm or refute? -- Dave Michelson -- davem@ee.ubc.ca -- University of British Columbia ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 6 May 1993 04:47:31 GMT From: Henry Spencer Subject: ASTRONAUTS---What does weightlessness feel like? Newsgroups: sci.space In article <1993May6.021401.21063@ee.ubc.ca> davem@ee.ubc.ca (Dave Michelson) writes: >I'm under the impression that spacesickness was a far more serious problem >on Apollo flights than it was on Gemini. Presumably the far larger (!!) >cabin had a lot to do with it. Anyone care to confirm or refute? Indeed, it was barely recognized as an issue until spacecraft got roomy enough to roam around in. Evidently, just sitting there doesn't produce sufficient sensory confusion to give most astronauts trouble. -- SVR4 resembles a high-speed collision | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology between SVR3 and SunOS. - Dick Dunn | henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 6 May 1993 09:22:37 GMT From: Dave Michelson Subject: ASTRONAUTS---What does weightlessness feel like? Newsgroups: sci.space In article henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes: >>I'm under the impression that spacesickness was a far more serious problem >>on Apollo flights than it was on Gemini. Presumably the far larger (!!) >>cabin had a lot to do with it. Anyone care to confirm or refute? > >Indeed, it was barely recognized as an issue until spacecraft got roomy >enough to roam around in. Evidently, just sitting there doesn't produce >sufficient sensory confusion to give most astronauts trouble. It's curious that spacesickness is rarely (if ever) associated with EVA. In the early days, there was a real fear that spacewalking would induce severe vertigo and disorientation but the only problem reported by Gemini astronauts was fatigue. I suppose that it may be a little bit like seasickness in that one generally feels better when up on deck than down below. (i.e., the sensory confusion is less... confusing!) -- Dave Michelson -- davem@ee.ubc.ca -- University of British Columbia ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 6 May 1993 01:51:30 GMT From: Gary Coffman Subject: BBS in Space? Newsgroups: sci.space In article <3_713_6352bdf7f83@Kralizec.fido.zeta.org.au> ralph.buttigieg@f635.n713.z3.fido.zeta.org.au (Ralph Buttigieg) writes: > >This is just an idea that has occurred to me. We can make telephone calls to >international aircraft via the imarasat satellite system. Can such calls be >made to an orbiting space craft? If it is possible perhaps we should see >what would be involved in setting up a BBS on Mir or an eventual >international Space Station. Reckon having a space station as part of fido >or Internet would be neat. MIR already has a BBS on board. It's accessed by amateur radio packet transmissions on 145.55 MHz. It's not the internet, but it works. I'd hate to imagine a Usenet feed via Airphone, it'd probably be cheaper to launch mag tapes. :-) 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: Thu, 6 May 1993 00:07:14 EDT From: Fred.Houlihan:814-238-4123@CRABAPPLE.SRV.CS.CMU.EDU;, Subject: Billboards in Space Newsgroups: sci.space If this topic has already been covered please forgive me. I cut an article out of the Oman Daily Observer (South West Asia) last month titled "Billboards in Space" with a dateline Washington but no date or news agency indicated. I was surprised not to see any followup om sci.space but I have been out of the country and may have missed it. The article described how Space Marketing Company of Georgia is offering a one mile wide mylar baloon developed by the Lawrence Livermore Labs to orbit in space displaying corporate logos for $25-$30 million. The first project was to have been launched over the city of Atlanta in 1996 to mark the olympic games but was vetoed by mayor Jackson. "We could actually fly McDonalds golden arches in space says Space Marketings director Mike Lawson", who adds that billboards could look as big as the moon. "It's horrifying" commented Rick Parks of the American Physical Society who is rallying American scientists against the idea. Is this article a hoax or are people actually considering this? I can fax the article to anyone interested. Fred Houlihan ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 6 May 1993 06:44:02 GMT From: Harri P J Tavaila Subject: Billboards in Space Newsgroups: sci.space I remember having read about various space billboard designs that were suggested in France some years ago (I believe they were supposed to be launched in order to celebrate La Tour d'Eiffel). Two of the designs I remember quite well: 1) A small concave mirror, that was supposed to collect the reflected sunlight so that visual effect would have been just about the same as that of a flash - a very bright spot (brighter than full moon) that would have lasted just few seconds. However this would have been visible only on very small regions. The astronomers became quite worried - such a device could easily wreak photomultipliers.. 2) An orbital clock (no, not a digital one, but analog). A ring of 12 aluminized spheres and two hands - showing Paris time for all wiewers. The size of the ring would have been just about the same as that of the Moon seen from ground. Also, lets not forget that experiement the russians did couple of months ago. Remember - it's all done with mirrors.. H Tavaila ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 5 May 1993 22:36:14 +0000 From: Andrew Haveland-Robinson Subject: Galileo Update - 04/22/93) Newsgroups: sci.space In article tholen@newton.ifa.hawaii.edu (Dave Tholen) writes: >Alan Carter writes: > >>> 3. On April 19, a NO-OP command was sent to reset the command loss timer to >>> 264 hours, its planned value during this mission phase. > >> This activity is regularly reported in Ron's interesting posts. Could >> someone explain what the Command Loss Timer is? > >The name is rather descriptive. It's a command to the spacecraft that tells Indeed, it is very descriptive when you *know* what it is! I had no idea what it was either, like many of the terms favoured here. When put in context it all starts to become clearer... +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Haveland-Robinson Associates | Email: andy@osea.demon.co.uk | | 54 Greenfield Road, London | ahaveland@cix.compulink.co.uk | | N15 5EP England. 081-800 1708 | Also: 0621-88756 081-802 4502 | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+ <<>> Those that can, use applications. Those that can't, write them! <<>> > Some dream of doing great things, while others stay awake and do them < ------------------------------ Date: 6 May 93 05:44:40 GMT From: Philip Young Subject: Mars Observer Update - 04/30/93 Newsgroups: sci.space,sci.astro,alt.sci.planetary |> Forwarded from the Mars Observer Project |> [...] Entry into |> Contingency Mode was verified when signal was reacquired and telemetry |> indicated that the spacecraft was sun coning. What is sun coning? -- Philip R. Young Data General Australia Pty. Ltd. ------------------------------ Date: 6 May 93 01:30:25 GMT From: Bruce Watson Subject: NASA contributions? Newsgroups: sci.space In article <1993May4.174613.9820@mksol.dseg.ti.com| pyron@skndiv.dseg.ti.com writes: | |In article <152941830@ofa123.fidonet.org|, David.Anderman@ofa123.fidonet.org writes: ||Teflon? A contribution from the space program? Since the French were using ||Teflon on household items in the early 1950's, it is unlikely that it was ||invented by NASA. As for pacemakers and calculators, again those are ||anecdotally connected with NASA. | |According to the "inventors" here at TI (corporate ego at stake), the handheld |calculator came about as a "we can do better than that" while looking at some |desktop monsters. It really had nothing to do with the space program. The TV series "The Machine That Changed the World" hints that as Fairchild Semiconductor was pioneering MOS technology, NASA was interested since they were always seeking minituration of everything and made some money available to keep things going. TI (and several other calculator companies) took advantage of the result. It is correct that the handheld calculator was not developed for the space program. -- Bruce Watson (wats@scicom.alphaCDC.COM) ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 6 May 1993 05:35:48 GMT From: Jack Sarfatti Subject: New gedankenexperiment to test for quantum connection information. Newsgroups: sci.physics,sci.optics,fj.sci.physics,sci.crypt,sci.space Stephen Barnett in NATURE 362, 11 March 1993 p.113 commenting on experiments of Poizat and Grangier (Phys. Rev. Letters 70, 271-274, 1993) writes: "With a QND detector for light we could measure any information encoded on the amplitude of a laser beam without degrading the the quality of the information left on the beam ... it allows us to tap into an optical signal and measure the amplitude modulation without changing the signal ... Poizat and Grangier's quantum optical tap works by the nonlinear optical effect of cross-phase modulation ... In a sodium cell .. the index change will be proportional to the intensity of the light, so it leads to an intensity dependent phase modulation. It is this phase modulation that is responsible for the production of solitons (self-sustaining wave packets) in optical fibres. When two beams are present, the intensity-dependent modification of the refractive index induced by one beam can produce a modulation of the phase in the second beam. This cross-modulation means that the phase change of one beam is proportional to the intensity of the other, so by monitoring the phase of the 'meter' beam which has interacted with the signal beam we can infer the intensity of the signal. .. the signal is not absorbed .. Poizat and Grangier in fact measure the signal by conventional means after the QND measurement. Their comparison of these two measurements shows that the signal does not become appreciably depleted, and that the signal and meter beams are correlated so that the measurement carried out on the meter tells us something about the signal amplitude. This new experimental arrangement has achieved the sensitivity required to push the nondemolition measurement into the quantum regime where the signal degradation is lower and the correlation between the the meter and signal beams is stronger than could be achieved in any classical arrangement." This is a new test for quantum nonlocality. The strong correlation here is like the strong correlation in the photon pair polarizations that violate Bell's locality inequality. "A conventional measurement would either have to degrade the signal more to achieve the same degree of accuracy in the measurement, or sacrifice accuracy in order to leave the signal intact. Measurement of the amplitude scrambles the phase of the signal beam. The nonlinear interaction between the meter and signal beams, causing a correlation between the signal intensity and the meter phase, also correlates the signal phase and the meter intensity. In monitoring the meter phase we discard information about the meter intensity and hence introduce additional uncertainty into the signal phase." Roughly speaking, in second quantization, n = a*a is canonically conjugate to the phase @ where a = n^1/2 e^i@ aa* - a*a = 1 A rigorous treatment is complicated and we cannot really use @ but need things like cos@ operators. There's a lot of published literature on this problem. I did some of the original work on this as a graduate student with Lenny Susskind and Jonathan Glogower back at Cornell in 1963. I introduced the problem to Susskind. It grew out of a paper I published in Nuovo Cimento. The question is, can we use this as a communication device? That is, can the choice to monitor or not monitor the meter phase transmit a bit to the signal beam? Thus, suppose we do not monitor the meter phase, then the signal phase stays stable and with the proper interferometer splitting the signal beam we can see fringes. On the other hand, if we monitor meter phase we randomize the signal phase to that when it recombines with the signal reference beam the fringes are destroyed. Thus Fig.1 Cross-phase modulation communicator gedankenexperiment (my invention) cross-phase modulator phase detector meter _____ ---------------------------| |--------------------------| | S | | transmitter /-----------|_____|-----------\ | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | signal | reference | ----------------/-----------------------------\------------- R1 | | | | receiver | | | R2 If the phase detector at S is switched "on" it randomizes the phase in the upper signal sub-beam relative to the reference beam. Therefore, counters R1 and R2 click at equal rates. On the other hand, if the phase detector at S is not switched "on", the relative phase in the split signal sub-beams is stable. Since there is an i unitary reflection phase shift at each splitter, using phase plates, we can arrange destructive interference at R1 and constructive interference at R2, allowing the observer at the receiver to infer whether or not a phase measurement was made at S. This is local decoding. The spacetime interval between the phase measurement event at S that transmits the bit, and the counter clicks at R that decode the bit can be spacelike. We can even arrange R to be in the timelike future of R. So where is the error? "In an interesting variation on the QND theme, Grangier and colleagues also used a nonlinear optical crystal to produced two amplified copies of the information contained in one quadrature component of an input signal (Phys. Rev. Lett 70, 267-270, 1993)." This shoots to hell the significance of the famous Wooters-Zurek result that Bennet assumes in his "quantum teleportation" scheme. You may not be able to clone a single-photon eigenstate, but, apparently there is no problem cloning Glauber and squeezed states. "Thus an amplitude modulated signal is converted into two beams, each more intense than the original and carrying the same amplitude modulation. Observation of the amplitude of one beam reveals the modulation carried by its partner." ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 6 May 1993 06:56:22 GMT From: Harry Butler Subject: saturn image Newsgroups: sci.space I would like colour images of the planet saturn, preferably voyager images, showwing the ring details. If you have such images could you forward copies to me by e-mail to butler@zeus.usq.edu.au. Thanks in Advance Harry Butler -- Harry Butler | | |~~~~| butler@helios.usq.edu.au |----| |----| Department of Mathematics and Computing, USQ, TOOWOOMBA | | |____| ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 29 Apr 1993 18:40:29 GMT From: Jay Thomas Subject: Space Colony Size Preferences Summary Newsgroups: sci.space I thought I was the only one who ocasionally designed space colonies. Well, anyways, here are my preferences: Size: at least 50,000 people. Shape: I like the cylinders. If you play with your mirrors and lighting right, you can even see stars. Size: at least Island 3 size. Also: space colonies really should have large 0-G areas. I think multicubic mile free areas would not be undesirable. Also there should be lots of 0-G cafes, observation areas, etc. Finally, how about several underground floors under the surface. Perfect place for extra agriculture, storage, or ECLSS ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 6 May 1993 00:23:34 EDT From: Fred.Houlihan:814-238-4123@CRABAPPLE.SRV.CS.CMU.EDU;, Subject: Visas for astronauts after an abort Newsgroups: sci.space There was a recent major airline crash in India where the survivors complained that evacuation and medical assistance were witheld by the authorities until their papers were determined to be in order. This happened within the last two months. Lots of people died in that crash. Fred ------------------------------ End of Space Digest Volume 16 : Issue 536 ------------------------------