Date: Mon, 31 May 93 05:24:10 From: Space Digest maintainer Reply-To: Space-request@isu.isunet.edu Subject: Space Digest V16 #651 To: Space Digest Readers Precedence: bulk Space Digest Mon, 31 May 93 Volume 16 : Issue 651 Today's Topics: Comet Shoemaker-Levy, Possible Collision With Jupiter in 1994 Let's Build a Space Ship! Mining on the Moon? (2 msgs) Space Marketing -- Boycott Voyager Discovers the First Direct Evidence of the Heliopause Why a far side Science station. 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: Mon, 31 May 1993 07:17:28 GMT From: 21012d Subject: Comet Shoemaker-Levy, Possible Collision With Jupiter in 1994 Newsgroups: sci.space It might be good for someone to consider radio frequency observations during and after the possible collision. Interactions of the magnetosphere and possible plasma jets would both provide additional unique information. L DeGroff (degroff@netcom.com) ------------------------------ Date: 30 May 1993 18:43:07 -0400 From: Bradley Gould Subject: Let's Build a Space Ship! Newsgroups: sci.space Hi. I was hoping that title would catch your attention. Yes, I do propose that we build a spaceship. And not just a more powerful rocket, (fusion or otherwise). I'm talking about a balls-to-the-wall, full-bore, maximum overdrive, rip up the spaceways, rock-n-roll-it-ship! I'll tell you right now I have no qualifications for my participation in this "project", other than a rabid curiosity and a deep sense of faith in humanity's destiny as a star-faring race. If you share that curiosity and conviction, read on... HISTORY: This idea has grown out of my fascination with UFOs. I have spent a number of years quietly compiling a body of facts regarding sightings, dating back as far as 1549. I have expressly avoided association with MUFON, CUFOS, etc., to keep my research as unbiased as possible. (I must admit, however, that one of my prized posessions is a picture I took of J. Allen Hynek in Brewster, N.Y. shortly before he died.) I believe our planet HAS been, and continues to be, visited by space- craft from other races. I further believe that these races have varying degrees of technological expertise. Some are dirtier (more radioactive), than others. Some prefer robotic investigations; others seem to prefer the "personal touch". (Although even these may be alien "androids", bioengineered to avoid the danger of direct contact, and/or to present a more "humanoid" and thus, less threatening form.) I only have a peripheral interest in CE3K issues, though. Like an Iron-Age Ox Cart driver confronted by a time traveller in a 68' GTO, what I'm REALLY interested in is sitting behind the steering wheel of that sucker! If that means I have to humor the guy with the ignition key, well... THE GUY WITH THE IGNITION KEY ISSUES: Obviously, we don't have E.T. standing before us, dangling a key- chain. However, we DO need to consider those to whom such a project represents a clear and unacceptable loss of control. I don't believe the reduction in manned spaceflights has been due solely to budgetary constraints. It's simply a matter of logistics. America exists solely because it was too costly in the long run to subjugate economically. Our government and business leaders realize that a guy on Mars might not exhibit the same respect for Authority that an Earth-bound citizen with nowhere to run would. Forget someone on Epsilon Eridani IV. Each participant to this endeavor must be in it for the jazz. However, I know there will be property issues at stake here. We therefore need to establish some legally airtight method of individual recognition for any technologies which come out of this project. I think we need to look beyond the US Patent Office. The big-boys have that whole office in their pockets. I also realize we're talking about technologies with obvious weapons applications. We need to establish a secure method of communications to protect this project from the "nihilistic set". I wish we lived in a more just and sane world, but unfortuately we still have to look out for the parasites and sociopaths in high places. ASSUMPTIONS: While we iron out how to proceed, surrounded by the "pragmatists" described above, I think I can suggest some directions in exploring the technologies which have brought these craft to our little blue marble... Based upon the fragments found in Las Cruces, NM I would say we have quite a few technical issues to resolve before we can go a-wanderin'. This is why you will find this same message repeated in a large number of news groups detailed below. The most interesting UFOs to me, exhibit incredible speeds and maneuverability. (The GTOs of the spaceways, if you will.) I believe that these particular UFOs manage to generate a "bubble of relative space/time" different from ours. This explanation would allow the craft to be "relatively" stationary to a given set of space/time coordinates, yet accelerating at incredible velocities relative to another set. By creating such a bubble, two problems are solved simultaneously. First, how do you protect a spacecraft's occupants at high speed from G-forces and cosmic debris impact? Secondly, how do you overcome the inertial mass/energy penalties inherent in velocities approaching and exceeding the speed of light (C)? The only way I can see to create such a bubble is to "suggest" to local sub-atomic entities that they're really somewhere/when else in relative space/time; to "con" them, if you will, into believing they are relative to a completely different set of space/time coordinates. This "suggestive" approach to sub-atomic manipulation is a key premise of Greg Bear's SF novel 'Anvil of Stars'. Greg postulates that there is a "data exchange" which occurs between elemental entities along priviledged channels which may not even exist within our universe. In his book, he approaches the subject from the perspective of communications and weapons systems. I have always thought of it in terms of propulsion systems. How would one generate such a relativity bubble? I think, by looking at this problem as a "perceptual" one. I've always found the Heisenberg uncertainty principle fascinating. I also find Schroedinger's cat-in-the- box problem very interesting. If we could design a self cognizant computer of such positional precision and certainty about it's own coordiates that it could actually influence the Heisenberg plot of subatomic relationships in a local radius large enough to encompass a spacecraft... This "relativity box" would have to be something very different from any other computer developed to date. It would need the ability to so accurately simulate "being" somewhere/when else, that local phenomena are forced to doubt their priveledged channel positional messages and rewrite their own messages to conform to the simulation. It would have to be able to perform this subatomic slight-of-hand with absolutely no human perceptual intervention. The cat MUST stay in the box at all times. Were I a theorist (which I'm not), I would look at achieving a multi-dimensional array of Permanent Standing Wave (PSW) functions to simulate the local relational matrix and then apply another complete set of coordinates for a totally different matrix. I would, furthermore, look at a "holographic" model to describe this matrix. I don't know of a computer capable of coercing sub-atomic phenomena into rewriting their positional data streams, but I DO feel that this is a key technology to achieving the sort of vehicular performance reported by UFO sightings; in the same sense that contemporary computers control the flight surfaces of high-performance jet aircraft; aircraft which would otherwise drop out of the sky like stones. (Please note that the Las Cruces UFO appeared to have crashed during a lightning storm. Could this have been due to computer overload?) Here are the news groups in which this message is repeated: alt.activism alt.cyberpunk alt.cyberpunk.tech alt.dcom.telecom alt.alien.visitors alt.fractals alt.hackers alt.individualism alt.privacy alt.rock-n-roll alt.security alt.sci.physics.acoustics alt.sci.physics.new-theories alt.security.pgp alt.society.civil-liberty alt.society.futures alt.society.revolution comp.ai comp.ai.genetic comp.ai.neural-nets comp.cog-eng comp.security.misc comp.society comp.software.licensing comp.specification comp.theory.dynamic-sys comp.theory.self-org-sys misc.activism.progressive misc.entrepreneurs misc.int-property misc.legal.computing sci.astro sci.bio.technology sci.cognitive sci.cryonics sci.energy sci.engr.biomed sci.engr.control sci.fractals sci.geo.fluids sci.geo.meteorology sci.materials sci.math.symbolic sci.nanotech sci.optics sci.philosophy.meta sci.philosophy.tech sci.physics sci.physics.fusion sci.physics.research sci.psychology sci.skeptic sci.space talk.politics.space P.S. PLEASE do not send me any E-Mail on CE3K unless you know of an E.T. with detailed blueprints for what we're trying to achieve here. Do NOT send me anything you value as an intellectual property until the legal and security issues have been resolved. If you, or someone you know, is in Public Relations, the media, etc., this could be very helpful in keeping the McCarthy wannabe's opening Coke bottles with their butts instead of molesting honest, hard-working, space cowboys like us. If you know how to set up an alt.newsgroup for this venture, please let me know. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 31 May 1993 01:57:48 GMT From: Henry Spencer Subject: Mining on the Moon? Newsgroups: sci.space In article <1uafd3INNgfc@nsat.ipp-garching.mpg.de> bds@uts.ipp-garching.mpg.de (Bruce d. Scott) writes: >|> >- what are the type and extent of the mineral resources on the moon? >|> >|> Essentially nothing is known about this. Ore deposits are, almost by >|> definition, rare events... > >Except that titanium is so abundant in lunar surface material that it >has been said to qualify as medium to high-grade ore by terrestrial >standards... Depends on which material we are talking about. Some of it does have a noticeable percentage of titanium. But so do quite a few Earthly minerals. As has been pointed out repeatedly in this group, titanium is *not* a rare metal, on Earth or elsewhere. Titanium dioxide is routinely used as a pigment in white paints. Titanium's limited use and high-tech reputation, as a metal, arises from the extreme difficulty of refining and working with it, not the rarity of titanium ores. -- 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: Mon, 31 May 1993 06:48:24 GMT From: Nick Janow Subject: Mining on the Moon? Newsgroups: sci.space henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes: > Titanium's limited use and high-tech reputation, as a metal, arises from > the extreme difficulty of refining and working with it, not the rarity of > titanium ores. That difficulty disappears on the moon (and elsewhere in space), since there won't be any annoying oxygen or nitrogen to contaminate the titanium. :) Of course, the vacuum has its own problems as far as metals go. Which of the common metals on the moon would have the least trouble with vacuum welding? What treatments (alloys, oxide, nitride, or carbide coatings, etc) will reduce or enhance vacuum welding? Luckily, these issues can be resolved in labs on Earth. Zero-g problems can only be researched properly in Earth orbit or beyond. -- Nick_Janow@mindlink.bc.ca ------------------------------ Date: 31 May 1993 03:36:44 -0500 From: "I am an android.." Subject: Space Marketing -- Boycott Newsgroups: sci.environment,misc.invest,sci.astro,talk.environment,talk.politics.space,sci.space,misc.headlines Pardon my trimming of newsgroups.. In article <1t4elk$mjd@darkstar.isi.edu> rlewis@darkstar.isi.edu (Roger Lewis) writes: ]The major danger of Space Marketing is all the bullets that will rain down ]upon the earth from all the good ole boys firing at it when I buy the ]message "No shooting allowed within sight of this sign". :) Must be some HUGE buckshot being sold in them hills.. ;) ]-- ]rlewis@venera.isi.edu I'm the NRA *AND* the ACLU. Power to the PEOPLE! ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ AC or DC? :) -- |Pat Chester (aka: claypigeon) wolfone@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu| |People's organizations rarely stay that way... or even begin as such. | |I only speak for myself. If I *did* speak for UT, would anyone listen?| ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 31 May 1993 02:48:39 GMT From: Kevin Moore Subject: Voyager Discovers the First Direct Evidence of the Heliopause Newsgroups: sci.space,sci.astro,alt.sci.planetary In article <1993May28.181808.5792@nmt.edu> smooge@nmt.edu (the Smooge) writes: >What is the mechanism for the generation of the 2-3 kilohertz >frequency. It isnt blackbody radiation, nor would it seem to be >bremstralung. Any help would be appreciated, as I am quite interested >in the subject. As a guess (from a former plasma physicist) it would be something along the lines of a streaming instability, or perhaps a pressure-driven instability. In a streaming instability a beam of energetic particles travels through a plasma (solar wind through interstellar medium) so that different species of particles have drifts relative to each other. The drift energy can excite waves in some circumstances. (reference: Francis F. Chen Introduction to Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion pp211-214) This will occur for sufficiently long wavelengths, provided the drift velocity is large w.r.t. the thermal velocity, which should be the case for the heliopause. In a pressure driven instability, the wave energy comes from the expansion of the interplanetary plasma being confined by the interstellar medium. Both of these mechanisms lead to low frequency oscillations, so to pick which it is, would require more information than we were given in the press release. Any comments from REAL astrophysicists? (Which I certainly don't claim to be) Someone from NASA? Kevin Moore kjm@buc.edu.au ------------------------------ Date: 31 May 93 00:13:19 GMT From: Morgoth the Mad Subject: Why a far side Science station. Newsgroups: sci.space In article <1u8asv$g1u@access.digex.net>, prb@access.digex.net (Pat) writes: > > Simple solution.. Just put the science station on the near side > and spin the moon up with gyros, so that the stastion is on the > far side:-) > > I thought there already was a post card by the Far Side Cartoon people?? Or am I to jacked in to notice? Morgoth the Mad lives in Rogue AIs everywhere! ------------------------------ End of Space Digest Volume 16 : Issue 651 ------------------------------