Space Digest Fri, 13 Aug 93 Volume 17 : Issue 019 Today's Topics: Auction of Soviet space goodies, $32 Catalog Cold Fusion and its possible uses (if it is proven to exist) (2 msgs) engine failures and safety Fate of Luna samples (was Re: Moon Rocks For Sale) How large is Halley's comet? *Please* man-made meteor storm? Mars Observer's First Photo Moon Rocks For Sale (3 msgs) Orbital information Perseid watch SE Michigan Perseid report Time Why the Shuttle will never be popular. 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: 12 Aug 1993 19:08:32 GMT From: Miles Abernathy Subject: Auction of Soviet space goodies, $32 Catalog Newsgroups: sci.space In article <40582@scicom.AlphaCDC.COM>, wats@scicom.AlphaCDC.COM (Bruce Watson) wrote: > Will there be a full color catalogue of the items to be auctioned > for us with little money? I called Sothebys, 800-444-3709. Catalogs are $32. = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = _ Miles Abernathy, N5KOB = | |__ miles@mbs.telesys.utexas.edu = _| | POB 7580, Austin TX 78713 = \ * / University of Texas @ Austin = \/ tel. (512) 471-6521 = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = ------------------------------ Date: 12 Aug 1993 19:03:30 GMT From: "Lawrence R. Mead" Subject: Cold Fusion and its possible uses (if it is proven to exist) Newsgroups: sci.physics,sci.space In article <1993Aug9.192450.2914@mksol.dseg.ti.com> mccall@mksol.dseg.ti.com (fred j mccall 575-3539) writes: >In <23jm86$1r2@Tut.MsState.Edu> lrmead@whale.st.usm.edu (Lawrence R. Mead) writes: > >>In article <1993Aug2.160347.14115@mksol.dseg.ti.com> mccall@mksol.dseg.ti.com (fred j mccall 575-3539) writes: >>>In snyder@henry.ece.cmu.edu (John Snyder) writes: >>> >>>>This brings up a question that nags all experimenters, I think: >>>>When is an unusual bit of data to be ignored, set aside with no further >>>>thought, or explained way with one/some of the stock explanations >>>>of possible complications? And when is that bit of data the indication >>>>of something new -- some new phenomenon, new observation, or the key >>>>to some new understanding, if it is only pursued further? >>> >>>As well it should. One of the classical historical incidents of this >>>type was data that Milliken decided to throw out because it didn't fit >>>with theory and wasn't prevalent enough to be statistically >>>significant. If he had kept that data and analyzed further, he would >>>have discovered that there were particles with partial electronic >>>charges; something that had to wait quite a while before being >>>'rediscovered'. Where would physics have been if we had known about > >>WHAT ????? WHAT PARTICLES ARE THOSE ???? PHYSICISTS HAVE FOUND NO >>FREE PARTICLES WITH PARTIAL CHARGE SO HE WOULD NOT HAVE DISCOVERED >>ANYTHING. > >GOD, I LOVE PEOPLE WHO THINK THAT THEIR CORRECTNESS IS IN DIRECT >PROPORTION TO THEIR ABILITY TO TYPE IN ALL UPPER-CASE!!!!! NOT TO >MENTION HOW IMPRESSIVE THE USE OF REPETITIVE PUNCTUATION IS!!!!!!! Capital letters are easy to spot - thats why they are used. > >[Buy a clue, Larry. Got any *proof* that he didn't happen to detect >one of the 'non-free' particles that carry partial charges? Take the >state of your gruntlement elsewhere -- I'm not interested.] As has been pointed out elsewhere , extraordinary claims require even more extraordinary evidence. I saw an extraoardinary claim (though i believe now the author did not intend to make it), so i asked for extraordinary evidence, as should you. Lastly, you are reading far more into mere capital letters than i ever meant by them. Chill out. > -- Lawrence R. Mead (lrmead@whale.st.usm.edu) | ESCHEW OBFUSCATION ! Associate Professor of Physics ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 12 Aug 1993 20:13:10 GMT From: fred j mccall 575-3539 Subject: Cold Fusion and its possible uses (if it is proven to exist) Newsgroups: sci.physics,sci.space In <24e462$g68@Tut.MsState.Edu> lrmead@whale.st.usm.edu (Lawrence R. Mead) writes: >In article <1993Aug9.192450.2914@mksol.dseg.ti.com> mccall@mksol.dseg.ti.com (fred j mccall 575-3539) writes: >>In <23jm86$1r2@Tut.MsState.Edu> lrmead@whale.st.usm.edu (Lawrence R. Mead) writes: >>>WHAT ????? WHAT PARTICLES ARE THOSE ???? PHYSICISTS HAVE FOUND NO >>>FREE PARTICLES WITH PARTIAL CHARGE SO HE WOULD NOT HAVE DISCOVERED >>>ANYTHING. >> >>GOD, I LOVE PEOPLE WHO THINK THAT THEIR CORRECTNESS IS IN DIRECT >>PROPORTION TO THEIR ABILITY TO TYPE IN ALL UPPER-CASE!!!!! NOT TO >>MENTION HOW IMPRESSIVE THE USE OF REPETITIVE PUNCTUATION IS!!!!!!! >Capital letters are easy to spot - thats why they are used. No, Larry, capital letters in a net setting are generally indicative of 'shouting'. Ditto the overblown use of multiple punctuation, which is *never* correct. >> >>[Buy a clue, Larry. Got any *proof* that he didn't happen to detect >>one of the 'non-free' particles that carry partial charges? Take the >>state of your gruntlement elsewhere -- I'm not interested.] >As has been pointed out elsewhere , extraordinary claims require >even more extraordinary evidence. I saw an extraoardinary claim >(though i believe now the author did not intend to make it), so >i asked for extraordinary evidence, as should you. >Lastly, you are reading far more into mere capital letters than i >ever meant by them. Chill out. Perhaps the problem is your writing skills? Or perhaps your manners? Or maybe Newbie Clewlessness? Whichever, you should not be surprised that when you 'shout' at someone they treat you like someone who is shouting at them. -- "Insisting on perfect safety is for people who don't have the balls to live in the real world." -- Mary Shafer, NASA Ames Dryden ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Fred.McCall@dseg.ti.com - I don't speak for others and they don't speak for me. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Aug 93 01:24:00 BST From: h.hillbrath@genie.geis.com Subject: engine failures and safety > Date: 6 Aug 1993 08:16:08 GMT > George William Herbert writes: > True. However, all-engine failures are pretty rare in both planes > and rockets. Offhand, I remember that one 747 in the ash cloud, > (very nearly) the DC-10 with the oil leaks in all 3 engines, the > (727?) from columbia that ran out of fuel and crashed in NY, and the > Canadair 767 which suffered from metric-conversion induced fuel > starvation but lucked out and landed intact on a racetrack. 8-) I am not going to attempt to document all the airplane multiple engine failures of the 20th century, but I am quite sure there have been at least two caused by volcanic ash clouds (one in Alaska). I have no recollection of it being a DC-10 in which the mechanic erroneously assumed that the drain plugs came with "o" rings installed (I would have guessed B-727, it is for sure that there were three engines, so it could have been a L-1011, but DC-10 does not compute.) Some others, there was one, 727 this time for sure, enroute from Florida to NYC in which the flight engineer noticed that the engines were not doing well, and turned on heaters and that did them all in (low NPSP as we say in the biz). There was a Delta flight, I don't remember the type, which had just taken off from LAX when the pilot, for some reason difficult to imagine, got the wrong switch, and shut down all engines. There was one that really was a DC-10 in which a shattered compressor disk chopped all three hydraulic systems at a point where they were all in a knot, resulting in a corn field landing (Iowa?) and, there was a relatively recent incident in Great Britain, a B-737, in which the crew noticed that one engine was in trouble, but the pilot apparently got confused about "left looking forward" or "left looking aft" (maybe "port" and "starboard" were not such dumb ideas) and cut the wrong one. Then there were multiple recent 747's in which the separation of one engine caused damage to a second one. I am not sure what the message in all this is, relative to rocket safety, but something that is common to many of them is that in airplanes, the engines all have a common mode failure at the "top level" in the form of the crew. The volcanic ash is somewhat of a special case, I think. And, the one DC-10 is the only airplane that I can think of in which there was a direct and prompt cause and effect relationship between the failure of one engine, and the loss of more than one safety critical system. (Sometimes there is a "delayed and/or indirect" relationship, i. e. fire, or loss of thrust causing ground contact.) > but any rocket is gonna come down hard if you run out > of fuel, no matter what's underneath you or what hobbies you have. I am just guessing from memory about airplane engine failures. Rocket engines are something that I know more about, in my spare moments, I am constructing the "Ultimate Data Base" which has everything known about every rocket engine failure. Desk top size. In discussing fuel depletion, one should remember that rockets seldom have seldom had intermediate landing points available, and no airplane is likely to make its intended destination if it unexpectedly runs out of fuel, either. Unexpected propellant depletion, is, perhaps unexpectedly, not all that rare as a failure mode in rockets, and perhaps more expectedly, if you run out of propellant when you didn't expect too, it is often hard to figure out why. I think that consideration of the effects of propellant depletion (we rocket people do not like to say "fuel" which gets complicated) makes a very interesting, and important, point, about engine reliability in the two cases. There is no question that rocket engines fail more often, and there is also no question that they fail more often fail spectacularly than do aircraft engines (per "equivalent flight"). There is a lot of question as to why, and whether there "should" but this difference. In the case of propellant depletion, early Rocketdyne engines (of the type used on Thor, Atlas, Jupiter, etc.) had a "design feature" that in that eventuality, they didn't "wimp out" and quit running, as you might expect your automobile engine or an airplane engine to do, but, rather, they shattered the turbine disk, which threw large chunks, sometimes through propellant tanks, etc. In many comparable situations, I have heard comments of "So what?' If you miss the target, everything else is the same." I have also heard comments along the lines that "It is easy to explain a spectacular explosion to the 'higher up's' than an engine that 'wimps out'." I don't know that either idea had anything to do with this particular failure mode, but after the first Thor ran out of propellant less than a second before expected cutoff, and became a fireball rather than a just having a slightly short range, a redesign was made that caused the engine to "degrade gracefully." I don't think even one failure like that of an airplane engine would have been necessary to have made the point. The idea of engine failures that only cause the loss of thrust, and ones that cause the loss of other engines, or other stuff, has been called "correlation" in the engine trade (I assume that is just an euphemism, the idea being how many times engine two goes when engine one does, and is therefore "correlated.") Other people have tried to talk about "catastrophic" engine failures. That doesn't work at all. For most rockets in the "historical data base" there was no engine out capability, and therefore every failure was "catastrophic." (And, there is, conceptually, some vehicle, somewhere, that could withstand any loss of a single engine, no matter what it did.) Correlation is very difficult to deal with, as it is a "rare" event, that only happens after another "rare" event, the fact that the engine stops running to begin with. And, hopefully, it never happens the same way twice, since all known correlation modes get fixed. Estimates for rocket engines run as high as 35 percent of all failures, but 5 percent is more reasonable, in my opinion, and has been discussed as a design goal for future engines. Aircraft engines have rates much less than one percent. > Still pretty good odds. Assuming you have restart capability in > your motors, and that they're separated enough that a catastrophic > 1-engine failure doesn't cascade, you can make a pretty safe rocket. I agree that one can make a pretty safe rocket, and, there are a number of things that one can do to make them safer. engine separation is one of them. However, it is not at all clear that having a restart capability helps, it seems that it could make things a lot worse. Another chance for the engine to make like a bomb, after having already "dodged the bullet" the first time. Good idea or not, it is certainly novel, I have never heard it even discussed, seriously, in the course of the Shuttle design, and many subsequent studies. The only thing remotely similar is that on the Centaur, there was an automatic sequence, even before the first of the recent start failures, to try starting twice. I am not sure if the effect is greater with rockets that with airplanes or not, but certainly, the number of engines that one needs to perform the intended mission decreases rapidly with time, and restart wouldn't be very helpful, even if it could be accomplished. Also, rocket engines tend to not be as easy to start, even the first time, as airbreathers, and a restart capability could result in greater complexity. One question I alluded to, and didn't answer is "Are rocket engines inherently less reliable, or inherently more destructive in failure than airbreathers?" That is very controversial, but my own opinion is not inherently, except for the oxidizer pump, and oxidizer pump failures are a very small proportion of total engine failures and confined to "primitive, early rocket engine designs." In various earlier messages on this topic, the relative merits of engines and wings, or the contribution of wings to safety were discussed. This is a complex subject, but, to make a vast oversimplification, wings have nothing to do with safety, engines do. Wings may have something to do with operations cost, but, only at high flight rates, and may have something to do with various other capabilities/desirements. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 12 Aug 1993 19:32:51 GMT From: Henry Spencer Subject: Fate of Luna samples (was Re: Moon Rocks For Sale) Newsgroups: sci.space,sci.astro,alt.sci.planetary,sci.geo.geology In article <1993Aug12.131453.1@fnalo.fnal.gov> higgins@fnalo.fnal.gov (Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey) writes: >And isn't it interesting that Korolev's family had a private lunar >sample? Actually, there are a fair number of these in the hands of VIPs and ex-VIPs (although it's a little surprising that the Soviets would use any of their tiny Luna samples for this -- guess they felt they owed old Sergei...). Nixon distributed a large number of small dust samples to world leaders after Apollo 11, and I'd be willing to bet quite a bit that the moonwalking astronauts were told they could keep one pebble apiece if they kept quiet about it. -- "Every time I inspect the mechanism | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology closely, more pieces fall off." | henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry ------------------------------ Date: 12 Aug 1993 20:09:48 GMT From: Craig T Manske Subject: How large is Halley's comet? *Please* Newsgroups: sci.space I recently had an argument with a friend of mine about the size of Halley's comet. I do not mean the size of the tail, but the size of the ice chunk itself. I argue that the chunk of frozen particles is about the size of a hardball or softwall. He argues it is about a mile in diameter. Who is correct here. If I am correct, what keeps the comet itself from melting to nothingness. Thanx alot. Albion albion@csd4.csd.uwm.edu P.S. I do not read this newsgroup, so if you could reply via email, that would be great. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 12 Aug 1993 22:19:08 GMT From: & Subject: man-made meteor storm? Newsgroups: sci.space : In article <1993Aug11.142540.18674@aio.jsc.nasa.gov: lawrence@gadget.jsc.nasa.gov (John F. Lawrence) writes: : : : :More spectacular ones are much larger and sometimes survive : :re-entry. I also remember coming across the story of lady that : :was hit by one in the 1920s while she was sleeping in her : :apartment. It crashed through the roof and a couple of floors of : :the building before it hit her. She suffered a broken hip. Whoa. I can't resist a followup. The meteorite in question is at the Alabama Museum of Natural History (two buildings down from here). The victim was Mrs. Annie Hodges, who was battered in late November of 1954 (photos were in an issue of _Life_ the next month). It is a stony meteorite about 4 by 6 inches. Here landlady sued (and won, this is Alabama) for possession of the rock, which she promptly sold back to Mrs. Hodges. There is to be (I don't know whether it was published yet) a book by Harold Povenmire on the incident. Apparently this happened at the height of UFO hysteria, and hounding by kooks has been said to have contributed to a later nervous breakdown. Mrs. Hodges' health failed and she died only a few years later. One could get paranoid, knowing that a rock from space went to all the trouble of coming through your roof, off the rafters, through the ceiling, and bouncing off your console radio just to hit you in the hip... Bill Keel Astronomy, University of Alabama ------------------------------ Date: 12 Aug 1993 22:47:09 -0400 From: Pat Subject: Mars Observer's First Photo Newsgroups: sci.space,sci.astro,alt.sci.planetary the project scientists have one advantage over everyone else. they get to choose teh onbjects imaged. I am sure somehow that if ones PhD was in crustal dynamics, one would have very different targets for observation then someone interested in surface chemistry. I also doubt anyone not intimately associated with the program will be able to make much progress with the raw data. I am sorry, these are taxpayer funded projects, US Citizens should get equal access to the raw data and the volume sets. pat -- I don't care if it's true. If it sounds good, I will publish it. Frank Bates Publisher Frank Magazine. ------------------------------ Date: 12 Aug 1993 19:11 UT From: Ron Baalke Subject: Moon Rocks For Sale Newsgroups: sci.astro,sci.space In article <1993Aug12.185712.1526@unine.ch>, Daniel.Borcard@zool.unine.ch writes... >My memory must be short...I was convinced that the Soviets never managed to >send a spacecraft to the Moon and get it back. Could someone tell me when that >happened? > The Soviets had three successful unmanned lunar sampler missions that brought back lunar material from the Moon: Luna 16 (1970), Luna 20 (1972) and Luna 24 (1976). With Luna 15, they attempted to return the first lunar samples ever just days before Apollo 11, but the Soviet spacecraft crashed on the Moon. The Soviets have also land and operated two rovers on the Moon, which something the US has never accomplished. ___ _____ ___ /_ /| /____/ \ /_ /| Ron Baalke | baalke@kelvin.jpl.nasa.gov | | | | __ \ /| | | | Jet Propulsion Lab | ___| | | | |__) |/ | | |__ M/S 525-3684 Telos | When given a choice between /___| | | | ___/ | |/__ /| Pasadena, CA 91109 | two exciting things, choose |_____|/ |_|/ |_____|/ | the one you haven't tried. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 12 Aug 1993 22:42:29 GMT From: Barney the Dinosaur Subject: Moon Rocks For Sale Newsgroups: sci.astro,sci.space Ron Baalke (baalke@kelvin.jpl.nasa.gov) wrote: : The Soviets have also land and operated two rovers on the Moon, which something : the US has never accomplished. Ah, yes, landing LIVE HUMANS certainly pales in comparison to landing a rover.. How silly to think that it was some kind of great accomplishment. -- e-mail to : zeke@netcom.com boring flames to : /dev/null *or* dev/eat/shit **This .sig is a test. It is only a test. If it had been an actual .sig, it would have contained a number of humorous quotes and/or graphics..** ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Aug 1993 01:54:48 GMT From: "Phil G. Fraering" Subject: Moon Rocks For Sale Newsgroups: sci.astro,sci.space zeke@netcom.com (Barney the Dinosaur) writes: >Ron Baalke (baalke@kelvin.jpl.nasa.gov) wrote: >>The Soviets have also land and operated two rovers on the Moon, which >>something the US has never accomplished. >Ah, yes, landing LIVE HUMANS certainly pales in comparison to landing >a rover.. How silly to think that it was some kind of great >accomplishment. But I wonder what our excuse was/is for not following up; there would be a lot of useful stuff that could be done today with an unmanned rover, some of which would be precursors towards a manned return. (Besides, we could have used our manned rover designs as a starting point...) >-- > e-mail to : zeke@netcom.com > boring flames to : /dev/null *or* dev/eat/shit Believe me, when I flame, it's anything but boring. Ugly, yes, but I try not to be boring. >**This .sig is a test. It is only a test. If it had been an actual .sig, it >would have contained a number of humorous quotes and/or graphics..** -- +-----------------------+"Just think of the mail server as |"Standard disclaimer" | a friendly robot librarian." |pgf@srl03.cacs.usl.edu |(or words to that effect, from someone +-----------------------+who probably hasn't used one). ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 11 Aug 93 19:10:00 -0500 From: Charles Radley Subject: Orbital information Newsgroups: sci.space It seems impossible to send you email, so I am making this public, please provide your individual email address. -=> Quoting Elliott Conan Evans to All <=- ECE> Message-ID: ECE> Newsgroup: sci.space ECE> Organization: Junior, English, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA ECE> I wish to put a fictional character in earth orbit so that the view ECE> out of the portholes is more-or-less a constant sunrise. The idea is ECE> to have my character experience a year long sunrise. ECE> A discussion with my housemate yields the idea for a very fast ECE> (~45 minutes) polar orbit that precesses slowly to take earth's ECE> orbit around the sun into account. Of course, some of his sunrises ECE> will actually be sunsets, but the character is a poet, who probably ECE> won't even notice. =^> This is known as a "sun synchronous" orbit. Since the orbit of the Earth around the Sun takes 365 days, the day/night terminator migrates with respect to intertial space. This means that the near-polar orbiting satellite would have to perform a plane change of slightly over one degree per day in order to stay in the day/night terminator region. This plane change would take up quite a lot of fuel, but otherwise, is perfectly feasible. The inclination of the orbit would be at 66.5 degrees to the Earth's equator, and orthogonal to the Solar ecliptic plane. ECE> Is the scenario even believeable? Yes, basically, provided you can design a spacecraft with enough fuel and propulsion capability to change the orbit. You might have to run some numbers. ECE> What if we ignore the fact that he'd be smashing into scads of space ECE> junk and possibly other sattelites? The type of orbit you need would not be any more susceptible to orbital debris collisions than any other orbit. P. S. , there is another newsgroup for discussing science fiction story ideas ( Rec.Arts.SF.science ) where this discussion would be more appropriate. ... Internet address:- DJ320@CLEVELAND.FREENET.EDU Ad Astra per Guile ! --- Blue Wave/QWK v2.10 ------------------------------ Date: 12 Aug 1993 15:54:35 -0400 From: Earl W Phillips Subject: Perseid watch Newsgroups: sci.space,sci.astro 1993 PERSEID METEOR TRICKLE REPORT In anticipation of the expected high meteor rates of the 1993 Pereid Meteor Shower (due to the recent return of comet P/Swift-Tuttle to the inner solar system), I coordinated a Meteor Watch with my local amateur astronomy club, the Westerville Astronomy Interest Group, and the students of my IS-410 (astronomy) class. The night of the expected peak (8/11) I reserved the local State Park's beach area (Alum Creek State Park). I chose that particular site because of it's low horizon, relatively dark skies, and lack of interference from curious recrea- tioners. The reasoning behind the Watch was to collect useful data to report to the International Meteor Organization, as well as expose the astronomy students and club members to a bit of "real science" in this field. As it turned out, our skies were much less than ideal. We had (at times heavy) haze, and at one point the entire sky was completely clouded out. Our average limiting visual magnitude was +3, and an average of 35% of the sky was blocked from clouds and haze. Obviously, our counts were low, and the derived ZHR's reflect the bad observing conditions in their high error bars. Still, we saw quite a few spec- tacular meteors. Bright, long-trailed yellowish meteors crossed our sky, and a few flashes were observed. What appeared as lightning behind the hazier areas were actually Perseids flashing and exploding at the end of their short duration flights through Earth's atmosphere. I personally caught one Perseid in the act of blowing itself to bits at the end of it's trail. As a result of the poor observing conditions, the peak was anti- climactic. In fact, the "peak" night was no better than a night about a week before, when I and my mate went out for about 1.5 hours to do a Perseid count. Still, we got useful data. After running the numbers through a computer program I wrote to derive ZHR's, it'll all boil down to useful information for the databanks. I hope everyone else had better observing conditions than we did! Our data is included below, for those interested in such things. OBSERVER'S MID-POINT OF DERIVED ERROR OBSERVER'S NAME TIME & DATE ZHR BAR AFFILIATION OF OBSERVATION ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Riffle,Helen 23:15 8/8/93 123 55 WAIG Phillips,Earl 23:40 8/8/93 133 44 WAIG Evans,Jeff 22:32:30 8/11/93 684 183 IS-410 Darling,Lynn ditto ditto ditto ditto Taylor,Sharon 22:17:30 8/11/93 255 128 IS-410 Gaetano,Amy 23:22:30 8/11/93 775 144 IS-410 Busche,Bill 22:26:30 8/11/93 518 156 WAIG Branoff,Ruth ditto ditto ditto ditto Williams,John 22:45 8/11/93 910 263 WAIG Phillips,Earl 00:03 8/12/93 356 92 WAIG Metheny,Michele 00:37:30 8/12/93 808 125 IS-410 Barnhart,Dr.Phil22:15 8/11/93 272 136 IS-410 Barnhart,Esther ditto ditto ditto ditto The average ZHR of these observations is 483, with an average error bar (+/-) of 133; for the time period spanning from 8/8/93 to 8/12/93 local time. Key to above: WAIG = Westerville Astronomy Interest Group. IS-410 = Integrative Studies 410 (astronomy) class at Otterbein College, Westerville, Oh. Ditto = was observing partner (note taker) of the person listed directly above. For more information regarding the above data, or if you're interested in obtaining a copy of the computer program, you may con- tact the author at: Earl W. Phillips, Jr, 7893 Thornfield Lane, Colum- bus, Oh 43235; or via internet as ephillip@magnus.ircc.ohio-state.edu. The computer program was written for IBM and compatibles with a math co-processor and at least EGA graphics. If necessary, a copy of the source code will be supplied along with the compiled program. ***************************************************************** * | ====@==== ///////// * * ephillip@magnus.ircc.ohio-state.edu| ``________// * * | `------' * * -JR- | Space;........the final * * | frontier............... * ***************************************************************** ------------------------------ Date: 12 Aug 1993 20:06:02 GMT From: Ojvind Bernander Subject: SE Michigan Perseid report Newsgroups: sci.space,sci.astro,alt.sci.planetary,sci.geo.geology In article <24cq31$7u6@vela.acs.oakland.edu> atems@igor.physics.wayne.edu (Dale Atems) writes: >I saw roughly 25 meteors between 21:30 and 23:45 EDT Aug 11 (0130 to >0345 UT Aug 12), when thick fog interrupted viewing. Conditions were >generally hazy but not too badly so. Most meteors left a glowing trail; >one was very bright (magnitude about -5 or so). Activity was sporadic, >with three or four in a minute (sometimes two consecutively) followed >by lulls of up to 30 min. Radiant point appeared to be Cassiopeia, but >many meteors extended well south and/or west of the zenith. Overall a >good Perseid show, considering that it was before midnight. > >Returned to viewing briefly from 1:30 to 2:00 EDT Aug 12. Saw two >meteors in that time; neither left a visible trail. Here in Southern California, I camped out and stayed awake from 11pm to 1am. I saw about 1-2/minute average, with up to 5 or 10 in a single minute. -- Ojvind Bernander -- ## ## # .. _~ __ .. # @ > / ) , , _/) /_) _ _ _ _ _ _/)_ _ < @ | ^ (_/ /_|/_/_/)_(/_ __/_) _(/_/(_/)_(I_/)_(/_(/_/(_ v | ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 12 Aug 1993 10:13:32 GMT From: "Piet op den Brouw." Subject: Time Newsgroups: alt.sci.planetary,sci.astro,sci.physics,sci.space In article <1993Aug11.143519.18995@aio.jsc.nasa.gov> fraietta@pat.mdc.com (Mike Fraietta) writes: >From: fraietta@pat.mdc.com (Mike Fraietta) >Subject: Re: Time >Date: Wed, 11 Aug 1993 14:35:19 GMT >In article <2487ao$1up@kbad.eglin.af.mil>, jeffcoat@eglin.af.mil (Mark Jeffcoat) writes: >|> Three questions: >|> >|> 1. What is the current difference between International Atomic Time (TAI) >|> and Coordinated Universal Time (UTC)? >|> >|> 2. When was UTC last adjusted? >|> >|> 3. What time basis is used by the Global Positioning System (GPS)? >|> >|> E-Mail response to jeffcoat@buzz.eglin.af.mil, or just post it. E-Mail >|> would be easier on me. >|> >|> > >Here is the way I understand it to be: > >1) TAI = UTC + Delta_AT >2) UTC last adjusted I believe on 30 June by 1 leap second >3) GPST is defined to be the same as UTC (USNO) at midnight on the night > of 5 Jan 1980 and the morning of 6 Jan 1980. GPST = TAI - 19s. > >Hope that helps. > >-- >Mike Fraietta >fraietta@pat.mdc.com >McDonnell Douglas Aerospace - Houston Division >(713) 283-1066 You are right but it is now I believe -27s. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Piet op den Brouw Phone : +31 70 314 2433 SHAPE Technical Centre Fax : +31 70 314 2111 p.o. Box 174 2501 CD The Hague Email : brouw@stc.nato.int Netherlands ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 12 Aug 1993 22:37:58 GMT From: Barney the Dinosaur Subject: Why the Shuttle will never be popular. Newsgroups: sci.space Pat (prb@access.digex.net) wrote: : In article robs@eskimo.com (Rob Schultz) writes: : |Ok, how about this. The space shuttle started as a small pickup and midway : |through had folks try to turn it into a Lamborgini. : |Rob Schultz | | There is no such thing as over-kill... : AClose. : Actually, the STS is a winnebago, designed and built by : Lamborgini. : pat The STS is a Yugo, designed and built by small children in a schoolyard. -- e-mail to : zeke@netcom.com boring flames to : /dev/null *or* dev/eat/shit **This .sig is a test. It is only a test. If it had been an actual .sig, it would have contained a number of humorous quotes and/or graphics..** ------------------------------ End of Space Digest Volume 17 : Issue 019 ------------------------------