Return-path: X-Andrew-Authenticated-as: 7997;andrew.cmu.edu;Ted Anderson Received: from beak.andrew.cmu.edu via trymail for +dist+/afs/andrew.cmu.edu/usr11/tm2b/space/space.dl@andrew.cmu.edu (->+dist+/afs/andrew.cmu.edu/usr11/tm2b/space/space.dl) (->ota+space.digests) ID ; Sun, 8 Apr 90 02:00:02 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <0a7hB2e00VcJICU048@andrew.cmu.edu> Reply-To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU From: space-request+@Andrew.CMU.EDU To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU Date: Sun, 8 Apr 90 01:59:31 -0400 (EDT) Subject: SPACE Digest V11 #235 SPACE Digest Volume 11 : Issue 235 Today's Topics: Re: Quick launches ( was: Intelsat / Titan Failure ) Hubble Window Re: Quick launches ( was: Intelsat Re: Pegasus status ? Re: HST Image Status for 04/01/90 (Forwarded) Re: South Atlantic Anomaly Re: SPACE Digest V11 #231 Re: South Atlantic Anomaly Re: The Threat of Peace Re: Pegasus Re: orbit definitions ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 5 Apr 90 16:29:23 GMT From: mnetor!utzoo!henry@uunet.uu.net (Henry Spencer) Subject: Re: Quick launches ( was: Intelsat / Titan Failure ) In article dlbres10@pc.usl.edu (Fraering Philip) writes: >About quick launches: I thought the obstacle to fast launches on many of >these vehicles was the payload integration procedure. ... >Is there any way to make this cheaper, more reliable, and faster? ... Sure: standardize the interfaces. Right now, every launch is a custom job. The customers will object, though, unless the cost drops quite a bit to compensate. Actually, they will probably object even so... -- Apollo @ 8yrs: one small step.| Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology Space station @ 8yrs: .| uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu ------------------------------ Date: 6 Apr 90 21:09:28 GMT From: usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!zardoz.cpd.com!dhw68k!ofa123!rick@ucsd.edu (Rick Ellis) Subject: Hubble Window > I read somewhere that the launch of the HST had been moved UP two > days? Whyfor? Why not? They were ahead of their predicted schedule. -- Rick Ellis ...!{dhw68k,zardoz,lawnet,conexch}!ofa123!rick rick@ofa123.FIDONET.ORG 714 544-0934 2400/1200/300 ------------------------------ Date: 7 Apr 90 21:53:56 GMT From: elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!sdd.hp.com!cs.utexas.edu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!utzoo!henry@decwrl.dec.com (Henry Spencer) Subject: Re: Quick launches ( was: Intelsat In article <45600007@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu> sfn20715@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu writes: >I refuse to believe that the Air Force would not quickly correct >any problem with their Minutemen. Any program that receives every dollar >it requests surely would not have the problems that uninformed people >might speculate. Very few USAF programs ever receive every dollar they request, popular mythology notwithstanding. I believe it is still the case that no Minuteman has ever been successfully test-fired from the operational type of silo. Many have been fired from the Vandenberg test silos, but those are not representative of the operational ones. There were a series of attempts to fire from an operational-type silo at Vandenberg, all failures. I believe the failures were all minor things, not indicative of any sort of fatal flaw, and money and official patience simply ran out. After all, it says in the specs that it will work... -- Apollo @ 8yrs: one small step.| Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology Space station @ 8yrs: .| uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu ------------------------------ Date: 7 Apr 90 03:48:09 GMT From: mcgill-vision!clyde.concordia.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!utzoo!henry@bloom-beacon.mit.edu (Henry Spencer) Subject: Re: Pegasus status ? In article <3320003@hpindda.HP.COM> chikarma@hpindda.HP.COM (Sanjay Chikarmane) writes: >Having not heard a thing in the media, I am wondering what happened >of the Pegasus launch scheduled for yesterday (April 4th). Any info ? The launch on Wednesday was scrubbed due to bad weather. It was rescheduled for Thursday. And on Thursday, IT FLEW!!! It worked. The payload is in orbit, delivery as promised. The first orbital launch attempt for an entirely privately-funded launcher, after development taking only 2.5 years and only $50M, succeeded. This is easily the best news in five years. No, I lie -- make it twenty. -- Apollo @ 8yrs: one small step.| Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology Space station @ 8yrs: .| uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu ------------------------------ Date: 7 Apr 90 08:30:28 GMT From: shelby!helens!hanauma!joe@decwrl.dec.com (Joe Dellinger) Subject: Re: HST Image Status for 04/01/90 (Forwarded) In article <1990Apr4.203419.13932@cs.rochester.edu> dietz@cs.rochester.edu (Paul Dietz) writes: >Before you decode the picture, note: (1) the date on which it was sent, >and (2) the name of the sender. > > Paul F. Dietz > dietz@cs.rochester.edu I knew immediately the picture must be fake because I KNEW they'd never actually release digital picture info to the net! Last year I digitized some of Voyager II's raw pictures of Neptune off the TV as they came in real time on the Stanford Cable Network, and made the best ones available via anonymous ftp. The response was incredible! Many thousands of ftp connections in a few days! (Needless to say, my advisor wasn't too happy when we momentarily hit a load of 15 due to ftpd.) And then I followed the progress of the images across the net as they were converted into almost every imaginable format over the next few days. Wow, I thought, there's really a big demand for these things. Here's my chance to help JPL get a lot of free publicity at universities all over the country, where publicity could really do them a lot of good! So I asked Miya (of course!) whom at JPL to contact. He gave me a name and phone number, and I called.... Well, THAT person had been dead for three years, but there was somebody at the number still, and they got me through to the correct person. So I told them how there was this tremendous demand for space program pictures in digital form, they could get all this wonderful free publicity, etc, etc. They didn't believe me. I talked with them for about half an hour, explained how they could do it very easily, we'd just want a very few pictures of the sort that their own people already had made for their own Sun backgrounds internally, etc, how all they had to do was give me a few bitmaps and the images would distribute themselves, how it would be such great publicity for them at Universities, etc, etc... Result? Well, they weren't too happy that I had distributed the Neptune pictures, although since they were no better than what people could have videotaped off TV anyway they didn't mind _too_ much. Anyway, I tried. I really did. >>>> Forget it. <<<< As near as I can tell, NASA and JPL have NO interest in releasing digital images of anything except for the official complete data sets intended for strictly scientific use. Those they will only release after the data is a year old. The JPL public relations guy said if I wanted to add more images to my archive the only way would be to digitize them myself off public- relations photos. This really boggles my mind. I guess I'm not surprised now that JPL couldn't get money to send a probe to Halley, and it's hard to feel very sorry for them. Perhaps ESA is smarter? Viva La France!!!! ? \ /\ /\ /\/\/\/\/\/\/\.-.-.-.-.......___________ \ / \ / \ /Dept of Geophysics, Stanford University \/\/\.-.-....___ \/ \/ \/Joe Dellinger joe@hanauma.stanford.edu apple!hanauma!joe\/\.-._ ************** Drive Friendly, Y'all! ****************************************** ------------------------------ Date: 7 Apr 90 21:52:20 GMT From: miker@apple.com (Michael P. Radovancevich) Subject: Re: South Atlantic Anomaly In article <1990Apr7.195649.4301@laguna.ccsf.caltech.edu> palmer@tybalt.caltech.edu (David Palmer) writes: > >The South Atlantic Anomaly is the place where the Van Allen Belts, regions >of high radiation trapped by the magnetosphere, come closest to Earth. I seem to remember hearing something about the SAA being the result of high altitude nuclear weapons testing in the 50's. Sorry, I no longer remember where I had read this or how long ago it was. :-( I think I heard that much of the radiation is due to the by-products of these tests being trapped in the magnetic fields of the Earth. -Mike -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | Michael P. Radovancevich | My opinions are not the product of Apple, | | CommToolbox Hack | but my products are the opinion of Apple. | | Apple Computer, Inc. | ---------------------------------------------- | | 20525 Mariani Ave, MS 27Y | Internet: miker@apple.com | | Cupertino, CA 95014 | UUCP:{sun,voder,nsc,decwrl}!apple!miker | | 408-974-1042 | Applelink:RADOVANCEVI1 | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------ Date: 7 Apr 90 23:17:44 GMT From: ganoe@arizona.edu (Bill Ganoe) Subject: Re: SPACE Digest V11 #231 In article <639517776.amon@H.GP.CS.CMU.EDU>, Dale.Amon@H.GP.CS.CMU.EDU writes: [OSC's IPO was withdrawn at the last] > moment due to some negative publicity. I do not known the precise > nature of the news that caused the withdrawal, but it was evidentaly > some investment news letter and OSC took it seriously enough to make > > I wish I'd had stock BEFORE the launch. sigh. > > from the Emerald Isle, > Dale Amon The "investment news letter" was the Wall Street Journal, and the article was on the front page on Friday, March 23. That was the day the IPO was to hit the streets. I thought the article was rather balanced in its treatment, but it did point up the very high degree of risk involved in that first launch. Not the kind of thing you really want when you need to squeeze as much capital as possible from that IPO. -- "Any society that needs | William H. Ganoe bill@tucson.sie.arizona.edu disclaimers has too many| SIE Dept, Univ. of Arizona lawyers." -- Eric Pepke | Tucson, AZ 85721; USA ------------------------------ Date: 7 Apr 90 03:53:13 GMT From: mcgill-vision!clyde.concordia.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!utzoo!henry@bloom-beacon.mit.edu (Henry Spencer) Subject: Re: South Atlantic Anomaly In article <101.261CB03A@ofa123.FIDONET.ORG> Mark.Perew@ofa123.FIDONET.ORG (Mark Perew) writes: >The press release for the Hubble Space Telescope mentions something >called the "South Atlantic Anomaly (SAA)". >What is this? It's an area over the South Atlantic where the Van Allen belts are unusually close to Earth. This means higher radiation exposure for satellites with orbits passing through it (which is why Skylab had a shielded safe for its photographic film) and high noise levels in sensitive detectors. A real nuisance. (In case you're wondering why there should be such an area... Most everyone knows that Earth's magnetic poles are not at its geographic poles. Less well known is that Earth's magnetic center is not at its geographic center either. The combination gives a somewhat off-center magnetic field, and thus a somewhat off-center magnetosphere.) -- Apollo @ 8yrs: one small step.| Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology Space station @ 8yrs: .| uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu ------------------------------ Date: 8 Apr 90 02:02:05 GMT From: wuarchive!cs.utexas.edu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!watserv1!watdragon!watyew!jdnicoll@decwrl.dec.com (Brian or James) Subject: Re: The Threat of Peace In article 90717459@WSUVM1.BITNET (Wayne Fellows) writes: >Can't all these poor unemployed engineers go do something useful instead of try >ing to find better ways to nuke the planet? Maybe start their own companies an >d design new and innovative products? Hey, these poor guys don't have any experience in designing things that actually work :) JDN ------------------------------ Date: 7 Apr 90 21:42:30 GMT From: elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!usc!cs.utexas.edu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!utzoo!henry@decwrl.dec.com (Henry Spencer) Subject: Re: Pegasus In article <8775@pt.cs.cmu.edu> vac@sam.cs.cmu.edu (Vincent Cate) writes: >Can anyone provide any information on these other small launch vehicles? There aren't very many of them. Scout is the only one I can think of, unless you count Chinese and Indian boosters. (Oh, the Soviets probably have two or three as well.) They've largely gone out of fashion, since space science has been in decline and comsats are too big for them. >How long are the waiting lines for small launch vehicles? Negligible; there are almost no firm customers at the moment, which is one obstacle to getting funding to try to build one. There is lots of vague interest that *might* turn into a big rush of payloads, once the launch capability is in place and proven (and preferably cheap). >The Pegasus was developed by the startup "Orbital Sciences Corp"... Ahem. Pegasus was developed as a joint venture by Orbital Sciences Corp. and Hercules. Hercules builds the solid motors, contributed a fair chunk of the development funding, and for that matter owns a fair piece of OSC. -- Apollo @ 8yrs: one small step.| Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology Space station @ 8yrs: .| uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu ------------------------------ Date: 7 Apr 90 07:45:29 GMT From: psuvm!mrw104@psuvax1.cs.psu.edu Subject: Re: orbit definitions In article <7197@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu>, tholen@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu (David Tholen) says: > >In article <90096.162050MRW104@psuvm.psu.edu>, MRW104@psuvm.psu.edu writes: > >>A geostationary orbit is a geosynchronous orbit with an inclination and >eccen- >>tricity of zero. A satellite in this kind of orbit always appears in the same >>spot in the sky (somewhere on the ecliptic). > >Somewhere on the celestial equator, actually, because we're talking about >orbits around the Earth. My apologies-- I should know better than to confuse the ecliptic with the celestial equator, but I've been up most of the last three days working on a stupid aerodynamics lab (required courses are great, aren't they?) and my brain has been pretty addled. Goodnight, and I shall rejoin you when I feel human again. Mike Williams mrw104@psuvm.edu ------------------------------ End of SPACE Digest V11 #235 *******************