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, 21 Oct 1990 02:17:00 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <0b8Hoty00VcJ8aG05P@andrew.cmu.edu> Precedence: junk Reply-To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU From: space-request+@Andrew.CMU.EDU To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU Date: Sun, 21 Oct 1990 02:16:26 -0400 (EDT) Subject: SPACE Digest V12 #474 SPACE Digest Volume 12 : Issue 474 Today's Topics: Re: Theories needed on life planetary longitudes Re: Theories needed on life Voyager/Triton Article Re: more talk about space stations Re: Names Galileo Update - 10/19/90 Administrivia: Submissions to the SPACE Digest/sci.space should be mailed to space+@andrew.cmu.edu. Other mail, esp. [un]subscription notices, should be sent to space-request+@andrew.cmu.edu, or, if urgent, to tm2b+@andrew.cmu.edu ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 20 Oct 90 07:35:12 GMT From: agate!shelby!helens!hanauma!joe@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Joe Dellinger) Subject: Re: Theories needed on life In article <1990Oct19.204109.1718@nntp-server.caltech.edu> bruce@seismo.gps.caltech.edu (Bruce Worden) writes: >I am under the impression that there are relatively few ways for organisms >to adapt to a given environment. An often cited example is the physical >characteristics of desert plants some of which appear nearly identical to >plants on another continent even though the two are completely different >species. You might want to read "Wonderful Life" by Stephen J Gould. Basically he paints a picture of evolution having a large random component. Species diversify for a while, and then WHAM, something comes along and randomly wipes out entire branches of the evolutionary tree. The survivors diversify again, but some of the diversity is well and truly lost forever. All the animals we normally think of, things like lizards, bears, dogs, whales, horses, people, monkeys, snakes etc, are variations on a remarkably consistent theme. A backbone with vertebrae, 4 limbs, five digits per limb, one head, one tail, etc etc. Sure there are some variations: snakes suppressed all the limbs, whales two of them. People have modified two limbs for manipulation, and suppressed the tail. Giraffes have greatly lengthened some of the vertebrae. Horses have suppressed all but 1 digit on each limb. Etc, etc. But the basic body plan is the same. This basic plan has been around a long time now, and the originator of it was probably like nothing alive today. It's just far faster for evolution to keep ringing variations on the old themes as needed than it is to invent something new from scratch. New inventions don't stand a chance competing against the old established monopolies. That's not to say that some traits or organs can't get invented again and again: how many times have eyes evolved independently? Your eyes and horses' eyes and whales' eyes and fishes' eyes are all under the same patent, as it were. We all inherited our eyes from our common vertebrate ancestor. However the Octopus, an invertebrate, evolved its eyes independently. And even though Octopus eyes LOOK pretty much like ours their independent origin shows: many of the internal details are quite different. On the other hand, it didn't have to go that way. Insects evolved something completely different for eyes. Some molluscs even evolved reflecting telescopes for eyes instead of refractors like ours, I've read. So my guess is that IF the basic body plan that gets established early on happens to have 4 limbs, a head, and a tail, you MIGHT end up with something very human-looking in appearance at some point. But there's no reason to expect that basic body plan will win the lottery very often. And even if you got something that looked human the details would probably be different. The human food and air tubes stupidly have to CROSS each other to get to the lungs and stomach. Rather silly design; how many times have you nearly choked? Human eyes strangely put the detector layer BEHIND the layer that feeds the detector layer. Stupid design; we have to look through all that junk. Octopus eyes got lucky and evolved it the other way around. One last point: by some standards we aren't even all that successful. Where are all the species closely related to us? We're the only species left in our genera! And the few reasonably close relatives we still have, Gorillas and Chimpanzees, are only just hanging on. Lucky for us we figured out these tool-using and speech tricks, and managed to pull it out pretty well these last few ten thousand years. Of course, ten thousand years is NOTHING... come back in a few million years and see how we're doing. Probably we'll either have colonized the local group by then, or we'll be extinct. Anybody want to make a bet? \ /\ /\ /\/\/\/\/\/\/\.-.-.-.-.......___________ \ / \ / \ /Dept of Geophysics, Stanford University \/\/\.-.-....___ \/ \/ \/Joe Dellinger joe@hanauma.stanford.edu apple!hanauma!joe\/\.-._ ** tick ****** tick **** tick! *** tick! ** tick! tick! tick! RING! **** WHAM ** ------------------------------ Date: 19 Oct 90 13:59:39 GMT From: ubc-cs!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!watserv1!ria!uwovax!17001_1511@beaver.cs.washington.edu Subject: planetary longitudes Several comments on recent postings: Longitude measurement on any world, Earth included, is purely arbit- rary. There are really two basic approaches: on any body in synchronous rotation around another, the prime meridian used by cartographers is that which faces the primary (i.e. on the Moon it is the mean position of the sub-Earth point, on Phobos the mean position of the sub-Mars point and so on). For objects not in synchronous rotation the choice is more arbitrary, and the prime meridian's position is determined simply by calculating the number of rotations since some standard time at which the prime meridian was pointing in a specified direction. However, these 'dynamic' definitions are not reliable unless we know the rotation state and librations very well indeed. So, for cartographic purposes it is better to identify some very small but clearly definable point such as the centre of a small circular crater, and making that the 'Greenwich' of the planet. This is done whenever suitable images are available. This 'Greenwich' might not be on the prime meridian if that region (according to the original dynamic definition) has not been photographed yet. Examples: Mercury - crater HUN KAL defines 20 deg. long. Venus - crater Ariadna defines 0 deg. long. Mars - crater Airy-0 defines 0 deg. long. Ganymede - crater Anat defines 128 deg. long. For more detail, see a paper by M.E. Davies and others in the journal CELESTIAL MECHANICS, Vol. 39, 1986. Revisions are no doubt on the way. Phil Stooke, Department of Geography, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada N6A 5C2 ------------------------------ Date: 19 Oct 90 20:35:03 GMT From: munnari.oz.au!uhccux!hale!whinery@uunet.uu.net (Alan Whinery) Subject: Re: Theories needed on life In article <1990Oct18.213753.34575@eagle.wesleyan.edu> dlinder@eagle.wesleyan.edu writes: >Could someone theorize on what humanoid life would be like on a planet 3 or 4 >times the size of the Earth. I'm looking for theories on body structure, >societies, technology, psychology, etc. Thanks, I appreciate any speculation. > > dml This isn't going to be another one of THOSE questions, is it? I postulate : If a planet were 3 to 4 time the size (let's say radius) of the earth with similar density, it would not be a very nice place for any thing resembling humanoids. Since a factor of 4 in the radius would increase the surface area by a factor of 16 and the volume (and thus the mass at a specific density ) by a factor of 64! I suppose the questions at hand are, does your theoretical planet need to be all THAT big? And -- do the creatures need to be humanoid? If you lowered the density considerably so that the creatures could move around a little, maybe a mini gas giant -- a Gas Midget! All of this raises a question of planetary stability, of course... Alan the night Janitor The Institute for Astronomy Somewhere in the central Pacific _constantly reading Asimov's non-fiction_ whinery@hale.ifa.hawaii.edu ------------------------------ Date: 19 Oct 90 22:22:29 GMT From: swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sdd.hp.com!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!jato!mars.jpl.nasa.gov!baalke@ucsd.edu (Ron Baalke) Subject: Voyager/Triton Article Associated Press -- 10/18/90 "Voyager-Triton" By Lee Siegel "Five-mile-tall black plumes that look like volcanic geysers erupting on Neptune's moon Triton really may be swirling funnels of dust, gas and nitrogen ice, some Voyager 2 spacecraft scientists now believe." The AP's Los Angeles science writer reports that California Institute of Technology and Voyager scientist Andrew Ingersoll argues in today's issue of the journal Science that the plumes are really dust devils, just the same as similar occurrences on Earth and Mars. The report quotes Ingersoll as saying "the majority theory is still that they're geysers. But we're having a live debate." The story further states that the debate won't be settled until further analysis of the Voyager 2 data allows an understanding of Triton's atmospheric temperature as it relates to altitude. The story states that if the temperatures in Triton's atmosphere are colder at higher altitudes, as they are on Earth, the slightly warmer icy fog in geysers could float upward. But preliminary evidence, according to the report, suggests the opposite -- which further suggests there might be warm bare spots on the moon's surface. According to the AP, Ingersoll and colleagues at CalTech argue that bare spots on Triton's surface would be conducive to dust devils, which theory Ingersoll says is further supported by the fact that the plumes remain constricted in diameter as they rise, exactly like dust devils do elsewhere in the solar system. The report cites Ingersoll's remark that dust devils on Earth rise some 2,000 feet, on Mars they rise nearly four miles and could rise even further on Triton. ___ _____ ___ /_ /| /____/ \ /_ /| | | | | __ \ /| | | | Ron Baalke | baalke@mars.jpl.nasa.gov ___| | | | |__) |/ | | |___ Jet Propulsion Lab | baalke@jems.jpl.nasa.gov /___| | | | ___/ | |/__ /| M/S 301-355 | |_____|/ |_|/ |_____|/ Pasadena, CA 91109 | ------------------------------ Date: 19 Oct 90 03:24:32 GMT From: news-server.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!utzoo!henry@rutgers.edu (Henry Spencer) Subject: Re: more talk about space stations In article <90291.111258GIPP@GECRDVM1.BITNET> GIPP@gecrdvm1.crd.ge.com writes: > Last, and this one has been touched on before (but I missed the answer), >what is the problem with simply adding logistics/support to a new shuttle >that has the entire cargo bay as a lab (as opposed to retrofitting with >spacelab) and blasting the sucker permenantly into orbit? The orbiter systems are not built for long stays in space, or for maintenance and resupply in orbit (with a few exceptions). You'd have to revise many things. You'd also have to build *something* to go in the cargo bay, since the orbiter has to open its bay doors in orbit (the heat radiators are on the inside of the doors) and in any case the cargo bay is not built to hold pressure. What you will end up doing is building all the bits and pieces of something like SII's Industrial Space Facility or a Spacelab-based station, and there will be little point to leaving an orbiter wrapped around it. -- The type syntax for C is essentially | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology unparsable. --Rob Pike | henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 19 Oct 90 22:15:06 EDT From: John Roberts Disclaimer: Opinions expressed are those of the sender and do not reflect NIST policy or agreement. Subject: Re: Names >From: sdd.hp.com!wuarchive!cs.utexas.edu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!watserv1!ria!uwovax!17001_1511@ucsd.edu >Subject: planetary north and names First of all, let me point out that Phil is describing things as they *are*, while I am presenting a viewpint of how I think things *should* be. There doesn't seem to be any rule against occasional griping on the net. :-) >Latin names on planets are useful when dealing with an international >community of scientists. How can we use 'vernacular' names like 'Mariner >valleys' in an international setting without being offensive? By providing translations. I think the chief advantage of Latin feature names is that I can read a paper by an astronomer from Finland, written in his/her native language, and instead of being unable to understand a single word, I'll be able to pick out the place names, and nothing else. I suppose it's silly of me to think that feature descriptions could be translated along with the rest of the paper. >Look at >medical terminology for all those squishy things inside us, or the latin >names of genera and species of living things - latin is not really a dead >language in science after all. Maybe someday there will be a philological horror movie: "Night of the Living Dead Language". In the movie, a ponderous, decrepit creature dressed in tattered rags will grab screaming high school coeds and suck the blood from their brains, causing them to flunk out of science and become cosmetologists. >Besides, it is just as easy to learn words >like 'tessera' or 'tholus' as simple terms like 'graben' or 'caldera', >without thinking of them as words in a foreign language. But they *are* foreign words. Unlike many terms of Greek and Latin origin that have become "anglicized" over the centuries, these words require Latin rules for plurals and other manipulations. What would be the Latin equivalent of the transition from "crater" to "craterization"? While I would like someday to learn Latin for its own sake, I don't much appreciate being forced to pick up so much to follow astronomy, and I suspect it's a total turn-off to many members of the general public who might otherwise become enthusiasts and proponents of astronomy. >Incidentally, on a planetary subject, I have just received the new soviet >atlas of Venus (ATLAS POVERKHNOSTY VENERY) from Sojuzkarta. >... The text portion is only in russian >but a gazetteer at the end lives latin equivalents. That's another problem - the character set has changed over the milennia. The English alphabet has several significant differences. Cyrillic is completely different at least in appearance, and Japanese has no relation whatsoever. >Phil Stooke, >Department of Geography, >University of Western Ontario, >London, Ontario, Canada N6A 5C2 John Roberts (lingua somewhat in cheek) roberts@cmr.ncsl.nist.gov ------------------------------ Date: 19 Oct 90 18:34:42 GMT From: sdd.hp.com!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!jato!mars.jpl.nasa.gov!baalke@ucsd.edu (Ron Baalke) Subject: Galileo Update - 10/19/90 GALILEO STATUS REPORT October 19, 1990 Yesterday was the first anniversary of the Galileo launch from STS-34. Spacecraft performance and health are excellent; plans for the Earth flyby activities on December 8 are proceeding well. As of noon (PDT) Thursday, October 18, 1990, the Galileo spacecraft is 27,913,650 miles from the Earth and traveling at a heliocentric speed of 54,110 miles per hour; distance to the Sun is 111,233,990 miles (1.21 AU). Round trip light time is 5 minutes, 4 seconds. A NO-OP command was sent on October 15 to reset the Command Loss Timer to 264 hours, the planned value for this mission phase. A series of Delayed Action Commands (DACs) were sent to the spacecraft on October 16. The first DAC reconfigured the downlink telemetry data rate from 1200 bps, which was automatically selected by the stored sequence, to 40 bps (uncoded) to enable positive verification of subsequent DACs. The data rate change was necessitated by a recent DSN (Deep Space Network) coverage change which provided the 70-meter station to Ulysses for its TCM (Trajectory Correction Maneuver) resulting in Galileo using the 34-meter station in Australia. As a further consequence of Ulysses related coverage changes, the planned delta DOR (Differential One-way Ranging) on October 16 was moved to October 17 requiring DACs to reconfigure the radio frequency subsystem and the Telemetry Modulation Unit for the delta DOR activity and then reconfiguring the hardware back to normal operating state. The last DACs sent on October 16 involved powering off the NIMS (Near Infrared Mapping Spectrometer) electrical heater to preclude a possible thermal violation of the SSI (Solid State Imaging) detector limit resulting from positioning the scan platform at large cone angles (above 165 degrees). The high cone angle positions were required to support UVS (Ultraviolet Spectrometer) Lyman Alpha data collection on October 18. Subsequent to the Lyman-Alpha activity, the NIMS heater was reactivated. Since the heater was powered off for a short time (about 3 hours) there was minimal effect to the thermal control of the RPM (Retro Propulsion Module). The EUV (Extreme Ultraviolet Spectromter), DDS (Dust Detector) and MAG (Magnetometer) Cruise Memory Readouts (MROs) planned for October 16 were commanded via the stored sequence but about a 95 percent of the data was lost due to Australia 70 meter coverage provided to Ulysses; however, the cruise science MROs on October 18 were successfully performed and collected. A Command Detector Unit (CDU) Signal-to-Ratio (SNR) test was successfully completed on October 16. This periodic test provides continuing trend information characterizing the telecommunications hardware used for uplink commanding. Another delta DOR activity was successfully completed on October 17. This activity again was a North/South pass using the 70 meter antennas in Australia and Goldstone. This was the seventh of 27 planned delta DOR activities prior to Earth closest approach. Delta DOR is an additional navigation data source in addition to doppler and ranging data. The VE-9 (Venus-Earth-9) Part I memory sequence load was successfully transmitted and received by the spacecraft on October 18. This sequence controls spacecraft activities from October 22 to December 7 and includes time windows for TCM-7, TCM-8, TCM-8A, the PLS (Plasma Instrument) shade retraction, Probe Checkout, and the playback of Venus data activities. Part II of the VE-9 sequence memory load was successfully transmitted and received by the spacecraft today. The entire VE-9 sequence memory load is now on-board Galileo and will become active on October 22. UVS Lyman Alpha data collection continued as planned on October 18. This data is stored on the spacecraft tape recorder for playback along with Venus Encounter data planned for November 19-21. The AC/DC bus imbalance measurements exhibited some minor activity. The AC measurement fluctuated 1 to 2 DN during a period of no spacecraft activity and is stable near 48.6 volts. The DC measurement dropped about 10DN and is stable near 18.8 volts. All other power-related and subsystem telemetry measurements are normal. Sometime between the end of the DSN track on October 17 and the start of track on October 18, the ninth despun CDS (Command Data Subsystem) Critical Controller 2A POR (Power on Reset) telemetry indication was observed. The signature was the same as that observed in the previous eight occurrences. Actions to reset the telemetry indication were completed later on October 18. All actions were successfully completed and a NO-OP command was sent to reset the Command Loss Timer to 216 hours, the planned value for this mission phase. ___ _____ ___ /_ /| /____/ \ /_ /| | | | | __ \ /| | | | Ron Baalke | baalke@mars.jpl.nasa.gov ___| | | | |__) |/ | | |___ Jet Propulsion Lab | baalke@jems.jpl.nasa.gov /___| | | | ___/ | |/__ /| M/S 301-355 | |_____|/ |_|/ |_____|/ Pasadena, CA 91109 | ------------------------------ End of SPACE Digest V12 #474 *******************