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Date: Tue, 23 Apr 91 02:25:07 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: SPACE Digest V13 #446

SPACE Digest                                     Volume 13 : Issue 446

Today's Topics:
      "more appropriate questions" (was: Why the space station?)
			       Pegasus
			       Tethers

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Date: 22 Apr 91 17:26:07 GMT
From: mintaka!think.com!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!wuarchive!rex!rouge!dlbres10@bloom-beacon.mit.edu  (Fraering Philip)
Subject: "more appropriate questions" (was: Why the space station?)

After much thought, and reading everyone's comments, I would like to
propose what I think would be some more appropriate questions:

1. Why a space station?

2. Why Space Station Freedom?

3. Why some space stations/platforms?

4. What would be a good working definition of a "platform?" It could
mean a lightsat of some sort, and the lightsat might be one.

5. Why Skylab? Why Saylut (pick a number) ? Why Mir?

I suspect # 5 may be very important.

6. If the space station is going to support exploration, then,
"Why Apollo?" "Why (Sov. Space Prog)?" "Why not use assembly at
stations/platforms?" 

I suspect none of these questions are independent of each other. 

I don't think I, or anyone else here, can satifactorily answer all of
these.


--
Phil Fraering dlbres10@pc.usl.edu 
"Yep, everyone rallied to the call of 'a new stepping stone.' Only it
turned out, we turned out to be the stepping stone for the project." -
related to me by an ex-L5 activist who will remain anonymous

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Date: 22 Apr 91 19:47:05 GMT
From: argosy!kevin@decwrl.dec.com  (Kevin S. Van Horn)
Subject: Pegasus

Have there been any more Pegasus launches since the first one about a year
ago?  If not, when is OSC planning to launch another payload to orbit?

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Kevin S. Van Horn | The means determine the ends.
kevin@maspar.com  |

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Date: Mon, 22 APR 91 16:18:29 GMT
From: F026 <@BITNET.CC.CMU.EDU:F026@CPC865.EAST-ANGLIA.AC.UK>
Subject: Tethers

  Nick Szabo's explanation of tethers in space misses the *really* interesting
part for LEO users: if you have a longish (>1000m) tether orbiting within a
magnetic field, eg LEO, an electrical potential is induced (at the cost of
orbital velocity). Similarly, if you pass a current through it, you get a
force. Thus you spend the daylight part of your orbit boosting your station
by applying the spare output of your Sterling cycle solar collectors to the
tether, and the eclipse portion converting velocity to power. Station keeping
and continuous electrical power using neither fuel nor batteries.
  As I understand it, this is what the TSS is intended to prove. Anybody have
any more recent information on this project?
 
Reference: Spaceflight (British Interplanetary Society) c.1989
           (if anyone wants this ref more accurately I'll look it up)
_________________________________________________________________
Mike Salmon, Climatic Research Unit    | "Spin, spin, spin the
Univ. of East Anglia, Norwich, England |  Wheel of Justice..."
F026@CPC865.UEA.AC.UK   +44-603-592875 |

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End of SPACE Digest V13 #446
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