Return-path: X-Andrew-Authenticated-as: 7997;andrew.cmu.edu;Ted Anderson Received: from hogtown.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 ; Thu, 4 Jul 91 04:11:44 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: Precedence: junk Reply-To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU From: space-request+@Andrew.CMU.EDU To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU Date: Thu, 4 Jul 91 04:11:39 -0400 (EDT) Subject: SPACE Digest V13 #777 SPACE Digest Volume 13 : Issue 777 Today's Topics: ESA Press Release No.22 Re: anti-gravity? NASA Headline News for 06/19/91 (Forwarded) NASA Headline News for 06/18/91 (Forwarded) Re: Excavating (minig) gold in the space by NASA. Re: Excavating (minig) gold in the space by NASA. Re: Access to Space Administrivia: Submissions to the SPACE Digest/sci.space should be mailed to space+@andrew.cmu.edu. Other mail, esp. [un]subscription requests, should be sent to space-request+@andrew.cmu.edu, or, if urgent, to tm2b+@andrew.cmu.edu ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 21 Jun 91 09:59:33 SET From: MSKALA%ESRIN.BITNET@vma.cc.cmu.edu Comment: CROSSNET mail via MAILER@CMUCCVMA Subject: ESA Press Release No.22 ESA Press Release No.22; Paris, 19 June 1991 METEOSAT-2: TEN YEARS IN ORBIT 19 June 1991 marks the tenth anniversary of the launch of Meteosat-2, the second in the series of European Weather Satellites. Designed for a 3-year life in space, Meteosat-2 remarkably is still producing imagery perfectly after more than three times as many years in orbit. It will actually be able to take a "10th-Birthday" and final image. Launched on 19 June 1981, at precisely 12:32:59 U.T. on an Ariane-1 launcher, Meteosat-2 was already eagerly awaited by the European meteorologists, who had been using the services of the experimental Meteosat-1, launched in November 1977. Meteosat-2 began service on 12 August 1981 and it was the primary satellite for exactly seven years, until 11 August 1988, when Meteosat-3 took over. In the last three years, three Meteosat satellites have been launched: Meteosat-3 in June 1988, Meteosat-4 in March 1989 and Meteosat-5 in March 1991. The latter two were financed and are owned by Eumetsat, the European organization for thel exploitation of meteorological satellites. Meteosat images are know to hundreds of millions of Europeans, who are used to seeing them every day on their televison weather forecasts. The images sent to the ground every thirty minutes have been used from the very beginning to derive each day "meteorological products", such as sea-surface temperature maps and cloud coverage data. These and other products are now routinely fed into the meteorological data networks. The Meteosat satellites measure 2.1 metres in diametre and they are 3.2 metres high. 6ft.11in. x 10ft.6in. - mmsY Spin-stabilized and of a mass, in in-orbit, of 320 kilogramme 700 pds. - mmsY, they all have been built by a European industrial team headed by Aerospatiale (France). Meteosat-2 will be de-orbited in a few weeks, liberating its position in the crowded geostationary orbit for another spacecraft, and ending the life of one of Europes's longest living satellites. ------------------------------ Date: 20 Jun 91 04:02:39 GMT From: aunro!alberta!ubc-cs!van-bc!rsoft!mindlink!a143@lll-winken.llnl.gov (Ed Meyer) Subject: Re: anti-gravity? > minsky@media-lab.media.mit.edu writes: > > Msg-ID: <1991Jun18.225759.23654@news.media.mit.edu> > Posted: 18 Jun 91 22:57:59 GMT > > Org. : MIT AI Laboratory > Person: Marvin Minsky > > In article <1991Jun18.004625.156@falcon.aamrl.wpafb.af.mil> > bkottmann@falcon.aamrl.wpafb.af.mil (Brett Kottmann) writes: > > > > A researcher in Scotland has developed a device that harnesses > >gyroscopic energy to lift a device against gravity--antigravity... > > > > In demonstrations, the apparatus lifts against gravity (it is > balanced > >beforehand with an equal weight via balance arm). > > Well, this is good for a contest. Balances are easy because one can > make the required lift arbitrarily small. So you can use > > a surreptitious airflow > how 'bout running current through an electromagnet fied along the > balance arm. this will produce torque in the earth's field. (Called > a "dipping needle". > simply putting a few KV of DC between the hardware and the balance > is almot sure to deflect the beam one way or the other, unless the > environment is symmetrical. Marvin, it seems to me that a long time ago there was a clamor about something called (I believe) a "Dean Drive." It was supposed to use derivatives of acceleration (and higher derivatives) to do its non-reactive accelerations ... or something like that. Well, the last I heard about it was just before they were going to try the device on a ballistic pendulum. Guess what, .... :-) So, maybe the good-ole ballistic pendulum-type test should be tried on this device. Ed Meyer ------------------------------ Date: 22 Jun 91 01:11:53 GMT From: att!pacbell.com!news.arc.nasa.gov!usenet@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Peter E. Yee) Subject: NASA Headline News for 06/19/91 (Forwarded) Headline News Internal Communications Branch (P-2) NASA Headquarters Wednesday, June 19, 1991 Audio Service: 202 / 755-1788 This is NASA Headline News for Wednesday, June 19, 1991 . . . Atlantis was rolled from the orbiter processing facility to the vehicle assembly building early this morning. Stacking of Atlantis onto its external tank is presently underway. Rollout to launch pad 39-A is expected to occur by Monday, June 24. Atlantis' payload, the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite-E, is already on the pad, in the payload changeout room, and will undergo a health check tomorrow, and will be fueled on Friday and Saturday. Pad A will be the only shuttle launch facility for the remainder of the year as Pad B has been taken off line for a series of needed repairs and refurbishment, including upgrades to the pad environmental control system and the hypergolic servicing system. The work is estimated to cost $3.3 million, and is timed to coincide with the period when Columbia will be back at Rockwell's Palmdale facility for its upgrades. Columbia is presently expected to arrive at KSC's shuttle landing facility by the weekend, pending enroute weather, for post- landing servicing. It will be ferried back to Palmdale around August for the Rockwell refurbishment. Following Atlantis' TDRS mission, the next NASA payload scheduled for launch is the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite, which is presently undergoing baseline functional testing at KSC. As part of the tests, UARS technicians have deployed the high gain antenna boom and will be checking its motion today. Tomorrow, technicians plan on installing the high gain dish and testing the ensemble. UARS is currently set for launch aboard Discovery in September. The flight director, mission manager and flight crew briefings for Discovery's upcoming STS-43 mission will be held next Wednesday and Thursday at the Johnson Space Center. The TDRS briefing will be at 9:00 am EDT, Wednesday, June 26 and will be followed by the crew briefing at 9:30 and then round-robin crew interviews. The flight director and other payloads briefings will occur on Thursday, June 27, beginning at 9:00 am. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Shortly after 7:34 am EDT yesterday, and only 25 seconds into the flight of the Prospector/Joust-1 mission, the Eastern Test Range safety officer destroyed the vehicle after the Prospector deviated from its planned trajectory. A statement from the University of Alabama- Huntsville payload team, issued this morning, said recovery efforts for the Joust-1 payload will not be renewed. The payload was apparently destroyed upon impact into the Atlantic Ocean after separating from the Prospector rocket during the launch attempt. Small pieces of debris determined to be part of the payload were retrieved by a recovery ship. An Orbital Sciences Corp. review board has begun an investigation into the cause of the mishap. OSC was contracted by UA-H to provide the launch vehicle and launch services. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * The STS-40 post flight crew press conference will occur next Friday, June 28, at 2:00 pm, at the Johnson Space Center. The STS- 40 crew will present film highlights of their pace-setting life sciences experiments mission and will also describe the post-flight medical protocol which four of the crew will have recently completed. Here's the broadcast schedule for Public Affairs events on NASA Select TV. Note that all events and times may change without notice, and that all times listed are Eastern. indicates a program is transmitted live. Wednesday, 6/19/91 1:00 pm Magellan Sciences Seminar from Jet Propulsion Laboratory, taped last week. This report is filed daily at noon, Monday through Friday. It is a service of NASA's Office of Public Affairs. The contact is Charles Redmond, 202/453-8425 or CREDMOND on NASAmail. NASA Select TV is carried on GE Satcom F2R, transponder 13, C-Band, 72 degrees West Longitude, transponder frequency is 3960 megaHertz, audio is offset 6.8 MHz, polarization is vertical. ------------------------------ Date: 22 Jun 91 01:06:19 GMT From: att!pacbell.com!news.arc.nasa.gov!usenet@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Peter E. Yee) Subject: NASA Headline News for 06/18/91 (Forwarded) Headline News Internal Communications Branch (P-2) NASA Headquarters Tuesday, June 18, 1991 Audio Service: 202 / 755-1788 This is NASA Headline News for Tuesday, June 18, 1991 . . . Shortly after 7:00 am EDT, and only seconds into the flight of the Prospector/Joust-1 mission, the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station range safety officer destroyed the vehicle when the Prospector launch vehicle began to wobble. It was undetermined if the Joust-1 payload, a nosecone with 10 materials and biotechnology experiments, was successfully jettisoned and is recoverable. A briefing on the mishap and subsequent investigation was to have begun at 11:30 am from the Kennedy Space Center press site. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Meanwhile, KSC orbiter technicians are getting ready to roll Atlantis from the orbiter processing facility later tonight to the vehicle assembly building for stacking. Atlantis' payload, the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite-E, is already at launch pad 39-A awaiting arrival of the vehicle. Work on Discovery is also progressing toward that orbiter's planned launch this September to deliver the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite into orbit. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * The flight director, mission manager and flight crew briefings for Discovery's upcoming STS-43 mission will be held next Wednesday and Thursday at the Johnson Space Center. The TDRS briefing will be at 9:00 am EDT, Wednesday, June 26 and will be followed by the crew briefing at 9:30 and then round-robin crew interviews. The flight director and other payloads briefings will occur on Thursday, June 27, beginning at 9:00 am. The STS-40 post flight crew press conference will follow on Friday, June 28, at 2:00 pm, again originating from JSC. The STS-40 crew will present film highlights of their pace-setting life sciences experiments mission and will also describe the post-flight medical protocol which four of the crew will have recently completed. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * The Ames Research Center reports that tests are currently underway on an F/A-18 fighter aircraft in the 80-by-120-foot wind tunnel at Moffet Field. This is the first full-scale aircraft to be tested in the world's largest wind tunnel. The research activities are seeking to understand how the fighter performs at very high angles of attack and is part of the NASA aeronautics program's High Alpha Technology activities. The High Alpha Technology program integrates supercomputer capabilities, ground-based experiments using wind tunnels and flight simulators, and flight tests of a specially equipped F/A-18 fighter. The wind tunnel tests on the F/A-18 are scheduled to run for 12 weeks using the Navy-supplied fighter. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Ames also reports that more than 35 media pursued the "asteroid hitting Yucatan" story through the center's facilities and staff. Ames and Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientists had shown, earlier last month, that there was strong evidence pointing to a giant meteorite or asteroid impact in the northwestern Yucatan peninsular area about the time of the disappearance of the dinosaurs. The evidence has been published in appropriate scientific journals and has created a rather large media following. Ames also reports that their educational programs officers visited more than 30 schools in western states last month and hosted several score of students at Ames facilities as part of their Aerospace Encounter program. The center also presented programs to more than 780 individuals at the annual Children's Fair in Portland. The Stennis Space Center reports that it hosted nearly 3,000 visitors last week and conducted a Summer Reading program for 70 youngsters at the West Biloxi library. Stennis also reports they have provided economic and general program information about Stennis activities to the Hancock Chamber of Commerce for a report the Chamber is compiling for the Mississippi Department of Economic Development. Here's the broadcast schedule for Public Affairs events on NASA Select TV. Note that all events and times may change without notice, and that all times listed are Eastern. indicates a program is transmitted live. Tuesday, 6/18/91 11:30 am Joust-1 press briefing with Orbital Sciences Corp. officials, from KSC. This report is filed daily at noon, Monday through Friday. It is a service of NASA's Office of Public Affairs. The contact is Charles Redmond, 202/453-8425 or CREDMOND on NASAmail. NASA Select TV is carried on GE Satcom F2R, transponder 13, C-Band, 72 degrees West Longitude, transponder frequency is 3960 megaHertz, audio is offset 6.8 MHz, polarization is vertical. ------------------------------ Date: 20 Jun 91 12:00:05 GMT From: mcsun!news.funet.fi!hydra!wikla@uunet.uu.net (Arto Wikla) Subject: Re: Excavating (minig) gold in the space by NASA. Remember what happened to the economy of Spain after they had found the gold of America! (There was a gold-inflation, which ruined the economy and finally was the end of super-power Spain.) Arto Wikla, Helsinki, Finland ------------------------------ Date: 20 Jun 91 15:03:08 GMT From: swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!think.com!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!thunder.mcrcim.mcgill.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!IRO.UMontreal.CA!matrox!altitude!elevia!alain@ucsd.edu (W.A.Simon) Subject: Re: Excavating (minig) gold in the space by NASA. In <1991Jun20.145226.1712@elevia.UUCP> alain@elevia.UUCP (W.A.Simon) writes: > [ ... ] > I would see some kind of preprocessing done in space (thank > you SPS), and the ingots would be placed in a very high orbit > [ ... ] The iron and the nickel could stay in space, to be used for industrial development, which would be financed by the sale of precious metals on the ground. Nice bootstraps you have there fellow! > [ ... ] -- William "Alain" Simon UUCP: alain@elevia.UUCP ------------------------------ Date: 20 Jun 91 23:48:21 GMT From: eagle!data.nas.nasa.gov!mustang!nntp-server.caltech.edu!news@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Steinn Sigurdsson) Subject: Re: Access to Space In article <31591@hydra.gatech.EDU>, ccoprmd@prism (Matthew DeLuca) writes: >In article <1991Jun19.125503.16147@iti.org> aws@iti.org (Allen W. Sherzer) writes: >>In article <31557@hydra.gatech.EDU> ccoprmd@prism.gatech.EDU (Matthew DeLuca) writes: > >>>From the perspective of the companies launching the satellites, the (IMHO >>>the appropriate point of view) the satellites are indeed 'self-sustaining' >>>(is this another term for profitable?) > >>No, self-sustaining is not the same thing as profitable. Suppose Boeing >>decided to halt all product design. That would make them a lot more >>This may or may not be true. At this time nobody who buys a launch >>pays the entire cost of that launch. No matter who launches your >>satellite there are huge costs associated with building the infrastructure >>and launcher not paid by satellite users. > >Well, once the original investment has been paid off, all the user really >should be paying is the incremental cost anyway. In the case of launching >facilities and research paid for by the government in years past, this >cost can be pretty much written off as a government investment that doesn't >need to be repaid or recouped. Actually the government does recoupe cost+ - in increased revenue both from the comsat firms themselves, multiplier effects (eg Insat VP buys a Jag and pays luxury tax, plus sales tax plus income tax on Jag dealer), and the tax on the added wealth created by the increased efficiency (presumed) of wealth creators serviced by such companies... ultimately that would seem to be a significant part of the justification for government involvment in pure research and infrastructure development, but such benefits are _very_ hard to quantify - I think it is clear that corporate profit tax of satellite companies has not paid post WWII rocket research or KSC facilities, but the indirect benefit almost certainly has and then some. It seems clear that this involment has paid off so far, _on_ _average_, picking the right development to support is hard and it can be argued that alternative uses of the revenue would have done even better. ------------------------------ End of SPACE Digest V13 #777 *******************