Date: Wed, 11 Nov 92 05:06:28 From: Space Digest maintainer Reply-To: Space-request@isu.isunet.edu Subject: Space Digest V15 #410 To: Space Digest Readers Precedence: bulk Space Digest Wed, 11 Nov 92 Volume 15 : Issue 410 Today's Topics: Edit your newsgroup header, please was Re: Lunar "colony" reality check and Apollo fire First Saturn 5 Launch - 25 Years Ago Today Japanese X-ray satellite: Astro_D Lunar "colony" reality check Man in space ... Mars over the Moon??? Obscure Help Needed Playback of Galileo Gaspara data is when? Swift-Tuttle Comet a threat to earth? 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: Wed, 11 Nov 1992 05:46:46 GMT From: David Knapp Subject: Edit your newsgroup header, please was Re: Lunar "colony" reality check and Apollo fire Newsgroups: sci.space,alt.sci.planetary In article mechalas@mentor.cc.purdue.edu (John Mechalas) writes: >In article fiddler@concertina.Eng.Sun.COM (steve hix) writes: >>In article roelle@uars_mag.jhuapl.edu (Curtis Roelle) writes: There is no reason to have a thread going exactly and totally into two different newsgroups. If you see this happening, please edit your headers so we can limit the thread to one group or the other. -- David Knapp University of Colorado, Boulder Perpetual Student knapp@spot.colorado.edu Looks like hate *is* a family value after all and Colorado families are for it. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1992 07:58:21 GMT From: Brett Vansteenwyk Subject: First Saturn 5 Launch - 25 Years Ago Today Newsgroups: sci.space Spectacular launch, I remember it well even though I was 9. The broadcaster had to leave his chair to help hold the window in and there was a huge pad fire afterwards. It seemed that these partucular problems were solved by the second launch. --Brett Van Steenwyk ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1992 03:49:15 GMT From: Robert W Murphree Subject: Japanese X-ray satellite: Astro_D Newsgroups: sci.astro,sci.space The Japanese scientific space agency, ISAS, is scheduled to launch a 700 kg x-ray astronomy observatory february 3, 1993. This mission has as much effective collecting area as Einstein or ROSAT and more spectral coverage though not, I understand, the resolution of the previous two. It continues as the fourth in a series of Japanese x-ray astronomy satellites. Ginga was the one before ASTRO-D. Is anyone prepared to summarize this mission and provide easy comparisions with the capabilities and potentials for research in ASTRO-D with Einstein and ROSAT? Are there any articles planned for publishing between now and february 3? Is there any address for public relations documents access (preferably) in english) for ISAS or this mission? if anybody knows anything, I would appreciate mail and/or posting to sci.astro ------------------------------ Date: 11 Nov 1992 04:35:21 GMT From: Bryan Butler Subject: Lunar "colony" reality check Newsgroups: sci.space,alt.sci.planetary In article <1992Nov10.152154.9709@eng.ufl.edu> joev@sioux.eel.ufl.edu (Joseph Versagg) writes: >Sorry for rehashing what was posted earlier, or , even worse, what may now >be common knowladge, but what is this about ice at the poles of Mercury? >Since Mercury rotates, although slowly, ice would be baked off the surface, >then would leak into space due to the low gravity. > we have a report in a recent issue of Science (23 October, 1992) explaining our findings: Mercury Radar Imaging: Evidence for Polar Ice M. A. Slade, B. J. Butler, and D. O. Muhleman which appears with 2 companion papers: Radar Mapping of Mercury: Full-Disk Images and Polar Anomalies J. K. Harmon, and M. A. Slade The Thermal Stability of Water Ice at the Poles of Mercury D. A. Paige, S. E. Wood, and A. R. Vasavada our paper describes a radar experiment in which we detected an anomalous radar return from the north polar region of Mercury, using the combined VLA/Goldstone bistatic radar. the polar region has 2 distinctive radar properties: first, it is the brightest reflector on the portion of the disk we imaged (about 80% of the surface), and second, its "polarization ratio" is > 1. the second property alone is enough to indicate the presence of ices, but the interpretation is certainly not unique. however, the only surfaces for which this property has been detected are icy ones (the surfaces of the Galilean satellites, and the residual south polar cap of Mars). subsequently, the Harmon and Slade data from Arecibo confirmed the presence of the north polar anomaly, and found a similar one at the south pole (i should note here that our experiment was at 3.5 cm, while the Arecibo experiment was at 13 cm). this clearly indicates that whatever is causing the anomalous reflection is temperature related. so, in order to investigate the thermal regime of the mercurian surface, we brought in Dave Paige and his co-workers to do the thermal modelling. their results indicate that permanently shadowed regions near the poles of Mercury can get as cold as about 50 K (this is very cold, but remember that the Mariner 10 radiometer measured physical temperatures as cold as 90 K on the nightside equator). the presence of large regions in permanent shadow is facilitated by the fact that Mercury has a very small obliquity. 50 K is certainly cold enough for most ices to remain stable over solar system time scales (billions of years). the problem is then how to get the ices there. this is answered in part in a paper soon to be published in JGR (the paper is going through revision right now): Mercury: Full Disk Radar Images, and the Detection and Stability of Ice at the North Pole B. J. Butler, D. O. Muhleman, and M. A. Slade where i discuss more fully the experiment, and the sources, sinks, migration and stability of ice on the mercurian surface. note that all of this has reopened the discussion of polar volatiles on the Moon. -bryan butler@cluster.gps.caltech.edu or butler_b@caltech.edu ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1992 05:46:20 GMT From: Steve Jenkins Subject: Man in space ... Newsgroups: sci.space In article nickh@CS.CMU.EDU (Nick Haines) writes: >Isn't the point of hyperventilating to boost stores of ATP? Clearly >you're not going to do much to increase the oxygen in the blood, but >the brain doesn't need oxygen, it needs energy. Well, *my* brain insists on oxygen. Accept no substitutes! The brain has no capacity for anaerobic metabolism; its production of ATP is by oxidative phosphorylation of ADP. Hyperventilation does not raise the amount of oxygen in the blood by any significant amount, and therefore does not speed the production of ATP. The key is the shape of the curve that relates oxygen content in blood to oxygen partial pressure. It's s-shaped (sigmoid, they say), and the normal arterial PO2 of 90-100 mmHg is way up on the flat part of the curve. You can raise the partial pressure much higher without appreciably increasing the O2 content. As I said, hemoglobin is pretty wonderful stuff. >This is what I've always thought hyperventilating does, and it seems >to work for me :-) I suspect this is a higher cortical phenomenon that cannot be explained in terms of cellular energetics. :-) -- Steve Jenkins jenkins@devvax.jpl.nasa.gov Caltech/Jet Propulsion Laboratory (818) 306-6438 ------------------------------ Date: 9 Nov 92 15:56:45 CST From: carlis_jc@cs1.lamar.edu Subject: Mars over the Moon??? Newsgroups: sci.space I realize that any complete attempt to terraform a body should take into account such things as retainablity of gasses and, hopefuly the body it's self will have a modicum of material to work with. I still don't see why we shouldn't experiment with techniques for creating at least a heavy gas blanket around the Moon. This would seem like a pretty major problem to overcome within a reasonable length of time. (a few decades?) The stuff that is being pushed at the moment talks about setting up "Factorys" on Mars that would produce heavy gasses that would be traped by its' gravity and then once the temp. starts bumping up they would establish "Greenhouses" for plant life and start feeding Oxygen and etc....... Anyway thats the BASIC gist of what I've seen on the subject (Newspaper articals, Spots on programs such as "Beyond 2000" on A&E, even stuff like Weakly Readers thats distributed to grade school children) and it set me to wondering why the sudden hurry to get to Mars? It's like everyone just forgot about the Moon once we got there and started focusing on Mars. (By the by has anyone heard any further reports on the long term effects of weightlessness on those Russian Cosmonaughts?) Anyway I wasn't sugesting that we terraform the Moon, I was just wondering why we seem to have skiped over it and was trying to get some more info on the whole subject in general. Thank you for your time all who've posted....... Jay ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1992 01:36:58 GMT From: jdnicoll@prism.ccs.uwo.ca Subject: Obscure Help Needed Newsgroups: sci.space An embarrassing request: my HP died and I discover I cannot remember how to do logs with a slide-rule, nor can I find my sr-related texts. Clearly, I am senile. Anyone out there recall how the damn things work? James Nicoll ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1992 04:13:43 GMT From: Robert W Murphree Subject: Playback of Galileo Gaspara data is when? Newsgroups: sci.astro,sci.space The playback and reception on earth of the rest of the data from galileo's flyby of the astreroid gaspara last year is scheduled for this month. Assuming it takes some time to process the data for "instant science" will there be a press release and when will it be? ------------------------------ Date: 8 Nov 92 19:06:25 +1700 From: Dale Parish Subject: Swift-Tuttle Comet a threat to earth? Newsgroups: sci.space >> I understand that it is pretty unlikely that Swift-Tuttle will hit >> earth in 2126. However, I would like to know what would happen in the >> case such a big object would collide with our planet? I am not sure > >>You die, I die, Everybody dies! > > Calm down. Do you expect to live until 2126? OK. Wouldn't you like to believe that by that time, *someone* will be living on the surface of another orbiting body? ------------------------------ Xref: crabapple.srv.cs.cmu.edu sci.space:51117 sci.astro:28360 Path: crabapple.srv.cs.cmu.edu!fs7.ece.cmu.edu!news.sei.cmu.edu!cis.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!saimiri.primate.wisc.edu!ames!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!usc!rpi!batcomputer!munnari.oz.au!dgaust!wattle!young From: Philip Young Newsgroups: sci.space,sci.astro Subject: The Big Picture Message-Id: <1041@dgaust.dg.oz> Date: 10 Nov 92 03:26:54 GMT Sender: news@dgaust.dg.oz Followup-To: sci.space Organization: Data General Australia Lines: 16 Source-Info: Sender is really news@CRABAPPLE.SRV.CS.CMU.EDU Source-Info: Sender is really isu@VACATION.VENARI.CS.CMU.EDU Given our propensity to fling hardware into the heavens, and our desire to get a good handle on what's very old and far away, has anybody done any serious investigation of the possibility of tacking astronomical eyes on craft headed for interstellar space which would be suitable for verrrrrrrrrrrry long baseline interferometry? We're not just talking Earth orbit here. Seems to me we have the clocks, the computers, the comms. What would be the shortest frequency we could realistically deal with? Could costs be contained with a standardized, shrink-wrapped observatory package? What might we discover with a (radio?) telescope whose effective diameter increases 10E+4 km/sec or more for the forseeable future? -- Philip R. Young | 1.79E+12 furlongs per fortnight ... Data General Australia Pty. Ltd. | It's not just a good idea, it's the law. ------------------------------ End of Space Digest Volume 15 : Issue 410 ------------------------------