Date: Tue, 11 May 93 05:17:11 From: Space Digest maintainer Reply-To: Space-request@isu.isunet.edu Subject: Space Digest V16 #553 To: Space Digest Readers Precedence: bulk Space Digest Tue, 11 May 93 Volume 16 : Issue 553 Today's Topics: "365 days of the Shuttle flights" Boom! Whoosh...... Commercials on the Moon Grad schools NASA looks at wanted Life on Mars. (5 msgs) Philosophy Quest. How Boldly? test - please ignore U.S. Government and Science and Technolgy Investment (2 msgs) Vandalizing the sky 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: Mon, 10 May 1993 18:27:51 GMT From: Henry Spencer Subject: "365 days of the Shuttle flights" Newsgroups: sci.space In article <1sjmlpINNi9f@no-names.nerdc.ufl.edu> pam@wombat.phys.ufl.edu (Pawel Moskalik) writes: >... I think it would be interestin to compare these numbers with >the numbers for the Soviet manned space program. I take into account only >the Soyuz flights which took place since 1981, that is during the time of the >shuttle program. That covers the last residency in the SALUT 6 station, >whole SALUT 7 program and ongoing MIR program. Why did you leave out the Progress freighters? They're an integral part of the Mir program and of Soviet/Russian manned spaceflight in general. -- SVR4 resembles a high-speed collision | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology between SVR3 and SunOS. - Dick Dunn | henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 10 May 1993 13:48:19 GMT From: Gary Coffman Subject: Boom! Whoosh...... Newsgroups: sci.space In article <37860@scicom.AlphaCDC.COM> wats@scicom.AlphaCDC.COM (Bruce Watson) writes: >In article <1993May8.230330.19720@ringer.cs.utsa.edu+ sbooth@lonestar.utsa.edu (Simon E. Booth) writes: >+ >+Now, with the talk here about this mile-long space balloon, one thing I'd >+like to know is just how they would manage to pack something that huge into >+the payload shroud of a rocket or into the payload bay of a shuttle? >+And exactly what would it look like from the ground? > >The Echo I balloon launched in 1960 was 100 feet in diameter and fit >uninflated into a 28-inch diameter package and weighed 132 pounds. If the scaling held, we'd be looking at a 123 foot diameter package weighing 3.5 tons for a 1 mile in diameter Echo style balloon. The mass is managable, but the payload shroud might be another matter. The more serious problem would be finding the hanger for painting on the logos before launch. Echo was inflated in a blimp hanger, but a one mile high hanger might be harder to find. :-) Gary -- Gary Coffman KE4ZV | You make it, | gatech!wa4mei!ke4zv!gary Destructive Testing Systems | we break it. | uunet!rsiatl!ke4zv!gary 534 Shannon Way | Guaranteed! | emory!kd4nc!ke4zv!gary Lawrenceville, GA 30244 | | ------------------------------ From: Gary Coffman Subject: Commercials on the Moon Newsgroups: sci.space Reply-To: Gary Coffman Organization: Destructive Testing Systems References: <1993Apr29.123911.15925@daimi.aau.dk> <4wD93B3w165w@stycx.hacktic.nl> Date: Mon, 10 May 1993 13:44:17 GMT Lines: 32 Sender: news@CRABAPPLE.SRV.CS.CMU.EDU Source-Info: Sender is really isu@VACATION.VENARI.CS.CMU.EDU In article <4wD93B3w165w@stycx.hacktic.nl> peter@stycx.hacktic.nl (Author) writes: >u920496@daimi.aau.dk (Hans Erik Martino Hansen) writes: >> I have often thought about, if its possible to have a powerfull laser >> on earth, to light at the Moon, and show lasergraphics at the surface >> so clearly that you can see it with your eyes when there is a new >> moon. >> How about a Coca Cola logo at the moon, easy way to target billions of >> people. > >Well this is about the worst idea I've come a across sofar, lighten up >man not everything is commerce. > >---------------------------------------------------------------------------- >Peter@stycx.hacktic.nl (Author) Stycx BBS +31 3404 59551 >The responsibility for chance...lies within us. We must begin with ourselves, >teaching ourselves not to close our minds prematurely to the novel, >the suprising, the seemingly radical. -Alvin Toeffler Uh, Peter, take a page from your sig. A laser system capable of projecting advertising on the Moon would make a dandy laser launcher, or even make Star Wars defense systems real. Commerce is a driver for innovation. I'd put up with ads on the Moon for a working laser launcher. If Coke did it, Pepsi wouldn't be far behind. And we'd see a laser power race like never before. Gary -- Gary Coffman KE4ZV | You make it, | gatech!wa4mei!ke4zv!gary Destructive Testing Systems | we break it. | uunet!rsiatl!ke4zv!gary 534 Shannon Way | Guaranteed! | emory!kd4nc!ke4zv!gary Lawrenceville, GA 30244 | | ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 10 May 1993 16:15:22 GMT From: "C. Taylor Sutherland III" Subject: Grad schools NASA looks at wanted Newsgroups: sci.space I'm a senior in physics and Clemson University in South Carolina and I'm looking to get my hands on a list of schools that NASA normally looks at for future employees (if NASA exists by the time I graduate :) ) so that I might get some information about and apply to them. email them if possible. Thank you -- taylors@hubcap.clemson.edu | "I" before "e" except after "c", + Amiga | And when sounding like "ay" as in "neighbor" and "weigh", | Rules | And on weekends and holidays and all throughout May, | Supreme + And you'll always be wrong no matter WHAT you say! + ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 10 May 1993 16:34:09 GMT From: Frank Crary Subject: Life on Mars. Newsgroups: sci.space,sci.bio In article <1sk847$m67@usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu> ak104@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Robert Clark) writes: > In the June 1993 issue of _Final Frontier_ there is an interview with >Dr. Gilbert Levin who designed one of the life detection experiments on >the Viking missions. > He's of the opinion that the data from his experiment is indicative of >life on Mars. If I'm thinking of the same experiment, then this is very debatable: If life was detected, it thrived for the first few minutes of the test and then died. >He gives several reasons for this: > 1.) His experiment was the most sensitive of the detection methods. His opinion on the subject is rather biased. > 2.) The three experiments were designed to detect different kinds > of life so it should be expected that his gave the only repeated > life signs. They were designed to detect life in different ways, not different kinds of life. _If_ you assume any hypothetical Martian life was radically different from terrestrial life, then this might be a valid point, but that isn't a trivial assumption. > 4.) In some of the images of martian rocks, there are seasonal changes in > their coloring similar to moss growing on terrestrial rocks. Which I believe can be explained by the known water and carbon-dioxide seasonal cycles and/or seasonal changes in ultraviolet light exposure and photochemistry. > His detector is known as the Labeled Release Experiment. He claims > that in numerous tests of his detector on terrestrial soil samples > he never once got a false positive or false negative response. He never tested it on soil baked with UV light in a 7 mbar carbon dioxide environment. > Before I read this article I wasn't aware that any of the experiments > gave repeated life signs. Another thing that surprised me was that after > all these years there still hasn't been a symposium convened to discuss > the data returned by the Viking life experiments. The subject has been discussed many times at general planetary science symposiums, so it isn't as if the matter were being ignored. The experiment basically gave positive results (i.e. the sugars added to the sample was converted into carbon dioxide and something, as they had been metabolized) for a short time but then ceased to do so. The general consensus is that the Martian soil contains highly oxidized, normally unstable, chemicals as a result of UV light, and if you add moist carbon compounds, it will react with them vigorously releasing carbon dioxide. Of course, this will only continue for a short time before all the oxides are consumed. Frank Crary CU Boulder ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 10 May 1993 12:18:35 EDT From: Larry Zibilske Subject: Life on Mars. Newsgroups: sci.space,sci.bio I dont know that the results have completely excluded the possibility of life on Mars. I have been trying to find the biodata for the Viking missions to examine myself. I am a soil microbiolgist and my interests include very low level microbial activity detection. I see, for instance, very low but definite metabolic activity in very environmentally extreme conditions (temperature, moisture) and someone mentioned that the data show a pattern similar to that seen in the Viking data....but I cant find the Viking data. Does anyone know where this might be obtained? (not the polished public press stuff; but the journal article level or orginal pub data)? ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 10 May 1993 17:48:06 GMT From: Richard Ottolini Subject: Life on Mars. Newsgroups: sci.space,sci.bio New experiments by an international consortium of scientists are planned for the 1994 Russian "lander". These experiments are intended to resolve some ambiguities from the Viking experiments. I heard in particular about the American oxide experiment at JPL last week. It will cleverly test whether the soil is oxidizing enough to cause some the results seen in Viking. P.S. The term "lander" might be more accurately called "bouncer". To save costs, both the Russian and 1997 American probes are not going to have landing rockets, but drop the probes in airbags from a parachute a couple hundred meters up. (Can't have the parachute fall ontop of the lander.) ------------------------------ Date: 10 May 1993 18:28 UT From: Ron Baalke Subject: Life on Mars. Newsgroups: sci.space,sci.bio In article <1sk847$m67@usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu>, ak104@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Robert Clark) writes... > > > In the June 1993 issue of _Final Frontier_ there is an interview with >Dr. Gilbert Levin who designed one of the life detection experiments on >the Viking missions. > He's of the opinion that the data from his experiment is indicative of >life on Mars. > The results of Viking's search for life on Mars have been inconclusive. Some of the experiments did give positive results. However, the experiments were unable to clearly differentiate that the results were due to a life form or to some peculiar chemical reaction. The suspicion by the majority of the Viking scientists was that a strong oxidizing element was present in the Martian soil which caused the strange results. However, no chemical reaction has been presented that can explain the strange results from the Viking experiments. This is basis of Dr. Levin's claim: since there is no known chemical reaction capable of explaining the results from his experiment, then Viking must of detected life after all. ___ _____ ___ /_ /| /____/ \ /_ /| Ron Baalke | baalke@kelvin.jpl.nasa.gov | | | | __ \ /| | | | Jet Propulsion Lab | ___| | | | |__) |/ | | |__ M/S 525-3684 Telos | Once a year, go someplace /___| | | | ___/ | |/__ /| Pasadena, CA 91109 | you've never been before. |_____|/ |_|/ |_____|/ | ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 10 May 1993 18:53:12 GMT From: Henry Spencer Subject: Life on Mars. Newsgroups: sci.space,sci.bio In article <1sk847$m67@usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu> ak104@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Robert Clark) writes: > He's of the opinion that the data from his experiment is indicative of >life on Mars... The Viking life-detection results are best described as "confusing". There were some indications for and some against -- while there were positive results in some tests, the overall pattern was not what would have been expected from life. The devastating blow was the failure of the GCMS experiment to find any organic molecules at all in the soil; it would give positive results even on Antarctic soil, but it came up negative on Mars. The simplest explanation does seem to be some kind of highly active surface chemistry. Somewhat unorthodox forms of life remain a possibility that can't be ruled out. Levin is pretty much the last holdout for positive Viking results. The farthest most of the other people involved will go is to concede that the matter isn't fully settled. There apparently were comments, even beforehand, that Levin wasn't taking a particularly objective approach to the question. -- SVR4 resembles a high-speed collision | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology between SVR3 and SunOS. - Dick Dunn | henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry ------------------------------ Date: 10 May 1993 12:33:46 -0400 From: Pat Subject: Philosophy Quest. How Boldly? Newsgroups: sci.space In article <1993May10.093106.20921@sni.co.uk> jlk@siesoft.co.uk (Jim Kissel) writes: > >I would speculate that "they" will be upright and bi-laterally symmertic Symetry seems to be a natural principal of chemistry, but why upright? whales and dolphins would never be considered up right by any means. also lots of clever mammals are barely off ground level. don't be primo-centric. you hand biased, thumb promoting bigot :-) pat ------------------------------ Date: 10 May 1993 16:24:46 GMT From: "F.A. Ringwald" Subject: test - please ignore Newsgroups: sci.space Test - can I really post to this thing from here? It's raining here in England (not surprising), with thunder (surprising). ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 10 May 1993 16:42:08 GMT From: kjenks@gothamcity.jsc.nasa.gov Subject: U.S. Government and Science and Technolgy Investment Newsgroups: sci.space,talk.politics.space,sci.research,talk.politics.misc,talk.politics.libertarian,misc.education I've finally gotten time to respond to this nonsense. In sci.space, I wrote: : >>People who criticize "big Government" and its projects rarely seem to : >>have a consistent view of the role of Government in science and : >>technology. Posting to every newsgroup he could think of, Jim Hart (jhart@agora.rain.com) wrote: : Your view, on the other hand, is perfectly consistent -- I want my : pork, and I want it now. You have the gall to use our tax money : to sit here and lecture us on how stupid you think we are, : and you can't even even tell the difference between your fetid : bureaucracy's propaganda and history. In actual history, the the : U.S. govnt. went into R&D with World War II (Manhattan : Project) and the Cold War (H-bomb, ICBMs, etc.) in response to : military threats from National Socialist Germany and the Union of Soviet : Socialist Republics. No knowledgeable person ever tried to pretend : this was going to help the economy. In fact, countries that concentrated : their R&D in the private sector (eg Japan) kicked our ass economically : in the latter half of the Cold War as rigor mortis set in. Japan : now outnumbers the U.S. in patents over 2:1, and dominates the world : in electronics, autos, etc. despite being a small little island : country and late-comer to the industrial revolution. : At first U.S. govnt. R&D was able to borrow the habits of private R&D to : create large productive organizations, but due to lack of incentive to do : anything but whine for pork, they gradually deteriorated to the level of : miserable selfish complainers like yourself. Through the misplaced : hysteria over Sputnik we got your agency, which started off well, but : now spends $10's of billions on PR and props for shows on CNN, and : apparently now for idiotic posts by stuck-up jerks pretending to tell : us masses how ignorant we are to question the wisdom of your pathetic : attempts at technology development. Like that wonderful incredibly : shrinking space station you keep pretending you're going to build, : for purposes you keep pretending are so all-important. Your PR is : good though; any PR that convinces people to spend $2 billion a year : on blueprints for a "space station" has to be pretty clever, even if : those people are Congressmen. : Established in order to *fight* socialism, the military-industrial : complex now seems to have delusions of *becoming* socialist! Your agency : persists in the delusion that it can make history. You persist : in the delusion that you can lecture us on history. In fact you are : just a miserable little side-effect of this unfortunate history. Your : posts are so blatantly self-serving, it's truly sad, like : seeing a beggar in the streets. : Jim Hart : jhart@agora.rain.com Obviously, you have some strong feelings about this subject. But history isn't the question, here; it's interpretation of history and the motives of the people who made it. We all pretty much agree what the facts are. (But you'd support your argument better if you got your data right. "$10's of billions on PR and props for shows on CNN" indeed. That's almost as bad as pretending that NASA's spent "$2 billion a year on blueprints for a 'space station.'") There have been many motives behind the U.S. Gov't's role in investing in science, research and development. You seem to contend that "In actual history" (as opposed to Government propoganda, I suppose) the sole motivation for U.S. Gov't spending on science and technology has been the war with communism. This is not the complete truth, and you know it. Your comments about Japan reveal more ignorance about the true reasons behind technology development. Nobody knows all of the reasons, but Japan has some good ideas, and we would do well to emulate some aspects of Japanese technology development. Maybe you hadn't heard about it, but most of the industrialized world is already working on that. Our government works with taxes collected unequally from everyone, but directed by our elected officials, usually in manners which will help them get re-elected. This has inevitably given rise to our system of pork-barrel politics for helping our government decide which projects to fund (like the Space Station Freedom Program and the Superconducting Super-Collider) and which to dump. Government agencies like NASA and DOE lobby for or sometime against various projects, but it's the Congresscritters who really decide which projects to fund and which to can. NASA is making history. But if everything worked the way I'd like it, NASA's role in space travel would change. NASA has been as a service provider and major customer of launch services. NASA has been exploring space, and taking "baby steps" in developing the basic technologies necessary to explore the rest of the Solar System. But I feel that NASA should take on a role in space exploration more similar to its role in civil aeronautics research: that of advisor and an assistant to industry, rather than the source of funding that keeps the business alive. We have a long, long way to go before the commercial sector will have enough of a technology base to start developing the really profitable applications of space technology, like solar power satellites, asteroid mining, self-sustaining lunar colonies, terraforming other planets, and space billboards. For now, NASA's role in space exploration is developing this technology, since the commercial sector does not have the short-term return on investment necessary for them to invest in this kind of research. Several far-seeing companies are investing internal R&D funds in space exploitation, but it takes a very large investment, and the potential pay-off is a long time in the future. NASA is indeed making history, but it should be helping the commercial sector make the future instead. Character slurs make amusing reading in Usenet, but they rarely add to the message content, so I won't address them. Please be more civil; impolite postings detract from your arguments. -- Ken Jenks, NASA/JSC/GM2, Space Shuttle Program Office kjenks@gothamcity.jsc.nasa.gov (713) 483-4368 "Posting to Usenet is like blabbering in the town square." -- Steve Yelvington, steve@thelake.mn.org, in alt.culture.usenet ------------------------------ Date: 10 May 1993 17:58:04 GMT From: Gregory McColm Subject: U.S. Government and Science and Technolgy Investment Newsgroups: sci.space,talk.politics.space,sci.research,talk.politics.misc,talk.politics.libertarian,misc.education In article <1slv7a$545@access.digex.net> prb@access.digex.net (Pat) writes: >In article <1sh1hn$ohg@suntan.eng.usf.edu> mccolm@darwin.math.usf.edu. (Gregory McColm) writes: >> >|In article jhart@agora.rain.com (Jim Hart) writes: >|>Socialist Republics. No knowledgeable person ever tried to pretend >|>this was going to help the economy. In fact, countries that concentrated >|>their R&D in the private sector (eg Japan) kicked our ass economically >|>in the latter half of the Cold War as rigor mortis set in. Japan >| >|Much of Japanese R & D success is actually American failure of initiative. >|A number of innovations, from VCRs to fuzzy logic, were American, but >|American corporations were not interested. If American had not supported >|the basic R & D, then the whole world would have suffered, because the >|woefully inadequate Japanese R & D would not have filled the gap. >| >|Incidentally, American support for pure research goes back almost to >|the colonial era. Some presidents, like Jefferson and J Q Adams, strongly >|supported it. In this century, during the first half, there was a lot > > >Until the 1900's the US didn't even do research in CHemistry. > >SUre during the colonial era we had franklin who was marvelously >productive, but mos tof the serious universities were in >europe. In the late 1800's we started to make serious >contributions to electrical science, but a lot of the big names >were still in europe. > >A major advantage the US had was WW1 and 2. by winning both wars we >were able to steal all of germanys patented processes. that brought us >aspirin, dye chemistry, gas chemistry, rocketry, numerous electronic >devices.... > >also, because of NAZI persecution, a number of Top german scientists >fled to the US bringing their skills. > >essentially if you look at it, the 40's 50's and 60's were >more influenced by the spoils of war then by american commitment >to research. the 70's and 80's were more typical. what was >the advantage, which was unique to america, was that having room >for mavericks, independent thinkers were able to develope research >outside of any system. > >pat I must give way to temptation ... 1. Science nowadays is BIG science, and I mean bigness far beyond subsidizing ocean voyages like that of HMS Beagle. A vast number of technological doodads have arisen out of this, and bureaucrats love the whole charade, but it is not clear how much progress (of the sort that will impress people 500 years hence) is being made. Nevertheless, in the current game, we are winning the Nobel prizes while Japan is making the money. 2. Continuing in this line, CMFair has suggested that the 20th century is the Silver Age in science, while the 19th was the Golden Age: the idea is that we are running on inertia. I posted this suggestion in sci.math, and got some chewing out --- but I still get the feeling that for mathematics at least, there is an uncomfortable amount of truth in this (the decline seems more noticeable in the visual arts, music, literature, and philosophy). Comments or flames, anyone? The greatest scientists of the 19th century were Gauss and Darwin, of the 20th, Hilbert and Einstein. Comparisons? 3. I didn't know that we got much out of WWI. During that war, a chemist applied to the army, and was told that the army already had a chemist. TAEdison was brought into the effort, but the big innovations (eg, sonar) were made by pointy-headed university types (of course, as all lone-genius purists know, TAEdison was merely the director of a large institution that developed products to which he attached his name ...). My impression was that the preference for social science spending continued right into WWII, when there was a sharp change as a result of the promises of radar, atom bombs, etc. Snide comment: If America was the home of the hardy individualists, then why were most of the major scientists European? Because science has always been a hobby of the middle class --- the lower class doesn't have the time, the upper class doesn't have the patience (I was going to say "brains", but I remembered that we shouldn't get nasty on Usenet) --- and the American middle class is imbued with too many upper class values. -----Greg McColm ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 10 May 1993 16:58:25 GMT From: Ken Arromdee Subject: Vandalizing the sky Newsgroups: sci.space In article <1993May10.154057.24121@sol.ctr.columbia.edu> kjenks@gothamcity.jsc.nasa.gov writes: >Similarly, if space billboards are eventually launched, there >will be methods for avoiding them. The simple expedient is to take a >field trip to a higher orbit, which may be made possible by cheaper >access to space. Space billboards would be far worse than earthly ones in this sense. You're right, I can get out of my car and walk past a billboard, to see the landscape. It may be possible to go to a higher orbit to see past the "space billboards". But this would require far more of my time and resources to do than walking past an earthly billboard. Even if we have commercial space travel, it's as if whenever I wanted to see past an Earthly billboard, I had to take a trip to Alaska. -- "On the first day after Christmas my truelove served to me... Leftover Turkey! On the second day after Christmas my truelove served to me... Turkey Casserole that she made from Leftover Turkey. [days 3-4 deleted] ... Flaming Turkey Wings! ... -- Pizza Hut commercial (and M*tlu/A*gic bait) Ken Arromdee (arromdee@jyusenkyou.cs.jhu.edu) ------------------------------ End of Space Digest Volume 16 : Issue 553 ------------------------------