Return-path: X-Andrew-Authenticated-as: 7997;andrew.cmu.edu;Ted Anderson Received: from holmes.andrew.cmu.edu via trymail for +dist+/afs/andrew.cmu.edu/usr1/ota/space/space.dl@andrew.cmu.edu (->+dist+/afs/andrew.cmu.edu/usr1/ota/space/space.dl) (->ota+space.digests) ID ; Sun, 2 Apr 89 00:20:17 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: Reply-To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU From: space-request+@Andrew.CMU.EDU To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU Date: Sun, 2 Apr 89 00:20:08 -0500 (EST) Subject: SPACE Digest V9 #330 SPACE Digest Volume 9 : Issue 330 Today's Topics: Re: Success with cold fusion reported Bad news about Hubble Space Telescope Re: Room Temperature fusion - possible indications? Re: Success with cold fusion reported Re: Success with cold fusion reported Re: Two questions. "This space for rent" on Mir Solar Eclipse in July 1991 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 30 Mar 89 19:51:34 GMT From: pasteur!washoe.Berkeley.EDU!kring@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Chuck Kring) Subject: Re: Success with cold fusion reported In article <8328@csli.STANFORD.EDU>, cphoenix@csli.STANFORD.EDU (Chris Phoenix) writes: > Path: pasteur!ames!mailrus!purdue!decwrl!shelby!csli!cphoenix > From: cphoenix@csli.STANFORD.EDU (Chris Phoenix) > Newsgroups: sci.research,sci.space,sci.environment,misc.headlines,sci.misc > Subject: Re: Success with cold fusion reported > Message-ID: <8328@csli.STANFORD.EDU> > Date: 30 Mar 89 09:30:26 GMT > References: <18213@glacier.STANFORD.EDU> <3451@aplcomm.jhuapl.edu> <77762DBH106@PSUVM> <1989Mar28.041030.2291@gpu.utcs.toronto.edu> <1113@gvgpsa.GVG.TEK.COM> > Sender: cphoenix@csli.Stanford.EDU (Chris Phoenix) > Reply-To: cphoenix@csli.stanford.edu (Chris Phoenix) > Organization: Center for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford U. > Lines: 22 > Xref: pasteur sci.research:876 sci.space:10590 sci.environment:731 misc.headlines:12080 sci.misc:3720 > > In article <1113@gvgpsa.GVG.TEK.COM> johna@gvgpsa.gvg.tek.com.GVG.TEK.COM (John Abt) writes: > > Imagine how cheap it would be, with unlimited power, to turn large areas of > land into mirrors. Just find any sandy area such as a desert, then melt it > smooth, then sputter on some shiny metal. Not to flame, but this is one of the stupidest ideas that I've read in this group. In addition to totally destroying part of the environment, it simply will not work for two reasons: 1> Deserts get cold at night because there is little vegetation or water in the atmosphere to hold the heat. Reflecting it during the day would not significantly increase amount of heat which is radiated over time. 2> If the greenhouse effect were a problem, then much of the reflected sunlight would get trapped on the way back up and end up warming the atmosphere anyway. Finally, unlimited power does not imply cheap power. Cold fusion aside, everything that I've heard about fusion implies that it will be very expensive. I haven't heard anyone who would really know claim that cold fusion will be cheap. How much does palladium cost? How long will it last in in a fusion environment? I hope that if you are ever in a position to make decisions which will affect the envorinment, you will give more thought about the ramifications of your position. Chuck Kring UC Berkeley CAD Group kring@ic.Berkeley.EDU ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 30 Mar 89 8:10:48 CST From: Will Martin -- AMXAL-RI Subject: Bad news about Hubble Space Telescope The following posting just showed up on the latest RISKS Digest; I checked the past SPACE Digests and didn't find it there, so I'm sending in a copy to get the information over here. If it turns out to be a duplicate, my apologies. The info in here is alarming. Considering the enormous slippage in the HST launch date, it is rather incredible. It appears that if the HST had been launched on time according to the original schedule, it could not have been used due to this software problem! So all that delay was not necessarily a bad thing. Yet the entire system may STILL not be ready, even after having given the software side vast amounts of extra development time during all these years of delayed launch. This is very depressing... Will Martin [This info also provided by: Peter Scott -Ed] Item from RISKS: Date: Tue, 28 Mar 89 14:57:02 PST From: eggert%stand@twinsun.UUCP (Paul Eggert) Subject: Will the Hubble Space Telescope Compute? M. Mitchell Waldrop's article (_Science_, 17 March 1989, pp 1437-1439) on SOGS is notable for its coverage accessible to the general scientific public, and for its claim that the software engineering community has switched to rapid prototyping. Selected quotes follow. -- Paul Eggert, Twin Sun Inc. Will the Hubble Space Telescope Compute? Critical operations software is still a mess--the victim of primitive programming methods and chaotic project management First the good news: two decades after it first went into development, the $1.4-billion Hubble Space Telescope is almost ready to fly.... But now the bad news: the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore still has dozens of programmers struggling to fix one of the most basic pieces of telescope software, the $70-million Science Operations Ground System (SOGS).... It was supposedly completed 3 years ago. Yet bugs are still turning up ... and the system currently runs at only one-third optimum speed.... If Space Telescope had been launched in October 1986, as planned at the time of the Challenger accident, it would have been a major embarrassment: a superb scientific instrument crippled by nearly unworkable software.... [chronology: 1980-1 2"-thick requirements doc. written by NASA-appointed committee 1981 contract awarded to TRW; peak team included 150 people 1983 first software components delivered later SOGS declared utterly unsuitable.] The problem was basically a conceptual one. NASA's specifications for SOGS had called for a scheduling algorithm that would handle telescope operations on a minute-by-minute basis.... The tacit assumption was that the system would schedule astronomers on a monthly and yearly basis by simply adding up thousands upon thousands of these minute-by-minute schedules. In fact, that tacit assumption was a recipe for disaster.... The number of possible combinations to consider rises much faster than exponentially.... In the computer science community, where this phenomenon has been well known for about 40 years, it is called ``the combinatoric explosion.'' Accepted techniques for defusing such explosions call for scheduling algorithms that plan their trips with a road map, so to speak. And SOGS simply did not have it. In addition to performance issues, however, SOGS was also deficient in basic design terms. ``SOGS used last-generation programming technology,'' says one senior programmer.... ``SOGS was designed in such a way that you couldn't insert new releases without bringing down the entire system! For days!'' says the science institute's associate director for operations, Ethan Schreier.... Indeed, the fundamental structure of SOGS is so nonmodular that fixing a bug in one part of the program almost invariably generates new bugs somewhere else.... So, where did SOGS go wrong?... One of the main villains seems to have been the old-line aerospace industry approach to software development.... In the wider computer science community this Give-Me-The-Requirements approach is considered a dismal methodology at best... Modern programming practice calls for ... a style known as ``rapid prototyping''... Even more fundamental ... few people at NASA were even thinking about telescope operations in the early years.... the Space Telescope project as a whole was saddled with a management structure that can only be described as Byzantine.... At the hardware level the chaos at the top was reflected in a raft of independently developed scientific instruments and onboard computers, none of which were well coordinated with the others. Indeed, the presumption was that any such problems would be taken care of later in the software.... So, is SOGS fixed now? Maybe. With TRW's help, the institute has spent the past several years beating the system into shape.... On the other hand, such progress has come at a price. SOGS now consists of about 1 million lines of programming code, roughly ten times larger than originally estimated. Its overall cost has more than doubled, from $30 million in the original contract to roughly $70 million.... In both NASA and Pentagon contracting, the cost of the old-line approach is becoming all too apparent. Indeed, it has become a real sore point in the computer community. ``It's the methodology that got us to Apollo and Skylab,'' says [James] Weiss [data systems manager for Space Telescope at NASA headquarters]. ``But it's not getting us to the 1990s. The needs are more complex and the problems are more complex.'' ``SOGS,'' he says, ``is probably the last example of the old system.'' ***End of Posting*** ------------------------------ Date: 30 Mar 89 05:48:33 GMT From: vsi1!v7fs1!mvp@apple.com (Mike Van Pelt) Subject: Re: Room Temperature fusion - possible indications? In article <1989Mar29.210238.4205@utzoo.uucp> henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes: , alien@cpoint.UUCP (Alien Wells) writes: > > In addition, I expect the government to try to limit the use (if it works) > to utility use only for two reasons. First, there will be political pressure > to protect the structure of utilities, despite the reality that we would > be better off putting one of these in everyone's home and eliminiating the > power grid. Be the first on your block with your own fusion reactor!!! What a great idea, we can all have our table top fusion reactor which will create some steam which will drive the turbines which are connected to a generator -)-). Yep, this has to be much cheaper than buying electric from those mean old utility companies. Just buy the wife a lead jacket when she does the laundry in the basement in case those nasty radioactive stuff happens to leak. Why do you think it would be more efficient to produce your own electricity instead of buying it from utilities?? What would be the cost of such system, $5,000 sounds realistic. How about maintanence cost, $500 per year. What about the radioactive waste, I guess we could water the lawn with it. This is reality. Mark Armstrong ------------------------------ Date: 30 Mar 89 18:40:34 GMT From: voder!blia!blic!miket@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Mike Tossy) Subject: Re: Success with cold fusion reported >> >>I'm not sure that distributed energy production has anything intrinsically >>going for it that centralized doesn't - basically the centralization is >>a response to economics just like centralized food production (they call >>them farms, meat packers, grain co-ops, etc.), centralized news media (I >>suppose we COULD all do our own investigative reporting), centralized >>traffic control (again - we could all get 4X4's and take off cross-country), >Ok Bob, think for a second. Energy production is not analogous to >telecommunications OR food production. The most important factor is >the distribution loss (either I2 x R or thermal) that result from >trying to produce energy in one location and move it to another. >Producing energy locally would make us a much less energy intensive >nation. The only disadvantage to local energy production is that >utilities don't make as much money. :-) Seems to me that the distribution loss is not "the most important factor". There are others. As with today's fossil fuel plants, the cold fusion plants may turn out to be more efficent at larger sizes. The cost of the operations staff (unless you believe these cells can operated without staffing) could make some centralization cost effective. Even if they can operate unmanned then perhaps maintainance might still make for less expensive centralized operation (it maybe cheaper to ship "cheap fusion power" over an existing power grid than to move maintainance personnel from house to house). Again depending upon the technology, it maybe cheaper to build less capacity and use the existing powergrid to load balance than it would be to build enough capacity for each site to meet its peak demand. (My house uses little energy during the day and my office uses little power at night. Today with centralized power production we can share the installed power plant capacity - not so without a power grid.) Other arguments are possible of course. An assembly line might produce standard units at a low enough cost as to make decentralization possible. Or perhaps something in between, perhaps neighborhood power stations? You can even envision that "advanced countries" like the U.S. would adopt a centralized approach because of our existing power grid, while "developing countries" might go for a distributed approach and avoid the capital investment of building a power grid. (Look at railways, very few developing countries find them cost effective to build, but most countries that developed during the rail age find them cost effective to maintain.) As always it is going to get down to economics (plus other social considerations). Unfortunately for those environmentalists who like to snipe at utilities the truth is that utilities do perform a socally useful function and that usefulness may very well continue even if cold fusion works. Final point: being "much less energy intensive nation" is not a "goodness" in isolation. There is nothing morally superior about using less energy, per say. The problem of energy use comes from the side effects that our current energy production techniques. Would you believe that using less energy was good if all our energy was produced with alternative methods like solar? Reducing the cost of energy has been traditionally how societies have increased the value of human labor, and I think that is a moral goodness. I'm glad I live in a society of "mechanical slaves" instead of human ones. --Mike Tossy (No I don't work for a Utility.) ------------------------------ Date: 30 Mar 89 18:54:27 GMT From: att!cbnewsl!sw@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Stuart Warmink) Subject: Re: Two questions. In article <3288@nunki.usc.edu>, sawant@nunki.usc.edu (Abhay Sawant) writes: > > 1. I thought the idea of having spacecraft merely 'nudge' asteroids > towards earth was really neat. [...] Nudging them towards the Earth is one thing, getting them to match the Earth's velocity is quite another! The alternative is to send them in a Hohman (sp?) transfer orbit to the Earth, this requires the minimum ammount of energy up front and at arrival. Still, we are talking about (for current technology) staggering ammounts of energy (for an asteroid worth mining). Stabilisation should not be a problem; it is made easier by good choice of propulsive site and automatic attitude control. > 2. If it's not very hard getting some kind of hot fusion going, isn't > it a easy solution to the radioactive waste problem to chuck it into a > merrily burning fusion reaction? Alternatively, shoot it into the > center of the sun. Alternatively, shoot it at the stars. Why have we > only thought of earth-based solutions to radioactive wastes so far? The Sun wouldn't notice, sending it into "empty" space is perhaps short-sighted. Anyway, no-one will get away with actually launching the stuff in the first place, for fear of an accident... -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ "PENTAGON OFFICIALS ARE CONCERNED ABOUT | Stuart Warmink, Whippany, NJ, USA AN ANTIMATTER SHORTAGE" ("WHAT'S NEW") | sw@cbnewsl.ATT.COM (att!cbnewsl!sw) -----------> My opinions are not necessarily those of my employer <----------- ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 30 Mar 89 09:40:03 PST From: Peter Scott Subject: "This space for rent" on Mir I just heard on the radio that you can now buy advertising space on Mir (a couple of years ago I would have assumed it was an April Fool's joke). You can buy a patch on a cosmonaut's spacesuit, or a 2-lb cargo that you can proclaim "has flown in space", or an ad on the Mir hull, or a billboard at the Baikonur launch pad. It boggles the mind. I wonder if they'll consider inserting promos for sponsors in the voice links? "Comrade, the Bulova time is 00:30 Zulu..." Peter Scott (pjs@grouch.jpl.nasa.gov) ------------------------------ Date: 30 Mar 89 18:21:39 GMT From: ncrlnk!ncrcce!pasek@uunet.uu.net (Michael A. Pasek) Subject: Solar Eclipse in July 1991 Excuse me if this is not the proper forum, but.... I heard that there will be a total solar eclipse in July 1991, that will be visible (full) in Hawaii and (partial) in the Western U.S. Can anybody out there tell me EXACTLY when this will occur ? I would like to make plans now to be in Hawaii when it does happen, and to be on the right side of the islands for viewing, etc. Please e-mail responses. Thanks. M. A. Pasek Switching Software Development NCR Comten, Inc. (612) 638-7668 CNG Development 2700 N. Snelling Ave. pasek@c10sd3.StPaul.NCR.COM Roseville, MN 55113 ------------------------------ End of SPACE Digest V9 #330 *******************