Return-path: X-Andrew-Authenticated-as: 7997;andrew.cmu.edu;Ted Anderson Received: from beak.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 ; Sat, 10 Mar 90 02:13:34 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: Reply-To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU From: space-request+@Andrew.CMU.EDU To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU Date: Sat, 10 Mar 90 02:13:08 -0500 (EST) Subject: SPACE Digest V11 #133 SPACE Digest Volume 11 : Issue 133 Today's Topics: SR-71 Record Flight Information Re: SR-71 Record Flight Information Re: SR-71: LA to DC Re: SR-71 Re: hubble telescope power Re: hubble telescope power MUSES-A dust experiment - first (non-)result XB-70 and X-15 Re: SR-71 and dates Re: Resolving Power of Hubble Space Telescope ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 07 Mar 90 18:40:50 SET From: ESC1018@ESOC.Bitnet Comment: CROSSNET mail via MAILER@CMUCCVMA Comment: File SPACE FILE A X-Envelope-To: space+@ANDREW.CMU.EDU could you please unsubscribe me...remove me from your mail list. Ta. Joe Kuzak ------------------------------ Date: 9 Mar 90 19:42:06 GMT From: skipper!shafer@ames.arc.nasa.gov (Mary Shafer (OFV)) Subject: SR-71 Record Flight Information OK, troops, here's the straight skinny, from the Lockheed full-page ad in the LA times, 7 March 90. [Big photo of 972] THE ONLY PLACE TO CATCH IT IS AT THE SMITHSONIAN. On March 6, 1990, SR-71 # 972 made its final flight, from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C,, setting four speed records along the way. Rightfully, this Blackbird will ultimately be placed on permanent display by the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museaum. It's a fitting tribute to a masterpiece of modern aviation. Upholding the SR-71's distinction as the world's fastest and highest- flying jet aircraft, #972 claimed speed records for: - Transcontinental Coast to Coast--2,404 statue miles (National record 68 min. 17 sec. Average speed 2,112 statute mph) -Los Angeles to Washington (World Record 64 min. 5 sec.) -Kansas City to Washington (World record 26 min. 36 sec.) -St. Louis to Cincinnati (World Record 8 min. 20 sec.) This same aircraft previously set the New York-to-London and London- to-Los Angeles world speed records. For 25 years, the extraordinary SR-71 remained a technological breed apart while flying high altitude reconnaissance missions. Sleek and lightning- fast, it was truly an aircraft ahead of its time. Even today, nothing approaches the Mach 3 Blackbird, which still holds the absolute world speed record. Revolutionary technology like this is a Lockheed trademark. It's inherent in everythin we do. This is as true today as it was in 1964, when the first SR-71 roared skyward amid the purple-orange blast of full afterburner. *LOCKHEED [The front page LAT article says, among other things, that the old coast-to-coast record was set in April, 1963 by an American Airlines Boeing 707 on a commercial flight. That record was 8 hr. 38 min., with an average speed of 680.9 mph. The SR-71 took off from Palmdale (AF Plant 42) at 0430, went out over the Pacific, refuelled, and then went for it. They crossed the California coast near Oxnard. They had a 6 kt tailwind. They crossed the Atlantic coast east of Salisbury, Md, decelerated, and turned. They landed at Dulles, in Chantilly, VA. They did a low approach (flyby), at 200 ft AGL, in burner before they landed. The records were certified by the National Aeronautic Assn, keeper of the nation's aviation and space records. The Blackbird also holds the record for sustained altitude in horizontal flight--85,069 ft. The New York-to-London record is 1 hr. 54 min., average speed of 1,807 mph. The old world record for absolute speed was 2,193 mph.] Notice that the records didn't include Edwards or Palmdale and that the altitude must have been below 85,069 ft. -- Mary Shafer shafer@skipper.dfrf.nasa.gov or ames!skipper.dfrf.nasa.gov!shafer NASA Ames Dryden Flight Research Facility, Edwards, CA Of course I don't speak for NASA -- Mary Shafer shafer@skipper.dfrf.nasa.gov or ames!skipper.dfrf.nasa.gov!shafer NASA Ames Dryden Flight Research Facility, Edwards, CA Of course I don't speak for NASA ------------------------------ Date: 9 Mar 90 22:02:01 GMT From: skipper!shafer@ames.arc.nasa.gov (Mary Shafer (OFV)) Subject: Re: SR-71 Record Flight Information In article shafer@skipper.dfrf.nasa.gov (Mary Shafer (OFV)) writes: [The front page LAT article says, among other things, that the old coast-to-coast record was set in April, 1963 by an American Airlines Boeing 707 on a commercial flight. That record was 8 hr. 38 min., ^ 3 hr. Sorry. with an average speed of 680.9 mph. Oops! -- Mary Shafer shafer@skipper.dfrf.nasa.gov or ames!skipper.dfrf.nasa.gov!shafer NASA Ames Dryden Flight Research Facility, Edwards, CA Of course I don't speak for NASA ------------------------------ Date: 8 Mar 90 17:55:12 GMT From: umich!sharkey!amara!khai@CS.YALE.EDU (S. Khai Mong) Subject: Re: SR-71: LA to DC In article <25F652B0.22016@orion.oac.uci.edu> dkrause@orion.oac.uci.edu (Doug Krause) writes: > In article braun@drivax.UUCP (Kral) writes: > #Their flight path was such that they watched the sun rise and set 3 times > #(this from an interview with the pilot). A truley awsome experience. > > How is this possible? The only thing I can think of is that they > were constantly changing their altitude. Another possible way -- they flew westbound around the world. :-) -- Sao Khai Mong: Applied Dynamics, 3800 Stone School Road, Ann Arbor, Mi48108 (313)973-1300 (uunet|sharkey)!amara!khai khai%amara.uucp@mailgw.cc.umich.edu ------------------------------ Date: 9 Mar 90 18:14:14 GMT From: s96!chubb@lll-winken.llnl.gov (Kris Chubb) Subject: Re: SR-71 Someone told me last night that they cheated on the coast to coast flight. Seems that the SR-71 flew west about 100 miles, turned around, and with a running start and altitude already gained, started being timed as it passed over the coast (or Edwards AFB?). Any comment (or clarification)? Kris Chubb --> chubb@s65.es.llnl.gov Lawrence Livermore Nat'l Lab. (Who/Which has nothing whatever ----------------------------> to do with the trash I've ----------------------------> expressed here) ------------------------------ Date: 10 Mar 90 03:45:47 GMT From: cs.utexas.edu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!ists!yunexus!utzoo!henry@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu (Henry Spencer) Subject: Re: hubble telescope power In article <100464@convex.convex.com> schumach@convex.com (Richard A. Schumacher) writes: >Is it possible to someday boost the HST to sychronous orbit >where it was originally intended to operate? Could a Centaur >upper stage be ferried up by expendable launcher and then >mated to HST by a shuttle crew? The earliest references to the HST that I can find all refer to it as a low-orbit mission; I don't recall ever hearing of a proposal to put it in Clarke orbit. Mating a Centaur to it would probably work, and might supply enough delta-vee to get it there, but in-space assembly is officially Too Difficult for anything but the space station. Dunno why. The mission would take tight scheduling, since Centaur's loiter time in orbit is very limited. There are a couple of other problems with the idea, too. For one thing, how do you bring HST back for repairs and instrument changes? (The second- generation instruments for it are already under development.) For another, you might have to radiation-harden the electronics and solar arrays more, since Clarke orbit is in the fringes of the outer Van Allen belt. -- MSDOS, abbrev: Maybe SomeDay | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology an Operating System. | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu ------------------------------ Date: 8 Mar 90 17:20:27 GMT From: convex!schumach@uunet.uu.net (Richard A. Schumacher) Subject: Re: hubble telescope power Is it possible to someday boost the HST to sychronous orbit where it was originally intended to operate? Could a Centaur upper stage be ferried up by expendable launcher and then mated to HST by a shuttle crew? ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 9 Mar 90 17:32:00 +0100 From: u515dfi@mpirbn.uucp (Daniel Fischer) Subject: MUSES-A dust experiment - first (non-)result It was just announced that the Munich Dust Detector aboard the Japanese MUSES-A spacecraft didn't measure any increase in dust density when it passed the L4 Lagrange Point of the Earth-Moon system on Feb.14. However, since it is a fairly small detector the counting rate is very small (about one dust grain per week!) and thus the statistics aren't convincing. In the past 3 decades there has been a lot of controversy about the possibility that there are "dust moons" at the L4 and L5 points, and one Polish researcher even claimed to have seen and photographed them. [Some references: Kordylewski, Acta Astron. _11_,165{1961}; Bruman, Icarus _10_,197{1969}; Roach, Planet Space Sci. _23_, 173{1975}; Roeser, Lecture Notes in Physics _48_,124{1976}; Kordylewski, Ster= nenbote _21_,81{1978}] The 'phenomenon', if there is any, is very little known nowadays, and I wonder: has it been 'killed' convincingly, either by calcula= tion or by complete non-observation (references, please!,) or was it just forgotten? >>>>> What does the 'L5 society' think about it...? <<<<< +- u515dfi@mpifr-bonn.mpg.de --- Daniel Fischer --- u515dfi@mpifr-bonn.mpg.de -+ | Max-Planck-Institut f. Radioastronomie, Auf dem Huegel 69, D-5300 Bonn 1,FRG | +----- Enjoy the Universe - it's the only one you're likely to experience -----+ ------------------------------ Date: 9 Mar 90 09:26:42 GMT From: mcsun!ukc!axion!axion.bt.co.uk!apengell@uunet.uu.net (alan pengelly) Subject: XB-70 and X-15 The pilot of the F104 that hit the XB-70 was Joe Walker, who at the time was considered the US's best test pilot ( in particular flying the X-15). Apparently no one knows why it happened. Incidently, does anyone know what characteristics of the X-15 were inherited by the Shuttle, i.e. lift/drag ratio etc? Strikes me that the X-15 was a superb research programme and that its value is somewhat understated. ------------------------------ Date: 9 Mar 90 18:47:05 GMT From: hplabsb!dsmith@hplabs.hp.com (David Smith) Subject: Re: SR-71 and dates With respect to the proposals for SR-71 as Pegasus launcher, the stores separation problem was not fully solved in the D-21 program. AW&ST had this to say (Jan. 22, p.42): The photograph directly below shows the D-21 mounted on the aft fuselage of a Lockheed M-12 mother ship. The M-12 was created by taking a single-seat A-12, the forerunner of the SR-71, and converting the reconnaissance bay behind the pilot into a cockpit for the drone controller. A streamlined launch pylon for the D-21 was added atop the aft fuselage. On a launch attempt during supersonic cruise on July 30, 1966, the D-21 collided with the M-12 carrier aircraft after separation. The M-12 broke apart and both crewmembers ejected. The drone controller drowned of the California coast after successfully ejecting. The M-12 program was immediately canceled, and the remaining drones were converted for launch from the B-52. -- David R. Smith, HP Labs dsmith@hplabs.hp.com (415) 857-7898 ------------------------------ Date: 9 Mar 90 19:57:12 GMT From: zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!swrinde!emory!emcard!wa4mei!nanovx!chara!don@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu (Donald J. Barry) Subject: Re: Resolving Power of Hubble Space Telescope As stated correctly by several posters, the HST will have a limiting performance of 0.1 arcseconds. What was not mentioned is that resolution three times greater is routinely obtained through ground-based optical speckle inter- ferometry. Using the 4-m Mayall and CTIO telescopes, the Center for High Angular Resolution Astronomy (CHARA) at Georgia State University routinely resolves features down to 0.03 arcseconds. Statistical techniques to remove atmospheric blurring are used with sensitive detectors capable of taking short exposures over which atmospheric distortion is frozen. Many such images are processed to yield a final diffraction-limited dataset. Arrays of optical telescopes are being pioneered by several groups, including CHARA. The "CHARA Array", a network of 7 1-meter telescopes distributed over a 400-meter circle, is currently under consideration for funding by the National Science Foundation. The Array will have a limiting resolution of 0.2 milliarcseconds -- a factor of 100 exceeding any ground-based instrument (and 300 times better than Hubble!) Of course, these techniques are limited to reasonably bright sources (New detectors enable the speckle technique to work to roughly 14 magnitude, over a dynamic range not exceeding 100/1, and the Array will have limiting magnitude of 11 initially, and 14 with optical compensation) But there are many interesting objects visible with these constraints -- certainly far more than Hubble will ever have time to examine. Hubble's principle contribution will be simultaneous solution of several limits pertaining to ground-based astronomy -- fine resolution of very dim sources having large dynamic ranges, in visible and UV. Singly, except for UV spectroscopy, the capabilities of HST have been duplicated years past by ground based instruments. -- Donald J. Barry (404) 651-2932 | don%chara@gatech.edu Center for High Angular Resolution Astronomy | President, Astronomical Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA 30303 | Society of the Atlantic ------------------------------ End of SPACE Digest V11 #133 *******************