Date: Mon, 8 Feb 93 07:45:08 From: Space Digest maintainer Reply-To: Space-request@isu.isunet.edu Subject: Space Digest V16 #136 To: Space Digest Readers Precedence: bulk Space Digest Mon, 8 Feb 93 Volume 16 : Issue 136 Today's Topics: Clinton's Promises (space) in Charlotte Observer Meteor Riding/Netting (lets go fishing) Mir Mirror NASA Approved copy of TRASYS for SGI? Riding Comets Sabatier Reactors. So what's happened to Henry Spencer? Space Digest V16 #093 Space Grown Semiconductors Units and Star Trek Using off-the-shelf-components 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: Thu, 4 Feb 1993 21:59:42 GMT From: Henry Spencer Subject: Clinton's Promises (space) in Charlotte Observer Newsgroups: sci.space In article <1k6beeINNgtf@mojo.eng.umd.edu> sysmgr@king.eng.umd.edu writes: >>... kill SS Fred and offer $10B, tax-free, to the >>first US corporation or consortium to put a station on orbit and keep it >>staffed by at least X people for a year and day. He should also offer $5B to >>the second corporation/consortium to do the same thing... > > A) Who owns possession of the technology used to develop the station? US industry, which the government is supposed to be helping. Besides, why do you care? The idea is to get results, not "technology". > B) Who owns the data? What data? Oh, you want the station to send back data? Tell them that once the station is up there, the government will pay for the data at specified prices, after which the government will (of course) own it. > C) How do you set the damned thing up without using goverment help > in the first place? Guess who owns all the big launch facilities. Commercial launch providers use those facilities routinely now (although admittedly not without a lot of stupid hassles). Create enough of a market and maybe some of the proposals for commercial launch sites will actually happen. It sure would be useful. > D) Does it have to be a U.S. corp? What if I use off-shore tech, say > get the Italians into building my living modules? Practical politics would probably dictate restricting it to US companies. Who cares whether they use off-shore technology? If your priority really is technology rather than an operational space station, write in a requirement that any off-shore procurement of major subassemblies must include the technology used to build them. -- C++ is the best example of second-system| Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology effect since OS/360. | henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 4 Feb 1993 20:44:22 GMT From: Nick Szabo Subject: Meteor Riding/Netting (lets go fishing) Newsgroups: sci.space jbh55289@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Josh Hopkins) writes: >Now picture yourself throwing a net in front of one of the >hypersonic battleships. Let's throw out the net or grappler at hypervelocity, so that its delta-v with the asteroid is very low. If the delta-v between spacecraft and asteroid is 4.0 km/s, we might throw the grappler back from the spacecraft at 3.99 km/s. It then snags the asteroid at 10 m/s, and a _very long_ bungee chord absorbs the remaining 3,990 m/s over many minutes, until the spacecraft and asteroid have matched velocities. Part of the energy can also be absorbed by a friction reel and heat dissipation system, or by spinning up a flywheel which can then be used to launch payloads the other way. (This gets back to the rotating tether idea, which might also be used here). The chord will be very heavy. If it's heavier than the spacecraft, it takes less energy to move the spacecraft than to launch the bungee chord & grappler. So, this technique works best if it is deployed from the asteroid and reused. To save launch costs, we could use chemical microreactors to make the bungee chords from cometary organics. Bungee braking! :-) -- Nick Szabo szabo@techboook.com ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 4 Feb 93 22:27:11 GMT From: Leonard Spani Subject: Mir Mirror Newsgroups: sci.space In article <4003@mowgli.mdavcr.mda.ca>, faubert@mdavcr.mda.ca (David M. Faubert) writes: |> Hi, |> |> On the radio this morning I heard that the Russian mirror experiment could |> be seen in the west from Vancouver, where I am. I went outside and, sure |> enough, there was this extremelely bright light in the west. By extremely, |> I mean around magnitude -5 I suppose. It was flickering slightly and it |> was slightly yellow, which is what one would expect from a light outside |> the atmosphere that low on the horizon. |> |> Did anyone else see it? I would like to have some confirmation that the |> thing I saw was the mirror and not something else like another UFO. |> Yeah.. I saw something too. It was between 6:30pm and 7:30pm Vancouver time when I was driving home from work. I couldn't get a good look at it, but it was definitely unusual and didn't look like an aircraft or anything. It was very bright and seemed to flicker a bit. The colour was different from the "usual star colour" but I couldn't put a specific colour on it. It was not Venus, or whatever that extremely bright "star" is that has been in the western sky lately. It also appeared bigger than your average star, and slightly rectangular (wider than it was high), but that may have been an illusion based on its brightness. My first impression was that it was an unusual aircraft because its lights were exceptionally bright and didn't blink. I'm not sure of the direction (I was paying more attention to the road), but I would *guess* it was more-or-less south in the sky. It appeared to move very slowly, but that could be nonsense because I was always moving when I was watching it. It was unusual enough that I would call it a UFO (by strict definition), but the MIR mirror certainly sounds like a good explanation. Could I have seen the mirror between 6:30pm and 7:30pm? Also, the object seemed to appear and disappear, would the mirror do this? (A more likely explanation is that I simply lost sight of it while driving and couldn't find it again when I looked back ;^) When I got home, I couldn't find it anymore ;^( |> |> |> Dave |> |> |> |> Leonard. -- *********************************************************************** | Leonard E. Spani | //!?\\ | (disclaimer-p) | | spani@mprgate.mpr.ca | \\?!// | t | *****************-<( "everybody thinks I'm paranoid" )>-*************** ------------------------------ Date: 4 Feb 93 20:57:18 GMT From: Michael McCulloch Subject: NASA Approved copy of TRASYS for SGI? Newsgroups: sci.space I'm looking for a NASA approved source for TRASYS. We have several SGI's running IRIX 4.0.5. Please don't direct me to COSMIC -- since the versions they release are for VAX or CONVEX computers. Even with source code, some incompatibilities are encountered if trying to port to SGI's (MIPS architecture). Please respond directly to mmcculloch@nebula.tbe.com . Michael McCulloch Huntsville, AL Teledyne Brown Engineering ------------------------------ From: Victor Wood Subject: Riding Comets Terry Ford asks in a message about the possibility of hitching a lift on a comet. Well, I suppose you could, but why bother? Not much fuel is used in going over millions of KM of space. Most fuel is used in the powering of electronic systems, transmitters and (any) experiments. I think there is a project to cruise beside and land on a comet planned but I can not think what it is called. I think, if I remember correctly, it is suppose to take a comet core sample and return it to earth in a fridge. Im not to sure about that though. Maybe someone at NASA or ESA could comment? Victor Wood | | RM4Y@VM.OP.DLR.DE | "Life is a 50 pence paperback" | ROSAT Control K4 | German Space Operations Center | Muenchenerstr. 20 | D-W8031 Oberpfaffenhofen | +49 81 53 28 14 22 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 4 Feb 1993 19:46:45 GMT From: Henry Spencer Subject: Sabatier Reactors. Newsgroups: sci.space References: <1jutp0INNacf@digex.digex.com> <24JAN199320503892@judy.uh.edu> <1993Jan26.030319.11373@iti.org> Organization: U of Toronto Zoology Lines: 26 Sender: news@CRABAPPLE.SRV.CS.CMU.EDU Source-Info: Sender is really isu@VACATION.VENARI.CS.CMU.EDU In article <1993Jan26.030319.11373@iti.org> aws@iti.org (Allen W. Sherzer) writes: >... they will be using hydrazine thrusters. BTW, these thrusters are the >single heviest items to be returned to Earth. They must be returned intact >since it would be too dangerous to re-fuel them in orbit. The Soviets/Russians have only been doing such refuelling for ten years, after all... >Dennis, The Wake Shield facility would cost NASA $93 million to build >(according to their cost model). A private company is building it for >$11 million. Spacehab would have costed NASA $1.1 billion (again, >with their costing model). A private company is doing it for $153 >million. NASA would have taken eight years and $1 billion to build >the same DCX vehicle which McD is building in two years for $60 million. Also to the point, I'm told that if you put a standard piece of lab equipment -- the sort of thing that might plausibly go into a space station lab module -- through NASA's what-it-should-cost model, and then compare to the actual commercial price, you begin to understand why everything NASA does is so expensive. Forget cost overruns; even when everything goes right, NASA pays far more than it should, because its own cost models say things ought to cost that much, and no supplier in his right mind is going to argue. -- C++ is the best example of second-system| Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology effect since OS/360. | henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 4 Feb 1993 21:48:38 GMT From: Henry Spencer Subject: So what's happened to Henry Spencer? Newsgroups: sci.space I wrote: >Second, I visited Edwards and Dryden, and finally met Mary Shafer. >It was a great visit, even though I wasn't entirely well by that point, >and Mary's every bit as nice in person as on the net. I should say, though, that Mary did one unkind thing: she warned the Dryden tour guide (Mary seems to know everyone at Dryden) not to let me try to sneak off with one of the SR-71s. Rats. I was looking forward to making a run for the border at Mach 3... -- C++ is the best example of second-system| Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology effect since OS/360. | henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry ------------------------------ From: BRIGGSP@Citadel.edu Subject: Space Digest V16 #093 Rich Kolker writes: >All these kids... I was in elementary school, I was in nursary school, geez :-).< Amen, bro. Until this very moment I thought I was still young. But I was not TAKING a class when the Challenger explosion occurred, I was TEACHING one. The deartment lab tech had the TV tuned in during the passing period between classes, so I got to see the replay of "Go at throttle-up" and then went into class to teach Mechanics. Now the JFK assassination, Iwas in fifth grade for THAT; but you young sprouts were probably not around then ... Regards, Patrick R. Briggs Dept. of Physics The Citadel Charleston, SC 29409 briggsp@citadel.edu call disclaimer(joke,dashed_lines) ------------------------------ Date: 4 Feb 93 21:31:24 GMT From: Steinn Sigurdsson Subject: Space Grown Semiconductors Newsgroups: sci.space,sci.materials In article <1993Feb3.231051.1@stsci.edu> gawne@stsci.edu writes: In article , steinly@topaz.ucsc.edu (Steinn Sigurdsson) writes: [refering to space grown semiconductors] > See Nature, _360_ 293-294 26 Nov 1992 for a summary review + references OK, I tried that and discovered what I suspect most others will. The Nov 92 issues are currently "at the bindry" for binding. Lovely. I can't get anything that was published between July 92 and Dec 92 it would seem. So, Steinn, if you have a spare few minutes might you post a brief review of what the Nature article had to say? Darn, I don't suppose Henry feels like making amends for the frightful shortage of AvWe summaries recently... Now, the actual sci.mat post was mainly concerned with semi-conductor fabrication? The article focuses on protein synthesis. Basically, they say it has been hit&miss so far, some crystals grow better, some worse. Some that grow better have since been improved on Earth by using different techniques, no crystals that wouldn't form at all on Earth have yet been formed in space. For those that have been grown well in space only, none have yet had a structure determined!? Basically they say that the best thing to do is to spend a lot of time in orbit doing a lot of experiments with someone on the spot to massage them along and that there may never be a magic rush of new crystal formation + concominant structure solutions... but they do think some crystals will only be successfully grown in micro-g and may make it worthwhile. BTW looks like there's now a journal decdicated to the issue, "Journal of Applied Microgravity Technology" - might be a good reference source. Journal of Crystal Growth also looks like they deal with it a lot, specifically volumes 76 and 110 looks like they might be micro-g specials... | Steinn Sigurdsson |I saw two shooting stars last night | | Lick Observatory |I wished on them but they were only satellites | | steinly@lick.ucsc.edu |Is it wrong to wish on space hardware? | | "standard disclaimer" |I wish, I wish, I wish you'd care - B.B. 1983 | ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 4 Feb 1993 22:04:41 GMT From: David E Turner Subject: Units and Star Trek Newsgroups: sci.space My understanding is that velocity is equal to c*warp^3 in the original Star Trek and c*warp^5 in Star Trek: The Next Generation. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 4 Feb 1993 22:05:00 GMT From: Henry Spencer Subject: Using off-the-shelf-components Newsgroups: sci.space In article <1993Jan27.190735.17499@cc.ic.ac.uk> atae@crab.ph.ic (Ata Etemadi) writes: >... I just wondered what other components might be >out there which are standard and space-qualified. I don't imagine >for one minute that these components will be chosen for major space >missions since they are just not expensive enough. Maybe the UOSAT >folks will be willing to give them go... It depends on who you ask. NASA is pretty fussy. Others aren't. In practice, "space qualified" often means "it's been tried in space and it works". The UoSAT people have been heard to complain that as soon as they fly something once, the price zooms because the vendor now thinks it's "space qualified" and therefore worth a lot more. -- C++ is the best example of second-system| Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology effect since OS/360. | henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry ------------------------------ End of Space Digest Volume 16 : Issue 136 ------------------------------