Date: Sun, 7 Mar 93 05:07:02 From: Space Digest maintainer Reply-To: Space-request@isu.isunet.edu Subject: Space Digest V16 #283 To: Space Digest Readers Precedence: bulk Space Digest Sun, 7 Mar 93 Volume 16 : Issue 283 Today's Topics: Gaspra Animation Jupiter and Venus followons (2 msgs) Jupiter and Venus followons (was Re: Refueling in orbit) KNOWLEDGE DISCOVERY IN SCIENTIFIC DATABASES Need the SEDS student space organization address SOLAR gravity assist? NOPE. SSF Resupply (Was Re: Nobody cares about Fred?) 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: 6 Mar 1993 05:44 UT From: Ron Baalke Subject: Gaspra Animation Newsgroups: sci.space,sci.astro,alt.sci.planetary ============================== GASPRA ANIMATION March 5, 1993 ============================== A Gaspra animation is now available at the Ames Space Archives. This animation is courtesy of Jeff Alu. The animation was formed from 11 images taken by the Galileo spaecraft shortly before its closest approach to the asteroid in October 1991. The animation is in FLI format. Using anonymous ftp, the animation can be obtained from: ftp: ames.arc.nasa.gov (128.102.18.3) user: anonymous cd: pub/SPACE/ANIMATION files: gaspra.fli gaspra.txt (see below) -------------------------------------------------------------------------- gaspra.txt This animation consists of 11 images taken by the Galileo spacecraft as it flew by the asteroid 951 Gaspra on October 29, 1991. The animation shows Gaspra growing progressively larger in the field of view of Galileo's solid-state imaging camera as the spacecraft approached the asteroid. Sunlight is coming from the right. Gaspra is roughly 17 kilometers (10 miles) long, 10 kilometers (6 miles) wide. The first frame of the animation (smallest image) was taken 5 3/4 hours before closest approach when the spacecraft was 164,000 kilometers (102,000 miles) from Gaspra, the last frame (largest image) at a range of 16,000 kilometers (10,000 miles), 30 minutes before closest approach. Gaspra spins once in roughly 7 hours, so these images capture almost one full rotation of the asteroid. Gaspra spins counterclockwise; its north pole is to the upper left, and the "nose" which points upward in the first image, is seen rotating back into shadow, emerging at lower left, and rotating to upper right. Several craters are visible on the newly seen sides of Gaspra, but none approaches the scale of the asteroid's radius. Evidently, Gaspra lacks the large craters common on the surfaces of many planetary satellites, consistent with Gaspra's comparatively recent origin from the collisional breakup of a larger body. ___ _____ ___ /_ /| /____/ \ /_ /| Ron Baalke | baalke@kelvin.jpl.nasa.gov | | | | __ \ /| | | | Jet Propulsion Lab | ___| | | | |__) |/ | | |__ M/S 525-3684 Telos | It's kind of fun to do /___| | | | ___/ | |/__ /| Pasadena, CA 91109 | the impossible. |_____|/ |_|/ |_____|/ | Walt Disney ------------------------------ Date: 6 Mar 93 04:47:50 GMT From: Ron Baalke Subject: Jupiter and Venus followons Newsgroups: sci.space In article <1n8ce4INNktd@access.digex.com> prb@access.digex.com (Pat) writes: >Whose bus did Magellan use? Mariner derived? I know at that point in >NASA's mind-set all vehicles were designed based upon previous history >and commonality. > Here are all of the "spare" parts that Magellan is comprised of: Medium Gain Antenna - Mariner High and Low Gain Antennas - Voyager Equipment Bus - Voyager Star Scanner Design - IUS (Inertial Upper Stage) Radio frequency TWTA - Ulysses Attitude Control Computer - Galileo CDS (Main Computer) - Galileo Thruster Rockets - Voyager Electric Power Dist. Unit - Galileo Pyrotechnic Control - Galileo Solid Rocket Motor Design - Space Shuttle PAM Propellant Tank Design - Space Shuttle Auxiliary Power Unit. Also, about 45% of the code for the main computer was lifted unchanged from Galileo. ___ _____ ___ /_ /| /____/ \ /_ /| Ron Baalke | baalke@kelvin.jpl.nasa.gov | | | | __ \ /| | | | Jet Propulsion Lab | ___| | | | |__) |/ | | |__ M/S 525-3684 Telos | It's kind of fun to do /___| | | | ___/ | |/__ /| Pasadena, CA 91109 | the impossible. |_____|/ |_|/ |_____|/ | Walt Disney ------------------------------ Date: 6 Mar 1993 05:12 UT From: Ron Baalke Subject: Jupiter and Venus followons Newsgroups: sci.space The Grand Plan for exploring the solar system is a simple four step process: 1. Flyby 2. Orbiter 3. Unmanned Landing 4. Manned Landing We've already done all four steps with the moon. The other bodies in the solar system take a little longer because they are farther away, and they each follow their own individual time scale. If you look at this closely, you'll realize that the Galileo and Cassini missions are the second step in the Grand Plan and are the follow ons to Voyager. With Venus, we sent the flyby missions with Mariner 2 and Mariner 10; we've done the orbiters with Pioneer Venus and Magellan, so the next logical step would be to send a lander (the Soviets have sent landers, but the US hasn't). The Fast Pluto Flyby mission is the start of the first step for Pluto. The proposed MESUR mission is step 3 for Mars and will eventually help pave the way to a manned landing. It may not always be obvious but there is plan, and it has been in effect for over 30 years. ___ _____ ___ /_ /| /____/ \ /_ /| Ron Baalke | baalke@kelvin.jpl.nasa.gov | | | | __ \ /| | | | Jet Propulsion Lab | ___| | | | |__) |/ | | |__ M/S 525-3684 Telos | It's kind of fun to do /___| | | | ___/ | |/__ /| Pasadena, CA 91109 | the impossible. |_____|/ |_|/ |_____|/ | Walt Disney ------------------------------ Date: 6 Mar 93 04:25:47 GMT From: "Peter G. Ford" Subject: Jupiter and Venus followons (was Re: Refueling in orbit) Newsgroups: sci.space In article <1n8ce4INNktd@access.digex.com> prb@access.digex.com (Pat) writes: >Whose bus did Magellan use? Mariner derived? I know at that point in >NASA's mind-set all vehicles were designed based upon previous history >and commonality. Magellan uses a spare equipment bus from the Voyager project. To quote the specs from Martin Marietta Corp. "it is a bolted aluminum structure with aluminum cover plates. The bus is 16.7 inches high and approx 6 feet across". The radar iself is not located on the bus, but in a separate equipment module (5.3 ft by 3 ft by 4 ft) which was developed specifically for Magellan. Peter Ford MIT and Magellan Project ------------------------------ Date: 5 Mar 93 22:02:13 GMT From: coverton@sibelius.humgen.upenn.edu Subject: KNOWLEDGE DISCOVERY IN SCIENTIFIC DATABASES Newsgroups: sci.psychology,sci.math.stat,sci.space,sci.research,sci.geo.geology,sci.bio CALL FOR PAPERS: KNOWLEDGE DISCOVERY IN SCIENTIFIC DATABASES A Special Session of the Second International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management November 1 - 5, 1993 Double Tree Hotel, Washington D.C., USA Scientific disciplines from astronomy to earth sciences to biology are faced with extraordinary growth in the complexity and volume of data that must be examined to gain new scientific insights. To cope, researchers have turned to techniques for automating their analyses with the goal of making discoveries that might otherwise be missed due to the sheer mass of data. Knowledge discovery in databases is an emerging research area that draws from information management and machine learning, among others, to address the problem of uncovering nontrivial, implicit information in databases. It offers considerable potential for automating at least some aspects of the scientific discovery process. The International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management (CIKM) will host a special session on Knowledge Discovery in Scientific Databases to explore recent results in both the theory and practice of the methodology. Contributions from researchers and practitioners in the fields of information management, statistical and heuristic machine learning, knowledge acquisition, knowledge representation and allied technologies as applied to the problem of scientific discovery are welcome. General information on CIKM is enclosed at the end of this message. For further information on the session, contact: G. Christian Overton U. of Pennsylvania 422 Curie Blvd CRB 475 Philadelphia, PA 19104-6145 phone: 215-573-3105 fax: 215-573-5892 internet: coverton@cbil.humgen.upenn.edu or coverton@central.cis.upenn.edu IMPORTANT DATES Deadline for paper/tutorial/exhibit submission: April 1, 1993 Notification of acceptance: July 15, 1993 Camera ready papers due: September 1, 1993 Please indicate in the cover letter that the submission is for the special session on Knowledge Discovery in Scientific Databases. ============================================================================ CALL FOR PAPERS Second International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management November 1 - 5, 1993 Double Tree Hotel, Washington D.C., USA Sponsored by ISCA in cooperation with AAAI, ACM (Pending Approval), IEEE, and University of Maryland, Baltimore County. The conference provides an international forum for presentation and discussion of research on information and knowledge management, as well as recent advances on data and knowledge bases. Authors are invited to submit papers, proposals for tutorials and proposals for exhibits concerned with theory or practice or both. The focus of the conference includes, but is not limited to, the following: Application of knowledge representation techniques to semantic data modeling; development and management of heterogeneous knowledge bases; automatic acquisition of data and knowledge bases especially from raw text; object-oriented DBMS; optimization techniques; transaction management; high performance OLTP systems; security techniques; performance evaluation; hypermedia; unconventional applications; parallel database systems; physical and logical database design; data and knowledge sharing; interchange and interoperability; cooperation in heterogeneous systems; domain modeling and ontology-building; knowledge discovery in databases; information storage and retrieval and interface technology. INSTRUCTIONS TO AUTHORS All submissions must be accompanied by a cover letter containing a list of all authors, their affiliations, telephone numbers, electronic mail addresses, and fax telephone numbers. Papers should be at most 20 double spaced pages and must include an abstract of 100-150 words with five keywords. All submissions will be reviewed and will be judged with respect to quality and relevance. Authors must submit 7 copies of each paper, tutorial or exhibit proposal to the program chairman: Prof. Bharat Bhargava Department of Computer Science Purdue University West LaFayette, Indiana, 47907 Email: bb@cs.purdue.edu Telephone: +1 (317) 494-6013 Fax: +1 (317) 494-0739 For more information about the conference (as opposed to paper submissions), send e-mail to cikm@cs.umbc.edu STUDENT PAPER AWARD The author of the best student paper will receive an award for his/her submission. To be eligible, the student must be the first author and primary contributor to the paper. The cover letter must identify the paper as a candidate for this competition. IMPORTANT DATES Deadline for paper/tutorial/exhibit submission: April 1, 1993 Notification of acceptance: July 15, 1993 Camera ready papers due: September 1, 1993 STEERING COMMITTEE Bruce Blum Tim Finin Keith Humenik David Jefferson E. K. Park Yelena Yesha GENERAL CO-CHAIRS Tim Finin Yelena Yesha PROGRAM CHAIR Bharat Bhargava PROGRAM VICE CHAIRS Nabil Adam Rafael Alonso Jay Gowens Sushil Jajodia P. A. D. De Maine Kia Makki Chris Overton Niki Pissinou EUROPEAN VICE CHAIR Hans Schek AWARD VICE CHAIR Stanley Su PUBLICITY VICE CHAIR Arie Segev LOCAL ARRANGEMENTS VICE CHAIR Keith Humenik TUTORIAL CHAIR Charles Nicholas TREASURER E. K. Park ------------------------------ Date: 5 Mar 1993 20:50 PST From: "Horowitz, Irwin Kenneth" Subject: Need the SEDS student space organization address Newsgroups: sci.space In article <1993Mar5.171140.18293@ringer.cs.utsa.edu>, sbooth@lonestar.utsa.edu (Simon E. Booth) writes... > >I saw the SEDS mailing list address in the faq but I copied it down wrong. > >Could someone re-post it please?? > Simon, Currently our "permanent" mailing address is: MIT SEDS W20-445 MIT 77 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02139 (617)253-8897 (phone/FAX) odyssey@athena.mit.edu however, this is likely to be changing in the coming months. An alternate address is here at Caltech (location of the "floating National HQ"): Caltech SEDS 112-58 Caltech Pasadena, CA 91125 seds@cco.caltech.edu Of course, if you have a specific question about SEDS, I should be able to answer it (after all...I've been a member of SEDS longer than anyone else :-). ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Irwin Horowitz | Astronomy Department |"Whoever heard of a female astronomer?" California Institute of Technology |--Charlene Sinclair, "Dinosaurs" irwin@iago.caltech.edu | ih@deimos.caltech.edu | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 6 Mar 1993 05:17:36 GMT From: Henry Spencer Subject: SOLAR gravity assist? NOPE. Newsgroups: sci.space,alt.sci.planetary In article <1n0h5fINNiui@news.aero.org> shag@aero.org (Robert M. Unverzagt) writes: >> >Do I need to go any further to show that there is no net benefit >> >of doing this? ... >> Sure you need to go further -- one data point does not a graph make, >> much less a proof... > >No claim for giving a proof was made. You asked why anyone thought there was net benefit in this. The answer is, because in the right circumstances, there *is*. >> It turns out that the crucial question is: do you want to reach more >> than solar escape velocity, and if so, how much more? > >No, I don't. I want to go to Pluto. Why would you want to >go on a hyperbola? The trip time is shorter, but so what? ... Try computing travel times for doing outer-solar-system exploration using minimum-energy trajectories. The one-way trip time to Pluto on a Hohmann ellipse exceeds thirty years. To get places in the outer solar system in reasonable amounts of time, you *must* use hyperbolic trajectories. The distances are simply too great otherwise. >... And what >about the probe's relative velocity once it gets to Pluto -- >is it only in the neighborhood for a two speed-blurred photos >as it heads towards interstellar space? This is a problem. But at perihelion, Pluto is slightly over 140 km/s-years away, meaning that if you want to hold trip time down to (say) ten years, your average velocity has to be at least 14 km/s. Your encounter speed won't be much lower than that, and there is no practical way to do aerobraking or any such. So yes, you do make a very fast flyby. This is why the Pluto Fast Flyby people are planning two spacecraft -- Pluto's rotation period is 6-odd days, so a single fast flyby will not get you full imaging. With chemical propulsion, nothing short of an Energia launch will get you a reasonable trip time and enough delta-V to decelerate for a slow encounter. The PFF baseline uses a dedicated Titan IV with two solid kick motors and a probe weighing only about 150kg. >> sqrt(i^2 + 2/p) + 1 - sqrt(2 + 2/p) >> ----------------------------------- >> sqrt(i^2 + 2) -1 >> >> It is therefore obvious :-) that if i > sqrt(2), the ratio is less than 1. > >OK. If we call this quantity J, what's the partial derivative of >J with respect to i? (I too lazy to chain-rule it out, and I >suspect that Henry has this handy, since it's an obvious question :-). I've got the partial derivative of the numerator with respect to i somewhere, but not the whole thing. It's not particularly interesting in any case, because there is no optimum. For i <= sqrt(2), you want p = 1, i.e. forget the gravity-well maneuver. For i > sqrt(2), you want to shave the Sun as close as you possibly can, because J increases all the way down. If i = 2 and p = 0.005 (just above the nominal solar surface), J is about 0.72, a considerable saving. Even at p = 0.1, it's 0.83, still quite substantial. As i rises, at first the situation improves pretty much across the board, but as i gets really large, the middle of the graph moves up again and you start needing quite low perihelion to see a major advantage. -- 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: 5 Mar 93 18:47:31 From: Steinn Sigurdsson Subject: SSF Resupply (Was Re: Nobody cares about Fred?) Newsgroups: sci.space,talk.politics.space In article <1mutmsINNnmi@access.digex.com> prb@access.digex.com (Pat) writes: Maybe we should move to t.p.s? In article steinly@topaz.ucsc.edu (Steinn Sigurdsson) writes: | What's the Point of this Stein? Get Away Specials ride the STS super Cheap. | But there is a significant difference between a GAScan and a 12,000 | lbm Thruster module. YEah, I can hitchHike occasionally on the | interstates, but do you think I could get some trucker to | take me and 5,000 pounds of cargo, even though he has deadhead space? | |The point of this was to continue a rather minor sidethread |where Allen and you were arguing that any freight is always |charged at full amortised cost. |You have forgotten that the question was about fuel only |or fuel+thrusters, the claim was that the weight difference given the thrusters weigh more then the fuel, and impose major configuration difficulties, they are not marginal. |was costing NASA $X00million per flight, when in fact the |fuel has to be flown anyway and the extra weight of a new |thruster pack does not mean the supply flight now costs |twice as much just because the refuelling component is |twice the weight. No. the mission costs 500 million, even if it flys emptry. |_If_ ditching the thrusters would allow them to fly |say a TDRSS or a comsat with the fuel you might have a case, |but in practise I expect they'll be carrying people |and lots of little stuff which are marginally affected by |the extra weight of the thrusters. According to Tom munoz at JSC, a legitimate expert. PM changeout missions were scheduled as Dedicated missions. 2 PMs at 12,000 lbm each, were the only cargo, other then asteroids. Somehow, I think if you could save 5-9,000 lbm, then something useful may ride up in the spare room. Ah, STS can take 40,000 lbs or so up, that's already three 12,000 pound modules - now tell me, what's the volume of the shuttle bay, density of hydrazine and volume of the full module as opposed tank+pump+hookup I could imagine something stupid, like Lab racks, or food and water or spare solar cells being dragged up in the weight savings. Also with a designed tankage system for the bay, maybe they could even haul up around 40,000 lbm of fuel and tankage, and refuel up to 6 PMs at a throw. get three of fuel at a go. Only you and wingo suggest some sort of arbitrary costing, of if the bottom 30% of the manifest must fly, then the top 2/3rds are free to me. ... | >on standby figuring (correctly) that the marginal cost is negligible, | >the price charged to regular standbys is what the market will bear, | >based on how big a discount people will demand to accept the | >uncertainty of not getting a flight. | And Launcher companies sell secondary payloads much less then primaries, | but then you accept the orbit, and the mass restrictions they stick you with. | Do you think 12,000 pounds is a secondary payload? and can SSF | accept uncertainty on when the next Shuttle will arrive witha PM? | I don't think so. |Any launch method you use has uncertainty, name a booster that |can launch 6000-12000 pounds that might not be grounded for 1-3 years. |Remember the shuttle has to go to Fred anyway to bring people and |other consumables, do you know that there is the volume to use |the "extra" 6000 pounds for anything you can charge for? I could name one thing. More fuel. Every pound dragged up now, saves it from a future manifest. You still can't answer the Basic question. IS 12,000 lbm a Secondary Payload, subject to bumping? the answer is No, and as such, it has to be charged as a primary payload. Fuel is a primary payload. You're arguing they could fly more per mission and that weight is the limiting factor, I respectfully suggest it isn't. | > Wingo was trying to claim that thrusters fly for free. Allen pointed | > out that was a crock. You then come up with some argument on the | > cost being the operating cost divided by payload. Sadly, that's | > allen's point, too. The cost of dragging thrusters to orbit does | > cost 10,000/pound under any rational accounting scheme. any claims to | > the contrary is a fiction. | >This is false; you repeatedly assume that the cost per pound is the | >total operation cost+amortised cost divided by pounds flown; it is | >no such thing - if NASA stopped in its tracks and flew nothing | >it would still cost several billion per year. | Stein. What do you mean. NASA has the capacity to put up about 8-12 | Shuttle flights per year. We the taxpayers pay them 4 and some Billion | a year to do this. Now every SSF devoted mission means somebody else | waits for a mission. Now if NASA went to a total stand-down | it would mean they are considering terminating SHuttle Ops. That means | Manned SPace division gets re-organized. |No, it could mean they're doing a safety review, or that Greenpeace |has sued them to stop SRB emissions... Like I said. If they go to a total stnad-down. They(someone) is considering terminating shuttle ops. Wether they stand down due to costs or legal actions, it means someone wants to end it. Nope. A total stand down does not mean they're considering termination. | If they stand down for a few months, things ride, but if they stand down | for 3 years like post challenger, believe me, people get sacked.... |Oh yeah, name one. Well. In February 1987, I interviewed for a Job in Melbourne Florida, just down the road from KSC. I noted rents seemed abnormally cheap and companies were giving leasing bonuses. I asked why, and was told that due to the SHuttle Stand-down. numerous people had been laid off, and that people were breaching leases like crazy and leaving town. I also talked to a small sttellitte company in DC, 6 months later and they said they were on the brink of chapter 11, because all Non priority shuttle tasks were halted, and that was killing their projects. Name a source that said, people were fully employed and happy through the STS grounding. How many of your anecdotes were NASA employees? Oh, and where did "happy" come in? | Now if they terminate SHuttle, lots of people go overboard. If you say | they shouldn't because NASA is A JOBS Program, then that's communism. | it didn't work there, it doesn't work here. |Bzzt. Usenet rules of debate number 2, gratuitous invoking of |Communism out of context, you lose. Bzzt. Usenet debate rules three. Screaming foul when in the wrong. Bzzt. #2 supercedes #3 - if I'm wrong demonstrate it and leave out the name calling. Hey. I call it as I see it. You claim that no-one should get sacked, even if their program gets terminated. That these people have a right to their jobs, and the political might to see that it occurs. Well, that's Stalinist Lumpen Proletarian thinking. Somehow I suspect you do not know what any of the Capitalised words above mean. Make for nice meaningless jargon spouting though. I suppose I should feel insulted... You cite aany Milton Friedman Text, that says. People must always stay in the same job, despite it becoming a sinecure. Would JM Keynes do? | > |Allen, what is the development cost of learning how to do | > |automatic refuelling and over how many flights will you amortise it? | NASA has a 13-14 billion dollar budget. THey could fund any program | ona multi-year basis. They just odn't choose to. They want to waste | money. it justifies jobs better. |Excuse me? You claim to know Public Administration and also claim |that NASA could divert $4billion from Congressional allocation |into a development program like that. Right. You claim to know so much? Out of a requested 36 billion dollar DDTE budget for SSF and an expected 3 Billion dollar O&M buidget for the program, They can't do a 5 year DDTE on a refueling program?????? Allen's estimates were that even if they spent 4 Billion, A real Generous estimate in my book, they could do a shuttle tankage and transfer system. Now that would work out to 400 Million over 10 years, and still make money. And i seriously doubt it would cost that much, even using Government costing. Go read the NASA budget. $400mill is about the entire planetary exploration budget (excluding launch costs, they're hidden in ops) NASA does not have the authority to throw that sort of money around. The total development and construction budget for Fred was $2 billion per year, you think they can divert 20% and still build it on schedule (without procurement rule changes that NASA does not control)? | Ah. The mind of the bureaucrat takes over. The more we spend, the | more we get. Not do more with less. |That is part of the reality of the system in which NASA operates, |if you can change it, more power to you. And which they have a vested interest in maintaining. Nobody at NASA Senior Staff has an interest in shaking up the world. An exaggeration, several do, they are not omnipotent and usually the choice is play by the book or leave. | You could argue, given the Deficit, that NASA Borrows it's entire | budget on the open market. |No you could not. Cite somebody on this. Excuse me, maybe you can tell us which government outlays are funded from the deficit - you seem to know NASA is, that leaves another 250-300 billion, I guess the rest are then funded from revenues only. | Steinn. Have you ever studied business or government? Rate of return | analysis applies wether you are a government or a business. it only | becomes problematic, when one is investing in a public good. | The shuttle is a very measurable Service, provided bt hte governemnt, | and as such ROI and ROR are normal measures for it. |Is it now, can you tell me how much investment was made in the |shuttle, how much of that was strictly STS development and how |much was generic development on materials, space suits, hypersonic |flight etc that _is_ a public good? If you wish to Wingo it, You can write off ALL shuttle DDTE as Sunk, and just look at O&M costs as service fees. Let's do that and we still come to 500 million a flight. If we amortize the developement costs over the expected 150 flights before the shuttles are retired, then we get. 30 Billion/ 150 flights, about 700 million a flight. Of course, we hashed this one out a long time ago. The problem with the shuttle is it carries about 3.9 billion in fixed overhead. that is billable against the measured unit service provided. | What charges can you claim against public good launches? This is irrelevant and you know it. Nope. You seem to think the payloads are buying a fixed cost service, they're not. The launch+payload is a service, that accountants have decreed that the satellite development and construction is in a separate budget from launch operations is irrelevant. Try to think of the payload+launch as a ongoing project with most of the revenue an intangible return to the government. Now, you can argue that the launch component could be achieved at less cost - but that then requires a new development and the money is not available to both keep launching and to develop new launchers. Stupid, but under the accounting rules NASA has to operate under funds appropriated each year. |Do you put a hidden charge on "commercial" launches of National |Security missions because the development costs on those were sunk |by the government? No. The general method is to sink all DDTE monies and bill services on the BASIS of O&M, for annual accounting. For total costing, you measure DDTE. | Stick to astro-physics. you won't be so off. |I don't think it were astrophysicists that generated the system |NASA operates in, I do believe most of the culprits had MBAs or PA degrees, |or law. And very few were communists [sic]. What's the relevance of this comment. I pointed out you didn't know how the Government accounting system, and you get all snide. Do you make this same crack about the Tax System. If you argued with a CPA, he'd tell you to stick with astronomy also. I make the same cracks about the tax system, frequently. I also pay the taxes. Accounting rules are not natural law, they're man made rules, they differ between nations, and in time, that a group of self-designated accountants have decreed that a particular system should be used does not make it rational or effective, or even consistent. | >This is pure nonsense. NASA is not a group of trading companies, | >and its purpose is to find out how to carry out certain objectives, | >if possible, given this years budget. They can't borrow upfront costs | >and they are not free to buy from arbitary suppliers, a significant | >part of their mission has been to find out how to carry out certain | >objectives in space and to maintain a group of people who have the | >experience of carrying out those activities. | IT is not the Mission of Freedom to be a welfare program inside of | NASA. By your reasoning, now SHuttle has no raison d'etre other then | th fly SSF. If SHuttle is a good, practical system, then it will | support other missions. If it isn't it will die. That's evolution! |Isn't it? I think in reality it actually is part of Fred's mission, |and it sucks, unless you happen to be one of the NASA people hoping |to hang on until there is funding for some real missions. Who do you |think defines Fred's mission, and what do you think it is. So you agree. SSF is a welfare program for Shuttle. and should look to waste as much shuttle resources as it can, so as to keep the NASA army employed. I think in reality this is a part of SSFs mission. It was decreed so by _your_ law makers, not me. Well, I hope you stick up as much for welfare, when it's black ghetto youth. Well, gosh, you've already determined I'm a communist, right? | By your reasoning, if someone invented a 10 dollar anti-gravity drive | that needed no maintenance, and meant a buick could make a good | rocket, then it should be scrapped because it would not employ the | NASA Shuttle Army and it's political power. |Nope, but if you claimed you needed only $4billion to develop |the anti-gravity drive and why don't they scrap the STS and fire |100,000 people to let you fund development you might encounter |a little resistance... So if DC-Clipper works out and turns to need only a few dozen support workers, will you support laying off, most of the shuttle support Army?????? Yup. And I hope DC works, but until DC has a demonstrated capability I cannot support terminating STS. There is still the problem of _how_ to fire the NASA employees, in practise most would probably go to other projects. | NASA borrows all sorts of up-front money. all decisions are based | upon investment vs payback how do you think shuttle was developed. | They borrowed 30 billion and threw out saturn, which only cost | 500 million a launch. |No, NASA is funded from current operating revenues, at most about 20% No. NASA is funded from the General Expenses. Now tax revenues happen to cover about 80% of the expenses. Come now, you just said that NASA was funded by T-bills only. |of its funds can currently be considered borrowed. If the US |government ever splits the budget into "investment" and "current |expenses" it will be interesting to see what fraction of the NASA |budget is considered "investment" and funded on borrowed money... Doesn't matter. We don't differentiate long term capital investment from O&M money. it all comes from the same pool. And it is costed out at the T-bill rate for oppurtunity cost comparison. And, quite franky, IMHO, that is totally ludicrous and I don't care how many current US accounting rules proclaim it to be the Right Thing. Instead of funding NASA, the USGovernment could put 14 billion in the treasury, for loan at the T-Bill rate. Currently 6.9% Stop hand waving, and look at the basic economics. | Again. I challenge you to find any text on Public Administration that | says Allens accounting is wrong. |A lot of the world's problems seem to be tracable to MBAs and |microeconomists overapplying limited models of toy worlds to reality. So I guess, you can't find any one who says Allens accounting methods are wrong. Sure, lots of people. Some on here on the Net even. | Allen is wrong to consider ALL of Nasa a small business, but in terms of | flight operations. THey Are. | NASA's research branches and Advanced test labs are "Public Goods". | they are not and never should be considered businesses. But NASA's | communications group is a service. and is measured against public | companies, and is contracte d for as often as is provided in-house. | Shuttle operations are again a measurable service, and as such should | be run in something approximating business rules. | ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ |Yeah, yeah, of course it would do ever so much better in a _real_ free |market... It may be quite an idea. The Space science people are in favor of using cheaper ELV's ratehr then the shuttle for most mission planning. Now that they are not held hostage to the shuttle Mafia, they are looking at a number of smaller launch vehicles. Yeah, but they still don't actually have to pay the launch costs. Although NASAs new accounting rules require that the mission cost reported now includes the launch cost. Of course these are some of the same people who planned missions on HLVs and suffered the cost overrun when those were not available - but that was NASAs fault too. | 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 | ------------------------------ End of Space Digest Volume 16 : Issue 283 ------------------------------