Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/mac/TEXT/SPACEDIG/V08/V8_230.TXT

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Subject: SPACE Digest V8 #230

SPACE Digest                                      Volume 8 : Issue 230

Today's Topics:
             Hip Hip ... Ariane!
              Mir elements, epoch 17 May
           Re: Uncle Carl is on the rampage
            Re: Unused Saturn V's
            Re: I want to be an astronaut
            Re: Unused Saturn V's
            Re: Shooting the Moon
              I want to be an astronaut
                Dr. Sally Ride
            Re: Shooting the Moon
                Ion-like-drive
            Re: Is it CBS or NASA?
          Oops... (was: Nevada fuel plant explosion)
                Re: NASA News
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 19 May 88 12:17:29 GMT
From: mcvax!unido!ecrcvax![e-mail]  (Bruno Poterie)
Subject: Hip Hip ... Ariane!

Kourou, 18 May 1988, 01h58 (European Time)
Ariane-2 fired from pad ELA-1
load put onto orbit 18 minutes afterwards
everything went ok - just waiting 15 minutes for a big electricity-loaded
cumulus to pass over the launch place.
Intelsat-5 F13 onto work orbit
next Intelsat-5 in december 1988
Intelsat-6 serie to start in 1989

Felicitations for all people involved, both in Guyane and in Europe.

------------------------------

Date: 20 May 88 00:32:00 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Mir elements, epoch 17 May

These elements are from after Progress 36 was hard-docked to the
Mir/Kvant complex, and are more likely to be reliable than the ones
posted on Monday.

You may be better off fudging the values for mean motion and B*; they
tend to be estimated incorrectly in the days immediately following
maneuvering of the vehicle.

Kevin

Mir
1 16609U          88137.78771951 0.00018335           12175-3 0  2030
2 16609  51.6192 228.6531 0021522 336.6954  23.3330 15.75232363128881

Satellite: Mir
Catalog id 16609
Element set 203
Epoch: 88137.78771951
Inclination:  51.6192 degrees
RA of node: 228.6531 degrees
Eccentricity:  0.0021522
Argument of perigee: 336.6954 degrees
Mean anomaly:  23.3330 degrees
Mean motion: 15.75232363 revs/day
Mean motion acceleration: 0.00018335 * 2 revs/day/day
Epoch Revolution: 12888

Semimajor axis:    6722.06 km
Apogee height*:     358.37 km
Perigee height*:     329.44 km


        Source: NASA Goddard via T.S.Kelso's `Celestial RCP/M'

* Apogee and perigee altitudes are referred to the mean radius of the
  Earth (6378.15 km), and not to the local radius of the geoid.  They
  are only approximate, and should not be used for orbit prediction.

------------------------------

Date: 4 May 88 16:03:45 GMT
From: [e-mail]  (Mike Smithwick)
Subject: Re: Uncle Carl is on the rampage

[hey mister line eater. . .]

I just heard an incredible piece of dreck emanating from the direction
of Carl Sagan's mouth yesterday morning. How anyone can continue to take
this character seriously is beyond me (flames go to /dev/null).

He was on the CBS morning show yesterday with his pal from the Politburo,
Roald Segedeeve (or whatever, didn't write down his name) hyping the
proposed joint US/Soviet mars mission. Kathy Sullivan asked him,
"Wouldn't something like this cause problems in the area of stealing
secrets???"

Carl : "Well, yes, the Soviets would have to worry about us, seeing that
they are so far ahead in both manned and planetary space exploration"

(not quite an exact quote, but you get the idea).

To his credit however, he did say that the mission should not be a one
shot love-fest, but would require a strong infrastructure (gawd, i hate
that word), to insure that it doesn't end up like another Apollo.

This is not to criticize the concept of the mission, so don't start
another flame.war about that. Just Carl should learn to think before he speaks.


--
               *** mike (Cyberpunk in training) smithwick ***
"Use an Atari, go to jail!"
[disclaimer : nope, I don't work for NASA, I take full blame for my ideas]

------------------------------

Date: 3 May 88 11:35:50 GMT
From: aplcen!aplcomm!ra.jhuapl.edu![e-mail]  (Michael W. Stalnaker)
Subject: Re: Unused Saturn V's

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Al Globus) writes:
>
>.............................................  Congress has been
>very supportive of NASA, at least until Challenger and the budget
>crises.  Before that, Congress routinely increased NASAs money over
>Reagan's requests.  I guess you'll have to dump you pre-conceptions
>about Congress and put the blame where it belongs, on the presidency.


    Congress supportive of NASA??? Since when??? Those dunderheads on the
hill would love to see NASA abolished and the money used for their pet pork
barrel projects. If there is any one group of people most responsible for the
shambles that the U.S. Space program is in, it's Congress.  NASA told them
originally that the shuttle would cost about double what it does today.
Congress replied. Fine here's half the money you asked for, not double the
performace so the DoD can use it too. The result? A flying brickyard rather
than a ship with a titanium-alloy hull, and boosters that blow up. NASA did
not want to use solid boosters since you can't shut them down, and since they
have a lower performance than liquids, but thanks to the infantile wisdom of
Congress, they didn'nt have the budget to develop the needed equipment.

--Mike Stalnaker
[e-mail]
'' Pro is to con as progress is to congress.''

------------------------------

Date: 4 May 88 16:20:40 GMT
From: cfa!cfa250![e-mail]  (Jonathan McDowell)
Subject: Re: I want to be an astronaut

From article <[e-mail]>, by [e-mail] (Marcia Colsmith):
> I always thought being an astronaut was out for me because of my bad
> vision.  However only the pilots need perfect vision now, the mission
> specialists just need to have correctable vision, i.e. contacts are fine.
> Marcia Colsmith        ihnp4!ihlpf!colsmith

My understanding is that having correctable to 20/20 vision is not
good enough; there is also a limit on your uncorrected vision
- at least 20/100 in each eye. This applies for mission and payload
specialists. Unfortunately, I think I just miss because of this
problem. What the hell, I'll apply anyway - the worst they can
do is say no.

Good luck, Marcia - see you on the space station some day.

Jonathan McDowell

PS I don't know about the height regs although there is a book
called 'The Real Stuff' which lists all this in an appendix.
I think I heard they had to make a new Extra Extra Small
spacesuit size for Mary Cleave.

------------------------------

Date: 4 May 88 17:13:53 GMT
From: concertina![e-mail]  (Steve Hix)
Subject: Re: Unused Saturn V's

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Al Globus) writes:
>
>.............................................  Congress has been
>very supportive of NASA, at least until Challenger and the budget
>crises.  Before that, Congress routinely increased NASAs money over
>Reagan's requests.  I guess you'll have to dump you pre-conceptions
>about Congress and put the blame where it belongs, on the presidency.

Which congresscritter's reelection pamphlets have *you* been reading?

The chronic underfunding for the shuttle started a *long* time before
the current administration.  You can say this for congress, though,
they've been consistent.  Doubt if they'll ever get blamed for being in
large part responsible for the Challenger disaster, among other
things.  (*No* :-)! )

------------------------------

Date: 4 May 88 20:57:37 GMT
From: spar![e-mail]  (Jay Freeman)
Subject: Re: Shooting the Moon


Maybe an interesting Mars mission would be an orbiting mapper with excellent
imaging capability:  Elementary physical optics indicates that from 200 Km,
a 1-meter aperture telescope operating in the mid-green could resolve
objects on the surface that were only 10 cm in extent.  A meter is perhaps
large and heavy for a planetary mission, but surely, not by too much:  I
expect 0.3 m would not be too big a deal.  And one need not work in the
mid-green, either.  I don't recall how far into the UV the transparency of
the Martian atmosphere extends, but resolution is inversely proportional to
wavelength, so if you could work at (say) 3000 Angstroms instead of 5500,
there would be nearly a factor of two improvement.  That means that an 0.3-m
telescope, from 200 Km, at 3000 Angstroms, could resolve objects less than a
foot in diameter; and that ought to be sufficient for finding a smooth
"landing field".

Thus a high-resolution imaging orbiter could provide detailed images of a
wide variety of sites, both for immediate scientific use and as part of the
search for a "landing field"; the lander could wait in orbit (or be a later
flight) until a field was identified.

I suspect that the launch weight required to put such an imaging spacecraft
into Martian orbit is less than the launch weight required to get a small
nuclear device to the Martian surface.  (The latter mission must launch not
only the weight of the device, but also the weight of its re-entry vehicle.)

                        -- Jay Freeman

<canonical disclaimer -- these are my opinions only>

------------------------------

Date: 3 May 88 20:25:06 GMT
From: ihnp4!ihlpf![e-mail]  (Marcia Colsmith)
Subject: I want to be an astronaut

Laura Watson asked what qualifications an astronaut needs.  I have an
interest in that myself, and even asked a few questions of a genuine
astronaut once.  A bachelors degree is required, but of course the more
degrees the better, in appropriate fields of course.  This could be almost
anything scientific.  I believe most astronauts nowadays (aside from the
actual pilots) have PhDs simply because they were "more qualified" and
there is a surplus of applicants.  A PhD is not required, however.

I always thought being an astronaut was out for me because of my bad
vision.  However only the pilots need perfect vision now, the mission
specialists just need to have correctable vision, i.e. contacts are fine.
There is a max and min height (because of space suits I guess) but most
people fit that.  Anybody know the numbers?

Sometimes I think about getting another techie degree just to be better
qualified for the space program!  Okay, it's a dream I have, but maybe
someday I'll do something about it.  The other thing I worry about is
I get dizzy reading in a car and stuff like that and I think I'd be prone
to space sickness. :-(

Anyway I did briefly talk to Dr. Sally Ride twice and she is one of my heros.
(Heroine sounds like a drug, or some lady tied to railroad tracks, so I say
hero for either gender.)  When I toured Kennedy Space Center last month
95% of the people in the promo films were male, but they were kind of old
recordings and simulations.

Marcia Colsmith        ihnp4!ihlpf!colsmith

------------------------------

Date: 4 May 88 15:26:23 GMT
From: ihnp4!ihlpf![e-mail]  (Marcia Colsmith)
Subject: Dr. Sally Ride

I hope 12 other people don't post this as well, but Sally Ride left NASA
because they weren't letting her do research work.  She said that when she
joined the astronaut corps NASA said the astronauts could do research
between flights and training.  Evidently they weren't doing this, so she
left to do research at Stanford (?).

And the height requirement is definitely NOT a max of 5'9" although I don't
remember what it is.  I think it was around 6'3" or 6'6".

Marcia Colsmith        ihnp4!ihlpf!colsmith

------------------------------

Date: 3 May 88 20:23:29 GMT
From: [e-mail]  (Kevin William Ryan)
Subject: Re: Shooting the Moon


   Ideas for overcoming the landing site problem:

   Since what is wanted is a clear landing site, scout it out ahead of time.
There are objections to sending a large enough telescope on the orbiter to
check the surface from LMO (low martian orbit), such as the size of the thing,
but this might work anyway.  Carefully view the terrain and select a spot
before going down.  This has been suggested by others.

   Now for my idea:

   If a telescope is too heavy/bulky/low in resolution, send down a Ranger type
probe first.  This is just a camera on a retrorocket, with position locational
gear.  Have it take pictures of the proposed area as it impacts.  Resolution is
limited by how fast the camera transmits (Geronimoooo....WHAP! :->).  This
should give pictures detailed enough.  Load it with an impact-survivable
transmitter, and you have a landing beacon as well.  This would allow a rather
stupid but accurate mechanism for terminal guidance.  Send down several, and
the latter ones could use the previous ones to accurately triangulate the
clearest landing site with respect to the probes.  (Of course, you'd want some
extras, in case some hit rocks :->)
   Comments?  I wanna call it Highdiver...


   Kevin Ryan

 [e-mail]

------------------------------

Date: 2 May 88 22:53:00 GMT
From: ddsw1!igloo![e-mail]  (Bronis Vidugiris)
Subject: Ion-like-drive


I seem to recall hearing about a test of an ion drive that used the
ions and/or electrons of free space rather than an onboard reaction mass
source.  Is this correct, and if so, does anybody remember the details
of where and when this was done?

Bronis Vidugiris
!igloo!bhv@ddsw1

------------------------------

Date: 4 May 88 18:58:37 GMT
From: [e-mail]  (Colin Jenkins)
Subject: Re: Is it CBS or NASA?

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Jerry Whitnell) writes:

>There was an article on the qualifications that NASA is looking for in their
>astronauts in NASA Technical Briefs (I think the name is correct) about
>2 years ago.  All I can remember is that they wanted an advance degree
>in the sciences or engineering and that you be under 5' 9".

Actually, I think the true irony of this is that a 5'9" max height
discriminates against a heck of a lot more men than women!  I'm certainly
out of the running.

[Which isn't to say that NASA is easier for women, this just caught my eye]

>Jerry Whitnell                Been through Hell?


                        Colin

------------------------------

Date: 5 May 88 07:31:33 GMT
From: [e-mail]  (Tat Lim)
Subject: Oops... (was: Nevada fuel plant explosion)

Open foot, insert mouth...  This is what happens when you post without getting
all available facts straight first...

The plant that exploded in Nevada apparently *was* making sodium perchlorate,
but for *solid rocket booster* fuel.  Thus there is a direct effect on the
Shuttle program.  Now, my question becomes whether this is the same fuel
compound used in other solid rockets used by the U.S. space program.

--
Kian-Tat Lim ([e-mail], GEnie: K.LIM1)

------------------------------

Date: 5 May 88 18:43:52 GMT
From: [e-mail]  (Paul A. Flaherty)
Subject: Re: NASA News

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Phil R. Karn) writes:
>"AMSAT" (Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation) is a registered trademark,
>mostly to protect against misuse by American Satellite Corporation.
>Unfortunately, "OSCAR" is not.
>Phil

Begging the Colonel's pardon, but "OSCAR" is a registered trademark, in the
state of California, owned by California Project OSCAR, Inc.  We're the
folks that put up the first amateur satellites; nowadays, Project OSCAR
spends most of its time raising money for AMSAT, and a few of its own
projects.  The relationship between the two groups is bizarre, indeed.


--
-=Paul Flaherty, N9FZX         | One Internet to rule them all,    -- Tome
Computer Systems Laboratory  | One Internet to find them;            of
Stanford University          | One Internet to bring them all,    Internet
->[e-mail]  | And in the Ether bind them.         Hacking

------------------------------

End of SPACE Digest V8 #230
*******************