Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/mac/TEXT/SPACEDIG/V08/V8_261.TXT

Internet Message Format | 1991-07-08 | 18KB

Return-path: <[e-mail]>
X-Andrew-Authenticated-as: 0;andrew.cmu.edu;Network-Mail
Received: from andrew.cmu.edu via trymail for [e-mail]
          ID </afs/andrew.cmu.edu/usr1/ota/Mailbox/andrew.cmu.edu.501.1.0>;
          Thu,  7 Jul 88 06:20:47 -0400 (EDT)
Received: by andrew.cmu.edu (5.54/3.15) id <AA00497> for ota+space.digests; Thu, 7 Jul 88 06:20:08 EDT
Received: by angband.s1.gov id AA02743; Thu, 7 Jul 88 03:22:29 PDT
    id AA02743; Thu, 7 Jul 88 03:22:29 PDT
Date: Thu, 7 Jul 88 03:22:29 PDT
From: Ted Anderson <[e-mail]>
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Subject: SPACE Digest V8 #261

SPACE Digest                                      Volume 8 : Issue 261

Today's Topics:
    A coherent, efficient and well directed space program
                 Space Cities
         Re: Ruskies find Heaven to the left of Pluto
         Re: The launch loop author replies:
              Re: Bureaucracy vs.  space
              Re: women in space
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Reply-To: pnet01![e-mail]
Date: Mon, 30 May 88 19:31:05 PDT
From: [e-mail] (Jim Bowery)
To: crash![e-mail]
Subject: A coherent, efficient and well directed space program


Dale Skran (not Amon) writes:

> This is the core of Mr. Bowery's thinking. Instead of subsidizing the
> aerospace corporations, the NASA budget will be doled out to countless
> professors and grad students, who by some miracle of organization, will
> generate a coherent, efficient, well directed space program.
>
> Translation: stop spending money in such a way that it benefits
> engineers who work for large corporations. Instead, spend money in such
> a way that it benefits my friends who do research at universities and
> small companies.

The miracle of organization is the same miracle of organization that
serves ANY market:  Some businesses figure out there is a lot of money
to be made providing goods and services by looking for where the money
is.  This is called "market research." (One of those capitalist
 running-dog lackie concepts.)  Then they get funding by developing a
business plan and going out for investors (there's those capitalist
swine again, trying to make a PROFIT) who look at the plan and the
market under a scanning tunneling microscope to make sure it makes
sense (of course, they couldn't possibly do as good a job as the
 extraordinarily insightful, intelligent, creative, critical and
 thoughtful project managers in NASA who come up with systems like
 Shuttle and Space Station and will have a job tomorrow no matter
 how badly they screw up with your money).  This money from investors is
then spent by the poor deprived ENGINEERS who I am so selfishly victimizing
by not letting them work on cost+ government contracts conceived and managed
by NASA bureaucrats.  (By the way, I am an engineer and I know a lot
more engineers paid by government contract than I do scientists in
universities and small companies.)

The really Draconian and Evil thing about this Heresy is that if the market
researchers, project planners, investors and engineers get together to do
something of intrinsic beauty and value like design, develop and operate a
manned vehicle to deliver satellites to orbit and then blow one up because
they were just a little, uh, "careless" about things -- they'll go BANKRUPT!
OUT OF BUSINESS!  And worst of all... THEY MIGHT HAVE TO BECOME PRODUCTIVE
MEMBERS OF OUR SOCIETY!!!  Dale really should tell Gorby on me -- oh wait...
Gorby is turning into a capitalist swine too...  Is there no hope for
the Revolution?

> Said organizations are working very hard to support private launch
> operations. A current target is making sure that the DOT gets enough
> dollars to process all their applications for private launch services.
>
> If Mr. Bowery was looking for constructive ways to help
> NSS/Spacecause/Spacepac achieve the goal of a strong private launch
> industry, he would find a lot to do, and a lot of people who agreed with
> him. Unfortunately, he has chosen to devote his energies to a series of
> wild and unsubstantiated attacks on various individuals in leadership
> positions.

First, I'd like to thank Dale for continuing to bring up this issue
so I can continue to bring damning facts about these organizations
to the attention of the public.

It's interesting that my attempts to influence these organizations
previously failed to achieve any effect, but when I started treating
these folks like the "bad children" they were, they all of a sudden
start behaving themselves!  Good for them!  Let's see more PRO-space
legislative action now that they've gotten the picture.  For example,
get SpaceCause to stop avoiding support for CDSF -- oh I forgot... Sandra
Adamson would be the person responsible for that and she works on Space
Station.  I will resume cooperation with the Legislative Committee, SpacePAC
and SpaceCause the day all Directors of these organizations are free of
aerospace industry funding.

Oh well.  I guess I'll have slap some of these bad children around
some more until they REALLY get the picture.  Isn't it horrible the way
we can write congressmen and get RESULTS in this INCOHERENT, INEFFICIENT
and UNDIRECTED Democracy of ours?  It's about time we put a bunch of
NASA managers in charge of the whole thing to make it coherent,
efficient and well directed like the Shuttle program!  ;-)

>>> Replace the leadership of these bodies AND act on your OWN to support
>
> Translation: elect Mr. Bowery to the NSS board

I decided to go ahead and see what I could do to bring out this issue
prior to the International Space Development Conference in Denver
knowing full well that it would be political suicide.  I will not be
elected to the board of directors of NSS and doubt there would have
been much of a chance anyway given the way the nominating committee
was set up by SpacePAC's founder, Mark Hopkins.  Since there wasn't
much of a chance, I decided to become a guided missile locked onto
Mark's organizations to see if I could make a difference.  Apparently
I did, which is more effect than most people have who are elected to
the Board.  Maybe if Mark Hopkins' nominating committee wasn't
a self-perpetuating political tool in support of Mark's political
action organizations, people like me would choose to work WITHIN the
Society instead of having to involve the authorities to clean up
the mess he's making of NSS and of our space program.

PS:  Yes, I know that CDSF isn't as "commercial" as it used to be
but it is a LOT more "commercial" than Space Station, and it makes
a LOT more sense.  So either start lobbying against Space Station
or start lobbying FOR CDSF, if it isn't already too late.

Yes I've heard the excuses about how lobbying for CDSF might
jeopardize the Space Settlement Act and I don't buy it for a second.
The stories given by Scott Pace and Sandra Adamson about this issue
during the candidate's forum at the IDSDC didn't mesh and the whole thing is
on VIDEOTAPE.  Rid the Legislative Committee of everyone working on Space
Station, send out another, unbiased, questionaire to NSS membership about what

they want to see happen in space, rewrite the NSS policy statement that was
originally written by Space Station contract employees, and they might be able

to start to rebuild their credibility.  As of now, this conflict is bringing
out and emphasizing facts that are progressively destroying the credibility
of the political action organizations which is as it should be until they
are cleaned up.

The rumors that NSS's lawyer is considering a lawsuit against me is only
adding evidence to my case.  It isn't going to intimidate me.  If anyone
can substantiate this rumor, or the rumor that NSS's lawyer is also a lawyer
for NASA, please contact me with the information.

PPS:  To those who think I should be "nicer" about all this -- consider
the fact that an average person's approximate actuarial value to society
is $1,000,000 and that NASA spends the equivalent of about 10,000
idealistic and enthusiastic human lives every year even as they bring us
closer to the day that we may loose our chance to grow beyond this pressure
cooker, thus threatening most of the life on Earth.  There maybe situations
in which it is good to be very relativistic and tolerant of unethical
behavior and human waste -- this isn't one of them.

PPPS:  I just picked up the dictionary and it fell open to page 666
       "knowledgeability * kremlinology".  Must be shere coincidence --
       just like oracle 36 when Challenger blew.

Webster's nineth new collegiate dictionary gives the following definition:

conflict of interest (1951): a conflict between the private interests
and the official responsibilities of a person in a position of trust
(as a government or corporate official)

UUCP: {cbosgd, hplabs!hp-sdd, sdcsvax, nosc}!crash!pnet01!jim
ARPA: crash!pnet01![e-mail]
INET: [e-mail]

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

Date: 30 May 88 16:16:04 GMT
From: uflorida!novavax![e-mail]  (Thomas Maddox)
Subject: Space Cities


          Space Cities--Problems, Proposals, Questions

     The following material represents a somewhat formal version of some
informal queries that I posed to the net a brief while ago, concerning
the design of a fictive but real space city.
    (My ideal is, in Marianne Moore's words , "Imaginary gardens
with real toads.")

(1) General design characteristics:

     So far as I know, the accepted general designs fall into
rotating torus, sphere, or cylinder, all providing spin-induced
forces approximating gravity.
     I am currently using the "Stanford torus" model, as outlined
in T. A. Heppenheimer's _Colonies in Space_.  (Slightly over a
mile in diameter, with a 1 rpm spin rate, central hub 400 feet in
diameter, six spokes 50 feet wide going to an outer rim.)
     (One somewhat curious elaboration from the Heppenheimer book
I plan to use:  the city will occupy a "2:1 resonant orbit" that
is 200,000 miles from Earth at farthest point, 100,000 miles at
closest.  In terms of narrative possibility, it provides openings
and in general seems less boring than the usual "L5" colony"  Any
ideas on this?)
     Given what I know, this seems at once roomy (10,000 people, sight
lines of 1/2 mile) and conservative, i.e., basically, a current-
technology extrapolation of early visions of space cities.

     Questions:
     Has anyone suggested (a) *absolutely necessary*
modifications of this design (because of, e.g., newly-discovered
constraints) or (b) nice variations on it?
     Has anyone proposed an arguably superior design?

[I am most definitely inviting *your own* comment and conjecture.]

(2) Staying alive:

     Currently I am assuming that building materials will come
from the Moon, that food and oxygen will be supplied by
agriculture.  Anyone know of interesting research that's been
done within the past few years on such topics?

    In particular, I'm interested in details about the total
ecology--which types of plants and animals can one expect to
flourish together in the space city?  What are the constraints?
(Currently I'm thinking bright, tropical vegetation, the city as
New Eden, lush and beautiful.  Any reason not to do so?  Anything
concrete to add?)

(3) Bright ideas:

     Of any sort.  What vistas can you see opening up in a space
city, what unique possibilities that one cannot expect life on
Earth to provide?
     Art, entertainment, politics, sex, drugs, rock and roll.
You name it.  All entries welcome.

(4) A particular problem:

     I want to have my city dwellers snag a metal-rich asteroid.
I'm almost totally unclear on a few essentials.  How big can it
reasonably be?  (I want it to have enough size to sustain tunnels
in which a few a characters are going to have Amazing Adventures;
I want it to be transportable.)  Where is a good place for them
to get it?  ("Asteroid Belt" meaning exactly what in this
context?)  The idea is that some semi-expert robotic prospecting
machines have located it, stuck some kind of rockets on it
(probably fusion powered, using asteroid material, anything wrong
with that?), and brought it back to the space city, which is
orbiting as above.
     In summary, my big questions:  *How big can the thing be,
where will they find it, what will its exact composition be, and
how long will it take them to get it home?*

(5) General considerations:

     While I am very interested in having a clean, sound design,
I do not feel constrained by current theory/technology at too
detailed a level.  I.e., if I or anyone else comes up with a
lovely idea that reaches a little beyond the limits of the
currently acceptable, that's fine, if the idea generates good
narrative.
     Also, for those of you (which may be all of you) unfamiliar
with my fiction, a few observations:  my sf is new school (no
Heinleinian digressions on the nature of the good life, high-tech
(in the cyberpunk mode, I reckon), high-style (for better or
worse, eh?).  If you read (or have read) "Snake Eyes" (anthologized in
_Mirrorshades_) or "The Robot and the One You Love" in the March,
'88 _Omni_, these are representative pieces.

     So, finally, let me thank you in advance for your stated
willingness to help.  I'll certainly thank you individually,
summarizing what I've learned, and probably will post a summary
of results, unless you all have gone home for the summer or the
millenium and don't respond.

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

Date: 31 May 88 20:27:08 GMT
From: nsc![e-mail]  (Ken Trant)
Subject: Re: Ruskies find Heaven to the left of Pluto

in article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Eric Behr) says:
% Yeah, yeah, we want more, we are all bored to death with those silly,
% uninformative, beside-the-point, endless summaries that Henry Spencer
% somehow finds time to pound into his keyboard ...............
%                                                        Eric

 Maybe your bored, But who cares?, keep it up Henry!.


--
PATH= Second star to the right,          {...Ken Trant...}
      and straight on till morning
"Official Sponsor, US Olympic Team" {...Merrill Lynch Realty...}
                               415-651-3131    *:-)    408-721-8158

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

Date: 31 May 88 18:37:35 GMT
From: s.cc.purdue.edu![e-mail]  (Patrick White)
Subject: Re: The launch loop author replies:

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (John Gregor) writes:
>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Keith Lofstrom) writes:
>>it is hard to make a valid criticism of the launch
>>loop without reading the technical paper.

   Two questions if you please...

   1) since I picked up this discussion in the middle, where/how can I get a
      copy of this paper?

   2) how big would this thing have to be to put a 1 lb payload into orbit..
      or even sub-orbital?  like, could someone build a model one in their
      backyard or something?

   Thanks muchly.


-- Pat White
ARPA/UUCP: j.cc.purdue.edu!ain  BITNET: PATWHITE@PURCCVM  PHONE: [phone]
U.S.  Mail:  320 Brown St. apt. 406,    West Lafayette, IN 47906

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

Date: 31 May 88 22:38:26 GMT
From: thumper![e-mail]  (Phil R. Karn)
Subject: Re: Bureaucracy vs.  space

> >   PHIL KARN: Henry is right about the max G loads on the shuttle;
> >   they're about 3G.  This *is* gentler than many expendables.

> Agreed, but Henry's original posting was comparing shuttles with cargo
> planes, not with expendables.

Comparing the Space Shuttle with a cargo airplane is utterly pointless
since they provide a completely different service. The Space Cadets seem
to make careers of "proving" things by analogy, relevant or otherwise.

By similar logic, one could compare a dialup telephone modem with a null
modem and conclude that there must be something grossly wrong with the
management of all the major modem companies because their products are
so much bigger, slower and more expensive.

In case you haven't figured it out yet, there is a world of difference
between building airplanes and building space launchers. The fact that
we went from Orville and Wilbur to the 747 and affordable air transport
in a single human lifespan is not "proof" that the same rate of progress
in space transportation could occur "if only the Government would get
out of the way". Not only is the reasoning false, but it undervalues the
considerable contributions that governments have made to both
technologies, for whatever reasons.

Phil

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

Date: 31 May 88 15:54:58 GMT
From: steinmetz!sungoddess![e-mail]  (Dennis M. O'Connor)
Subject: Re: women in space

An article by [e-mail] ("Carlos A. lopez") says:
] [...] individuals with slow-twitch muscle fibers might be better suited to
] extended voyages than those with a fast-twitch physiology, regardless of
] sex.  They use oxygen better, and tend to have less muscle mass.
]
]    (Quick biology lesson: slow-twitch muscle fibers contract slower, but
] can do so longer because they use oxygen better.  Fast-twitch fibers
] contract faster, and more powerfully, but tire quickly. [...])

  Remedial biology lesson : you are confusing (fast|slow)-twitch
  with (high|low) oxidative. It is entirely possible ( usually
  through interval training ) to develop fast-twitch high-oxidative
  muscles which, unlike normal fast-twitch muscles, do not
  produce the high levels of lactic acid associated with fatigue.
  Prime example of fast-twitch high-oxidative athletes :
  mile runners, standardbreds.
--
 Dennis O'Connor   [e-mail]  ARPA: [e-mail]
    "The object of socialization is to teach wolves that they are sheep."

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

End of SPACE Digest V8 #261
*******************