Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/mac/TEXT/SPACEDIG/V08/V8_278.TXT

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Subject: SPACE Digest V8 #278

SPACE Digest                                      Volume 8 : Issue 278

Today's Topics:
            Soviet Soyuz TM-5 mission ends
               Soyuz TM-5 mission ends
     Re: advance space news from June 6 AW&ST -- Pegasus!
                   Pegasus
     Re: advance space news from June 6 AW&ST -- Pegasus!
               Discovery Launch
        Long Term Effects of Weightlessness...
            Re:  -- Pegasus launch vehicle
     Re: advance space news from June 6 AW&ST -- Pegasus!
            Re: Henry's von Braun comment
             Re: Cometesimals at Tunguska
       Chapter Directory and Notes from Denver Meetings
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Mon, 20 Jun 88 16:55:09 EDT
From: Glenn Chapman <[e-mail]>
Subject: Soviet Soyuz TM-5 mission ends


   The Soviet Soyuz TM-5 flight ended on June 17th, after a 9 day 18 hour
mission (my own unofficial estimate of the mission duration), 8 days
of which were spent on the Mir/Kvant space station complex.  The crew of
Anatoly Solovyov, Viktor Savinykh and Alexander Alexandrov (the Bulgarian guest
cosmonaut) have proved to be in excellent condition since the landing. This
was the longest guest cosmonaut mission to date.
    Left on board were the long duration Mir crew of Vladimir Titov and
Musahi Manarov which on June 21 will have spent one half a year in orbit.  That
is the mid point of their mission.
    Sorry about the delay in this report, but our VAX is having problems.
    One interesting point here is that even this short term mission was longer
than all but one shuttle flight (STS-9 in Nov. '83, 10 days, 7 hours).   It is
worry some when even the Russian's short duration guest missions are longer than
almost all of our own flights.  This must change if the US is to have any
significant presence in space.

                                                    Glenn Chapman
                                                    MIT Lincoln Lab

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

Date: Wed, 22 Jun 88 14:31:08 EDT
From: Glenn Chapman <[e-mail]>
Subject: Soyuz TM-5 mission ends


   The Soviet Soyuz TM-5 flight ended on June 17th, after a 9 day 18 hour
mission (my own unofficial estimate of the mission duration), 8 days
of which were spent on the Mir/Kvant space station complex.  The crew of
Anatoly Solovyov, Viktor Savinykh and Alexander Alexandrov (the Bulgarian guest
cosmonaut) have proved to be in excellent condition since the landing. This
was the longest guest cosmonaut mission to date.
    Left on board were the long duration Mir crew of Vladimir Titov and
Musahi Manarov which on June 21 will have spent one half a year in orbit.  That
is the mid point of their mission.
    Sorry about the delay in this report, but our VAX is having problems.
    One interesting point here is that even this short term mission was longer
than all but one shuttle flight (STS-9 in Nov. '83, 10 days, 7 hours).   It is
worry some when even the Russian's short duration guest missions are longer than
almost all of our own flights.  This must change if the US is to have any
significant presence in space.

                                                    Glenn Chapman
                                                    MIT Lincoln Lab

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

Date: 21 Jun 88 21:01:41 GMT
From: thumper![e-mail]  (Phil R. Karn)
Subject: Re: advance space news from June 6 AW&ST -- Pegasus!

> Man is the best computer we can put aboard a spacecraft. --Von Braun

Last week's successful Ariane-4 launch put AMSAT Phase 3-C and two other
satellites into the following orbit:

perigee 221 km (nominal: 220 km)
apogee 36,359 km (nominal: 36,294 km)
inclination 10.01 deg (nominal: 10 deg)

I'd like to see some fighter jock/astronaut do as well by flying a
launch manually.  Perhaps you should limit the scope of this statement
somewhat.

Von Braun, of all people, should have known better. But he was not
exactly known as one who always placed high ethical standards above
doing and saying whatever was required to get funding from whomever he
happened to be working for at the time.

Phil

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

Date: 20 Jun 88 15:57:31 GMT
From: oodis01!uplherc!esunix![e-mail]  (Bob Pendleton)
Subject: Pegasus



> In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (David Smith) writes:
> > Since no one else has, I thought I'd point out the article on p.10 of
> > US News & World Report for June 13.  It said that Orbital Sciences Corp.
> > and Hercules Aerospace announced a plan to develop Pegasus, a 50-foot
>
> Wouldn't you know it, posting this was the library's cue to finally put
> out the June 6 AW&ST, which has Pegasus on the cover.  Let that be the
> primary reference, I guess.  So now it's doubly surprising to me that,
> with all the oddball, exotic, and trivial stuff that gets discussed in
> this forum, Pegasus hasn't stirred more comment.
>
>             David Smith
>             HP Labs
>             [e-mail]

I've been waiting for Henry to post the AW&ST summary for June 6. I've
been wondering how the doom and gloom, U.S. business has no foresight,
people will respond to it.

To toss in a few facts from sources at Hercules, a launch contract for
the first pegasus has been signed. Launch costs are closer to $10 million.
$6 million would be a good guess at the build cost. Development costs
are expected to be $40-$45 million, with pay back in 16 to 18 launches.
Which works out to about $2.5 million in profit per launch!

Total development time is planned at 18 months. There will be NO filght
tests before first commercial launch (talk about trusting your cfd code).
Pegasus can be used as a carrier for hypersonic flight experiments that
do not reach orbit. The claim is that the combination of a winged vehicle
and launching from 40,000 feet at mach 0.8 gives 10% to 14% improvement
in performance over a ground launched vehicle.

Pegasus will be able to put ~600 pounds into a polar orbit and ~900 pounds
into an equatorial orbit. Because it is launched from a long range aircraft
pegasus can be launched in any direction.

Note that all, 100%, every dime, of the development costs are being covered
by private capital. It is a joint venture of OSC, an energetic
entrepreneurial company, and Hercules Aerospace, an established, respected,
highly experienced rocket propulsion company. I hope to see more of this
kind of deal as companies face the fact that big old companies are too set
in their ways and young energetic companies don't have the resources or
the expertice needed for real innovation.

            Bob P.
--
Bob Pendleton @ Evans & Sutherland
UUCP Address:  {decvax,ucbvax,ihnp4,allegra}!decwrl!esunix!bpendlet
Alternate:     {ihnp4,seismo}!utah-cs!utah-gr!uplherc!esunix!bpendlet
        I am solely responsible for what I say.

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

Date: 21 Jun 88 16:59:53 GMT
From: devvax!smythsun![e-mail]  (David Smyth)
Subject: Re: advance space news from June 6 AW&ST -- Pegasus!

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Henry Spencer) writes:
>> ...some idea of how useful a 600-900 pound (still no metric!) payload is?
>
>It's not big enough for most recent payloads, which have tended heavily
>toward the pile-everything-into-one-huge-lump school of design.  However,
>many people feel that this tendency has gone much too far, and that there
>would be many benefits from going back to small single-mission satellites
>for a lot of jobs.

Unfortunately, we need to get funding for space exploration.  Such
funding generally comes from Congress.  Seasoned NASA people have
found that it is about as hard to get $10million as $10billion.
Therefore, it is far more likely that future missions will use
yet more complex spacecraft, even though everybody knows about
K.I.S.S.

>600-900 lbs is lots for *one* scientific experiment
>plus support equipment, and is enough to be useful for things like
>communications and espionage if you are willing to design the equipment
>to fit.  Personally, I suspect you could make money on even smaller
>payloads if you offered cheap, frequent, short-notice, low-hassle launches.

If the business of space-borne experiments ever becomes a profit-oriented
industry, I would agree with you.  However, nobody seems to look at it
in that way, at least in this country.  Here, in our "free market
economy" we have the major companies enslaved to the stock market,
and the stock market is at best interested in the instantaneous
second derivative of profits or income, but usually totally random.

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

Date: 22 Jun 88 17:49:00 GMT
From: UCSFVM.BITNET![e-mail]
Subject: Discovery Launch

Date:    22 June 88, 10:48:01 PDT
From:    Donna Reynolds                                 DR9021   at UCSFVM
To:      SCI-SPACE at VAX.BERKELEY.EDU
Subject: Discovery Launch

I will be covering the Discovery launch for a Bay Area
publication.  Are there any WOMEN on the net who will be
traveling to Canaveral for the launch and who would like to
discuss sharing accommodations?  I hope to keep costs down on
this assignment, and it seems the price of everything on the
Cape doubles (at least) around launch time.

I plan to stay in Titusville and probably will arrive 3-5
days before the launch.  I've already made tentative
reservations.

If interested, please contact me via e-mail at:

     [e-mail]

                               Donna Reynolds

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

Date: 22 Jun 88 16:14:30 GMT
From: rochester!ur-tut!sunybcs![e-mail]  (Scott S. Campbell)
Subject: Long Term Effects of Weightlessness...

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Glenn Chapman) writes:
>...
>Anatoly Solovyov, Viktor Savinykh and Alexander Alexandrov (the Bulgarian guest
>cosmonaut) have proved to be in excellent condition since the landing. This
>was the longest guest cosmonaut mission to date.
>...
>    Left on board were the long duration Mir crew of Vladimir Titov and
>Musahi Manarov which on June 21 will have spent one half a year in orbit.
>is the mid point of their mission.

I'm generally (i.e., non-techinically) curious about the affects of
weightlessness on the human body over long periods of time.  Now that the
Soviet Union has put several people into zero-G for extended periods of time,
has there been any mention of the ability of these cosmonauts to re-adapt to
the pull of Earth's gravity?  How did the recovery time relate to the amount
of time spent in the space station?  What thereapy was necessary to re-adjust?

Just curious,

Scott

-
Scott S. Campbell
[e-mail]
[e-mail]

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

Date: 23 Jun 88 04:17:47 GMT
From: aplcen!aplcomm!stdc.jhuapl.edu![e-mail]  (Jim Meritt)
Subject: Re:  -- Pegasus launch vehicle

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Dani Eder) writes:
}"Houston, we just lost the number 4 air revitalizer, could you send
}up a spare, NOW!!??" (no smiley face)


How about toilet paper!!!!!!

}
}With a solid rocket, presumably you could treat it like a big
}missile, and not have to spend more than a few hours prepping it
}for launch.


Why would not the time spent waiting for the window be longer than "prepping"
if for launch?  If it is like a missle, would not the launch vechicle
ALWAYS be ready for launch?  Unless, of course, you meant time spent
prepping the payload.


Disclaimer: Individuals have opinions, organizations have policy.
            Therefore, these opinions are mine and not any organizations!
Q.E.D.
[e-mail] 128.244.65.5  (James W. Meritt)

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

Date: 22 Jun 88 14:46:08 GMT
From: pacbell!cogent!uop![e-mail]  (Dr. Nethack is back)
Subject: Re: advance space news from June 6 AW&ST -- Pegasus!

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Phil R. Karn) writes:
> > Man is the best computer we can put aboard a spacecraft. --Von Braun
>
> Last week's successful Ariane-4 launch put AMSAT Phase 3-C and two other
> satellites into the following orbit:
>
> perigee 221 km (nominal: 220 km)
> apogee 36,359 km (nominal: 36,294 km)
> inclination 10.01 deg (nominal: 10 deg)
>
> I'd like to see some fighter jock/astronaut do as well by flying a
> launch manually.  Perhaps you should limit the scope of this statement
> somewhat.

Computer operations can, at times be more efficient, perhaps his claim
was more philosophic.. when a computer breaks, or malfunctions, or
(at times) performs its task, it still is not capable of the intuitive
things a human is.

And there is the kicker.  Has nothing to do with jockness. And everything
to do with improvisation.. Computers *helped* bring back Apollo 13,
as a tool to devise various probabilties, etc.  But Men brought her
home, both ground crew, and otherwise.

Now are you going to say, she should have never flown?  That would be
as absurd as saying you can tell me whenever a jet should never take
to the skies.

You can't predict everything...at least a human is flexible enough to
*try* different things.

Voyager's computers had to be re-tweaked from the ground due to damage,
could it do that itself?

(Maybe we are finally getting close enough in technology for self corrections
but there is still the cause and effect of needing a human in the chain
somewhere.. if only to look at the images!)

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

Date: 23 Jun 88 01:30:18 GMT
From: pioneer![e-mail]  (Eugene N. Miya)
Subject: Re: Henry's von Braun comment

I side with Phil on this one.  I also note Todd's response.  The
fundamental problem with computing at the moment is that computers
aren't really reliable.  We build redundany into them: sure I recommended
buying a 3B20D and a Tandem at one point, and JPL had the STAR, but
the point is: why can't our electronics do without parity (shades of
Seymour), SECDED, etc.?  This is retorical comp.arch can use a good
fault tolerance discussion, and if you are only on the ARPAnet without
Usenet access, sorry you can't discuss computer architecture, tough
cookies, someone should gateway that group.  If you plan to discuss this
topic, move it to arch, not space unless you are talking specifically
about spaceborne systems.

I don't quite know what Todd meant about Voyager computer problems,
they added data compression for Uranus and beyond.  There were a few
other things.  Oh, I did meet Henry last evening at Usenix, briefly,
associated a net address with a face.

--eugene

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

Date: 21 Jun 88 07:18:16 GMT
From: portal!cup.portal.com![e-mail]
Subject: Re: Cometesimals at Tunguska

The recent discussion on cometesimals has me wondering if this could explain
another puzzle. In 1908, a large explosion flatened a section of the Tunguska
region in Siberia. As far as I know, there has never been a satisfactory
explaination for this event. (Pointers to more data are !very! welcome.)

The sticking point is that the damage pattern matches that of a nuclear air
burst. Trees are broken down in a pattern radiating away from ground zero,
but with no significant crater or extra damage at ground zero itself. This
couldn't happen with a normal meteor, because anything large enough to have
caused the blast would have survived to ground impact.

I wonder if the fluffy snowball wouldn't do it. I'm thinking that a large,
low density, fast moving object could couple all of its kinetic energy to
the atmosphere. This would leave a shock wave traveling on the same path as
the object, which might leave the right damage pattern.

Well, how far out in left field am I?

    Paul

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

Date: 23 Jun 88 07:58:31 GMT
From: agate![e-mail]  (William Baxter)
Subject: Chapter Directory and Notes from Denver Meetings

If you would like a copy of any of the following documents, please email
your request to me.

1. NSS Chapter Directory: contains general information about chapters,
   including meeting times and places, officers, projects,

2. Notes from the "Chapter Meetings" at the ISDC: the meetings at which
   the "Transition Committee" was established to create a "Chapter
   Assembly" within the NSS.


I will make some announcement when there is a significant update to the
Chapter Directory, e.g. when I finish the newsletter section listing
info about chapter publications.

William Baxter

ARPA: web@{garnet,brahms,math}.Berkeley.EDU
UUCP: {sun,dual,decwrl,decvax,hplabs,...}!ucbvax!{garnet,brahms,math}!web

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

End of SPACE Digest V8 #278
*******************