Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/mac/TEXT/SPACEDIG/V08/V8_334.TXT

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Date: Tue, 23 Aug 88 01:05:47 PDT
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Subject: SPACE Digest V8 #334

SPACE Digest                                      Volume 8 : Issue 334

Today's Topics:
             space news from Aug 1 AW&ST
           Where's that summary? (was Re: SETI ...)
            Re: 95% vs. 99.9% reliability
            Re: 95% vs. 99.9% reliability
                   Re: SETI
    Re: Space Station power supply (was Re: Lithium cells)
            Re: 95% vs. 99.9% reliability
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 19 Aug 88 02:19:33 GMT
From: clyde!watmath!water!utgpu!utzoo![e-mail]  (Henry Spencer)
Subject: space news from Aug 1 AW&ST

Cover photo is Magellan in final test.

Congress gives large boost to Navy's laser comsat project, developing
technology for communication with submerged submarines.

Japan's CS-3B comsat is now slated for launch Sept 14, to replace CS-3A,
which had an antenna failure after launch.

Rocketdyne is successfully test-firing a small high-pressure rocket engine
for a USAF contract, aimed at orbital transfer vehicles.

Britain dumps Hotol.  British government will no longer fund development
work.  The government will promote attempts to find international support,
but most everyone agrees this is a silly idea, especially since some of
the technology is secret.  British Aerospace and Rolls-Royce surprised.

NASA is [finally] giving serious attention to using non-US expendables
to launch supplies to the space station.  The US is also looking at what
can be done with US expendables, including the notion of developing an
unmanned freighter resembling Progress.  3-4 expendable launches per year
for station logistics look likely, on top of the cargo carried by shuttle
crew-rotation visits.  It is not clear whether expendable-launched freight
loads would be towed to the station by the OMV -- which would require
basing it there rather than on the ground -- or would rendezvous and dock
by themselves a la Progress.  Also being re-examined is the issue of
garbage disposal, since fewer shuttle visits means less opportunity to
send waste (and useful payloads, for that matter) down to the surface.
Having the OMV de-orbit garbage, or small reentry vehicles for priority
cargo, is being looked at.

NASA narrows station crew-escape options to ground-based standby shuttle
or new small manned spacecraft based at the station; there is a notion
that both might be needed.  The idea of leaving an orbiter at the station
full time has been dropped as impractical.

Shuttle flight readiness firing slips slightly due to minor technical
problems.

NASA plans to ask for $2.1G for the space station next year, and boost
that to $2.9G in FY91.

[Micro-editorial:  This is ridiculous.  NASA can forget that.  It is
becoming increasingly clear that NASA's gold-plated space station does
not have the political support it needs to survive.  I've been saying
this for quite a while, but I admit I didn't expect it to come to a head
quite so quickly.  NASA is having to fight hard to get $900M this year;
no way is Congress ever going to give them three times that two years
from now.]

NATO selects Delta to launch its first next-generation comsat; the attempt
to get Ariane considered for this one has failed.  The Europeans intend to
keep trying, while the US remains adamantly opposed.  (For those with short
memories, the *official* US reason is that such contracts are supposed to
stay within full NATO members, and France isn't one.)

The Mir cosmonauts will do a second EVA to repair the British/Dutch X-ray
detector.  It will probably happen early this fall, after new tools are
developed and a Soviet/Afghan Soyuz visit is completed (late August?).

US State Dept has been formally asked to approve export licenses to ship
US-built comsats to China for launch on Long March.  Asiasat (a British/
Chinese consortium) wants to launch the former Westar 6 on Long March,
Hughes wants to use Long March for the two new Aussats, and Intelsat is
also formally interested.  These are the first formal "go all the way"
requests.  State will decide by late September, but the matter is subject
to interagency review, which has a habit of causing major delays.  China,
unlike the USSR, is not on the "forget it" list for restricted technology;
case-by-case review is the procedure for China.  DoT and others are unhappy
about China's prices being much lower than US expendables, and oppose the
applications as harmful to long-term US interests.  Others see it as a
free-trade issue and oppose clumsy protectionism:  "perhaps the Chinese
have discovered a cheap approach to space, and the US companies are
simply victims of their gold-plated approach".

Pacific Engineering picks site for its new oxidizer plant, with hopes for
limited production by "next February".  [The wording sounds like Feb 89,
which would surprise me a bit -- maybe they mean Feb 90?]

NASA picks TVA's Yellow Creek site in Mississippi as the tentative site
for a government-owned advanced-SRB plant.  Bidders for the new-SRB
contract must propose operations using the government-owned site, but
may also propose a privately-financed site as an alternative.

Japan picks one of Hughes's spinners as its next weather satellite, GMS-5,
for launch in 1993.

Major National Academy of Sciences assessment of space-science goals says
that lots more money should be spent on science missions [surprise, surprise]
and that few (but some) of the missions have any real use for the station.
US leadership is not just threatened but gone:  "...the Soviet Union is now
the leader in space science."  Apart from the predictable, the report calls
for:

- Much better coordination within the US government for satellite operations,
    with fewer artificial boundaries between "research" and "operational"
    use.  "...interagency cooperation is essential to the advancement of
    the Earth sciences, yet such cooperation in the area of satellites
    has not fared well at the Office of Management and Budget."

- Under planetary exploration, a high-priority effort for specialized space-
    based telescopes for detection of planets around other stars.
    [While I agree that this is a good idea, classing it under "planetary
    exploration" is silly; it's astronomy.]

- The obvious set of unmanned planetary missions.

- A Pluto flyby.

- Renewal of the search for life on Mars.

- A space-based imaging interferometer for much higher resolution than the
    Hubble telescope.

- Consideration of manned lunar and Mars operations as inherent evolutionary
    steps in planetary exploration.

- High priority for the Large Deployable Reflector, a 20-30 meter reflecting
    telescope assembled in orbit.

- A solar polar orbiter.

- Starprobe, a flyby of the Sun at 2.7Mkm.

- Interstellar Probe, using electric propulsion and a Jupiter flyby to leave
    the solar system at 80 kps.  If launched in 2000, this would overtake
    the Pioneers and Voyagers by 2005.

- A dedicated space-based life sciences lab.

- A major technology effort, starting now, to prepare for these missions.

- An ongoing program of smaller flight projects to keep small-scale space
    science alive.

- Treating launch systems, space platforms, etc. as "tools to support
    well-defined objectives" rather than ends in themselves.  [I have
    mixed feelings about this.  On one hand, it's the sensible thing
    to do.  On the other hand, one then starts to hear:  "Your project
    relies on this space platform that isn't approved yet, so we can't
    possibly fund you.  ...  Your space platform has no committed
    customers, so we can't possibly fund it."  NASA's uncritical
    devotion to the station and the shuttle is not (solely) the result
    of preoccupation with engineering over science.]

More mumbling about US-Soviet cooperation in space, especially Mars.

Latest unhappiness:  NASA is probably going to delete the Visual and
Infrared Mapping Spectrometer from Mars Observer, and replace the radar
altimeter with a less sophisticated one.  The space scientists claim
NASA is gutting the mission; NASA counters that the instruments are over
budget, and the choice is between reducing the scope of the mission or
delaying it further (something the scientists are very much against).
[NASA is being politically naive here:  what they ought to do is punt the
decision to the scientists, which would probably have the same result but
without the uproar being directed at NASA.]

More pictures of Soviet hardware at Baikonur.

IKI [the Soviet space-research institute] has asked for the use of NASA's
large vacuum chamber at JSC, to compile a larger database of known spectra
for the laser spectrometer aboard the Phobos probes.  IKI's own small
vacuum chamber has limited what they can do.

SDI's Space-Based Interceptor will continue as a program, but its flight
experiment will be deferred indefinitely since Congress is refusing to
fund SBI at the necessary levels.

[Whew!  I am finally caught up -- the Aug 8 issue only arrived today, and
I haven't finished reading it yet.]
--
Intel CPUs are not defective,  |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
they just act that way.        | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry [e-mail]

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

Date: 13 Aug 88 00:06:18 GMT
From: heurikon![e-mail]  (Ray Lampman)
Subject: Where's that summary? (was Re: SETI ...)

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Edwin Hoogerbeets) writes:
| Has the person who is conducting the poll of significant space related
| events finished said poll? I am interested in seeing the results ;-)
| Comments anyone?
________________________________________________________________________

I'm looking forward to those results also ... and am especially interested
in the net community's forecast of future significant space events and when
they will occur. Would anyone care to post their forcast for discussion?
A forecast that includes prerequisite events, matterals, and technologies,
would start an interesting discussion. For example ...

What are the prerequisites for human colonization for a nearby solar system?
Forget for a moment that we can not do this at present, and think about why
not. What must come first? Changes in governments? Economies? Technology?
Do we need any basic scientific advances? How about long range sensors?
--
I am seriously considering a career on  | Ray Lampman [phone]
the beach. I'll need a microwave modem, | Madison Wisconsin USA Earth
solar power supply, and a little shade. | {husc6,rutgers}!uwvax!heurikon!lampman

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

Date: 12 Aug 88 14:08:08 GMT
From: [e-mail]  (Keith Rogers)
Subject: Re: 95% vs. 99.9% reliability

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:
>Can we build more vehicles? I understand the answer is NO. The tooling and
>construction facilities either no longer exist or have been converted ot
>other uses. Except for the existing spares, building a new shuttle would
>require an effort comparable to building the first one. Much like building
>a Saturn 5.

    Do you mean to tell me that NASA made *no* provisions whatsoever for
building more shuttles?  None at all?  This whole program has been a dead
end with no hopes of going anywhere but down the tubes?  Please tell me
it isn't so. This will crush my last naive hopes that NASA isn't just a bunch
of hopeless incompetants.  At least tell me what their justification is.

Keith Rogers

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

Date: 12 Aug 88 21:27:27 GMT
From: [e-mail]  (Keith Rogers)
Subject: Re: 95% vs. 99.9% reliability

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (that's me) writes:
>This will crush my last naive hopes that NASA isn't just a bunch
>of hopeless incompetants.
>
    I apologize and retract this.  My dissatisfaction is not with NASA
but with the way it is managed and the way the government runs it.  Again, I
admit that my reaction was unwarranted.

Keith Rogers

gain a British space program bites the
dust before it has even started.

[I wonder, if this were a US program, how much follow-up would there have
 been on the net?!]

--
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If all the statisticians were laid end to    |  Stuart Warmink, APT UK Ltd.
end across the Atlantic, 99% would drown :-) |  <att>!whuts!sw Whippany NJ USA
-----------> My opinions are not necessarily those of APT UK Ltd. <-----------

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

Date: 11 Aug 88 15:11:46 GMT
From: psivax!quad1!ttidca![e-mail]  (Dick Jackson)
Subject: Re: SETI

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Edwin Hoogerbeets) writes:
>
>Another possible reason we might not be receiving came to me while
>reading sci.crypt. Maybe everyone is sending RSA across the universe and
>we don't know what's going on? (again :^)

I don't know what "RSA" is but this para triggered an idea. Maybe its
obvious to THEIR radio designers that the messages should be sent using
spread spectrum with a code given by some naturally occuring, fundamental
number. This number could not be a physical constant or transcendental
number because of the choice of significant figures. Maybe there are some
long but rational numbers generated by number theory?

(For those who may not be familiar with spread spectrum, it is a radio
technique which trades off power for bandwidth; signals can be buried in
the noise level and recovered by correlating the signal using the code
by which it was generated - Please no flames for this cheap and cheerful
description.)

Dick Jackson

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

Date: 12 Aug 88 02:26:54 GMT
From: tness7!tness1!splut![e-mail]  (Jay "you ignorant splut!" Maynard)
Subject: Re: Space Station power supply (was Re: Lithium cells)

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Lucius Chiaraviglio) writes:
>In article <[e-mail]>, I wrote:
>>Main power on the space station is specified as 220 VAC at 20 kHz.
>    Isn't this going to cause considerable inefficiency of power
>transmission due to radiative losses, which go up with increasing frequency (I
>don't remember the exact relation, but it's linear or worse)?

According to my source, the losses are low enough to be of minor problem.
Me? I'm not a power engineer (if it ain't 1 or 0, it's broke!).

>    Also, this is going to make it impossible to operate induction motors
>(unless you want them to go VERY fast) without using electronic conversion of
>the power to get the frequency down.

Or DC motors, from a power supply. My source hasn't seen a single motor
specified on the station, though.

--
Jay Maynard, EMT-P, K5ZC...>splut!< | Never ascribe to malice that which can
uucp:       uunet!nuchat!           | adequately be explained by stupidity.
   hoptoad!academ!uhnix1!splut!jay  +----------------------------------------
{killer,bellcore}!tness1!           | Birthright Party '88: let's get spaced!

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

Date: 13 Aug 88 04:30:27 GMT
From: [e-mail]  (Eugene Miya)
Subject: Re: 95% vs. 99.9% reliability

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Keith Rogers) writes:
>    Do you mean to tell me that NASA mad *no* provisions whatsoever for
>building more shuttles?  None at all?  This whole program has been a dead
>end with no hopes of going anywhere but down the tubes?  Please tell me
>it isn't so. This will crush my last naive hopes that NASA isn't just a bunch
>of hopeless incompetants.  At least tell me what their justification is.

I cannot totally justify the thinking of many of those who made decisions
in the early 1970s [remember back then, that's when this thing was
put together, but maybe a few of you were young [I was in college]].
Anyway, on one hand you can argue: YES, no provisions, on another hand
you can argue the X-3* <That's the Kleene operator IS the next provision
so the answer would then be NO.
It's largely based on the idea that you sort of assume the thing is
coming down the pipe.  You don't see many ENIACs or Univac Is do you?
I think many of the higher ups over judged public interest in space
and assumed scaled up budgets, etc.  I don't think it's seen as a dead end
by the men (they are all men) largely like the development of aircraft
for military purposes (no end in sight).  It's a form of planned
obsolescence.

Now, I don't justify it [as Hans Mark noted, they felt they HAD to place
all eggs into one basket].  It's the problem of simultaneous development
and use "Hey I'm trying to use this thing!" "Hey, I'm trying to develop
this thing, hands off..."  Other keywords: Orient express.  Anyways
an interesting problem.  HOW long will the airframes last?  Will they be as
good as DC-3s?  (Possibly not).  I will tell you a lot of
working is being done on hypersonics right now, but I wonder where we
would be if we had not had the rush Mercury program and had instead
gone with Crossfield's X-15B program->X-20 Dynasoar, etc. with more
men in the loop (i.e., a more low key space thing).  Would the
Soviets have beaten us? Etc.  Anyways, we took the path more travelled.

Another gross generalization from

--eugene miya, NASA Ames Research Center, [e-mail]
  resident cynic at the Rock of Ages Home for Retired Hackers:
  "Mailers?! HA!", "If my mail does not reach you, please accept my apology."
  {uunet,hplabs,ncar,decwrl,allegra,tektronix}!ames!aurora!eugene
  "Send mail, avoid follow-ups.  If enough, I'll summarize."

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

End of SPACE Digest V8 #334
*******************