Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/mac/TEXT/SPACEDIG/V08/V8_354.TXT

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Subject: SPACE Digest V8 #354

SPACE Digest                                      Volume 8 : Issue 354

Today's Topics:
         Re: The sun as a trashcan (was : Plutonium)
         Re: The sun as a trashcan (was : Plutonium)
                   Re: Seti
                   Re: Seti
                   Re: Seti
                   Re: Seti
           Re: access to space; how to deny
                Re: plutonium
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 28 Aug 88 14:44:44 GMT
From: cat.cmu.edu![e-mail]  (David Pugh)
Subject: Re: The sun as a trashcan (was : Plutonium)

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Thomas Cervera) writes:
>....
>In my eyes the idea to dump Plutonium into the sun could become reality.
>If we can send spacecrafts to the inner planets of our solar system,
>I think, it must be possible to let something like that crash into the
>sun, or not ?
>But if it's possible, why don't we send all our dangerous (radioactive)
>garbage to the sun ? Here in Germany, they don't know where to go with
>it.
>At this time, U.S.A. and USSR destroy their expensive short range missles
>'cause they are (thankgod !) no longer needed to respond the 'threat from
>the other side'.
>Why don't they modify them to be able to leave the earth's gravity
>field ? The payload could be Pt or other dangerous stuff ...
>....

Unfortunately, it is much harder to drop something into the sun than
is it have it orbit Mercury or Venus. Someone mentioned that the
required delta-V was about 18 kilometers per second. Even ignoring
this problem, though, there are other problems with dumping nuclear
waste into space. The IRBM's (Pershing II's & SS-20's) simply don't
have enough power to reach a nice stable orbit. You also have a problem
in that you have to consider the possibility of a booster failing.

The easiest way to get rid of nuclear waste would probably be to
use hard land it on the moon. Would it be possible to build a
railgun/mass-driver/etc. which could launch small (1kg) payloads
to crash land on the moon?
--

                        David Pugh
                        ....!seismo!cmucspt!cat!dep

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

Date: 29 Aug 88 01:05:09 GMT
From: [e-mail]  (Joe Keane)
Subject: Re: The sun as a trashcan (was : Plutonium)

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (David Pugh) writes:
>Unfortunately, it is much harder to drop something into the sun than
>is it have it orbit Mercury or Venus.  Someone mentioned that the
>required delta-V was about 18 kilometers per second.

I don't have the necessary data handy, but it should be possible to
send something to the sun by shooting it near Mercury (or maybe
Venus).  You might have to do some boosting near the planet, but this
is much more efficient than trying to do a drop (like in _Aliens_).

>The easiest way to get rid of nuclear waste would probably be to
>use hard land it on the moon. Would it be possible to build a
>railgun/mass-driver/etc. which could launch small (1kg) payloads
>to crash land on the moon?

Please don't do this!

--Joe

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

Date: 29 Aug 88 00:28:14 GMT
From: silver![e-mail]  (Lucius Chiaraviglio)
Subject: Re: Seti

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Kevin Bagley) writes:
>In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Tony Nardo)
>writes:
>> Or, on a more grim note, let's say that there's a species which
>       [Highly abbreviated]
>>    1) fairly developed civilization,
>>    2) developed very effective weapons
>>    3) bit overcrowded,
>>    4) believing themselves to be the "roughest, toughest
>    [stuff deleted]
>
>I do **not** believe this garbage, but lets say there is a civilization
>out there with the above type of mentality, (I personally think that
>type of mentality is far more obnoxious than our own and that our
>civilization is teetering on the brink of self destruction.)

    Why do you think it is more obnoxious than our own?  We seem to meet
all four qualifications to degrees ranging from fairly (#1, #3, and #4) to
excellently (#2).

>                                                             why
>couldn't this super tough highly teched civilization did exist, they
>may be capable of doing severe damage simply through communcation.
>i.e.
>   1) They could communicate to us a cure for cancer that was
>      actually a very subtle poison that was airborn and did
>      not take affect for n years.

    Fred Hoyle (and maybe a co-author, I don't remember) had the same idea
in _A is for Andromeda_ and another book, in which aliens in the Andromeda
galaxy send instructions on how to build a self-aware computer with a mission
to convert Earth to be like the aliens' planet or destroy it if the
inhabitants (us) see through the plot and quit cooperating.  While the
scientific premises in this particular dilogy are less than sound, it is
impossible to prove that the same sort of thing could not be accomplished by
better-thought-out methods of the same general idea.

> [. . .]
>   3) Mass hypnotism followed by mass suicide.
>
>   4) Help me here folks. How else do you cause genocide by remote control?

    An elaboration of #3 is as follows:  send over a religion or a
political ideology which will spread to everyone on the planet and which
preaches lethal intolerance of anyone not converted, and then optionally does
a Jim Jones job on a massive scale, or sets up something like that portrayed
in George Orwells _Nineteen Eighty-Four_.  To ensure that it takes hold, tempt
the original recipients (most likely to be scientists, the government, and the
military) with means to great power (insights into how to build superweapons,
etc.) which can be used most effectively if they participate in the religious
and/or ideological program.

>I find this no more bizarre than the concept of this type of
>civilization and a hell of a lot cheaper than sending their
>starfleet.

    You could be right.  The problem with this kind of approach is that
(unless the perpetrators travel considerably from their home to broadcast the
message, thus negating at least some of the savings), they give away their
location.  And if the plot doesn't work, they run the risk that their intended
victims might be sufficiently enraged or feel a sense of duty sufficient to
cause them to take the trouble to come over physically and do their very best
to blow the perpetrators out of existence -- and if they have their act
together, they will do everything to keep their own home planet secret, so
that the perpetrators will not know who is taking revenge on them if they
tried this in more than one direction.  If responses are expected, they
wouldn't be too hard to fake.

    -- Lucius Chiaraviglio
       [e-mail]
       [e-mail]    (in case the first one doesn't work)
    Villainy knows no bounds. . . .

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

Date: 26 Aug 88 16:22:41 GMT
From: mcvax!ukc!etive!hwcs![e-mail]  (Adrian Hurt)
Subject: Re: Seti

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Henry Spencer) writes:
> A poor assumption; our own lifespan is likely to increase dramatically within
> the next century or so.

During a series of TV programmes last Christmas, it was demonstrated that life
expectancy has been levelling off. I can't remember exactly why; something to
do with the cells making up the body. I think it may have been that they can
only be replaced a certain number of times, but I' not sure there. Anyway, the
conclusion was that lifespan would probably not exceed 100 by much. Diseases
can be beaten, but old age is much more difficult.

> >3) Advanced societies have limited budgets and would expect a return on investment
>
> Again, check out the pattern in our immediate past.  Emigrating to North
> America -- just the passage and the necessary startup supplies -- took
> every cent the Plymouth Rock colonists had, and drove them so deep into
> debt that it was 20 years before they were in the black again.

But did anyone launch a multi-year enquiry when a ship was lost? People were
much more willing to risk their lives then.

Having challenged this optimism about the human species, I should also say that
these examples do not necessarily indicate what an alien culture might see in
space exploration and/or colonisation. Science fiction provides such options as
exterminating life, assisting fledgeling races, escape from a doomed world, and
more.

Finally, to try to open a few minds, who says we haven't been visited? Would
you believe anyone who said we have? Would you believe anyone who claimed to
have seen or met the visitors? In other words, how do you react to people who
believe in UFO's? Simply saying "They're nuts" or "They were fooled by
something" isn't open-minded. As Henry said somewhere else, I don't believe and
I don't disbelieve. Can anyone conclusively prove whether we have been visited
or not?

--
 "Keyboard? How quaint!" - M. Scott

 Adrian Hurt                 |    JANET:  [e-mail]
 UUCP: ..!ukc!cs.hw.ac.uk!adrian     |  ARPA:   [e-mail]

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

Date: 28 Aug 88 00:00:49 GMT
From: attcan!utzoo![e-mail]  (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Seti

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Adrian Hurt) writes:
>> A poor assumption; our own lifespan is likely to increase dramatically within
>> the next century or so.
>
>During a series of TV programmes last Christmas, it was demonstrated that life
>expectancy has been levelling off...

Our *natural* life expectancy is unlikely to increase much further.  That
wasn't what I was talking about.

>Diseases can be beaten, but old age is much more difficult.

Agreed.  On the other hand, there is a lot more motive for tackling it.
Old age is 100% fatal and happens to everyone; AIDS is insignificant by
comparison.

Understand, I don't expect major improvements in lifespan tomorrow, or
next year, or even next decade.  But we are starting to understand the
detailed biochemical functioning of a few very small portions of our
physiology.  It is fairly safe to predict massive progress in this within
a few decades.  The biggest problem with old age is simply that we don't
understand the details of why it happens.  That will change.

>> Again, check out the pattern in our immediate past.  Emigrating to North
>> America -- just the passage and the necessary startup supplies -- took
>> every cent the Plymouth Rock colonists had, and drove them so deep into
>> debt that it was 20 years before they were in the black again.
>
>But did anyone launch a multi-year enquiry when a ship was lost? People were
>much more willing to risk their lives then.

Nonsense.  You're looking at a pathological phenomenon in a persistently-
underfunded branch of the US government, not a general trend.  If access
to space were adequate to permit an attempt at, say, a lunar colony to
be made *without* having to beg approval from government bureaucrats and
a Congress full of fat lawyers, there would be half a dozen of them already,
risks notwithstanding.  There is no shortage of people willing to risk their
lives for what they see as a worthwhile cause; the problem is that
spaceflight is currently too expensive for such people to fund it from
their own resources.

>... who says we haven't been visited? Would
>you believe anyone who said we have? Would you believe anyone who claimed to
>have seen or met the visitors? In other words, how do you react to people who
>believe in UFO's? Simply saying "They're nuts" or "They were fooled by
>something" isn't open-minded. As Henry said somewhere else, I don't believe and
>I don't disbelieve. Can anyone conclusively prove whether we have been visited
>or not?

"It is good to have an open mind, but not one that is open at both ends."
It is not possible to state definitely whether we have been visited or not.
However, the weight of the evidence is against it.  Clearly, if we *are*
being visited, the visitors are being very furtive and cryptic about it.
This is quite peculiar behavior by our standards (and we have no others to
judge it against).  It is possible to imagine explanations for it, but they
are sufficiently strained that good evidence would be needed to justify
them.  None is on hand.  For all the reports of UFO landings, contacts,
etc., *NOT ONE* unquestionably extraterrestrial artifact or hitherto-
unknown-but-verifiable fact has come out of them.  There have been
sightings of phenomena that are arguably difficult to explain, but
there are plenty of natural phenomena that are still poorly understood;
it is not necessary to invoke extraterrestrial spaceships as the reason
for our inability to explain such sightings.  There are people who claim
to have seen or been contacted by extraterrestrials, but people have been
known to lie or be mistaken before; it is not necessary to take such
claims at face value to explain them.  The most prosaic -- and hence, most
probably correct -- theory is that we are not being visited, and have not
been in the past.
--
Intel CPUs are not defective,  |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
they just act that way.        | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry [e-mail]

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

Date: 26 Aug 88 23:18:49 GMT
From: tikal!sigma!uw-nsr!uw-warp!gtisqr![e-mail]  (Kevin Bagley)
Subject: Re: Seti

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Tony Nardo) writes:
> Or, on a more grim note, let's say that there's a species which
       [Highly abbreviated]
>    1) fairly developed civilization,
>    2) developed very effective weapons
>    3) bit overcrowded,
>    4) believing themselves to be the "roughest, toughest
    [stuff deleted]

I do **not** believe this garbage, but lets say there is a civilization
out there with the above type of mentality, (I personally think that
type of mentality is far more obnoxious than our own and that our
civilization is teetering on the brink of self destruction.) why
couldn't this super tough highly teched civilization did exist, they
may be capable of doing severe damage simply through communcation.
i.e.
   1) They could communicate to us a cure for cancer that was
      actually a very subtle poison that was airborn and did
      not take affect for n years.

   2) Tell us of a new and safe energy source that is actually
      a quark bomb. (Kills / destroys buildings etc. but does
      not destroy atmosphere or produce radiation.)

   3) Mass hypnotism followed by mass suicide.

   4) Help me here folks. How else do you cause genocide by remote control?

I find this no more bizarre than the concept of this type of
civilization and a hell of a lot cheaper than sending their
starfleet.

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

Date: 28 Aug 88 19:26:51 GMT
From: dasys1![e-mail]  (Tom Neff)
Subject: Re: access to space; how to deny

All this chatter about how to take out a shuttle is going to have ears
waggling at NSA, folks.  Watch your backs!

That said, I second Jim Meritt's concern - was just about to say the
same thing.  You don't need to wait for boost phase.  Once cryos are
aboard, STS is a huge bomb.  It wouldn't take much to do the job right
there on the pad.

Nor do you really need such direct technicolor methods to "deny" the US
access to space.  There are a zillion failure points in the whole
system.  How many people wondered where the ammonium perchlorate came
from until last month?  Do we have another crawler handy?  How's the
guard on the OPF or VAB during off-mission cycles?  Are things pretty
stable politically in, say, Dakar?

As we know from nail-biting current experience, a stray puff of H2 or
an out-of-round clamp can set the schedule back days or weeks.  You have
just got to believe that if some sinister Unseen Presence ever gave the
order, we could be set back half a year or more.  Maybe a critical
half year depending on what's going on.

Nor would there likely be any conveniently incriminating Cuban SAM tailfin
lying around afterwards.  More likely you'd have yet another "terrorist
incident" with no one to go to war against.

--
Tom Neff            UUCP: ...!cmcl2!phri!dasys1!tneff
    "None of your toys    CIS: 76556,2536           MCI: TNEFF
     will function..."    GEnie: TOMNEFF           BIX: t.neff (no kidding)

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

Date: 27 Aug 88 01:00:27 GMT
From: amdahl!ems!nis!meccts!meccsd![e-mail]  (Michael V. Stein)
Subject: Re: plutonium

In article <880825130944.0000072C.ABAY.AA@Virginia> [e-mail] (=3545***) writes:
>Someone wrote in suggesting that we dump plutonium into the sun and kill
>two birds with one stone: getting dangerously radioactive stuff off of the Earth
>and also once the plutonium was in the sun it would be ionized and therefore
>be detected by an alien race (if they are equipped with a damn good s[ppectro-
>meter).

Plutonium is far too valuable of an energy source to go throw it away.
Even if we could, which as Mr. Plait later explains is probabally
impossible, it would be one of the most stupid ideas ever implemented
by anyone on this planet - or probably any other planet for that
matter.

--
Michael V. Stein - Minnesota Educational Computing Corp. - Technical Services
{bungia,cbosgd,uiucdcs,umn-cs}!meccts!mvs  or  [e-mail]

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

End of SPACE Digest V8 #354
*******************