Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/mac/TEXT/SPACEDIG/V08/V8_357.TXT

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

Return-path: <[e-mail]>
X-Andrew-Authenticated-as: 0;andrew.cmu.edu;Network-Mail
Received: from po2.andrew.cmu.edu via trymail for +dist+/afs/andrew.cmu.edu/usr1/ota/space/[e-mail] (->+dist+/afs/andrew.cmu.edu/usr1/ota/space/space.dl) (->ota+space.digests)
          ID </afs/andrew.cmu.edu/usr1/ota/Mailbox/po2.andrew.cmu.edu.4295.0.0>;
          Mon, 12 Sep 88 00:46:51 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from po3.andrew.cmu.edu via qmail
          ID </afs/andrew.cmu.edu/service/mailqs/q002/QF.po3.andrew.cmu.edu.232b568b.2f7f4b>;
          Mon, 12 Sep 88 00:46:12 -0400 (EDT)
Received: by po3.andrew.cmu.edu (5.54/3.15) id <AA03897> for +dist+/afs/andrew.cmu.edu/usr1/ota/space/space.dl; Mon, 12 Sep 88 00:44:07 EDT
Received: by angband.s1.gov id AA06930; Sun, 11 Sep 88 01:06:04 PDT
    id AA06930; Sun, 11 Sep 88 01:06:04 PDT
Date: Sun, 11 Sep 88 01:06:04 PDT
From: Ted Anderson <[e-mail]>
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Subject: SPACE Digest V8 #357

SPACE Digest                                      Volume 8 : Issue 357

Today's Topics:
          Re: space news from July 11 AW&ST
         Re: The sun as a trashcan (was : Plutonium)
    Re: SOlar System trashcans (Was:The Sun as a trashcan)
 Were the Russians right about 007?   [New stuff on KAL 007 from CBC]
    Re: SOlar System trashcans (Was:The Sun as a trashcan)
               Re: SPACE Digest V8 #340
                   Re: Seti
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 29 Aug 88 17:21:04 GMT
From: attcan!utzoo![e-mail]  (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: space news from July 11 AW&ST

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Tom Neff) writes:
>Excuse me, but are we really supposed to believe that omitting the
>flight crew makes using the old SRBs an acceptable risk?

Rationally, you have a point.  Congress is not rational.  Losing hardware
is troublesome, but it would not be anything like the political disaster
that more dead astronauts would be.

>Challenger is
>every bit as "dead" as its crew, and we cannot afford to lose another
>orbiter under any circumstances...

Then we'll have to ground the shuttle permanently.  There is no way to
fly it without risking loss of another orbiter.  The NRC report on
shuttle frequency put it even more strongly:  if the shuttle continues
flying, another orbiter *WILL* be lost eventually.
--
Intel CPUs are not defective,  |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
they just act that way.        | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry [e-mail]

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

Date: 30 Aug 88 00:54:23 GMT
From: attcan!utgpu!utzoo![e-mail]  (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: The sun as a trashcan (was : Plutonium)

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Joe Keane) writes:
>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_).

Actually it has to be Venus, because our current boosters can't reach
Mercury directly.  (Mariner 10 got to Mercury via Venus.)  I suspect it
doesn't help enough.  The best way to get really close to the Sun, in
fact, is a Jupiter flyby (!).  Remember, velocity is what counts, and
Jupiter's gravitational field is so hefty that it does a much better job
on velocity changes than Venus would.

The problem with any such scheme, though, is that suddenly our trashcans
can't be just inert lumps of metal.  Now they need precision navigation
equipment, plus power, plus communications, plus a propulsion system for
course corrections.  New failure modes also appear:  what happens if you
lose guidance on a trashcan before Jupiter flyby?

>>The easiest way to get rid of nuclear waste would probably be to
>>use hard land it on the moon...
>
>Please don't do this!

Why not?  Assuming you have enough control to put them down within, say,
50 km of a specific aiming point, of course.
--
Intel CPUs are not defective,  |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
they just act that way.        | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry [e-mail]

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

Date: 29 Aug 88 15:44:31 GMT
From: rebel!didsgn![e-mail]  (didsgn)
Subject: Re: SOlar System trashcans (Was:The Sun as a trashcan)

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Joe Keane) writes:
] >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!

Seriously, the idea doesn't seem that stupid.
Is your objection one of principle, or do you have specific reasons?
(I am not flaming- honestly! Just would like to know your opinion...)

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

Date: 29 Aug 88 14:46:12 GMT
From: attcan!lsuc!maccs![e-mail]  (gordan)
Subject: Were the Russians right about 007?   [New stuff on KAL 007 from CBC]

[followups directed to the politics groups only]


In article <[e-mail]> in misc.headlines,
       [e-mail] (Gary Dare) writes:
-I was listening to CBC's "Sunday Morning" on my shortwave this
-morning and they had an incredible documentary on new evidence
-of KAL 007 being purposefully sent into Soviet airspace.  Among
-the points that have surfaced over the past five years:
-
- [numerous points omitted]


"In the early hours of September 1, 1983, a Soviet fighter plane shot down
Korean Airlines flight 007 as it flew without authorization over the
Soviet Union's airspace.  The Boeing 747 plunged into the Sea of Japan,
killing all 269 passengers and crew."


It is now exactly five years since KAL 007.

An interesting and somewhat disturbing book on the subject is:  SHOOTDOWN,
Flight 007 and the American Connection, by R. W. Johnson (ISBN 0-670-81209-9).
Briefly, the author proposes the unthinkable: that KAL 007 was in fact on a
passive surveillance mission.

According to this premise, the aircraft itself would have carried no
surveillance equipment; rather, it would merely have overflown Soviet
territory as a passive probe in order to trigger the Soviet radar network and
air defense system into action.  Regardless of whether it was intentional or
not, electronic monitoring of Soviet defense installations during KAL 007's
overflight apparently did indeed yield a gold mine of intelligence
information.

Although it is difficult to accept the author's final conclusion, this is not
a typical "conspiracy theory" book.  The exposition is lucid and the arguments
are cogent and to the point; it does not have the outward appearance of merely
jumping to conclusions.  On the whole, it seems to have been carefully written
and argued, and at the very least, it brings up a number of interesting
points:


o The seemingly inexplicable behavior of William Clark, who resigned as
National Security Adviser just six weeks after KAL 007.  In the weeks after
the shootdown, he had failed to attend Cabinet meetings and "did not attend
the special Presidential briefing of leading Congressmen and Senators on the
007 affair -- which even far junior Cabinet members attended." [p. 222]
The implication seems to be that these were the actions of a man with a guilty
conscience.


o Japanese military radar tapes from the Wakkanai installation clearly show
KAL 007 made mysterious changes in course and altitude in the last few minutes
of its flight.  While out of civilian radar range, KAL 007 radioed ground
control and announced a climb to 35 000 ft, but actually dove to 29 000 ft and
then rose again to 32 000 ft; furthermore, it made a change of course that
actually took it deeper into Soviet territory over Sakhalin.  [pp.  24--27]

This information from the radar tapes was read into the records of the
Japanese Diet (parliament) in May 1985.  Nevertheless, the New York Times,
among others, failed to print it.  [p.  221]

Meanwhile, the key USAF radar tapes of 007's flight were destroyed, according
to US Justice Dept. attorney Jan K. von Flatern, after being kept for just
fifteen days and then routinely recycled (i.e. wiped).  [p. 289]


o The routine civilian tapes of 007 talking to its ground controllers at
Anchorage and Narita were not released until September 13, a lengthy and
inexplicable delay.  By contrast, the top-secret transcripts of the Soviet
fighter pilot's conversation with his ground control were produced with a
great flourish at the UN on September 6.

There is in fact some question as to whether the civilian tapes are genuine in
their entirety.  In particular the final words spoken by KAL 007's crew are
rather odd.  A full 38 seconds after the plane was hit, 007 called Tokyo, but
gave only the standard call signal rather than a Mayday distress signal, with
no mention of an attack.  After waiting for an acknowledgement from Tokyo, the
final, fragmentary "rapid decompression" message was sent out.  [p.  27]

Thus Flight 007 was still on the air a full 56 seconds after it was hit,
which, given the tremendous damage found to have been inflicted on both bodies
and wreckage recovered later, seems remarkable.  This is in contrast to both
the Air India flight of June 1985 (destroyed by an on-board bomb) and the
recent Iranian Airlines incident, in which there were no radio transmissions
at all after the explosion.

Finally, the author makes a fairly strong case that intelligence recordings of
Soviet ground-to-air conversations were also made (not just air-to-ground),
but that these have not been released and their existence has never been
admitted to (except for one instance in which Japanese Cabinet Secretary
Masaharu Gotoda inadvertently confirmed their existence in a press
conference).  Curiously, the American press apparently never followed up this
story.  [pp.  169--171]


o "Under US law, because 007 was an American-built plane, with American
passengers aboard, leaving from an American airport, there had legally to be
an investigation into the disaster by the US National Transportation Safety
Board (NTSB).  The NTSB did indeed open just such an investigation but was
summarily (and illegally) ordered by the State Department to halt it and turn
over all its documentation on the disaster.  This was the last ever heard of
these documents, or of the legally necessary inquiry in the US." [p. 227]


o The ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization) report on the affair
devoted only eight lines of a 113-page report to the question of whether KAL
007 might have been on a surveillance mission [p.  231], and concluded that
navigation error may have been responsible.  However, the ICAO Air Navigation
Commission (a specialist technical body) delivered its own report in February
1984, which "rejected the accident scenarios postulated by the first report".
Although it did not establish the exact cause of the aircraft's `diversion
from its flight plan track',  "the ANC's report did not make comfortable
reading and it received remarkably little press coverage." [pp.  235--236]


o There is a chapter on the search effort for the black box.  The author
discusses US deep-sea retrieval technology, including recoveries of lost US
and Soviet submarines [pp.  198--199].  A comparison is made with the Air
India crash, for which the black box was recovered with relative ease.  The
possibility is left open that KAL 007's black box may in fact have been found
(and suppressed).


o In 1978, KAL flight 902 strayed over Soviet territory at Murmansk.  The
pilot, Kim Chang Kyu, ignored Soviet fighters until they fired at his plane
(with some loss of life) and forced it down at a Soviet airfield.  All
passengers and crew were soon released, and there were no lasting
international repercussions.  [pp.  249--250] Several Soviet military
officials, however, were reportedly purged or even shot as a result of the
incident.

There certainly seems to be no lack of a precedent for KAL aircraft straying
into Soviet territory and ignoring attempts to force them to land until fired
upon.


o Two flights took off from Anchorage in roughly the same time slot -- KAL 007
and KAL 015 (with Sen. Jesse Helms aboard the latter).  Oddly enough, KAL 007
almost immediately ceased direct communication with Anchorage ground control,
and despite several direct requests to the contrary, simply relayed messages
through KAL 015.  Also, from times of arrival at various waypoints over the
Pacific, there appear to have been some anomalies in the flight speeds of both
007 and 015.

The pilot of KAL 015, Captain Y. M. Park, did not testify in the lawsuit
brought by relatives of American victims; apparently, he has never answered
questions about the incident. [pp. 291--293]



Probably the most ironic passage in the book reads, in part,

"There is, in a word, some reason to believe that risky schemes could get
hatched in a milieu like this..."

Here [p.  257] and elsewhere [p.  271], the author argues, essentially, in
favor of the notion that covert operations could have been planned and
executed by a small group of people and kept secret from the American public
and even from Cabinet officials like Secretary of State George Shultz.
Ironic, because when the book was written a few years ago, this was mere
speculation; after the Iran-Contra affair came to light, it is known to be
documented fact.


If KAL 007's overflight of Soviet territory was indeed a deliberate
passive surveillance probe, the worst-case scenario envisaged by the
planners would probably have simply been a forced landing on Soviet
territory, much like what happened after the Murmansk incident in 1978,
with no lasting effect on international relations.  However, the pilot,
who had a reputation as a "human computer" for being meticulous and
painstaking, may have decided at the end not to take the fall and the
blame for what would inevitably be explained as an incredibly careless
navigational error.  At the end, he was just minutes from international
airspace, and may have been tempted to take a chance (in any case, the
Japanese military radar tapes leave little doubt that some sort of
evasive action was attempted at the end of the flight).


Naturally, the Soviet reaction to the incident did not incline anyone to
believe them.  Incredible as it seems in today's era of glasnost, it took them
several days to even admit they had shot down a civilian airliner.  They told
a number of blatant lies and withheld information, which did much to turn
world opinion against them even further than the original incident.

Furthermore, the Soviet Union has for most of its existence been an evil
empire in the literal sense, a terrorist state (no smileys).  Any Soviet
statement about a spy mission naturally sounds like a lame, belated, and
incredibly cold-blooded excuse to avoid responsibility for an atrocity.

And yet, there are still questions.  Yes, anyone who says "the US is just as
bad as the Soviet Union" is a fool; yes, the American people would never
tolerate placing innocent lives at risk (even if the worst-case scenario had
merely been a forced landing).  But the American people would never have
tolerated selling arms to the Ayatollah, either... _if_ they had known about
it at the time.

Can we really be sure that the shadow foreign policy pursued by a small,
self-appointed group was limited to just Iran-Contra, or did William Casey and
Co. have their fingers in filthier pies?  Will we ever know?
--
                 Gordan Palameta
            uunet!ai.toronto.edu!utgpu!maccs!gordan

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

Date: 30 Aug 88 10:06:27 GMT
From: agate!stew.ssl.berkeley.edu![e-mail]  (Richard Link)
Subject: Re: SOlar System trashcans (Was:The Sun as a trashcan)

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (didsgn) writes:
>In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Joe Keane) writes:
>] >The easiest way to get rid of nuclear waste would probably be to
>] >use hard land it on the moon.
>
>Seriously, the idea doesn't seem that stupid.

The idea is SILLY! since:
(1) it would cost WAY! too much
(2) nobody in their right mind would allow hazardous! launches of
    very hazardous waste. Doesn't anyone out there remember the
    Challenger? It is much less costly and much less dangerous to
    bury the stuff in the arctic.

...Dr. Richard Link
Space Sciences Laboratory
University of California, Berkeley
[e-mail]

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

Date:         Mon, 29 Aug 88 11:22:31 EDT
From: Richard Layton <[e-mail]>
Subject:      Re: SPACE Digest V8 #340

If a highly developed intelligent life recognizes that we exist, and is
able to monitor our airways, then what more would it have to gain by
making its presence known to us?  --i.e. What do we have to offer, that
it would not already be aware of?

Wouldn't it be much smarter to sit back and watch us develop a little
longer to see in which directions we move.

For any technology we may have developed that it had not, it would be
able to view at its own discretion.  For I am sure it would have better
viewing (both audio and optical).  Indeed, it would have seen how we
developed that technology.

*====================================*================================*
*   Richard Layton                   *   Bitnet:  Rich@Tifton         *
*   Computer Systems Programmer      *   "To know about computer      *
*   Coastal Plain Experiment Station *   intelligence and like it is  *
*   Tifton, Ga  31794                *   to be doomed ..."            *
*   912-386-3385                     *   (P. H. Winston)              *
*====================================*================================*

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

Date: 29 Aug 88 18:51:14 GMT
From: eagle!icdoc!tgould![e-mail]  (Ian Moor)
Subject: Re: Seti


There may only be a small time interval during which a civilization radiates
RF at an easily detectable frequency. How long before we all have cable tv
over fibre optic links ? Or maybe satellites which direct all their output
at the planet. Should we be looking for something else like Infra-red
from power plants?

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

End of SPACE Digest V8 #357
*******************