Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/mac/TEXT/SPACEDIG/V08/V8_361.TXT

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Subject: SPACE Digest V8 #361

SPACE Digest                                      Volume 8 : Issue 361

Today's Topics:
         Re: Are we ready for terraforming???
         Re: The sun as a trashcan (was : Plutonium)
           Re: access to space; how to deny
                Re: plutonium
         Re: SDI, Asats, and access to orbit
                   Re: SETI
               Re: Berserker hypothesis
                 NASA Select
     Unmanned w/old SRBs (was Re: space news from July 11 AW&ST)
          Overpopulation is not our problem
                   Re: SDI
         Re: Are we ready for terraforming???
              Re: Orbital Mech Algorithm
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 31 Aug 88 22:50:05 GMT
From: [e-mail]  (John S. Watson)
Subject: Re: Are we ready for terraforming???


People should stop trying to cure the symptoms and realize
what the problem is:

(In my best Sam Kenasen (sp?) voice )

THERE'S TO MANY PEOPLE!
OVERPOPULATION IS THE PROBLEM!
HAVE FEWER BABIES!

Actually, I don't think all our current environmental problems are caused
by overpopulation ... just a big hunk.

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

Date: 30 Aug 88 14:37:46 GMT
From: uplherc!esunix![e-mail]  (Bob Pendleton)
Subject: Re: The sun as a trashcan (was : Plutonium)

Dumping nuclear waste in space is one of the repeating topics in this
news group. It turns out that hard landing the stuff on the moon is
the most cost effective way of getting rid of the stuff in space.

The real question is why would anyone want to spend the money and take
the risks involved in launching the stuff? I can almost see why fear
of high level nuclear waste would make people want it off the planet,
but spending billions of dollars to throw away a multibillion dollar
resource like the worlds plutonium supply seems simply insane.

If we do decide to dump the stuff in space (and what ever ocean we
launch over), I hope we are smart enough to dump it on the moon or in
orbits that don't go too near the sun. At least then we can retrieve
it after we realize what we've done.

            Bob P.

P.S.

The US government has paid for many studies of the "proper" way to
dispose of high level nuclear waste. The same technique has been
proposed many times. Simply put, bury it deep in large blocks of
basalt, where large is roughly the size of your average mountain. Back
filled with ceramics and crushed basalt the decay heat of the waste
should fuse the surrounding material into an extremely hard nodule.

To the best of my knowledge this has not been tested. Nor has it ever
been seriously considered as a waste disposal technique by the federal
government, it seems it costs too much. I'll bet it costs less than
launching the waste into space.
--
Bob Pendleton @ Evans & Sutherland
UUCP Address:  {decvax,ucbvax,allegra}!decwrl!esunix!bpendlet
Alternate:     utah-cs!esunix!bpendlet
        I am solely responsible for what I say.

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

Date: 31 Aug 88 04:15:00 GMT
From: a.cs.uiuc.edu!m.cs.uiuc.edu![e-mail]
Subject: Re: access to space; how to deny


/* Written 12:26 pm  Aug 29, 1988 by [e-mail] in m.cs.uiuc.edu:sci.space */
Actually, I think the major remaining single-point failure mode in the
system is the VAB itself.
/* End of text from m.cs.uiuc.edu:sci.space */

Uh, isn't NASA 905 also a single point of failure?  Seems that the STS
is pretty useless without the carrier aircraft to herd it around the
country -- and the mods to a stock 747 are non-trivial.

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

Date: 31 Aug 88 18:00:00 GMT
From: necntc!primerd!bree![e-mail]
Subject: Re: plutonium


OK - I've imagined it. Is it possible to build explosion proof containers?
There is certainly technology to keep flight recorders intact through a
plane crash. Would more of the same work for a rocket explosion?

Was anything that survived the Challenger explosion meant to?

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

Date: 31 Aug 88 06:41:14 GMT
From: tektronix!percival!bucket![e-mail]  (Leonard Erickson)
Subject: Re: SDI, Asats, and access to orbit

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Bob Gray) writes:
<To me there is only one defense system which could possibly
<work. Get colonies of people as widely spread over the
<whole solar system as possible so that it is physically
<impossible for any one colony or group of colonies to
<threaten or attack all the others at the same time.

Step back a century or three, change "solar system" to world, and you
have an "inarguably true" statement, but one that is patently false
*now*. By the time we have major colonies spread across the solar
system, we will be quite capable of threatening each other even at
those distances.

Running away is *never* a long-term solution.
--
Leonard Erickson        ...!tektronix!reed!percival!bucket!leonard
CIS: [70465,203]
"I used to be a hacker. Now I'm a 'microcomputer specialist'.
You know... I'd rather be a hacker."

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

Date: 31 Aug 88 06:47:07 GMT
From: tektronix!percival!bucket![e-mail]  (Leonard Erickson)
Subject: Re: SETI

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Henry Spencer) writes:
<In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:
<>     Maybe I'm an optimist, but I don't believe that such vicious
<>civilizations exist...
<
<I don't believe that they exist.  On the other hand I don't believe that
<they don't exist, either.  There is no evidence to justify either belief.
<
<> or even if they did, that they could actually
<>traverse space to come here and "silence" us.  The energy requirements
<>are just too great...
<
<An 1888 electrical engineer would have said the same thing about the energy
<requirements of any large 1988 city.

Henry, any guesses as to how big a probe we could send to say, Alpha Centauri,
if we didn't care about the cost (in the same sense that the Soviets don't
care about their defense spending). By we, I mean the goverments of Earth.

Say an Oriion powered probe using the existsing nuclear arsenals?
--
Leonard Erickson        ...!tektronix!reed!percival!bucket!leonard
CIS: [70465,203]
"I used to be a hacker. Now I'm a 'microcomputer specialist'.
You know... I'd rather be a hacker."

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

Date: 31 Aug 88 12:26:39 GMT
From: aplcen!aplcomm!warper.jhuapl.edu![e-mail]  (Tony Nardo)
Subject: Re: Berserker hypothesis

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:
>    Now maybe the Berserkers were originally programmed to be very quiet
>between executions, and carefully designed to prevent mutations in their
>goals.  But they would be present in such large numbers across the galaxy
>that sooner or later a near fatal run-in with a comet, or radiation from a
>stellar flare would modify the program in one in such a way as to remove its
>inhibitions against change.  That event would seed a Darwinian evolution
>of self-reproducing Berserker-derived machines that would acquire the
>survival-oriented goals of normal life.  You can't fool Mother Nature
>forever.

Not necessarily.  Expose a silicon chip to radiation and you have a useless
chip.  Expose vacuum tubes to radiation (let's keep an open mind here :-)
and your vacuum tubes remain in the same state.  Expose an optically-based
circuit to radiation and - hmm, anyone out there got an optical circuit to
try this on?

Software/hardware doesn't mutate.  Fail, yes.  Mutate, no.

As far as a near fatal run-in with a comet, why would that cause change?
Fear?  Instinct for self-preservation?

Of course, if the "berserkers" are organically-based computers then I'd
concede your point - but then, they'd just be another life form (a vicious
one, but still a life form) and wouldn't really fit the berserker role.

==============================================================================
ARPA:   @aplvax.jhuapl.edu:trn@warper       \
        [e-mail]  }  one of these should work
UUCP:    {backbone!}aplvax!warper!trn       /
USnail: c/o Johns Hopkins University/APL, Room 7-53, Johns Hopkins Road
    Laurel, Md. 20707

50% of my opinions are claimed by various federal, state and local governments.
The other 50% are mine to dispense with as I see fit.
==============================================================================

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

Date: 16 Aug 88 16:19:20 GMT
From: [e-mail]  (Michael Linn)
Subject: NASA Select

I've heard a lot of mention about "NASA Select", which is presumably
some sort of cable TV channel.

How can one get access to it?
Is it available nationwide or only in certain regions?
Is there a fee to subscribe to it?

Would someone please fill me in on the details?

                                                  Thanks.

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

Date: 31 Aug 88 21:43:56 GMT
From: dasys1![e-mail]  (Tom Neff)
Subject: Unmanned w/old SRBs (was Re: space news from July 11 AW&ST)

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Henry Spencer) writes:
>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.

OK, but remember something else I said in the >> article: you don't
have to be sitting in the crew module to die in a Shuttle accident.
Wouldn't NATO airshows still have gotten the kibosh if all 3 pilots had
ejected safely at Ramstein?

>>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.

Yes, but the NRC doesn't really have any better basis for making a
statement like that, than NASA does for implying we won't lose one.
Sure, if we used the fleet for 30+ years and expanded it to 10
orbiters, losses would be inevitable.  They would also be easier to
take.  What we cannot afford to do is ace one of the remaining three
right now.  Playing games with unmanned flights for the sake of getting
some use out of the flawed-design SRBs strikes me as unwise.  (As your
AW&ST synopsis noted, I'm hardly alone.)  It would certainly tie up
Columbia for more months of retrofit downtime, for one thing.  And
it would introduce another untried component into the system.

If we must use the old SRBs, I say let's strap them onto an ELV core
and get some iron up there.  Our precious orbiter fleet, AND the people
who make them go, deserve only the safest hardware available.
--
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: 1 Sep 88 01:34:21 GMT
From: sm.unisys.com!csun!polyslo![e-mail]  (The Math Hacker)
Subject: Overpopulation is not our problem

In <[e-mail]> csustan!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!watson proclaims:
>THERE'S TOO MANY PEOPLE!
>OVERPOPULATION IS THE PROBLEM!
>HAVE FEWER BABIES!
>Actually, I don't think all our current environmental problems are caused
>by overpopulation ... just a big hunk.

You're talking to the wrong people.  The U.S. is NOT currently overpopulated.
It just seems that way because of overcrowded cities.  Also, the big reason
for a lot of our environmental problems is that we've become a very urban
nation, and crowd ourselves into places like Seattle, Los Angeles, New York,
Dallas, etc., subjecting ourselves to problems that go with them.

In fact, we may have a problem with the size of our gene pool.  There is a
fine line about when a population's gene pool is large enough and diverse
enough to continue advancing genetically.  With not enough babies being born,
we're treading that fine line now, but since we allow so much immigration
thats not a great problem, yet.  Mexico on the other hand...

This is off the top of my head from books I've read.  Please correct me if
some of it is wrong.

Also, in a space-related note, does anyone have the revised shuttle manifest.
If it has already been posted I must have missed it.  Could someone send me a
copy?

--
James A. Salter  --  Yes, math majors can use UNIX(tm), too...
[e-mail]       | sin(x)/n = 6   (Cancel the n's!)
...!ucbvax!voder!polyslo!jsalter   |     "Type h for help." -- rn

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

Date: 31 Aug 88 16:05:40 GMT
From: att!ihnp4!twitch!hoqax![e-mail]  (LARRY GEARY)
Subject: Re: SDI

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (David P. Hamilton) writes:
>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Mike Van Pelt) writes:
>>In article <[e-mail]> David P. Hamilton writes:
>>>Another argument (sorry, I'm not being as brief as I'd promised) has
>>>undoubtedly been raised before, although I haven't heard a plausible
>>>response to it.  Any SDI system worth its salt will be capable of
>>>controlling access to orbit at the whim of its owners.  Do SDI
>>>advocates really want to place this power in the hands of a single
>>>government, even our own?

You don't need an SDI to control access to orbit. The Iranians could deny
the U.S. access to space by placing one of their speedboats with sailors
with shoulder launched missiles off Cocoa Beach. In fact, anyone else with
the desire to do this could probably pull it off, even an individual. Isn't
the Ariane launch site near the ocean? How about Vandenberg AF base? Only
the Soviets have a reasonably secure, inland launch site.

--
 Larry Geary                                              | Bush     49 |
 att!hoqax!lmg        Think globally ... Post locally     | Dukakis  47 |
 [e-mail]                                        | Public    0 |

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

Date: 1 Sep 88 06:05:45 GMT
From: thumper![e-mail]  (Phil R. Karn)
Subject: Re: Are we ready for terraforming???

Sulfur dioxide is only one cause of acid rain. The other is nitric acid,
formed from nitrogen oxides and water. Nitrogen oxides are byproducts of
almost any high temperature combustion in air, even when "clean" fuels
like hydrogen are burned.  They are also formed naturally by lightning,
although I suspect this is a relatively minor amount.

Phil

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

Date: 1 Sep 88 05:54:25 GMT
From: tektronix!reed![e-mail]  (P Douglas Reeder)
Subject: Re: Orbital Mech Algorithm


  I, too wrote an orbital simulation using the simple equasions.
The spacecraft was accelerated by the sun and as many planets as you wanted
to add, so no adjustment was needed to go into orbit around planets.
You could fly around from planet to planet and find out how long it took
you. Especially fun is flying around the Earth moon system, because of the
wierd orbits you can do.  It's lots of fun to write such a program.

--
Doug Reeder                           USENET: ...!tektronix!reed!douglas
10 Cyclopedia Square             from BITNET: [e-mail]
Terminus City                     from  ARPA: tektronix!reed!douglas@berkley
Terminus,The Foundation               Box 502 Reed College,Portland,OR 97202

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

End of SPACE Digest V8 #361
*******************