Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/mac/TEXT/SPACEDIG/V09_2/V9_250.TXT

Internet Message Format | 1991-07-08 | 20KB

Return-path: <[e-mail]>
X-Andrew-Authenticated-as: 7997;andrew.cmu.edu;Ted Anderson
Received: from holmes.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/MY01Try00UkZ04mU5M>;
          Mon, 20 Feb 89 08:51:51 -0500 (EST)
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Reply-To: [e-mail]
From: [e-mail]
To: [e-mail]
Date: Mon, 20 Feb 89 08:51:42 -0500 (EST)
Subject: SPACE Digest V9 #250

SPACE Digest                                      Volume 9 : Issue 250

Today's Topics:
              private spaceplane
              Re: 1992 moon base
               Re: the un/manned debate
           Re: Manned vs unmanned space exploration
              Energia questions
Cosmos mission results and future U.S./USSR missions announced (Forwarded)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 16 Feb 89 17:36:11 GMT
From: asuvax!enuxha![e-mail]  (Norman C. Kluksdahl)
Subject: private spaceplane

A while ago, I asked for a showing of interest in a privately-run project
to investigate the feasibility of a small-scale spaceplane.  Lots of you
(i.e. 40+) responded in some way or another.  This was just before
Christmas, and I tried to e-mail a followup letter to everyone.  Unfortunately,
at that juncture, we were having massive problems with our mailer, and I'm
not certain what did or didn't make it through.  Soooo........

Here goes again.  (For all interested parties, I have compiled a preliminary
mailing list.  Ask for copies.)

What I propose is a 4 part project.  The first two phases can be accomplished
without vast sums of capital, and will, at the very least, be a great
learning experience for all involved.  The phases are:
1)  Definition of the goal.  What is the design supposed to accomplish?
2)  Selection of a design.  Things get quite involved here, but it's still
    relatively cheap and fun.
3)  Securing funding and construction.  Here is where the headaches start.
    But several possible solutions have been proposed for funding, and if
    the project goes anywhere, the EAA has *lots* of construction expertise.
4)  Operation.  Paydirt.

Even if the thing never gets past phase 2, I think we could collectively
have lots of interesting experiences with such a project.
If this sounds interesting, e-mail an answer, resume, whatever.  If you
would like to know who responded initially, or if you didn't get my
followup message and would like it, you have but to ask.

(Special thanks to Dani Eder, Dale Amon, Henry Spencer, and Charles Brunow
for their helpful discussions and suggestions--even when they didn't know
that's what they were doing!)


Norman Kluksdahl              Arizona State University
            ..ncar!noao!asuvax!enuxha!kluksdah

standard disclaimer implied

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

Date: 16 Feb 89 05:37:40 GMT
From: ndcheg!uceng![e-mail]  (daniel mocsny)
Subject: Re: 1992 moon base

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Henry Spencer) writes:
> In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (daniel mocsny) writes:
> >...To the extent the Antarctic winter is similar to life on the moon...
> There is one obvious dissimilarity:  the winter staff in Antarctica know
> that they're in "maintenance mode", with all the real activity waiting
> for the summer.  This will affect motivation.

Correct, and that is why I included the disclaimer "To the extent..."
I think we can safely count on at least the early lunar staffs to
display exceptional motivation and self-sacrifice, perhaps even
heroism. Living conditions that would amount to banishment in
Antarctica would probably appear as an unequaled opportunity to the
early lunar colonists. I have enough experience in several fields to
have some idea of what highly motivated people can do.

However, I also know how conditions that require tremendous motivation
have a way of eventually leading to burnout. An athlete will gladly
suffer deprivations in training to attain a goal, and will suffer
intense pain in competition, but will (s)he be able to sustain heroic
efforts indefinitely? Sports psychologists know the answer: no. The
athlete must schedule her/his training and competition around the
goal of hitting between one to three performance peaks per season.

The lunar staffs will enjoy the attention and sympathies of most of
humanity, at least initially. Ultimately, however, the moon base will
be yesterday's news, things will get a little slow at Luna 1, and the
staffs will be left with the reality of their situation. If it's
inherently a bad situation, they aren't going to be able to ignore
that forever. Then when we blow another shuttle and they're looking
at a few years until the next re-supply, they'll need motivation
in spades.

This is the reason for my interest in the information-handling
problems associated with space colonization. Productivity requires
three ingredients: materials, energy, and intangibles relating to
information: know-how, intelligence, judgement, data-gathering and
processing, control, organization, adaptation, learning. Notice that I
have no single word to sum up the vital third leg of the triad. That
implies how little we (OK, I) understand what we have historically
taken largely for granted.

A little reflection shows that the three legs of the triad can
partially substitute for each other. This is important for space
colonization, because the third ingredient can have arbitrarily close
to zero mass, depending on our skill at packaging it. And the third
ingredient is the primary factor that determines our psychological
well-being.

We are information-processing organisms much more than we are
materials-processing organisms. Humans need a satisfying and
relatively benign information (i.e., sensory and thought) environment.
We need a variety of challenging (but not impossible) problems to
solve. We need to interact regularly with other intelligences. We need
to have our visual and auditory systems massively and favorably
stimulated. We need opportunities to exercise power and control over
our surroundings. We need variety.

And that is why we need robots, AI, pocket supercomputers, teleop,
virtual reality, global hypertext, gigabit networks, machine learning,
Von Neumann replicators, nanotech, the whole nine yards (did I miss
any buzzwords?). The material costs of sustaining, not to mention
expanding, human life on the moon will be well beyond what we can
satisfy with human labor. We can't just dump people in cans and expect
them to huddle heroically while we try to build a reliable launcher to
get them back home. We have to give them the tools to not simply
survive on the moon, but to take it.

Cheers,

Dan Mocsny
[e-mail]

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

Date: 16 Feb 89 05:29:09 GMT
From: rochester!rit!ritcv![e-mail]
Subject: Re: the un/manned debate

Ugggg!

I have just about enough of this manned/unmanned thing.  I think
we all understand fairly well that both are needed.  Both the manned
and unmanned programs provide results (both tangible and intangible).

Most of the ideas that people propose seem to be thoughtless comments
about what the ideal space program would be.  Perhaps a little more
thought could go into possible solutions to our current
situation--not fantsy solutions grabbed from pulp science fiction.

for example.  The scientific probe activists...  while your
telling us the great virtues of 30 billion dollars worth have you ever
considered what we would do with all this information?  Where we would
store it?  Already we are on the verge of saturating nasa's NASCOM
network.  with the HST and the other great observatory programs going into
service, we will rapidly climb into the terabytes a year worth of
information being transmitted from space to earth.  We need to be
continously thinking about new technologies to retreive, store, and
process this information.

I don't mean this to be a flame, (although there are doubtless those
who will take it as such.), But I bet there are those out there who
feel as I do, and would much rather see debate of issues a little
more pertinent to our present world.

Also, what about areas in  applicable space research?  Not space
based manufacturing, or colonization.  Both of these ideas are decades
into the future (unless we are visited by aliens who grant us wild
technologies).  But areas where space help to discover new processes
that may be duplicated on earth.  Advances in crystalography,
metalurgy, pharmacuticles(sp?), and other long unspellable sciences.

We know that we need to take a two pronged approach.  Challanger
has told us that much.  But what specific areas of research are we
looking forward to in the near years. How can nasa work against
a tightening budget to keep it's programs active?  Big ticket items
are always much easier to get public support for then smaller
less noticable scientific missions.  What does congress want out
of a space program?  Does anyone really know?  And is there really
a tangible market for private industry research and developement
of space?  I tend to doubt it.  I believe that space will remain
a government controlled and operated thing until the government can
start to prove that it will be worthwhile for private industry to
make the investement necessary.

Although we tend to think in great leaps and bounds, unfortunately,
the best research is that which is done slowly, and one step at a
time.

Michael Kirby

[e-mail]
[e-mail]
rochester!ritcv!mpk9172

***
"The intelligence of the masses is inversely proportional to it's size"

"Ray Tracing done here....Cheap!"

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

Date: 16 Feb 89 10:54:05 GMT
From: cs.utexas.edu!sm.unisys.com!csun!polyslo![e-mail]  (THE VIKING)
Subject: Re: Manned vs unmanned space exploration

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Nick Szabo) writes:
>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (John Roberts) writes:
>>From: cs.utexas.edu!sm.unisys.com!csun!polyslo![e-mail]
  [John Roberts and I state a postition defending manned space as R&D]

>!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!?????????????????????????????????????????
>Two posters now have advocated putting money in *unproductive* ventures,
>for the very reason that they are unproductive, and skimping on productive
>ventures!  This sort of thinking scares the bejeebers out of folks who are
>considering investing their money in space.

Nick's posting attacks Robert's and my postings by simplifying their content
to a single, obviously contradictory sentence. Not a very ethical way of
discussing things Nick.

The basic premise in my posting is that manned space research is basic R&D.
That means that economic return on investment does not apply. It is also
wrong to try to catagorize some types of basic R&D as more important than
others. It might be possible to make some sort of a case that physics is more
important than chemistry which is more important astronomy, that unmanned
space R&D is more important than manned, etc. (pick your own peculiar R&D
ordering). The fundamental point is that they are all important. We need many
and more types of basic R&D, not less. The US spends less than 1% of its GNP
on basic R&D, so if you think unmanned space R&D is underfunded, fight to get
its funding increased. Fighting to get the funding for other types of R&D
(for example manned space R&D) decreased is only negative.

Most people in this discussion do seem to agree that manned space R&D is
important in general, including Nick Szabo and Paul Dietz. I believe it's
important because the event of man's expansion into the solar system is of
great importance. Nick and Paul do state that it is unimportant now. This
is wrong because knowledge gained from basic R&D is valuble regardless (within
reason) of when it is learned. Afterall when is the right time to learn about
the nature of subatomic particles, or the structure of DNA, or how to build a
transister? There are times when research is not feasible, but there've been
men in space for 30 years now, the Soviet Union has a permanently manned
station, etc. Paul says that manned space won't be important for 40 years. I
don't think it's possible to predict technological advance with any accuracy
beyond 25 years, if that. When the time to move into space does come we will
need a large body of technical and general knowledge inorder to do so. Manned
space R&D is clearly both feasable and worthwhile NOW.

Some things in Paul's postings suggest that he does support manned space R&D
now in general, just not NASA's current program. At least to the extent of
developing manned booster technology.
Paul Dietz writes:
>>Did I suggest we not do research on better boosters?
Nick Szabo also supports research into tele-operation, from the perspective
of eventual use by men in space.
I personally believe that manned space R&D should focus on reducing manned
launch costs before doing anything else. I believe in this sense that virtually
everybody in this group supports somekind of manned space R&D, with the
exception of fanatics like Chip Olsen who don't support any R&D unless it is in
their area of concern (ecology in Chip's case).

I do believe that the space station is a mistake at this time. In fact I
agree with Henry Spencer that it would be best if we simply disbanded NASA
(with the exception of JPL) and turned it over to private industry with a
policy of payment on orbital delivery only. This is difficult because it
requires cutting the careers of tens of thousands of talented and dedicated
employees off at the knees. I do have a few words in NASA's defense. They do
agree that less expensive launchers are important before building a station,
that's why the shuttle was built in the first place. It is perhaps too
difficult politically for NASA to declare the shuttle a failure and start over.
And that means they have to use it for something, so they're moving on to the
station despite the inflated cost.

John L. McKernan.                    Student, Computer Science, Cal Poly S.L.O.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
.signature currently under government sponsored basic research. Results
guaranteed to advance science, satisfy every special interest group, generate
2000 times the wealth expended, and show up the Russians expected REAL SOON NOW.

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

Date: Thu, 16 Feb 89 09:57:51 PDT
From: Peter Scott <[e-mail]>
Subject: Energia questions
X-Vms-Mail-To: EXOS%"[e-mail]"

Those four boosters on Energia are liquid fuel, not solid, right?
What altitude do they separate at?  Are they recovered and reused?
What about the main rocket?  How close does it come to being able to
go into LEO?  Could it do so if it jettisoned the engines and just
send the shell into orbit?  If so, how come the Russkies haven't built
an orbiting facility this way?

Peter Scott ([e-mail])

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

Date: 16 Feb 89 22:08:12 GMT
From: [e-mail]  (Peter E. Yee)
Subject: Cosmos mission results and future U.S./USSR missions announced (Forwarded)

Paula Cleggett
Headquarters, Washington, D.C.                February 16, 1989

C. J. Fenrick
Ames Research Center, Mountain View, Calif.


RELEASE:  89-18

COSMOS MISSION RESULTS AND FUTURE U.S./USSR MISSIONS ANNOUNCED


     The science results of the collaborative U.S./USSR
biosatellite mission from Cosmos 1887 have confirmed the adverse
physiological and biomedical effects of prolonged space flight.

     The analyzed mammalian biospecimens suggest that adolescent
vertebrate animals will experience significant alterations in
calcium metabolism, immune functions and musculoskeletal mass and
structure.

     The Soviet Union launched Cosmos 1887 on Sept. 29, 1987, for
a 12-plus-day mission.  Cosmos 1887 was the sixth in a series of
unmanned Soviet satellites that flew U.S. and USSR life sciences
experiments.  This cooperative activity is being carried out
under the l987 U.S./USSR agreement concerning Cooperation in the
Exploration and Use of Outer Space for Peaceful Purposes.

     The U.S. experiments on Cosmos 1887 investigated the effects
of space flight on the major body systems, including skeletal
bones and muscles, nervous system, heart, liver and several
glands and blood.  Special tissue culture studies, using
pituitary cells, studied the growth hormone.  Spleen and bone
marrow cells were used to investigate the effects of microgravity
on the immune system.  The U.S. also had a radiation measurement
experiment on the spacecraft.

     The Soviet experiments were developed and managed by the
Institute for Biomedical Problems, Moscow.  The USSR provided the
U.S. tissue samples from 5 of 10 rats that were flown aboard the
spacecraft.

     The majority of the scientific specimens were returned to
the U.S. in late October 1987 and distributed to the scientific
teams around the country.  The remainder of the biosamples
arrived at NASA's Ames Research Center, Mountian View, Calif.,
for analysis in early November.

     The science results of Cosmos 1887 bone studies indicated
structural changes occurred without significant changes in the
mineral content.  For example, the bending strength of the rat
humerus bone was decreased by 40 percent and the compression
strength of the lumbar vertebra was decreased by 27 percent.

     Muscle studies on the rats showed that, while individual
muscle weights were similar for both flight and ground control
animal groups, the fast muscle types showed significant decrease
in cross-sectional area, atrophy and extracellular edema, while
at the same time showing increased necrotic fibers and motor end
plate degradation.  Slow muscle types showed little evidence of
atrophy but some biochemical changes.  The mitochondria in the
heart muscle also showed degeneration and fiber changes.

     Observations on other body organs and physiological systems
confirmed what was learned on previous flight research
experiments, such as a decreased mass and spermatogenesis in the
testes, decreased growth hormone release by the anterior
pituitary cells, increased cholesterol, triglycerides and organ
weight in the liver and a reduced immune response suggested by
several types of measures involving the spleen, bone marrow and
blood.

     The U.S. Space Biology and Medicine Program has received
many benefits from scientific cooperation with the USSR,
including the opportunity to conduct experiments on the
physiological effects of 12-plus-days of space flight on rats and
rhesus monkeys.  This length of the Cosmos missions is
approximately twice the exposure time in microgravity that is
presently experienced in U.S. Spacelab flights on the Shuttle.

     While a comparable 8-day U.S. mission with rats is expected
to fly in mid-1990, a U.S. mission with rhesus monkeys is not
expected until late 1992 or 1993.  These early Cosmos flights
serve as a testbed for the development of U.S. scientific
experiments, technology and flight hardware.  In addition, both
sides benefit from the sharing of research data in all areas of
space biology and medicine.

     The U.S. has three opportunities to fly experiments with the
Soviets in the next few years.  The USSR has invited the U.S. to
participate on the USSR 1989 and 1991 biosatellite missions.

     The science focus will be in biomedical research with the
following payload specimens:  Rhesus monkeys, male wistar rats,
fish, fish eggs, newts, drosophila, beetles, seeds, unicellular
organism and planaria.

     In reciprocal fashion, Soviet scientists have been invited
to participate in analysis of specimens from the U.S. Shuttle
Spacelab life sciences mission to be launched in June 1990.

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

End of SPACE Digest V9 #250
*******************