Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/mac/TEXT/SPACEDIG/V09_5/V9_522.TXT

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Subject: SPACE Digest V9 #522

SPACE Digest                                      Volume 9 : Issue 522

Today's Topics:
Re: Excerpts From Acting Administrator Truly's remarks at the National Space Outlook Conference (Forwarded)
              Re: Outer Space Committee
             Re: [Russians] Lost in Space
              Re: ADA and space station
              Re: Moon landing nostalgia
              Re: Super strings
          Re: Vaguely-space-related queries
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 21 Jun 89 04:28:43 GMT
From: bfmny0![e-mail]  (Tom Neff)
Subject: Re: Excerpts From Acting Administrator Truly's remarks at the National Space Outlook Conference (Forwarded)

Admiral Truly's remarks ably illustrate everything that's wrong with the
US space program.  Let me point out a few words that were NOT mentioned
in that text.

    "Mars"

    "Soviets"

    "Venus"

    "Jupiter"

    "Moonbase"

    "Mercury"

    "Uranus"

    etc.

The primary problem is that there is no damn *mission* here except
place-holding in LEO and in the budget.  We're not shooting for
*anything* in space except a meal ticket.

Let me read into the record some of Jack Kennedy's words from May 1961.
To do so all I have to do is crack Buzz Aldrin's wonderful new book, MEN
FROM EARTH (written with Malcom McConnell, who did the definitive
Challenger book A MAJOR MALFUNCTION).  I recommend this book
enthusiastically to all space buffs as a must-have for the bookshelf.
(If all you can afford is paperback, start watching carefully in summer
1990 or so.)

The President said it was time "...for a great new American
enterprise...  I believe that this nation should commit itself to
achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the
moon and returning him safely to Earth.  No single space project in this
period will be more exciting, or more impressive to mankind, or more
important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so
difficult or expensive to accomplish."

I would like readers of this newsgroup to contemplate *carefully* these
words for a moment.  They are not idle boilerplate -- they hold within
them the seeds of the entire space effort that followed, and in fact
drove *two* nations' energies for nearly a decade to come.

You could practically parse it phrase by phrase.

Imagine it being *time* for a *great new American enterprise.*  Imagine
us actually *starting something new* in 1989, not a pale follow-on of
something we did five years ago, or something the Japanese are already
doing, but something *terrifying* that we're not sure *anyone* can do,
including us.  Just think about that for a moment.

Now imagine us *committing ourselves* to *achieving a goal.*  Not just
sort of limp wristedly agreeing to interim funds for some exploratory
studies, but COMMITTING ourselves to ACHIEVING a GOAL as a nation.

Don't overlook the President's clause in there -- "returning him SAFELY
to Earth."  Who remembers that this all important caveat was in there
from the very challenge that started the program.  We need to think
about astronaut SAFETY and COMFORT and DIGNITY rather than stupid
comsat SCHEDULES.  Right Mr Mulloy?  <cheap shot, forgive me, but I
saw the granite McAuliffe monument this summer and my sobs were the
deepest to the *bone* since Maya Lin's eternal Vietnam memorial hit me>

Now look at what our President saw in his challenge.  He saw *excitement*
(remember when our plans were exciting?  Not the bare fact of orbit,
which can't help but thrill, but rather what we were *doing* with it?),
he saw *difficulty*, and he was totally unafraid to say that he saw
*expense* involved.

...They may have been artifacts of an earlier era (aren't our leaders,
always) but dammit Spock, we had *leadership* in space back then, and
we had *diligence* in LBJ's crucial followup.

Nowadays we have Rotarian boilerplate recited listlessly in underattended
subcommittee hearings, while an entrenched and subsidized LEO contractors'
plutocracy waits for its crumbs.

If you could waft Robert Goddard, N. Tsiolkovsky, Hermann Oberth, Willy
Ley and W. Von Braun via time machine into the visitors' gallery at one
of these House subcommittee chambers, they would be on the next flight
to Beijing or Tokyo faster than you could say "Peenemunde".

I am frankly not sure whether I am making the desired impression with
readers of this article.  It's a hard topic.  What the past thirty years
suggest to me is that we not only need CONCRETE goals in space, we
need EXCITING and SCARY goals in space to achieve greatness.

Yet the folks who say "a one-shot land and return from Mars repeats the
mistakes of Apollo and doesn't build an infrastructure for future expansion"
have a good point.

So I suggest a goal that takes care of this.

LET'S BUILD A PAIR OF MARS STATIONS, IN ORBIT AND ON THE SURFACE, BY 2040.
Let's do it cooperatively -- US, USSR, EEC, Japan, India, Israel, Indonesia
et cetera.  LET'S REDEEM OUR DREAMERS, and END RUN OUR DOUBTERS.  Let's let
*everyone* with the means and desire to do something in space have a hand
in this -- use it to promote world UNITY and world PRIDE.

Is this daring?  Do the means exist to convince today's President to
utter the words?

I am totally open to discussion and debate on this point, I don't claim
to have all the answers, I just want people to think about it.  I am a
feed off UUNET so it's 100% reliable to mail me as uunet!bfmny0!tneff.
--
You may not redistribute this article for profit without written permission.
--
Tom Neff                UUCP:     ...!uunet!bfmny0!tneff
    "Truisms aren't everything."    Internet: [e-mail]

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

Date: 19 Jun 89 17:53:06 GMT
From: portal!cup.portal.com![e-mail]  (H Keith Henson)
Subject: Re: Outer Space Committee

Although it is almost forgotten (back in the days of Carter--remember
him) the US did not go along with the Moon Treaty.  Now, that was an
interesting document for human rights!  No property rights, searches
without cause at any time, and defectors must be handed back.  I should
find an electronic copy of Star Laws and post it to the net.

Keith Henson

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

Date: 27 Jun 89 17:32:44 GMT
From: [e-mail]  (Eugene Miya)
Subject: Re: [Russians] Lost in Space

This comes up frequently.
The best information you will find anywhere in the public literature
is published by the Congressional Record every two years on the
status of astronauts, cosmonauts, and spacenauts.  Write your
Congressman, or visit a public library.  You might see interesting
surprises (like Gen. James Abrahmson of the SDI office had astronaut
status), various stats on who died in various programs, accidents, etc.
The information is moderately complete (short of getting into
political arguments: => talk.politics) and raises a few things
to consider when making claims for falsifying people's flights or deaths.

Another gross generalization from

--eugene miya, NASA Ames Research Center, [e-mail]
  resident cynic at the Rock of Ages Home for Retired Hackers:
  "You trust the `reply' command with all those different mailers out there?"
  "If my mail does not reach you, please accept my apology."
  {ncar,decwrl,hplabs,uunet}!ames!eugene
                UNIX
                  Live free or die.

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

Date: 27 Jun 89 17:15:05 GMT
From: [e-mail]  (Eugene Miya)
Subject: Re: ADA and space station

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (54317-T.EBERSOLE) writes:
>>Discussion on Ada and European origins and possible uses in space....
>One wonders what languages are used for Ariane, Spot, other ESA projects.
>Do they have a version of Ada?

I don't think the launch vehicle specifically uses computers.  Maybe
ground controlling instruments.  You sort of have to makes these
distinctions.  SPOT was planned years before Ada existed so I suspect
lots of its function is either hardwired or assembly language coded,
it's documented some where in remote sensing literature.  I think you
will see its use increasing, but I think you will also see increased
use in C [because of Unix and workstations], LISP [AI interest],
and several other languages, and oh, yes, a decrease in the use of PL/1 and
HAL/[SG].

If you are going to continue the space aspects follow up to
sci.space, but if you are going into Ada, remove sci.space and use
comp.lang.ada.  If you can't read, please return to school 8).

Another gross generalization from

--eugene miya, NASA Ames Research Center, [e-mail]
  resident cynic at the Rock of Ages Home for Retired Hackers:
  "You trust the `reply' command with all those different mailers out there?"
  "If my mail does not reach you, please accept my apology."
  {ncar,decwrl,hplabs,uunet}!ames!eugene
                  Live free or die.

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

Date: 21 Jun 89 04:51:23 GMT
From: bfmny0![e-mail]  (Tom Neff)
Subject: Re: Moon landing nostalgia

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] ("Bill Ball") writes:
>            [Man in Space, A Time Television Special], like the
>Air & Space issue, brings home what a fluke the Apollo program
>was--having more to due with the Bay of Pigs than with the exploration
>of space.

I emphatically disagree with this assertion.  The moon race was not a
fluke offshoot of the Bay of Pigs failure.  The Soviets were at that
time giving every indication of dominating space, including a pervasive
ICBM threat which we sort of take for granted nowadays but which was Big
News back then.  Jack Kennedy was fascinated with space as a political
tool as a Senator, Presidential candidate (remember the "Missile Gap,"
subject of all those Boris Badinov cartoons when Rocky & Bullwinkle [my
patron saints] visited Frostbite Falls, Minnesota?), and later as
President.  The moon race was a natural outgrowth of JFK's geopolitical
contest with the vigorous USSR leader Krushchev.  And Apollo itself from
a technical viewpoint was already on the boards and in the brains of the
US team in the mid-50's.  All that remained was to flesh it out and
suffer the birth pangs of contractors assembling actual hardware, once
the overall strategy (LOR, Lunar Orbit Rendezvous) was agreed to.  This
fleshing out makes a marvellous story, one I never cease to be engrossed
in -- but it would be a horrible mistake to dismiss it as a side effect
of some transitory political expediency.

There is no political goal of expedience on the planet that cannot be
solved more cheaply than a moonshot.
--
You may not redistribute this article for profit without written permission.
--
Tom Neff                UUCP:     ...!uunet!bfmny0!tneff
    "Truisms aren't everything."    Internet: [e-mail]

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

Date: 25 Jun 89 22:43:08 GMT
From: portal!cup.portal.com![e-mail]
Subject: Re: Super strings


On 20 June 1989, BOCHANNK at DB0TUI11 writes:

:Dear space friends!

:Does anyone have some informations (books, articles, scripts) about the
:super string theory?

:Alex


     May I suggest the book "Beyond Einstein - The Cosmic Quest For The Theory
of The Universe" by Dr. Michio Kaku (Bantam, 1987)? It's mostly about
superstring theory, though not written on a technical (i.e. no equations) level.

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

Date: 27 Jun 89 06:09:45 GMT
From: ogccse!blake![e-mail]  (William Lewis)
Subject: Re: Vaguely-space-related queries

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Will Martin) writes:
>There are several questions that have arisen in my mind based on postings in
>the Space list over the past, and I solicit answers, comments, or explanations
>from those out there who know about such things. They aren't specifically
>and uniquely space-related, but the topics have all been mentioned here from
>time to time:
>
>1) Regarding X-ray astronomy -- the X-ray detectors must be placed into space,
>                                                        .... But WHY are
>X-rays absorbed by the atmosphere when they can penetrate materials that are
>opaque to visible light?

   I think it's just that X-rays are more penetrating than normal light,
even in something opaque to them. I.E., X-rays travel further through
X-ray-opaque objects than visible light does through visble-opaque
objects. I think this has something to do with the frequency and hence
energy of the photons.  And I'm *pretty* sure that the range (of penetration)
is inversely proportional to the density of whatever it's penetrating. But
this constant is larger for X-rays than for visible light.


>2) Regarding elementary particles -- one of their characteristics is called
>"spin". Is this REALLY "spin" the way a top or gyroscope spins -- that is,
>the particle is actually physically rotating in space? Or is it a term that
>is convenient and used to describe a quality of the particle, like "charm".
>"color", and "strangeness", which does NOT correspond with anything in
>normal human experience?

   I think it originally referred to the fact that a spinning charged object
generates a magnetic field, a dipole, like the field generated by these
particles. . (Think right-hand rule.) But it now
refers to the rotational symmetry of the particle. (?) It is the reciprocal
of the symmetry, er, a spin-1/2 particle has 180-degree symmetry, a spin
1/3 particle has 120-degree symmetry, and a spin-2 particle must be rotated
twice before it comes back to its original, er, state. [Who knows. Not me.]


>4) Black hole temperature -- Are medium-sized black holes hot or cold? I have
>read that small black holes would be very hot, putting out radiation, due to
>the Hawking Effect and the tunnelling of particles through the event
>horizon and the business of pairs of virtual particles being formed out
>of the vacuum right by the event horizon, and one of the pair maybe being
>sucked inside the hole, leaving the unmatched other particle to come out
>as radiation. At some size, does this stop and the black hole become
>very cold, being an infinite energy sink? [The main problem with a
>black-hole-powered refrigerator is carrying it up the stairs... :-) ]

   Another back-of-the-spinal-cord calculation (read gut reaction) is that
the energy emitted by a black hole (through Hawking evaporation) would
be proportional to its surface area, because the energy emitted is limited
by the number of virtual pairs created in the zone right outside the event
horizon. (I may be flamed for the use of 'event horizon'. Do it in mail.)
(I can think of some more complicated [general] scenarios for that
pair production, but they still look like they boil down to 'energy
proportional to surface area'.) So larger black holes would emit more
total radiation.
   But the volume of a black hole grows much faster than its mass, the larger
a black hole is, the less dense it is. (I have seen calculations saying that
a black hole the size of the observed Universe would be about as dense as
the observed Universe...) Presumably the surface area also grows faster
than the mass, or large black holes would evaporate as quickly (or faster)
than small ones. Which I am assured is not what Hawking says is the case.
   [And you wouldn't carry a black-hole 'fridge up the stairs. You would
carry the stairs down past the 'fridge... =8)]

    --- phelliax
        "Oh. Wait a second. If that were true I couldn't exis --"

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

End of SPACE Digest V9 #522
*******************