Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/mac/TEXT/SPACEDIG/V09_5/V9_526.TXT

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Subject: SPACE Digest V9 #526

SPACE Digest                                      Volume 9 : Issue 526

Today's Topics:
             Re: [Russians] Lost in Space
              Re: Don't mess with NASA?
        Astronaut Stanley Griggs dies in plane crash.
                 Re: Question
Re: Excerpts From Acting Administrator Truly's remarks at the National Space Outlook Conference (Forwarded)
               new space goals
           Re: Apollo program benefits (Forwarded)
           Re: Satellite Images - at home!
                (none)
               Re: SPACE Digest V9 #516
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 28 Jun 89 16:33:10 GMT
From: mailrus!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!utzoo![e-mail]  (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: [Russians] Lost in Space

The more knowledgeable Soviet-space analysts -- Oberg, Bozlee, and Vick,
among others -- generally dismiss this sort of thing as baseless nonsense.
Despite Soviet secretiveness, the membership of the cosmonaut corps and
how it changed with time is fairly well known; there are no unaccounted-for
cosmonauts.  For a while there were, but it turns out that they left the
program in quite mundane ways, mostly plane crashes (still the leading
cause of death among US astronauts) and medical problems, with one or two
major disciplinary infractions thrown in.  Claims of secret Soviet space
failures do not appear to have any solid evidence behind them.

(What they do have behind them, quite possibly, is a deep-seated wish to
show the Soviet program as incompetent and wasteful of human life.  As
compared to the awe-inspiring competence and caution of the US program, of
course. :-( )
--
NASA is to spaceflight as the  |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
US government is to freedom.   | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry [e-mail]

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

Date: 26 Jun 89 08:45:38 GMT
From: att!occrsh!uokmax!metnet!p3.f30.n147.z1.FIDONET.ORG![e-mail]  (Greg Trotter)
Subject: Re: Don't mess with NASA?

In an article of <23 Jun 89 17:00:37 GMT>, [e-mail] (Williams) writes:

 >Oh the horrors of it all, embarassed to fly in a DC-3.

And a large bottle of Pepto to go, please!

                                        - greg

-------
Disclaimer: I'm right, you're wrong.



--
Greg Trotter - via FidoNet node 1:147/10
UUCP: ...!uokmax!metnet!30.3!Greg.Trotter
INTERNET: [e-mail]

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

Date: 28 Jun 89 23:38:00 GMT
From: wrksys.dec.com![e-mail]  (CUP/ASG, MLO5-2/G1 6A, 223-3283)
Subject: Astronaut Stanley Griggs dies in plane crash.


         Astronaut Stanley David Griggs died when his light plane crashed
    while he was possibly performing stunt maneuvers on June 18, 1989.
    Griggs, who joined the astronaut corps in August 1978, was scheduled
    to pilot the STS-33 mission on DISCOVERY for this fall.  His only space
    mission was on Space Shuttle 51D on April 12, 1985 on DISCOVERY.  He
    was a mission specialist on that mission, which included U.S. Senator
    Jake Garn.

         Larry Klaes  [e-mail]
              or - ...!decwrl!renoir.dec.com!klaes
                  or - [e-mail]

               N = R*fgfpneflfifaL

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

Date: 28 Jun 89 07:37:23 GMT
From: uhccux!munnari.oz.au!basser![e-mail]  (James Ashton)
Subject: Re: Question

In article <Added.8Ydv=[e-mail]> [e-mail] ("Asst. Dir. Of Three: The Magic Number") writes:
>I am building a gravitational/orbital simulator and need positional/velocity
>data on the large bodies of our system.
>'Large' is kind of subjective, just planets would be O.K.
>Titan, Europa, other big Jovians and Saturnians would be great, heck we even
>have data on the Uranian and Neptunian systems now.

You are looking for `The Astronomical Almanac' jointly published annually
in both the U.K. and the U.S..  In the U.S. it comes from the USNO and
you should be able to find copies in every university library where
astronomy is taught.  It's the definitive source for this kind of data.
From memory there is a section which gives heliocentric coordinates
and velocities for all the planets in cartesian form.  For multiple
dates, look in several successive year's AA.  Do the satellites as
separate problems from a planet centered point of view.  Starting
conditions for these will be harder to come by:  you'll have to
calculate them yourself from orbital data in another form I think.

>Seems simple enough.  Although the N-squared efficiency algorithm tends to clog
>up a VAX 8650 completely for sufficiently large numbers of bodies, 10 or even
>50 bodies is no sweat.  Hopefully this is all that's required to model our
>system accurately, however, with all their finding out about chaotic phenomenon
>in orbits, who knows.

In principle it is simple but unless you know some numerical integration
theory, watch out.  Up until a few years ago, the AA was based on other
methods for most objects but recently I understand it has changed to
numerical integration almost entirely.  Accordingly a new `Explanatory
Supplement' has been in preparation for some years which I eagerly
await.  You may find the old `Explanatory Supplement' useful and it
should be found in the same places as the AA.

>I would imagine JPL uses something like this to figure out where their probes
>are going, maybe someone there could help.

I believe JPL is indeed the place where many of the calculations for the
AA are done.  Good luck.

                        James Ashton.

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

Date: 28 Jun 89 06:14:30 GMT
From: [e-mail]  (Gandalf the Grey)
Subject: Re: Excerpts From Acting Administrator Truly's remarks at the National Space Outlook Conference (Forwarded)

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Tom Neff) writes:
... [stuff deleted] ...
>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.
>
... [more stuff deleted] ...
>Tom Neff                UUCP:     ...!uunet!bfmny0!tneff
>    "Truisms aren't everything."    Internet: [e-mail]

    I applaud your proposal to set ourselves the goal of a base on
Mars by 2040, although I don't think it's reasonable next step (why
try to work out the bugs of living in an esentially hostile
environment when it takes help anywhere from months to years to get
there, why not get the bugs worked out on the moon first?)

  But I would cation against having excitement and adventure as the
only major motivating force.  James Burke, technological historian, in
the concluding show of his television series _Connections_, talked
about the apollo mission.  He talked about the time he covered the
apollo 11 liftoff. He said, "It was an emotional day for all of us, I
won't forget it!  The problem is that that rocket took off as much on
euphoria as rocket fuel.  The public saw it as a great adventure, and
how many great adventures are you willing to pay for when the plot is
always the same? And so, after 7 missions, the program was canceled--
but before you say, 'good, waste of money', in the same period of
time, american women spent the same amount on cosmetics.  It was lack
of understanding of the scientific reasons behind apollo that killed
it." (I'm did my best to recall that from memory, but I may not have
gotten it exactly)  There are many dangers with hoping for euphoria to
carry you all the way to Mars and 2040.
  If any goals are to be set, they have to be closer than either Mars
or 2040. (Even I will be an old man of 72 by the time I see 2040, if I
ever do) and the public should be at least partially what we hope to
learn by this little adventure, and how we plan to learn it.

 -- Gandalf
    (a.k.a. Mitch Patenaude)

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

Date: 28 Jun 89 16:51:04 GMT
From: jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!utzoo![e-mail]  (Henry Spencer)
Subject: new space goals

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Tom Neff) writes:
>LET'S BUILD A PAIR OF MARS STATIONS, IN ORBIT AND ON THE SURFACE, BY 2040.

You realize, I hope, that that's FIFTY YEARS away, and Apollo only took ten.
If I was trying to set an ambitious goal, I'd make it initial deployment
in 2001 and full operation by 2005.  A determined effort ought to be able
to get the necessary hardware development done in a decade, even starting
from the current mess.

>Let's do it cooperatively -- US, USSR, EEC, Japan, India, Israel, Indonesia
>et cetera...

Let's see...  The USSR does the heavylift boosters and nuclear-electric
space propulsion, since they already have most of that done or in the
works.  Japan does the electronics, of course.  ESA builds the crew
quarters, based on Spacelab experience.  The US does... um... well...
--
NASA is to spaceflight as the  |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
US government is to freedom.   | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry [e-mail]

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

Date: 28 Jun 89 18:58:48 GMT
From: sei![e-mail]  (Robert Firth)
Subject: Re: Apollo program benefits (Forwarded)

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Peter E. Yee) writes:
>                     APOLLO PROGRAM BENEFITS
...
>     "We have brought back rocks, and I think its a fair trade.
>For just as the Rosetta Stone revealed the language of ancient
>Egypt, so may these rocks unlock the mystery of the origin of the
>moon and indeed, even of our Earth and solar system."

oh, dear... wasn't the Rosetta Stone an unanticipated spinoff
from a military venture?

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

Date: 27 Jun 89 19:55:00 GMT
From: m.cs.uiuc.edu![e-mail]
Subject: Re: Satellite Images - at home!


In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Frank Rahmani) writes:
>There was a posting very recently on the net (schematics and software)
>that used an average Atari computer to receive satpics.

Henry Spencer replies:
>Please, folks, if you post something like this, give a more specific reference
>than "on the net".

OK, it was posted on rec.ham-radio by watmath!mcvax!mike; I don't
recall the date of the original post, as it's in the paper archives
and not the magnetic ones, and I don't have the time to dig it out.

Eric Roskos ([e-mail]) made a similar posting, including a
MacWrite schematic, also in rec.ham-radio; his posting appeared here
on 9 April, with the header slightly munged so I don't have the actual
poting date.

Kevin

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

Date: 28 Jun 89 09:26:00 GMT
From: rpitsmts![e-mail], [e-mail]
Subject: (none)


   re: Soviets killed/lost in space

    From what I've read, only the Soyuz 1 and 11 flights were
   actual incidences of cosmonauts being killed in spaceflight
   accidents. The parachute on Soyuz 1 failed to open and there
   was some sort of leak in the hatch mechanism of Soyuz 11 which
   resulted in the cosmonauts asphyxiating before re-entry. These
   are well-documented and were not covered up. This being the
   case, I don't think any of those "missing" Vostok or Voskhod
   missions are very likely.
    But the people who put together that fact sheet had to have
   gotten their stories from somewheres (ie, there might be a
   grain of truth to this). What are the sources of this information?
   Has glasnost opened up some of the old Soviet space files (which
   probably contain some very interesting information, even if
   they aren't covering up any deaths, like the details of their
   proposed moon mission)? I used to know a lot about early space
   missions but I'd lost interest a few years back. I may do a bit
   of independent research into this if someone can point me in
   the right direction.

    Jim Kasprzak  "This isn't a real .signature, just a clever imitation."
    [e-mail]   or   [e-mail]

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

Date: Thu, 29 Jun 1989 00:30-EDT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: SPACE Digest V9 #516

> time.  If I don't do a good job, I won't be in business very
> long.  That same simplicity should guide your future commercial
> launch services procurements!"  (Anonymous entreprenuerial launch
> service spokesman.)

Sounds an awful lot like George to me!!!

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

End of SPACE Digest V9 #526
*******************