Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/mac/TEXT/SPACEDIG/V09_5/V9_557.TXT

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Subject: SPACE Digest V9 #557

SPACE Digest                                      Volume 9 : Issue 557

Today's Topics:
          Re: NASA funding is not transitive
           HST article in DISCOVER July 89
          Re: NASA funding is not transitive
          Re: NASA funding is not transitive
            Moon landing disbelief
         Re: Procurement and future computers
           RE: Vaguely space-related topics
       RE: Re:  Vaguely space related queries ( and then some)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 14 Jul 89 01:58:28 GMT
From: att!mtuxo!mtgzz![e-mail]  (d.l.skran)
Subject: Re: NASA funding is not transitive


If the station budget is cut, it will not in a million years go to other
space projects except in the naive fantasies of bowery and baxter.
The "pigs" are the trough include
    SSC, EPA, HUD, Veterans, NSF...

They all have a good story too - and then there is the deficit as well.

It is a sad thing that space advocates waste time sniping at each others
pet projects as though the cancelation of the other guys stuff would make
it better for them. BTW, Carl Sagan suffers from the same delusion as
baxter.

However, I do agree with Mr. Baxter that you should call your Congresscritter
and ask them to co-sponsor the Launch Services Purchase Act. You should also
ask them to fully fund the space station.

We are going to hang together or we will continue to hang as we are now -
each in our own little Earthbound world.

Dale Skran
not Amon

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

Date: 14 Jul 89 17:37:20 GMT
From: ncrlnk!ncrcce![e-mail]  (Wayne D. T. Johnson)
Subject: HST article in DISCOVER July 89

Discover this month has a whole section on SPACE - The Once and Future Frontier
in honor of the 20th anniverary of APOLLO 11.  For once they are on track, after
an very inflammitory article on evolution a few months back I was just about to
cancel.

I will include here a breif list of highlights from their article of the HST
mirror.  It is well worth the time to read all 11 pages.

HST has been sitting in a clean room at Lockheed since Nov 4, 1984 at a cost
of $10 million a month.

The contract for the primary mirror was awarded to Perkin-Elmer.  A second
contract was given to Eastman-Kodak for a spare.  Corning made the original
glass blank, two glass plates with a honeycomb of glass inside to reduce
weight.

Perkin-Elmer had earlier dropped a $1 million mirror for Copernicus in 1968
and had only done a "okay" job on a 60 inch demonstration mirror.  The demo
had been scratched and the edge was badly turned.

Perkin-Elmer had its eye on bidding on the Solar Optical Telescope, a $60
million project, so they were very hot on doing a good job.

The Mirror specs called for the mirror to be ground to a hyperboloid to within
lamda by 64 (a 1/64th of the wavelength of neon light).  That would be
equivalant to 1/2 of a millionth of an inch.  The Aluminum coating had to be
at least 70% reflective in the ultraviolet, the absolute limit for aluminum
is 84%.

The final mirror came out as lamda by 78, and 80% reflective.  Not bad.


--
Wayne Johnson                 (Voice) 612-638-7665
NCR Comten, Inc.             (E-MAIL) [e-mail] or
Roseville MN 55113                    [e-mail]
These opinions (or spelling) do not necessarily reflect those of NCR Comten.

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

Date: 14 Jul 89 17:53:42 GMT
From: mailrus!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!utzoo![e-mail]  (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: NASA funding is not transitive

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Tom Neff) writes:
>The time has come to abolish NASA... we should spin it off into its components.
>
>    * Aeronautical research ...
>    * Military space research - let the military do it...
>    * Commercial launch services - let industry do it...
>    * Space based industrial research - let industry and governments...
>    * Scientific space research - now we're talking! ...

One thing I miss from this list is space technology research -- the space
equivalent of the aeronautical research.  That's the single most important
contribution NASA could make to spaceflight.  NACA enormously speeded up
progress in aviation; we're overdue for the same thing in spaceflight.
--
$10 million equals 18 PM       |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
(Pentagon-Minutes). -Tom Neff  | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry [e-mail]

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

Date: 15 Jul 89 22:51:43 GMT
From: bfmny0![e-mail]  (Tom Neff)
Subject: Re: NASA funding is not transitive

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Henry Spencer) writes:
>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Tom Neff) writes:
>>The time has come to abolish NASA... spin it off into its components.
>>
>>    * Aeronautical research ...
>>    * Military space research - let the military do it...
>>    * Commercial launch services - let industry do it...
>>    * Space based industrial research - let industry and governments...
>>    * Scientific space research - now we're talking! ...
>
>One thing I miss from this list is space technology research -- the space
>equivalent of the aeronautical research.  That's the single most important
>contribution NASA could make to spaceflight.  NACA enormously speeded up
>progress in aviation; we're overdue for the same thing in spaceflight.

I can, like, totally dig this scene, man. :-)

It does sound like a natural for NASA/NARA/whatever, but it should be
picked at a bit more closely, like artichoke stew.  In the first place,
a well defined MISSION should always come first, and NASA/etc should be
carefully evaluated in each case as to whether it's the right agency for
the job.

Take high angle of attack (HAA) aircraft research for example - Henry
and I both see AvWeek pix of this about every other week.  Why are they
doing it?  Because EXISTING flight modes and missions need better HAA
performance.  What do they need to do it?  One or two old planes and
some wind tunnel time.  How's it going?  Great.  How potentially
beneficial for the dollars spent?  Very.

Now take the Kuiper observatory.  Why is NASA in charge?  Ya got me,
buddy.  (I know NSF and others help adminstrate.)

Now take the laughable supposed "mission" of lowering launch costs.  Has
NASA got any damn business being involved?  Snort!  Let Boeing or
someone with a *stake* in lower launch costs do it.

There are a lot of things one could test in space, is my point.  Some
are needed now, some ain't, some are industry's business and some are
USG's.  (Some are the military's.)  Match the actor to the mission.
There's no doubt that if you DEFINE an international Mars mission, for
instance, NASA needs to be tasked with inventing the craft needed.  But
the mission has to come first -- we can't simply let them make burbling
noises about establishing "presence" in space while the pork barrel
rolls.
--
"My God, Thiokol, when do you     \\    Tom Neff
want me to launch -- next April?"  \\    uunet!bfmny0!tneff

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

Date: 14 Jul 89 18:07:51 GMT
From: amdahl!drivax![e-mail]  (MacLeod)
Subject: Moon landing disbelief

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:

:Out of curiosity I looked up dates and times of some of the events
:surrounding the Apollo 11 mission.  I think most everyone realizes the
:20th anniversary of that mission is nearly upon us.  (Digression - I find
:it a strange feeling to think that there is an entire generation out there
:who have never, not once in their entire lives, looked up at the moon and
:wondered if people will ever walk up there.  But then it occurs to me that
:I wonder myself when people will ever walk up there *again* and know that
:this youngest generation still has an opportunity to find this sense of
:wonder I felt more than 20 years ago.)

On the other hand, as reported her some time ago, a reader was talking
with his young daughter and friend, and discovered that not only did
they not know that the USA had been to the moon, but when informed of the
fact, didn't believe it.  The space achievements of the Kennedy years
already look like they were performed by another people in another time
in some lost golden age.

Pardon me if this seems too maudlin and emotional, but I get tired of posters
who declaim, "Help America keep her lead in space!" when such players as
Indonesia and India are doing more launching than we are.

Michael Sloan MacLeod  (amdahl!drivax!macleod)

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

Date: 7 Jul 89 11:56:47 GMT
From: b.gp.cs.cmu.edu![e-mail]
Subject: Re: Procurement and future computers

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (John Roberts) writes:
}>       - full spoken language translation capability between all
}>         langauges of space faring nations.
}Automatic full language translation and continuous speech recognition have
}been "a couple of years away" for ~3 decades now. During this time, new
}problems have appeared about as fast as the technology has progressed. [...]
}Even when the basic capability is
}developed, real-time performance will still be a problem: modern supercomputers
}can take on the order of half an hour to analyze a few seconds of speech,

Better not tell that to the SPHINX project here at CMU, which is using a Sun4
with some custom hardware to get 1000-word, speaker-independent, continuous
speech recognition in 1.5 to 3 times real time (6-12 times R.T. without the
custom hardware).  They are currently working on a 5000-word vocabulary,
still speaker-independent without "training."

--
UUCP: {ucbvax,harvard}!cs.cmu.edu!ralf -=-=-=- Voice: [phone] (school)
ARPA: [e-mail]  BIT: ralf%cs.cmu.edu@CMUCCVMA  FIDO: Ralf Brown 1:129/46
            Disclaimer? I claimed something?
"When things start going your way, it's usually because you stopped going the
 wrong way down a one-way street."

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

Date:     Fri, 7 Jul 89 13:14 EST
From: <[e-mail]>
Subject:  RE: Vaguely space-related topics

>Here there was some misinformation.  Spin is NOT angular momentum!!

Ooops!  Goofed here.  I was thinking more about isospin than spin.  Spin
is an angular momentum term that may or may not interact with the
orbital angular momentum.

Sorry about that, Chief!

Arnold Gill
Queen's University at Kingston
BITNET:  gill@qucdnast

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

Date: Fri, 7 Jul 89 14:26:12 CDT
From: [e-mail] (d. scott hess)

Subject:  RE: Re:  Vaguely space related queries ( and then some)

Arnold Gill writes:
}Will Martin asked several questions, which got various responses, some
}of which were rather dubious attempts at physics.
}
}>1) Regarding X-ray astronomy -- the X-ray detectors must be placed into space,
}> [ stuff deleted about atmosphere X-ray absorption ]
}
}Henry Spencer, among others, gave the correct answer.  The
}atmosphere is actually opaque at all but visible wavelengths (plus a few
}others).  The penetrability of ANY type of radiation has little to do
}with the density of the matter by itself, but rather with ALL of the
}properties of the matter, of which density is only one.

Remember: It is no coincidence that the light getting throught the
atmosphere happens to pretty much fall in the set that we can see
easily.  Its not that surprising that all the others are outside the
visible spectrum, because if they came through well, they'd more than
likely also be in the visible spectrum.

}>5) Neutronium and similar compressed matter -- is there any theoretical

There were a couple good books by Robert L. Forward, Dragons Egg, and
Neutron Star.  They are fiction, but he's pretty good with his science.
The electrons do get pretty much free rein in a neuron star - who's to
slow them down?  Its my impression that neutronium isn't a solid, but
more like a liquid.  There isn't really anything holding the neutrons
together, besides gravity.  Its sort of like a planet made up of
billiard balls.  But then again, I didn't get all that far in physics,
so take this with a grain of salt.



Later, same issue, Tom Neff has (in reply to Henry Spencer):
}>                            General Dynamics,
}>Martin Marietta, McDonnell Douglas, Arianespace, etc., will scream bloody
}>murder, hire lobbyists, and start talking excitedly to Congressthings,
}>because they simply can't do it.
}
}Precisely the kind of catfight that kills missions.  QED.

Ooops- out of context here.  The next bit said he thought the private
agaencies would jump in and do it for them.  Of course, the private
agencies certainly aren't going to be doing a lot of heavy-listing for a
while ...

}>Why can't we get the hardware in place for that in 10 years?
}
}Our track record supports my assertion better than your objection, I
}think.  We can't get that hardware ready in 10 years because we can't do
}ANYTHING in 10 years anymore.  The can-do technocracy that gave us
}Vietnam and Apollo is ancient history.  It's suicidally futile to
}predicate a Mars mission on JFK rising Arthur-like from the grave.  We
}have to design something around the do-able.  While we don't have
}Sputnik or Camelot to lean on anymore, we do have new dynamics like
}international cooperation, plus the huge quantum leap in one fundamental
}ability: to send back killer images from anywhere we visit.  Neptune
}about to provide a fresh example it appears.  The early Moon race had
}the support of the nation even though most Americans only "saw" it through
}paragraphs in the newspaper.  What could Ogilvy & Mather do with the
}Viking stuff and the JPL Mars Movie?  But I digress.

Sorry, I have to side with Tom here.  The original letter floored me
when I saw it - Henry Spencer being really optimistic! Noooo.  Really,
I'd like to see this happen soon, but I don't see it coming.  I think 10
years is a bit much to ask.  Maybe in ten years, it won't be though.

}Apollo was not strangled at birth, it was conceived in haste and
}repented at leisure.**

I don't think the right people are doing the repenting, though.  The
stranlgers are still out there ...

}>                            ... set your sights higher.  Mars is not that
}>hard.
}
}Prove it!  Let's go there and prove me wrong!
}
}Mars is too easy?  Nice problem to have!**

Wait?  Mars isn't that hard, if we put our minds to it.  It seems that
the main point you made was that we wouldn't do that, though.  And I'm
sure Apollo looked hard to those who were in charge of implementing it.

And now, for some original thought.  I think NASAs main problem today is
that they tried to be TOO far-thinking.  Apollo was NOT that far ahead
of its time - it broke new ground, but alot of it wasn't really that new
- it was just an engineering problem.  They'd had experience with
rockets, etc.  They basically needed to build them bigger.

The Space Shuttle, meanwhile, was conceived to be way ahead of its time,
and it was!  They had little or no experience with much of the
technology involved.  And thus, they spent much more time than they
thought they would building new industries for it.  If they had waited a
bit, exeperimented more, then maybe we'd be in a better position.  The
shuttle program would have been better off to have started in the 80's,
and launched in the 90's.  Who says we couldn't have done most of what
we've done with the shuttle with apollo-era equipment?  ( I didn't say
all.  There have been things which were done just because we have a
shuttle, some with very little reason beyond that.) And now it looks
like they've finally figured out that they aren't going to have enough
launch space on the shuttle, and its not the best thing since the
invention of the wheel.  And the older technology does have its uses.

So, what I want to say is that I would like to go to Mars, or to
Freedom, but I think they should try building it to be useful, not
revolutionary.

Lastly, about the use of "vapor"-ware on the Space Station (and anywhere
else) - 256M chips will be around by 1998, in all likelyhood, but I'll
consider myself lucky if I can buy 16M chips.  Same with high density
LCDs.  That would be nice to have on the Space Station, but I'd not want
to be trusting in equipment which hasn't been around long enough to be
fully debugged.  I would wait at least five years on equipment, because
by that time industry has generally gotten their act together.  And I
don't mean five years between announcement and usage, I mean between
shipping in quantity and usage.  Right now I'd trust 80386s, or 68030s,
but probably not MIPs or SPARC.  And definitely not the 80486 and 68040,
and 64M RAM chips.  They simply do not work yet.  There is no need for
NASA to pioneer this area anymore.  Others are doing very well, thank
you.

Scott Hess

These opinions may or may not be fictitious or otherwise non-existent.
Any reflection of reality found therein is probably distorted.

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

End of SPACE Digest V9 #557
*******************