Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/mac/TEXT/SPACEDIG/V09_6/V9_612.TXT

Internet Message Format | 1991-07-08 | 19KB

Return-path: <[e-mail]>
X-Andrew-Authenticated-as: 7997;andrew.cmu.edu;Ted Anderson
Received: from corsica.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/UYwDul200UkV46Ok5C>;
          Tue, 22 Aug 89 03:20:17 -0400 (EDT)
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Reply-To: [e-mail]
From: [e-mail]
To: [e-mail]
Date: Tue, 22 Aug 89 03:20:03 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: SPACE Digest V9 #612

SPACE Digest                                      Volume 9 : Issue 612

Today's Topics:
            space news from July 24 AW&ST
               Re: It was said
                  Re: Alcor
                 Re: Moonwalk
          Re: Space telescope - why only 1200 hours?
          Re: Space telescope - why only 1200 hours?
             SPACE Digest V9 #580
         Re: re does this proposal make sense
        Re: Catch-A-Planet (was:Re:Curiosity)
 Re: space news from June 19 AW&ST, and Apollo-anniversary editorial
              NSS Hotline Update
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 22 Aug 89 03:31:56 GMT
From: agate!bionet!csd4.csd.uwm.edu!mailrus!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!utzoo![e-mail]  (Henry Spencer)
Subject: space news from July 24 AW&ST

Bush sets forth his long-term space plan, minus budget and timetable, and
calls for -- did you really expect anything else? -- more study.  Congress
likes the vision but doesn't care for the lack of budget planning.  House
Majority Leader Gephardt "noted that when President Kennedy issued the
call to go to the Moon, he included the bill".

DoD preparing RFP for a new antisatellite weapon.

SDI's sounding-rocket particle-beam experiment successful on July 13.
Next on the agenda is a larger experiment in orbit, "traceable to weapon
performance levels", perhaps 1995.

Amroc fires its first flight-weight motor in a full-duration test at the
USAF Astronautics Lab [at Edwards].  The test, on July 11, was fully
successful, including testing of Amroc's liquid-injection thrust vectoring.
A second similar firing is planned before first flight in August.

======================================================================
George Koopman, president of Amroc, killed in automobile accident near
Edwards July 19.  Amroc will try to launch on schedule in August.
======================================================================

House blocks Rep. Charles Schumer's attempt to shift about half the space
station's funding to domestic programs... despite only token support for
the station from the White House.  More modest cuts were made, however,
and an independent analysis of station overhead costs -- i.e., the hefty
fraction of the money that disappears into NASA and never turns into
visible hardware -- has been ordered.  NASA has also been ordered not
to pass more than 50% of the cuts on to the contractors.

House also defers development of the station crew rescue vehicle,
maintaining minimum funding only.

France reaches compromise with USSR on French Mir mission price tag.

France would also like to expand space cooperation with the US, but
says the relationship is difficult when there are constant program
changes due to NASA's budget mess and the US's ridiculous attitude
on technology transfer.  The recent Soviet-French space agreement
includes French access to Soviet wind tunnels and related test facilities
for Hermes development, because France couldn't get the use of US ones.
One French official says, "Dealing with the Soviet Union on cooperative
space efforts is not easy, but we find the Americans are not simple to
work with either."  There are a couple of brighter notes, however.
France has agreed to joint development with NASA on an infrared spectrometer
for Cassini (although it will also fly on the Soviet 1994 Mars mission!).
And the US decision to divert the solid-fuel mixer meant for Kourou
has been reversed.

Ariane launch planned for this week delayed, pending checks on one of its
payloads (Germany's TVSat 2) after the building housing it took a direct
lightning hit.  New date is Aug 8.

Hughes books two comsats on one Ariane for next summer.  A launch slot
opened up unexpectedly when Intelsat requested a postponement in launch
of an Intelsat 6.

Arianespace says that the maximum-lift Ariane 4 configuration has been
deemed operational after its June launch.  There was concern about noise
levels when exhaust from the liquid-fuel strap-ons hits the launch platform,
but a combination of pad modifications and minor engineering changes to
Ariane dealt with the problem.

The payload for STS-28 [the August mission] is a new imaging recon satellite,
the SRS (Strategic Reconnaissance Satellite).  There is a small secondary
payload that may be an SDI experiment.
--
V7 /bin/mail source: 554 lines.|     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
1989 X.400 specs: 2200+ pages. | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry [e-mail]

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

Date: 3 Aug 89 12:11:48 GMT
From: b.gp.cs.cmu.edu![e-mail]
Subject: Re: It was said

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] ("DENVER BRAUGHLER") wrote:
} [golf ball on the moon]
}        Of course, contrary to a current happy trash bag commercial on TV, the
}ball would not have gone into earth orbit either.  What is the escape velocity
}needed for a single impulse launch from the moon?

What I *really* liked was the way the ball's trajectory curved :-)
--
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
FAX: available on request                      Disclaimer? I claimed something?

Alan Demers: Here is the promised Fast Fourier Transform example.  It worked
         for the two examples I tried, so I'm fairly sure it is correct.
Student: Proof by exhaustive testing?
Demers:  Well, it sure exhausted me.

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

Date: Fri, 4 Aug 1989 13:11-EDT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: Alcor

Keith is not the only one to consider the Cryonics option as an
important backup. I too intend to go into space, whether in the next
couple decades (Keith has a bit over one on me) or in 200 years. I know
many others who are serious about their desire who are also signed on
for this. It may be a long shot, but it may also be the ONLY shot...

                        Dale Amon
                    a former director of the L5 Society
                    a former director of NSS

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

Date: 4 Aug 89 15:38:57 GMT
From: mailrus!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!utzoo![e-mail]  (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Moonwalk

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Harold E Mueller) writes:
>... And the balloons
>deployed by the CM on splashdown were said to be necessary for flotation
>(I think they were for stability indeed)...

More precisely, for the right kind of stability.  The CM by itself had two
stable floating positions:  "stable 1", right side up, and "stable 2", nose
down.  Unfortunately, "stable 2" seemed to happen quite a bit in real
life.  And of course, "stable 2" put the hatch underwater.  So the balloons
were added to enforce "stable 1".
--
1961-1969: 8 years of Apollo.  |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
1969-1989: 20 years of nothing.| uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry [e-mail]

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

Date: 5 Aug 89 00:19:49 GMT
From: bfmny0![e-mail]  (Tom Neff)
Subject: Re: Space telescope - why only 1200 hours?

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Greg S. Hennessy) writes:
>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Tom Neff) writes:
>#Speaking of HST, there was a very interesting squib in this month's
>#ASTRONOMY.  Seems a team has taken the Palomar 5-meter scope to the
>#*diffraction limit* using optical interferometry (a technique adapted
>#from radio astronomy), easily splitting two different double stars with
>#separations of a small fraction of an arcsecond.
>
>It is nice, but you need bright stars to do it with. HST is STILL the
>only way to get the high resolution images on a faint source.

Is Neptune bright?
--
"We walked on the moon --    ((    Tom Neff
    you be polite"         ))     [e-mail]

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

Date: 4 Aug 89 15:25:47 GMT
From: uakari.primate.wisc.edu!indri!aplcen!haven!uvaarpa!hudson!astsun8.astro.Virginia.EDU![e-mail]  (Greg S. Hennessy)
Subject: Re: Space telescope - why only 1200 hours?

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Henry Spencer) writes:
#Name an unmanned system, except Energia, that could do better for a payload
#that big.

Wasn't that Mr Neff's point? A Saturn V could probably put HST up
pretty high.


-Greg Hennessy, University of Virginia
 USPS Mail:     Astronomy Department, Charlottesville, VA 22903-2475 USA
 Internet:      [e-mail]
 UUCP:        ...!uunet!virginia!gsh7w

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

Date: Friday, 4 August 1989 2:21pm CST
Reply-To: [e-mail]
From: [e-mail]
Subject: SPACE Digest V9 #580

Please unsubscribe my id from the space digest list.

Thx.

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

Date: 4 Aug 89 20:55:17 GMT
From: mailrus!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!utzoo![e-mail]  (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: re does this proposal make sense

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Peter Nelson) writes:
> ...times 365 (days) = 1.7 billion dollars per year.   Is this
> enough to design, build and maintain a space station? ...

It's enough to design, build, and maintain several, if it's done right.

>  ... The average American doesn't
>  give a farthing about space, or science, or anything else having to do
>  with the future...

Not quite right, according to people who've been involved with systematic
polling on the topic.  The average American supports all these things.
He just doesn't think they are particularly high priority.
--
1961-1969: 8 years of Apollo.  |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
1969-1989: 20 years of nothing.| uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry [e-mail]

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

Date: 04 Aug 89 05:17:27 EDT
From: Colin Hunter <[e-mail]>
To: <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Catch-A-Planet (was:Re:Curiosity)

From: J. Colin R. Hunter

In SPACE Digest V9 #580,
cwjcc!mailrs!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!csri.toronto.edu![e-mail]-stat
e.edu  (Wayne Hayes) writes:

> .............. Sagan cites another tribe in an adjacent valley that
> suffered from a rare disease called Kuru, a virus. In 1957, a physician
> studying this disease showed the tribespeople what the virus looked like
> though a microscope. A few months later, a different phyisician (not
> knowing that they had observed the virus through a microscope) asked
> them to describe what they know about the disease. Part of the description
> told of an "invisible evil", accompanied by a diagram in the sand that
> looked very similar to the Kuru virus ...............................

       This  raises  more  questions  than  it   attempts   to   answer.   The
aetiological agent for kuru is *not* a virus, but is a prion; a discovery that
was not made until the mid-'80s.   Prions in their native state do not contain
any genetic material in the conventional sense (neither DNA nor RNA), although
they are thought to  be  able  to incorporate  certain host nucleotides within
their structure during the "infection" process.  The host's DNA  and  cellular
machinery  is  hijacked  into  manufacturing more prions.  Since prions are so
small (less than 50nm in  diameter),  being  just  protein molecules, I do not
believe  that  microscopy was advanced enough in 1957 to  visualise  a  single
prion, even if they had known what to look for.

J. Colin R. Hunter
Department of Microbiology & Immunology
University of Maryland at Baltimore

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

Date: 31 Jul 89 00:24:29 GMT
From: jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!attcan!ncrcan!ziebmef![e-mail]  (Matthew Francey)
Subject: Re: space news from June 19 AW&ST, and Apollo-anniversary editorial

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Jonathan Patrick Leech) writes:
>     How can you design a followup to a mission that hasn't flown yet?
> It would be silly to build something else and launch it before Galileo
> tells us the next questions to ask.

  Ask this of any planetary scientist, and no doubt you will get a deluge
of possible experiments to send to Jupiter that were never considered for
Galileo or were dropped for cost/space/bandwidth/weight/whatever reasons.

  What upsets me most is that all these probes we are launching seem to be
completely unique.  Has no one considered the benefits of making a nice
standard space probe that can do Everything?   Take for example, Galileo.
I have no solid information on this machine, but I know it does go into
orbit around Jupiter and does have at least 1 atmospheric probe... and that
the Cassini mission will do much the same thing... which makes me think that
perhaps instead of spending yet another huge sum on Yet Another Unique
Space Probe, just build another Galileo (or 10) and fire it off to Saturn...
Is this just too radical, or what?
--
Name: Matthew Francey             Address: N43o34'13.5" W79o34'33.3" 86m
[e-mail]          uunet!utgpu!{ontmoh!moore,ncrcan}!ziebmef!mdf

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

Date: 4 Aug 89 10:31:57 GMT
From: cdp![e-mail]
Subject: NSS Hotline Update



This is the National Space Society's Space Hotline updated August
1st.

Response to President Bush's space speech of July 20th, the
Apollo anniversary, has run a full range - from critical
commentary from the media and Capitol Hill - to lukewarm from the
public and interested parties (such as industry) to muted esctasy
from NASA and the space advocacy community.

Bush's ambitious 30-year plan for NASA has drawn heavy fire from
Capitol Hill. Sen. Gore of Tennessee accused the president of
offering "not a challenge to inspire us, but a daydream as
splashy as a George Lucas movie - - with about as much connection
to reality." Rep. Charles Schumer of New York, whose amendment to
transfer $714 million from NASA to social programs lost in a
lopsided vote on the House floor, also criticized Bush's
statement as "space exploration by press release." Space program
supporters, such as Sen. Jake Garn of Utah praised Bush for
providing "a blueprint for a substantive, visionary space
policy," and encouraged Bush to lead the fight to "garner the
support of members of Congress."

Several newspaper editorials in the week following the presdent's
address were harshly critical, with the New York Times stating
that the president is "merely giving NASA a nominal goal to
justify its vast and so far fruitless investment in the space
shuttle and space station."  The St. Louis Post Dispatch said
that the president's speech was an "exercise in feel-good
Reaganesque public relations."

Positive media commentary did come from, of all places, the Wall
St. Journal. Its editors noted that "Washington's tribe of
frightened people (shouldn't) stop the rest of the country from
being bold and brave and successful."

Public commentary seems to have been muted, something which space
advocates can and should change. Spacecause, the grassroots space
lobby, suggests letters to the editors of local newspapers
praising the president's initiative as the departure point of
true space exploration. Calls to the Presidential comment line
would also show the Administration that there is support from the
public for his initiative. The number is 202-456-7639.

The scheduled launch of the DoD STS-28 mission of the shuttle
Columbia is set for Tuesday, August 8th. Testing continues on
systems for the launch and the top secret cargo, which the NSS
has learned will be another in the Lacrosse reconnaissance
satellite series. The mobile cargo canister which carried the
mission's payload out to pad 39B was the same as that used for a
previous DoD mission in which a Lacrosse was placed in orbit. The
STS-28 crew will arrive at the Cape on Saturday afternoon.


The fight for the Space Station and the NASA budget in general
moves from the House to the Senate, but not until after the
August congressional recess. The space station came through the
House on the 20th anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing with
only a $395 million cut to its $2.05 billion request. Sen.
Barbara Mikulski's VA, HUD and Independent Agencies subcommittee
will next take up the debate over appropriations for the NASA
budget. Milkulski, in a speech to a group of senators, NASA
officials and industry supporters on July 19th said that she is
an "unabashed space enthusiast" who would struggle "to make sure
we fund the space station". Sen. Mikulski is apparently stalling
the mark-up of the subcommittee's bill in order to keep as many
options open as possible.

Johnson Space Center Director Aaron Cohen has been temporarily
assigned to NASA headquarters to lead the agency's response to
the national goal of human exploration of the Moon and the planet
Mars as announced by President Bush on July 20th. JSC will be
managed by Deputy Director Paul Weitz in his absence. Former NASA
General Counsel John E. O'Brien will become an assistant deputy
administrator with responsibility of supporting NASA's efforts in
formulating plans to implement the president's stated future
goals. He will provide "special analysis and management problem
solving" skills according to a NASA spokesperson. Cohen and
O'Brien will both report directly to the Administrator.

Rep. George Brown, Jr. introduced an amendment to the defense
authorization bill which would require the administration to
investigate and report on problems caused by nuclear reactors
orbiting the Earth. The move is an attempt to curb the use of
space reactors. A similar measure is to be introduced in the
Senate by Sen. Dale Bumpers (D-Ark.).

The DOT's OCST has approved an application by Martin Marietta
Commercial Titan, Inc. to launch the 1st commercial flight of the
two stage booster in September from Cape Canaveral Air Force
Station. Two commercial satellites from Britain and Japan will be
the payloads.

Vice President Quayle will address employees at Marshall Space
Flight Center on Wednesday, August 2nd.

This has been the National Space Society's Space Hotline for the
week of July 31st.

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

End of SPACE Digest V9 #612
*******************