Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/mac/TEXT/SPACEDIG/V10_0/V10_071.TXT

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Date: Mon, 25 Sep 89 03:23:54 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: SPACE Digest V10 #71

SPACE Digest                                      Volume 10 : Issue 71

Today's Topics:
         Re: What's Wrong With HR2674. (long)
             Re: Soviet salaries
      Re: Alternative Space Goals, Anyone? (was Re: SpaceCause)
            Re: Voyager one-shot?
           How about a PRO-GALILEO DEMONSTRATION!?!
         Fearmongering about Gallileo (Long)
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Date: Wed, 13 Sep 89 12:27:39 PDT
From: mordor!lll-tis!oodis01!riacs!rutgers!pnet01.cts.com![e-mail] (Jim Bowery)
To: ucsd!nosc!crash![e-mail]
Subject: Re: What's Wrong With HR2674. (long)

Kieran A. Carroll @ U of Toronto Aerospace Institute writes:

> I've heard arguments that space flight would become fairly commonplace
> on its own, in its own time, with or without major government intervention.
> These arguments also conclude that "in its own time" means "in 50 or 100
> years"; this conclusion is arrived at by examining evolutionary improvements
> in performance of aircraft, and extrapolating them to the performance
required
> of spacecraft.
That is all quite correct except the numbers.  It took less than 50 years from
the Wright brothers' first flight to air flight becoming "commonplace".  Since
we are, according to your own logic, 30 years beyond the stage of the Wright
Brothers' first flight (government support of booster development, which
you advocate as the most effective route to commonplace spaceflight, has
been going on for more than 30 years here in the US) your own logic suggests
only 20 years until we see spaceflight as "commonplace", assuming the same
"natural" pace as the aircraft industry.

>                                                     ..the way to do it is
> >>not<< through paying the lowest possible price for launches -- the effects
> of this would be to have launch companies cut costs to the bone, thus
> reducing the attractiveness of providing services in this area,
This is a false dilemma.  You obviously don't understand the distinction
between cost and price.  The way businesses operate in the private sector
is to charge a price that is above their cost.  The difference is called
profit.  Businesses operate to make a profit and submit bids that will
supply them with a sufficient profit to provide a good return to their
investors.  Businesses, when given an opportunity to set their own price
as they see fit, without cost accounting (which is the way the government
current does launch contracts) can set their price arbitrarily high.  Indeed,
the real wonder of the situation is that businesses choose to build
launchers under government cost accounting where their profit margins are
set by law rather than by business factors.  If you read HR2674 (which I
seriously doubt given your statements) you will notice the provision
for bids without cost accounting.  This guarantees that SOMEONE
will win the bid at a sufficient profit to stay in business.

>                                                       ..probably forming
> a cartel to keep other companies from springing up,
Just because NASA has formed a cartel to prevent all progress in space
for the last 20 years doesn't mean the private companies have the skills,
authority or inclination to do the same.  If, somehow, rocket technology or
some critical components could be controlled, the way the supply of oil is
controlled by petroleum producing nations, then there might be some hope.
But the technology to do a lot better than the big three is out there and
has been for many years.  The components are about as complex as those in
a VW.  The Chinese are doing this stuff in their refrigerator factories.

>                                                                Doing so
> quickly involves spending a fair whack of money on R&D, money that just
> wouldn't be available in an environment where competition brought launch
> prices down as-far-as-possible-using-currernt-levels-of-technology). HR2674
> would have the effect of restoring the evolution of space launchers to its
> natural, too-slow-as-far-as-I'm-concerned pace.
First off, HR2674 was quite carefully worded so as to allow the government
to continue to provide R&D for rocket booster technology -- thus your
primary objection to the bill is moot and also demonstrates you either
didn't read it or your reading comprehension skills could use substantial
improvement.  Secondly, at present, the critical area in launch costs isn't
insufficient "R&D" but rather a refusal to CEASE "R&D" and go into PRODUCTION
the way the Soviets have done.  Our private sector is better at PRODUCTION
than the Soviet government while our public sector is worse at PRODUCTION
than the Soviet government.

> How do you infuse money into an area without the recipients becoming greedy,
> and spending it on yachts and parties instead of rocket development? One way
> is to hire dedicated people (fanatics like us, and von Braun) for whom
> getting people into space cheap is a much bigger thrill than having a party
> on a yacht. Unfortunately, the current crop of aerospace contracting
> companies is not run by people like us;
This is false.  The current crop of aerospace contracting companies is
comprised of people like us only more so.  They were so fanatic about
space they decided to make a career out of it.  That they were disillusioned
and became cynical is the real problem.  Fanatics like us would do no
better than they under the current system and would probably do worse.

> The only proposal I've ever hear for infusing cash into the area in a useful
> way is one based on the old Air Mail contracts that the US Government signed
> during the early days of aviation. The government agreed to buy a certain
> amount of flight services from private operators (in this case to fly mail
> back and forth).
You are referring here to the Launch Incentives Act which was put together
by Jerry Pournelle and friends.  It is the people who were out there actually
promoting the Launch Incentives Act who ended up writing HR2674.  Where
were you when we were all trying to get the Launch Incentives Act passed?
Why are you fighting us now that we are actually making progress on a bill
with a chance for passage?  Clearly, academia has finally done its damage
and all you can do now is emit funny yammering noises to make
it sound like you know something -- a skill highly regarded in academic
circles these days.  By the way, what do you think of cold fusion?

If you REALLY want the US government to open the trade barriers and
give you lots of money, why don't you just become the 51st state
and become a porkbarrel lobbyist for McDonell Douglas?

For all of the rest of you who are actually for space instead of
against it, this is your big chance.  While the anti-space pacifists
are squealing like stuck pigs about how insulting this message is,
you can have EXCLUSIVE access to your congressman's ear in support
of HR2674.  Call him today and ask him to cosponsor the bill.  Ask
for an appointment to speak with him personally about it.  The bozos
should be chewing on this diversion for a week or two.

PS:  Canadians CAN have an impact, especially on the trade-restriction
portion of the bill if they exercise the discipline of using the
appropriate channels through their own government to have their ambassador
advocate dropping that provision as part of free trade between the
US and Canada.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jim Bowery    Phone: [phone]
PO Box 1981                  Join the Mark Hopkins Society!
La Jolla, CA 92038   (A member of the Mark Hopkins family of organizations.)

UUCP: {cbosgd, hplabs!hp-sdd, sdcsvax, nosc}!crash!pnet01!jim
ARPA: crash!pnet01![e-mail]
INET: [e-mail]

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

Date: Wed, 13 Sep 89 22:13:02 EDT
From: John Roberts <[e-mail]>
Disclaimer: Opinions expressed are those of the sender
    and do not reflect NIST policy or agreement.
Subject: Re: Soviet salaries


>Date: Thu, 7 Sep 89 09:05:55 EDT
>From: Glenn Chapman <[e-mail]>
>Subject: Soviet's Soyuz TM-8 docking time at Mir space station

>     One interesting sidelight in recent broadcasts was some statements on
>what cosmonauts get paid.  Typical ground pay is 300-400 rubles per month
>about 50% more than the average pay if I remember correctly (the official
>rate puts the ruble about equal to the dollar, though on the
>black market it is much less).  For a mission they get a bonus of
>2000-15,000 rubles, though the higher number is for a 1 year flight
>(ie. 5-6 years regular pay for a year on Mir - not bad).

>                                                 Glenn Chapman
>                                                 MIT Lincoln Lab
Hm, ~$100/month for all earth personnel in the Soviet space industry? No
wonder Soviet launches are so cheap! (I somehow doubt that it would work
over here.)
                                   John Roberts
                                   [e-mail]

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

Date: 14 Sep 89 02:10:19 GMT
From: norge![e-mail]  (John McKernan)
Subject: Re: Alternative Space Goals, Anyone? (was Re: SpaceCause)

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Henry Spencer) writes:
> In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Brian Yamauchi) writes:
> >It would be nice if the anti-NASA individuals on the net could put
> >together a list of alternative space goals (public sector, private
> >sector, or both) rather than just bashing NASA...
>
> The obvious goal is to return to the scheme envisioned in NASA's charter:
> NASA does R&D, private industry does operations.  That means no NASA-run
> launchers and no NASA-run space station, and a lot more emphasis on new
> technology and experimental (i.e. risky) systems.

I think this is a good idea, but it doesn't really mention goals, ie. where
is the R&D headed. I think it's clear what our goals really are, we want to
colonize space and the planets and explore the solar system (including Earth).
Much of this R&D can only realistically be done by a large organization
funded by tax dollars (ie. NASA). I think NASA largely has these goals in
mind, but they seem to be confused as to what R&D they should be doing now.
Obviously we need vastly improved launch, propulsion and life support
technology. The space station will return some useful information in the
life support area, but given the current launch costs, we would get
**orders of magnitude** more accomplished with our money by keeping our R&D
on the ground.

In my opinion our goals in space are fairly obvious, and consequently our
overall R&D focus should be relatively clear (ie. improved launch, propulsion,
and life support technology). Do these goals and the consequent R&D focus
seem obvious and correct to the rest of you on the net? What we really need
are some practical suggestions for getting NASA to see the obvious.

John L. McKernan.                                                  [e-mail]
Disclaimer: These are my opinions but, shockingly enough, not necessarily Sun's
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The future is rude and pushy. It won't wait for us to solve today's problems
before it butts in with tomorrow's.

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

Date: Wed, 13 Sep 89 21:49:50 EDT
From: John Roberts <[e-mail]>
Disclaimer: Opinions expressed are those of the sender
    and do not reflect NIST policy or agreement.
Subject: Re: Voyager one-shot?


>From: bfmny0![e-mail]  (Tom Neff)
>Subject: Was Voyager another damaging Apollo one-shot?

>I mean after all, think about it -- NOW what can JPL do that will grab
>the attention of the man in the street?  We've crammed the joy of
>discovery of every major planet into the space of about 15 years.
>Everything else from now on is going to look boring or repetitive by
>comparison -- oh, ANOTHER picture of Jupiter on the front page, Martha,
>didn't they do that a couple of years ago?  The Apollo 16 Syndrome.

There's an even worse problem - the terrible reduction in the number of
planetary phenomena that haven't been discovered yet. You know the current
application of the "scientific method" - no new theory is considered "proven"
until it has correctly predicted the discovery of some phenomenon that had
not yet been observed at the time the theory was formulated. After Voyager,
a young scientist can come dashing to his supervisor, shouting, "I've just
developed a brilliant theory to explain ring mechanics! It matches all the
data collected by Voyager!" The supervisor will gaze sadly at the young
scientist, and reply, "I'm sorry, but all the ringed planets in our solar
system have been used up, so there's no way to prove your theory. I'll
keep your theory in my files, and if we ever discover ringed planets in
another solar system, we'll see what we can do about proving it."

(Partly kidding :-)
                           John Roberts
                           [e-mail]

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

Date: 13 Sep 89 17:51:59 GMT
From: [e-mail]  (Eric William Tilenius)
Subject: How about a PRO-GALILEO DEMONSTRATION!?!

It's high time that we started showing that there is some real, solid
support for the Galileo mission!

The paranoid uninformed have been hogging the media for too long with
their outrageous claims about the probe.

NOW IT'S OUR TURN!!

At the very least, write your local papers, Congressmen, Senators, and
so forth AND LET THEM KNOW HOW CRUCIAL GALILEO IS TO SPACE SCIENCE.

On another note, how about organizing a COUNTER protest to these
protestors?  A PRO-SPACE rally is bound to get attention as it is truly
a rare thing.

LET'S NOT LOSE THIS BATTLE -- THE TIME TO ACT IS NOW!

- ERIC -

Eric W. Tilenius     | Princeton Planetary Soc. | [e-mail]
523 Laughlin Hall    | 315 West College         | [e-mail]
Princeton University | Princeton University     | rutgers!pucc.bitnet!ewtileni
Princeton, NJ 08544  | Princeton, NJ  08544     | princeton!pucc!ewtileni
609-734-7677         | 609-734-7677             | DELPHI:  TILENIUS

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

Date: 14 Sep 89 01:28:30 GMT
From: agate!shelby!unix!joyce!zodiac!deimos![e-mail]  (Andrew Diseker)
Subject: Fearmongering about Gallileo (Long)




    This article appeared in the Washington Post, Sunday 10 September.
The author is Colman McCarthy.  I don't know if this is the correct forum
for this, but I think it spells out why we won't have much of a space program
in the future, if this kind of fear-mongering gets worse.

    The article follows, excerpted without permission.

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

        Atlantis: Countdown To a Disaster in the Making


    Within six weeks, Bruce Gagnon, coordinator of the Florida
Coalition for Peace and Justice, may be in jail.  His crime could be
the fractiousness of civil disobedience at the Kennedy Space Center
where on or soon after Oct. 12 the Department of Energy and NASA
plan to launch a plutonium-power (sic) space probe destined for
Jupiter.  Gagnon, 37, an Air Force veteran and son of an Air Force
career man, has worked for more than a year organizing anti-nuclear,
peace and church groups into a large and credible opposition to the
health and safety risks of a Chernobyl in the sky.
    If the shuttle launch -- named Atlantis -- blows up in a
Challenger-type explosion, it's rational to expect the worst from
radioactive fallout.  Plutonium is the most toxic substance known to
humans, with one pound -- if evenly distributed -- capable of causing
cancer among all the earth's citizens.
    Little of that bothers the nuclear wizards at DOE or their
spaced-out allies at NASA as they mutually stage-manage the launching
of 50 pounds of plutonium as not much riskier than sending up a balloon
at a summer picnic.  To back this flight of fancy, they spout odds
like croupiers at a casino.  It's 500 million to one that a worker at
the space center will die of cancer if Atlantis explodes immediately
after release.  It's 10 million to one that the rocket will fall to
earth after launching.  Those are numbers from the early line, based
on the dated NASA environmental-impact study.  After the 1986
Challenger blowup, the oddsmakers at NASA began hedging: The chances
of an accident are now 78 to one.
    For Gagnon, the numbers are no more reliable than bets on a
tilted roulette wheel.  He wrote recently to the space agency: "We
don't trust your statistics and find it incredible that you think the
public should believe that NASA can make objective safety
determinations about programs such as this one.  If the Challenger
disaster taught the public anything, it was that NASA will always put
its best face forward and always downplay any possibility of risks."
    It was citizens like Gagnon who spent more than a decade of
marching, getting busted and trying to give wake-up calls to
Congress about the incompetence and arrogance of DOE in such nuclear
fields of dreams as Rocky Flats, Colo.  They were labeled alarmists
by engineers and technologist (sic) whose record of spills, design
flaws and equipment failures leaves the public with bills for
clean-up and waste disposal that citizens not yet born will be paying
well into the 21st century.  Rocky Flats, a nuclear bomb plant that
bombed, joins Love Canal, the Exxon Valdez and a long list of other
catastrophes as refutations of officialdom's "trust us" approach to
public safety.

    [ Description of Bruce Gagnon's history as a community
      activist deleted ]

    During this period, Ronald Reagan had come to Orlando to deliver
his Russia-is-the-evil-empire speech.  Gagnon volunteered to help the
FREEZE campaign expand in Florida.  The state, splashed with sun and
dominated in four congressional districts by defense contractors, never
had a history for citizen resistance against military or nuclear programs.
As much as anyone, Gagnon, now an organizer for more than 10 years, has
changed that.  Florida newspapers have been reporting his anti-plutonium
campaign as a major story.  Much of the national media, still gaga over
NASA's Neptune number, have yet to get their collective heads out of the
clouds about next month's scheduled launch.
    Gagnon and his coalition are now considering a suit to secure an
injunction to stop Mission Plutonium.  The nuclearists who brought us
Rocky Flats have yet to answer the question: If plutonium isn't safe on
the ground, how can it be safe in the sky?


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

    Fortunately, this article appeared in the Style section, not
the Outlook( Op-Ed ) section.  Hopefully it will influence fewer 'citizens'
that way.

    I realize there are dangers involved with Gallileo's nuclear
generator, but the writer obviously doesn't know enough science to
understand that the only danger to earth ( slim chance that it is ) is
during the launch itself, not once the probe is on its way to Jupiter.
Moreover, he makes no mention of the fact that ALL deep-space probes have
been and must be nuclear-powered.  This type of fear-mongering disgusts me.
I only posted this to make other people aware of the damage this type of
journalism can have on our space program.


Andrew Diseker            UUCP: sun!sundc!potomac!adiseker
Advanced Decision Systems    Internet:  [e-mail]

The above opinions are mine.  I speak for myself and not my employers.

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

End of SPACE Digest V10 #71
*******************