Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/mac/TEXT/SPACEDIG/V10_0/V10_079.TXT

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Subject: SPACE Digest V10 #79

SPACE Digest                                      Volume 10 : Issue 79

Today's Topics:
               Re: Voyager RTGs
     space organization -- What needs to be accomplished
            Re: Re: Saturn V & F-1
             NASA forced to photo Cydonia
            Searching for the 10th planet
            Re: Re: Saturn V & F-1
            Re: NSS Dial-A-Shuttle Release
Planetary exploration featured in next satellite video conference (Forwarded)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Fri, 15 Sep 89 18:43:00 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 RTGs


>From: mailrus!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!utzoo![e-mail]  (Henry Spencer)

>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Steve Masticola) writes:
>>Can the RTG be conserved by reducing power use, or are the instruments
>>being shut off because there won't be adequate power available for
>>them at that time? The former seems unlikely...

>It is; the RTG decay rate is preordained.  I think either the "shutting
>down instruments to conserve power" is really "eventually power will get
>short, and we might as well turn them off now because they're no longer
>useful", or somebody has misunderstood slightly.

I believe the cameras had to be kept warm using electric heaters. Are any other
instruments kept warm? If so, turning some of the instruments off could be
an effort to make use of the limited power supply to keep other instruments
alive.
                                  John Roberts
                                  [e-mail]

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

Date: 17 Sep 89 01:20:27 GMT
From: [e-mail]  (pezely)
Subject: space organization -- What needs to be accomplished


(Was: Corporate Space Admin.  Now a non-profit, independant organization.)

While trying to come up with a formal definition of our organization,
here's a list of concerns which I came up with.


1. Help to get a space station assembled which will eventually have both
a rotating and non-rotating section for experiments and a permanent staff.

2. Achieve number 1 (or at least be ready to assemble) by the year 2000.

3. Increase public awareness to the point that every household in USA
knows what is happening and knows of at least one benefit of the space
station which will directly or indirectly effect them.

4. Have our own engineers (the top in the field) complete designs for a
practical space station which is modular and inexpensive.

5. Show the contractors that our designs are worth their money and
efforts to construct.  This means showing them the vast profit potential
for the long run.

6. Find customers for the space station at every stage of its
development (each point where more people/labs can move in).

7. Raise vast amounts of money from the general public and private
investors (Billions-of-dollars range) to help pay for the station.

8. Become a liaison/lobbying group for industry, government, and
organizations.

9. Become the one-stop information service for industry, government,
organizations, and the rest of the world.


These are the things which must be done.  They will most likely be done
in the reverse order in which they appear in the list, and the list is
in order of importance of the entire space program (to some extent).

Comment, please.  (e-mail or post)

- Daniel
--
Daniel Pezely <[e-mail]>       (Home: 728 Bent Lane, Newark, DE 19711)
Computer Science Lab, 102 Smith Hall, U of Del, Newark, DE 19716 302/451-6339

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

Date: 16 Sep 89 23:46:40 GMT
From: cs.utexas.edu!mailrus!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!utzoo![e-mail]  (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Re: Saturn V & F-1

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Bob Campbell) writes:
>    Without the advantages of existing designs and production
>    facilities, why not try to build it better?  It possibly
>    could prove cheaper than a redesign and give a better
>    engine (and better engineers!)

It can prove quite a bit cheaper than a slavish imitation of the original.
It is reported that, when the time came to build Endeavour, Rockwell said
they could build three new orbiters for the same price if NASA would allow
them to substitute compatible bits of hardware instead of exactly duplicating
all the original systems.  Even with the few years of delay since Atlantis,
some of the bits and pieces were hard to get and some subcontractors were
gone.

Predictably, NASA didn't go for it.
--
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: 15 Sep 89 18:15:08 GMT
From: hastings![e-mail]  (Ken Schmahl)
Subject: NASA forced to photo Cydonia

I'm surprised no one has posted this yet, so I'll do it now:

In Thursday's (9/14) Wall Street Journal, page B1, the following
article was printed (copied here without permission):

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

Here's a space trip that's pretty far out even if it doesn't reach
Neptune.  The National Aeronautics and Space Administration will soon
hunt for pyramids.  On Mars.

The space agency says it has granted a longstanding request from some
space buffs, who call themselves the Mars Project, to photograph the
Cydonia region of Mars.  Cydonia may be home to a field of pyramids and
other rock formations erected by alien beings, speculate Mars Project
enthusiasts, who pore over old photos of Mars looking for odd things.
They have even found one rock formation that looks like a human face.

Richard Hoagland, the Mars Project founder, says he assumes that
through the pyramids the aliens are trying to tell us "something
significant, something useful."  But he doesn't know just what yet.

Mr. Hoagland ruminations have long been a source of merriment among
space scientists.  But NASA started taking him more seriously after he
recently recruited Rep. Robert Roe, a New Jersey Democrat who is
chairman of the House Science and Space Committee, to help him.  Rep.
Roe's staff asked NASA whether it planned to photograph Cydonia with
it's Mars Observer spacecraft, scheduled for launch in September 1992 -
with the clear implication that if it didn't, it should.  "With space,
there are so many unknowns, why not take a picture?" reasons Robert
Maitlin, an aide to Rep. Roe.

So now NASA, grudgingly, says it will try to unravel the pyramid scheme
with new photos of Cydonia.  "We'll try, if only to kill off the
rumors," says Arden Albee, the Mars Observer project scientist.

The Mars Observer camera can see objects as small as a car.  If aliens
built in Cydonia, says Michael Malin, the Arizona State University
scientist who manages the camera for NASA, there should be small
buildings, roads and dump sites.  "That would be clear evidence" that
the formations aren't just weird geology, he says.

But the Mars Project's Mr. Hoagland says that's asking too much.  Roads
could erode, over time, and aliens might have different ways of
building things from those of humans.  What he's looking for are unusual
geometric patterns that indicate the presence of intelligence.  "I
don't want to limit ourselves to things we'd expect to see," he says.
"How alien is alien?"

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

A good example of how far Congressional influence can reach
(all the way to Mars).


Ken Schmahl                                  %^)
hdwr I/O subsystems, Sun Microsystems, Mtn. View, Ca.
     [e-mail]
     ...sun!eng!kschmahl

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

Date: Sat, 16 Sep 89 02:13:41 SET
From: [e-mail]
Comment: CROSSNET mail via MAILER@CMUCCVMA
Subject: Searching for the 10th planet

Date: 16 September 1989, 02:03:40 SET
From: Cornelius Caesar          BITNET / EARN:       I0908    at DKAFHS1
To:   space+   at andrew.cmu.edu

I have read in the past about speculations for the possibility of the
exixtence of a 10th planet.
Would the deep space probes (Pioneer 10+11, Voyager 1+2) give data
(for example gravitational anomalies, visual contact) for this search?
What about the Space Telescope?

Or am I "behind the moon" and the non-existence has already been proven?

   Cornelius

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

Date: 16 Sep 89 22:33:27 GMT
From: bfmny0![e-mail]  (Tom Neff)
Subject: Re: Re: Saturn V & F-1

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Bob Campbell) writes:
>The problems I see with rebuilding the Saturn V are:

>1:  No job for it.
>    Face it.  If we needed them we would have kept building them. ...

This verges on circular reasoning.  Was it right, or wrong, for the
space program to peter out after the Apollo challenge was met?  If we
wanted to keep our momentum, to keep expanding with Apollo Applications,
the orbiting laboratories, more lunar landings and an eventual base, we
needed the Saturn V.  When we decided to shift the emphasis from can-do
to make-do, when the primary mission became how to dismantle a working
program with a maximum of face saving and a minimum of boat rocking, we
no longer needed them so they weren't built.  That doesn't mean there's
no job for the Saturn V, it means the USG lacks the political will to
tackle it.

>2.  Missing knowledge and tools
>    Like they said, it will take a bit of work to try and rebuild it.
>    Without a strong commitment (see #1) it isn't going to happen.

As our ex-S5 engineer poster suggested last week, they ain't dead yet.
I bet *anything* it would be cheaper to reconstruct a rocket from what
they know than it would be to design a new one from scratch.

>3.  If we need to redesign anyways . . .
>
>    Without the advantages of existing designs and production
>    facilities, why not try to build it better?  ...

This is of course the NASA answer too.  Only by rethinking and gold
plating everything can we support endless new contractor studies, which
are an industry in themselves these days.  Meanwhile the Soviets
outlaunch us 20 to 1 using 20 year old boosters.  What's wrong with this
picture!

We're in Catch-22.  Nobody (Western) can afford to orbit the bulk
hardware needed to get anything really major going in space, precisely
*because* we mothballed the Saturn instead of reaping the long term
dividends of its (very expensive) design.  Therefore industry is scared
of space and there's no market for a new Saturn.

--
'We have luck only with women --    \\\     Tom Neff
          not spacecraft!'         *-((O    [e-mail]
 -- R. Kremnev, builder of FOBOS      \\\   uunet!bfmny0!tneff (UUCP)

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

Date: 15 Sep 89 15:29:54 GMT
From: bfmny0![e-mail]  (Tom Neff)
Subject: Re: NSS Dial-A-Shuttle Release

In article <1050400010@cdp> [e-mail] writes:
> The two extraordinary [Galileo-] Earth encounters, which will occur in
> 1990 and 1992, will provide the first ever deep space look at our own
> planet.

I dispute this.  If memory serves, it was Mariner 10 in 1973 which
turned its cameras backward after orbital insertion to Venus and
Mercury, and gave us our first long shot view (a rather famous one) of
Moon and Earth together in space.

However, it may be that the National Space Society wasn't organized at
that time, so it doesn't count.  :-)  [two points Neff, nice bash job]

--
'We have luck only with women --   ((O    Tom Neff
         not spacecraft!'           \\\   [e-mail]

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

Date: 16 Sep 89 00:02:25 GMT
From: trident.arc.nasa.gov![e-mail]  (Peter E. Yee)
Subject: Planetary exploration featured in next satellite video conference (Forwarded)

Terri Sindelar
Headquarters, Washington, D.C.


RELEASE:  89-144

PLANETARY EXPLORATION FEATURED IN NEXT SATELLITE VIDEO CONFERENCE


     On October 3, NASA's Educational Affairs Division,
Washington, D.C., through Oklahoma State University, Stillwater,
will transmit via satellite an educational, video conference to
discuss upcoming solar system exploration missions and the recent
Voyager encounter with Neptune.

     Dr. Lennard A. Fisk, NASA's Associate Administrator of Space
Science and Applications, will discuss NASA's upcoming space
science and planetary missions.  NASA has planned or already has
underway over 35 major space science missions during the next 5
years.  These include:  the Magellan mission, launched from the
Space Shuttle last May, will radar map Venus; the Galileo
spacecraft, scheduled for launch Oct. 12, which will study
Jupiter; the Cosmic Background Explorer, to be launched in early
November, which will examine the sun's radiation; Hubble Space
Telescope, a free-flying observatory to investigate celestial
bodies and study the history and evolution of the universe, is
scheduled for launch in March 1990.  Dr. Fisk also will discuss
NASA's plans for the Craf-Cassini missions to rendezvous with a
comet and study Saturn and its moon Titan.

     Dr. Edward C. Stone, Voyager Project Scientist, NASA Jet
Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., will discuss the recent
Voyager 2 encounter with Neptune and show imagery of the planet
and its recently discovered massive dark spot, rings and moons.

     These live, 1-1/2 hour, interactive, video conferences are
designed to update teachers on NASA programs, demonstrate
aerospace activities for the classroom and announce new programs,
products and activities available to classroom teachers.  The
nation's participating school districts will receive
transmissions from 2:30 to 4:00 p.m. Eastern time.

     NASA's education satellite, video-conference series, now in
its fourth year, have been highly praised by educators throughout
the nation.  This year more than 20,000 educators in 50 states
are expected to participate.


     The 1989-90 video conference schedule is:

     Planetary Exploration - Oct. 3, 1989
     Flight Testing - Dec. 5, 1989
     Space Science in the Classroom (SEEDS) - Jan. 23, 1990
     Robotics in Space - Mar. 27, 1990

     The Oct. 3 conference will be transmitted on Westar IV,
channel 19.  There is no charge for registration or participation
in the video conference.

     To register for the series, interested teachers should write
to NASA Aerospace Education Services Project, Videoconference
Site, 300 North Cordell, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater,
Okla., 74078-0422, or call 405/744-7015.  Registration ensures
that announcements, publications and other materials for teacher-
participants are received at the school.

     Media and organizations interested in participating can
access the satellite or view the event from NASA Headquarters,
400 Maryland Ave., S.W., room 6004, Washington, D.C.

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

End of SPACE Digest V10 #79
*******************