Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/mac/TEXT/SPACEDIG/V10_0/V10_080.TXT

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Subject: SPACE Digest V10 #80

SPACE Digest                                      Volume 10 : Issue 80

Today's Topics:
      Tombaugh's Planet Search (was: Alternate Voyager Missions)
               News of the Week, Sep 15
              Re: RTGs for use on earth
     Re: Galileo Jovian atmospheric probe -- is it sterilized???
            Re: Re: Saturn V & F-1
     Re: Galileo Jovian atmospheric probe -- is it sterilized???
            Galileo Earth fly-bys
           Re: NASA forced to photo Cydonia
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 16 Sep 89 10:07:23 GMT
From: cs.utexas.edu!mailrus!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!utzoo!sq![e-mail]  (Mark Brader)
Subject: Tombaugh's Planet Search (was: Alternate Voyager Missions)

(This being a sci.astro-ish topic, I've added a cross-posting over
there, but I've directed followups to stay in sci.space where this
thread originated.)

>  ... Clyde Tombaugh searched most (not all)
>  of the ecliptic to rather faint limits and found no new outer planets.

Tombaugh searched all of the ecliptic and then some.  People interested
in the search for Pluto should find the 1980 book "Out of the Darkness:
The Planet Pluto" by Clyde W. Tombaugh and Patrick Moore.  (Paperback by
Mentor (New American Library), ISBN 0-461-61997-8.)  All the material on
the actual search is identified as by Tombaugh, while Moore discusses
related topics such as the search for Neptune.

Tombaugh writes:

#  By July 1943 the entire area of sky north of south declination 50 degrees
#  had been photographed, from Canopus to Polaris.  I had finished blinking
#  all of the accessible southern hemisphere, also all the area between
#  1 hour to [sic] 13 hours of right ascension to north declination 60
#  degrees (including the Great Dipper).
#
#  ... I had blinked all the plates to over 35 degrees north of the winter
#  solstice region; much of this was in the Milky Way and very laborious
#  and time-consuming.
#
#  I intended to blink a few more pairs ... when the planet search came
#  quickly to a complete stop.  I was drafted ...

(Of course "blinking" refers to comparing two plates to find an object
that moved.  The plates north of the blinked area were for other purposes
than finding planets.)

Tombaugh summarizes the search statistically as follows:

#  ... the estimated number of stars in the examined areas totalled
#  44,675,000 (plus or minus 1 million), or a total of 90 million star
#  images, counting those on each plate of the pairs.  Every one of those
#  90 million images were seen individually by me.  It required a total of
#  7000 hours of work at the Blink-Comparator.
#
#  In this extensive search, the following discoveries were made in order
#  of importance: one trans-Neptunian planet, one globular star cluster,
#  one cloud (or super-cluster) of galaxies, several lesser clusters of
#  galaxies, five "open" galactic star clusters, and about 775 asteroids.
#
#  On the plates, I marked 3969 asteroid images, 1807 variable stars,
#  and counted 29,548 galaxies.  Few astronomers have seen so much of the
#  Universe to such minute detail.


>  That would suggest any new planets would be away from the ecliptic.

Certainly true.  *Well* away from it.  Or quite dim.  Tombaugh writes:

#  ... I ... marked several thousand faint planet suspects, all of which
#  proved to be spurious when checked with the third plate.  Over 90% of
#  those were very faint, within the last magnitude of the limit of the
#  plate.  As a result, I would be willing to guarantee that there were
#  no more distant planets brighter than magnitude 16.5 at the time the
#  plates were taken.

(Pluto was about magnitude 15 at its discovery.)

#  ... I could have picked up a planet like Neptune at seven times Neptune's
#  distance from the Sun ... I could have picked up Pluto at 1.5 times its
#  average distance from the Sun.  A planet with the size and reflecting
#  power of the Earth could have been detected at 100 astronomical units,
#  or 2.5 times the distance of Pluto in 1930.  ... Jupiter would have been
#  detectable to a distance of 470 astronomical units.

Go find the book.  it's good.

--
Mark Brader, SoftQuad Inc., Toronto, utzoo!sq!msb, [e-mail]

"[Jupiter's] satellites are invisible to the naked eye and therefore can
 have no influence on the Earth and therefore would be useless and
 therefore do not exist."    -- Francesco Sizi, quoted by T. Cox

This article is in the public domain.

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

Date: 15 Sep 89 15:41:56 GMT
From: frooz!cfa250![e-mail]  (Jonathan McDowell)
Subject: News of the Week, Sep 15

Jonathan's Space Report

Sep 15, 1989 (no.25)
---------------------------------------------------------------------

The Soyuz TM-8/Mir/Progress M complex continues in orbit, crewed
by Aleksandr Viktorenko and Aleksandr Serebrov.

Atlantis/STS-34/Galileo is scheduled for launch on Oct 12.

Two classified payloads were aboard the Titan 34D launch on Sep 4.
They are probably DSCS communication satellites and are now presumably
in geostationary orbit.

Another classified US satellite was launched on Sep 6. No details yet,
but it's a year since the first Titan II SLV launch from Vandenberg,
so another of those would be a good first guess. Any details, anyone?

Another Resurs-F remote sensing satellite was launched by the USSR
on Sep 6.


(c) 1989 Jonathan McDowell

Off to DC all next week, so next one will be late...

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

Date:         Fri, 15 Sep 89 10:01:01 EDT
From: Kenneth Ng <[e-mail]>


:------------------------------
:
:Date: 2 Sep 89 03:58:11 GMT
:From: agate!shelby!portia!hanauma![e-mail]  (Joe Dellinger)
:Subject: Re: Voyager's Interstellar Itinerary
:
:In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail]
: writes:
:>296036       Closest approach to Sirius - 4.32 ly away.
:>             14.64 ly from the Sun.
:>
:>        Personally, I wouldn't trust the numbers past about 60000 years -
:>there are still too many unknown possibilities for gravitational influences.
:>
:I wouldn't trust numbers past 1000 years myself. I'll make a 50$ bet that
:within 600 years Voyager will be proudly on display in the Smithsonian, as
:a monument to the fading days of the WWII era of world history. (I'm willing
:to make a 50$ bet because I know 50$ by then will be the equivalent of 2 cents
:now.)

Smithsonian?  Do you really think an American team will be the first
to go out that far?  What's the Soviet equivalent of the Smithsonian?

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

Date: 15 Sep 89 14:36:31 GMT
From: frooz![e-mail]  (Bill Wyatt)
Subject: Re: RTGs for use on earth


 >>The Mexican incident [...]
 >
 > Just to keep this straight -- there was a separate incident, in Brazil I
 > believe, involving a discarded radioisotope (Cs) source from a medical
 > lab, disposed of by tossing into a public dump.  [...]
 >        Hundreds of people were permanently injured and several
 > lives lost, not only because of some Brazilian laboratory's negligence,
 > but also because people the world over still deal with technology on a
 > mystical level.

My recollection of this is not quite identical. The laboratory went
bankrupt, and the owner refused to let the people in to dispose of the
radioisotopes, which were stolen during a subsequent break-in. The
stuff was then discarded, and later found and distributed by poor
people who had little knowledge and less education about radioactivity.

My point is that the tragedy was not due to the laboratory's negligence.

Bill Wyatt, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory  (Cambridge, MA, USA)
    UUCP :  {husc6,cmcl2,mit-eddie}!harvard!cfa!wyatt
    ARPA:   [e-mail]
    SPAN:   cfa::wyatt                 BITNET: wyatt@cfa

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

Date: Fri, 15 Sep 89 09:46:09 PDT
From: Peter Scott <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Galileo Jovian atmospheric probe -- is it sterilized???

sco![e-mail]  (Evan A.C. Hunt) writes:

>    How difficult would it be at this point to sterilize the atmosphere
>probe?  I have difficulty believing that something designed to withstand
>Jovian conditions would be damaged if we ran hot steam over it for a few
>hours.  I agree that the risk of contaminating Jupiter is small, but if
>the cost to make it even smaller is negligible, then I think it's much
>more foolish not to try.

Well, what's the point in doing it unless you do it right?  Some bugs just
love hot steam.  And was already pointed out, the *surface* of the probe
is going to get a pretty thorough dusting en route anyway;  some posters were
worried about the *interior* of the probe.  Wanna take it apart now?

Peter Scott ([e-mail])

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

Date: 17 Sep 89 01:45:27 GMT
From: haven!uvaarpa!hudson!astsun.astro.Virginia.EDU![e-mail]  (Greg Lindahl)
Subject: Re: Re: Saturn V & F-1

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Tom Neff) writes:
>>[someone else]
>>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.

Of course, the main competition to the S5 would be the shuttle-C. The main
engines for the shuttle-C are flying today. By your own argument, it must
be cheaper to build shuttle-C using existing components than to reconstruct
the Saturn V from rusting originals.

What the Shuttle C lacks is the political committment needed to fund
it. I think it would be quite a bit cheaper to loft the space station
on a few shuttle C flights then a bunch of shuttle flights. If Congress
can't back that kind of cost savings, what makes you think they're going
to take the more radical step of rebuilding the Saturn V?

------
Greg Lindahl
[e-mail]                                             I'm not the NRA.

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

Date: 16 Sep 89 17:39:33 GMT
From: cs.utexas.edu!mailrus!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!csri.toronto.edu![e-mail]  (Wayne Hayes)
Subject: Re: Galileo Jovian atmospheric probe -- is it sterilized???

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Terry Ingoldsby) writes:
>I'm baffled.  We are losing many species of life each year (the number 2/day
>sticks in my mind) here on earth and there seems to be more commotion about
>Jovian life that may or may not exist, and certainly isn't as important to
>me even if it does exist.  I realize that this is a *very* earth centered
>viewpoint (for which I will surely be flamed) but I live on this planet and
>I'm more concerned about protecting earth's environment than the (exceedingly)
>primitive life that *might* exist on Jupiter.  If the space probes give us
>info that might be of use in predicting/protecting earth's environment then
>the possible demise of a few Jovian bugs does not upset me unduly.
>--
>  Terry Ingoldsby                       ctycal![e-mail]
>  Land Information Systems                           or
>  The City of Calgary         ...{alberta,ubc-cs,utai}!calgary!ctycal!ingoldsb

Ok, flame on :-).

First think of the same thing happenning here on Earth about 800 million
years ago.  Then there was not much more than microscopic multi-celled
creatures here.  However there *had* been life for nearly 3 *BILLION* years.
Ie, it took a *long* time for life to go from nothing just to multi-
cellular.  Then things really took off.  So if there's "bugs" on Jupiter,
they're certainly deserving at least as much evolutionary "respect" as
anything on Earth, probably having evolved to a large degree as much as we
have.  So 800 million years ago some extra-terrestrials come
mosying by and say of the Earth, "Gee, look, nothing more than sub-insects
here.  Let's colonize it."  The potential loss of an advanced ecosystem
totally different than any other is, at the very least, a massive
scientific loss in the far future.  (Sheesh!  Imagine studying the evolution
of life on a non-Earth planet for millions of years!!  Right here in our
own back yard!! Shit, Our ancestors would *NEVER* forgive us for for screwing
up an opportunity like that!)

    I guess it is a somewhat subjective opinion (though one that
many people take *very* seriously, both with reason and strong emotion --
just ask any "Trekkie" who believes in Gene Roddenberry's "Prime
Directive"), but I just strongly believe that we have no right to go
screwing around with an environment we know nothing about.  Yes, it's
a trajedy what's happeining on Earth due to our stupidity, but certainly
does not give us the right to try and fix our stupidity here by
just propagating that stupidity to a completely "virgin" environment.
I don't think Galileo's atmospheric probe is going to tell us much about
how to save our environment.  Learning about Jupiter's weather and
cloud motion as it pertains to learning about Earth's environment is
going to involve deep and long term radar probing of the atmosphere.
The Galileo atmospheric probe is doing for Jupiter's atmosphere what
Voyager did to it's cloud tops:  some very, very basic info to whet
our appetites.  It is very scientifically exciting, that's about it.

    As I said in a recent posting, I personnally have been convinced
by the posters of sci.astro that the risk of contamination is negligible,
and even that the chance of life there is also small.  But the philosophy
is still strong:  don't mess with planet that may have life that we
may screw up.  I'm still uneasy about it, but not as much as before.

--
"If I had only known, I would have been a locksmith."   -- Albert Einstein

Wayne Hayes    INTERNET: [e-mail]    CompuServe: 72401,3525

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

Date: Sat, 16 Sep 89 13:31:27 PDT
From: Peter Scott <[e-mail]>
Subject: Galileo Earth fly-bys

I saw plots the other day of the ground tracks for the two Earth fly-bys
of Galileo.  I'm sorry to say that they're both over south-western Africa
and Galileo is unlikely to be visible from North America anywhere near
closest approach.  Forgot to check time of day, of course, so don't even
know whether it's dark then.  Of course, this is good news if you live in
Namibia and it's midnight GMT...

Peter Scott ([e-mail])

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

Date: 15 Sep 89 20:06:42 GMT
From: bfmny0![e-mail]  (Tom Neff)
Subject: Re: NASA forced to photo Cydonia

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Ken Schmahl) writes:
>I'm surprised no one has posted this yet, so I'll do it now:
>In Thursday's (9/14) Wall Street Journal...

Side note - once again, remember news propagation delay.  A bunch of
people may very well *have* posted it, as we'll soon see :-)

>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.

It's a nice idea to study chaotic terrain closely, even if airheads are
believing face-in-the-rug games (I wish Hoagland had seen the curtains
in my bedroom as a kid -- *definite* evidence!).  There is a lot to
learn.  But Albee is fooling him[?]self to think anything NASA can do
will kill off the rumors -- such things are made to survive, not go away.

>But the Mars Project's Mr. Hoagland says [checking for evidence of
>construction with 3-meter resolution] is 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?"

Note how he positions himself early for damage control in the event of a
negative finding.  (This is a pattern common to cannier UFO and
"psychic" purveyors.)  If common or garden evidence fails to show, it is
declared of no interest, and faces-in-the-rug restored to preeminence.
With better resolution there will be decades worth of geometrical
nonsense to be extracted.

It would make a nice control for NASA to deliver Hoagland a digitized
image of a segment of actual living room rug mislabeled as Cydonia, just
to see what findings he announced, but I doubt they have the guts. :-)
--
                                    \\\
'We have luck only with women --   *-((O    Tom Neff
         not spacecraft!'             \\\   [e-mail]

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

End of SPACE Digest V10 #80
*******************