Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/mac/TEXT/SPACEDIG/V10_1/V10_172.TXT

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Subject: SPACE Digest V10 #172

SPACE Digest                                     Volume 10 : Issue 172

Today's Topics:
           Asteroids as weapons of mass destruction
            lower thy flame if you please
            Re: The true value of Galileo
             Re: Space Shuttle Launched!
          Reason with the Anti-RTG Movement?
          Neptune images on CD-ROM from NASA
              Re: The Anti-RTG Movement
            Re: Amroc tour trivia.
        Re: Reason with the Anti-RTG Movement?
             Re: Plutonium in Earth orbit
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 20 Oct 89 19:22:36 GMT
From: ibmpa![e-mail]  (Nick Szabo)
Subject: Asteroids as weapons of mass destruction



In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail]
ysics.utoronto.ca (Christopher Neufeld) writes:
>Disclaimer: I am NOT professor Griffin.

>   So, to use it as a weapon, you would have to arrange for it to hit the
>ground directly, without spiraling in through the atmosphere. Current
>technology couldn't put that sort of delta-v on an asteroid, unless it was
>already on a worrisome course.

It's not a matter of delta-v.  It's simply a matter of finding a trajectory
that directly intersects that of Earth.  This involves timing and fine
adjustment, which we do very well today. Voyager, ICE, etc.  have
accomplished far trickier maneuvers.  Think about Galileo's two
"near-collisons" with Earth; in both cases it has large delta-v vs. the Earth.

The energy needed for collision-course is much less than the energy for
delivering an asteroid into Earth orbit.  In fact, it probably lies well
within the current art: find an asteroid that is within .001 km/s delta-v of
collision course with Earth (just a matter of thorough search with ground-
based telescopes), nudge it with a few well-placed nuclear explosives, and
fine-tune the course with a few small chemical rockets.

A vertical, as opposed to a grazing or "spiralling" approach, is also easy.
The orbit needs to be reasonably eliptical compared to Earth's, and the
delta-v should be large enough (3-4 km/s?) to give a swift approach.

Legal and/or military steps will need to be taken as space development
progresses, to protect Earth from the high-energy activities of space.
Robert Heinlein started to discuss this 25 years ago in _The Moon is a Harsh
Mistress_.  I don't know of any solution.  This is a big problem.

On the constructive side, we might use collision with other objects (the Moon
or other asteroids) to radically decrease the amount of energy we need to
move asteroids into various desired orbits.  Question: if two asteroids collide
at high speed, do they shatter, vaporize, or remain for the most part intact?
If good chunks of them remained intact, and the resulting trajectories could
be reasonably predicted, collision would be an inexpensive technique for
moving asteroids and comets into Earth, Mars, Jupiter, or whatever orbits we
desired.

>Such asteroids would be monitored if their
>existence became known.

There are an estimated c. 100,000 asteroids with a delta-v closer than the
lunar surface. Only a few of these have been discovered, and none are
regularly tracked.  100,000 gives us a large population of trajectories to
work with.  The sensor and computational power needed to find and track all
these is large but should be undertaken to forestall a tragedy.  I just
lived through a scary 7.0 earthquake.  Some other folks in the Bay Area weren't
so lucky.  Compared to an asteroid strike, the earthquake was incredibly
trivial.

> Christopher Neufeld....Just a graduate student  |  "I'm a scientist;
> [e-mail]               | nothing shocks me"
> [e-mail]              |   - Indiana Jones
> "Don't edit reality for the sake of simplicity" |



--
--------------------------------------------
Nick Szabo
uunet!ibmsupt!szabonj
These opinions are not related to Big Blue's

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

Date:     Sun, 22 Oct 89 14:41 EDT
From: <[e-mail]>
Subject:  lower thy flame if you please

Subj:   rebuttal

>Date: 11 Oct 89 06:05:13 GMT
>From: bungia!orbit!pnet51![e-mail]  (S Schaper)
>Subject: Re: Galileo--- history repeats itself

>Apparently Korac MacArthur is a product of the Amerian Public Educational
>System. Where did he get his history - Monty Python???

>UUCP: {amdahl!bungia, uunet!rosevax, chinet, killer}!orbit!pnet51!schaper
>ARPA: crash!orbit!pnet51![e-mail]
>INET: [e-mail]

        Actually, in fact I was trying (apparently not too well) to make a
satirical analogy.  The rematch of Galileo vs. the Christians(ics) was too
good a pun to pass up.  I suppose I should have includes some smileys.  Do
forgive me for bad net linquistics.   Everyone's a critic.  :)  <<<< see?
Jeesh!

                Korac MacArthur

"It only a flesh wound!  En guarde!"
--- the Black Knight, Monty Python's The Holy Grail

Disclaimer: n/a

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

Date: 22 Oct 89 00:22:50 GMT
From: rochester![e-mail]  (Paul Dietz)
Subject: Re: The true value of Galileo

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Jim Bowery) writes:

>Such an awakening is our only real hope of getting to space.
>The cost of such a disaster would be small compared to the
>value of breakout out into the space frontier before the
>Club of Rome comes home to roost.

Two comments:

(1) It was a report *to* the Club of Rome, not *by* the Club.  The Club
did not endorse the conclusions in Limits To Growth.

(2) Limits To Growth was debunked soon after it came out.  It's
nonsense, an excellent example of "garbage in, gospel out".  Resources
are and will continue to be abundant, and population growth peaked in
the 60's.  Demographers project world population will not reach 10
billion until the year 2100; although that could be off, the trend is
reassuring.

For an amusing put-down of Jay Forrester, see the most recent Forbes.

    Paul F. Dietz
    [e-mail]

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

Date: 20 Oct 89 21:48:03 GMT
From: ibmpa![e-mail]  (Nick Szabo)
Subject: Re: Space Shuttle Launched!

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Ron Baalke) writes:
>
>The Space Shuttle just successfully been launched!!

"Jupiter or Bust"!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


******************* Godspeed Galileo ******************************
--
--------------------------------------------
Nick Szabo
uunet!ibmsupt!szabonj
These opinions are not related to Big Blue's

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

Date: 21 Oct 89 20:19:44 GMT
From: jumbo![e-mail]  (Bob Ayers)
Subject: Reason with the Anti-RTG Movement?

Tom Neff writes

    A savvy Agency would have bent over backwards to placate the coalition
    people, with white room tours and VIP launch tickets and a high level
    scientist-to-scientist sit down to air out serious objections from the
    coalition's physics people.

Have you heard or seen or even heard of a "coalition's physics person"?
I haven't.

Let me make a few substitutions in the paragraph I quoted:

    A savvy biology teacher would have bent over backwards to placate
    the fundamentalists, with tours to paleo-digs and a high level
    scientist-to-scientist sit down to air out serious objections from
    the fundy's creationist people.

Tom apparently believes tht the Christics etc. are anti-RTG due to a
reasonable analysis unfortunately grounded on insufficient or erroneous
data, and that an appropriate course is to give them more data and let
them see the light.

I believe that the Christics are anti-RTG for reasons which have nothing to
do with scientific reasoning. E.g. that atomic power was created by the
Devil to tempt mankind and anything associated with it is Evil. Or that
science-bashing is a fruitful way to inflame the masses.

Anyone got any evidence to suggest that the Christics (and other
anti-RTGers) can be swayed by logic?

Bob

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

Date: 21 Oct 89 20:14:58 GMT
From: microsoft![e-mail]  (Brian Willoughby)
Subject: Neptune images on CD-ROM from NASA

I'm posting this blind, so this may be old news...
I read in a recent computer weekly rag that NASA has released the images
that were downloaded from the recent Voyager flyby of Neptune.  The
intention was to provide the images so that people with less expensive
computer graphics machines could view the digital pictures, and the
CD-ROM media was used since many files are over 1 Meg.

Unfortunately, the article - which mentioned that the CD-ROM was
available from JPL and three other organizations - did not mention any
address or phone number for obtaining the CD-ROM.

A quick GREP of sci.* revealed a few mentions of JPL.  Do any of you know
where I could get the disk?  Please reply via email, as I do not read
these groups (lack of time, certainly not interest!).  Sorry, I don't
remember the names of the other organizations - the article is not handy.

Brian Willoughby
UUCP:           ...!{tikal, sun, uunet, elwood}!microsoft!brianw
Bitnet          [e-mail]
InterNet:       microsoft![e-mail]
  or:           microsoft![e-mail]

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

Date: 21 Oct 89 23:23:35 GMT
From: mailrus!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!utzoo![e-mail]  (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: The Anti-RTG Movement

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Tom Neff) writes:
>A savvy Agency would have bent over backwards to placate the coalition
>people, with white room tours and VIP launch tickets and a high level
>scientist-to-scientist sit down to air out serious objections from the
>coalition's physics people...

Uh, what physics people?  We're not dealing with rational opponents here.
(The rational no-nuclear-power-in-space people, by and large, consider
Galileo worthwhile despite some reservations about NASA safety estimates.)
When dealing with crazies, bending over backwards just gives them a better
chance to knock you on your behind.

I tend to agree with Tom that NASA is not particularly smart about handling
this sort of problem, but in this case they got the right answer even if it
was for the wrong reasons.
--
A bit of tolerance is worth a  |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
megabyte of flaming.           | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry [e-mail]

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

Date: 21 Oct 89 19:29:34 GMT
From: cs.utexas.edu!ginosko!usc!aero![e-mail]  (Thomas F. Smith)
Subject: Re: Amroc tour trivia.

From a previous message:
>On the blackboard inside the AMROC blockhouse:
>TO DO:
>  1) Launch
>  2) Party
>  3) Sleep
>  4) (see 3)

That reminds me:------------------------------------------------------------
Seen at the launch site by me.  Taped to the base of the rocket:
Paper warning from fireworks_  WARNING: Emits sparks.  Light fuse and stand
back.  Fur sure!  Very small notice but I was very close.

--
This space reserved.                                     Space Not Reserved.
Space Commercialization Office, Space Systems Division, Los Angeles AFB, CA.

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

Date: 21 Oct 89 23:02:16 GMT
From: bfmny0![e-mail]  (Tom Neff)
Subject: Re: Reason with the Anti-RTG Movement?

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Bob Ayers) writes:
>Tom Neff writes
>
>    A savvy Agency would have bent over backwards to placate the coalition
>    people, with white room tours and VIP launch tickets and a high level
>    scientist-to-scientist sit down to air out serious objections from the
>    coalition's physics people.
>
>Have you heard or seen or even heard of a "coalition's physics person"?
>I haven't.

Right, maybe NASA hasn't either, I wouldn't be surprised.  Nevertheless
they apparently do exist.  An article in this week's VOICE ("Space
Junk," by Karl Grossman) quotes several scientists making pro-coalition*
statements: Dr Michio Kaku, prof. nuclear physics CUNY; John Gofman, MD,
PhD, prof emeritus medical physics UCB (Pu pioneer for Manhattan
Project; calls Galileo "one of man's modern lunacies"); Dr Horst Albin
Poehler, identified as a "scientist with 20 years service for NASA
contractors at KSC" (provided an affidavit saying NASA rejected heavy
shielding to save 2000 pounds).

The coalition's case evidently rested on what these and similar folks
know about plutonium, plus what could be found out about NASA's risk
studies via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).  FOIA yields included
Final Safety analyses by GE and other contractors.  One might wonder why
FOIA should be necessary in the first place!  Siege mentality.  What I
was talking about before.

Again, I am not taking the coalition's side, but I think NASA can ill
afford to p*** off the liberal baby boomer constituency they can
influence.  (Giving them the bouncer treatment only broadens that
influence.)

* The plaintiffs in the recently dismissed lawsuit are the Christic
  Institute, the Florida Coalition for Peace and Justice and the
  Foundation on Economic Trends.
--
Knowing *when* to optimize is just   >>>/     Tom Neff
  as important as knowing *how*.       /<<<   [e-mail]

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

Date: 20 Oct 89 14:57:12 GMT
From: att!drutx!druwa![e-mail]  (BakerRC)
Subject: Re: Plutonium in Earth orbit

> Was Apollo 13?  That thing came straight down a lot faster than merely
> orbital velocity and it had a RTG onboard that was not intended to
> ever come back to earth at all.
>
>
> I seem to have missed the massive destruction following its impact
> at 25,000 mph (as opposed to a measley 18,000 mph).  Can you tell
> me where this destruction took place and how many thousands died
> and what area I should avoid for the next million years.

I believe minus 3 died.

Congratulations Atlantis.
"You looked beautiful going up" - Launch control (and me)
"Galileo is on its' way to another world" - Don Williams, STS34

blah
blah
blah
blah
blah
blah
blah

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

End of SPACE Digest V10 #172
*******************