Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/mac/TEXT/SPACEDIG/V10_2/V10_290.TXT

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Subject: SPACE Digest V10 #290

SPACE Digest                                     Volume 10 : Issue 290

Today's Topics:
            oceans as alternatives
            the affordable cost may change
         Re: Re: Why NASA wants to go to Mars
         Galileo Update 11/29/89 (Forwarded)
           Still space images on videodisc
         NASA Headline News for 11/30/89 (Forwarded)
             Gary Hudson and the Phoenix
              Re: Mir expansion
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 30 Nov 89 17:47:41 GMT
From: cs.utexas.edu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!utzoo![e-mail]  (Henry Spencer)
Subject: oceans as alternatives

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Brian Yamauchi) writes:
>Imagine actually wanting to *utilize* undersea resources -- Rifkin and
>friends would have apoplectic fits.  (All the more reason to go ahead
>and do it :-).

Ever wonder why nobody's done it?  It's because the oceanic equivalent
of the infamous Moon Treaty was *not* intercepted by an oceanic equivalent
of L5.  The oceans are the "common heritage of mankind"... which means that
any private corporation that wants to make money out of them runs into a
long string of bureaucratic roadblocks written into the rules by socialist
countries.
--
Mars can wait:  we've barely   |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
started exploring the Moon.    | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry [e-mail]

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

Date: 30 Nov 89 09:27:32 GMT
From: voder!dtg.nsc.com![e-mail]  (Lord Snooty @ The Giant Poisoned Electric Head )
Subject: the affordable cost may change

perhaps if the eastern europe upheavals result in a perceived non-threatening
bloc to the US government in the near future, then... the affordable cost
of getting into space may change for the better. that is, we may have more
cash to throw around. hitching a ride on the back of communism's downfall...
--
...........................................................................
Andrew Palfreyman    a wet bird never flies at night        time sucks
[e-mail]    there are always two sides to a broken window

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

Date: Thu, 30 Nov 89 11:28:09 PST
From: Peter Scott <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Re: Why NASA wants to go to Mars

bbn.com![e-mail]  (Nichael Cramer) writes:

>It is one thing to
>use ones own sources or to say to an individual or some organization
>"Please give me money to do this" and allow them the choice of doing so,
>whatever their motives are.  It's something else altogether to simply
>inform someone --say the lady who just came through to empty the
>wastebasket in my office-- that she is going to have to pay for this
>whether she likes it or not.
>
>Being expected to supply her with sensible justifications for something
>like this doesn't seem to be at all unreasonable.

We all have to pay for a whole bunch of things whether we like it or
not.  It's called income tax.  You don't have any legal way of avoiding
it unless you make a hideously large amount of money.

There is no requirement that any item which federal money is spent on
be justifiable to everyone on down to the cleaning lady.  I doubt there
is a single item on the federal budget which everyone paying taxes
approves of.  The process (supposedly) is that if we don't like the
decisions they're making about how to spend our money, we don't vote
for them again.

I don't think it's even appropriate that a majority of tax payers
approve of a particular expenditure -- minorities have rights too --
but even stipulating this, have we any idea whether a majority of
the population would support a federally-funded Mars mission?  No,
we don't know one way or the other.

It would appear that the only way to find out is to do it and then
see who stays in office :-)

Peter Svott ([e-mail])

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

Date: 30 Nov 89 16:01:20 GMT
From: zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!usc!henry.jpl.nasa.gov!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!jato!mars.jpl.nasa.gov![e-mail]  (Ron Baalke)
Subject: Galileo Update 11/29/89 (Forwarded)



                      GALILEO WEEKLY STATUS
                        November 29, 1989


     As of Wednesday, November 29, the Galileo spacecraft is 8.15
million miles from Earth (round-trip light time 88 seconds,
almost 1 1/2 minutes); it is now more than 50 million miles along
its 185-million-mile path to Venus.

     The last week was a relatively uneventful period for
Galileo's flight team; owing to the holiday only a few
activities were scheduled, including Sun-pointing Saturday,
yesterday, and today, and an RPM maintenance (flushing the
propulsion system plumbing) on Monday.

     The spacecraft is still in the dual-spin mode, with the spun
section rotating at approximately 3 rpm.  It is transmitting
telemetry at 1200 bits per second via LGA-2, the low-gain antenna
attached to a boom pointing down (away from the Sun) from one of
the RTG booms.  The DSN tracking data are clear enough to show
the back-and-forth motion of this antenna as the spacecraft
rotates.

     The third operational sequence (of six covering the period
from launch through Venus encounter) will be sent to
Galileo Friday and take effect Saturday, December 2. It
consists of continued cruise operations including further
spacecraft characterization.  The second trajectory change
maneuver (removing the rest of the original bias) and the
four-day science checkout, scheduled for late December, will
be part of EV-4, the next sequence.


 Ron Baalke                       |    [e-mail]
 Jet Propulsion Lab  M/S 301-355  |    [e-mail]
 4800 Oak Grove Dr.               |
 Pasadena, CA 91109               |

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

Date:     Thu, 30 Nov 89 14:03 CST
From: Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey <[e-mail]>
Subject:  Still space images on videodisc
Original_To:  SPACE

I just received a catalog of aviation history books from the Smithsonian
Institution Press.  It includes six videodiscs full of stills at fifty-five
bucks apiece.  I don't have a player, but maybe some readers will be
interested.

"The National Air and Space Museum is reproducing its entire photo archives aon
videodiscs.  Ten discs are currently planned...[these laser NTSC 525-line
discs] can be played on all laser videodisc players."
 Two of the six discs are relevant to students of spaceflight.  Quoting from
the catalog:
============================================================================

Archival Videodisc 6

The Lunar Missions Imagery Disc documents the history of manned and unmanned
lunar missions with over 70,000 images.  The unmanned Ranger, Surveyor, and
Lunar Orbiter missions are represented with a selection of over 6,000
black-and-white images on side A, followed by 23,000 color and black-and-white
images taken by the Apollo astronauts.  Because many of these images were shot
in rapid sequence, they provide an "animated" re-creation of many aspects of
the Apollo missions when played in an auto forward mode.  Each image is
referenced with an index.

Also on Side A are chronologies of American and Soviet lunar missions,
photodocumentaries of lunar explorations, and biographies of the Apollo
astronauts.  Details of lunar mapping are provided as a cross reference to the
Apollo photographs.

Side B stores roughly 47,000 frames of Apollo panoramic photography from Apollo
15, 16, and 17.  A mapping index is provided for Side B.
ISBN: 0-84747-939-5S  $55.00 (Smithsonian members $44.00)

Archival Videodisc 5
[NASA history, U.S. space program, Shuttle Hasselblad photography from STS-1 to
STS-61C.] Index included.
ISBN: 0-84747-936-0S  $55.00 (Smithsonian members $44.00)
======================================================================
The other discs are of interest to aviation buffs:
#1  Aircraft, alphabetical by manufacturer (100,000 images)
#2  More aircraft, personalities, events
#3  USA(A)F through 1954, including 50,000 WWII images
#4  USAF pre-1954, Korea, art collection (Single-sided, 50,000 images)

If you're interested, contact:
Smithsonian Institution Press
Dept. 900
Blue Ridge Summit, PA 17294-0900
[phone]

                        ///        Bill Higgins
   E                   ///
  |8D:O:          occc))))<))      Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
   E                 ///
                    ///            Bitnet: [e-mail]

Bumper sticker seen on a Soyuz:    SPAN/Hepnet/Physnet: 43011::HIGGINS

 DON'T LAUGH-- IT'S PAID FOR       Internet: [e-mail]

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

Date: 30 Nov 89 22:50:28 GMT
From: trident.arc.nasa.gov![e-mail]  (Peter E. Yee)
Subject: NASA Headline News for 11/30/89 (Forwarded)

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Thursday, Dec. 30, 1989                      Audio:  202/755-1788
-----------------------------------------------------------------

This is NASA Headline News for Thursday, November 30th......

A federal grand jury met in Birmingham, Alabama yesterday to hear
charges that improperly inspected and possibly inaccurate sensors
on booster rockets made by the Thiokol Corporation were used on
the first three shuttle flights following the Challenger
accident.  The new sensors were added to monitor things like
pressure within the redesigned joints and the operation of new
heaters wrapped around joints.  Thomas Lee, Director of NASA's
Marshall Space Flight Center, which oversees work on the booster
rockets, emphasized that shuttle safety has not been compromised,
and that the equipment in question has nothing to do with the
operation of the shuttle itself.  Lee said that Marshall
engineers quickly determined through a variety of ground tests
and the success of recent missions, that the boosters are
operating as anticipated.

NASA officials said yesterday that the Solar Maximum satellite
dropped 7.5 miles in 24 hours and is expected to re-enter earth's
atmosphere about 1:49 a.m. Eastern time on Saturday.  Most of the
satellite will be destroyed by fire, but some debris could
possibly survive the re-entry.  That is expected to occur
somewhere between 28 degrees north and 28 degrees south of the
equator...80 percent of which is water.

At Kennedy Space Center, a two-day dress-rehearsal countdown for
the upcoming STS-32 mission is underway.  Columbia's crew will
participate in the final hours of the test tomorrow morning.  A
formal flight readiness review for the mission is scheduled next
week.







                          ************













-----------------------------------------------------------------
Here's the broadcast schedule for public affairs events on NASA
Select television.  All times are Eastern.

Friday, Dec. 1.....

     6:00 A.M.     Coverage begins of the concluding 6-hours
                   of the STS-32 countdown demonstration test.

Thursday, Dec. 7...

    11:30 A.M.     NASA Update will be transmitted.

All events and times are subject to change without notice.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
These reports are filed daily, Monday through Friday, at 12 noon,
Eastern time.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
A service of the Internal Communications Branch (LPC), NASA
Headquarters, Washington, D.C.

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

Date: 30 Nov 89 07:16:40 GMT
From: genbank!agate!shelby!portia![e-mail]  (Joseph Brenner)
Subject: Gary Hudson and the Phoenix

I just attended a talk by Gary Hudson (sponsored by the Stanford
Libertarians).

His current project is a company called Pacific American Launch
Vehicles (soon to be re-named Pacific American Spaceship Company).

The vehicle design he's working on (the Phoenix) is a
version of the project that the National Citizen Advisory Council
on Space was pushing to the government.  I noticed Pournelle
dropping some hints about it in a "computer" column, but outside of
that, I'd heard nothing about it.

The concept is a single stage to orbit vehicle, which is NOT
an expendable (he makes the point that it's difficult for a small
company to establish the reliability of an expendable booster, since
you have to throw them away to demonstrate them). The idea is bring
it down under power (or rather, let it drop and fire up the
engines to stop it just before it hits).   The design uses an aerospike
engine with over a hundred burners (I think that's the term he used)
radially distributed around the plug.  He mentioned something about
using air tight seals over the burners on re-entry so that the bottom
can function as a heat shield (cooled, not ablative).

According to Hudson, the aerospike design was originally
developed by Rocketdyne in the late 60s (he flashed a picture of
a ground test from 1968) as a successor to the J-2s in the Saturn V.
They were also planned for use on the space shuttle, until NASA flaked
out on them in the early 70s.  Hudson says the only reason they could
discover for not using them was that NASA wanted a competitive bid,
and Rocketdyne would've been the only supplier.

An interesting safety feature is that the vehicle is split into two
stages, the lower half being dedicated to the engine and fuel tanks,
and the upper half the cargo/crew section.  In the event that something
goes wrong with the lower section, they can separate and the upper stage
lands using parachutes.

Total vehicle height is something like 52 feet. The diameter is
about half the height.

Supposedly, no new technology is involved in this design, only integration
of some old technology into a new configuration.  However, he did say
that they had figured out 2 or 3 "little tricks" that he didn't want
to talk about.

Hudson's previous project, the Liberty vehicle now looks dead.
He said they'd essentially built the first stage, and invested about
$2 million in the project, when the venture capital backing pulled
out because "they weren't sure about the size of the market".
He seemed pretty disgusted at the use of venture capital in general,
and instead is focusing on finding (rich) private investors for his
current project.  He claimed that he'd been in touch with "an individual
on the east coast, whose name would be know to you all, with extensive
connections in the investment community"... Hudson said something
like "you know, it's really a trip to talk to someone only a few years
older than you who is worth billions."

Hudson's main intended market at this point is evidently space tourism.
He sited some study that showed that if you could bring it down to
$10,000 per ticket you can expect a million customers a year, or
10 billion a year in business.  In comparison, he says that the total
current commercial launch industry only does about $800 million per year.
(Japan's plans for a space hotel assume $50,000 per person and
expect about a half billion a year in business.)  He flashed an artists
conception of the interior cabin of a tourist ship: twenty seats arranged
radially in pairs with small windows in front of them (lots of space
between seats) and a narrow isle running behind them.

-- Joe Brenner

([e-mail]  Materials Science Dept/Stanford, CA 94305)

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

Date:     Thu, 30 Nov 1989 15:23 EST
From: Donald F. Simmons <[e-mail]>
Subject:  Re: Mir expansion
To: <[e-mail]>


     I have read on several posting on how the new module that has docked with
Mir will be moved to another docking port with some mechanical arm (sorry,
postings lost). How exactly is this done, and how fast do they do it? The new
module must mass (not weigh) tons, and is comparable in size to the original
Mir. Wouldn't the act of swinging it to another port start the whole station
spinning, or is this corrected for in some fashion?


################################################################################
# With mystical divinity of unashamed felinity ## Donald Simmons  0C109@AECLCR #
# Round the cathedral, cry 'Viva!'             ## Chalk River Nuclear Labs     #
# Life to the everlasting cat.                 ## Chalk River, Ontario         #
################################################################################

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

End of SPACE Digest V10 #290
*******************