Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/mac/TEXT/SPACEDIG/V10_4/V10_415.TXT

Internet Message Format | 1991-07-08 | 17KB

Return-path: <[e-mail]>
X-Andrew-Authenticated-as: 7997;andrew.cmu.edu;Ted Anderson
Received: from beak.andrew.cmu.edu via trymail for +dist+/afs/andrew.cmu.edu/usr11/tm2b/space/[e-mail] (->+dist+/afs/andrew.cmu.edu/usr11/tm2b/space/space.dl) (->ota+space.digests)
          ID </afs/andrew.cmu.edu/usr1/ota/Mailbox/YZfLU7q00VcJQ6xU4u>;
          Fri, 12 Jan 90 01:24:08 -0500 (EST)
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Reply-To: [e-mail]
From: [e-mail]
To: [e-mail]
Date: Fri, 12 Jan 90 01:23:44 -0500 (EST)
Subject: SPACE Digest V10 #415

SPACE Digest                                     Volume 10 : Issue 415

Today's Topics:
            Electric Car from GM?
            Re: Nuclear Reactors in Space
  Question: Was American Moon landings on China's news back in 1969?
Re: Question: Was American Moon landings on China's news back in 1969?
               Solar power flux
               A new propulsion method?
            Re: Nuclear Reactors in Space
             Re: On-Board Imaging Systems
         NASA Headline News for 01/11/90 (Forwarded)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: [e-mail]
Date: 11 Jan 90 11:02:51+0100
To: <[e-mail]>
Subject: Electric Car from GM?

>Organization: Ciba Geigy ZIT (Central Engineering) Basel, Switzerland


    This isn't exactly space, but since we were
talking about batteries...  Does anyone know anything
about this new electric car that GM announced a couple
of days (week?) ago?  Particularly how they solved the
power storage problem?  I understand this model has
substantially better performance than earlier attempts.

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

Date: 11 Jan 90 17:00:13 GMT
From: cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!aplcen!haven!uvaarpa!murdoch!astsun.astro.Virginia.EDU![e-mail]  (Greg S. Hennessy)
Subject: Re: Nuclear Reactors in Space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Neal Woodall) writes:
#which you you rather be hit by, a bunch of fast neutrons or a bunch of beta
#particles?

As if there was a difference.

-Greg Hennessy, University of Virginia
 USPS Mail:     Astronomy Department, Charlottesville, VA 22903-2475 USA
 Internet:      [e-mail]
 UUCP:        ...!uunet!virginia!gsh7w

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

Date: 11 Jan 90 01:36:53 GMT
From: vsi1!wyse!mips!prls!philabs!briar.philips.com![e-mail]  (Robert Casey;6282;3.57;$0201)
Subject: Question: Was American Moon landings on China's news back in 1969?

I seem to remember hearing, 20 years ago, that China did not tell its people
about the American Apollo Moon landings.  Man on the Moon.  I saw it live on
TV here in USA.  The astronauts brought a TV camera with them to the Moon.
The USA said that the astronauts "represented all mankind, not just USA" when
they walked on the Moon.  Ok.  Though they planted a USA flag there.  But we
haven't built any military bases, or done anything else there.

I asked two of my friends, who lived in China at the time, about this.  One
said that he didn't know about Man on the Moon untill a few months after it
happened.  My other friend said that he heard it live on the radio, by
listening to a Chinese language broadcast on Voice of America.  He also said
that it was illegal to listen to VOA at the time.  So he told only a few
trusted friends about it.

So, was it true that the Man on the Moon landing didn't make it onto
the News in China back in July 1969 (that's when it happened).  Why
would the Chinese goverment not tell its citizens about the Moon
landing?  (I'm just a dumb ordinary American.)  I realize that many of
you college students were very young then (0 to 4 years old), and would not
remember this anyway.  I was 15 years old then.  So, anyone my age
would know about this.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
"We don't need no re-education
We don't need no thought control
No Mao thoughts in the classroom
  Hey army, leave the students alone
  Hey Deng, leave the students alone
All in all, it's just another brick in the wall
All in all, you're just another brick in the wall!

      _Another Brick in the Wall, pt 2_ by Pink Floyd (modified)
      Pink Floyd is a rock band

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

Date: 11 Jan 90 20:06:59 GMT
From: uwm.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!usc!pollux.usc.edu![e-mail]  (Qiang Wan)
Subject: Re: Question: Was American Moon landings on China's news back in 1969?

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Robert Casey) writes:
>I seem to remember hearing, 20 years ago, that China did not tell its people
>about the American Apollo Moon landings.  Man on the Moon.  I saw it live on
>...

I ran across an American comic book in China back in 1982, with a story of
some US soldiers in a submarine. During one of their deep sea missions in
1969, two soldiers had the following interesting conversation:

A: "... We will be the only people who won't witness the great moment of
 moon landing..."
B: "Not ture. There are 800 million Chinese and Albanians (who won't be
 seeing the event on live TV)..."

I can't tell if the moon landing was ever on the newspaper then since I
was just a little kid. However I won't be surprised if the news were
deliberately delayed. There are many such incidents in those years, like
the escape of Lin Biao (Vice Chairman of the party and Minister of the
Defense). It was such a common practice that in the summer of 1976
people in Guangzhou (Canton) was circulating that Chairman Mao has died
already and the death was kept a secret for fear of unrest (Mao actually
[?] died on Sept 9, 1976, which was amazingly close to the rumored date)

If the moon landing event was reported late on Chinese newspapers in 1969,
the primary reason I could cite is that China just launched its first
man-made satellite around that time (1968?). The launch was used as a
propaganda to promote Mao's Thought and to demonstrate the superiority of
socialism. People took to the streets to celebrate. Radio broadcasted
live the music signals transmitted back from the satelite (sp?). At the
same time, Mao made a famous speech about the international atmasphere.
("...It is not the people (in the third world) who is afraid of the
Americans. It is the Americans who is afraid of the people...") The launch
of the Chinese satelite was viewed as establishing a leadership position
for China in the third world. Therefore, there is every reason for the
Chinese to be embarrassed about the moon landing event.

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

Date: 12 Jan 90 00:29:26 GMT
From: uwm.edu!cs.utexas.edu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!physics.utoronto.ca![e-mail]  (Christopher Neufeld)
Subject: Solar power flux

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Bill Wyatt) writes:
>
>I believe 1 kW/m**2 at Earth is very close to the correct value. I'm not
>sure if this is the value at the surface or at the top of the atmosphere.
>
   It's about 1kW/m^2 at normal incidence at the Earth's surface, and about
1.4kW/m^2 at normal incidence above the atmosphere. Of course the
wavelengths are not all attenuated by the same factor, and PV cells don't
work equally well at all wavelengths, so it would be an oversimplification
to expect that solar cells in orbit produce 40% more electricity than they
do on the ground. Perhaps somebody out there knows what the actual
enhancement would be. Anybody?

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


--
 Christopher Neufeld....Just a graduate student  |
 [e-mail]              | The meek can have the
 [e-mail]                    | earth, I want the stars.
 "Don't edit reality for the sake of simplicity" |

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

Date: 11 Jan 90 01:52:08 GMT
From: zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!samsung!munnari.oz.au!cluster!metro!ipso!stcns3![e-mail]  (Dave Horsfall)
Subject: A new propulsion method?

From a Henry signature:

"Saturn V #15 flight-ready birds nesting in engines"

Certainly an original (and cheap) method, but I don't think they'd be
quite up to it, somehow...

PS
Yes - Henry does talk to people.  It was after meeting him at a party
last year (Hi Chris) that I was sufficiently motivated to pay for the
importation of sci.space to Australia.  Now, with the IP link, it's
basically free.

--
Dave Horsfall (VK2KFU),  Alcatel STC Australia,  [e-mail]
[e-mail],  ...munnari!stcns3.stc.oz.AU!dave

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

Date: 11 Jan 90 19:36:21 GMT
From: frooz![e-mail]  (Bill Wyatt)
Subject: Re: Nuclear Reactors in Space

> In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Tom Neff) writes:
>> Well, reactors don't care how far from the sun they are per se (as long
>> as you don't get too close!), but they do need fuel, and when that runs
>> out you have a lot of complicated hardware doing nothing.  Solar arrays
>> diminish in effectiveness as distance from the sun increases, but while
>> they are effective at all they are just about *permanently* effective.

Not, they're not. Radiation (Van Allen belts, Jupiter's belts, and
even eventually the solar wind) degrades them. For example, the
Hipparchos satellite people are very concerned that the poor orbit
it's in will quickly destroy the solar panels, since it passes through
the Van Allen belts. (At last report they're holding up much better
than expected, but hold your breath - we're essentially at solar
maximum right now, so a big storm will hurt.)

For another example, Magellan's solar array output (Venus probe)
decreased about 5% from a single large solar flare event last October.
I would think any mission to Jupiter must have RTG's at least as much
for radiation hardness as for power output.

From article <[e-mail]>, by [e-mail] (John Woods):
> But they don't have to go very far away to become *in*effective.  As I recall,
> the solar flux at Earth is something like a kilowatt per square meter (I am
> certain this is wrong, but not by an order of magnitude).

I believe 1 kW/m**2 at Earth is very close to the correct value. I'm not
sure if this is the value at the surface or at the top of the atmosphere.

[Good summary of baleful 1/R**2 effects deleted]

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

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

Date: 11 Jan 90 20:54:05 GMT
From: [e-mail]  (Peter G. Ford)
Subject: Re: On-Board Imaging Systems

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Raul Izahi Lopez Hernandez) writes:
>Does anybody know what type of Imaging system does Magellan or Galileo
>use to get pictures of the planets they are going to visit?
>
>Also, what type of image acquisition systems are planned to be installed
>in the space station Freedom for EOS (earth observation) work?

Here's some info about Magellan...

The primary Magellan imaging system is an S-band (2385 Mhz) synthetic-
aperture radar (SAR). It uses a 3.8 meter spherical dish antenna (a
spare left over from the Voyager Project) and a 300 Watt transmitted.
Its receiver samples the returned echoes at 0.4 microsecond intervals
and transmits the digital result back to the Earth. The resolution of
the instrument varies from 120 meters around the equator to 350 meters
near the poles.

The first step in ground processing is to correlate the received signal
against a copy of the transmitted waveform, thereby measuring the range
from the space-craft to surface scatterers. The next step is to analyze
the received signal in frequency, to further isolate scatterers that
have differing doppler-shift profiles. In a third step, the echo
intensities from different delays and doppler shifts are re-projected
into latitude and longitude on the planet's surface. The result is a
350x110000 pixel image, generated once per orbit, 8 orbits per day for
8 months.

The 350x110000 pixel strips (we call them "noodles") are the chopped up
into "handy" strips and assembled into 8192x7168 pixel images which are
recorded on CD-ROM disks and also printed on photographic paper. The
images are, of course, in black-and-white.

All SAR image processing is carried out at the Jet Propulsion
Laboratory.  In addition, Magellan also makes altimetric and
radiometric measurements of Venus. These are smaller data sets which
will be processed jointly by teams from JPL, MIT and Stanford
University.

I'll let others speak for Galileo and EOS.

Peter Ford
MIT and Magellan Project

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

Date: 11 Jan 90 22:15:08 GMT
From: trident.arc.nasa.gov![e-mail]  (Peter E. Yee)
Subject: NASA Headline News for 01/11/90 (Forwarded)

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Thursday, January 11, 1990                    Audio: 202/755-1788
-----------------------------------------------------------------

This is NASA Headline News for Thursday, January 11....


The crew of the space shuttle orbiter Columbia continues
preparations for rendezvous with the Long Duration Exposure
Facility.  Grappling of the satellite is now scheduled for about
9:48 A.M., Eastern time, Friday.

Mission Specialist Marsha Ivins has been filming with the IMAX
camera.  Later today, the crew will attempt to film fires in
Madagscar and deforestation in Brazil.  The text and graphics
system is still malfunctioning and water leakage in the cabin
dehumidifier system required some unscheduled plumbing earlier
today.



Vice President Dan Quayle told members of the American
Astronomical Society meeting in Crystal City, VA., the United
States competitive advantage in technology has disappeared.  He
said space programs cost too much and take too long to develop.
The Vice President told the 175th annual meeting of the
scientific group that in order to revitalize U.S. space
efforts...the National Space Council, which he heads...is
"looking across the traditional divisions among civil, commercial
and national security activities.

Quayle said the Space Council is developing a four-point plan for
the 1990s...devise plans for missions to the moon and Mars,
expand Earth observations and improve launch capabilities and
improve national security.  He also told the scientists the U.S.
will commit itself to a balanced program...not emphasizing human
exploration at the expense of science excellence.



DARPA -- the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency -- and the Air
Force have told Orbital Sciences Corp. to conduct a third captive
flight of the Pegasus air launched booster.  The flight test,
aboard the NASA B-52, is tentatively set for January 30.



Flight controllers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory say the
Galileo spacecraft continues to operate well in a dual spin mode.
Galileo's Venus flyby is scheduled for February 9.

                   *             *             *


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


Coverage of the STS-32 mission continues....  here are some
scheduled highlights.

Friday, January 12....

     4:30 A.M.    Videotape replay of day 3 activities.

     6:43 A.M.    Downlink of LDEF retrieval activities

     9:48 A.M.    Live color downlink of LDEF grapple ops.

    10:50 A.M.    Live downlink of LDEF photo survey.

    10:30 P.M.    Replay of day 4 activities.


Saturday, January 13....

      4:45 A.M.   Videotape playback of LDEF retrieval ops

     10:12 A.M.   Crew news conference with media

      1:30 P.M.   Videotape replay of day 5 activities

      9:30 P.M.   Replay of day 5 activities


Sunday, January 14....

       A variety of downlinks on crew activites.

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.

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

End of SPACE Digest V10 #415
*******************