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Subject: SPACE Digest V11 #187

SPACE Digest                                     Volume 11 : Issue 187

Today's Topics:
              Re: Nina and Columbus 500
             Re: Giotto Update - 03/14/90
              Re: Martian Stardard Time
          For All Mankind - Great Movie!!!!!
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 25 Mar 90 06:13:08 GMT
From: mailrus!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!ists!yunexus!utzoo![e-mail]  (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Nina and Columbus 500

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:
>Does any one have any further information? Where will the
>group find a launch vehicle? Funding? What instruments will
>the space probe carry? What research has been carried out into
>the (formidable?) problems of controlling a solar sail `in
>flight'?

The Columbus Quincentennial people are trying to organize a solar sail
race, with one entry apiece from the Americas, Europe, and Asia.  I don't
know how the European and Asian entries are being run, but the Americas
entry was meant to be a multi-phase design competition, with the number
of entries being thinned down progressively.  This may get revised a bit,
because apparently the number of actual phase-one entries was rather less
than expected.  (One of the groups that *did* submit an entry was the
Canadian Space Society, which is how I know something about this...
Note, though, that I'm not seriously involved with the CSS entry and do
not speak for the team.)

Launch vehicles are as yet a murky area.  Last I heard, various people
were willing to offer piggyback launches, but it would really be best to
have a dedicated launch to get the entries above the Van Allen belts.
(Solar sails work poorly at low altitudes, and the main piggyback-launch
opportunity to high orbit gets you into GTO, which means radiation trouble
because of all the Van-Allen-belt passes.)  A dedicated launch would carry
all three entries, probably, but what can be done with piggybacking is
anybody's guess.

The Q.C. people are providing some modest funding, although donations and
sponsors are expected to play a considerable role.  This is definitely
an amateur, or at least spare-time, effort, with little or no government
funding.

Apart from, possibly, a small camera, nobody is seriously considering
instruments.  Just controlling the sails will be a sufficiently large
challenge.  This is a competition, not a scientific mission.  If it were
a science mission, it wouldn't be going to Mars -- that goal was chosen
for PR, not science value, in my opinion.

Research into sail control has been limited; one might even say minimal.
It's a hard problem, especially with relatively unorthodox designs that
haven't been looked at before.
--
"Apparently IBM is not IBM    |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
compatible." -Andy Tanenbaum  | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry [e-mail]

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

Date: 23 Mar 90 13:57:13 GMT
From: mcsun!unido!mpirbn![e-mail]  (Daniel Fischer)
Subject: Re: Giotto Update - 03/14/90


           The Giotto Extended Mission Update <14 Mar 1990> says:
> Giotto is currently going through a checkout of its science instruments
> which is expected to last one month.
The European Space Operations Center (Darmstadt, W.Germany) denies that! They
have told me today that the section of the spacecraft that houses most of the
scientific instruments is still too hot to begin with this checkout (it was
baked by the sun during the recent perihelion passage of Giotto). Thus, at this
time there are only routine checks of other onboard systems under way, and the
actual science checkout will not start before the end of April. A second
trajectory correction, BTW, was successfull on March 19th: the Hydrazine
thrusters are still working flawlessly. Thus the S/C itself seems to be fine -
whether there will be a 'Giotto Extended Mission' (GEM) seems to depend on the
fate of the scientific payload alone, above all the status of the camera.
 [Based upon the 'Giotto Hotline' {Germany-6151-886-609}, ESA Press Release
  #7 of 15 March 1990 <are those avail. online?> + personal comm. ESOC/PIO]

Daniel Fischer [[e-mail]] on behalf of the newsletter SKYWEEK

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

Date: 25 Mar 90 16:26:16 GMT
From: cs.utexas.edu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!physics.utoronto.ca![e-mail]  (Christopher Neufeld)
Subject: Re: Martian Stardard Time

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Brian or James) writes:
>
> might I ask that the well-intentioned, but
>incredibly unworkable system of incorporating satellite orbital periods
>as quanta sizes for the calender be dropped? Our calender already creaks
>under the load of leap years, skipped leap years and the rarely commented on
>[and nonesistant] kilomillenial 'half-pfenig' days needed to cover
>the fact that twenty eight and a bit is not a useful unit to divide
>three hundred and sixty five and a bit by.
>                            JDN

   Actually, the calendar faces these problems because 365 doesn't
divide evenly into 365.xxxx. If I declared tomorrow that each year would
be divided into one month (a useless division, but anything is divisible
nicely by one), and weeks of five days each (which divides evenly into
365), you'd still have to introduce an extra day almost every four
years.


--
 Christopher Neufeld....Just a graduate student  | "You are looking at,
 [e-mail]              | ze virld's FIRST,
 [e-mail]          Ad astra! | nuclear - magnet!"
 "Don't edit reality for the sake of simplicity" |  Siegfried of KAOS

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

Date: 25 Mar 90 06:33:17 GMT
From: hpfcso!hpfinote![e-mail]  (Doug Josephson)
Subject: For All Mankind - Great Movie!!!!!


I thought this might be of interest to people who read this notesgroup:

I just saw a GREAT movie called 'For All Mankind'; it's a documentary about
the Apollo project.  A group of people led by a journalist named Al Reinert put
it together from the 6 million feet of 16mm film shot by the astronauts during
the missions.  Each frame used in the film was blown up to 35mm from the
original negatives (which are stored in liquid nitrogen vaults at Johnson Space
Center).  This was a very painstaking process apparently, averaging only four
or five frames a day; the entire process took a year and a half.  Also, all the
original audio was digitally re-recorded for the movie.

Most of the film has never been seen before by the public.  The movie takes
bits and pieces from all the missions (with some Gemini footage thrown in as
well) and covers all phases of a trip to the moon.  Most of the EVA footage on
the moon is from the Lunar Rover equipped missions (15, 16, 17).  Some of the
most impressive sequences for me were:  the ride up the launch gantry next to
Saturn V; close up shots of the 5 first stage F-1's belching fire; a shot (from
a camera in the interstage ring I think) which shows the second stage light up,
and then pivots around as it falls away to show the earth; great closeups of
the LM and CM in lunar orbit; shots of the earth as it gets smaller and
smaller; and the EVA footage on the moon.

The audio is comprised of the original recordings during the missions and also
of reflections by the astronauts from 80 hours of interviews.  Some of the
audio is of poor quality, but I guess that's what you get when you transmit
from 240,000 miles!  There are some riveting moments from the Apollo 12
lightning strike during launch and the Apollo 13 accident ("Houston, we have a
problem").

The film has been nominated for an Academy Award and gets "two thumbs up, very
enthusiastically" from Siskel & Ebert (like I need those guys to tell me that
space documentaries are good!).  I think it was just released about two weeks
ago - it might be in somewhat limited distribution, as the flyer I have about
it says it is currently without a distributor.  For those of you close to
Denver, it is showing at the Ogden Theater until March 29th - so get there and
see it!  Otherwise, watch for it at a theater near you!

Filmed on location with a budget of $42 billion and a cast and crew of 24.  Now
if they could just make an IMAX film out of it!


Doug Josephson  [e-mail]  [phone]


PS.  This is my first posting ever, so hopefully it won't be fouled up.  I am
     also pretty dumb when it comes to using mail so I hope that the address
     thingamajigger means something to somebody!

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

End of SPACE Digest V11 #187
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