Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/mac/TEXT/SPACEDIG/V11_2/V11_235.TXT

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Subject: SPACE Digest V11 #235

SPACE Digest                                     Volume 11 : Issue 235

Today's Topics:
     Re: Quick launches ( was: Intelsat / Titan Failure )
                Hubble Window
          Re: Quick launches ( was: Intelsat
             Re: Pegasus status ?
        Re: HST Image Status for 04/01/90 (Forwarded)
              Re: South Atlantic Anomaly
              Re: SPACE Digest V11 #231
              Re: South Atlantic Anomaly
               Re: The Threat of Peace
                 Re: Pegasus
            Re: orbit definitions
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 5 Apr 90 16:29:23 GMT
From: mnetor!utzoo![e-mail]  (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Quick launches ( was: Intelsat / Titan Failure )

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Fraering Philip) writes:
>About quick launches: I thought the obstacle to fast launches on many of
>these vehicles was the payload integration procedure. ...
>Is there any way to make this cheaper, more reliable, and faster? ...

Sure:  standardize the interfaces.  Right now, every launch is a custom job.

The customers will object, though, unless the cost drops quite a bit to
compensate.  Actually, they will probably object even so...
--
Apollo @ 8yrs: one small step.|     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
Space station @ 8yrs:        .| uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry [e-mail]

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

Date: 6 Apr 90 21:09:28 GMT
From: usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!zardoz.cpd.com!dhw68k!ofa123![e-mail]  (Rick Ellis)
Subject: Hubble Window


 > I read somewhere that the launch of the HST had been moved UP two
 > days? Whyfor?

Why not?  They were ahead of their predicted schedule.




--
Rick Ellis
...!{dhw68k,zardoz,lawnet,conexch}!ofa123!rick                             [e-mail]
714 544-0934 2400/1200/300

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

Date: 7 Apr 90 21:53:56 GMT
From: elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!sdd.hp.com!cs.utexas.edu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!utzoo![e-mail]  (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Quick launches ( was: Intelsat

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:
>I refuse to believe that the Air Force would not quickly correct
>any problem with their Minutemen.  Any program that receives every dollar
>it requests surely would not have the problems that uninformed people
>might speculate.

Very few USAF programs ever receive every dollar they request, popular
mythology notwithstanding.  I believe it is still the case that no
Minuteman has ever been successfully test-fired from the operational type
of silo.  Many have been fired from the Vandenberg test silos, but those
are not representative of the operational ones.  There were a series of
attempts to fire from an operational-type silo at Vandenberg, all failures.
I believe the failures were all minor things, not indicative of any sort
of fatal flaw, and money and official patience simply ran out.  After all,
it says in the specs that it will work...
--
Apollo @ 8yrs: one small step.|     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
Space station @ 8yrs:        .| uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry [e-mail]

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

Date: 7 Apr 90 03:48:09 GMT
From: mcgill-vision!clyde.concordia.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!utzoo![e-mail]  (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Pegasus status ?

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Sanjay Chikarmane) writes:
>Having not heard a thing in the media, I am wondering what happened
>of the Pegasus launch scheduled for yesterday (April 4th). Any info ?

The launch on Wednesday was scrubbed due to bad weather.  It was rescheduled
for Thursday.  And on Thursday, IT FLEW!!!  It worked.  The payload is
in orbit, delivery as promised.

The first orbital launch attempt for an entirely privately-funded launcher,
after development taking only 2.5 years and only $50M, succeeded.

This is easily the best news in five years.  No, I lie -- make it twenty.
--
Apollo @ 8yrs: one small step.|     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
Space station @ 8yrs:        .| uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry [e-mail]

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

Date: 7 Apr 90 08:30:28 GMT
From: shelby!helens!hanauma![e-mail]  (Joe Dellinger)
Subject: Re: HST Image Status for 04/01/90 (Forwarded)

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Paul Dietz) writes:
>Before you decode the picture, note: (1) the date on which it was sent,
>and (2) the name of the sender.
>
>    Paul F. Dietz
>    [e-mail]

I knew immediately the picture must be fake because I KNEW they'd never
actually release digital picture info to the net!

Last year I digitized some of Voyager II's raw pictures of Neptune off the TV
as they came in real time on the Stanford Cable Network, and made the best
ones available via anonymous ftp. The response was incredible! Many thousands
of ftp connections in a few days! (Needless to say, my advisor wasn't too
happy when we momentarily hit a load of 15 due to ftpd.) And then I followed
the progress of the images across the net as they were converted into almost
every imaginable format over the next few days.

Wow, I thought, there's really a big demand for these things. Here's my
chance to help JPL get a lot of free publicity at universities all over
the country, where publicity could really do them a lot of good! So I asked
Miya (of course!) whom at JPL to contact. He gave me a name and phone number,
and I called.... Well, THAT person had been dead for three years, but there
was somebody at the number still, and they got me through to the correct
person.

So I told them how there was this tremendous demand for space program
pictures in digital form, they could get all this wonderful free publicity,
etc, etc. They didn't believe me. I talked with them for about half an hour,
explained how they could do it very easily, we'd just want a very few pictures
of the sort that their own people already had made for their own Sun
backgrounds internally, etc, how all they had to do was give me a few bitmaps
and the images would distribute themselves, how it would be such great
publicity for them at Universities, etc, etc...

Result?

Well, they weren't too happy that I had distributed the Neptune pictures,
although since they were no better than what people could have videotaped
off TV anyway they didn't mind _too_ much.

Anyway, I tried. I really did. >>>> Forget it. <<<<

As near as I can tell, NASA and JPL have NO interest in releasing digital
images of anything except for the official complete data sets intended for
strictly scientific use. Those they will only release after the data is a
year old. The JPL public relations guy said if I wanted to add more images
to my archive the only way would be to digitize them myself off public-
relations photos.

This really boggles my mind. I guess I'm not surprised now that JPL couldn't
get money to send a probe to Halley, and it's hard to feel very sorry for them.

Perhaps ESA is smarter?     Viva La France!!!! ?
\    /\    /\    /\/\/\/\/\/\/\.-.-.-.-.......___________
 \  /  \  /  \  /Dept of Geophysics, Stanford University \/\/\.-.-....___
  \/    \/    \/Joe Dellinger [e-mail]  apple!hanauma!joe\/\.-._
************** Drive Friendly, Y'all! ******************************************

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

Date: 7 Apr 90 21:52:20 GMT
From: [e-mail]  (Michael P. Radovancevich)
Subject: Re: South Atlantic Anomaly

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (David Palmer) writes:
>
>The South Atlantic Anomaly is the place where the Van Allen Belts, regions
>of high radiation trapped by the magnetosphere, come closest to Earth.


I seem to remember hearing something about the SAA being the result of
high altitude nuclear weapons testing in the 50's.  Sorry, I no longer remember
where I had read this or how long ago it was.  :-(

I think I heard that much of the radiation is due to the by-products of these
tests being trapped in the magnetic fields of the Earth.

-Mike


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

Date: 7 Apr 90 23:17:44 GMT
From: [e-mail]  (Bill Ganoe)
Subject: Re: SPACE Digest V11 #231

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] writes:
  [OSC's IPO was withdrawn at the last]
> moment due to some negative publicity. I do not known the precise
> nature of the news that caused the withdrawal, but it was evidentaly
> some investment news letter and OSC took it seriously enough to make
>
> I wish I'd had stock BEFORE the launch. sigh.
>
>                 from the Emerald Isle,
>                 Dale Amon

The "investment news letter" was the Wall Street Journal, and the article
was on the front page on Friday, March 23.  That was the day the IPO
was to hit the streets.  I thought the article was rather balanced in
its treatment, but it did point up the very high degree of risk involved
in that first launch.  Not the kind of thing you really want when you need
to squeeze as much capital as possible from that IPO.

--
"Any society that needs | William H. Ganoe      [e-mail]
disclaimers has too many|  SIE Dept, Univ. of Arizona
lawyers." -- Eric Pepke |  Tucson, AZ 85721; USA

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

Date: 7 Apr 90 03:53:13 GMT
From: mcgill-vision!clyde.concordia.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!utzoo![e-mail]  (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: South Atlantic Anomaly

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Mark Perew) writes:
>The press release for the Hubble Space Telescope mentions something
>called the "South Atlantic Anomaly (SAA)".
>What is this?

It's an area over the South Atlantic where the Van Allen belts are unusually
close to Earth.  This means higher radiation exposure for satellites with
orbits passing through it (which is why Skylab had a shielded safe for its
photographic film) and high noise levels in sensitive detectors.  A real
nuisance.

(In case you're wondering why there should be such an area...  Most everyone
knows that Earth's magnetic poles are not at its geographic poles.  Less
well known is that Earth's magnetic center is not at its geographic center
either.  The combination gives a somewhat off-center magnetic field, and thus
a somewhat off-center magnetosphere.)
--
Apollo @ 8yrs: one small step.|     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
Space station @ 8yrs:        .| uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry [e-mail]

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

Date: 8 Apr 90 02:02:05 GMT
From: wuarchive!cs.utexas.edu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!watserv1!watdragon!watyew![e-mail]  (Brian or James)
Subject: Re: The Threat of Peace

In article <Added.sa7Mw0S00Ui30k=[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Wayne Fellows) writes:
>Can't all these poor unemployed engineers go do something useful instead of try
>ing to find better ways to nuke the planet?  Maybe start their own companies an
>d design new and innovative products?

 Hey, these poor guys don't have any experience in designing things that
actually work :)
                            JDN

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

Date: 7 Apr 90 21:42:30 GMT
From: elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!usc!cs.utexas.edu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!utzoo![e-mail]  (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Pegasus

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Vincent Cate) writes:
>Can anyone provide any information on these other small launch vehicles?

There aren't very many of them.  Scout is the only one I can think of,
unless you count Chinese and Indian boosters.  (Oh, the Soviets probably
have two or three as well.)  They've largely gone out of fashion, since
space science has been in decline and comsats are too big for them.

>How long are the waiting lines for small launch vehicles?

Negligible; there are almost no firm customers at the moment, which is
one obstacle to getting funding to try to build one.  There is lots of
vague interest that *might* turn into a big rush of payloads, once the
launch capability is in place and proven (and preferably cheap).

>The Pegasus was developed by the startup "Orbital Sciences Corp"...

Ahem.  Pegasus was developed as a joint venture by Orbital Sciences Corp.
and Hercules.  Hercules builds the solid motors, contributed a fair chunk
of the development funding, and for that matter owns a fair piece of OSC.
--
Apollo @ 8yrs: one small step.|     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
Space station @ 8yrs:        .| uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry [e-mail]

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

Date: 7 Apr 90 07:45:29 GMT
From: psuvm![e-mail]
Subject: Re: orbit definitions


In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (David
Tholen) says:
>
>In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] writes:
>
>>A geostationary orbit is a geosynchronous orbit with an inclination and
>eccen-
>>tricity of zero. A satellite in this kind of orbit always appears in the same
>>spot in the sky (somewhere on the ecliptic).
>
>Somewhere on the celestial equator, actually, because we're talking about
>orbits around the Earth.

My apologies-- I should know better than to confuse the ecliptic with the
celestial equator, but I've been up most of the last three days working on
a stupid aerodynamics lab (required courses are great, aren't they?) and my
brain has been pretty addled. Goodnight, and I shall rejoin you when I feel
human again.

Mike Williams
[e-mail]

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

End of SPACE Digest V11 #235
*******************