Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/mac/TEXT/SPACEDIG/V11_2/V11_272.TXT

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Subject: SPACE Digest V11 #272

SPACE Digest                                     Volume 11 : Issue 272

Today's Topics:
           Navstar GPS Constellation Status Update
               Re: Interstellar travel
         NASA Headline News for 04/16/90 (Forwarded)
               B-58 as launcher
              Re:  SPACE Digest V11 #268
            Arecibo (sp?) message
              Re:  SPACE Digest V11 #269
              Re: jobs in space
          Re: Pegasus launch from Valkyrie  (or ...
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date:        Mon, 16 Apr 90 13:15:00 ADT
From: [e-mail]
Subject:     Navstar GPS Constellation Status Update

                        Navstar GPS Constellation Status

Blk                       NASA   Orbit
II        PRN Internat. Catalog  Plane    Launch
Seq   SVN Code   ID      Number  Pos'n     Date        Status (90-04-10)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Block I
       1   4  1978-020A  10684   (C-4)   78-02-22  Not usable since 85-07
       2   7  1978-047A  10893   (A-4)   78-05-13  Not usable since 85-09
       3   6  1978-093A  11054    A-3    78-10-06  Operating on Rb clock
       4   8  1978-112A  11141   (C-3)   78-12-10  L-band signals turned
                                                    off 89-10-14
       5   5  1980-011A  11690   (C-1)   80-02-09  Not usable since 84-05
       6   9  1980-032A  11783    A-2    80-04-26  Operating on 2nd Rb clock
       7                                 81-12-18  Launch failure
       8  11  1983-072A  14189    C-2    83-07-14  Operating on Cs clock
       9  13  1984-059A  15039    C-1    84-06-13  Operating on Cs clock
      10  12  1984-097A  15271    A-1    84-09-08  Operating on Cs clock
      11   3  1985-093A  16129    D-1    85-10-09  Actually near position C-9;
                                                    operating on Rb clock
                                                    without temp. control

Block II
II-1  14  14  1989-013A  19802    E      89-02-14  Operating on Cs clock
II-2  13   2  1989-044A  20061    B      89-06-10  Operating on Cs clock
II-3  16  16  1989-064A  20185    E      89-08-18  Became available 89-10-14;
                                                    operating on Rb clock
II-4  19  19  1989-085A  20302    A      89-10-21  Became available 89-11-23
II-5  17  17  1989-097A  20361    D      89-12-11  L-band signals enabled
                                                    90-01-06
II-6  18  18  1990-008A  20452    F      90-01-24  Became available 90-02-14
                                                    22:26 UT; testing underway
II-7  20  20  1990-025A  20533    B      90-03-26  Testing underway

Notes
1.  NASA Catalog Number is also known as NORAD or U.S. Space Command object
number.
2.  Bracketed orbital plane position = satellite no longer operational.
3.  An earlier version of this table had PRN 16 in plane D.  Note correction.
4.  PRN 8 L-band signals were re-enabled on 90-02-20 at 16:15 UT for testing;
    satellite is set unhealthy.

================================================================================
 Richard B. Langley                            BITnet: [e-mail] or [e-mail]
 Geodetic Research Laboratory                  Phone:  [phone]
 Dept. of Surveying Engineering                Telex:  014-46202
 University of New Brunswick                   FAX:    [phone]
 Fredericton, N.B., Canada  E3B 5A3
================================================================================

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

Date: 16 Apr 90 06:43:36 GMT
From: bfmny0![e-mail]  (Tom Neff)
Subject: Re: Interstellar travel

One possible explanation for the Fermi paradox that nobody can disprove
is that when you achieve interstellar travel, somebody comes and kills
you.  Let's hope that's not it.
--
Stalinism begins at home.  }{  Tom Neff  }{  [e-mail]

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

Date: 16 Apr 90 19:57:14 GMT
From: trident.arc.nasa.gov![e-mail]  (Peter E. Yee)
Subject: NASA Headline News for 04/16/90 (Forwarded)

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Monday, April 16, 1990                        Audio: 202/755-1788
-----------------------------------------------------------------

This is NASA Headline News for Monday, April 16.....

Workers at Kennedy Space Center have removed a malfunctioning
Auxiliary Power Unit from the orbiter Discovery and reinstalled a
replacement.  Leak checks of the system are now being conducted
at Launch Pad 39-B.  While the pad work is underway...batteries
from the Hubble Space Telescope are being charged at the Vehicle
Assembly Building.  The 130-hour battery charging started early
and should be completed by Friday.

Meanwhile...the Columbia was rolled over from the Orbiter
Processing Facility to the Vehicle Assembly Building early today.
The move was to have been completed last Friday, but a hydraulic
leak was discovered in the Columbia's forward landing gear.  The
delay puts preparation for the next mission slightly behind
schedule, at this time.

                        *            *

Representatives from the United States Department of Agriculture
and Park Seed Co. say the growing of tomato seeds which flew in
space for six years aboard the Long Duration Exposure Facility
presents no food safety risks.  The SEEDS project became an issue
last week when it was reported there might be some danger when
eating the vegetable.  Dr. Alvin Young, of the USDA, says the
tomatoes are safe to consume.  Park Seed Co.'s research scientist
Dr. James Alston said he's planning to eat the tomatoes grown
from the seeds.  Alston said he ate a variety of vegetables grown
from seeds flow on the STS-6 mission in 1983 with absolutely no
complications.

                        *            *

Aerospace Daily says the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel last
Friday reported they take exception to a proposal to eliminate
one of two airlocks on Space Station Freedom. The panel has urged
the airlock be restored.

                        *            *

The Soviet space organization say they plan to replace their MIR
space station in eight or nine years with a larger facility which
can hold 9 to 12 cosmonauts.  Other sources indicate it may not
happen because of severe economic problems in the Soviet Union.


                         * * * * * * * *





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

Thursday, April 19.....

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


Tuesday, April 24....

     9:00 A.M.       STS-31 Countdown Status Report

    10:00 A.M.       APU/HST Status Report

    11:00 A.M.       Pre-launch News Conference


Wednesday, April 25....

    4:00 A.M.        STS-31 Launch coverage begins


All events and times are subject to change without notice.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
These reports are filed daily, Monday through Friday, at 12 noon,
EDT.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
A service of the Internal Communicatiion's Branch, NASA HQ.

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

Date: Mon, 16 Apr 90 13:36:07 PDT
From: Ken Harrenstien <[e-mail]>
Subject: B-58 as launcher
Cc: [e-mail]

There's a recent book titled "Soviet SST -- the technopolitics of the
Tupolev TU-144" (forget author, sorry; it's OK but not great).  While
talking about the history and problems of sustained supersonic flight
it includes some discussion of the B-58 as the first large supersonic
aircraft, and I was left with the strong impression that this plane
was much too fragile and high-strung to even consider adapting it for
other roles.  Like the SR-71, at top speed it was on a knife edge and
any sudden imbalance (engine flameout, at worst case) would produce a
lot of little airplane pieces on the ground.  Perhaps Mary Shafer can
get some real stories from someone who was around back then...

Just to keep the thread alive, how about simply towing a Pega-RPV up?
The disposable wings (made by Rutan, of course) could be optimized
either for height or speed.  The idea of a pair of F-15s slinging a
Pega-BB through Mach 2 is wild enough, I hope.

--Ken
-------

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

From: [e-mail]
Date:     Mon, 16 Apr 90  09:29:21 EDT
Subject:  Re:  SPACE Digest V11 #268

> From:  (Henry Spencer)
> Subject: Re: Fermi Paradox
>
> In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Frank
>  Scherb) writes:
> >Why not consider the idea that the Galaxy is so big that given about
> >a million years of exploration you still only see a very small piece
> >at best? ...
>
> Exploring from a central point, this would be true.  But it shouldn't
> take more than a thousand years at most for a major colony to become
> a starfaring civilization itself.

Take for example the human outpost on the planet Earth. After a recorded
history of nearly fifty thousand years, after a developmental stage that
may have been as long as 3,000,000 years, the human race is no closer to
interstellar travel than was Og, neanderthal stone-user. Instead of
throwing sticks with rocks on the ends of them, we have advanced all the
way to throwing rockets with sticks of dynamite on the ends of them.

> If we figure major colonies ten
> light-years apart, and assume travel time is short compared to the
> thousand-year buildup time, that's a light-year per century, or
> about ten million years to cross the galaxy.  There's been plenty
> of time for that; the galaxy is old.
> --
Certainly, and if we figure that somewhere across the universe, about 12
or 13 billion light years ago, a race of beings developed to the highly
technological state where they could venture out into interstellar space,
and their wisest scientists said, "you see that 30th magnitude star out
there at the other extreme of the universe, well I believe that if we
set out now, in just 12 or 13 billion years, a very primitive civili-
zation, capable only of self- and others-destruction will have developed,
and we will want very much to communicate with them and see if they can
teach us to kill each other and every other species with which we come
into contact, so we had best put our most intelligent scientists onto
our finest and most costly starship, and set out for that place immed-
iately. After all, they'll be waiting for us, and we wouldn't want to
disappoint them. They'll probably have fixed dinner and all."

                                                Derdin Valpar
                                          aka   Marc Arlen
                                                AZM@NIHCU

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

Date: 17 Apr 90 03:12:54 GMT
From: cs.utexas.edu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!physics.utoronto.ca![e-mail]  (Christopher Neufeld)
Subject: Arecibo (sp?) message


   All this talk of radio wave SETI brings up something I've been
wondering about for a while.
   Many of us have heard of the graphic image sent by the Arecibo fixed
radio dish a while back. It used the familiar prime by prime grid of
binary states to make a low resolution picture.
   This message, if I remember correctly, was sent to a cluster of stars
some ten or twenty thousand light years distant, at a cost of a few
dollars worth of electricity.
   My question: why wasn't the message sent to closer stars, since cost
couldn't have been an object? Was it fear of space invaders? (No smiley,
this is a serious question).


--
 Christopher Neufeld....Just a graduate student  | "Like most
 [e-mail]              | intellectuals he is
 [e-mail]          Ad astra! | intensely stupid."
 "Don't edit reality for the sake of simplicity" |  Marquise de Merteuil

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

From: [e-mail]
Date:     Mon, 16 Apr 90  09:10:45 EDT
Subject:  Re:  SPACE Digest V11 #269

> Subject: Drake Equation (was Re: Interstellar travel)
>
> [e-mail] writes:
> >
> >Nope, that's the Drake equation.  The Fermi paradox basically says,
> >"Where is everybody???"  The Drake equation suggests that the galaxy should
> >be teeming with life, given the number of stars we have.
>
> The Drake equation is an attempt to quantify how many technologically
> advanced civilizations there are in the galaxy.  If they (i.e. Drake,
> Sagan, et al.) could come up with a high enough estimate, they could
> justify doing what they wanted to do anyway: a radio search for alien
> radio signals.
>
> What the Drake equation really does is to identify our areas of
> uncertainty a little more precisely.  Instead of one big uncertainty,
> we now have a couple of reasonably certain numbers, one or two numbers
> we can guess at with some degree of certainty, and a lot of numbers
> which are totally unknown.

What the Drake equation apparently does is to provide yet another area
of nonexistent knowledge wherein person's like Drake and Sagan can be-
come the planet's resident experts, and thereby derive unconscionably
high incomes by doing speaking engagements, radio, and television shows
based on their self-generated knowledge in fields that are in reality
only forums for speculative thinking, i.e., verbal comic books.

                                              Derdin Valpar
                                         aka  M. Arlen
                                              AZM@NIHCU

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

Date: 16 Apr 90 13:55:11 GMT
From: pilchuck!seahcx!phred![e-mail]  (Pete Jarvis)
Subject: Re: jobs in space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Timothy Andre) writes:
>
>1) Is a PhD a requirement for being a Mission Specialist?
    No, but certainly enhances your chances.
>2) What are my chances of actually becoming a Mission Specialist?
    Low, lots of competition.
>3) I have been told that a private pilot's license or a ham radio license
>    would be helpful.  True?
    Yes........
>4) How about experience in the Air Force Reserve?
    Another enhancement
>

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

Date: 16 Apr 90 14:44:21 GMT
From: mailrus!sharkey!itivax!vax3.iti.org![e-mail]  (Allen W. Sherzer)
Subject: Re: Pegasus launch from Valkyrie  (or ...

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Henry Spencer) writes:
>>I was wondering if a FB-111 would do? My copy of Janes says it will carry a
>>bomb load of 37,500 which is pretty close...

>With such loads it is almost certainly subsonic, giving no advantage over
>the B-52.

It might give a cost advantage. I understand B-52's are pretty expensive and
it is almost impossible to get parts.

>The F-111 family is generally overweight and underpowered, and
>is "supersonic" only by courtesy. :-)

Which is why I proposed upgrading the engines to F-100's which would
each add another 9,000 pounds of thrust.

>It's vanishingly unlikely that any
>of them could reach, say, Mach 2 with a heavy external load.

Agreed. However, it MAY be cheaper to operate than using a B-52 or 747.
This thread started as a way to reduce cost to orbit by increasing payload.
There are two ways to reduce cost to orbit. One is to increase the payload
and the other is to reduce operational cost. My postings on this address
the latter way.

IMHO if you don't use operational aircraft you will make it more expensive
to put a pound to orbit. There were lots of mach 2 aircraft out there, but
getting any operational just to add a few hundred pounds to payload won't
get you anything.

   Allen
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Allen W. Sherzer         |         If guns are outlawed,                  |
|   [e-mail]            |         how will we shoot the liberals?        |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

End of SPACE Digest V11 #272
*******************