Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/mac/TEXT/SPACEDIG/V11_3/V11_334.TXT

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Subject: SPACE Digest V11 #334

SPACE Digest                                     Volume 11 : Issue 334

Today's Topics:
           Space Station Interior Pictures
              Re: Dyson spheres?
Re: Not-so-Silent Running (Was Re: a bunch of other irrelvant things)
          Re: Pegasus launch from Valkyrie  (or ...
              Re: Dyson spheres?
             Re: Dyson spheres, heat flow
    >>... Hermes will be mostly aluminum, for example, not
      "face" on Mars images available for anonymous ftp
             Re: Dyson spheres, heat flow
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 29 Apr 90 04:54:09 GMT
From: cs.utexas.edu!ut-emx!hutto![e-mail]  (Henry Melton)
Subject: Space Station Interior Pictures



I need some source materials to help an artist visualize the interior
of the space station Freedom and the shuttles.  What I'm looking for are
magazine or book references that show lots of interior shots.
Explanations of what the pictures are showing would be especially
helpful.  Does anyone know of a book I'm likely to find in bookstores?


--
Henry Melton ...!cs.utexas.edu!ut-emx!hutto!henry
1-512-8463241 Rt.1 Box 274E Hutto,TX 78634

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

Date: 29 Apr 90 19:21:17 GMT
From: usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!aristotle![e-mail]  (Peter Scott)
Subject: Re: Dyson spheres?

In article <[e-mail]>,
[e-mail] (John Roberts) writes:
>  [...]
> Ignoring the infrared feedback, one can calculate the maximum mass of a
> nonreflecting, nonrotating sphere that can be supported by light pressure
> from the sun.  [...]
> Incidentally, to the inhabitants of the sphere, the sun would be "down",
> with the local force of gravity about 1/3000 of that on earth.

?  Are you saying that the gravitational attraction exerted on a particle
on the inner surface of the sphere is g/3000?  I thought that gravitational
attraction inside a spherical shell was 0.  Yeah, I know it's approximately
the same answer, but still... what gives?

This is news.  This is your       |    Peter Scott, NASA/JPL/Caltech
brain on news.  Any questions?    |    ([e-mail])

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

Date: Sun, 29 Apr 90 23:46:49 -0500
From: "Kevin B. Kenny [the Arch-Traitor] KE9TV" <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Cc: [e-mail], [e-mail]
Reply-To: [e-mail]
X-No-Matter-Where-You-Go: There you are.

OK, I'll believe that the maria were named by Helvelius.  So many
other of the names in his works were Ptolemaic, that I just guessed
that the lunar names were, as well.

I stand corrected.

Kevin, KE9TV
[e-mail]

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

Date: 30 Apr 90 01:41:39 GMT
From: uokmax![e-mail]  (Tom Egelston)
Subject: Re: Not-so-Silent Running (Was Re: a bunch of other irrelvant things)

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Nick Watkins) writes:
>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (David Ray) writes:
>
>>The movie sucked. It didn't make sense that a NASA-like space federation
>>would have gone to all the expense and planning to build these space
>>greenhouses, maintain them, have them work perfectly, and then decide
>>to nuke then for beaurocratic reasons.
>
>Have you heard of a Rocket called Saturn V ? There are 2 still available
>for your contemplation if you haven't ...

     Only two?!?!?!?  Last I checked, there was one at Kennedy, Johnson, and
one at Huntsville.  Has someone sprayed a fresh coat of paint on one and
"borrowed" it?   ;-)

--
          Tom Egelston      Internet: [e-mail]
 Disclaimer: Don't get so stressed!! It's nothing but a bunch of 1's and 0's...
     "Though my eyes could see, I still was a blind man,
         Though my mind could think, I still was a mad man..."  --  Kansas

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

Date: 30 Apr 90 08:55:10 GMT
From: zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!samsung!munnari.oz.au!csc![e-mail]
Subject: Re: Pegasus launch from Valkyrie  (or ...

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Marcus Hall) writes:
>
> Fraering Philip:
> ]Remember: The cost of developing Pegasus from point zero: $40 million.
> ]Cost of refurbishing B-70 Valkyrie: probrably lots more.
>
> Vincent Cate:
>>.... Remember, and increase of 300 lbs worth of payload
>>at $10,000/lb is worth $3,000,000.  There are no planes that cost that
>>much per flight.
>
> Actually, I've heard that the XB-70 cost about $10,000,000 per flight.  This
> was counting all the development costs, but still, it was quite expensive.
> I don't know what the actual operational costs were, presumably they were
> something close to reasonable since it was intended to be an operational
> plane.
>
>
>>I did not really mean to suggest that we use the Valkyrie.  I just knew
>>that 25 years ago we had a fast big plane and wondered if we had one
>>today.  I see that we do not.  Oh well.
>
> Yea, 25 years ago we had alot of things (Saturn production, etc.)  Rather
> depressing to see what's become of it all..

    Why not use the B1-B?  While not as fast as the XB-70, it is quite fast
at altitude (about Mach 2 if my memory serves me) and it should be able to
carry a Pegasus without too much trouble.  The other alternative might be to
hire the Soviet's to do it for you with a "Blackjack" ;-)

Brian Ross

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

Date: 29 Apr 90 22:37:25 GMT
From: [e-mail]  (Patrick Brewer)
Subject: Re: Dyson spheres?


>
>?  Are you saying that the gravitational attraction exerted on a particle
>on the inner surface of the sphere is g/3000?  I thought that gravitational
>attraction inside a spherical shell was 0.  Yeah, I know it's approximately
>the same answer, but still... what gives?

    Coming in on the tail of this discussion I'm not sure if this is what
he is talking about, but . . .

    The gravitation would not be due to the mass of the shell, but to the
mass of the sun. Given the mass distribution in our solar system, we could
take the mass of the rest of the solar system and make a shell. The shell
would be physically larger, but its mass still very small compared to that
of the sun!

--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
   Patrick W. Brewer         The President of       [e-mail]
                     CAT-Theme Program @ NCSU
        "It's not how much you have, it's how much you give!"

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

Date: 30 Apr 90 03:25:58 GMT
From: samsung!munnari.oz.au!arkaroo8![e-mail]  (Daniel Ake CAROSONE)
Subject: Re: Dyson spheres, heat flow

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Steven P Coltrin) writes:
I said:
> >From what I remember of the series (been a while)
> >most of the ships ran on inertialess drives imported from th
> >puppeteers. What use an inertialess drive would have of helium
> >exhaust? (other than as a heat sink for its own sake!)
>
> Absolutely right.  An inertialess thruster would probably have nothing to do
> with helium exhaust.  But they would draw power, and that does NOT come from
> the thrusters!
>
> And, while the series never explicitly states where humans acquired inertialess
> thrusters from, it is strongly implied that they bought it from the Outsiders
> at some truly ungodly price.

I apolgise. Memory Cross-pointer allocation fault.
"Strongly Implied" seems like an appropriate understatement...

My brain does seem to be running on mindless autopilot at the moment,
I forgot that even inertialess drives will probably require some energy
source.

I do appear to have made something of a silly statement, anybody got
any ideas for a dip that might go well with my toes? They need a little
something extra.

BTW: "inertialess thruster" seem like a contradiction in terms, sort of like
"military intelligece".

Dan.

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

Date: 29 Apr 90 03:07:25 GMT
From: usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!zardoz.cpd.com!dhw68k!ofa123![e-mail]  (Wales Larrison)
Subject: >>... Hermes will be mostly aluminum, for example, not

detract from the general tone of
>>[Henry Spencer]
>>... Hermes will be mostly aluminum, for example, not
>>titanium like the shuttle.
>
>[George Herbert]
>The shuttle is good ole Aluminum alloys, much of it garden variety
>2024 and 7075 ... Which is not to detract from the general tone of
>your posting, which was that the shuttle pushed technology all over.
>It did, in almost all ways, and in retrospect building it out of
>titanium would have been a great idea because it would have ended up a

--- Opus-CBCS 1.12
 * Origin: Universal Electronics, Inc. (1:103/302.0)
--
Wales Larrison
...!{dhw68k,zardoz,lawnet,conexch}!ofa123!Wales.Larrison                             [e-mail]
714 544-0934 2400/1200/300

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

Date: 29 Apr 90 22:21:00 GMT
From: van-bc!ubc-cs![e-mail]  (George Phillips)
Subject: "face" on Mars images available for anonymous ftp

Thanks to Loren Carpenter, the original 2 images of the "face" on Mars
are available via anonymous ftp from cs.ubc.ca (128.189.97.5), directory
/mars.  Except for 1 file, the images are the original, unprocessed
data.  As usual, non-business hours ftp'ing is appreciated.  Our internet
link is pretty slow so if you get 2K a second, consider yourself lucky.
I've appended the README file which should give you a pretty good idea
of what's there.


George Phillips [e-mail] {alberta,uw-beaver,uunet}!ubc-cs!phillips

-----------
This directory contains the only 2 images of the alleged face on Mars.
Each frame is in 2 parts, a .label file which contains mysterious information
which you may find useful and a .rect file (compressed) which is
the image itself in grayscale (1 byte per pixel).  Each image is 1204 x 1055.
If you have the PBM+ toolkit, you can convert them to another format with
something like:

  uncompress < 35a72.rect.Z | rawtopgm 1204 1055 - | pgmtoyourfavoriteformat

If you want the entire frames, get the files:

    35a72.label (text file)
    35a72.rect.Z (509519 bytes, use binary mode)
    70a13.label (text file)
    70a13.rect.Z (438164 bytes, use binary mode)

These are big and our Internet connection is a 19.2 Kbaud straw so it may take
a while.  Please try to avoid business hours and your best bet would be
2:00 - 5:00 am Pacific time.  If you're willing to put these files into
your own anonymous ftp directory then good for you.

For just the nitty gritty, you can grab:

    35.face.pgm.Z
    70.face.pgm.Z

which are 130 x 130 compressed PGM format images of the dirt pile (the raw
data, no processing has been done).  PGM format is pretty obvious.

Finally, there's "marsface.arc" which is a copy of the same file from
wsmr-simtel20.army.mil (can't remember which directory).  It contains a
GIF image which has raw and enhanced versions of the pile.

So grab the images, process them and let the world or your mother know
why or why not there is a giant face on Mars.

There's a bit of a readme file in marsface.arc, most of which I've appended
here since Loren's comments may be of interest.

    -- George Phillips <[e-mail]>

-------
From Loren Carpenter:

I've been reading the chatter on the net about the "Mars face" for some time.
Most, if not nearly all, of the opinions and observations have been based on
little or no information.  This is largely because of the difficulty of
obtaining the original imagery.

A few years ago when I was with Lucasfilm, I was asked by Mr. Hoagland
and associates if I would participate in the "Mars Project".  This was
to be an informal group of technically capable people who could tinker
around with the "face" and "city" pictures in their spare time.  Work
being what it was, my spare time evaporated and I drifted away from the group.

However, for the last 5 years I've had Viking Orbiter pictures 35A72 and
70A13 on a tape on my shelf.  This posting contains the only two images
of the "face" returned by Viking.  Both images in this posting are
100x100 excerpts from 35A72 and 70A13 respectively.

The data is exactly as I received it.  It's pretty noisy and there is an
obnoxious riseau mark in one of the images.  Most of the noise appears to
be caused by "broken bits", i.e. 1 (or maybe 2) bits toggled somewhere
in the pixel.  I wrote a smart median filter and it cleaned them up fairly
well.

For ease of decoding (everybody doesn't have every spiffy decompressor) each
image is encoded in hexadecimal.  4 lines of text constitute 1 scanline of
picture.  I have also included the file header for each image.  It contains
camera and sun information, if you can figure it out...

The original pictures are 1204x1055, so don't expect to see them on the net.
Our management won't let other sites log on to ftp files around, so if there
is someone who wants to be a librarian, I can probably send them the full
files.

I haven't done anything serious with these images, so please don't flood me
with questions.  Personally, I think it's just a pile of dirt.  The Mars
Observer will have 25x the resolution, so hang on a couple of years and
we can all see what a pile of dirt looks like up close.

The excerpts are offset as follows:
    35A72: 318 in x, 416 in y
    70A13: 152 in x, 874 in y

                Loren Carpenter
                ...{ucbvax,sun}!pixar!loren

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

Date: 30 Apr 90 05:07:59 GMT
From: uokmax![e-mail]  (Steven P Coltrin)
Subject: Re: Dyson spheres, heat flow

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Daniel Ake CAROSONE) writes:
>BTW: "inertialess thruster" seem like a contradiction in terms, sort of like
>"military intelligece".
>
A pet idea I've had bouncing around awhile is that the 'reactionless drives'
are actually neutrino drives analogous to the photon drives humans used before
buying the hyperdrive shunt from the Outsiders.  Therefore they wouldn't
violate any strange laws like Newton's, but would be essentially reactionless
because the exhaust is thrown where it cannot be seen.  (Though in _The
Ringworld Engineers_ it is revealed that ships using thrusters can be tracked
by their neutrino exhaust.)

>Dan.
>
   --SPC

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

End of SPACE Digest V11 #334
*******************