Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/mac/TEXT/SPACEDIG/V11_3/V11_360.TXT

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Subject: SPACE Digest V11 #360

SPACE Digest                                     Volume 11 : Issue 360

Today's Topics:
             Space Anniversaries
             Dr. C. Stoll on NASA Select
                   signoff
              Re: Status of Projects...
             Voyager Confirms Relativity
       Re: NASA Headline News for 05/02/90 (Forwarded)
                Re: mea culpa
             Re: Manned mission to Venus
            Re: Heroes come in all sizes!
              Re: Status of Projects...
            Re: Rename the Earth?
            EVA comm during Hubble deploy
              Re: 'Weather' in the VAB ?
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 4 May 90 18:18:31 GMT
From: zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sdd.hp.com!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!jato!mars.jpl.nasa.gov![e-mail]  (Ron Baalke)
Subject: Space Anniversaries



There are a couple of space anniversaries coming up.  Today (May 4) marks
the first anniversary of the Magellan launch from the Space Shuttle.
Tomorrow is the 29th anniversay of Alan Shephard's flight into space,
the first U.S. astronaut in space.


 Ron Baalke                       |    [e-mail]
 Jet Propulsion Lab  M/S 301-355  |    [e-mail]
 4800 Oak Grove Dr.               |
 Pasadena, CA 91109               |    Go Lakers!

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

Date: 4 May 90 18:49:51 GMT
From: usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!aristotle![e-mail]  (Peter Scott)
Subject: Dr. C. Stoll on NASA Select


I saw this on a NASAMAIL group and thought it would be of interest
to all you NASA SELECT junkies out there:

 **************************************************************************
 *                                                                        *
 *    Dr. Clifford Stoll, Berkeley astronomer turned computer sleuth,     *
 *    will be at NASA Headquarters on Friday, May 11, 11:00 a.m. EDT,     *
 *    NASA auditorium, room 6104.  His presentation will be broadcast     *
 *    live over NASA SELECT.  In tracing the source of a 75 cent          *
 *    accounting error on a Unix computer, Stoll uncovered a German       *
 *    hacker, working for the Soviet KGB, who had been breaking into      *
 *    more than 30 military and defense contractor computers.             *
 *                                                                        *
 *    Dr. Stoll's experience is dramatized in his recent best selling     *
 *    book,  The Cuckoo's Egg.  He currently works as an astronomer at    *
 *    the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.                    *
 *                                                                        *
 *    Marie Tynan, Computer Security Manager, NASA HQ                     *
 *                                                                        *
 **************************************************************************


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

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

Date: 4  May 90 15:55 -0100
From: Jeff Raynor <[e-mail]>
Subject: signoff

signoff space

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

Date: 4 May 90 20:46:38 GMT
From: usc!samsung!rex!rouge![e-mail]  (Fraering Philip)
Subject: Re: Status of Projects...

By paper projects, I doubt you are referring to the use of paper-like
composites in the hull... :-)

Seriously, though, this is a horrible state of affairs;
Is there possibly a way to get NASA involved in helping prove out the
public or private concepts listed, in the same way that DAPRA
helped Pegasus? (Question: Exactly how much did DAPRA/DoD help
Pegasus?)

Phil

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

Date: 4 May 90 15:08:33 GMT
From: usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!jato!mars.jpl.nasa.gov![e-mail]  (Ron Baalke)
Subject: Voyager Confirms Relativity




From Sky & Telecope, June 1990

VOYAGER CONFIRMS RELATIVITY

When photons escape the gravity of a massive object, they lose energy and
their wavelengths increase correspondingly.  Such a gravitational redshift,
amounting to just one part in a billion or so, was measured by Timothy P.
Krisher and colleagues at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.  They used
tracking data from Voyager 1's flyby of Saturn in 1980.

Their results, reported in the March 19th Physical Review Letters, confirm
the predictions made by the general theory of relativity to an accuracy of
1 percent.  Krisher and co-workers are now refining their observations using
Voyager 2 data from Uranus and Neptune.

 Ron Baalke                       |    [e-mail]
 Jet Propulsion Lab  M/S 301-355  |    [e-mail]
 4800 Oak Grove Dr.               |
 Pasadena, CA 91109               |    Go Lakers!

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

Date: 4 May 90 06:49:00 GMT
From: hplabsb![e-mail]  (David Smith)
Subject: Re: NASA Headline News for 05/02/90 (Forwarded)

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:
>> The Apollo 204 spacecraft will be moved from the Langley Research Ctr ...
>> The Apollo has been in storage at Langley Research Center since 1967.
>Being a block I spacecraft this would have to be modified to
>reflect later safety standards impossed after the Apollo fire destroyed a
>capsule of nearly identical internal design.   However, if this can be done
>with resonable effort, Apollo 204 could become a nearly off the shelf Orbital
>Transfer Vehicle.

Darn right it would have to be modified.  Apollo 204 is not just "nearly
identical", it *is* identical, right down to the scorch marks and ruptured
hull.

That thing belongs in a museum, not in space or in a missile silo.

-----------------------------------------
  This paragraph is a pacifier
  for the cockeyed news program
  which penalizes brevity
  by preventing me from posting a message
  which is shorter than the quoted lines.
-----------------------------------------
--
    David R. Smith, HP Labs
    [e-mail]
    [phone]

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

Date: 4 May 90 21:28:54 GMT
From: pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sdd.hp.com!cs.utexas.edu!helios!wfsc4![e-mail]  (Hal Mueller)
Subject: Re: mea culpa

>They also placed (dumped?) the remains of the "Challenger" in a missile
>silo down on the Cape. How many silos do they have?

I heard a radio report, I believe on NPR, that 204 was going into the
same silo, and that the move was made to free storage space at Langley.


--
Hal Mueller            [e-mail]          n270ca@tamunix (Bitnet)
Graduate Student, Department of Computer Science
Research Assistant, Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Sciences
Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843

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

Date: 4 May 90 18:10:13 GMT
From: agate!shelby!neon![e-mail]  (John Kallen)
Subject: Re: Manned mission to Venus

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Mark SOKOLOWSKI) writes:
>I would like to start a new discussion about a manned mission to Venus.
>I know that given the inferno that's there, it sounds crazy, but Venus has
>many advantages over Mars:
>- 3 month flight instead of 9, and lower energy requirements to go there.
>- 8 times the mass of Mars, which means that it can trap any spaceship more
>  easily than the red planet.
>-  Notwithstanding its athmosphere, Venus is the TRUE twin of our Earth, and
>   it should be therefore our main target from the cultural point of view.

"Cultural?" If the selection of target were ruled by a cultural point
of view, it should be Mars. Remember Schiaparelli's and Lowell's
'canals'? H.G.Wells' "War of the Worlds"? Orson Welles' broadcast in
1938 that caused major panic in New England? The speculations
of life forms that prompted researchers to include a life-detection
experiment on the Viking landers? Venus may be the "TRUE twin" of Tellus
mass-wise, but as far as the climate and possiblilty of life (as we
know it, Captain :-), Mars is definitively closer.

>And for those that doubt about my seriousness, I am glad to tell that I
>will be the first to volunteer to go there... After all our technology
>can enable us to make life bearable even at 900 F and 90 athmospheres

Sure, in a lab on Tellus surrounded by cooler air... A question was
previously discussed on this newsgroup: "where do you dump the excess
heat to cool the lander?"

Mars is definitively a better choice for manned landings. The mission
can be carried out at considerable less expense (despite the longer
distance) since all the life-system technology already exists. A
"mars-suit" wouldn't be much different from a "moon-suit" the Apollo
astronauts used. (Of course, the blueprints of the suit might have
been chucked away along with the rest of the Apollo hardware :-(

Still, a manned Venus-lander would be instructive to launch, if only
to prompt the development of ultra-resilient life-support systems :-)
_______________________________________________________________________________
 | |   |   |    |\ | |   /|\ | John Kallen        Computer: kom-pyu'-ter (n) a
 | |\ \|/ \|  * |/ | |/|  |  | PoBox 11215         device for generating errors
 | |\ /|\  |\ * |\ |   |  |  | Stanford CA 94309   speedily and unpredictably.
_|_|___|___|____|_\|___|__|__|[e-mail]___________________________

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

Date: 4 May 90 16:18:06 GMT
From: swrinde!cs.utexas.edu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!utzoo![e-mail]  (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Heroes come in all sizes!

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Pavlos Papageorgiou) writes:
>    How does NASA, or any other space-faring organisation for that
>matter, approach the issue of physical size and weight of their
>astronauts?

There are size limits for being an astronaut, on both the large and small
ends, to avoid having to design equipment for extreme-worst-case people.
They've loosened a bit over the years; the original Mercury maximum height
was set by the diameter of the capsule!

The idea of specifically selecting small people to reduce equipment size
and life-support requirements has been mentioned occasionally, but NASA
has never taken it seriously.  About the only example I know of in real
life, in fact, is that the Soviet Army specifically selects small men
for tank crews.  (They have the advantage of having universal conscription
from a huge population, guaranteeing an adequate supply of small people.)
--
If OSI is the answer, what is |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
the question?? -Rolf Nordhagen| uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry [e-mail]

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

Date: 4 May 90 20:49:51 GMT
From: swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!samsung!rex!rouge![e-mail]  (Fraering Philip)
Subject: Re: Status of Projects...

One more comment (sorry about wasting the bandwidth):

Larger markets probrably won't evolve with the current ultraexpensive
(X thousand a pound? Whatchya doing? Using gold as reaction mass?)
rockets we are currently using. Solar Power Sattelites, SDI, et al
all seem to be waiting for a cheap lift.

Phil

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

Date: 3 May 90 17:36:02 GMT
From: ddsw1!corpane![e-mail]  (John Sparks)
Subject: Re: Rename the Earth?

[e-mail] (John Roberts) writes:

>[PS. to match the planet names, Tellus' moon should be named Cynthia. :-) ]

Shouldn't that be "lollipop"? Oh, wait, that's for Telly not Tellus. :-)




--
John Sparks  | D.I.S.K. 24hrs 2400bps. Accessable via Starlink (Louisville KY)
[e-mail] |                                     | PH: (502) 968-DISK
Don't worry if you're a kleptomaniac, you can always take something for it.

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

Subject: EVA comm during Hubble deploy
Date: Fri, 4 May 90 13:13:06 MESZ
From: Joseph C. Pistritto <[e-mail]>
Mailer: Elm [revision: 64.9]

The astronauts were in the airlock, and partially depressurized
during the Hubble deploy problems (solar wing).  I suspect that
the shuttle air to ground was being patched thru onto the suit
comm frequency during this time, so that Houston could talk
directly to the astronauts.  This would certainly seem the most
efficient way to get everybody on the same line.  Since the
orbiter antenna would be radiating on the suit comm frequency,
I suspect this is what was monitored by the ground station
involved.  Assuming that thing puts out 1 watt or so, its very
reasonable to be receiving it on the ground from a receiver
like the R7000.
                                                -jcp-
--
Joseph C. Pistritto ([e-mail], cgch.uucp![e-mail])
 Ciba Geigy AG, R1241.1.01, Postfach CH4002, Basel, Switzerland
 Tel: [phone] (work) [phone] (home)   GMT+2hrs!

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

Date: 5 May 90 02:15:42 GMT
From: swrinde!cs.utexas.edu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!utzoo![e-mail]  (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: 'Weather' in the VAB ?

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Daniel Fischer) writes:
>... *so* strange that I wonder whether it might be true. The point I wonder
>about most is this: ] The Vehicle Assembly Building at the KSC is so big
>          ] (isn't it the largest room ever built?) that inside they have
>          ] 'local weather'. So while the sun is shining over Florida, if
>          ] humidity is high enough, big clouds form under the ceiling.

"Moonport" (NASA SP-4204), the definitive history of the Apollo launch
facilities, discusses the ventilation system that was provided specifically
to avoid condensation problems and the like within the VAB.  Rocco Petrone's
chapter in "Apollo Expeditions to the Moon" (NASA SP-350) (Petrone was in
charge of Apollo launch facilities during much of their construction and
early use) does mention the "clouds" -- as baseless folklore.
--
If OSI is the answer, what is |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
the question?? -Rolf Nordhagen| uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry [e-mail]

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

End of SPACE Digest V11 #360
*******************