Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/mac/TEXT/SPACEDIG/V11_3/V11_377.TXT

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Subject: SPACE Digest V11 #377

SPACE Digest                                     Volume 11 : Issue 377

Today's Topics:
     Hubble Space Telescope Update - 05/07/90 (Forwarded)
                Re: Space Camp
             Re: Manned mission to Venus
              Terraforming Venus
            Re: Recovering old spacecraft
             Re: Manned mission to Venus
             Re: Manned mission to Venus
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 8 May 90 16:41:09 GMT
From: usc!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sdd.hp.com!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!jato!mars.jpl.nasa.gov![e-mail]  (Ron Baalke)
Subject: Hubble Space Telescope Update - 05/07/90 (Forwarded)



UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL -- MAY 7

"Hubble Space Telescope's First Picture Could Come Friday"

"The Hubble Space Telescope could snap its historic first picture
of the heavens as early as Friday, officials said Monday."

UPI reports that telescope engineers at Goddard Space Flight
Center today planned to begin a 36-hour process of preparation
for the first picture.  The report quotes Hubble verificiation
director Mike Harrington stating the picture "could come as early
as Friday (but) it might be Saturday."

The wire story says the subject of the picture, which is intended
as a test, will be a 3-billion-year-old star cluster called NGC
3532 which is 1,500 light years away in the constellation Carina.

Harwood says NASA had hoped to take this picture last week but
that a series of problems in the initial stages of telescope
turn-on activities had put the process one week behind schedule.

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

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

Date: 8 May 90 19:21:12 GMT
From: uc!shamash!hall![e-mail]  (Terry Greyzck)
Subject: Re: Space Camp

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Scott Johnson) writes:
>Hello,
>  Does anyone have any information on the United States Space Camp
>in Alabama and/or Florida?  My SO and I were considering going, but
>we didn't want to get mixed into something that is "just for kids".

I went to Space Academy in October '88.  This is basically the 10-17 year
olds week-long program compressed to three days, but is not a 'just for
kids' program.

First, go to the Huntsville program.  I don't believe the Florida version
even has an adult program.  Besides, the Huntsville space museum beats
the Kennedy one hands down, IMHO.  The 3-grav centrifuge is open to the
public, so you don't have to go Space Academy to experience it.  The
museum is worth the trip itself.

The best part of the program is the flight simulation.  The shuttle cabin
is reasonably accurate, even to individual switches (although most of them
really do nothing except flash lights).  As pilot, you have to go through a
rather complex checklist before, after, and during flight.  The cabin has
some limited hydraulics for up/down/sideways motion.  The people running
the simulation, used to running it for kids, tend to throw all the
too-tough-for-kids problems they have thought up at the adults, which adds
a certain additional amount of challenge (we had an electronics fire, three
other warning lights including cabin pressure loss, at the same time I was
in a countdown to launch a satellite...).

The people going EVA had fun (and sweated a lot) using actual surplus NASA
spacesuits (outer layer, only).  They are hot enough that you have to
bundle up with ice packs before you get into the suit.  The robot arm is a
heavily modified cherry-picker arm, and zero-gee is simulated by individual
'hovercraft' that pivot at your center of gravity in multiple directions.

Stay away from the space station simulation, though.  It looked incredibly
boring.  Just sitting in the space station doing experiments, in
shirtsleeves.

It is well worth the price.  If you are a NSS member, you get a substantial
discount (actually worth joining NSS if you aren't a member).  One note:
you may have to wait a year or more to get an adult slot; there are very
few adult sessions.

There used to be a Level II Adult program, which I badly wanted to go to,
but it was discontinued in '89 for reasons unknown to me.  That one
included use of the underwater simulator and other very interesting items.

GO!

Terry Greyzck

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

Date: 9 May 90 01:56:22 GMT
From: zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!samsung!cs.utexas.edu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!mcgill-vision!quiche!calvin![e-mail]  (Mark SOKOLOWSKI)
Subject: Re: Manned mission to Venus

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Brian L. McCormick) writes:
>
>I think it's a bad idea because I feel that it would be difficult, expensive,
>and time consuming and would not provide what a future civilization would
>need.

I don`t want Venus to be "terraformed", for me, it is beautiful just with
its present surface conditions. The Earth will never be able to become Venus,
for if all our oceans would boil, and the CO2 released, our planet would
only have 60 athmospheres of pressure and 300 C of surface temperature...
For those that don't see Venus as a good choice for exploration, I will give
this argument: Venus has more hard surface area than all the inner solar
system bodies combined. (It has about the same surface as Earth, which is
greater than the quarter of emerged lands on Earth + 1/16 (Moon) + 1/9
(Mercury) + 1/4 (Mars)).
I have seen too a posting laughing about the eventual "Batyscaphe"
culture. In fact, we don't need Batyscaphs on Venus. Recent experiments in
deep water diving have shown that human beings can breath trinix
(helium + oxygen + hydrogen) up to 25 athmospheres. And a french
experiment performed last year enabled people to breath under 60
athmospheres of hydrox (99.5% hydrogen + 0.5% oxygen). The only
problem is that they speak like Donald Duck. So normal (and big,
elongated) cylinders, just like on Mars and the Moon, can be sufficient.
And what about the submarine life found near the coasts of Japan by a
French-Japanese expedition in 1986. It lived under temperatures in
excess of 350 C, by 3000 m of depth (and that's the equivalent of
300 athmospheres!!!!!), in a sulfuric environment (the magma was
nearby, since the expedition had as the main goal the study of the
friction point between 3 tectonic plates). Some scientists, amazed,
submited the (sort of) worms to higher temperatures, and those creatures
even felt better!!! Is life on Venus really impossible!!!
So I am convinced that a manned station on Venus won't surely differ from
other stations in the solar system, and that beakthroughs in medecine
will enable people to go outside without suits.
Everyone seems to portray our twin sister as a dark, overheated and bleak
place. But, knowing the diversities of landscapes and vegetation on Earth,
but can you imagine a body having 4 times its area to not have at least the
same diversity, same beauty...

Mark S.
-------

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

Date: 9 May 90 04:06:23 GMT
From: zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!samsung!munnari.oz.au!gondwana4![e-mail]  (Daniel Ake CAROSONE)
Subject: Terraforming Venus

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Brian L. McCormick) writes:
>     2.  Once the planet has cooled to a reasonable temperature (perhaps
>     after hundreds of years), a number of stations might be established
>     on the surface.  CO2 can be electrolyzed at these stations to produce
>     carbon, which can be buried or otherwise disposed of, and oxygen, which
>     can be used to burn hydrogen (imported from Jupiter or Saturn?) to produce
>     water.


How easy would it be to fission hydrogen from existing matter on the planet?
I assume that we are going to have to rebuild the atmosphere/soil/etc from
scratch, so maybe this approach is easier than trying to ship megatonnes of
Hydrogen from the gas-giants?

Daniel Carosone
[e-mail]

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

Date: 8 May 90 03:53:26 GMT
From: clyde.concordia.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!qucdn![e-mail]  (Arnold G. Gill)
Subject: Re: Recovering old spacecraft

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Rev Dr Phil Herring)
says:
>
>Re the last remark about using large planets for assistance: gravitational
>assist only works if you want to accelerate the craft as well as re-point
>it. It always comes out of the encounter faster than it went in. If you
>want to get a craft in a distant orbit back to LEO, you'd have to slow it
>down by quite a bit when it got here.
     When you say you get out of an encounter faster than you went in, it must
be specified with respect to what.  With respect to the planet, speed in
equals speed out.  But not with respect to the Sun, which is the really
important point in movement around the Solar System.  To slow the craft down,
just do the encounter in reverse - run into the planet as opposed to catching
up from behind (figuratively speaking, of course).
-------
 -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
|  Arnold Gill                        |                                     |
|  Queen's University at Kingston     |     If I hadn't wanted it heard,    |
|  BITNET   : gilla@qucdn             |       I wouldn't have said it.      |
|  X-400    : [e-mail]  |                                     |
|  INTERNET : [e-mail]  |                                     |
 -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

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

Date: 8 May 90 16:20:28 GMT
From: zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!samsung!rex!rouge![e-mail]  (Fraering Philip)
Subject: Re: Manned mission to Venus

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Mark SOKOLOWSKI) writes:


  "I don't see why Venus would be so bleak. After all it is brighter on its
   surface than in the cold darkness of the Oceans. Furthermore, artificial
   light, greenhouses with trees and vegetation would make life fairly
   acceptable there. I would even tell you that being there would be more
   enjoyable for me than in some space station lost between the Earth and
   Mars, millions of Km's from any object greater than a grapefruit..."

Yes, I guess Venus would be a nice place to live if you could duplicate
several thousand square meters of Earthlike surroundings there. Much the
same could be said of New Iberia, Louisiana (my hometown :-). Actually,
though, everything you say could also be said of a space station, and we
could much more easily build a large enough space station that you couldn't
tell you were off-earth.

  "Wait a minute: It will be about 2 month and 3 weeks for the travel to
   Venus, and Venus is our closest neighboor! Of course, the first mission
   can only deal with a flyby, in which case the whole mission would take
   less than 2/3 of the time to simply go to Mars. And about the rockets,
   the Energyia can send a Mir sized spacecraft together with an equally
   massive supply unit (about 35-40 tons) to Venus (and Mars if you
   substract a few tons). Sorry, but the logic here points all the way to
   Venus. For the Saturn V, the figures should be about the same, and 3 or
   4 shuttle flights can do it too..."

Have you calculated in the fact that you can refuel at Mars a heck of a lot
easier than at Venus, both from water in permafrost on the surface and
from deposits at Phobos. (I know, the Phobos probe didn't get close enough
to tell, but it did detect a gas torus or shock wave in the plasma at
the orbit of Phobos, and I submit that it was caused by water outgassing
from the sattelite.

  "First of all, I'm not talking about a sophisticated suicide. What I want
   to see in such a mission is the breaking of an ultimate frontier. If we
   can land on Venus and STAY THERE ALIVE, then we'll be ready for the entire
   solar system..."

What for? The Russians and Japanese would have the title, and renting any
small part of it would be outrageously expensive. Also, I doubt we'll get
much in the way of exchange from Russian tourists wanting to see the
anazing culture we'll have built in the bathyscapes.

  "True for the PRINCIPLES of this technlogy i.e. action-reaction principle.
   But what about liquid hydrogen handling, when this hellish liquid boils
   at 10 K (only a teflon-kevlar alloy isn't like glass at this temperature),
   vaporizes 10 times faster than water for an equal amount of added energy,
   is 100 times less visquous than alcohol (leaks through holes of 1/10th of a
   micron), and is explosive when its concentration in air is above 4%. Not
   talking about the fact that because it is 14 times less dense than the
   liquid oxygen it is combined with, the turbopumps have to turn at 1500
   rotations PER SECOND MINIMUM. (So the transmission system, IS IT REALLY SO
   EASY TO MAKE AS THAT OF A CAR?????).
   Funny that Challenger hasn't exploded because of a problem with one of its
   3 main engines... And funny that the decision to put human beings in a
   REUSABLE LIQUID HYDROGEN PROPELLED spaceship was the most stupid ever
   (And in fact, is the space shuttle really reusable when they change
   those main engines at almost every flight????).
   And this is only an example, dealing with liquid hydrogen...."

All straw man arguments; the shuttle died because of the solid-fuel
booster malfunction. Had it been powered by a 307 cu. inch V8, it would
still be dead. As for the main engines, their problem isn't that they
are reusable, but that they are the HIGHEST pressure rocket engines ever
built. Without the massive vibration loads on the engines from the
solid rockets, they'd probrably last a lot longer.

Also, most plans I've seen for shuttle replacements use ALL liquid-hydrogen
engines, partly because of the safety factor. Using the SSME as a case
study of reusable engines is like using a Pinto as an example of a _safe_
car.

  "Everybody is talking about those asteroids, but some scientists, like
   Carl Sagan, are now speaking against their exploitation. It seems that
   they aren't quite so much of them out there, and beside, they keep a good
   record about the history of the solar system. Everybody is now concerned
   with environment, but it doesn't mean that we should consider the rest
   of the solar system as a garbage can. In fact, I am afraid about man going
   to Mars, the kind of destruction it can do there. First, we have to solve
   our problems here. Not have so much of them that we will have to export
   all our garbage (cultural and material) in the entire galaxy. That's why
   I think we sould not industrialize space for now (I mean, centuries from
   now). We can go there to conquer, set new frontiers, learn, not colonize
   in an utmost imperialistic way. Will it really matter to have a factory
   on the Moon when there will be 10 billion people down here. I bet the rare
   materials recovered from our satellite will be used to make better weapons
   and extermination means to control our growing social and geopolitical
   problems. I'm a little crude here, but I'm sure that a blind faith
   on salvation from space (and equivalently, a blind faith in the arrival
   of some martians that will help us) is dangerous because it will surely
   let our problem down here grow faster than the actual solutions that
   will be brought by the space-related exotic means. Look at the shuttle!!!
   They were promising us ONE FLIGHT PER WEEK!!!!!! Factories, thousand
   of people in space by the 1990's... And it costed billions of truly waisted
   money, for any unmanned rocket can do the job of the shuttle (I don't care
   about the fact that man is FLEXIBLE, can have INITIATIVE, since the
   reliability needed for a spaceship that can carry men cancels that).
   When sending men out there, we should be realistic about why we do it!!!
   Sending a manned mission to Venus wouldn't surely be a waist of money,
   if we compare the costs with those put up for the B-2 and other military
   curiosities, and because we HAVE TO send mens on such a mission in order to
   have some interest from the rest of humanity!!!!"

Scotty, set the Phasers to maximum flame:


Most of the problems you describe are not characteristic of space technology,
manned spaceflight, or even technology in general. They were generated by the
extreme overbureaucratization of our space program.

As for asteroids as nature preserves: Currently they are even more barren
than the South Bronx. The only reason not to is due to some dimly
defined ethic about man being evil. We won't use up so much of the asteroids
that they will be lost to science forever. As for Carl Sagan, I think he is
just reacting against the fact that someone has other ideas about what to
do in space than to seek symbolic aquiescence from Mars and provide really
nifty make-work for Astronomers. If it weren't for that perception of space
amoung the general public, as something reserved for the high priesthood,

WE'D BE WORKING AND LIVING THERE NOW!

The Russians have just had their own revolt against their high priests. It is
called Glasnost and Perestroika. That's why they stopped sending all of those
probes to Venus (favorite Sadgeev quote: "Why must we keep sending probes to
Venus? Were we sentenced to it?") and sent one to a possibly water-rich
asteroid orbiting Mars.

As for whether or not space industrialization and colonization will
improve the situation on Earth, I believe it will, because I and _millions_
like me plan to be there using it to improve Earth.

At the very least, it's better than another bunch of fossil fuel plants,
which is all the enviornmentalists will allow to be built in spite of the
greenhouse effect.

To finish, I will leave you with this quote:
"Local movements for restraint in the world's democracies will only restrain
those democracies and not the world as a whole." - K. Eric Drexler.

Auf Wiedershaun!
Philip Fraering

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

Date: 8 May 90 15:21:16 GMT
From: usc!cs.utexas.edu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!utzoo![e-mail]  (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Manned mission to Venus

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Bruce Carlson) writes:
>        How long would it take to bioform Venus to acceptable limits?

Open question, because at the moment nobody has a feasible scheme for
doing it.  Getting rid of all the excess atmosphere is very difficult,
the slow spin is fundamentally hard to fix, and the shortage of water
pretty well demands massive imports from elsewhere in the solar system.
Mars would be much easier; it may not need anything more than a better
greenhouse effect.

In general, making almost any change to a planet takes centuries, if not
millennia.  There is a lot of inertia in something that big.

>        Could we develope a ramjet for Venus probes? (carring some of
>        it's own oxygen)

There is almost nothing in the Venusian atmosphere that is useful as
either fuel or oxidizer.  About the only sort of ramjet you could build
for Venus's atmosphere would be a nuclear one.

>        What is the temp. at the poles of Venus?

I don't have numbers on hand, but as I recall, it's not significantly
cooler than at the equator.  That massive atmosphere equalizes temperatures
pretty effectively.
--
If OSI is the answer, what is |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
the question?? -Rolf Nordhagen| uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry [e-mail]

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End of SPACE Digest V11 #377
*******************