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Subject: SPACE Digest V11 #495

SPACE Digest                                     Volume 11 : Issue 495

Today's Topics:
               Re: Sex in space
NASA selects instrument for Advanced X-ray Astrophysics Facility (Forwarded)
         Re: T.A.F.  --  Tough Apollo Trivia
      Re: mars vs. venus, which is easier to terraform?
           Re: space news from May 7 AW&ST
          Re: DSN Reliability and Resources Question
              Habitable Planets For Man
                  Plutonium
                Re: Plutonium
          NSS Phone Tree Alert on "Plymouth"

Administrivia:

    Submissions to the SPACE Digest/sci.space should be mailed to
  [e-mail].  Other mail, esp. [un]subscription notices,
  should be sent to [e-mail], or, if urgent, to
             [e-mail]

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

Date: 5 Jun 90 15:46:00 GMT
From: agate!volcano.Berkeley.EDU![e-mail]  (Dan KoGai)
Subject: Re: Sex in space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (OSAWA Ei-ichi) writes:

>Have you ever thought that some countries including USSR are able to
>send human kind, both women and men, to space?   They might have done
>it much more than you estimate, or expect :-)

    He's got a point:  1st Female Astronaut (Cosmoronaut) was a Soviet
whose name is Teresicova (I'm not sure about spelling) back in 60's.  For
U.S. we had to wait untill Space Shuttle and Sarry Ride--I don't know why
NASA didn't include female in Apollo missions.
    They also have more Cosmoronauts and longer experience or Gross
Orbit-hours.  They are obviously ahead in manned space missions.  And it's
fair to assume they've already done it.  I hope Perestroika will reveal us
how it was like.
    And to add more flame, it doesn't take married couple to experiment
intercourse--why didn't NASA and USSR do international interspace intercouse
in Apollo-Soyuz joint mission?
    And to add even more flame, why does it have to be women and man?
what's wrong with homo-sex?  And what's wrong with chicken or sheep?
Scientific interest waives all taboos!
    I wanna see my cum forms a ball :)

----------------
____  __  __    + Dan The "nasty" Man
    ||__||__|   + E-mail:    [e-mail]
____| ______     + Voice:    [phone]
|     |__|__|    + USnail:    1730 Laloma Berkeley, CA 94709 U.S.A
|___  |__|__|    +
    |____|____    + "What's the biggest U.S. export to Japan?"
  \_|    |      + "Bullshit.  It makes the best fertilizer for their rice"

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

Date: 5 Jun 90 22:23:01 GMT
From: trident.arc.nasa.gov![e-mail]  (Peter E. Yee)
Subject: NASA selects instrument for Advanced X-ray Astrophysics Facility (Forwarded)

Paula Cleggett-Haleim                               June 5, 1990
Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
(Phone: [phone])


Allen Kenitzer
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala.
(Phone: [phone])


RELEASE:  C90-t

NASA SELECTS INSTRUMENT FOR ADVANCED X-RAY ASTROPHYSICS FACILITY


     NASA has awarded a contract to the Smithsonian
Astrophysics Observatory, Cambridge, Mass., to provide a high
resolution camera for the space-based Advanced X-Ray Astrophysics
Facility (AXAF).  This cost-reimbursement-no-fee contract is for
$26.7 million.

     The contract will include development of the high resolution
camera, one of four candidate AXAF instruments, through launch
and 2-1/2 half years of on-orbit operation.  Other instruments
include a charge-coupled device x-ray camera, which is in final
negotiations with Pennsylvania State University, State College,
and an x-ray spectrometer, being developed by NASA's Goddard
Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.  In addition, NASA is
continuing definition studies on a Bragg Crystal Spectrometer at
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge.

      In Fiscal Year 1989, Congress approved the initiation of
technology development for AXAF's high-resolution mirror
assembly.  In Fiscal Year 1990, Congress provided initial
instrument funding.  This will be a 3-year program which, if
successful, should lead to a development start for the AXAF
spacecraft in Fiscal Year 1992.

     The AXAF is scheduled for launch in 1997 and will be the
third in NASA's series of space-based great observatories
following the Hubble Space Telescope, which was launched April
24, and the Gamma Ray Observatory, which is currently scheduled
for launch in November.

     These observatories, as well as the proposed Space Infrared
Telescope Facility which would follow AXAF, will operate for the
next few decades above the haze of Earth's atmosphere.  This
family of telescopes will permit simultaneous, complementary
observations of astrophysical phenomena over different
wavelengths of the spectrum.

     NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala., has
management responsibility for the telescope and will manage the
contract.  The Advanced X-Ray Astrophysics Facility program is
under the direction of NASA's Office of Space Science and
Applications, Washington, D.C.

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

Date: 5 Jun 90 16:37:18 GMT
From: att!watmath!watserv1!utgpu!utzoo![e-mail]  (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: T.A.F.  --  Tough Apollo Trivia

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Chris Duhon) writes:
>   2) Earth Orbit Rendezvous ...
>   3) Lunar Orbit Rendezvous ...
>
>The question I have is this -- Why did they not use a combination
>of options 2 and 3.  That is, launch the LM on one rocket, then
>launch the CSM (Command Service Module) on another, redezvous,
>then go.  That might mean using half the fuel, rockets that
>were less powerful than the trouble plagued F-1's, and thus
>launch vehicles less complex and powerful than a Saturn V.

Basically, they didn't consider an EOR/LOR combination because it seemed
unnecessarily complex and new-rocket development was needed anyway.  None
of the existing boosters had a hope of being big enough for a lunar
mission, even used several at a time.

You'd need at least three launches even with Saturn IBs, because you need
CSM, LM, and translunar-injection stage.  The Saturn V could do that last
with a second burn of its third stage, but the Saturn IB didn't have any
upper-stage fuel to spare.  This means you need three launches in fast
succession, and a three-way rendezvous; the complexity is escalating
rapidly.

"Trouble plagued"?  The F-1 development was, on the whole, fairly smooth,
and apart from a bit of a problem with pogo oscillation -- not uncommon
in new rockets -- it never gave the slightest trouble in flight.  The J-2
engines for the upper stages were not so cooperative, alas.  (However, if
you're going to do it with Saturn IBs, you need the J-2 anyway, since the
IB second stage used it.)
--
As a user I'll take speed over|     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
features any day. -A.Tanenbaum| uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry [e-mail]

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

Date: 5 Jun 90 03:45:38 GMT
From: zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!samsung!umich!ox.com!kitenet![e-mail]  (Russ Cage)
Subject: Re: mars vs. venus, which is easier to terraform?

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Michael Kinsella) writes:
>Which do you expect to be easier to terraform, mars or venus?

Mars.

>why?

Mostly, it needs an addition of greenhouse gases and maybe water.
These substances are available.  There are certain chlorofluorocarbons
(you know, the nasty stuff that kills ozone?) which last a long time
and have excellent greenhouse properties.  Our current manufacturing
here on Terra is nearly sufficient to do the job, so I do not think
it would be all that difficult.  Sequestering the atmosphere of
Venus, or removing it, is a vastly bigger task.

(As Henson pointed out, with nanotech it's all about the same.)

>how long do you think it would take if the level of government interest
>was equal to government interest in 'atomics' during the cold war?

A very long time.  Our government is not efficient.  If, however,
a warmer Mars made it easier to mine for some valuable mineral...

>how would you proceed?

Set up the Halon plants and start pumping.  As warmth increases,
the polar caps will lose their CO2 component, then the water will
melt.  Orbiting mirrors would certainly help.

If there is not enough water on Mars, adding some is possible.
Hard-landing comets or carbonaceous chondrites on the polar caps
would contribute their volatiles to the atmosphere and vaporize
the cap quickly as well.
--
              Oversimplification doesn't solve problems, it just
[phone]          changes them into less tractable problems.
Russ Cage, Robust Software Inc.            [e-mail]

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

Date: 5 Jun 90 16:43:32 GMT
From: snorkelwacker!spdcc!ima!haddock![e-mail]  (overhead)
Subject: Re: space news from May 7 AW&ST

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Henry Spencer) writes:
>[This will be a real quickie, as I'm preparing to be away for two weeks
>and time is short.]

>Major article with pictures of HST deployment and a detailed account of
>the various post-deployment headaches.  [Sorry, I just don't have time
>to summarize two pages of dense information.]

Let's see, May 7th...

The first picture: an open star cluster, about 1,500 light years
from Earth, NGC 3532.  Focusing test delayed by a week due to
various problems.  The high gain antenna problem caused cascading
problems for most of a week.  A communications blackout for 3
hours...  The telescope entered an "inertial safe mode", from
which recovery was relativly quick.  When controllers commanded
Hubble's aperture door to open, two gyros went offline, causing
it to enter "software safe mode", but with a reasonable attitude.
34 hours later, new data and commands were sent to Hubble to
reconfigure it out of safe-mode.  More high-gain antenna based
delays.  The low gain antenna was used to get engineering data
from Hubble to deduce what was going on.  Final photos of Hubble
from Discovery showed the wire bowed slightly out of place near
the #2 dish antenna.  Tinkertoy technology & high tech graphics
were used to model the problem.  The high gain antennas were
reconfigured.  Checkout continued, but when checking the Pointing
and Safe mode Electronics Assembly, they forgot to inhibit the
aperture door.  The door closed, causing motion, causing entry
into safe mode again.  About five hours later, they were able
reopen the door.

Henry does a great job at these AW&ST space news summaries.
They are quite time consuming.  I'd have missed the bit about
Japanese Astronaut.  No way I'd have remembered the Journalists...

Stephen.
[e-mail]

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

Date: 5 Jun 90 20:01:27 GMT
From: sdd.hp.com!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!aristotle![e-mail]  (Peter Scott)
Subject: Re: DSN Reliability and Resources Question

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail]
(Doug Mohney) writes:

> Speaking of reliablility, what would happen if something Bad happened
> to Goddard Space Flight Center? (Fire, chemical spill, plane crash, other
> act of god). Hubble is controlled from there, and probably other gizmos as
> well. Does NASA keep "hot sites" available at JPL? Or just pray a lot?

We are backup navigation for just about every mission; although on the manned
missions we are so far back in the chain that it would take a nuclear war to
put us in charge, on unmanned missions we are usually primary or secondary
navigation provider.  There's not much to do after launch, though.  We also
provide navigation for non-US western launches, such as ESA and the Japanese.
There's a navigation "War Room" downstairs from me that has links to tie in
to launch site nets.  I don't know whether we have the capability here to
actually control Hubble, but I bet it could be done in an emergency.

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

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

Date: 3 Jun 90 21:16:11 GMT
From: att!watmath!maytag!watdragon!watyew![e-mail]  (Brian or James)
Subject: Habitable Planets For Man


    Anyone out there know if this book is still in print
[I can hear people falling over laughing already]. The author was Stephan
Dole [I think], but the only copy I ever saw was in the Engineering, Math
and Science library at UW, and *sniff* they take such a dim view of selling
their books [And, of course, people who steal from libraries should have their
thumbs crushed]. First printing was in the early sixties, I'm pretty
sure.
                            JDN

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

Date:    Tue, 5 Jun 1990 8:22:39 EDT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Plutonium
X-Vmsmail-To: SMTP%"[e-mail]"

Pu is toxic if breathed.  It tends to form "non-healing granulatomata" in
the lungs, which become cancerous nodules, which spread all over the place
and do nasty things.  But it's not absorbed through the skin, and if
ingested won't be any more poisonous than any other heavy metal (such as
lead).  That's not to say that it won't hang around inside your body and
irradiate you for a while, but it won't act as a metabolic poison in any
fashion other than the standard heavy-metal poisoning.  And if you ingest
enough that heavy-metal poisoning is a problem, radiation is a much greater
worry.  Since Feynman speaks about placing his hands on a warm globe of
plutonium, and he lived for a good forty years afterward, I can point out
a few excellent examples of how little damage the radiation does.  On the
other hand, I am sure you can point out some other ones in the opposite
direction, which just points out that individual cases are worthless and
a statistic like the LD50 of radiation is required.
--scott

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

Date: 5 Jun 90 15:39:28 GMT
From: thorin!homer![e-mail]  (Jonathan Leech)
Subject: Re: Plutonium

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:
>Since Feynman speaks about placing his hands on a warm globe of
>plutonium, and he lived for a good forty years afterward, I can point out
>a few excellent examples of how little damage the radiation does.

    Since Feynman died of cancer, perhaps this is not such a great
example.  Followups to sci.med.
--
    Jon Leech ([e-mail])    __@/
    ``My goal is simple. It is complete understanding of the universe,
      why it is as it is and why it exists at all.''
    - Stephen Hawking

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

Date: 5 Jun 90 16:50:22 GMT
From: usc!cs.utexas.edu!mailrus!umich!ox.com!itivax!vax3.iti.org![e-mail]  (Allen W. Sherzer)
Subject: NSS Phone Tree Alert on "Plymouth"


June 5, 1990
Official NSS Phone Tree Alert
Subject: the ABC TV program "Plymouth"

They may not even show the pilot!!!

Call the ABC Audience Information Line
at [phone] and ask 'em when they are going
to show the pilot.

Write a letter to:
Robert Enger
President, ABC Entertainment
2040 Avenue of the Stars
Century City, CA  90067

and send a copy to
John Barber
VP Current Series Programs
(same address)

asking them to turn the pilot into a regular TV series.


Background:

"Plymouth" is a proposed TV movie and pilot about a town which is moved
to a company's mining facility on the moon. The company is having
trouble turning a profit on its mining operations because they can't
get anybody to make a commitment to stay long enough. The people of
Plymouth (in a nutshell) agree to go. A neat twist is that the show
takes place in 1989 to show what would be happening if we hadn't
abandoned space after Apollo.

If properly done this show represents a good opportunity to capture the
public imagination. Just as "Top Gun" stimulated interest in the Navy
and as "LA Law" has increased law school applications, "Plymouth" could
interest people in space. By reaching a mass audience "Plymouth" can
generate more interest in the colonization of space then we could ever
do on our own.

Properly done, however, doesn't mean great special effects or total
technical accuracy. In fact, technical accuracy could be one of the
least important aspects of the show. What will matter is the shows
human aspects.  People didn't watch "Hill Street Blues" because the
procedures were 100% correct, they tuned in because they liked and
cared about the characters. If the viewers like and empathize with the
characters of "Plymouth" the show can do well. In the meantime, they
will see what might have been and what still could be.

But (you knew there had to be one of these didn't you?) just because we
are not producing the show doesn't mean space activists have nothing to
do.  "Plymouth" has great potential and our help is needed so it can
achieve that potential. We need to watch the show and get our friends
to watch as well.  If the show looks good, write to both the network
AND the sponsor(s). Getting people to watch can be hard and new shows
don't get much chance to gain audience before they are canned; our help
will be needed.

But getting the show on the air is the first step, so please
act on this activation today!

[e-mail]     (Tihamer T. Toth-Fejel)
Industrial Technology Institute, P.O. Box 1485, Ann Arbor, MI 48106
office: [phone]   fax: [phone]   home: [phone]
*----*----*----*----*----*----*----*----*----*----*----*----*----*

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Allen W. Sherzer         |   Real men write self modifying code.          |
|   [e-mail]            |                                                |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

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End of SPACE Digest V11 #495
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