Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/mac/TEXT/SPACEDIG/V12_4/V12_473.TXT

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Subject: SPACE Digest V12 #473

SPACE Digest                                     Volume 12 : Issue 473

Today's Topics:
             Re: Theories needed on life
             Re: Theories needed on life
              Re: Launch cost per pound
             Re: Theories needed on life
             Pioneer 11 Update - 10/19/90
                  Re: Pluto
                  Re: Names
               * SpaceNews 22-Oct-90 *

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

Date: 20 Oct 90 01:03:41 GMT
From: ubc-cs![e-mail]  (Mike Gobbi)
Subject: Re: Theories needed on life


A planet 3 or 4 times the size of earth?  Do you mean 3xmass or 3xradius?

In the former case, I suspect that the life forms would have short thick
legs, and would be unlikely to be humanoid.  Far more likely, they would have
four or more legs to distribute their mass.

In the latter case, we are talking about a 27-G planet!  i think that the
only conceivable life forms on this planet would certainly be aquatic.  That
way they are relatively immune to the effects of their mass.

As far as culture and society goes (I presume you intend to write a story
about this, or something like that...) the sky is the limit.  Humanity has
had probably hundreds of different cultures in its history, so I suspect that
anything you can think of would be plausible from an alien point of view.
--
     __
    /..\      In quest of knowledge....
 --mm--mm--         Mike Gobbi

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

Date: 20 Oct 90 01:37:19 GMT
From: unmvax!nmt.edu![e-mail]  (Paul A. Houle)
Subject: Re: Theories needed on life


      Well,  how close to human does a creature have to be to be humanoid?
I can imagine bipeds being common,  but,  in our case,  it was essentially
a development route from primates with four opposite-thumbed 'feet' that
makes two hands availible for grabbing onto things.  Our hands specialized
into manipulators,  while our feet specialized in locomotion.   That's
why,  if you look at our tree-climbing brothers,  you find that their
feet look alot like hands,  because their hands and feet aren't as
specialized as ours.

      I think that the quadroped development route probably would tend to
produce human-like intellegent species.  After all,  it seems to me that
something has to happen to make limbs availible for something other than
walking and standing.  But,  fundamentally,  what kind of symmetries
can living things take?  How are they built into the morphogenic code?

      One of the things that higher gravity implies is that the upper limits
of size would be smaller.  The lower limits will stay the same,  so there
would be less size-diversity.  A human-sized creature will require a much
stronger skeleton and more efficient construction than it would on Earth.
As size goes down,  we'd have to minaturize the equipment needed to lug
the brain around - and remember that reaction times would have to be
considerably quicker on a high g-planet.  So,  it would be much harder
being an intellegent biped on a high-g world than it is here.  Maybe
that's why we are here and not on a high-g planet.

--
[e-mail] [e-mail]  [e-mail]
[e-mail]  [e-mail]  [e-mail]

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

Date: 15 Oct 90 17:00:31 GMT
From: swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sdd.hp.com!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!zardoz.cpd.com!dhw68k!ofa123![e-mail]  (David Anderman)
Subject: Re: Launch cost per pound

Are you willing to state that the Soviet cost per pound in LEO is
greater than our cost? If so, apart from stating that it is impossible
to compute costs in a command economy, please give me some reasons for
asserting that the Soviets are more inefficient than ourselves in
launching rockets.


--
David Anderman
Internet: [e-mail]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

Date: 19 Oct 90 20:41:09 GMT
From: unmvax!pprg.unm.edu!topgun!mustang!nntp-server.caltech.edu!seismo.gps.caltech.edu![e-mail]  (Bruce Worden)
Subject: Re: Theories needed on life

[e-mail] (Michael McNeil) writes:
>In article <[e-mail]>
>[e-mail] writes:
>
>> [ what would humanoid life on high-G planet be like? ]

>It's highly likely that humanoid life wouldn't exist even on a planet
>just like the Earth -- if life were to independently evolve again.
>There are just too many other possible pathways for it to follow.
>[ .... ]
>    Life, even cellular life, may exist out yonder in the dark.
>    But high or low in nature, it will not wear the shape of man.
>    That shape is the evolutionary product of a strange, long
>    wandering through the attics of the forest roof, and so
>    great are the chances of failure, that nothing precisely
>    and identically human is likely ever to come that way again.
>        Loren Eiseley, *The Immense Journey*, 1957

I am under the impression that there are relatively few ways for organisms
to adapt to a given environment.  An often cited example is the physical
characteristics of desert plants some of which appear nearly identical to
plants on another continent even though the two are completely different
species.  Ignoring the high-gravity question, isn't it possible that an
Earth-like planet could have beings remarkably similar to us?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
C. Bruce Worden                            [e-mail]
252-21 Seismological Laboratory, Caltech, Pasadena, CA 91125

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

Date: 19 Oct 90 15:37:08 GMT
From: swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!sdd.hp.com!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!jato!mars.jpl.nasa.gov![e-mail]  (Ron Baalke)
Subject: Pioneer 11 Update - 10/19/90


                           Pioneer 11 Update
                           October 19, 1990

     The Pioneer 11 spacecraft emergency continues.  Support from the 70
meter antenna in Spain yesterday provided Ames Research Center with one
major telemetry frame.  Ames reported that they were able to verify the
spacecraft receiver configuration as well as other engineering data. They
are continuing the analysis of the spacecraft problem at this time.  The
70 meter antenna in Goldstone also provided high power transmitter support
last night with a uplink power output of 330 KW.
      ___    _____     ___
     /_ /|  /____/ \  /_ /|
     | | | |  __ \ /| | | |      Ron Baalke         | [e-mail]
  ___| | | | |__) |/  | | |___   Jet Propulsion Lab | [e-mail]
 /___| | | |  ___/    | |/__ /|  M/S 301-355        |
 |_____|/  |_|/       |_____|/   Pasadena, CA 91109 |

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

Date: 20 Oct 90 01:30:07 GMT
From: munnari.oz.au!uhccux![e-mail]  (David Tholen)
Subject: Re: Pluto

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Ron Baalke) writes:

> In 1978, it was known that Pluto had a light variation every 6.3867 days,
> and this was assumed to be the planet's orbital period.  When Jim Christy

The 6.3867 day period is the rotational period, not the orbital period.  The
orbital period is a tad over 248 years.  Incidentally, the rotational period
has been further refined to 6.387248 days, with an uncertainty of about
0.000011 days.

> discovered Charon in 1978, he did so because he noticed bulges in Pluto.

The bulges were on the photographic images of Pluto, caused by our
atmosphere blurring together the images of Pluto and Charon.

> But the bulges were occuring in the north and south poles of Pluto.

The bulge was seen in only the northerly and southerly directions on our sky.
Because Pluto is tipped on its side, Pluto's poles lie in the east-west
direction on our sky, therefore the bulges did not appear near Pluto's
poles.

> When he correlated the bulges with 6.38767 orbital period, he not only knew
> that he had discovered a new moon, but the moon was orbiting north-south.
> Since he was also able to tell that the new moon (Charon) was about 1/6
> the size of Pluto, he was able to conclude that the two bodies were

Charon has maybe 1/6 the mass of Pluto, but its size is fully 1/2 that of
Pluto.

> tidally locked.  This also implied Pluto was rotating on its side.
>
> Then a rare event occurred that only happens once every 124 years.  Starting
> in 1985, Charon started eclipsing Pluto as seen from Earth.  This eclipse

The eclipses started on 1984 December 18.  They were first detected from the
Earth in early 1985.

> season ended this year, and peaked in 1988 with the eclipsing being seen

They ended 1990 October 15, but the last observable event was on 1990
September 23; the later events occurred with Pluto too close to solar
conjunction for observation.

> edge on.  The eclipsing between Pluto and Charon not only determined very
> accurately that Pluto was rotating at 94.0 degree angle, but the mass of

The inclination of Charon's orbit, and by inference, the tilt of Pluto's
rotational axis, is 99.0 degrees, with respect to the equator and equinox
of 1950.  The uncertainty is still about 0.9 degrees. The tilt with
respect to the ecliptic plane or the plane of Pluto's orbit is different,
so the angle means nothing unless the reference frame is mentioned along
with it.

> both Pluto and Charon was also determined.

The individual masses of Pluto and Charon remain undetermined.  The total
mass of the system was derived via Kepler's Third Law, which requires
knowledge of the orbital period of Charon and its average distance from
Pluto.  The eclipses were not necessary to derive the mass of the system.

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

Date: Fri, 19 Oct 90 22:36:12 EDT
From: John Roberts <[e-mail]>
Disclaimer: Opinions expressed are those of the sender
    and do not reflect NIST policy or agreement.
Subject: Re: Names


>From: julius.cs.uiuc.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sdd.hp.com!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!jato!mars![e-mail]  (Ron Baalke)
>Subject: Re: planetary north and names

>...The feature name has
>two parts; the first part is the female name, the second part is the
>feature.  Example: Aphrodite Terra.  Here is a list of the feature names
>used for Venus.

>Feature           Definition
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------
>Chasmata          Canyons
>Colles            Small hills, knobs
>Coronae           Ovoid-shaped features
>Craters           Craters
>Dorsa             Ridges
>Lineae            Elongated markings
>Montes            Mountains
>Paterae           Irregularly shaped craters
>Planitiae         Low Plains
>Planum            High Plain
>Regiones          Areas of moderate relief
>Rupes             Scarps (a cliff or steep slope)
>Tesserae          Polygonal ground, tiles
>Terrae            Continents
>Tholi             Domical hills

Thanks - that list will be very useful. Could you also provide the singular
forms (or is there a simple conversion rule)?
       John Roberts
       [e-mail]

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

Date: 20 Oct 90 00:23:03 GMT
From: ka2qhd![e-mail]  (John Magliacane)
Subject: * SpaceNews 22-Oct-90 *


SB SPACE @ ALLBBS < KD2BD $SPC1022
* SpaceNews  22-Oct-90 *

Bulletin ID: $SPC1022


                              =========
                              SpaceNews
                              =========

                       MONDAY OCTOBER 22, 1990

SpaceNews originates at KD2BD in Wall Township, New Jersey, United States.
It is published every week and is made available for unlimited distribution.



* ULYSSES NEWS *
================
Flight controllers began turning on Ulysses's nine science instruments on
Friday.  All onboard systems are operating normally.  The second of two
Trajectory Maneuvers is scheduled for 02-Nov-90, and will make final
adjustments in the spacecraft's flight path on its way to Jupiter encounter
in February 1992.  Ulysses was deployed by recent U.S. Space Shuttle mission
STS-41 on a five-year mission to study the Sun's poles and interstellar
space beyond the poles as well as study the planet Jupiter.


* PIONEER 11 NEWS *
===================
A spacecraft emergency exists on Pioneer 11.  Downlink signals from Pioneer
11 have become variable in strength.  The problem could be caused by a problem
in a driver amplifier in the satellite's transmitter.  Downlink received by
the 70 meter antenna in Australia is in low noise configuration, and the
receivers are locking up for 3 to 4 second intervals.  On Tuesday, commands
were sent to the spacecraft using 70 meter antennas in Spain and Goldstone
along with 400 kw transmitters.  Receiver lock with the 70 meter antenna
in Spain remained intermittent and no telemetry was received.


* GALILEO NEWS *
================
Galileo's 1200 bps high rate engineering telemetry data was successfully
received and processed last week using both 70 meter antennas in Goldstone
and Australia.  Spacecraft performance continues to be excellent.


* HUBBLE NEWS *
===============
The Hubble Space Telescope will be used to study a very large storm which
has suddenly developed in Saturn's atmosphere.  The Washington Times
reported that an oval-shaped white spot, one and one-half times as wide as
the Earth, has formed in Saturn's cloud belt.  Reta Beebe at New Mexico State
University reported that two smaller white spots have developed along with
the huge oval spot and that the three spots together cover nearly one third
of Saturn's surface.


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============
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--
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------------------------------

End of SPACE Digest V12 #473
*******************