Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/mac/TEXT/SPACEDIG/V12_4/V12_489.TXT

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Subject: SPACE Digest V12 #489

SPACE Digest                                     Volume 12 : Issue 489

Today's Topics:
             Re: Theories needed on life
           Re: NAVY WITHOLDING EVIDENCE!!!
           Re: NAVY WITHOLDING EVIDENCE!!!
            Re: Magellan Update - 10/15/90
           Re: NAVY WITHOLDING EVIDENCE!!!
           Jonathan's Space Report, Oct 12
              Re: Voyager/Triton Article
             Re: Theories needed on life
             Re: Theories needed on life
       Re: You Can't Expect a Space Station to be Cheap

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: 22 Oct 90 04:12:11 GMT
From: wuarchive!cs.utexas.edu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!cunews!cognos!dgbt!rick.doc.ca!calvin.doc.ca![e-mail]  (Andrew Patrick)
Subject: Re: Theories needed on life

In article <[e-mail]> I wrote:

>Sounds like a dinasour.  Hum... I wonder if there is a new theory here
               ^^^^^^^^
>somewhere.   Is the earth shrinking in size?  Perhaps the earth was
>much larger and when it shrunk the dinosaurs perished or simply
                                    ^^^^^^^^^
>slipped from the gravitational pull.  My son has always wondered why
>they were so big!

My son has also wondered why Dad can sometimes spell correctly and
sometimes ...


--
Andrew Patrick, Ph.D.       Department of Communications, Ottawa, CANADA
               [e-mail]    [e-mail]
        HDTV:  higher resolution, improved colour, wider screen,
            "sit-com" reruns.  What's wrong with this picture?

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

Date: 24 Oct 90 03:49:01 GMT
From: prism![e-mail]  (Matthew DeLuca)
Subject: Re: NAVY WITHOLDING EVIDENCE!!!

Hey, this stuff belongs on either sci.skeptic or rec.humor...

And do you have a name?


--
Matthew DeLuca
Georgia Institute of Technology      Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards,
Office of Information Technology     for they are subtle, and quick to anger.
Internet: [e-mail]

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

Date: 24 Oct 90 08:42:03 GMT
From: mintaka!olivea!samsung!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi![e-mail]  (Jim Kasprzak)
Subject: Re: NAVY WITHOLDING EVIDENCE!!!

In article <1050400040@cdp> [e-mail] writes:
>
>
>                         "UFO CENTRAL"
>                        The Forbidden City
>                            Area# 51

 I love this stuff... after so many dry, painstakingly factual postings
about what's really going on in space, it's nice to have a touch of
badly written conspiracy/fantasy/science fiction thrown in for comic
relief. Just as long as they don't come along too often. (-:
--
 Jim Kasprzak          [e-mail] (internet)
 RPI, Troy, NY         [e-mail]
 "A spirit with a vision is a dream with a mission."  -Rush

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

Date: 17 Oct 90 14:43:20 GMT
From: hpfcso!hpldola!hp-lsd![e-mail]  (Paul Carroll)
Subject: Re: Magellan Update - 10/15/90


>                           Magellan Mission Status
>                             October 15, 1990
>
>      The angle between the Sun, Earth and Magellan is down to 4.6 degrees.
> The predicted limit of the S-Band communications through the High Gain Antenna
> is 3.4 degrees, which is expected to be reached on October 20.

    What happens after October 20th?
    Is there a signal loss for some period of time (like a few weeks
    or a few months)?  If so, then how will Magellan be safed in
    case there is some problem with star calibrations?   Will
    Magellan stop imaging during this time?

    Thanks in advance.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+    Paul Carroll            "I don't believe there is a single   +
+    HP Logic Systems Division     man, woman, or child alive in       +
+    [e-mail]     America today that doesn't enjoy a  +
+                     lovely beverage!" - David Letterman +
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

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

Date: 24 Oct 90 18:03:46 GMT
From: usc!srhqla!demott![e-mail]  (Kevin D. Quitt)
Subject: Re: NAVY WITHOLDING EVIDENCE!!!

In article <1050400040@cdp> [e-mail] writes:
>
>
>                         "UFO CENTRAL"
>                        The Forbidden City
>                            Area# 51
>
>Produced by: Audrey Lauin
>Reported by: Bill McGowen both of "Current Affair(10/11/90)8:00p.m.
>
...
>
>Soon thereafter Mr.Lazar became a modern man without a country!
>His birth certificate, records of government jobs, coworkers,
>everything vanished.....................As if I was never born!!!

    Tell, you what.  You get me a copy of his fingerprints, and I'll
give you a copy of his birth certificate, drivers license and any other
identifying paperwork you choose to name.

--
 _
Kevin D. Quitt         demott!kdq   [e-mail]
DeMott Electronics Co. 14707 Keswick St.   Van Nuys, CA 91405-1266
VOICE [phone]   FAX [phone]  MODEM [phone] PEP last

                96.37% of all statistics are made up.

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

Date: 22 Oct 90 14:57:32 GMT
From: frooz!cfa250![e-mail]  (Jonathan McDowell)
Subject: Jonathan's Space Report, Oct 12

Got our news feed back at last, here goes with backlog...


Jonathan's Space Report

Oct 12 1990 (no.55)
----------------------------------------------------

Discovery landed on Oct 10 on Runway 22 at Edwards, successfully
completing mission STS-41, launched on Oct 6. The ESA Ulysses probe
is in solar orbit on its way to Jupiter. The PAM-S final stage,
and the second stage of the IUS, as well as associated adapters,
also are in solar orbit. STS-38/Atlantis is due for launch around
Nov 7, and even Av Leak has not revealed the nature of its DoD
payload - yet.

Gennadiy Manakov and Gennadiy Strekalov continue in orbit aboard the
Mir/Kvant/Kvant-2/Kristall/Soyuz TM-10/Progress M-5 complex.
Progress M-5 carries a VBS (Vosvrashchaemaya Ballisticheskaya Kapsula)
ballistic recovery capsule which will carry the results of materials
processing experiments carried out in the Kristall module back
to a landing in Kazakhstan. Progress M-5 used its engine to raise
the Mir complex orbit on Oct 1 from  370x406 km to 373x420 km.
The Salyut-7/Kosmos-1686 complex continues to decay slowly; its
orbit is now 344x346 km high.

A Soviet electronic intelligence satellite was destroyed on Oct 4
when the first stage of its Zenit launch vehicle exploded seconds
after launch from Kosmodrom Baykonur. This is the first failure
of a Zenit to reach orbit, although the upper stage of Kosmos-1714
failed to restart. The satellite would have been Kosmos-2102 had
it reached orbit.

Kosmos-2101 was launched on Oct 1 into an inital 170x296 km orbit by
Soyuz from Baykonur.  It is a photographic imaging recon satellite
operated by the GRU (Soviet military intelligence).  Kosmos-2101 will
remain in orbit until about Nov 14; unlike the high-resolution
Kosmos-2089, which reentered the same day, it has maneuvered into a
relatively high perigee 210x290 km orbit, suggesting that it is a
mapping flight.  The only other Soviet imaging satellite now in orbit is
Kosmos-2072, an advanced digital imaging satellite which was in a
237x277 km orbit on Oct 2.

___________________________________
|Current STS status:              |
|Orbiters                         |
|                                 |
|OV-102 Columbia        VAB Bay 1 |
|OV-103 Discovery       Edwards   |
|OV-104 Atlantis        VAB Bay 3 |
|                                 |
|ML/ET/SRB stacks                 |
|                                 |
|ML3/STS-35/ET/OV102    VAB Bay 1 |
|ML1/STS-38/ET/OV104    VAB Bay 3 |
|ML2                    VAB?      |
-----------------------------------

(c) 1990 Jonathan McDowell

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

Date: 22 Oct 90 02:38:42 GMT
From: usc!samsung!dali.cs.montana.edu!rpi!crdgw1!sixhub![e-mail]  (Wm E. Davidsen Jr)
Subject: Re: Voyager/Triton Article

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

| "Five-mile-tall black plumes that look like volcanic geysers
| erupting on Neptune's moon Triton really may be swirling
| funnels of dust, gas and nitrogen ice, some Voyager 2
| spacecraft scientists now believe."

  I attended a talk on Triton this spring, and this came up. One of the
points was that there are "fallout" patterns in what is presumably the
"downwind" direction from the plumes. I find it hard to believe without
further evidence that dust devils would form in eactly the same place
until they produced this pattern.

  The patterns are also noticed only on the ice covered portions (I use
the term ice loosely), another indication, since the geyser mechanism
requires a compound which can be a liquid or gas at the same
temperature, depending on the pressure. On earth water does the job,
while at the estimated temperatures on Triton (insert compound I forget
here) does the trick and is known to be present.

  Also note that these are current activities, since the fallout is on
top of the "snow," and winter only lasts (again from memory) 250 years
on Triton.
--
bill davidsen - [e-mail] (uunet!crdgw1!sixhub!davidsen)
    sysop *IX BBS and Public Access UNIX
    moderator of comp.binaries.ibm.pc and 80386 mailing list
"Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me

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

Date: 22 Oct 90 16:03:47 GMT
From: att!watmath!maytag!watdragon!watyew![e-mail]  (Brian or James)
Subject: Re: Theories needed on life

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Henry Spencer) writes:
>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Bruce Worden) writes:
>>... Ignoring the high-gravity question, isn't it possible that an
>>Earth-like planet could have beings remarkably similar to us?
>
>There is a long-standing debate about whether we are built the way we are
>because of sheer chance or good engineering.  There are lots of little
>things that clearly could change without altering our fitness for survival
>very much, e.g. the number of fingers on our hands.  On the other hand,
>anything that has followed a similar evolutionary track -- from finned
>fish, to belly-dragging quadrupeds, to long-legged quadrupeds, to bipeds --
>will probably have a fairly similar overall body plan.  Even somewhat
>different evolutionary patterns (the existence of which is one subject
>of the debate) seem likely to agree on basic features, i.e. putting the
>sensors near the top for a better view, but not at the top where they
>are vulnerable to falling objects and low ceilings.  But the die-hards
>will argue about even this.
>
>Oddly enough, some of the folks who are firmest about physical resemblance
>being unlikely are also the loudest about how advanced civilizations *must*
>be peaceful, egalitarian, etc.  You'd almost think :-) it was their politics,
>not their scientific judgement, talking.

    Oh, I'm sure that even if the physical form is greatly
different from ours, for us to acknowledge another species as intelligent,
there would be many similarities in behavior [Given our history, it
might be that be no other species could pass our exhaustive tests
for intelligence: Does it look like me/agree with me on these subjects?].
I imagine the different needs of another intelligent species might
cause certain political models to have different utility to them:
    "Why, look. The Hive-mind social insects of Delta Pavonis two
have libertarianism!"
    "Really?"
    "Yes. Check under abnormal pyschology." :)

                            James Nicoll

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

Date: 21 Oct 90 21:05:50 GMT
From: csusac!csuchico.edu!petunia!usc!cs.utexas.edu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!cunews!cognos!geovision![e-mail]  (Gord Deinstadt)
Subject: Re: Theories needed on life

[e-mail] (Clayton Cramer) writes:
>In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] writes:
>> Could someone theorize on what humanoid life would be like on a planet 3 or 4
>> times the size of the Earth.  I'm looking for theories on body structure,
>> societies, technology, psychology, etc.  Thanks, I appreciate any speculation.
>Short.  Squat.  Massive limbs.  Leg bones of tremendous density and
>thickness.  Massive muscles to move those heavy and strong bones.

Unless they swim in an ocean.  Or swim in the atmosphere - such a large
planet would have retained a lot of primordial atmosphere and hence have
much higher atmospheric density at the surface.  Actually, it surprises me
that no creature on Earth ever evolved the ability to balloon around.

The hard part is the chemistry.  You will have to adjust the distance
or size of the star in order to keep temperatures reasonable.  There
might be alternative chemistries to carbon/water, with different
temp. range, but why complicate things needlessly?

As for the society, it surely would be different if they live in an
ocean or atmosphere.  How do you stake out borders in three dimensions?
How do you farm?  You can herd, I suppose.  Consider dolphin behaviour.
When they want a safe place for the kids to play, a few of them get
together and stake out the perimeters of a space, herding the kids back
together if they spread out too much.  But to develop a technological
civilization, you need to work with solids, so you need to attach
yourself to the sea floor or to a floating object.  Maybe you live
inside some naturally occuring hollow or honeycombed object like
a coral reef, still 3 dimensional but with surfaces and spaces that
can be controlled, owned, fought over.
--
Gord Deinstadt  [e-mail]

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

Date: 23 Oct 90 22:21:56 GMT
From: hub.ucsb.edu!ucsbuxa![e-mail]  (Charles Frank Radley)
Subject: Re: You Can't Expect a Space Station to be Cheap



As a designer on Fred who is only superficially familiar with the LLNL

ideas, let me throw out some of the major design drivers on Fred, and I

would like to know how LLNL deals with them.....

1 - Atomic oxygen, very few materials can survive thirty years in the AO

environment, Fred has a 30 year lifetime requirement.   That means we have

to GUARANTEE 30 years, in reality it might last much longer;  what material

is the inflatable habitat made of ?  Exterior surfaces must all be metallic

to shield against AO, does the LLNL design do this ?

2 - Radiation - need to guarantee to operate after a 30 year dose in LEO

(crews rotated every 90 days) kinda restricts the electrical design;

3 - orbital debris - need to have a Safe Haven configuration of multiple

interconnected nodes and modules with fast closing hatches in between, to

seal off the punctured section, can the LLNL design do this ?

4 - Can LLNL assemble their Fred equivalent system using 22 shuttle

flights?   This means weight is a big issue.    LLNL's amorphous silicon

solar cells are certainly cheap to manufacture, but  for watts per pound

they are inferior, and heavy to launch.

5 - LLNL's Nickel-hydrogen batteries are nothing new, Fred uses the same

type;

6 - What experience does LLNL have in the following areas of space

applications:- airlocks, hyperbaric chambers, long life vacuum bearings,

BAPTAS (Bearing and Power Transfer Assemblies) = slip rings to get power

and data from the rotating panels to the station users,  large space

structures attitude control, long life propulsion systems, low pressure

outgassing and offgassing;

-

The impression I have is that LNNL trades off safety and risk versus cost.

As a safety engineer that is anathema to me.   There is nothing clever

about taking risks, any fool can do that.   However, they better be

prepared for the bad press they get when they have a Challenger style

disaster.

    NASA clearly does not want anything like that to happen again, and

safety costs money guys, sorry but that is just the facts of life.

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

End of SPACE Digest V12 #489
*******************