Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/mac/TEXT/SPACEDIG/V12_5/V12_510.TXT

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Subject: SPACE Digest V12 #510

SPACE Digest                                     Volume 12 : Issue 510

Today's Topics:
             US/Soviet man swap?
               Re: Hiten Update
       Re: You Can't Expect a Space Station to be Cheap
              Re: LLNL Proposal
         Re: Titan IV (was Re: LLNL Proposal)
        Re: A great idea on how to fund NASA!
               Re: Hiten Update
             Pioneer 11 Update - 10/29/90
         NASA Headline News for 10/29/90 (Forwarded)

Administrivia:

    Submissions to the SPACE Digest/sci.space should be mailed to
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----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 29 Oct 90 21:50:21 GMT
From: mojo![e-mail]  (Doug Mohney)
Subject: US/Soviet man swap?

The Latest Av. Week (10/15?) got an exclusive interview with Veep.Dan Quayle.
Dan, wearing his hat as Chairman of the Space-something-or-another committee,
mentioned two things which I now remember:

    A) Fred should go back to the drawing board for a redesign to make
       it less dependent on 20 shuttle launches; instead for a redesign
       to use the Advanced Launch Vehicle or another Heavy Lift Vehicle.

    B) We are talking with the Soviets for another manned exchange
       program; one of our astronauts would get a lift to Mir, while
       we would take a cosmonaut up in a Shuttle.

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

Date: 29 Oct 90 20:23:13 GMT
From: prism![e-mail]  (Matthew DeLuca)
Subject: Re: Hiten Update

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Daniel Fischer) writes:

>Wrong! There is one scientific instrument on-board, the MDC = Munich Dust
>Detector...

You mean the Japanese think there might be dust from Munich near the moon?

:-)

--
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: 29 Oct 90 22:02:19 GMT
From: hub.ucsb.edu!ucsbuxa![e-mail]  (Charles Frank Radley)
Subject: Re: You Can't Expect a Space Station to be Cheap



Does SSX require RL-10 engines ?   I thought it was aerospike.

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

Date: Mon, 29 Oct 90 20:11:09 -0500
From: "Allen W. Sherzer" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: LLNL Proposal
Newsgroups: sci.space
Cc:

In article <[e-mail]> :
>>I should also add that the LLNL station is designed for a life of ten
>>years not thirty. But since it costs less than 5% of what Freedom costs
>>this shouldn't be viewed as a problem.

>As several people have pointed out, there are advantages to being able
>to periodically update the design.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean here. It sounds like you agree
with me. Is this a fair statement?

>>>2 - Radiation - need to guarantee to operate after a 30 year dose in LEO
>>>(crews rotated every 90 days) kinda restricts the electrical design;

BTW, while looking for other things I found some figures for radiation.
According to the presentation before the National Research Council
LLNL states that the radiation dose for Freedom is 50 rad/year. LLNL
doseage is 5 rems. This lower dose will allow pre-menopausal women
to serve as Earth Station crew.

This lower does is achieved two ways. First, the Earth Station orbits lower
down (at a cost of 3.5T H2/O2 per year ~6-7X less if 10 kWe ion engine
is used). Secondly, there is a 'storm shelter' in one of the modul
shielded by over 1 meter of water.

>>>4 - Can LLNL assemble their Fred equivalent system using 22 shuttle
>>>flights?   This means weight is a big issue.

>>The LLNL Earth Station goes up in 1 HLV flight. This can be done because
>>the inflatable structures greatly reduce weight and launch volume. In
>>[1], ILC states that the packed volume of the Earth Station would be
>>28.8 cubic meters for an all fabric design and 31.6 cubic meters for
>>a design with hard pressure bearing floors. The total weight budget
>>is 40.4 tons, but that includes everything.

>How about in several smaller pieces?

I supose they could do it in several pieces. I suspect however that it
would add cost and risk.

>>They are. They are preparing by being up front with the risks involved.
>>Challenger was a disaster because people felt betrayed. NASA told them
>>the system was safe enough to send a school teacher. Had they been
>>more honest Challenger wouldn't have been so big a deal.

>That was *part* of the problem. Most of the problem is that Americans (and
>people in other countries too, I suppose :-) are basically idiots when it
>comes to risk analysis.

Then why didn't the Apollo fire or Apollo 13 ground that program for
2.5 years? I think it was because people understood that it was a risky
undertaking. We have been told for years that the Shuttle isn't risky.

>NASA has been trying for the last few years to convince people that a
>calculated probability that another Shuttle orbiter could eventually be
>lost should be regarded as a normal part of doing business, and the message
>never seems to sink in:
>
>   [conversation deleted]
>
>In this environment, it's hardly surprising that NASA has strange priorities
>regarding safety.

My memory is different. All through the 70's I was told that the Shuttle
was going to be safe, cheap and reliable. It was going to be 'the spaceship
for the rest of us' to borrow an old Apple ad. It required only a couple
of test flights before it became operational. It was so safe that NASA
(who was in a position to ) w) sent up two senators and a teacher.

NOW they come back and say 'we where just kidding about that safety and
reliability stuff'. It should come as no suprise people don't buy it.

People where shocked about Chalanger because for 15 years they where told
it was safe.

>>[3] NASA Assessment of the LLNL Space Exploration Proposal and LLNL
>>    Responses, LLNL doc. no. SS90-9 page 27.
>
>Could you quote the part about the batteries?

Glad to. NASA states (BTW, the NASA people who wrote this didn't sign their
names, we don't know who they where or where they work):


   The nickle-hydrogen batteries as proposed have an energy density of
   100 Wh/kg, which is about 4 times too high. This is about the level
   achievable at the at the individual pressure vessel (IPV) level, not
   at the integrated system level. (The Hubbell Telescope is about 25
   Wh/kg, and that is about the same level estimated for Space Station
   Freedom.)

LLNL replies:

   The critique is simply confused here. Nickel-hydrogen batteries are
   currently packaged in two basic forms, individual pressure vessle (IPV)
   and common pressure vessels (CPV), the latter being typically employed
   when multiple Ni-H batteries are eployed inn a single energy-storage
   package. The CPV's enclose all the batteries in a single pressure shell
   thereby saving substantially in total pressure shell mass, juat as lead
   acid 12-volt car batteries have a common shell, rather than being
   presented in 6 individually packaged 2.1 volt cells. Commercially multi-
   sourced CPV Ni-H batteries presently offer the 100 Wh/kg specific energy
   storage densities which are baselined in the Earth Station engineering
   design, the level of the critique mistakenly stipulated for IPV's (which
   presently have about 60-70% of the energy density of typical CPV units).

   (The Hubbell Telescope embodies 1970s technology, as the astronomical
   community has recently been deploring in print, e.g., in the current
   issue of Science News). [This was written before Hubbell was launched -
   AWS].

>In general, I think the LLNL inflatable station proposal is a very interesting
>idea, and probably worth pursuing, though I also suspect NASA is somewhat
>justified in its pessimistic assessment of its being fully as cheap and
>successful as predicted.

I agree. I think this has about a 75% chance of working. I'm sure it will
cost more than estimated. If it workes however, it will be a lot cheaper
than Freedom and give us some real infrastructure. It's just the sort
of high risk high payoff project our space researchers should be doing.

   Allen

--
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Allen W. Sherzer      |         What should man do but dare?            |
|   [e-mail]         |             - Sir Gawain                        |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+

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

Date: 29 Oct 90 14:58:17 GMT
From: [e-mail]  (SERRE GLENN)
Subject: Re: Titan IV (was Re: LLNL Proposal)

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Henry Spencer) writes:
>Actually, I think Phil has misread this one.  Nobody gets too upset when
>the USAF loses a quarter-billion Titan IV with a cost-top-secret spysat
>on top.  Delta, Ariane, and Titan all had major failures in 1986, with

1) The Titan failure in '86 was a Titan 34D, not a Titan IV.
2) Only Titan IVs that have Centaur upper stages cost a quarter-billion
(and we haven't launched any of these yet).

Minor corrections from
--Glenn Serre
[e-mail]

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

Date: 29 Oct 90 16:07:30 GMT
From: usc!cs.utexas.edu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!physics.utoronto.ca![e-mail]  (Christopher Neufeld)
Subject: Re: A great idea on how to fund NASA!

>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Ron Peterson) writes:
>>I have an idea that I think could fund a major portion of NASA's budget
>>and am posting it here in the hopes that someone at NASA sees it and
>>implements it.  The idea is this:
>>
>>     On one of the shuttle missions, send up thousands of tiny glass
>>spheres with small holes in them.  Once in space, expose the spheres to
>>the vacuum of space and then seal them.  Bring them back to earth
>>and sell them to people.  Everyone can own their own piece of space!
>>
>>This could be hotter than pet rocks!
>>
>>                     [e-mail]
>
   Yeah! And to fund the army you could sell fragmentation grenades to
the public!
   A glass ball with a vacuum inside is a bad thing to have around. If
it is broken it implodes, and the pieces fly through the centre of the
sphere, and on across the room at high speed. People doing vacuum
experiments prefer metal containers whenever possible to prevent the
formation of shrapnel. You'd need a plexiglass shield around the vacuum
sphere to make it safe.
   I'd hesitate to hold even a 1mm diameter vacuum sphere in my hand. If
it shattered it would send glass into my palm, and you don't want to
consider what would happen if you held it close to your face so that you
could see the tiny sphere more clearly........


--
 Christopher Neufeld....Just a graduate student  | "The pizza was just a
 [e-mail]    Ad astra! | detonator; I mean, if
 cneufeld@{pnet91,pro-micol}.cts.com             | it had set off the
 "Don't edit reality for the sake of simplicity" | hams...." Downtown Brown

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

Date: 29 Oct 90 17:23:07 GMT
From: sdd.hp.com!wuarchive!rex!rouge![e-mail]  (Fraering Philip)
Subject: Re: Hiten Update

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Daniel Fischer) writes:

>since the aperture is quite small, there is only one impact per week or so, but
>the one discovery has already been made (and was even mentioned in the Space
>News newspaper): micrometeorites coming from the direction of the sun. These
>particles (called beta-meteorites, not 'beta-particles' as Space News said -
>they aren't radioactive!) are dust grains so tiny that the solar radiation
>pressure is stronger on them than gravity -> they spiral outwards. The same
>physics as in cometary dust tails.

Talk about the same physics! I guess there's a 95% probability that it's the
same dust, unless you postulate that asteroid collisions inside the earth's
orbit are more common than we think.

After all, after a couple thousand years, if the dust weren't being brought
in, it wouldn't be there anymore.

Phil Fraering
[e-mail]

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

Date: 29 Oct 90 17:26:22 GMT
From: sdd.hp.com!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!jato!mars.jpl.nasa.gov![e-mail]  (Ron Baalke)
Subject: Pioneer 11 Update - 10/29/90


                             Pioneer 11 Update
                             October 29, 1990

     The Pioneer 11 spacecraft emergency support continues with 70 meter
antennas in high power transmitter uplink configuration.  Non-coherent
downlink telemetry has been processed by Ames Research Center.  Following
the uplink with the 70 meter antenna in Spain yesterday, the 70 meter
antenna in Goldstone was unable to acquire 3-way downlink.  The project
at Ames reports commands are getting into the Pioneer 11 spacecraft, but
the planned receiver swap was not successful.
      ___    _____     ___
     /_ /|  /____/ \  /_ /|
     | | | |  __ \ /| | | |      Ron Baalke         | [e-mail]
  ___| | | | |__) |/  | | |___   Jet Propulsion Lab | [e-mail]
 /___| | | |  ___/    | |/__ /|  M/S 301-355        |
 |_____|/  |_|/       |_____|/   Pasadena, CA 91109 |

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

Date: 29 Oct 90 23:47:05 GMT
From: trident.arc.nasa.gov![e-mail]  (Peter E. Yee)
Subject: NASA Headline News for 10/29/90 (Forwarded)


             Headline News
Internal Communications Branch (P-2) NASA
Headquarters

  Monday, October 29, 1990    Audio Service: 202 / 755-1788

This is NASA Headline News for Monday, October 29, 1990

At the Kennedy Space Center, preparations for Columbia's
tanking test are progressing well.  Aft compartment work is
nearly finished.  The foaming work is completed, and the aft
cameras have been installed.  The call-to-stations went out on
time at 7:00 am this morning.  The test is nominally scheduled
for 7:00 am EDT tomorrow.  Weather predictions call for good
weather.  The test will be carried live on NASA Select TV, along
with associated commentary.

The Flight Readiness Review for Atlantis's STS-38 flight is
underway at KSC today and tomorrow.  A launch date for the
dedicated DOD flight is expected at the conclusion of the FRR,
though KSC management says it is still looking good for Nov. 9.
On Wednesday, engineers will perform an engine flight
readiness test on Atlantis' main propulsion system.

Discovery's payload bay is closed today while workers
remove hypergolic fuels.

  * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

A press briefing on the first industrial exposition and conference
highlighting NASA's technology transfer program --
Technology 2000 -- will be held tomorrow at 2:00 pm in the
Headquarters 6th Floor Auditorium.  Participants will include
Assistant Administrator for Commercial Programs James Rose,
Deputy Director for Commercial Programs Leonard Ault, and
Editor of NASA Tech Briefs Bill Schnirring.  The press briefing
will be carried live on NASA Select TV.  The Technology 2000
conference itself will take place Nov. 27 and 28 at the
Washington Hilton.

  * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

The Hubble Space Telescope is scheduled to begin
observations of Saturn's newly discovered white spot in early
November.  The "Great White Spot," is now termed the "Wilber
Spot" after Steuart Wilber, Las Cruces, N.M., the amateur
astronomer who discovered it on Sept. 24.  Currently, the spot
has a diameter of over 50,000 miles, is larger than the famous
"Great Red Spot" on Jupiter, and covers most of one hemisphere
of Saturn.

  * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

The Galileo spacecraft is less than 23 million miles from
Earth now, and approaching us from beyond Earth's orbit at a
speed of more than 25,000 mph.  Speed in solar orbit is 55,565
mph.  Spacecraft health and mission performance continue to be
excellent and close to predictions.  The engineering telemetry
rate is 1200 bits per second.  Spacecraft events are now under
the control of a new operational sequence, which began last
week, and will continue through December 7, one day before the
first Earth gravity assist.



Here's the broadcast schedule for Public Affairs events on NASA
Select TV.  All times are Eastern.  **indicates a live program.

Monday, 10/29/90
        No scheduled Select TV program.

Tuesday, 10/30/90
    7:00 am    **Columbia tanking test, with commentary, from
KSC.  Expected conclusion of transmission is 10:30 am.

    12:00 pm    NASA Productions.

    2:00 pm    **Press briefing on Technology 2000 conference
from NASA Headquarters.  Expected conclusion of transmission
is 3:30 pm.

    6:00 pm    NASA Productions repeats.




All events and times may change without notice.  This report is
filed daily, Monday through Friday, at 12:00 pm, EDT.  It is a
service of Internal Communications Branch at NASA
Headquarters.  Contact:  CREDMOND on NASAmail or at
202/453-8425.


NASA Select TV:  Satcom F2R, Transponder 13, C-Band, 72
degrees West Longitude, Audio 6.8, Frequency 3960 MHz.

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

End of SPACE Digest V12 #510
*******************