Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/mac/TEXT/SPACEDIG/V13_0/V13_056.TXT

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Date: Wed, 16 Jan 91 21:37:55 -0500 (EST)
Subject: SPACE Digest V13 #056

SPACE Digest                                      Volume 13 : Issue 56

Today's Topics:
           Re: space news from Dec 17 AW&ST
           Man's Second Colony in the Solar System
               Re: Gas Releases
          Re: Information on highest skydive needed
           Hubble Studies Massive Star (Forwarded)
              Thanx for answers!
         Barium/Lithium release coordinates?
             Re: OSC stock price
    Swivels (rotating connectors) with power/data paths available?
                some questions
        Re: Fwd: NASA Plans To Redesign Space Station

Administrivia:

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

Date: Wed, 16 Jan 91 16:27:53 -0500
From: "Allen W. Sherzer" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: space news from Dec 17 AW&ST
Newsgroups: sci.space,sci.space.shuttle
Cc:

In article <[e-mail]> Henry writes:

>NASA has no quarrel with most of the [Augustine] report, but is concerned
>about the committee's recommendation to terminate orbiter production.

Which is now part of the '92 budget. NASA requested funding for another
Shuttle but was turned down.

>[And rightly so -- it's a thoroughly dumb idea, if the shuttle fleet is to
>continue to be a significant part of NASA planning.]

I think it is clear that the Shuttle will no longer be a significant
part of NASA planning. But then, with a man-rated HLV costing far less
than the Shuttle and a space station, there is little need for the
Shuttle.

>Another hot spot is that the committee recommended putting a single NASA
>center in charge of each major project, and taken literally this would
>mean scrapping the station's paperwork HQ in Reston.

Actually, no. The Augustine recommendation is that if a single NASA center
cannot run the entire program, then a separate program office should
run it. This office should be near the largest center involved but report
directly to HQ. The office should have its own systems engineering and
budget group. Since the station is run from several centers, this would
mean a separate program office.

Shutting down Reston (which IS being contemplated) would be a very bad
idea. They are the only people who know what is going on [1] with the
station and will be key to cleaning the mess up (if that is possible).

  Allen

[1] An acquaintance of mine works at Reston on Freedom. When people ask
    him how Freedom is going he replies: "it used to be that not only
    do I not know, I don't know anybody who does know. Now, I don't know
    how it is going but I think there IS somebody who does know."
--
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|Allen W. Sherzer | America does best when it accepts a challenging mission. |
|   [e-mail]   | We invent well under pressure. Conversely, we stagnate   |
|                 | when caution prevails.   -- Buzz Aldrin                  |

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

Date: 16 Jan 91 15:13:03 GMT
From: munnari.oz.au!mel.dit.csiro.au!latcs1![e-mail]  (Jonathan Burns)
Subject: Man's Second Colony in the Solar System

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

>  My own guess (please correct me if I'm wrong) is that if you
>can radiate the heat over a large area, the ice will melt slowly
>enough that it will refreeze before melting becomes a problem.  If
>this is true, by the way, it could be a useful plot device--yes, the
>terrorists have taken control of the heat dispersal computers...we
>have to give in to their demands, or beat them, or it's THE BIG
>SINK for all of us!  (This idea is copyright 1991 Mark Gellis.)

You should maybe consider the Chloran seige in _Skylark of Valeron_,
E.E.Smith, ~ 195?, before rushing in to copyright. Good try though.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Jonathan Burns        | It's a bonanza when Veronica plays piannica
[e-mail]       | On my granda-momma's oldio piazzica
Computer Science Dept | With the whistle of the B and O
La Trobe University   | Booting out a obligatti-gattigo!  - LaFemme et Owl, '51
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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

Date: 15 Jan 91 18:25:03 GMT
From: timbuk!cs.umn.edu!sialis!orbit!pnet51![e-mail]  (S Schaper)
Subject: Re: Gas Releases

I have had the same problem with clouds. It is my theory :-) that the barium
releases seed clouds. Therefore it cannt be that we can observe them. Unles
you are flying in the Keck.
**************************************************************************
Zeitgeist Busters!
UUCP: {amdahl!bungia, uunet!rosevax, chinet, killer}!orbit!pnet51!schaper
ARPA: crash!orbit!pnet51![e-mail]
INET: [e-mail]

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

Date: 15 Jan 91 13:10:03 GMT
From: hpcc05!col!hpldola!hp-lsd!oldcolo![e-mail]  (Keith Hamburger)
Subject: Re: Information on highest skydive needed

We just had someone talk to our L5 group about trying to break that
record.  Don't recall all of the details (and arrived at the meeting late
anyway) but will look into it.  Seems they are looking at several minutes
of freefall with an automated chute system.

Keith Hamburger
[e-mail]

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

Date: 16 Jan 91 22:29:25 GMT
From: usc!sdd.hp.com!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!jato!mars.jpl.nasa.gov![e-mail]  (Ron Baalke)
Subject: Hubble Studies Massive Star (Forwarded)

HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE STUDIES MASSIVE STAR IN NEIGHBORING GALAXY

     Astronomers working with the Goddard High Resolution
Spectrograph, an advanced instrument on NASA's Hubble Space
Telescope (HST), reported today on what they call the best
spectrograms ever obtained of Melnick 42, a very massive star in a
galaxy 170,000 light-years from Earth.  The report was presented to
the meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Philadelphia by
a team led by Dr. Sally Heap of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center,
Greenbelt, Md.

     Dr. Heap said that preliminary analysis of the spectrograms
shows that Melnick 42 is between 80 and 100 times more massive than
the sun, making it one of the most massive known stars.  Further,
the analysis reveals that Melnick 42 is shedding its hot gases at a
furious rate in a so-called "stellar wind" that strips the star of
an amount of gas equal in mass to the sun every 100,000 years.

     She explained that Melnick 42 is a hot young supergiant star in
the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a galaxy neighboring the Milky
Way.  The star may be only 2 million years old, compared with the
4.6-billion-year age of the Earth.  Melnick 42 has a surface
temperature of about 86,000 degrees Fahrenheit, or eight times
hotter than the sun.  According to present theory, Melnick 42 will
explode as a supernova within the next few million years, while the
sun will continue to shine for several billion years.  Dr. Heap
added that Melnick 42 is more than a million times brighter than the
sun.

     She said her observations were made possible because Hubble's
orbit is above the Earth's atmosphere which blocks the far
ultraviolet light from reaching ground observatories.  Also crucial
to making the observations was the spectrograph's tiny entrance
hole, only about 3/75th of an inch on a side, into which HST
focussed the bright core of the star's image.  "This excluded
interfering light from stars near Melnick 42, which usually hampers
observations," Dr. Heap explained.

     The purpose of the research, which involves astronomers in the
United States and Europe, is to study how the chemical makeup of hot
stars (stars hotter than the sun) influences the way in which the
stars change with time on their inexorable road to stellar
explosion.  Some astronomers had thought that the low abundance of
elements heavier than helium in stars of the LMC (such as Melnick
42) compared to stars in the Milky Way galaxy would result in the
LMC stars having rather weak stellar winds.  "Our findings on
Melnick 42, if confirmed by additional study, seem to contradict
this assumption," Dr. Heap said.
      ___    _____     ___
     /_ /|  /____/ \  /_ /|
     | | | |  __ \ /| | | |      Ron Baalke         | [e-mail]
  ___| | | | |__) |/  | | |___   Jet Propulsion Lab | [e-mail]
 /___| | | |  ___/    | |/__ /|  M/S 301-355        |
 |_____|/  |_|/       |_____|/   Pasadena, CA 91109 |

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

Date: 16 Jan 91 23:21:23 GMT
From: usc!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!magnus.ircc.ohio-state.edu![e-mail]  (Earl W Phillips)
Subject: Thanx for answers!


Thank all of you who felt kind enough to answer the
questions I had, dumb as they were. For those who
chose to be snide, pthpthpthpthpthpthpthpthpth! Ya
gotta start somewhere!

*****************************************************************
*                                    | ====@====      ///////// *
* [e-mail]|     ``________//         *
*                                    |       `------'           *
*                 -JR-               | Space;........the final  *
*                                    | frontier...............  *
*****************************************************************

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

Date: 15 Jan 91 21:12:02 GMT
From: usc!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!aplcen!warper.jhuapl.edu![e-mail]  (Ray Sterner)
Subject: Barium/Lithium release coordinates?


  As of 4:09 pm EST the CRRES hot line did not have the
  numbers needed to compute the altazimuth tables I have
  been posting.  The possible release times were given
  but not the satellite lat, long, and altitude at release.
  If anyone has access to those numbers or can compute them
  please email or post them so I can post the altazimuth
  tables.

     I can also make world maps showing where the
  releases are visible.  The maps have a scale plotted on
  them which can be used to estimate the apparent altitudes
  to a few degrees.  Azimuths may be directly measured on
  the maps.  They are in PostScript and are about 85K bytes,
  so would need to be placed in an anonymous ftp site.  If
  anyone is willing to provide such a site let me know and
  I'll mail you the maps.

    Looking beyond CRRES, I thought it might be of interest
  to post altazimuth tables for events such as upper stage
  ignitions.  I have never seen one, but it should be easy
  if the times and look directions are known.  If somebody
  has access to the information needed let me know.

  Ray Sterner                     [e-mail]
  Johns Hopkins University        North latitude 39.16 degrees.
  Applied Physics Laboratory      West longitude 76.90 degrees.
  Laurel, MD 20723-6099

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

Date: 15 Jan 91 05:07:12 GMT
From: snorkelwacker.mit.edu!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!zardoz.cpd.com!dhw68k!ofa123![e-mail]  (Wales Larrison)
Subject: Re: OSC stock price

Vincent Cate writes:

>OSC's stock has dropped $2 3/4 today to $11 1/2.  Is it just the
>market and gulf or something more immediately relevant to OSC?

   My suspicion would be OSC has lost one or more of the several
small ELV bids it was planning on capturing through its Space Vector
small rocket division.  I know they recently lost the launch
services part of the COMET proposal to SII, and several of their
planned launches as part of SDI and other DoD test programs were
under fire from a budgetary basis (looked like the programs which
required these launches for suborbital tests were being canceled).
  Since Space Vector provides about 70% of the black ink in OSC, any
changes in their cashflow would be immediately reflected in their
stock price.  [Digression, one way of modeling stock price is to
treat stock price as PRICE = EPS/(interest rate) + PVGO.  Where EPS
is earning per shre, interest rate is the corprate cost of capital,
and PVGO is the present value of future growth opportunities.  If
you lose some expected big business in the future, your EPS goes
down.  If you are a firm like OSC investing lots of current money in
risky future programs, any change to reduce your EPS would
significantly reduce your share price.

>Would people be interested in a "space-investor" mailing list?  The
>idea would be to get faster access to information concerning
>investment in space development.
        I would, definitely.

-------------------------------------------------------------------
Wales Larrison                                 Space Technology
                                                 Investor



--
Wales Larrison
Internet: [e-mail]
Compuserve: >internet:[e-mail]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

Date: 16 Jan 91 00:52:22 GMT
From: well![e-mail]  (Hank Roberts)
Subject: Swivels (rotating connectors) with power/data paths available?


Has anyone got a source for swivel connectors/supports that can also
transfer one or more electrical circuits past the rotating joint?

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

Date: 16 Jan 91 04:58:54 GMT
From: agate!bionet!uwm.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!magnus.ircc.ohio-state.edu![e-mail]  (Earl W Phillips)
Subject: some questions


I've got some questions I've been meaning to ask the
netters. I apologize if they've been asked before, I
haven't had time to read the history of these nets!

1) Once I know the lat, long location of my site, how
do I translate these figures to decimal?

*******the rest are for Mr.Baalke or Mr.Yee, or whoeverelse may know
the answers!*********

2) What is the meaning of the terms DESATS, SITURNS, STARCALS, etc
on the satellite reports, and what do they do (why are they
necessary)?

3) Which are the Pioneers/Voyagers that have left the Solar
Syatem?

Thanx all!

*****************************************************************
*                                    | ====@====      ///////// *
* [e-mail]|     ``________//         *
*                                    |       `------'           *
*                 -JR-               | Space;........the final  *
*                                    | frontier...............  *
*****************************************************************

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

Date: 16 Jan 91 13:26:31 GMT
From: bu.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!caen!engine.engin.umich.edu![e-mail]  (Ken Sheppardson)
Subject: Re: Fwd: NASA Plans To Redesign Space Station

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Brian Yamauchi) writes:
>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Allen W. Sherzer) writes:
>
>   >2) The Truss: In particular, building it in orbit.  Someone mentioned
>   >that the truss was cut in the latest redesign -- did this refer to
>   >just the dual keel design (which was cut earlier) or the *entire*
>   >truss?
>
>  One of the designs proposed when Congress mandated the design be evaluated
>  eliminated most of the truss. A small part would be left to hang experiments
>  on and the rest removed. This approach also used smaller modules for building
>  the station. Each module would be self contained and could go up on a single
>  Shuttle flight. A module would be flown up, docked, and ready to go.
>
>Hmmm...  So where would this design place the solar panels?
>

   I believe the design in question is the one put forth by JSC and described
   in AW&ST some weeks ago.

   In their design the existing raft module pattern is retained, while the
   transverse boom has been deleted and replaced by a short 'stinger' which
   sticks out behind the modules (in the -x direction, i.e. anti-'v-bar').
   The PV arrarys are then attached to this 'stinger' along the y axis (i.e.
   perpendicular to the orbital plane).  The entire stinger is articulated,
   as are the individual PV arrays, to provide two degrees of freedom for
   sun tracking.

   In regards to the earlier question about dual keels :

   Dual keels were indeed deleted from the baseline program some time
   ago, but they are *STILL* part of the evolution plan for station. The
   top level preliminary requirements document, the level I PRD, still
   refers to dual keels perpendicular to the transverse boom as the
   prefered method for providing real estate for additional attached
   payloads and lunar/mars vehicle assembly/processing facilities.

   References to 'deletion of the truss' fall into two categories:

   1) References to the adoption of a design similar to that presented
      by JSC which totally eliminates the transverse boom

   2) References to the adoption of pre-integrated truss to replace
      the erectable 5m bay truss tube and node truss.



          DISCLAIMER: These are my opinions, not my employers.


--
===============================================================================
 Ken Sheppardson                                  Email: [e-mail]
 Space Station Freedom Advanced Programs Office   Phone: [phone]
 NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton VA         FAX:   [phone]
===============================================================================

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

End of SPACE Digest V13 #056
*******************