Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/mac/TEXT/SPACEDIG/V13_1/V13_138.TXT

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Subject: SPACE Digest V13 #138

SPACE Digest                                     Volume 13 : Issue 138

Today's Topics:
              Re: SPACE Digest V13 #075
              Re: Solar Impact Mission.
    Manoeuvring using rope and anchor(was: Solar Impact Mission.)
              Re: Japan's Space Industry
           Re: Mir Sweepstakes Organizers Arrested

Administrivia:

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

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Date: Tue, 05 Feb 91 17:32:45 EST
From: tommy mac <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: SPACE Digest V13 #075

Re: Energy harvesting Via moons moving in Jupiters Magnetic field.

I have to stand my belief that Ganymeade is no good as a second colony.
It is perhaps true that you could use stations on one or more of the moons of
Jupiter to harvest electricity, much as an alternator 'harvests' electricity
from the momentum of a car engine.

It is also true that the station and the moon would eventually tumble head-long
into tha planet, as the moon's orbital momentum is removed as electricity.

Please recalculate your $$$ estimates, returns, etc.  Include not only the
imminent demise of said station, but also travel times.

P.S. -  How do you ship energy from Jupiter to anywhere else?  a beam? a pencil
 sized beam spreads to nearly a kilometer just from GEO.  Imagine from 9e+8 km?

-  Enegry harvesting in the asteroids is as expensive as your reflector
-  It is estimated (see SPACE RESOURCES (author;s name forgotten)) that 7% of
   all asteroids are iron-nickel type, and that these types contain nearly 15%
   platinum-type metals (Au, Hg, Pt, U, Cu, etc).


Nick, yer way ahead of yourself.  I said that the second colony won't be on
ganymeade.  I didn't say there would NEVER be a colony there.

Tommy Mac
              -What's Israel's national Bird?
                                                 -Duck
Acknowledge-To: <18084TM@MSU>

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Date: 6 Feb 91 04:09:12 GMT
From: elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!usc!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!dali.cs.montana.edu!milton!sumax!thebes!polari![e-mail]  (Charles Radley)
Subject: Re: Solar Impact Mission.




Here is an article from Duncan Lunana.   He sent it to several
NSS cahpters inlucing us in Ventura.     We believ it is public
domain and ok to post her and lsewhere:-





Waverider



by Duncan Lunan



From October 17 to 19, The University of Maryland was host to a

major event - the First International Hypersonic Waverider

Symposium.  This represented the rebirth of a concept of major

scientific and political importance, long associated with Glasgow

University, and something of a triumph for an amateur group which

continued to push for the concept's recognition when it had

largely been forgotten.



The Waverider re-entry vehicle was devised by Prof. Terrence

Nonweiler, Professor of Aeronautics and Fluid Mechanics and later

Dean of Engineering of Glasgow University.  It was intended to be

the manned spacecraft in a British space program based on the

Blue Streak missile in the 1960's - canceled by the Macmillan

government, and largely forgotten thereafter.  Its basis is a

shape known as the 'caret wing', which generates a plane shock

wave, attached to the leading edges, instead of the sonic boom

generated by conventional wings at high speeds.  The

high-pressure area trapped under the Waverider wing generates

lift, and the vehicle functions as a very high-performance

glider.



Waverider was conceived a a space shuttle, and its job is to

deliver payloads from space to the surface of a planet with an

atmosphere.  In the 1970's, discussions at ASTRA (the Association

in Scotland to Research into Astronautics) brought out a number

of major jobs for the vehicle in the exploration of Mars, Venus,

Jupiter and the rest of the outer planets.  In the longer term,

when we come to practical exploitation of the Solar System's

resources, it will have to be on an international basis and with

safeguards for the rights of developing nations.  Waverider has a

major role to play because its low wing-loading allows it a

landing 'footprint', descending from space, which literally

envelops the Earth, and also allows it a touchdown speed of less

than 160 kph.  A delivery vehicle which can land anywhere on

Earth, on ordinary runways, will be of great political

importance.  Other ideas from the ASTRA discussions suggested

that in the late 21st century transport Waveriders could have a

role comparable to that of Containers in the late 20th.



In 1981 ASTRA's Waverider study took a practical turn, and by

late 1984 Gordon Dick of ASTRA had achieved the first free

flights of hand-launched Waveriders.  (Gordon Dick is a designer

of sails an hang-gliders, now working as a technician at the

Glasgow School of Art.)  The first rocket launch took place in

1985, witnessed by Dr. Jim Randolph of the Jet Propulsion

Laboratory, Pasadena, which is responsible for the

Mariner/Viking/Voyager series of space probes.  Dr. Randolph is

head of the Starprobe project, which is intended to place an

instrumented probe within two million miles of the surface of the

Sun - described in some quarters as the most important scientific

mission of the century.  No rocket in existence can achieve that,

so it has to be brought about by planetary slingshot - what's

termed an 'aerogravity maneuver', in which the probe would fly

through the atmosphere of Venus and Mars to redirect its path

towards the Sun.  In April of this year Dr. Randolph paid his

third visit to ASTRA in Scotland, and confirmed that he regards

Waverider as the prime candidate for the Starprobe carrier.



The setting up of the Waverider conference in October was due in

large part to Dr. Randolph's support of the concept, since he

first learned of it from ASTRA in 1984.  At his urging the

University of Maryland undertook computer studies which resolved

the major problem with the Waverider design, eliminating

turbulence on the upper surface of the wing, thereby confirming

work done in Scotland by Gordon Dick.  This result was announced

at a small Waverider symposium last year, and the effect was

dramatic: the Call for Papers for this year's conference has been

answered by no fewer than 78 speakers, and the American space

agency NASA is now officially co-sponsoring the event.  ASTRA

will be represented by Duncan Lunan and Gordon Dick, who will

unveil the latest version of his Waverider space shuttle design -

including a control system which he hopes will be valid for all

Waverider applications.



Jim Randolph's Starprobe project will not go before the US Senate

and Congress for funding until 1994.  Meanwhile work in ASTRA

continues, with radio-controlled models and wind-tunnel tests,

with the future possibility of rocket flights sponsored by NASA;

no amateur society has ever pushed a space project so close to

official acceptance before, and the October conference was a very

big forward step in that direction.



(Ed. - This manuscript, written before the conference, was

received after the conference was held.  We hope to have further

news of the conference and Waverider progress in later issues.)

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

Date: 6 Feb 91 00:02:06 GMT
From: mcsun!hp4nl!charon![e-mail]  (Jack Jansen)
Subject: Manoeuvring using rope and anchor(was: Solar Impact Mission.)

Would it be technically possible to extend the idea of dipping into
the atmosphere by throwing an anchor out to a planet and swinging
around it? What I'm thinking of is, say, a 10Km Kevlar (or Twaron,
for us Dutch:-) cable with something like an anchor at the end,
have the anchor impact a reasonably sized asteroid (a couple Km
diameter, enough orders of magnitude difference in mass that you
don't accidentally send the asteroid somewhere you don't want it
to be), and release anchor and cable once you're facing the direction
you want to go?

I miss even a feeling for too many numbers (tensile strength required,
tensile strength of available materials, positioning accuracy
needed and attainable, g-forces survivable by the average spacecraft)
to start calculating, but maybe someone else wants to give it a try
(or, probably, tell me why this is a ridiculous idea in the
first place)...
--
--
Een volk dat voor tirannen zwicht    | Oral:     Jack Jansen
zal meer dan lijf en goed verliezen    | Internet: [e-mail]
dan dooft het licht            | Uucp:     hp4nl!cwi.nl!jack

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

Date: 6 Feb 91 06:33:28 GMT
From: zephyr.ens.tek.com!tektronix!sequent!crg5![e-mail]  (Nick Szabo)
Subject: Re: Japan's Space Industry

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Brian Yamauchi) writes:
>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Paul Blase) writes:
>
>    NS> The only thing the Japanese really have over us is efficiency --
>
>   The key is that Japanese Industry is taking the initiative and not merely
>   relying upon government funding.  Maybe we're more innovative, but they
>   are DOING it.
>
>Japanese companies also seem to have more of a long-term vision with
>regard to space development.  I've heard that Shimizu has plans for an
>orbital space station (for tourism), a lunar base, and a Mars base,
>and that Ohbayashi has plans for a lunar mining complex.

The U.S. also has "plans" for this space mythology, for what it is
worth.  No profitable corporation in either country is spending
serious money for any of this.

BTW the slogan of NASDA -- "quick is beautiful" -- is the opposite of
the U.S. space program's fetish with "long term planning", a euphimism
for putting off until tomorrow what should be done today.


>Whether these plans will be translated into reality is another issue,
>but, still, I wonder whether one could suggest similar ideas to an
>American Fortune 500 company without being laughed out of the
>boardroom... (or whether one would get to the boardroom in the first
>place).

You would get laughed out of any boardroom of any organization that had
even the slightest interest in and knowledge of economic payback.

There has yet to be created a business plan for space stations and
space bases that is anything close to reasonable in terms of cash
flow.  The costs are two or more orders of magnitude away from economic
payback.

I challenge anybody on the net to present a business plan -- the market
plan, R&D plan, projected financing and cash flows will suffice -- for
any one of the following:

* space station
* lunar base
* Martian base

using current launch costs, historical R&D costs for manned
space capsules, space-qualified machinery, etc.   Fact is, nobody
on this net or anywhere else on this planet can present a sound
business plan that is within even two orders of magnitude in cost
to being profitable.

The space station/lunar base/Mars spiel is simply a tradition of space
lore mimicked from the previous generation, with no grounding in the
technological, economic or scientific reality of the past half-century
or next century.  Communications satellites and space exploration probes
have already turned the previous generation's space plan on its head,
and modern automation technology puts it away for good.  For the pioneers
of today, the plans of the past consist of exactly zero in creativity
and imagination, and a big empty set in vision.

Not to mention huge losses on the balance sheet of any organization
that cares to try them.



--
Nick Szabo            [e-mail]
Embrace Change...  Keep the Values...  Hold Dear the Laughter...

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

Date: Wed, 6 Feb 91 21:12:38 -0500
From: "Allen W. Sherzer" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Mir Sweepstakes Organizers Arrested
Newsgroups: sci.space
Cc:

In article <[e-mail]> Brian Yamuchi writes:

>According to a UPI story on Clarinet (clari.tw.space), the organizers
>of the Mir Sweepstakes were arrested today (2/6) and charged with
>running an illegal lottery by the local DA.  This is a felony charge
>which carries a penalty of 2-10 years in prison.


Well, a while ago the DA threatened to do something like this. A lot
of phone calls seems to have changed their minds at that time. Pity
it didn't take. It might be a good idea to try some calls again. If
you want to call, the Houston DA's number is 713-221-5800. If you call,
pe polite and calmly tell them how you feel about it. Don't threaten
anything or anybody. If you are from Houston, make sure they know that.
You might also tell them if you entered and that you don't feel duped
(unless you do) even though you don't expect to win (I myself figure
I am five times more likely to be killed in a car crash as fly on Mir).

   Allen
--
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|Allen Sherzer |A MESSAGE FROM THE ANTI-WAR MOVEMENT TO THE PEOPLE OF KUWAIT: |
|[e-mail]   |       "If rape is inevitable, enjoy it!"                     |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+

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End of SPACE Digest V13 #138
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