Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/mac/TEXT/SPACEDIG/V13_3/V13_343.TXT

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Subject: SPACE Digest V13 #343

SPACE Digest                                     Volume 13 : Issue 343

Today's Topics:
           Re: Chemical rocket complexities
      Re: Observation report (or, "Is The Nuke Plant That Way?")
                Re: Discovery
     Re: Chemical rocket complexities (was Re: "Follies")
           Re: Need source for manned space flights
             Re: I want to go to orbit...
         NASA Headline News for 04/01/91 (Forwarded)
            Re: railguns,superguns

Administrivia:

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

Date: Mon, 1 Apr 91 20:31:43 EST
From: John Roberts <[e-mail]>
Disclaimer: Opinions expressed are those of the sender
    and do not reflect NIST policy or agreement.
Subject: Re: Chemical rocket complexities


>From: [e-mail] (Glenn A. Serre)
>Subject: Chemical rocket complexities (was Re: "Follies")
>Date: 31 Mar 91 00:24:06 GMT
>Organization: Public Access Unix - Univ. of Denver, Math Dept.

>Gyroscopes:
>I don't know how much these cost, anyone else out there have a clue?

>--Glenn Serre
>[e-mail]

I *think* the general price range is from hundreds of dollars for the
bottom-of-the-line types to tens of thousands of dollars or even more for the
most sophisticated models (such as one might put on an airliner). In any
event, only a small fraction of the total cost of a multimillion dollar
launcher, though of course the total guidance system would be more.

An additional comment: while chemical rockets *are* complex, there is no
reason to believe that exotic launchers would be significantly less
complex. The total operation of a laser launcher, for instance, would
probably be more complex than anything that has been attempted with chemical
rockets. The exotic launchers thus far envisioned would also have very
high initial costs, and may very well have considerable recurring costs.
I believe there is a role for the exotic technologies, especially in the long
run, but I'm not sure we know enough about them yet to say exactly what that
role should be. (Of course there should be funding for continuing research.)

I'm also concerned that there may be some tendency to equate complexity
with cost. There are cases in which you can actually decrease overall cost
by adding complexity. There are many examples of devices which are very
complex, and yet relatively inexpensive. Complexity can contribute to
other costs, for instance the maintenance requirements of the Shuttle, but
in that case it is the maintenance requirements, not specifically the
complexity that is at the heart of the problem.
        John Roberts
        [e-mail]

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

Date: 25 Mar 91 21:31:47 GMT
From: elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!sdd.hp.com!spool.mu.edu!cs.umn.edu!uc!shamash!timbuk!sequoia![e-mail]  (Greg Titus)
Subject: Re: Observation report (or, "Is The Nuke Plant That Way?")

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:
>At around 11 p.m. EST yesterday (March 24) a group of friends
>and I ...
>... observed, in the north-east region of a clear, star-filled
>sky (the moon was high in the south-west), a wine-red glow
>covering a large fraction of the sky.  (One person estimated
>that it covered a fifth of the sky; I think this was an
>over-estimate, but the glow was definitely substantially larger
>than any of the big constellations.)  A band of clear night
>sky was visible between the horizon and the glow.  Stars
>were obscured by the glow.  The glow grew in size and intensity
>as we watched, then faded out (though we did not watch much of
>its fade).

Almost certainly the auroral outburst of that evening.  Remember it
well; you may not see another aurora from Chapel Hill for 10 years
or so, if then.

greg
--
--------------------------------------------------------------
Greg Titus ([e-mail])             Compiler Group (Ada)
Cray Research, Inc.                               Santa Fe, NM
Opinions expressed herein (such as they are) are purely my own.

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

Date: Mon, 1 Apr 91 15:05:22 EST
From: John Roberts <[e-mail]>
Disclaimer: Opinions expressed are those of the sender
    and do not reflect NIST policy or agreement.
Subject: Re: Discovery


>Date: Thu, 28 Mar 91 14:17:15 EST
>From: John Roberts <[e-mail]>
>Subject: Re: Discovery

>>From: [e-mail] (Peter E. Yee)
>>Subject: NASA Headline News for 03/28/91 (Forwarded)

>>Discovery is hard-mated to its external tank in the Vehicle Assembly
>>Building. ...It will be rolled out to launch pad 39-A on Monday, April 1...
>                                                  ----
>>Following the rollout of Discovery to Pad B on Monday, NASA and the
>                                       -----
>>U.S. Army will collaborate on a series of Army "Be All You Can Be"
>>promotion photographs to be used later this  year by the service.  The
>>Army's Golden Knights, a precision parajump team, will fly down
>>in front of Pad B from 8,000 feet, landing in the parking lot in front
>>of the pad.  The team will be photographed from both the air and the
>>ground.

>Looks like Discovery is really going places! (I hope they figure out
>where by Monday...)    :-)  :-)  :-)

Apparently it was Pad A after all. So maybe the Golden Knights were to
land near Atlantis?
    John Roberts
    [e-mail]

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

Date: 1 Apr 91 07:00:46 GMT
From: zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!utzoo![e-mail]  (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Chemical rocket complexities (was Re: "Follies")

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Glenn A. Serre) writes:
>What other reasons are there for chemical rockets to be complex and cost a
>lot of money?...

The big one is not technical but organizational:  they all (even Pegasus,
although not to quite the same extent) are built based on military missile
technology by missile-technology organizations, to whom cost is no object
and performance is paramount, and the current customer base sees nothing
wrong with that.  They are complex and costly because nobody has seriously
tried to build one simple and cheap.  Nobody has tried because the customers
haven't asked for it.  The customers haven't asked because their payloads
cost far more than the launches, so launch costs are relatively unimportant
and reliability (that is, use of well-proven existing launchers) is vital.

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

Date: 25 Mar 91 22:15:44 GMT
From: wuarchive!cs.utexas.edu!romp!auschs!d75!awdprime!doorstop.austin.ibm.com![e-mail]  (Paul Chamberlain)
Subject: Re: Need source for manned space flights

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (eric smith) writes:
>Can anyone point me to a source that lists all manned space flights
>to date? The reference materials I know about only list "selected"
>missions, generally ones with some outstanding feature.

I looked in some Almanac's at the book store and one had "selected"
missions and another had all manned missions.  Sorry, don't remember
any more about it.

Paul Chamberlain | I do NOT speak for IBM.          IBM VNET: PAULCC AT AUSTIN
512/838-9748     | ...!cs.utexas.edu!ibmchs!auschs!doorstop.austin.ibm.com!tif

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

Date: 25 Mar 91 22:57:29 GMT
From: media-lab![e-mail]  (Marvin Minsky)
Subject: Re: I want to go to orbit...

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Henry Spencer) writes:
>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Mark SOKOLOWSKI) writes:
>>    What are the steps in order to build a reliable space-shuttle like
>>spaceship in order to send myself to orbit for the summer holidays?
>
>First you need to locate a source of dilithium crystals.  You're not going
>to get off the ground without them.

How much energy does one get, in fact, by fusing lithium to carbon?
And what is the potential barrier to be crossed. The design of my
dilithium reactor is coming along just fine, but a few parameters need
to be filled in.  Oh, in case you didn't know, all you have to do is
form an exponentially tapered slug of the crystalline material, and
tap one end of it.  If you get the taper just right, and apply the
appropriate materials science to suitably increase the speed of sound in the
material, then the taper will impedance-match all the input kinetic
energy of the input impulse into fusion of the last few atoms at the
device's tip. The power is simply proportional to the frequency of the
input excitation.  The whole thing is about the size of one of those
overpriced Mont Blank fountain pens.  Looks like one, too.  Only
problem is that it isn't working yet.

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

Date: 1 Apr 91 05:53:18 GMT
From: zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!csri.toronto.edu![e-mail]  (Wayne Hayes)
Subject: NASA Headline News for 04/01/91 (Forwarded)

>Date: 1 Apr 91 03:59:59 GMT
>From: trident.gum.nasa.guv![e-mail]  (Joseph P. Isuzu)
>Subject: NASA Headline News for 04/01/91 (Forwarded)

--------------------------- START OF REPOST ------------------------

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Monday, April 1, 1991                         Audio: 202/555-1788
-----------------------------------------------------------------

This is NASA Headline News for Monday, April 1, 1991.....

The Congressional Budget Explorer Module (CBEM) is scheduled for
installation in the orbiter Titanic's payload bay this afternoon.
Technicians resolved an earlier problem with hydraulic line pressure
when it was discovered that several fragments of lobbyist had become
stuck in a flapper valve.  The 127-ton CBEM payload will mark the
beginning of NASA's ambitious decade-long "Mission to Fort Knox."

A Flight Eagerness Review is scheduled for tomorrow and Tuesday.  The
current target launch date is Friday, May 11.  If no further problems
are uncovered in the FER, the launch will probably be pushed back a few
days anyway just for the heck of it.  The CBEM launch window ends on
Tuesday, May 21, when Venus rises in Aquarius and Neptune's influence is
no longer balanced, violating critical Astral launch criteria.

                       *                    *

Meanwhile, the Velikovsky spacecraft is in good health on its journey to
Venus.  It's now 122 million miles from Venus and about 28 feet from
Earth.  Engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory report that failure
to actually launch Velikovsky has had little impact on its ability to
perform the primary pseudoscientific missions.  Earlier problems with
voltage fluctuations in the Wide Eyed/Credulous Subject Scanner are
being monitored carefully.  "I'm pretending this is really exciting,"
says JPL team leader Geraldo R. Spencer.

In other planetary mission news, technicians at the Deep Space Network
installation in Canberra, Australia have identified the probable cause
of signal weakness in the primary 90-meter antenna: the dish was
apparently mounted upside-down.  A tentative schedule and budget
estimate for correcting the mount is underway.  DSN Australian
Coordinator Michael J. Dundee was quoted in the Australian weekly "P***
Off Mate" as saying that this mystifying problem had never been
encountered before, but was probably due to reliance on American antenna
design parameters.  "I'm still not convinced that anything's wrong, but
we'll try it the other way and see."

                       *                    *

Leak checks are underway on the Contractor Information Network (CIN) at
Huntsville, Alabama.  Technicians at the Huntsville Program Survival
Facility (PSF) expect to begin CIN closeouts by Thursday.  The system
will then be purged for use.

Aerobuck Weekly reports that in testimony last Thursday before the House
Space and Storm Door Subcommittee, NASA Administrator Roald Sagdeev
testified that a recent re-re-reshuffling and "options devaluation"
would enable Space Station to proceed despite the latest round of budget
cuts, but warned this was "absolutely the last cut that can be
sustained."  Citing internal NASA studies, the publication listed
several cost cutting measures under consideration, including a two year
stretchout of the Ground Telerobotic Administrator (GTA) subsystem, and
eliminating atmospheric pressure in the one remaining crew module, which
would also be downsized from 23 feet to 16 feet.  The name of the station
would be officially changed from "Freedom" to "Fred" to fit the new
bulkhead dimensions.

                       *                    *

The Soviets and Japanese jointly announced a contract with Hilton Hotels
last week, to provide a 335-room passenger module for the international
Sakharov Space Station currently under construction in Earth orbit.

Malawi became the 78th nation in space Sunday, launching an 1820-pound
satellite into orbit atop an Indonesian Merlata II booster.  This
launcher now has a record of 69 successes in 71 launches.

The last remaining Scout rocket was lost in a launch pad accident near
Wallops Island Proving Ground last week, according to a NASA spokesman.
Technicians apparently made an error in connecting a hydraulic feed line
to the rocket as it awaited payload checkout, connecting it to the
purge valve for a nearby Toxic Waste Holding Facility instead.  The
first stage appears to have partially dissolved and melted itself to
the concrete apron; EPA officials have ordered the site sealed pending
checkout by an Emergency Response team.

                         * * * * * * * *

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Here's the broadcast schedule for Public Affairs events on NASA
Deflect TV.  All times are Eastern.

Tuesday, April 31.....

     11:30 A.M.      "Budget Cut Spinoffs" - classroom teaching aid

Monday, May 0....

     9:00 A.M.       Colloquium on Soviet Inferiority

    10:00 A.M.       Three Letter Acronym (TLA) List Update (LU)

    11:00 A.M.       Pre-launch News Conference

    12:00 A.M.       Post-scrub News Conference

Friday, April 35....

    4:00 A.M.        Replay of the Administrator's Good Friday speech:
                     "The Crucifixion: A Lesson for NASA?"

    5:30 A.M.        Livestock Report

    6:00 A.M.        Astronaut Aerobics/Morning Workout

All events and times and missions and appropriations are subject to
change without notice.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
These reports are filed daily, Monday through Friday, at 12 noon,
EDT.  My god, CNN, when do you want me to file?  Last April?
-----------------------------------------------------------------
A service of the Infernal Communications Branch, NASA HQ.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Help -- I am being held hostage in the Public Affai<MMMMPPHHH>
--------------------------- END OF REPOST --------------------------

Hope everyone enjoyed that.  I think I got it from sci.space last year.
Here was the original header:

>From: [e-mail] (Daniel Fischer)
>Subject: Just for fun!
>Date: 20 Apr 90 09:09:36 GMT
>Organization: Max-Planck-Institut fuer Radioastronomie, Bonn
>
>I think this fool's joke beats all astronomical/space ones I've seen this
>year. It was just delivered in the SPACE Digest - but it's fun even on 20 Apr.
>For those who do not know the NASA Headline News: this fake is *perfect*!
>
>                                                    Greetings, Daniel
--
"You ask me what I think about war and the death penalty. The latter question
is simpler. I am not for punishment at all, but only for the measures that
serve society and it's protection." -- Albert Einstein

Wayne Hayes     INTERNET: [e-mail]        CompuServe: 72401,3525

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

Date: 25 Mar 91 22:24:46 GMT
From: att!linac!pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!cunews!mitel!testeng1![e-mail]  (Chris Stanfield)
Subject: Re: railguns,superguns

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Ian Stirling) writes:
>Here in the UK there was a program on TV,about the iraqi supergun
>affair ("petrochemical" pipes were actually bits of a massive gun
>barrel) It talked about the scientist who concieved the
>idea

The scientist in question is Gerald Bull (who was murdered under as
yet unexplained circumstances about a year ago). There was an
extensive discussion about his work on this group a while ago. The
project mentioned was the HARP gun (High Altitude Research Project, I
believe) and I believe some reference material was quoted. Perhaps
Henry, or some other kind soul, could mention these sources for those
interested, so that we could avoid repeating such a recent discussion
:-)

Chris Stanfield, Mitel Corporation: E-mail to:- uunet!mitel!testeng1!stanfiel
[phone] Ext.4960
We do not inherit the world from our parents - we borrow it from our children.

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

End of SPACE Digest V13 #343
*******************