Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/mac/TEXT/SPACEDIG/V13_5/V13_564.TXT

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Subject: SPACE Digest V13 #564

SPACE Digest                                     Volume 13 : Issue 564

Today's Topics:
             Re: Long-term Future of Life
               Re: Saturn V and the ALS
           United Space Federation,Inc. Update 5/15
               Re: Saturn V and the ALS
            SPACE Digest V13 #541
            SPACE Digest V13 #545
          Re: SPACE STATION FREEDOM WOUNDED

Administrivia:

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

Date: 15 May 91 23:53:09 GMT
From: mentor.cc.purdue.edu!noose.ecn.purdue.edu!en.ecn.purdue.edu![e-mail]  (/dev/null)
Subject: Re: Long-term Future of Life

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] writes:
> Re Long-term future of Civilization
>
> >       So, what happens at the core of human settlement when the core
> > regions have been stripped of useable resources, and new resources from the
> > outlying regions can't be shipped back fast enough to suit demand? There
> > is that nasty speed of light restriction on travel, not to mention how
> > expensive shipping objects is likely to be over interstellar distances.
> > I suppose it'd be like fungus; colonise a region, breed like hell until
> > the local resources are gone, and send out spores to repeat the process.
>
> Speculation, of course, but I think that your perspective is planet-bound.
>
> At the point in time you're referring to, resources will no longer mean, for
> example, trees, food and houses, but rather energy and information.
                          ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
If that.  What I know may be of no use to the ultra different 'brothers'
50 light years away!  And 50 years from now, the info may be useless.
Maybe cultural info to the less xenophobic cultures. (Such as
'Radio Alpha-C').

War will develop, but be extremely slower than we are used to.  500
year wars - volleys of asteriods 5 years apart! :)

>
> The coming age of Solar-system industrialization will train us in the now-
> infant technology of efficient recycling.  It would follow that material
> will always be available.  Whether it's in usable form depends on what you
> know, and availability of energy. Conservation, not depletion, will be
> the bigger issue.

Aye, there's the rub, but who can tell *WHAT* we are going to need or feel
we need in the future!  Its like the Cave-men predicting cars and airplanes.
They might see the need for super-fast travel (visionary) but have
*NO IDEA* of the means to do this.  Not an inkling.  We might have trained
ourselves to dream more effectively, but when we are talking about the
amazingly distant future, we are at the same loss, still its fun to dream!

>
> I can't remeber where, but there already is a design for a mechanism to
> strip hydrogen off the Sun for the purpose of making it burn slower, and
> hence longer.  (Age of stars =~ 1/mass^5)
> Then, before it goes into helium burning, dump that hydrogen back onto
> it.  Hence, the Solar System could last for 1000G years, not 5G.  It's called
> 'Stellar Lifting", if you want to look it up.  Sorry, can't remember the
> source.  :(

Use multiple fusion/fission to create the materials you need to build
a ringworld, Dyson sphere, or multiple smaller habitats.

The limits are only in the mind of this "Earth-Man"  (Sorta like
"Cave Man" to us) !

>
> 'Renewable' resources will one day refer to causing H clouds to collapse into
> stars, since they will be the major source of energy. (and metal)
> 'Trade' will probably be in information, not material or energy.  And
> 'conservation' might refer to waiting until you have the full photosynthetic
> machanism around an H cloud before causing it to collapse into a star! :)

Exactly!  I have a suspician that we are cave-men compared to our descendants.
We probably cannot even comprehend the amount or the scale of projects that
can be done, or even what those projects are!  Mind boggling!  Picture a
tessarect and you see what I mean.... :)

>
> On the timescales we're talking about, the issue is not whether humans will
> fill the universe, and use everyhting up, but rather;
>
> "How can we escape the 'Big Crunch'?" (Or Entroy Death, depending)

Simple, with the Infinite Improbability Drive! :)

>
> Now imagine the biologists nightmare as settlements seperated by LY's
> begin to diverge in their genetic makeup.  And interact.  Not just people,
> but crops and weeds, too.  And germs.  I've a feeling that the Plagues of
> antiquity will pale in comparison to the unexpected spread of diseases that
> have mutated and been brought to an area that hasn't evolved with them.
> And mutations will be higher in a radiation-rich environment, such as this
> Universe.

This could make some cultures wildly Xenophobic refusing to accept
even information from outside. (plagues and diseases from physical
trade causing this psychology)   In a few million years they would drop
out of 'common knowlege' of some planets until a probe or explorer
ship meanders into the system....

It would make an excellent SF novel.  A culture makes a FTL drive from
a colony world and wants to visit "Home" (Earth), but the culture has
become violently xenophobic.  I dunno, just an idea.

For a good 'feel' of this read _Man_After_Man_.  Its kind of a pseudo
scientific art book, but it is very interesting nonetheless!

--
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Cogito ergo sum...|  Brent Irvine     ([e-mail])    |
| Bibio ergo sum... | These opinions are mine...as if they counted! :)  |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+

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

Date: 15 May 91 21:34:52 GMT
From: usc!cs.utexas.edu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!utzoo![e-mail]  (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Saturn V and the ALS

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Gary Coffman) writes:
>NASA's track record doesn't begin with the Shuttle...

Which NASA are we talking about?  Today's?  The shuttle goes back over
half of NASA's lifetime.  All organizations are more effective when
young; NASA's early successes are not a good predictor of its performance
now.  The shuttle, unfortunately, is.

>ALS is supposed to capitalize on the experience drawn from the mistakes
>made with the shuttle. NASA more than anyone knows the faults of the
>shuttle. NASA more than anyone doesn't want to make those same mistakes
>again...

Oh?  Why not?  From the viewpoint of supporting fat expensive pets -- the
contractors -- and bloated bureaucratic empires, the shuttle is a resounding
success.  Its faults are significant only if you care about *spaceflight*,
which rates rather low with a lot of NASA's bureaucrats today.

If NASA doesn't want to make those same mistakes again, why are they so
tenaciously clinging to new-booster designs using shuttle SRBs and SSMEs?
--
And the bean-counter replied,           | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
"beans are more important".             |  [e-mail]  utzoo!henry

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

Date: 16 May 91 01:26:57 GMT
From: vax5.cit.cornell.edu![e-mail]
Subject: United Space Federation,Inc. Update 5/15

***************************************************************************
*               UNITED SPACE FEDERATION, INC.                             *
*              UPDATE #5  FOR 15th of MAY 1991                            *
***************************************************************************
*  An International (Multinational) Civil Space Agency By 1993            *
*                  An Idea Whose Time Has Come !                          *
***************************************************************************

  The United Space Federation, Inc. has resumed its TV programing as of
today, 15th of May 1991.  The shows are Newscast format and will be
cablecasted two times per month.  If any one who reads the VMSNEWS, Sci.
SPACE section is from the Japanese Space Agency, Russian Space Agency,
European Space Agency, Canadian Space Agency or any other established
national space program, Please send us press release information and we
will air it on our programs. ( Video Clips Will Be Very Welcome )

For more information about our TV programing please write to:

                                  UNITED SPACE FEDERATION, INC.
                                   International Headquarters
                                       P.O. Box 4722
                                  Ithaca, New York  14852-4722
                                 In the United States of America

                 E-MAIL Addresses:  [e-mail]
                                    [e-mail]

                 INTERNET:          [e-mail]
                                    [e-mail]

              Thank you for your time and support, Godspeed!

                                 Sincerely,
                                 Rick R. Dobson
                                 Executive Director
                                 United Space Federation, Inc.

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

Date: 15 May 91 13:14:21 GMT
From: iggy.GW.Vitalink.COM!widener!hela![e-mail]  (Allen W. Sherzer)
Subject: Re: Saturn V and the ALS

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Mary Shafer) writes:

>   Fair enough. But please do read the article in the September 90 issue of
>   Aerospace America. If for no other reason then you owe it to yourself to
>   be as informed as you can be.
>
>Well, as a 15-year member and an Associate Fellow of AIAA, married to
>an AIAA Fellow with over 20 years of membership (including chairing
>the AFM TC and it's conference), it's my opinion that Aerospace
>America is not necessarily informational.

I'm not concerned with the journal itself. In fact, I don't read it
myself but had this article sent to me by somebody who did. The question
is: what's wrong with the approach specified in the article? Attacking
the journal as a whole (even though they are very valid arguements)
does not address the specifics of the article.

I'm not claiming that this paper is rigerous enough to pass a peer
review journal. That was not their intent and since I suspect that
some of the details are propriatary I don't think they ever will
write such a paper. The point is that we are about to waste a decade
of effort and over $10 billion on something we could have in half
the time and 5% the cost.

Yet NASA refuses to even look at this cheaper approach. Last year
they told Congress they never even heard of the thing. Congress gave
NASA $10 million to study these alternatives and so far, NASA has
refused to do even that.

>Study the list of authors some time.  You'll notice that none of them
>have any technical qualifications.

This article is by Larry Stafford who is the Chief Engineer of Product
Development at the Delta Launch Vehicle division and Michael Rendine
who is an Aerospace Engineer.

  Allen
--
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|Allen W. Sherzer |        Allen's tactics are too tricky to deal with      |
|   [e-mail]   |             -- Harel Barzilai                           |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+

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

ReSent-Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Resent-Date:  Wed, 15 May 91 17:44:50 EDT
Resent-From: Tommy Mac <[e-mail]>
Resent-To: [e-mail]
Date:         Tue, 14 May 91 01:44:28 EDT
Reply-To: [e-mail]
From: [e-mail]
Subject:      SPACE Digest V13 #541
Comments: To: [e-mail]
To: david polito <[e-mail]>, Tom McWilliams <[e-mail]>

Re: Shuttle on tether

(Stuff deleted about mechanics or reel-unreel tether systems)

>     Note that the orbit has dropped. It will drop *EACH TIME THAT
>YOU REEL IN A SHUTTLE*. Do it often enough, and you'll be cruising at
>the top of the atmosphere... "Son of Skylab". Of course you could
>fire a rocket engine to boost the combined spacestation-and-shuttle
>back up. But that would be equivalent to having fired the shuttle up
>to the higher orbit in the first place !!! Reeling in the shuttle to
>raise its orbit is no different than firing the shuttle's engines
                    ^^^^^^^^^^^^
>to raise its orbit. In both cases you're looking at raising an object
>against gravity. The net work is the same...

Isnt the advantage that tethers don't require reaction mass?  And that
is also a cascading advantage 'cuz you don't need to carry it around
until you use it?

>> If you'd take a detailed look at the energy and angular momentum
>> transfers, you'd realize that tethers don't offer a free lunch, or
>> a free launch.  What they give you is checking and credit, letting
>> you loan or transfer energy and angular momentum w/o using rockets.

>     In another reply on this thread, I made a glaring error that
>would seem to allow this scheme to work. I assumed that a shuttle
>could be "reeled out". ( Silly me, I'll never graduate to sci.skeptic
>this way. ) If the shuttle detaches and the main station unreels
>several thousand miles of tether... you'll merely end up with an
>atrocious "crowsnest" like no fisherman has ever seen before. The
>shuttle will tend to remain in the same orbit as the station, *UNLESS
>IT FIRES ITS ROCKET ENGINES TO DE-ORBIT*. That's what the shuttle has
>to do right now.

It doesn't have to fire it's engines.  It has to expel enough mass at
high enough speed to match the momentum change it wants.  Rockets are
traditional, but in this case, you could use the station itself as
'reaction mass'.

You push off the station, it moves up, you move down, and the tether is
unreeled to keep it from slowing down the seperation.  When you get far
enough apart, the brakes slow down the seperation, finally stop it.
Shuttle lets go, de-orbits, breaks for lunch, calls HQ, etc.

Or something like that.

Tommy Mac
Acknowledge-To: <18084TM@MSU>

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

ReSent-Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Resent-Date:  Wed, 15 May 91 17:58:14 EDT
Resent-From: Tom McWilliams <[e-mail]>
Resent-To: [e-mail]
X-Resent-Date:  Wed, 15 May 91 14:46:21 EDT
X-Resent-From:  Tom <18084TM@MSU>
X-Resent-To:    Ron <[e-mail]>
Date:         Tue, 14 May 91 02:38:15 EDT
Reply-To: [e-mail]
From: [e-mail]
Subject:      SPACE Digest V13 #545
Comments: To: [e-mail]
To: david polito <[e-mail]>, Tom McWilliams <[e-mail]>

Re: Rude creeps

Warning, contains petty bullshit.  (I tried to e-mail it, but his address
is unfathomable)


Ron Carter Writes;

> (stuff deleted)

> Are you at all capable of thinking beyond the naive case?

> ( more stuff deleted )

> "How wrong can someone be and still take himself seriously?", Ron
> asks himself rhetorically.

      Do you really think you'll convince anyone that you have anything
to offer if you're a dick about it?

      If you're so sure that he doesn't know the truth, why do you find it
so irrestable to mock him?

I noticed you convienently deleted the part of the discussion where he does
quote numbers, do math, and shows why you must have high power densities,
else suffer aerodynamic losses or lack the energy to put a laser-launched
projectile into space.

You ignore in one place what you demand in another.  And yet you have the
audacity to question his lack of 'intellectual honesty' or 'hypocrisy'.

How can you take yourself seriously?

Tom
Acknowledge-To: <18084TM@MSU>

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

Date: 16 May 91 00:16:29 GMT
From: swrinde!mips!spool.mu.edu!rex!uflorida!mailer.cc.fsu.edu!prism![e-mail]  (Matthew DeLuca)
Subject: Re: SPACE STATION FREEDOM WOUNDED

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Allen W. Sherzer) writes:
>The House HUD/VA/IA Appropriations Subcommittee marked up the NASA
>appropriation this morning. They zeroed out ALL station funding.
>Unless the Senate restores the money and it survives conference,
>the space station will be cancled.

And once again, the U.S. shows that it is not a partner to trust in
international space projects.

--
Matthew DeLuca
Georgia Institute of Technology      "I'd hire the Dorsai, if I knew their
Office of Information Technology      P.O. box."  - Zebadiah Carter,
Internet: [e-mail]    _The Number of the Beast_

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

End of SPACE Digest V13 #564
*******************