Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/mac/TEXT/SPACEDIG/V13_5/V13_566.TXT

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Subject: SPACE Digest V13 #566

SPACE Digest                                     Volume 13 : Issue 566

Today's Topics:
               Re: Saturn V and the ALS
               Re: Saturn V and the ALS
               Long-term Future of Life
      Re: 14 Astronauts have died for space exploration?
           Re: Advancing Launch Technology
              Re: Why the space station?
          Re: An International Civil Space Agency 93
              Re: Honking at cyclists...
              Re: SPACE Digest V13 #499

Administrivia:

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Date: 15 May 91 20:50:52 GMT
From: usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!sdd.hp.com!news.cs.indiana.edu!widener!hela![e-mail]  (Allen W. Sherzer)
Subject: Re: Saturn V and the ALS

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Gary Coffman) writes:

>The Navy has the example of Rickover, NASA has the example of Von Braun,
>Lockheed has the example of Kelly Johnson. If they plan to put a strong
>individual in charge of the program with a clear vision of where he wants
>the program to go, they will succeed. If they try to design their camel
>by committee, like with the Shuttle, and with constantly changing budgets,
>like with Fred, they will likely fail.


Guess which approach is currently being used? So far we have the Air Force
Program manager who wants a Titan followon using the STME. We also have
the NASA program manager who wants to build a HLV using STME and the
ASRM. The program hasn't even started yet and they are 180 degrees
apart on what they want.

Like the Shuttle, NLDP is also being designed by a committee. As I
say, it will fail for the exact same reason the Shuttle failed. You
can even fill in your own reason.

  Allen

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

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Date: 15 May 91 20:32:40 GMT
From: att!pacbell.com!iggy.GW.Vitalink.COM!widener!hela![e-mail]  (Allen W. Sherzer)
Subject: Re: Saturn V and the ALS

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

>>>I have to side with NASA on this one, I'm afraid.  How long will it take
>>>to get "cheaper approaches" into production?

>>Should be doable in five years...

>Yes... but I said "how long *will* it take".  Accepting the Augustine report
>means doing exactly what NASA did in the 1970s:  phasing out a working,
>operational capability in favor of rosy promises on paper.

The Shuttle is just too expensive. As it is it consumes about 40% of the
total NASA budget. Too much work won't happen because we are throwing it
away with this beast.

>  There is no
>commitment to any near-term development of heavylift launch capability
>or manned expendables.

Put a Soyuz on a Titan. It will work just fine. Use the money saved
to build a space station. Send the spacelabs up to LEO and keep them
there. Service with Titan IV as needed.

Heavy lift would be nice but we can do without it for a while.

>Orbiter production should be terminated only when
>such efforts are approved, funded, and well under way.  They aren't.

And they never will be the way things are now. All the money which
could go to buying HLV's is spent operating the Shuttle.

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

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ReSent-Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Resent-Date:  Wed, 15 May 91 17:06:51 EDT
Resent-From: Tommy Mac <[e-mail]>
Resent-To: [e-mail]
Date:         Wed, 15 May 91 02:34:37 EDT
Reply-To: [e-mail]
From: [e-mail]
Subject:      Long-term Future of Life
Comments: To: [e-mail]
To: david polito <[e-mail]>, Tom McWilliams <[e-mail]>

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.

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.

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.  :(

'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! :)

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)

 As long as I'm on a sci-fci subject, imagine what astronomers of the distant
future will know about star formation, galaxy interaction/rotation, etc.

"As you can see in this series of slides, M51 is in fact shrinking at a rate
predicted correctly by a Balck Hole of aprroximately 352 Galactic Masses at
it's center.  We expect that it should entirely disappear by...."

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.

PS>  While doing some observations last friday, waiting for the CCD to read
out, we did a back-of-the-disk-cover calculation, and figured out that if
Sol had formed in the Magellenic Clouds, instead of here, the Milky Way
would subtend an arc of 30 degrees in the sky!  Woudn't that be neat!

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

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

Date: 13 May 91 22:03:01 GMT
From: swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!menudo.uh.edu!nuchat!lobster!n5abi![e-mail]
Subject: Re: 14 Astronauts have died for space exploration?

[e-mail] (Bob Rehak Ext. 3-9437, AIS Central Services  -  Swen Pa writes:

> >
> >             Headline News
> >Internal Communications Branch (P-2) NASA Headquarters
> >
> >  Wednesday, May 8, 1991        Audio Service: 202 / 755-1788
> >
> >This is NASA Headline News for Wednesday, May 8, 1991 . . .
> >
> >The Astronauts Memorial, honoring the 14 U.S. astronauts who
> >have given their lives in the exploration of space, will be unveiled
>
>
> 14 astronauts?  Last time I counted there were only 10.
>
> Apollo I: Grissom, White, and Chaffee.
> STS-61L Challenger: Scobee, Smith, Resnik, Onizuka, McNair,
>                     Jarvis, and McAuliffe.

 Here are the other four;
            Bassett, Freeman, See, Williams.

All four died in crashes of their T-38 jet trainers. Since they were
active Astronauts and the filghts were part of their training, they
are naturally included.


-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Gene Kennedy - Ham Radio Operator, N5ABI - lobster.hou.tx.us!n5abi!gak
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

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

Date: 15 May 91 06:16:58 GMT
From: elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!wuarchive!emory!wa4mei!ke4zv![e-mail]  (Gary Coffman)
Subject: Re: Advancing Launch Technology

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Fraering Philip) writes:
>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Gary Coffman) writes:
>
>>Note that I don't even believe that an HLV has to
>>be cheaper per pound to orbit than smaller launchers. I believe that
>>there will be payloads that will require heavy lift because it will
>>be cheaper to launch them assembled than to do assembly in space.
>
>1. Assembly in space may be a lot cheaper and easier than you think.
>Since the Russians can do it with their rather less developed automation,
>shouldn't it be easier with the more developed technology here?

For properly modularized payloads that can be simply docked together,
assembly in space is cheap. Given a manned assembly facility in orbit,
complex assembly of big systems *may* be cheap. But complex, big payloads
aren't cheap to assemble in orbit now. Therefore, an HLV, even if it's
costs per pound are higher, could be the cheapest way to get such payloads
delivered in the near future.

>2. Currently it looks like it is the small booster which can take
>business away from the larger one in spite of a cost per pound
>imbalance in favor of the larger booster. My example, again, is
>Pegasus...

Indeed, in cases where scheduling and launching flexibility are of
paramount concern, and the payloads are small, cost per pound is
not a real issue. Pegasus' market looks healthy *without* investing
in a program to make it substantially cheaper per pound of payload.
It's operational costs will probably decrease even more as OSC
progresses up the learning curve. Thus there is no pressing need for a
government funded program to lower the launch costs of small launchers.

For large launchers, there is little demand pull at present. Therefore
the pump priming of a government effort at supply push is needed to
get this system off the ground. Nobody is currently designing big
complex payloads, except Fred, because there is no reasonable way to get
them in space. If it becomes practical to do so, the payloads will likely
come.

Eventually there should be little need for HLVs as space materials
and space manufacturing allow complex structures to be made in space.
But to get from where we are to that utopian future, there must exist
intermediate steps. An HLV is such a step.

Gary

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

Date: 15 May 91 12:29:40 GMT
From: cis.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!caen![e-mail]  (Ken Sheppardson)
Subject: Re: Why the space station?

[e-mail] writes:
>[e-mail] (Gary Coffman) writes:
>>
>>If you assume that you are never going to do large scale in space assembly
>
>We won't need in in they _way_ you or NASA think we will need it.
>Large scale assembly isn't very valuable unless there are a lot
>of materials lying around with which to scale.  Fred does
>nothing about the need for cheap building materials, which is the
>real problem.  Rather, it sucks up money from missions of exploration
>that would give us knowledge about solar system resources with which
>to solve the problem.  Right _now_, Congress is deciding on Fred
>vs. SIRTF, a powerful infrared telescope which would discover thousands
>of new asteroids and comets.  Fred is incredibly destructivce of the
>long-term potential for large scale space assembly.

  You posted your budget for the space program a while back, as I recall.

  Could you go one step further and give us a timeline out to 2050 or
  so describing what steps you think we should take to realize our
  'long-term potential for large scale space assembley.' In particular,
  could you tell use when you anticipate a US permanent presence in space?

  Is Freedom destructive to our 'long-term potential for large scale
  space assembly' only because it's taking money away from other projects
  or are you talking about something more fundamental?

  Do you see any role for humans in space? If so, could you please
  descibe it?

  [...hmmm...maybe Queen Isabella should've given the money to those
   folks who wanted to build a REALLY BIG telescope to look in the
   other direction to see if they could see around the world the other
   way....] :)

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

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

Date: 15 May 91 17:36:21 GMT
From: aramis.rutgers.edu!remus.rutgers.edu!romulus.rutgers.edu![e-mail]  (Mark Lyons)
Subject: Re: An International Civil Space Agency 93

Wan't to Really piss of the pentagon! Wan't to make
space travel affordable for everybody? Who says
you can't take you pet fido to that moon vacation
you've been saving up for all year! Well now you can!
Just build you own handy dandy---

      *** S P A C E   E L E V A T O R !!! ***

THAT'S RIGHT! No more mesy chemicals! No more cleaning
up those nasty exploding shuttles! Now YOU can drive
to space! Newton got it all wrong... (bumped on the
head from too many apples perhaps?). You DON'T have
to break orbital velosity; YES... at the touch of a
button you can bring a little LIFT that keeps on
GOING and GOing and going and ......

How you ask? Well the concept is quite simple. First
you pool together several countries in a multinational
effort to fund the project. (after all we can't have
One country own this thing now, can we?).

The concept is quite simple actually. Picture a weight
tied to a string held in your hand. Twirl the string
and the weight circles around while the string stays
strait even under the influence of earth's gravity.
Now! Substitute your hand for a much larger planet
earth, the string for a semiflexible guided rail tube
and the dead weight for the mass of the tube above
geosynchronis orbit and by gosh, you've got one hell
of a cheap way to access space!

This is a call for all you bridge buiding types out
there: can this thing be built? C'mon, they said
it was impossible to go to the moon... Did'nt they?

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

Date: 15 May 91 15:24:48 GMT
From: dog.ee.lbl.gov!csa2.lbl.gov![e-mail]  (JOSEPH T CHEW)
Subject: Re: Honking at cyclists...

If you honked your horn at a bicyclist as v -> c in the interstellar
vacuum, would he either see or hear you?

Seriously, folks, I'm as fascinated as the next science dweeb by the
physical boundary conditions of colonizing the galaxy, but I think
this thread has served its purpose in rec.autos and should have its
Newsgroups header pruned accordingly on future follow-ups.  A thousand
groaning servers will thank you.

--Joe
"Just another personal opinion from the People's Republic of Berkeley"

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

Date: 15 May 91 09:14:01 GMT
From: swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!emory!wa4mei!ke4zv![e-mail]  (Gary Coffman)
Subject: Re: SPACE Digest V13 #499

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:
>
>My only defense is this;  the point I was trying to share, that I found so
>amazing, is that we put people on the moon with ONLY 64K ?!?
>
>Jeez, Nintendos use more than that.

16k of core is plenty for a good software development enviornment. 32k is
plenty for heavy duty word processing or accounting packages. A truly
enormous memory like 64k allows a true multiproccessing operating system
and it's applications to run. This recent trend toward slow bloated
programs that require 33 Mhz processors and megabytes of RAM to barely
equal what we used to do in 16k of core with a 4 Mhz processor is deplorable.
:-)

Gary

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End of SPACE Digest V13 #566
*******************