Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/mac/TEXT/SPACEDIG/V13_5/V13_594.TXT

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Subject: SPACE Digest V13 #594

SPACE Digest                                     Volume 13 : Issue 594

Today's Topics:
             SUB SCI.SPACE Thomas Nelson
           Re: Should Galileo be rerouted?
             Re:  Saturn V vs ALS
           Re: Gravity! What is Gravity? Try This!
               Re: Saturn V and the ALS
          Re: SPACE STATION FREEDOM WOUNDED
Re: NASA discovers impact likely tied to dinosaurs' demise (Forwarded)
               Re: Saturn V and the ALS
            A bit more on Freedom funding
         NASA Headline News for 05/16/91 (Forwarded)

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]

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

Date: 17 May 91 18:05:23 GMT
From: xyplex.com![e-mail]  (Tom Nelson)
Subject: SUB SCI.SPACE Thomas Nelson

SUBSCRIBE SCI.SPACE Thomas Nelson

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

Date: 18 May 91 04:25:12 GMT
From: swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!utzoo![e-mail]  (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Should Galileo be rerouted?

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (David Tholen) writes:
>> Like I've said, Galileo is already going to visit two asteroids ...
>1991 October 29, to be exact.  If the High Gain Antenna does not deploy,
>the data will be recorded and played back during the next Earth encounter...

There is, however, a small problem in that the probability of good results
from the asteroid encounter(s) is much higher if optical navigation is
available during the approach.  The asteroids' positions simply are not
known all that accurately.  Without the main antenna to send approach
images back to Earth quickly, the cameras will have to be pointed by
guesswork.  My recollection is that the imaging people were worried enough
about pointing *before* the antenna problem appeared...
--
And the bean-counter replied,           | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
"beans are more important".             |  [e-mail]  utzoo!henry

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

Date: 16 May 91 15:35:48 GMT
From: mcsun!ukc!strath-cs!nott-cs!cam-cl![e-mail]  (Steve Linton)
Subject: Re:  Saturn V vs ALS

In article <[e-mail]>,
[e-mail] (Doug McDonald) writes:

|>
|> The thing I have always wondered is why the bottom stage would not be,
|> rather than a rocket, an air-breather. This is of course some
|> sort of half-way from launching from an airplane and adding an
|> extra ordinary rocket stage. The only problem I see is the extra
|> development cost.
|>
|> Doug McDonald

An air-breathing bottom stage suddenly makes a supersonic or hypersonic
launch plane much more interesting, since building an air-breathing
motor that can run
sub-sonic supersonic AND hypersonic is rather hard (= expensive and/or heavy
and/or unreliable). A catapult could also help here.

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

Date: 17 May 91 12:51:58 GMT
From: infonode![e-mail]  (Jeff W. Hyche)
Subject: Re: Gravity! What is Gravity? Try This!

[e-mail] writes:

>Has any one ever taken a ballon and rubed it in your hair and placed it
>next to lots of little cut up pieces of paper.  What happens to all the
>little pieces of paper?, they stick to the ballon.  If Earth was like a
>big balloon in space, and  was charged when it was formed it would have
>no way to discharge in the vaccume of space.  Assume now that the Earth
>has a constent charge of massive proportions and that the heavy metals
>at the Earths core would pull all the lighter materials, dirt, sand, water,
>and me and you towards the center of the Earth.  Much like the little
>pieces of paper, these lighter materials are drawm torwds the heavy core
>of the Earth, But the charge of Earth is many millions of times more
>powerful than the charge of the balloon.  If you were to say take and
>reverse the charge of one of these particals, it would then repel away
>from the surface of the object it was previously attracted to!  Charged
>particals also have established magnetic fields, and so does the Earth.

>For all you research buffs out there, have fun with this experiment!
>I think you might find its resaults very interesting!?!

>Newton was close when he said gravity was a constent force, but he never
>told what that force was.  Maybe if had only known Ben Franklin!


    I'm going to assume this is leading up to saying that gravity is
just a static charge right?  Wrong.  Gravity and electricity are two
compleatly different forces.  Althought they are both basic components
of the universe, gravity is a byproduct of mass and electricity is the
movement of electrons trought a conductor.
    In your reference to established magnetic fields and the Earth,
I assume you mean to use it lift objects into orbit.  This has been
discussed in sci.skepitc alot.  This will not work, the Earths field is
to week to be used of lift. Any charge build up will arc to ground
before lifting.

--
                                  // Jeff Hyche
    There can be only one!    \\ //  Usenet: [e-mail]
                               \X/   Freenet: [e-mail]

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

Date: 17 May 91 16:18:00 GMT
From: sdd.hp.com!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!utzoo![e-mail]  (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Saturn V and the ALS

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Frank Crary) writes:
>"man-rated" has a special and technical meaning to NASA. It involves not
>only a safe design, but also crew escape modes, demonstrated redundency
>on all mission critical failure modes, etc...

However, as Allen has pointed out before, in practice it seems to do
nothing to improve reliability and it is quite expensive.
--
And the bean-counter replied,           | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
"beans are more important".             |  [e-mail]  utzoo!henry

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

Date: 18 May 91 00:21:31 GMT
From: hub.ucsb.edu!ucsbuxa![e-mail]  (Charles Frank Radley)
Subject: Re: SPACE STATION FREEDOM WOUNDED



The money from Freedom does not go to science, it goes to
HUD for housing projects.

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

Date: 16 May 91 16:05:45 GMT
From: dev8b.mdcbbs.com![e-mail]
Subject: Re: NASA discovers impact likely tied to dinosaurs' demise (Forwarded)

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Fraering Philip) writes:
> I've heard that seismic imagery of the crater is now at least underway if
> not done. Has anyone heard anything else more definate about this?
>
> --
> Phil Fraering
> [e-mail]
> ''It's a Flash Gordon/E.E. Smith war, with superior Tnuctip technology
> battling tools and weapons worked up on the spot by a billion Dr.
> Zarkovs.`` - Larry Niven, describing the end to _Down in Flames_.
--

Years ago, there were claims that Taktites were actually small pieces of the
Moon blaster free by meteoric impact and scooped up by Earths gravity.

The scientific evidence is that they indeed came from outer space, but not
from very far away. I personally won a science scholarship with a
project that established critical differences between the Tektites and
what was then known about the Lunar surface.

Does anyone know if the "Glassy Nodules" associated with this crater are
one and the same with the Tektites?

Mike


==========================================================================
\\\\    Michael Rivero      | "I drank WHAT!" |  "THIS PORTION OF SIG    |
\ (.    [e-mail] | Socrates  -------------------  UNDER       |
   )>   DISCLAIMER:::       |-----------|                 | CONSTRUCTION |
  ==    "Hey man, I wasn't  |           |                 | (pardon our  |
---/    even here then!"    |           |                 | white-out)   |
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++-------------------+++++++++++++++

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

Date: 17 May 91 11:13:54 GMT
From: coplex!disk![e-mail]  (joefish)
Subject: Re: Saturn V and the ALS

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Henry Spencer) writes:
>which rates rather low with a lot of NASA's bureaucrats today.
>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

NASA clings to the SRBs and SSMEs because they are in production,
and it would cost twice as much to put anything in production
to replace them.

Is there something with everything associated with the shuttle
according to you?

The SSME has about half the thrust of the Saturn V F1 engine,
but it has a much higher impulse.   But it is not a rational
argument to compare SSMEs to F1 engines, because it is the
SRB that replaces the F1 engines.

The SRBs have at least twice the thrust of the F1.   If four
were used instead of two, the total thrust would exceed that
of a Saturn V.

Even if an antique kerosene-oxygen engine were used in the
first stage, there is no better engine than the SSME to use
for the second stage.

The SRBs are much less complicated than the F1 assembly,
and are probably more reliable in both failure to be ready
to launch and failure during flight.   As only a hand full
of Saturn Vs were launched, the reliability with todays
organization and personnel might be much worse than the
shuttle.

The cost of shuttle launches is not in what an SSME costs,
but in the gigantic organization which operates the shuttle
program.   It is just like the aircraft companies being
forced to charge 3,000 dollars an hour for special parts that
require all the different departments  (sales, engineering,
prototyping, tooling, production, inspection, testing,
billing, accounting, and all levels of management) in addition
to a fixed cost per hour for the facility expenses which can
be enormous for JSC and KSC and all the support fscilities.

NASA is on the right track, but they are not even using the
shuttle components to full advantage.   The best design for
a space station at this point in time would be to use the
main tank as the keel or supporting truss, and build the
main bulk of the station right on the side of the main
tank, permanently attached, with the standard SSMEs and
computers installed, no wings, no tiles, no landing gear,
no rudder, no payload bay, just everything that is needed
as the one piece core of the station.    Then the smaller
components can be taken up by the shuttle.

With this approach, the space station could weigh around
300,000 pounds with the main tank, or about 200,000 pounds
for the station core, and 4 shuttle flights could add
another 100,000 pounds, making a total of five launches.

I think constant biased anti-shuttle discussions may be
keeping NASA people from proposing what they would really
like to do, because the congress hears too much shuttle
bashing.

Surely a 200,000 pound main core, attached to a 100,000
pound main tank, would be large enough, and the main tank
would make a much stronger and more rigid support for
the station than a truss.

The 200,000 pound station built right on the side of the
main tank should not cost substantially more than building
a shuttle and payload, because it would be the same weight
and nearly the same shape, minus the wings, tiles, rudder,
and landing gear.

Joe Fischer       [e-mail]

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

Date: 17 May 91 16:58:47 GMT
From: hela![e-mail]  (Allen W. Sherzer)
Subject: A bit more on Freedom funding

I just spoke with a couple of sources in Congress. They tell me that
the Senate allocations where even less than the House allocations which
means NASA will take a bigger hit in the Senate than the House. This makes
it almost assured that the Senate subcommittee will follow the House lead
and kill Freedom.

Also, the House appropriation includes $100M for NASA to study replacements
to Freedom. This means we will likely see a new station next year. This
will likely involve two stations: one human tended for microgravity and
another for life sciences which may be permanently crewed or tended.

The Industrial Space Facility would be a good idea for the first station
and the LLNL inflatable would be good for the second. Both are near term,
cheap, and expandable. Now is the time to start educating your
congresscritters on these and other options.

  Allen

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

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

Date: 18 May 91 06:50:52 GMT
From: [e-mail]  (Peter E. Yee)
Subject: NASA Headline News for 05/16/91 (Forwarded)


             Headline News
Internal Communications Branch (P-2) NASA Headquarters

  Thursday, May 16, 1991    Audio Service: 202 / 755-1788

This is NASA Headline News for Thursday, May 16, 1991 . . .

The STS-40 mission preparations are nearing completion at the
Kennedy Space Center.  Closeout activities are underway in
Columbia's aft compartment and should be finished tomorrow.  The
launch countdown begins Saturday evening.  The flight crew is set
to arrive at Kennedy from Houston on Sunday afternoon.  Launch of
Columbia for the STS-40 Spacelab Life Sciences is scheduled for 8:00
am EDT next Wednesday, MayJ22.

                   * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Jet Propulsion Laboratory flight controllers report that both Galileo
and Ulysses are in good condition and performing nominally in
their respective trajectories.  Ulysses is presently 309 million miles
from Earth, moving outward toward Jupiter at a velocity of 49,300
miles per hour.  JPL, under recent guidelines established by the
science working group, is taking steps to create longer, 10-hour,
Deep Space Network acquisition passes to allow the Ulysses
telemetry stream to use a higher bit rate, 1024 bps, for playback of
data.  The new strategy will be used for the remainder of Ulysses' trip
to Jupiter, and will involve more frequent pointing maneuvers to keep
the high-gain antenna directed precisely at Earth.

The Galileo project team this week began a series of spacecraft
tests designed to better characterize the partly-open condition
of the spacecraft's high gain antenna.  On Tuesday, JPL
commanded Galileo to change from all-spin to dual-spin and back to
all-spin.  Data from celestial navigation and spacecraft inertial
measurements indicate a very slight wobble, verifying that the
antenna opened off-center.  JPL expects to perform a radio test today
which will provide more information on the antenna's shape.
Otherwise, Galileo is performing nominally and is presently 50 million
miles from Earth.  It has travelled nearly 40 percent of its six-year, 2.4-
billion-mile-long, looping trajectory to Jupiter.

                   * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

NASA yesterday announced the selection of IBM Federal Sector
Division of Houston for negotiation of a 13-year contract to
provide as many as 48 ground-based mission operations mainframe
computer systems.  The systems will be used for the development of
both the Space Station Mission Control Center and the Space
Station Training Facility.  NASA will negotiate an indefinite quantity
under the contract, but anticipates the value of the contract to be about
$191 million during the 13-year contract period.

                   * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

                  The 8th National
MATHCOUNTS competition was held last week here in
Washington.  In the year-long series of activities leading up to the
finals, more than 350,000 mathletes participated.  These students
worked with more than 17,000 volunteer teachers, engineers and
others who served as mathematics coaches.  Helping make this
program work were engineers and scientists from NASA and NASA-
contractor facilities throughout the country.  This year's national
champion is an eighth-grader from Lexington, Mass.  His name is
Jonathan Weinstein, and for his efforts he received an $8,000
scholarship from General Motors, a personal computer from Tandy
Corp., and will spend a week at Space Camp, compliments of NASA.
Among the top ten teams was the one from Alabama.  NASA will host
all four Alabama team members at Space Camp, along with the
national winner.  NASA will also treat the coaches of the top
three individual winners, and the top seven teams, to a four-
day mathematics workshop at the Langley Research Center.
MATHCOUNTS is a national cooperative program funded and
supported by the National Society of Professional Engineers, the CNA
Insurance Companies, the Cray Research Foundation, the General
Motors Foundation, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics,
the Department of Education, and NASA.


Here's the broadcast schedule for Public Affairs events on NASA
Select TV.  Note that all events and times may change without notice,
and that all times listed are Eastern.

Thursday, 5/16/91
    12:00 pm    NASA productions, through 2:00 pm.

    6:00 pm    Repeat of NASA productions.

Friday, 5/17/91
    2:30 pm    STS-39 crew post-flight press briefing, from Johnson Space
          Center.


This report is filed daily at noon, Monday through Friday.  It is a service of
NASA's Office of Public Affairs.  The contact is Charles Redmond, 202/453-
8425 or CREDMOND on NASAmail.  NASA Select TV is carried on GE
Satcom F2R, transponder 13, C-Band, 72 degrees West Longitude,
transponder frequency is 3960 megaHertz, audio is offset 6.8 MHz,
polarization is vertical.

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

End of SPACE Digest V13 #594
*******************