Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/mac/TEXT/SPACEDIG/V13_7/V13_757.TXT

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Subject: SPACE Digest V13 #757

SPACE Digest                                     Volume 13 : Issue 757

Today's Topics:
              Re: Fred's Operatic Death
    Re: Extraterrestial Intelligence: the one from Michael Rivero
             Re: Access to Space
         Pointless Organizational Daffiness Syndrome
                 Re: The USF.
              Re: A Space Science letter
          IGY and the dawn of the Space Age

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
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Date: 18 Jun 91 17:00:59 GMT
From: news-server.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!watserv1!watdragon!watyew![e-mail]  (James Davis Nicoll)
Subject: Re: Fred's Operatic Death

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

    'Do NASA employees post self-serving propaganda (also 'should NASA...')'
    argument deleted.

    I have the damned feeling I've seen this thread before. How did the
tiff that ended with Ms Shafer briefly leaving sci.space start?

                                James Nicoll

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Date: Tue, 18 Jun 91 21:19:51 CET
From: GUNNAR RADONS <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Extraterrestial Intelligence: the one from Michael Rivero

To Michael Rivero and all who are interested;

I am sorry that I had not the time to grab the part of your reply to the
Extraterrestial intelligence discussion, since I just received in and I'm in
a hurry. But I have to reply to your saddly very wrong reply on metallicity.

1) Low metallicity means lower metallicity than the sun. The default value
   for the solar metallicity (anything beyond Helium4) is 0.02. That means
   only two percent of the sun exsist of elements heavier than H, and He and
   their isotopes.
2) Sun and the solar planets are born from the same molcule cloud, which itself
   seemed to have been enriched by a supernova. This relates back to element
   abundance measurements from meteorites.
3) Now one topic where I am very shure about (the other two were guesses from
   the literature and my memory).
      We see many more population I stars around us then population II stars.
   This is due to the fact, that it is very difficult to determine whther an
   M-dwarf is from poulation I (and therefore young) or from population II
   (old). Futher, most tstas we see in the solar vicinity are K and 1-Dwarfs.
   You may wnat to check the Gliese-Catalogue of nearby stars for proof.
4) The space density of stars along the z- axis (perpendicular to the galactic
   plane) is more or less gaussian (even if you beleave in the isothermal models
   of Cam, Schwarzschild etc., the conclusions won't change).
   This distribution is the same for young and old stars, since it is governed
   by the global potential of the galactic disk. The stars make oszillations
   perpendicular to the galactic disk. Therefore they are constantly
   accelerated when they run toward the disk, they swing across,  and get
   decelerated again. But this time it swings further out, since the mass in
   the galactic disk had changed. The idea is that the gas from the galactic
   halo permantently rains into the galaxy (I think this is even observed)
   and slowly raises the mass inside the galactic disk, deepening the potential
   well.
   Therefore: Even stars with metallicity less than 0.00001 have lots of
   heavy metals (in kilograms), but their relative amount is small. Whether
   there is a planet allowing live depends on how old the star is, how the
   accretiaon of dust and grains to protoplanets works, how much mass the
   planet has, how and whether their will be hight emeperature core,
   water, or other solvents.....

I am sorry that this got that long...
Gunnar Radons, [e-mail]

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

Date: 18 Jun 91 19:22:29 GMT
From: prism![e-mail]  (Matthew DeLuca)
Subject: Re: Access to Space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:
>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Matthew DeLuca) writes:

>>Communications satellites are a pretty loose defintion of 'industry'[...]

>Interesting.  This ("loosely" defined :-) self-sustaining industry is $6
>billion per year. The proposed El Dorado platinum mining would be $3
>billion per year.  CNN, MTV, News Corp., TV network communications, direct
>broadcast TV and radio, Ted Turner, Rupert Murdoch, international telephone
>calls, data communications, wire services, the international legs of
>USENET, etc.  Not terribly impressive.

Communications satellites are a service.  The service sector of the
economy does not create signifigant real wealth, so I don't consider it
a very impressive industry.  The only real industry involved is planted
solidly on the ground, in building the rockets, satellites, and transmission
and receiving stations.

Granted, that is good; it is a net benefit to the national economy.  But
to call it a 'self-sustaining industry' is akin to your last abuse of the
English language, calling a rockhunt in Antarctica a 'manned asteroid
sample-return mission'.  Subtle abuse of the language is rapidly placing
your name alongside that of my two favorite sci.space demagogues, William
Baxter and Jim Bowery.  Entertainment value, nothing more.

--
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_

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

Date: Fri, 14 Jun 91 15:50:54 PDT
From: [e-mail] (Jim Bowery)
To: crash![e-mail]
Subject: Pointless Organizational Daffiness Syndrome

Over the years, I've observed a disease that infects space enthusiasts
which I'll call "Pointless Organizational Daffiness Syndrome" or PODS.

The symptoms of The Syndrome are:

* Focus on geographical territory or domain, (including The World).
* Lack of defining goals.
* Attempt to be all inclusive to maximize the number of members
  rather than effectiveness.
* A large amount of politicing over organizational details
  during formation.
* Very little in the way of meaningful accomplishments
  prior to, during formation or after formation.
* The waste of a lot of people's time.
* Focus on attempts to claim credit for anything real that is accomplished
  by anyone anywhere.
* Initial growth from sheep-like people who are afraid of being "left out."
* Started by people who are expressing the human capacity for
  bureaucracy rather than pioneering, thus ensuring these organizations
  will service space suppressing bureaucracies like NASA/ESA, etc.

The National Space Society (itself an organization with PODS) seems to
breed these things like flies, primarily with the efforts of Terry
Savage or his cats paws.  The purpose of these NSS spawn appears
to be to capture anyone who might spin off from NSS back into
the bureaucracy mentality.

Others have popped up from time to time.  For example, some guy took
a very hypothetical idea for a grassroots-funded SPS company I was
discussing on Compuserv back in '82 and actually started SOLICITING
FUNDS and setting up little subsidiaries across the nation.  That
was my first real encounter with PODS.  Interesting it was also
about the same time I first heard about AIDS.

Is there a cure for PODS?  I think AIDS will be easier to cure.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jim Bowery      619/295-3164               The Coalition for
PO Box 1981                                   Science and
La Jolla, CA 92038                             Commerce
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Date: 18 Jun 91 23:32:28 GMT
From: cis.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!samsung!transfer!lectroid!sw.stratus.com![e-mail]  (Tarl Neustaedter)
Subject: Re: The USF.

I've asked the same questions, both in email and in postings to this group.
I've gotten snotty replies with no information and been ignored. I quote:
"My time is too important to waste on the likes of you :-I". Someone else
managed to provoke some real vitriol out of the USF, posted to this group.
I've done some checking and found out the following facts:

    1) The postmaster at cornell does not know the USF from adam, and
       Rick Dobson doesn't show up on her lists of Faculty, Staff or
       students. I don't know this is a psuedonym.

    2) The only official-sounding name on his list of participants is
       Francois Spiero, listed as representing the European Space Agency.
       He doesn't, his participation is personal; The USF has (I quote)
       "absolutely no link with ESA whatsoever". Mr. Dobson, a disclaimer
       is needed here. I suspect the same applies for a few others.

Given that this group is arrogating to itself the authority to "draft and
enforce international space law", I think detailed scrutiny of the current
organization, it's funding and official backing, is very much in order. Any
law-writing/enforcement organization needs continual monitoring of who and
what controls it; sources of funding are the primary means of such monitoring.

The organization is either a joke, or an extreme danger to all of us due to
the nature of the current "executive director" (who regards "people like me"
as beneath his notice, and responds to queries about funding with vitriol and
paranoia). If someone knows how to go about forcing this information out of
the USF, I'd appreciate it.

USF members, if you don't have the above information, think twice about
allowing your name to be used in public postings. You might also ask your
employers if they mind their name being used in these postings (without
disclaimers, take note). And I'd appreciate it if you send me any of the
information I've asked for, that you have. Your director won't.
--
         Tarl Neustaedter    [e-mail]
         Marlboro, Mass.    Stratus Computer
Disclaimer: My employer is not responsible for my opinions.

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

Date: 14 Jun 91 18:11:03 GMT
From: ssc-vax!bcsaic!hsvaic![e-mail]  (Dani Eder)
Subject: Re: A Space Science letter

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Stephen Walton) writes:
>
>1) It is incorrect to conclude that funding frozen at last year's levels would
>not severely hurt these programs. The funding profile of any space flight
>project is not flat -- instead it grows sharply in the early years, and then
>decreases as hardware problems have been solved and the project moves toward
>launch and mission operations. CRAF/Cassini, AXAF, and EOS all required large
>increases in FY '92, and the House action would deny these increases. The
>situation is particularly severe for CRAF and Cassini, both of which have
>perishable launch windows.
>

Hopefully the committees involved are intelligent enough to understand
that planetary exploration missions rise and fall in funding through
their development cycles, and the intent of the amendment is to freeze
the overall planetary exploration budget at last year's level.

If the committees are too dumb to understand this, we need to educate
them fast, since projects winding down, like Mars Observer, will get
unneeded windfalls, while those ramping up will be stalled.

Dani Eder

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

Date: 17 Jun 91 23:51:58 GMT
From: sequent!muncher.sequent.com![e-mail]
Subject: IGY and the dawn of the Space Age

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Suzanne Traub-Metlay) writes:

>Actually, the "space race" began even earlier --

Perhaps some folks missed the point.

Prior to 1958, over 90% of the government money spent on rocketry was
for automated weapons, particularly IRBM's and ICBM's.  Less than 10% was
spent on rockets for space exploration and their payloads (there
was a low-key suborbital research program after 1949).  This 10% included
Explorer, Sputnik and other IGY satellites themselves; they were done on a
shoestring as a result of efforts by scientists and space explorers
much like those in today's AGU.  Among these was one of the greatest
space explorers of them all, James Van Allen, who discovered and studied
the Van Allen radiation belts around the Earth and several other planets,
among other unprecedented accomplishments.

Due to Sputnik there was a large scare, resulting in a status race
to see who could launch the largest payloads the farthest.  The U.S.
launched nearly 2 dozen automated satellites before launching John Glenn
into orbit in 1961.  At this point, the bulk of NASA funding was for these
automated programs.  As the decade progresed these used technology
developed for Earth-orbit automated exploration to venture deeper into
space, resulting in automated planetary exploration (eg Mariners,
Veneras, Pioneers, etc.)  Robots looked at Venus, Mars, and Mercury before
astronauts circled the Moon, and at a fraction of the cost.  The first
self-sufficient space industry, satellite communications, was started
at this time.  The first company to build a GEO satcom, Hughes, did so over
the objections of NASA planners, who were trying to force the industry to
go towards a fleet of satellites in LEO.   This would have eliminated
the small-scale users with simple antennae that provide the bulk of the
current market's revenues.   Fortuneately, the people with their own
money invested at Hughes and Comsat ignored the NASA planners and put
the satellites in GEO.  Through most of the 1960's, about the same (large)
amount of money was spent on civilian space and military long-range
missiles and space efforts, due to the IGY satellite scare.

As the decade progressed, more money was funnelled into Apollo.  This
was the first "slaughter of the innocents", as the Mariner and Pioneer
programs were cut back, and Grand Tour cancelled.  As Gemini started flying
and Apollo was reaching flight readiness the U.S. public started turning
against what they perceived as wasteful astronaut programs.  After 1965
NASA funding started to decrease.  After the first Moon flights in 1968
and 1969 the funding decreased sharply.  The largest manned program of
them all proved to be a severe drag on NASA's efforts to obtain funding.
Worse, as described the NASA leadership focused its efforts on Apollo by
cancelling automated solar system exploration projects.  Meanwhile,
fortuneately, the DoD realized that space stations and astronauts were far
less useful than automated spy satellites, and cancelled the Manned
Orbiting Laboratory.

NASA also learned the lesson for a while -- in between the Apollo and
Shuttle funding peaks, the Viking and Voyager projects managed to
get funded.  Voyager was a cut-down Grand Tour.  The NASA leadership
officially told the Voyager crew not to go beyond Saturn.  Luckily,
they disobeyed.  On a shoestring, the capability to flexibly teleoperate
Voyager was designed in, so that the instructions for flying towards,
and doing exploration at, Uranus and Neptune could be uploaded and
executed at a later date.  The results of these missions, especially
Voyager, were dramatic and unprecedented.  They received overwhelming
support from the American public.  U.S. prestige was enhanced.  We remain
the only country that has ever explored the gas giant planets and their
moons.  We remain the only country that has sampled Mars, photographed
it in detailed color, and tracked its weather.

The two Voyager spacecraft cost less than a tenth of one Apollo flight.
But soon, the astronaut crowd was at it again.  To save NASA, the
convential wisdom went, it needed a "focus".  Despite the funding
drops in reaction to Apollo, it was decided that this would be yet
another astronaut program.  But they didn't stop at developing a new
launcher; they needed to force a monopoly.  The NASA leadership
caused severe damage by cancelling or attempting to cancel the existing
automated launchers.  Part of the strategy was making gross underestimates
of Shuttle costs.  It went from a $100/lb. promise in 1970 to the
$82,000/lb. it costs today.

Central planning won out over free competition.  As predicted by
RAND and others, NASA also cannibilized its own space exploration
efforts, cancelling a once-in-a-lifetime chance to explore Comet
Hally, and violating international agreements by cancelling the
U.S. half of the Solar-Polar mission.  Galileo and Hubble, among others,
ended up severely delayed, overpriced, and handicapped by being forced
onto the Shuttle.  All of this destruction to fund a centralized
launch industry to be dominated by astronauts.

Fortuneately, two events occured in the 1980's: the rise of the
European automated commercial launch service, and the Challenger
disaster.   For astronaut groupies, Challenger only turned heroes
into martyrs, and more money went into making the Shuttle "safe".
But the commercial and defense sectors reacted quickly and decisively.
The Reagan Administration revived the U.S. automated launcher business
by divorcing it from NASA; putting it in the private sector.  The DoD
started developing the automated Titan IV to launch Shuttle-sized and
smaller payloads without the overhead of astronauts.  Despite
problems with NASA, the DoD's automated infrastructure was quite effective
during this period, motivating large increases to the DoD space budget,
including the ambitious SDI program to develop automated missiles and
spacecraft to shoot down ICBM's.  This infrastructure proved to be
useful in several campains from Panama to Desert Storm.  Perhaps
most importantly of all, it was decisive to the START treaties to
lower the numbers of nuclear weapons.   Real space infrastructure was
helping humans on Earth, and during this period the DoD space
budget grew from a fraction of NASA's to twice NASA's.

The myth that astronaut programs are needed to motivate NASA funding,
and the resulting destruction caused to space science, continues to
this day.  The latest example is the crippling of CRAF, Cassinni, and
other projects to fund the latest astronaut toy, Space Station "Freedom".
Only when the U.S. space program sheds its political misconceptions
and starts focusing on productive programs will we be able to move
beyond the current dismal state of the public civilian program.
Until we wake up to the political and economic reality of the 1990's,
space science and exploration will struggle near death.



--
Nick Szabo            [e-mail]
Embrace Change...  Keep the Values...  Hold Dear the Laughter...
These views are my own, and do not represent any organization.

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End of SPACE Digest V13 #757
*******************