Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/mac/TEXT/SPACEDIG/V13_7/V13_765.TXT

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Subject: SPACE Digest V13 #765

SPACE Digest                                     Volume 13 : Issue 765

Today's Topics:
            Prediction Bulletins: Question
              Re: Fred's Operatic Death
               Re: Freedom Cost
              Re: anti-gravity?
               Probe(s) Status?
               Access to Space
               Re: NASA Budget
      Re: What is the Cheapest Import from Outer Space?
        Re: IGY and the dawn of the Space Age
        Re: IGY and the dawn of the Space Age
              Re: anti-gravity?

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: 18 Jun 91 18:11:45 GMT
From: cis.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!swrinde!cs.utexas.edu!cse!texas!csl.dl.nec.com![e-mail]  (Larry Baker)
Subject: Prediction Bulletins: Question

[e-mail] (TS Kelso) writes:
|> STS 40
|> 1 21399U 91 40  A 91163.12508770  .01258176  00000-0  24450-2 0   233
|> 2 21399  39.0061 289.6558 0008945  60.8652 299.6354 15.96805156  1040

Would some knowledgable internaut be so kind as to post a description
of what these numbers mean, and/or some references on where to learn
more about the math behind them?  Among other things, I would like to
write some graphical projections of orbital tracks.

--
Larry Baker
NEC America C&C Software Laboratories, Irving (near Dallas), TX
[e-mail]  cs.utexas.edu!necssd!baker

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

Date: 18 Jun 91 20:00:04 GMT
From: sequent!muncher.sequent.com![e-mail]
Subject: Re: Fred's Operatic Death

In article <rob.677270452@blacks> [e-mail] (Robbie) writes:

>I don't work for the IRS--I work for Dan Quayle.

We could end an otherwise horrid thread with this classic.  :-)


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

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

Date: 18 Jun 91 21:08:44 GMT
From: aio!ecfa![e-mail]  (Michael C. Matthews)
Subject: Re: Freedom Cost

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Brian Yamauchi) writes:
>
>But if the the shuttle launches are a separate ($54.4B) item here, and
>so are personnel costs ($25B), what does the $50B under Operations
>Cost pay for?
>

Contractor personnel, mostly.  The $25B only covers NASA employees.
Most of the people working on NASA programs are employed by the major
NASA contractor companies (Rockwell, McDonnell Douglas, Lockheed,
Grumman, Boeing, Martin Marietta, Northrop, TRW, IBM and dozens of
other computer companies, Link, Bendix, Krug, Mitre, etc., etc., etc.)
I'd guess there's at least a 2:1 ratio of contractor to NASA personnel.

This is, incidentally, something the Augustine Commission complained
about.  Civil service salary schedules make it impossible for NASA to
pay competitive salaries for engineers and scientists, so they all get
hired by contractors.  These companies put them to work on NASA
contracts doing the exact same thing they would have been doing if
they were NASA employees, only making a lot more.  Then the companies
charge NASA for all that salary plus benefits and overhead, plus a
profit.  So, NASA ends up paying $20-50K more per year per head than
they would have had to if they had been able to hire the engineers at
their contractor-paid salaries in the first place -- and those
engineers that NASA does get wind up spending an exasperating amount
of their time managing contracts.  Pretty depressing, isn't it?

About the only advantage for NASA that I can see in this scheme is
that they don't have to provide office space, etc. for all those
personnel, and they're a whole lot easier to get rid of than civil
servants when the budget crunch comes...

--
DISCLAIMER:  I probably don't know what I'm talking about.
             My perspective may be warped by working for a contractor.
--
Mike Matthews                   |        [e-mail]
Tethered Vehicle Analysis Group | (backup) -->  [e-mail]
Advanced Projects Section; Navigation, Control, and Aeronautics Department
Lockheed Engineering & Sciences Company,  Houston, Texas,   [phone]

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

Date: 19 Jun 91 01:55:00 GMT
From: aio!ecfa![e-mail]  (Michael C. Matthews)
Subject: Re: anti-gravity?

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Marvin Minsky) writes:
>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Brett Kottmann) writes:
>>
>>    A researcher in Scotland has developed a device that harnesses
>>gyroscopic energy to lift a device against gravity--antigravity...
>>
>>    In demonstrations, the apparatus lifts against gravity (it is balanced
>>beforehand with an equal weight via balance arm).
>
>Well, this is good for a contest.  Balances are easy because one can
>make the required lift arbitrarily small.  So you can use
>
>   a surreptitious airflow
>   how 'bout running current through an electromagnet fied along the
>balance arm.  this will produce torque in the earth's field.  (Called
>a "dipping needle".
>   simply putting a few KV of DC between the hardware and the balance
>is almot sure to deflect the beam one way or the other, unless the
>environment is symmetrical.

...and don't forget my favorite trick (frequency-domain control system
engineer that I am):

Weight your flywheel so that it is off-balance, and then spin it at
the appropriate rate to shake the balance at one of its resonant
frequencies-- hysteresis in the balance will cause it to show a constant
deflection of some value that depends on how hard you can shake it.

Never trust any mechanical force-measuring device with rotating machinery.

--
DISCLAIMER:  I frequently don't know what I'm talking about.
--
Mike Matthews                   |        [e-mail]
Tethered Vehicle Analysis Group | (backup) -->  [e-mail]
Advanced Projects Section; Navigation, Control, and Aeronautics Department
Lockheed Engineering & Sciences Company,  Houston, Texas,   [phone]

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

Date: 17 Jun 91 15:07:00 GMT
From: cis.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!mips!spool.mu.edu!munnari.oz.au!uniwa!fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au![e-mail]
Subject: Probe(s) Status?


What is the current status of all the `live' probes such as Magellan, Galileo,
as well as the Voyager probes?  Where are they?  Current mission status etc,
etc.

I'm sure people would like to know, myself included.

Malcolm Evans
Dept Computer Science
University Of Western Australia
Perth WA
Email: [e-mail] (or [e-mail])

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

Date: 17 Jun 91 15:28:49 GMT
From: cis.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!mips!spool.mu.edu!olivea!mintaka!ogicse!sequent!muncher.sequent.com![e-mail]
Subject: Access to Space

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

>trying to kill NASA and US access to space.

Astronaut access to space != US access to space.   Your astronaut
fetish is showing through.  In fact we have a thriving communications
industry which provides billions of people access to each
other via space.  We could also have a thriving space exploration
and science program if the greedy astronaut programs were not soaking
up the bulk of the funds.  The Europeans have quite substantial
access to space via Ariane and Giotto, et. al., with astronauts nowhere
in sight.

Also, I haven't heard of anybody trying to kill the Shuttle lately (except
Allen Sherzer).


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

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

Date: 17 Jun 91 17:27:13 GMT
From: mintaka!think.com!sdd.hp.com!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!unix.cis.pitt.edu![e-mail]  (Suzanne Traub-Metlay)
Subject: Re: NASA Budget

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Matthew DeLuca) writes:
>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:
>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>Sputnik and Explorer had their origins in the days after World War II, long
>before anyone thought about the IGY.  Read some of the RAND reports (well,
>read *about* them...some are still classified) from 1946, or the intelligence
>agency reports in the early 50's...the space race was under way the day
>V-2 rockets were captured from the Germans.
>
>>
>>

Actually, the "space race" began even earlier -- both the Soviets and the
Germans (governments, that is) kept a watchful and interested eye on the
doings of the amatuer rocket building clubs prevalent in their nations during
the 1930s. Sergei Korolev, the "Grand Designer" of the Soviet space program
during the 1950s and early 1960s, made a pilgrimage to the home of Konstantin
Tsiolkovsky in 1935, just before Tsiolkovsky's death, just to meet the father
of a space program both men considered already under way. The Tsar's science
advisors considered Tsiolkovsky a crackpot but Lenin recognized the
propaganda value of a "manifest destiny" program to spread socialism through
the cosmos and he made Tsiolkovsky a "hero" of the Soviet Union sometime in the
early 1920s. (This isn't as weird as it seems. Lenin at the time was desperate
to promote his electrification program throughout the Soviet Union. Comic
books and science fiction were popular among the very same youth he was trying
to interest in science and technology; their parents might not understand why
electricity was important in their village but students who wanted to be
socialist cosmonauts certainly would and these boys would be the scientists
and engineers Lenin needed to bring his new nation into the industrial
twentieth century.)
    Stalin felt the same way. While he couldn't care less about the
civilian applications of space technology, he understood the dramatic and
romantic appeal an exploratory space program had among the populace. By 1953,
he helped establish a Committee on Interplanetary Travel and enthusiastically
promoted Soviet participation in the 1957 IGY.


Suzanne Traub-Metlay
Dept. Geology & Planetary Science
University of Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh, PA 15260

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

Date: 18 Jun 91 00:27:21 GMT
From: hub.ucsb.edu!ucsbuxa![e-mail]  (Charles Frank Radley)
Subject: Re: What is the Cheapest Import from Outer Space?



You are the first person from llnl I have seen post here.
Do you have any news about Dr Wood's "Great Exploration" ?

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

Date: 18 Jun 91 00:08:33 GMT
From: stanford.edu!neon.Stanford.EDU!Neon![e-mail]  (John McCarthy)
Subject: Re: IGY and the dawn of the Space Age

There is a gap in Nick Szabo's account of the early space age.
The President's Scientific Advisory Committee, which recommended
the Explorer project, successfully recommended that Explorer use
hardware developed entirely separately from military hardware.
The explicit hope was that this would serve as an example of
separating civilian from military use of space and would influence
the Soviet Union to do likewise.  This had several consequences.

1. It didn't influence the Soviet Union in the slightest, since it was
based on a considerable misconception of what the Soviet Union was
like.

2. It required forbidding the von Braun group at Redstone from
launching a satellite based on the Jupiter IRBM rocket.
The von Braun group was ready much earlier.

3. It made the Explorer project one of minimal capability -
18 pounds - as compared to 200 and 2000 pounds for Sputniks
I and II.  I'm not sure the reason for this was entirely
budgetary; I suspect PSAC felt that any space activity would
be regarded as science fictionary and wanted to be modest to
preserve respectability.

4. The shoestring Explorer project experience long delays
and then failed spectacularly twice two months after Sputnik.

5. The von Braun group was given the go-ahead after Sputnik
and successfully launched a satellite before the first
successful Explorer launch.

6. Purity was abandoned completely after Sputnik.

In my opinion, the main reason for the decline in space funding
during and after Apollo was a major change in the American media
triggered by the Vietnam War.  The expectation of NASA and the
Kennedy Administration was that success with Apollo would
result in public enthusiasm for further manned exploration.
Von Braun published an article about an expedition to Mars.
I think they were right.

However, by the time of the first moon landing, the mood of the media
had completely changed.  For example, Life Magazine chose as their
main writer about the effort Norman Mailer.  He referred to himself as
Aquarius, sneered at the project and the astronauts and chose as
the butt of his ridicule a Redstone engineering manager named
George Mueller who had come from Germany with von Braun.

Recall that George McGovern said that if he were elected President in
1972 and if Apollo were launched in late December before he took
office, there wouldn't be any aircraft carriers to pick up the
astronauts after he took office.  I think it was a joke.
Fortunately, Nixon was re-elected.
--
John McCarthy


"The people of the antipodes, gazing at the moon when for us it is only
a small crescent, remark, 'What a splendid brightness!  It's nearly full
moon'" - Stendhal, Memoirs of an Egotist

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

Date: 18 Jun 91 15:57:02 GMT
From: [e-mail]  (David Smith)
Subject: Re: IGY and the dawn of the Space Age

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:
>2. It required forbidding the von Braun group at Redstone from
>launching a satellite based on the Jupiter IRBM rocket.
>The von Braun group was ready much earlier.

The von Braun group's launcher was based on the Redstone, despite the fact
that they called it Jupiter-C.


>3. It made the Explorer project one of minimal capability -
>18 pounds - as compared to 200 and 2000 pounds for Sputniks
>...
>4. The shoestring Explorer project experience long delays
>and then failed spectacularly twice two months after Sputnik.

You're thinking of Vanguard, not Explorer.


>5. The von Braun group was given the go-ahead after Sputnik
>and successfully launched a satellite before the first
>successful Explorer launch.

Their satellite *was* the first Explorer launch.

--
David R. Smith, HP Labs        | "There are two kinds of truth.
[e-mail]        | There are real truths,
[phone]            | and there are made-up truths."
                |   - Marion Barry (USN&WR 12/31/90 p18)

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

Date: 18 Jun 91 21:22:21 GMT
From: sdd.hp.com!caen!ais.org![e-mail]  (Tony Poole)
Subject: Re: anti-gravity?

[e-mail] (Brett Kottmann) writes:


>    A researcher in Scotland has developed a device that harnesses
>gyroscopic energy to lift a device against gravity--antigravity for all intents
>and purposes.

>    The inventor has built several machines with the following
>configuration:


>        [] - small engine to power flywheels
>              ------
>           |  |    - flywheels mounted so that their spin up-down
>           ----  - bottom of apparatus (central rod about which flywheels

>would rotate if allowed)

>    In demonstrations, the apparatus lifts against gravity (it is balanced
>beforehand with an equal weight via balance arm).

>    The inventor claims that the tendency for the flywheel arms to move
>outward (centrifigal force) is greater than the force trying to move the
>flywheels inward.
>    Thus the machine "pushes" against gravity.

Hmmmmm.......

Seems to me those same flywheels that "push" against gravity will work
with gravity at 180 degrees flywheel rotation.

Of course, if you had some sort of weight that were extended out at
a bigger radius on the downward rotation and retracted on the upward...
Nah...that's too easy.....

You sure maybe he not powering it with cold fusion from a dishpan?? :-)

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

End of SPACE Digest V13 #765
*******************