Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/mac/TEXT/SPACEDIG/V13_7/V13_775.TXT

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Subject: SPACE Digest V13 #775

SPACE Digest                                     Volume 13 : Issue 775

Today's Topics:
         NASA Headline News for 06/20/91 (Forwarded)
      Re: Excavating (minig) gold in the space by NASA.
               Re: Launch failure today
               National Aerospace Plane
        Astronauts Memorial Foundation Information Kit
         Re:  HST vs Ground based telescopes
      Re: Excavating (minig) gold in the space by NASA.

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: 22 Jun 91 02:04:22 GMT
From: news.arc.nasa.gov![e-mail]  (Peter E. Yee)
Subject: NASA Headline News for 06/20/91 (Forwarded)


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

  Thursday, June 20, 1991       Audio Service: 202 / 755-1788

This is NASA Headline News for Thursday, June 20, 1991 . . .

Preparations for the next shuttle mission are nearing completion at
Kennedy Space Center as Atlantis was mated to its stack in the
Vehicle Assembly Building last night.  Routine state-of-health checks
are being performed today on Atlantis' payload, the Tracking and Data
Relay Satellite-E, in the payload changeout room out at launch pad 39-
A.  Rollout of Atlantis to the launch pad is expected to occur by
Monday, June 24.  The flight readiness review for Atlantis' STS-43
mission is set to occur at KSC on Thursday and Friday, July 11 and 12.
The mission is currently set for launch in late July.

Columbia, riding atop the 747 shuttle carrier aircraft, left Dryden
Flight Research Facility yesterday, laid over at Biggs Army Air
Field in El Paso, and left for Kelly Air Force Base, San Antonio, this
morning.  Once down at Kelly, the 747 crew will assess weather
conditions and either remain at Kelly, or head for one of three
enroute refueling stops:  Eglin AFB, Fla.; Columbus AFB, Miss.; or
Barksdale AFB, La.  Irrespective, Columbia is expected to arrive at
Kennedy's shuttle landing facility either tomorrow or Saturday.  Once
back home, Columbia will undergo post-mission processing to remove
the Spacelab module P which will then be separately processed in the
Operations and Checkout Building P and safing.  Columbia will then
be prepared for the flight back to California for refurbishment
and upgrading at Rockwell's Space Division Palmdale facility
sometime in August.

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

Goddard Space Flight Center yesterday selected TRW, Inc., Redondo
Beach, for negotiation of a contract to design, develop, assemble
and launch a Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer/Earth Probe
Spacecraft.  The contract also has an option for an additional
spacecraft.  The spacecraft will carry one ozone mapping instrument.
The total proposed cost for the project is $29.3 million with the basic
spacecraft cost estimated at $21.7,m and the additional spacecraft
estimated at $7.6  The only ozone mapping instrument currently on
orbit is on the aging Nimbus 7 spacecraft.  An additional TOMS
instrument is scheduled to be flown on the Soviet Meteor 3 spacecraft,
scheduled for launch this August.  Goddard had issued a contract last
July to develop and produce four TOMS instruments.  Two of them will
be used on the TRW spacecraft, one on the Meteor, and the other will
fly on the Advanced Earth Observing Satellite, a Japanese earth
science satellite which is also scheduled to carry the NASA
Scatterometer, and which is presently set for launch in the mid-90s.

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

The STS-39 crew visited President Bush at the White House
yesterday, played horseshoes with the President and were escorted by
Mrs. Bush on a private tour of the White House.

Jet Propulsion Laboratory project engineers report that Magellan and
its radar system are performing well and that all recent star
calibrations and momentum wheel desaturations have been successful.
The current weekly command sequence being executed by the
spacecraft calls for a continuing use of the high gain antenna dish as a
shield from the Sun for thermal control.  The mapping sequence is
presently covering the area south of 45 degrees latitude to Venus'
south pole.  Beginning next week, Magellan will shift again to the left-
looking radar mapping mode and will begin to cover those areas on the
planet which were missed during the superior conjunction earlier this
year.

JPL also reports that activities intended to restore the Ulysses
spacecraft to nominal following the loss of X-band telemetry
last week are proceeding on schedule.  The spacecraft is now in a
normal cruise mode and onboard thermal conditions have restabilized.
All of the science instruments have been turned back on, though the S-
band transmitter remains off until further analysis of the telemetry
loss.  The S-band is used for the radio science investigations and
consequently the Solar Corona Experiment is presently being
interrupted.  JPL has not identified a cause for the loss of
telemetry and ground controllers are continuing their observations of
Ulysses' spacecraft subsystems to determine the behavior of the
spacecraft's power supply and conditioning system.  Ulysses is
presently 378 million miles from Earth, making the round-trip
communications time between it and JPL nearly 67 minutes.

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

Marshall Space Flight Center reports they have initiated a
special education program designed to give teachers practical
experience in the world of space.  The center has hired 12 teachers
from their six-state area who will be working in Marshall laboratories
this summer.  The program not only prepares the teachers for their
classroom duties by giving them practical, hands-on experience, but
also provides graduate credit for their efforts.

Also, Marshall's LASER project van is the site of a workshop being
held this week through next week for middle school science teachers.
The program is being conducted cooperatively with Alabama A&M
University.

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.
indicates a program is transmitted live.

Wednesday, 6/26/91
         1:00 pm    STS-43 flight crew briefing, from JSC.

Thursday, 6/27/91
         9:00 am    STS-43 flight director mission briefing, from JSC.
    10:00 am        Tracking and Data Relay Satellite briefing, from JSC.
        11:00 am        Inertial Upper Stage briefing, from JSC.
        11:30 am        STS-43 SHARE payload experiment briefing, from JSC.
    12:00 pm        STS-43 BIMDA payload experiment briefing, from JSC.
    12:30 pm        STS-43 Protein Crystal Growth experiment briefing,
            from JSC.
         1:00 pm    Total Quality Management Colloquium,, from NASA HQ.

Friday, 6/28/91
         2:00 pm     TS-40 post mission flight crew briefing, from JSC.

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.

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

Date: 20 Jun 91 15:10:12 GMT
From: cis.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!samsung!rex!rouge![e-mail]  (Fraering Philip)
Subject: Re: Excavating (minig) gold in the space by NASA.

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Arto Wikla) writes:

\Remember what happened to the economy of Spain after
/they had found the gold of America!
\(There was a gold-inflation, which ruined the economy and finally
/was the end of super-power Spain.)

Actually, I've heard that the gold let Spain build a really big
Scandinavian-style welfare state, which was good for a while until
the gold ran out... Also, then how come Mexico's economy didn't
get better with all that deflation?

Phil Fraering
[e-mail]

P.S: What I really mean is, there are probably external factors
besides the gold in the decline of Spain's economy.

Phil

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

Date: 20 Jun 91 16:03:44 GMT
From: agate!usenet.ins.cwru.edu!magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sdd.hp.com!hp-col!hpldola!hp-lsd![e-mail]  (Paul Carroll)
Subject: Re: Launch failure today


Watching the Joust launch, it looked to me like the problems started
around the nozzle.  The rocket, of course, turned sideways and the
nosecone was torn off, which is what the newscaster focused on.
Does it look like a failure in the nozzle?  I tried to get some video
later in the day, but CNN only showed the rocket before and after the
failure, not during.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+    Paul Carroll            "I don't believe there is a single   +
+    HP Colorado Springs Division     man, woman, or child alive in       +
+    [e-mail]     America today that doesn't enjoy a  +
+                     lovely beverage!" - David Letterman +
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

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

Date: 19 Jun 91 13:01:25 GMT
From: van-bc!rsoft!mindlink![e-mail]  (Mark Gray)
Subject: National Aerospace Plane

I'd like to find out about the National Aerospace Plane.  Could you
give me a thumbnail sketch of where development now stands on it and
also tell me where I can turn for further information.  I'm just
generally interested.

As I don't read this message area on a regular basis, I'd be grateful
if you would reply directly to me and if appropriate I'll post a
message summarizing the results.  Thanks.

Regards

-- Mark Gray --
--
____________________________________________________________
Mark Gray                   InterNet:    [e-mail]
Vancouver B.C. Canada       Tel:         [phone]
                            Fax:         [phone]
____________________________________________________________

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

Date: 20 Jun 91 17:39:30 GMT
From: pa.dec.com!hollie.rdg.dec.com!decuk.uvo.dec.com!nntpd.lkg.dec.com!rburns.enet.dec.com![e-mail]  (Larry Klaes)
Subject: Astronauts Memorial Foundation Information Kit


        To receive an information package on the Astronauts Memorial:

        The Astronauts Memorial Foundation, Inc.
        2121 Camden Road
        Orlando, Florida 32803
           U.S.A.

        Telephone: [phone]
        FAX: [phone]

        The Astronauts Memorial
        Spaceport USA
        Kennedy Space Center (KSC), Florida 32899
        U.S.A.


         Larry Klaes     [e-mail]
                or  ...!decwrl!rburns.enet.dec.com!klaes
                or  [e-mail]
                or  [e-mail]

              "All the Universe, or nothing!" - H. G. Wells

         EJASA Editor, Astronomical Society of the Atlantic

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

Date: 20 Jun 91 03:32:59 GMT
From: wolves!deepthot![e-mail]  (Jay Denebeim)
Subject: Re:  HST vs Ground based telescopes

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (John A. Weeks III) writes:
>In <[e-mail]> [e-mail]:
>> [...] then its time to do something *serious* to NASA management. Like
>> breaking up the organisation and starting from scratch again.
>
>I have given this some thought.  I don't think that it will accomplish.
>The risk is in creating a number of smaller NASAites that act much the
>same way.  An additional risk is that congress might be tempted to kill
>some of them wholesale.  And each smaller NASA might duplicate the required
>organizational bearucrats.  Like the Bell System breakup, we might have
>fixed a few problems, but in the process, we created problems that we didn't
>even know we had.
>
>Is there really anything wrong with NASA that isn't wrong with almost every
>other US government agency?

Funny you should mention this, I too have been giving it some thought
lately.  I was in Florida last week.  Amoung other things I visited
KSC and Disney World, so I guess that's where this idea came from.

KSC is very depressing to me, my SO (who is a big space advocate) says
she'll never go there with me again.  I always see lost potential, and
I think about where we should be by now as opposed to where we are.

Disney on the other hand is very impressive.  It too does not live
up to its potential IMHO, however what they set out to do they do quite
well.  Its very efficient, and the technology blends in seemlessly in
the places its not supposed to show.

It struck me that we would be better off hiring Disney to run the
space program.  I say this with 1/2 :-), but think about it.

--

 |_o_o|\\
 |. o.| || The           Jay Denebeim
 | .  | ||  Software
 | o  | ||   Distillery
 |    |//        Address: UUCP:     mcnc.org!deepthot.uucp!jay
 ======                   Internet: [e-mail]
                 BBS:(919)-460-7430      VOICE:(919)-460-6934

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

Date: 20 Jun 91 14:52:26 GMT
From: agate!usenet.ins.cwru.edu!magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!think.com!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!thunder.mcrcim.mcgill.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!clyde.concordia.ca!altitude!elevia!  (W.A.Simon)
Subject: Re: Excavating (minig) gold in the space by NASA.

In <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Peter Eichler) writes:
>In article <[e-mail]>, Sehari Babak writes:
>>In <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Cray Hardware Support) writes:
>>>In article <[e-mail]>
>>>[e-mail] (Luns Tee) writes:
>>>> [ ... ]
>>>>apparently contains 10000 tons of gold and 100000 tons of platinum, as well
>>>>as 10 billion tons of iron and 1 billion tons of nickel.  Its estimated
>>>>worth was put at around 1 trillion dollars.

    This kind of figures becomes meaningless.  Tell me how many
    Porsche's per household in the US this would amount to... |8-)

>>This might be one of the first real applications of Space technology. I say
>>NASA should issue stocks to built a space craft to go and bring that thing

    Why NASA?  Say I start this venture, privately, from Canada,
    with stock holder money ONLY.  Actually, I have little else
    to do these days, let me look at this...  I'll keep the net
    posted as I progress.  Ideas (e-mail) welcome.  Money?  It
    would be unethical at this point... but put it in a savings
    account!  I would like international participation.

>>down.  This could open up another very lucrative investment, a side from
>>satellites.  The technology we gain could help us mine other things in the
>>space too.  Then, boldly going were no man has gone before makes business
>>sense to.

    Asteroid mining was always recognized as the first tangible
    industrial benefit of space exploration.

    And we would have a great application for the Solar Power
    Satelite technology that we wisely turned down in another
    context.

>>I assume this could be possible if the price of gold goes much higher. Let us
>>forget about mars and concentrate on this, for now. After all, who needs cheap
>>marsian dart.

    Martian dirt?  Who knows, it may be superconducting at 200Kelvin.
    Or maybe it is great for psychedelic pottery...  or it contains
    enough energy per cubic centimeter to power a cruise ship for 10
    years!

    Don't knock it yet...

>Please explain to me how YOU would manage it to bring down an 11 billion tons
>asteroid to earth. THIS is impossible, since it will end in a catastrophy
>(whee, what an impact!!!).

    I have an idea: let's make this huge plastic net and stretch it
    between the moon and the sun.  Then...  Oh, sorry, wrong newsgroup.

    I would see some kind of preprocessing done in space (thank
    you SPS), and the ingots would be placed in a very high orbit
    around the earth, for pick up by a fleet of shuttles.  The
    irony of this is that the bottleneck today, would be shuttle
    technology; it is too costly, and ground maintenance and prep
    takes too long.  Carefully planned orbits could be devised
    for splash down of the ingots in a large body of water, away
    from populations and air routes...  a lot of planning.

>And the other way: To shoot up space guys for mining is MUCH too expensive.
>One launch of a shuttle costs several 10th millions of dollars and the cargo
>bay of it isn't able to hold enough gold to pay a) the launch and b) the
>mining and c) working in space. And please don't forget the mass of dollars
>to start this kind of application, just for invention, research, etc.

    First, I see no reason to man these operations.  We have
    the technology to make it remote sensing remote control,
    with a good dose of robotics.

    Second, yes, we need better and cheaper shuttle technology.
    In any cases.

    Third, there is very little research to be done.

>Well, the gold price must go *MUCH* *MUCH* higher until someone (well, no
>nation alone, just several nations together, e.g. USA+USSR+Europe) could
>affort starting such an operation.

    Think not of the gold, but of the platinum.

    I have a question on the economic level:  if we bring that
    much precious metal down to earth, it is not that precious
    anymore, is it?  The payoff of such a venture becomes a long
    drawn out process (the way diamonds are handled), or a fast
    exercise in diminushing returns.

>Peter
--
William "Alain" Simon
                                                   UUCP: [e-mail]

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

End of SPACE Digest V13 #775
*******************