Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/mac/TEXT/SPACEDIG/V13_7/V13_785.TXT

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Subject: SPACE Digest V13 #785

SPACE Digest                                     Volume 13 : Issue 785

Today's Topics:
          Ulysses status report 6/14 & 6/19
            USF International Space Agency
         July 11 Tuxpan Viper 3A Launch Info Request
        Re: 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
             [e-mail]

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Date: 23 Jun 91 00:03:26 GMT
From: cis.ohio-state.edu!pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!linac!mp.cs.niu.edu!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!rs6000.cmp.ilstu.edu![e-mail]  (Eric Behr)
Subject: Ulysses status report 6/14 & 6/19


                 ULYSSES SPECIAL MISSION STATUS
                          June 14, 1991

     The X-band telemetry link from the Ulysses spacecraft was
lost for approximately two hours on Friday, June 14, beginning at
7:58 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time.

     After loss of the downlink telemetry, the spacecraft went
into a safing mode, which automatically switched off all nine
science experiments.  The telemetry link was reestablished at
10:01 a.m. PDT.  No scientific data have been acquired since the
link was lost.

     The mission operations team plans to restablize the
spacecraft's thermal environment and begin turning the
spacecraft's science instruments back on early next week.

     Cause of the incident is being investigated.


                     ULYSSES MISSION STATUS
                          June 19, 1991

     Mission operations activities to restore the Ulysses
spacecraft to its normal operational configuration began
Saturday, June 15, following loss of the X-band telemetry link
Friday, June 14, for a two-hour interval.

     Ground controllers obtained an extra eight-hour pass Friday
evening to begin a sequence of commands to bring the spacecraft
out of the safing mode.  Round-trip light time is presently about
67 minutes.

     The spacecraft was successfully returned to nearly normal
operational and thermal conditions by Saturday, June 15, at which
time the first of the science instruments was switched back on.
All science experiments were back on and operational by Tuesday,
June 18.  The S-band transmitter, used for radio science
experiments, remains off until further analysis of the incident
is completed.  Shutdown of the S-band link has temporarily
interrupted the Solar Corona Experiment, designed to measure the
electron content of the sun's outer atmosphere.

     Cause of the incident remains unknown.  Following complete
return to normal operations of all experiments later this week,
ground controllers will monitor spacecraft subsystems to assess
the behavior of the Ulysses power system.

     Today Ulysses is approximately 609 million kilometers (378
million miles) from Earth, traveling at a heliocentric velocity
of about 72,000 kilometers per hour (46,000 miles per hour).

--
Eric Behr, Illinois State University, Mathematics Department
Internet: [e-mail]    Bitnet: ebehr@ilstu

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

Date: Sat, 22 Jun 1991 18:01 EDT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: USF International Space Agency
X-Envelope-To: [e-mail]

Path: vax5.cit.cornell.edu!usf
From: [e-mail]
Newsgroups: sci.space
Subject: USF Reply from Rick R. Dobson ( Founder)
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 20 Jun 91 16:44:12 EDT
Distribution: sci
Organization: CIT, Cornell University
Lines: 70

1)  The USF as a Single entity would not create or inforce space law as
a certian determined group of demogoges have suggested.  The USF would
be set up very simular to how ESA is set up and would consist of three
organizational bodies.

         A)  A planning body which would plan, propose, and create
             potential international space projects which would be
             undertaken by this International Space Agency and
             would consist of the the Scientific Community, the
             Industrial Community, the Acedemic Community.  When
             projects are aproved to be undertaken by this agency
             the membership of this body will be involved in the
             undertaking of these projects.

         B)  A governing or regulatory body which would review
             proposed projects submitted by the planning body to
             be debated and either approved or disaproved.  This
             body would consist of the national representitives
             of Nations involved in this agency and would be the
             only body of the USF with reglatory powers, appointed
             representitives of the National Space Programs which
             would act as a advisory committee to the National Delegates
             , apointed legal specaliasts from around the world to
             serve as an advisory committee to the national delegates
             , and lastly the Secretary General of the U.N. would
             have a honorary position in this body.

         C)  A adminastrative body which sole purpose will be to
             undertake and manage this international projects only
             after they have been approved by the reglatory body
             and worked out by the planning body.  This adminastrative
             body will be the core of the USF as and you can clearly
             see does not create or inforce space law as the demogoges
             have attempted to misslead people to believe!


2)  The USF is now small but is growing very rapidly!  The USF is a Not-
For-Profit Corporation which sole purpose is to set up an International
Civil Space Agency by 1993 as outlined above!  Its not the sinister and
dark organization that these few determined demogoges have been attempting
to mislead people into believing!

3)  I am the Founder of the USF and have recieved untrue and trumped up
false allegations from these same few demogoges whose only purpose it
seems to be is to cause havic, confusion, and ill feelings towards the
USF and its efforts on the net!  I am not an acedemic and on top of that
I have a bad writing disibility which hampers me greatly, but I keep
on going as my intentions are sincere and the USF efforts are important!
I served 6yrs in the US Navy as a Aircraft Tech. and worked on some of
the most advanced aircraft in the world. I am 26 years old and a strong
supporter of space developement both maned and unmaned as I feel both
have there place and purpose in the over all developement of space.

4)  USF support groups are now starting all over the world and highly
skilled and educated people are now joining the USF effort!  I may be
the founder of the USF but I never said I was the best to lead this
effort or the best qualified!  But at least I got off my dead ass and
started something instead of just sitting around and yapping about it!

                                   Rick at USF/HQ/USA

P.S. I have a writing disibility and it is hard for me to make speedy
replies to these demogoges, so to all the people on the net who came
to my aid in countering these people and have offered open support on
the net for the USF I thank you and hope for your continued support.


An International Civil Space Agency By 1993 - An Idea Whose Time Has Come!

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

Date: 22 Jun 91 22:43:51 GMT
From: cis.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!swrinde!cs.utexas.edu!ut-emx![e-mail]  (Chris Johnson)
Subject: July 11 Tuxpan Viper 3A Launch Info Request

(Apologies if this has already been discussed, but...)

I noticed in the June 3 issue of Aviation Week that the Spaceport Florida
Authority is launching a Viper 3A sounding rocket from Tuxpan, Mexico on
July 11 to observe the solar eclipse.

Several friends and I are going to be driving down to Tuxpan to see the
eclipse and we were hoping we might also be able to watch the sounding rocket
launch (none of us have ever seen one).  If anyone can provide information on
this launch (exactly where it's taking place, whether visitors are allowed,
when it's happening, etc.), we'd certainly appreciate it.

Please reply via email (I have a tough time keeping up with the newsgroups).
I'll be happy to share whatever I learn with anyone else who's interested.

Thanks in advance for any information.

Chris (Johnson)

Internet:  [e-mail]
UUCP:      {husc6|uunet}!cs.utexas.edu!ut-emx!chrisj
BitNet:    [e-mail]

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

Date: 21 Jun 91 06:30:06 GMT
From: cis.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!swrinde!emory!wa4mei!ke4zv![e-mail]  (Gary Coffman)
Subject: Re: IGY and the dawn of the Space Age

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:
>
>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.

As usual you fail to note that Explorer was launched on a military rocket.
The designed by space explorers rockets kept exploding on the pad in the
full glare of international publicity. The military rocketry program
enabled space science to actually get instruments in space and is the
clear precursor of all space activity. Your deification of Van Allen's
interpretation of telemetry readings from a military rocket's payload
would be amusing if Van Allen weren't such a constant impediment to
real space exploitation.

>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

Again this is not correct. By 1961 the bulk of NASA's funding was going
into the research and development of the heavy launchers and capsules
for the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs. Operational funding was
less than 10% of NASA's budget. US payload capacity didn't equal Soviet
capacity until Saturn became operational. Giving payload designers their
due, this did spur the development of lightweight subminiature electronics
in the form of transistorized and integrated circuit 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

Again an incorrect interpretation. The communications technology of the
1960s required massive 64 foot dishes and cryogenic masers to utilize
geosync satellites. Today, Motorola is going back to the concept of
a constellation of low orbit communications satellites to allow the small,
light, and cheap ground terminals possible because of the lower link
budget required by a LEO satellite. The real reason why GEO satellites
were chosen is that the ground equipment was so expensive that only the
national telephone monopolies could afford the ground terminals and thus
were able to lock out effective competition. No one foresaw the revolution
in GASFET technology that would allow mere 10 foot dishes to be used with
GEO satellites in the 1990s.

>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,

Again an incorrect interpretation. As the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo
programs became operational, the R&D funding that had developed them
over the proceeding ten years was terminated since it's job was complete.
As is always the case, the R&D funding vastly overshadowed the operational
funding. Therefore NASA funding declined, not due to public opinion
turning against NASA, but because the job was done and the follow on
program, the Shuttle, had not yet started.

>fortuneately, the DoD realized that space stations and astronauts were far
>less useful than automated spy satellites, and cancelled the Manned
>Orbiting Laboratory.

DoD cancelled MOL for many reasons. DoD's budget was in actual decline
due to inflation, Johnson's guns and butter budgeting, and the costs
of the war in Vietnam. There was severe political infighting over who
would control manned space programs between the Huntsville Von Braun
gang and the Colorado jet jockeys. And the Shuttle, which was touted
as capable of meeting the military needs that would have been served
by MOL, was on the horizon.

>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.

Indeed Voyager was a renamed Grand Tour and it's funding had been ongoing
during the wind down of Apollo. Your intimate knowledge of American public
opinion does not jibe with what we in the media saw however. Space missions
of any sort have never been huge audience draws. In particular, glorified
box cameras in space drew hardly a yawn from our audience compared to the
dramatic first moon landing. The general retrenchment of the 70s by the
American public, disillusioned by war and protest, by riots and Great
Societies, by the shattering of Camelot, led to a turning inward and
a general lack of interest in anything that did not offer immediate
gratification. This attitude seems to still prevail among some space
science advocates with their strident crys for poor probes now instead
of the much bigger and better and cheaper probes that will be feasible
after the necessary infrastructure is in place. This inability to take
the long view bodes ill for space development with it's neccessarily
long time frames.

>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.

After the "space race" was won and Camelot's promise fulfilled, there
was little interest by the public or Congress to fund space missions
of any kind. Beset by budgetary pressures caused by the war in Vietnam
and the Great Society programs, Congress was unwilling to properly fund
a follow on program to Apollo. The result was a crippled Shuttle restrained
by lack of funding to a shadow of the system NASA originally proposed.
Even this shadow of what NASA proposed offers $2560 a pound operational
cost to orbit and not the grossly inflated $82,000 you claim. Total
payload cost to orbit is $16,000 a pound for pure satellite launches
that don't require crew intervention or retrieval. For flights requiring
crew intervention or retrieval, the entire orbiter must be considered
payload.

>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.

This is pure bull. There never was a hint of free competition. The
private sector saw nothing of high enough value and low enough risk
to waste it's own money on in space aside from the comsat business.
It still doesn't to a large extent.  Central planning didn't kill free
competition, there never was any to kill. A few snapshots of Halley
would have been fun, but hardly of more scientific value than a look
at any of the other comets that pass this way on a regular basis.
Galileo and Hubble were designed to use the heaviest lift vehicle
left in the NASA stable after the demise of Apollo's Saturn. Rather
than being forced onto Shuttle, there was no other booster capable
of lifting them left, they were designed to take advantage of Shuttle's
heavy lift capability. The real crime of this period was Congress's
failure to fund NASA's plans for continued lunar exploration and Congress's
scrapping of Saturn. This left NASA with nothing but an underfunded
Shuttle for heavy lift.

>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.

Yes, they are suing NASA for breach of contract after the President
ordered NASA to stop carrying manifested commerical payloads on the
Shuttle. The commercial sector has yet to recover from this loss of
heavy lift capability. Several large commercial satellites had to be
scrapped. NSA has gone nuts since it's huge spy satellites could only
be placed in orbit by the heavy lift capability of the Shuttle. Massive
crash funding to develop the trouble plagued Titan IV as an alternative
has been necessary.

>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.

DoD's SDI boondoggle has cost hundreds of billions with no missile
defense near deployment. No SDI technology was used in Panama or
during Desert Storm. The vaunted Patriot system had completed development
and entered production before SDI was announced. The KH12 that supplied
intelligence for Desert Storm was the last launched by the Shuttle.
No new military capabilities are in place due to SDI, and the lack of
regular launches once furnished by NASA left field commanders in the
Gulf with poor communications, one of the few shortcomings of the
operation. Indeed, amateur radio packet equipment was pressed into
service in the Gulf because no secure satellite communications system
was available. DoD's navigation satellite system is so far behind
schedule that commercial equipment had to be pressed into service
in the Gulf. Despite tons of money, the DoD space program is less
successful and less useful than NASA's programs. SDI is under strong
attack in Congress and by members of the space science community as
a total waste and duplication of effort.

>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.

Pure bunk. NASA's long term infrastructure plans are more valuable
than any one shot scientific probe. Failure to establish a thirty
year permanent presence in space and to develop follow on heavy
lift means that space science will remain chained to small one shot
probes riding antique little boosters into orbit at excessive cost.
Once they can hitchhike a ride to LEO on heavy lift going to Freedom,
scientific instruments will have regular and relatively inexpensive
access to space.

Gary

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End of SPACE Digest V13 #785
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