Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/mac/TEXT/SPACEDIG/V15_2/V15NO240.TXT

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Date: Thu, 24 Sep 92 05:00:12
From: Space Digest maintainer <[e-mail]>
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Subject: Space Digest V15 #240
To: Space Digest Readers
Precedence: bulk


Space Digest                Thu, 24 Sep 92       Volume 15 : Issue 240

Today's Topics:
                                <None>
                             ? about SETI
    Atlas E and F questions ( Actually Pershing missile) (2 msgs)
                       Drop nuc waste into sun
                     Ion drive pollution (2 msgs)
  Luna 2010 (was Re: Space Platforms (political, not physical : -))
                     NASA working on Apollo rerun
                       overpopulation (3 msgs)
                PLANETLIKE OBJECT SPOTTED BEYOND PLUTO
                    Pluto/direct: what to name it?
                            SETI question
                     space news from Aug 17 AW&ST
  Using Electric Rockets for Science (was Re: Ion for Pluto Direct)
                    what use is Freedom? (2 msgs)

    Welcome to the Space Digest!!  Please send your messages to
    "[e-mail]", and (un)subscription requests of the form
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----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 22 Sep 92 19:30:03 GMT
From: Alex Howerton <[e-mail]>
Subject: <None>
Newsgroups: sci.space

>>         **  Town Meetings -- NASA will share its vision, mission and values
>> with the American people during a series of town meetings, scheduled to
>> begin in November, as well as allow prime contractors, small and
>> disadvantaged businesses and the university community to express their
>> views.  Planned locations include Hartford, Raleigh-Durham, Tampa,
>> Indianapolis, Los Angeles, and Seattle.
Does anyone know the dates of these? Especially the ones in Seattle?

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

Date: 23 Sep 92 04:10:00 GMT
From: James Brognano <[e-mail]>
Subject: ? about SETI
Newsgroups: sci.space

    A friend and I were discussing SETI the other day and we both were
wondering if there has ever been any non random radio signals from space
that could not be attributed to the background radio static of space.
This obviously excludes any manmade object sent into space for those who
would respond with a sense of humour.

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

Date: 22 Sep 92 20:23:25 GMT
From: Josh 'K' Hopkins <[e-mail]>
Subject: Atlas E and F questions ( Actually Pershing missile)
Newsgroups: sci.space

[e-mail] (Pat) writes:
>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Henry Spencer) writes:
>>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:
>>>Some references like Isakowitz, identify both Atlas E and F as
>>>typical 1.5 stage Atlas configurations, that may be coupled with
>>>a variety of second stages...
>>
>>This is correct.  Atlas C through F were *ICBMs*, not space launchers,
>>with the standard Atlas 1.5-stage configuration and no upper stages of
>>any kind.  When retired from strategic-missile duty, a lot of them were
>>used as space launchers, with a wide variety of upper stages.

>That makes me wonder.  when the US started retiring all those old
>Titan II's and Pershing missiles, were any considerations
>made to try using them for science?

>I know INF specifically allowed destruction of vehicles by firing
>into remote territory,  could the pershing's have been used
>for sub-orbital sounding flights or maybe LEO lightweight packages?

I don't know about the Pershings, but Titan IIs are being used as launch
vehicles.  There are a couple of variations being considered.  As far as I
know the only type that's been launched is the basic missile configuration
with improved avionics and a payload fairing.  There is also a design for a
version with solid strap ons and one that would use two additional first
stages as liquid strap ons.  These all have quite respectable payloads.
There were 55 available in storage, of which 14 have been committed to
refurbishment and launch.  Most ICBMs on both sides are potentially usefull
for as space launch vehicles.  However, the current market suppliers are
justafiably worried about thousands of small launchers being dumped on the
market.
--
Josh Hopkins                 Of course I'm a solipsist - Isn't everybody?
[e-mail]

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

Date: 22 Sep 92 22:36:42 GMT
From: Henry Spencer <[e-mail]>
Subject: Atlas E and F questions ( Actually Pershing missile)
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Pat) writes:
>That makes me wonder.  when the US started retiring all those old
>Titan II's and Pershing missiles, were any considerations
>made to try using them for science?

The Titan IIs are in storage, earmarked for refurbishing as (military)
launchers.  I believe the combination of treaty limits on methods of
disposal and treaty deadlines made it impractical to do much with the
Pershing 2s, which were in any case a bit small for use as launchers.
--
There is nothing wrong with making      | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
mistakes, but... make *new* ones. -D.Sim|  [e-mail]  utzoo!henry

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

Date: 22 Sep 92 23:04:14 GMT
From: Michael Robert Williams <[e-mail]>
Subject: Drop nuc waste into sun
Newsgroups: sci.space

I have been following thw3is conversation thread for quite a while now,
and I would like to add a bit by Larry Niven.

He suggested the following solution to the nuclear waste problem; make
money out of it! This would solve a lot of societal problems, such as
circulation speed of money (it would literally burn a hole in your pocket),
pickpockets (they'd need lead-lined gloves-- not very conducive to their
proffession), eliminate counterfieting (who in his right mind would set
up a reactor in his basement to make bogus money?), seriously curb political
corruption (politicians would have to take bribes by credit card), and
foreign aid could be delivered by ICBM.

It's something to think about.

     -Mike Williams
     [e-mail]

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

Date: 22 Sep 92 22:16:01 GMT
From: Mark Schlegel <[e-mail]>
Subject: Ion drive pollution
Newsgroups: sci.space

[e-mail] ("Phil G. Fraering") writes:

>\Is there a chance that the ion drive might pollute the environment that some
>/scientific instrument on the probe is trying to measure?  Like an instrument
>\measuring concentrations of natural ions in the area around some planet's
>/magnetic field? Sure, turn it off before you measure, but how long does it
>\take for the pollution to clear?

>Phil Fraering [e-mail] where the x is a number from 1-5.

I don't think this this would be as big of a worry as the pollution caused by
the local pollution of the neighborhood of the shuttle by its hydrazine
thrusters.  The ion exhaust is very fast and highly collumated (the ions
roughly flow in one direction) if the random thermal velocity of the ions
is much less than the flow velocity due to being accelerated by the
electric field in the ion motor (this should be a good requirement since
the thermal velocity Vth = sqrt(3kT/m) and the exhaust velocity
Vex = sqrt(2Ve/m), where e = the charge on the ion, V is the voltage
drop in the motor and m = ion mass).

The ions would tend to flow helical trajectories about the local magnetic
fields but they would not stay near the vehicle like the plume from a
thruster.

Mark
[e-mail]

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

Date: 22 Sep 92 23:25:08 GMT
From: Henry Spencer <[e-mail]>
Subject: Ion drive pollution
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <schlegel.717200161@cwis> [e-mail] (Mark Schlegel) writes:
>I don't think this this would be as big of a worry as the pollution caused by
>the local pollution of the neighborhood of the shuttle by its hydrazine
>thrusters.  The ion exhaust is very fast and highly collumated...

Actually, the same is true of thruster exhaust.  It doesn't just puff out
at random; rocket nozzles are carefully designed to convert random thermal
velocities to well-collimated jet velocities of several km/s.  The trouble
with both ion rockets and hydrazine thrusters is that not *all* of the
exhaust comes out as part of the main jet.  In an ion rocket, there's
typically some leakage of uncharged (thus unaccelerated) fuel.  In a more
conventional rocket, there's a low-velocity boundary layer at the rim
of the nozzle.  Good design minimizes these effects, but there's no way
to eliminate them.
--
There is nothing wrong with making      | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
mistakes, but... make *new* ones. -D.Sim|  [e-mail]  utzoo!henry

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

Date: 23 Sep 92 04:06:36 GMT
From: Brian Yamauchi <[e-mail]>
Subject: Luna 2010 (was Re: Space Platforms (political, not physical : -))
Newsgroups: sci.space,talk.politics.space,alt.war

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Bertil Jonell) writes:
>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:
>>In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Bertil Jonell) writes:
>>> In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Nick Szabo) writes:
>>>>* Privatize the radio spectrum and orbital slots, and disavow all
>>>>  treaties (Sea, Moon, Antartica, etc.) that prohibit private
>>>>  property and enterprise in frontier areas.
>>>

>  Since the status of the moon and other bodies are determined in various
>international agreements (Ok, it sounds like the pope dividing up America,
>but the agreements exist) viritually all the worlds nations would see a big
>free lunch hovering before their eyes: Since the agreements say that
>'humanity as a whole' or somesuch owns the moon (and probably the rest too),
>I can imagine a nation arguing that they should get a piece of the profit
>regardless of if they had invested in it or not.
>  Nations with high population will argue that they should get a share
>according to population, small nations will argue that it should be divided
>equally. All of them would argue that if the corporation didn't pay up, they'd
>start exercising the prerogatives of a nation (ie violence) on them.

>  "We, the following nations, have decided that, in accordance with agreements
>so-and-so, corporation X's lunar mining operation, wherever on the moon it
>might be located, is a case of squatting and theft, and we have contracted
>upon corporation Y [that also have a space capability] to evict them by any
>means necessary. In return for this corpration Y get a concession from us to
>run the mine and get to keep 50% of the profit."

But that's largely irrelevant if corporation X is American...
Overwhelming military superiority has its advantages :-).

Economic sanctions might be more of a problem, but if the G7 nations
(or for that matter, the U.S., Japan, and Germany) can agree on a plan
for the commercial development of space, the other nations won't be
able to do anything to stop it.  (The CIS is too dependent on Western
aid, and the PRC doesn't look like it's ready to start WWIII.)

An editorial in a recent issue of Ad Astra proposed an even more
radical option called Luna 2010.  The U.S. would claim the northern
hemisphere of the moon as an American territory, establish a permanent
base, grant 100 square miles of territory to any U.S. Citizen who can
survive on "U.S. Lunar Territory" for six months, and develop the area
with the goal of eventually establishing the territory as the 51st
state of the U.S.  (The southern hemisphere would be left for the rest
of the world to split up. :-)

Of course, it will never happen (at least not by 2010), but imagine
the fun if it did...  Could the resulting diplomatic firestorm trigger
a land rush on Luna -- who knows?
--
_______________________________________________________________________________

Brian Yamauchi            Case Western Reserve University
[e-mail]    Department of Computer Engineering and Science
_______________________________________________________________________________

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

Date: 22 Sep 92 23:38:25 GMT
From: "Edward V. Wright" <[e-mail]>
Subject: NASA working on Apollo rerun
Newsgroups: sci.space

In <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Nick Szabo) writes:

>You blame Apollo's ending on "politicians", but the commercial people you
>expect to take over didn't spend one fat dime of their own money
>trying to turn it into a commercial operation!

They didn't put in one dime because the politicians wouldn't
let them.  There was a serious attempt to raise money for
a short-term lunar base using Apollo hardware (Project Harvest
Moon), but it fell through because NASA had already decided
it wanted to do Skylab instead.  Why don't you read a little
history instead of just spouting nonsense off the top of your
head?


>You imbue great powers of wisdom and economic efficiency onto
>private enterprise; last year you claimed that it could build
>a lunar base ten times as large as NASA's for 1% of the price.



>(But of course, commerce can't reduce the cost of automated missions
>very much at all, or it would spoil Ed's plan of how it all has
>to happen, Just So.   Meanwhile, in the real world the cost of
>a comsat circuit has dropped an order of magnitude in a decade,
>while the cost of a space station has increased).

The cost of Space Station Freedom has increased because Freedom
was designed to spend money.  Its purpose is to keep NASA offices
open and NASA employees employed.  It is designed to the same
ridiculous standards as your strawman lunar base.  Yes, the cost
of a comsat circuit has dropped by an order of magnitude, but
the cost of AI software has not dropped at all.



>I never pretended automation was easy. I have said it is the most
>important technology we need to work on to industrialize space
>and make it so _we_ can afford to go there, not just a few astronauts
>spending $100's of millions each.  And not "robots" either, but
>automation for the simpler, hi-thruput extraction processes, such
>as Zubrin's design for manufacturing propellant from the Martian
>atmosphere, or mine for extracting it from Jupiter-family comet ice.

Nick, setting up a mine on a Jupiter-family comet -- any comet --
is only simple to someone as blissfully ignorant of real-world
engineering constraints as you are.  "Simple" automation?  Hardly!
You may have stopped calling them robots, as you did a few months
ago when you were peddling a scheme to send fully-automated mining
ships to the Earth-approaching asteroids, but you're still talking
something that is in the realm of science fiction.  You have no
idea of how many fundamental breakthroughs in AI would be required
to make what you are proposing feasible, let alone "simple."  To
run your manufacturing and mining plans, you need Commander Data,
and, like it or not, you just can't build him, either for $2.79
or $200,000,000,002.79.  Yet, because you've seen neat color
pictures of robots doing simple welding tasks in auto factories
or laying telephone cables, you think he's off-the-shelf equipment.


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

Date: 22 Sep 92 23:26:51 GMT
From: "Edward V. Wright" <[e-mail]>
Subject: overpopulation
Newsgroups: sci.space

In <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Nick Szabo) writes:


>For those of us interested in the prospect of civilization's expansion
>into space, this is an especially serious problem.  The concept of
>expanding space colonies, or a growing population on a terraformed Mars,
>is in jeopardy if, as demographics indicate, a technologically
>sophisticated population with perfect birth control would have
>birth rate of less than 1.0 per couple per lifetime, or a population
>decline of 50%/generation.

At least three things could change this.  The people who wanted
to move to the colony might tend to be people who wanted to have
larger families.  The colony developers might offer special
incentives to attract people who wanted larger families or
encourage people to have larger families than they otherwise
would.  Or a major breakthrough might occur in life-extension
research, increasing the number of child-bearing years in a
couple's lifetime.


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

Date: 23 Sep 92 01:00:25 GMT
From: Steinn Sigurdsson <[e-mail]>
Subject: overpopulation
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Edward V. Wright) writes:


   In <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Nick Szabo) writes:

   >expanding space colonies, or a growing population on a terraformed Mars,
   >is in jeopardy if, as demographics indicate, a technologically
   >sophisticated population with perfect birth control would have
   >birth rate of less than 1.0 per couple per lifetime, or a population
   >decline of 50%/generation.

   At least three things could change this.  The people who wanted
   to move to the colony might tend to be people who wanted to have
   larger families.  The colony developers might offer special
   incentives to attract people who wanted larger families or
   encourage people to have larger families than they otherwise

The easiest way to nudge the demographics up again is to
provide good easy access child care and tax breaks or other
direct financial incentives. Or a radical social change,
although there might be some objections to, for example,
some drastic changes in women's social status...

|  Steinn Sigurdsson    |I saw two shooting stars last night        |
|  Lick Observatory    |I wished on them but they were only satellites    |
| [e-mail] |Is it wrong to wish on space hardware?        |
| "standard disclaimer"    |I wish, I wish, I wish you'd care - B.B. 1983    |

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

Date: 23 Sep 92 03:01:51 GMT
From: "Thomas H. Kunich" <[e-mail]>
Subject: overpopulation
Newsgroups: sci.space

>   >expanding space colonies, or a growing population on a terraformed Mars,
>   >is in jeopardy if, as demographics indicate, a technologically
>   >sophisticated population with perfect birth control would have
>   >birth rate of less than 1.0 per couple per lifetime, or a population
>   >decline of 50%/generation.
>
>   At least three things could change this.  The people who wanted
>   to move to the colony might tend to be people who wanted to have
>   larger families.  The colony developers might offer special
>   incentives to attract people who wanted larger families or
>   encourage people to have larger families than they otherwise
>
>The easiest way to nudge the demographics up again is to
>provide good easy access child care and tax breaks or other
>direct financial incentives. Or a radical social change,
>although there might be some objections to, for example,
>some drastic changes in women's social status...

Aren't you all missing the point that the growth of Earth's
population will level off somewhere around three times the present
population around the same time that cheap energy is getting scarce?
>

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

Date: 23 Sep 92 00:18:30 GMT
From: Dave Tholen <[e-mail]>
Subject: PLANETLIKE OBJECT SPOTTED BEYOND PLUTO
Newsgroups: sci.space

Phil G. Fraering writes:

> You can't get gravity assist from the smaller objects, and the planets
> prob. aren't in a conveinent position.
>
> You need to use....
>
> Ion drive!!!!!!!
>
> Gee! What a suprise!

Not a surprise coming from you.  At the risk of sounding anti-ion-drive, which
I am not, I challenge you to prove that you "need to" use ion drive.

Neither ion nor chemical will cause Pluto and 1992 QB1 to line up any time
soon.  You need two spacecraft going in different directions.

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

Date: Tue, 22 Sep 1992 20:35:09 GMT
From: Josh 'K' Hopkins <[e-mail]>
Subject: Pluto/direct: what to name it?
Newsgroups: sci.space

[e-mail] (Kevin W. Plaxco) writes:

>Tombaugh isn't dead.  Shouldn't that preclude the present naming
>technique?

>-Kevin

I know it's morbid and probably impolite, but Tombaugh may well be qualified
for the naming shortlist by the time the mission needs a name.  He's not
exactly young you know.  What about naming after Percival Lowell?  I suppose
the fact that he practically has the planet named after him and the fact that
he supported the Martian canals idea (I think) wouldn't make him the front
runner.

--
Josh Hopkins                 Of course I'm a solipsist - Isn't everybody?
[e-mail]

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

Date: 22 Sep 92 23:09:13 GMT
From: Kyrsten Swazey <[e-mail]>
Subject: SETI question
Newsgroups: sci.space

Perhaps this is not the place to post this, and if it is i apologize...
I am a second-year college student majoring in Anthropology and
Literature.  I have only recently "discovered" SETI and am dying with
curiosity about the subject.  First of all, i have heard that funding
for the project was cut within the past two weeks.  Is this simply a
nasty rumor or did something dreadful happen?  And second, is there any
way in which an anthropologist (or even an anthropologist-to-be) could
become involved in The Search...?!
Thanks in advance to anyone who responds!

-Kyrsten

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

Date: Wed, 23 Sep 1992 08:35:13 GMT
From: Ron Baalke <[e-mail]>
Subject: space news from Aug 17 AW&ST
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Henry Spencer) writes...
>Big articles on Mars Observer, now being readied for launch.
>This will be the first mission to use the solid-fuel TOS upper stage
>from Orbital Sciences.  MO management is somewhat unhappy about being
>the first customer for a new upper stage [they thought ACTS was going
>to use it first, but ACTS has been delayed] and has had some special
>reliability assessments done.

Mars Observer will be the guinea pig for the TOS upper stage.

>(The official target for
>entry into this mapping orbit is mid-Dec, but there is hope that if
>cruise-phase fuel consumption is low enough, it might be possible to
>do it several weeks earlier.)

It turns out that the Sept. 25 launch date gives a fairly large
propellant margin over the original Sept. 16 date, so more fuel will
be available.
     ___    _____     ___
    /_ /|  /____/ \  /_ /|     Ron Baalke         | [e-mail]
    | | | |  __ \ /| | | |     Jet Propulsion Lab |
 ___| | | | |__) |/  | | |__   M/S 525-3684 Telos | Quiet people aren't the
/___| | | |  ___/    | |/__ /| Pasadena, CA 91109 | only ones who don't say
|_____|/  |_|/       |_____|/                     | much.

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

Date: Wed, 23 Sep 92 13:01:09 BST
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Using Electric Rockets for Science (was Re: Ion for Pluto Direct)

> >    The way we do things now is the worst of both worlds: let science be science

> >    and engineering be engineering.
> >

>

> In reality everybody would scream about the lack of scientific
> justification for such a mission, and that they should do X, Y and Z
> while they're out there or we won't support the funding proposal,
> and then complain that the mission profile is risking the incredibly
> valuable scientific goals X,Y,Z and why not do it using old
> and tried technology, and then complain that it was either over budget and
> overweight and Z(no X) should be cut, or the mission fails and
> the critical science objective "W" was lost and clearly NASA are
> just a bunch of Incompetent Idiot Bureacrats (TM).
>


That's what I said wasn't it? I'm suggesting there is a better way of doing things.
I don't claim to have any confidence that the current system is CAPABLE of change
however. Your statements are undoubtedly, and sadly, correct.

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

Date: 22 Sep 92 22:19:22 GMT
From: Tom Nugent <[e-mail]>
Subject: what use is Freedom?
Newsgroups: sci.space

[e-mail] (USRNAME) writes:

>Space Station Freedom, What use is it?

>"What's wrong with this picture?" Who will use the space
>station when it is ready? The types of science mostly talked
>about are life science and microgravity. Microgravity is
>somewhat incompatible with people being on board and
>jostling the station. Are there plans now to have a module
>floating free from the main station for that?

Actually, reports within the last year indicate that Freedom will be able
to achieve true microgravity levels with people on board.  Hence they
can do all that great micrograv research.  If you want the reference, let
me know, and I'll try to find it.


--
Tom Nugent    voice:[phone]    e-mail:[e-mail]
"To be average scares the hell out of me." -- Anonymous

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

Date: 23 Sep 92 00:37:00 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: what use is Freedom?
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (USRNAME) writes...
>Sept 18,1992
>
>Space Station Freedom, What use is it?
>
>According to a reliable source, at a space station
>utilization meeting of 1500 people earlier in the year, only
>15  of the people in attendance considered
>themselves to be space station users, as opposed to
>contractors, NASA engineers, etc. The question comes to mind
>"What's wrong with this picture?" Who will use the space
>station when it is ready? The types of science mostly talked
>about are life science and microgravity. Microgravity is
>somewhat incompatible with people being on board and
>jostling the station. Are there plans now to have a module
>floating free from the main station for that?
>
Hi there Gay, this is Dennis at UAH.  I would love to know who your
reliable source is.  That is not the impression that I got from the
conference.  By the way it was held here in Huntsville. There are several dozen
users of SSF.  Many of those users are users that are already flying
experiments on other platforms such as CONSORT, SpaceHab, SpaceLab, COMET,
MIR and the Shuttle mid deck lockers.  I do not have the time to publish
a comprehensive list but gimme a few days and I will see what I can do.  Here
are some of the users that I currently know off of the top of my head.

Battelle Institute (Crystal Growth Studies)

Teledyne Brown (Metals Sintering and High oxide metals studies. Note this is
                with Teledyne money not NASA money)

The Consortium for Materials Development in Space at UAH (supports many
efforts with internal money such as superconductivity experiments, Got a
lot of good data on STS 46 too.

Penn State University (I don't know what, but they fly with us too)

McDonnell Douglas Space Systems (Electro Plating experiments, funded with
MacDac IR & D money not NASA money)

Master Builders (I ain't telling why they are doing it)

I did not attend the conference because I am trying to get a satellite in the
air as soon as possible, but I will get a hold of the abstracts and publish a
list of users.

One problem station has had in the microgravity users community is that the
office up in Reston and HQ have been painfully draggin their feet on
rounding up the people who are doing microgravity research and showing them
what the resources (volume, weight, Power, cooling, etc) that the users need
to know to design their experiments.  Almost all experimenters that I have
spoken with would like to have a couple of weeks or even a month to run
their experiments in the SSF environment but till this year SSF has been
basically undesigned from the standpoint of internal layout and resources.
This year will cure most of these uncertainties.  Direct upgrading of
SSF racks to accomodate Mid Deck Locker modules is underway to supplement
the Standard SSF racks that are being designed.  This will allow an upgrade
path to SSF for researchers to make incremental upgrades without spending
a lot of bucks to fly.
>What I am curious to find out is, who wants to use the space
>station Freedom and for what? There are probably scientists
>who want to do basic research, but perhaps there are also
>people in industry who have thought about using the ssF for
>applied research.
>
As to astronauts juggling a 750,000 pound station enough to disturb the station
experiments forget it.  Beyond simple inertia the experience that is being
gathered from the SpaceHab, SpaceLab, COMET and CONSORT missions is bringing
about new ways of dealing with the vibrations that are there as well as
bringing about a measure of reality to the specifications on microgee.  It
turns out that not only are the requirements as stringent as once thought, it
has been proven conclusively by my own accelerometer experiments that the
primary culprit to an experimenters microgravity level is the operation of
their own internal moving parts.  For example a camera shutter can generate
an impulse of 1 X 10-2 g!  Because of this many systems are being converted
to digital video.  Other primary causes of microgravity disturbances are
motors, moving blocks and other internal machinery.  Experiments are being
redesigned and those that violate the specifications are not permitted to
fly until they meet their own specifications.  (Note: It is wonderful for
engineers to show the scientist just how ignorant they have been in regards
to the microgravity levels that their own experiments produce)

Redesigning experiments to have vibrational isolation from the main structure
is also happening for those experiments that cannot meet the overall
microgravity requirements of SSF or CONSORT or any of the other platforms.


[Soapbox]

The microgravity science field will finally open up when SSF gets to orbit
because the prepatory work that is being carried out by the NASA scientist,
Contractors and CCDS's around the nation and world.  The problems are being or
have been solved.  What is necessary now is to GET IT UP THERE AND USE IT. Just
one discovery such as a higher temperature superconductor with more malleability
will pay for SSF by itself. Don't be too sure it won't happen either. :-)

>If anyone on the net has thoughts, please post or send to
>me. I'm putting together a short presentation for a
>technical society meeting on this subject. I especially want
>to talk to people in industry who have an interest in using
>the space station Freedom for applied research.
>
>Tally ho, Freedom Bound.
>
>--- Gay
>
>ps. I'd appreciate it if you would cross post this to other nets
>if you are able to do so. Thanks.
>
>e-mail(Internet):  [e-mail]
>         (GEnie)   :  G.CANOUGH
>phone/fax= 607 785 6499    voice mail = 800 673 8265
>radio call sign:   KB2OXA
>
>'Snail Mail:
>ETM, Inc.
>PO Box 67
>Endicott, NY 13761

Dennis Wingo, University of Alabama in Huntsville

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End of Space Digest Volume 15 : Issue 240
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