Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/mac/TEXT/SPACEDIG/V15_3/V15NO314.TXT

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Date: Wed, 14 Oct 92 05:02:32
From: Space Digest maintainer <[e-mail]>
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Subject: Space Digest V15 #314
To: Space Digest Readers
Precedence: bulk


Space Digest                Wed, 14 Oct 92       Volume 15 : Issue 314

Today's Topics:
               Bootstrap hardware for LunaBase (4 msgs)
                            Cosmic strings
                   Diesen sphere or Strungen Sphere
                          HRMS/SETI Answers
            It wasn't Amsterdam. (was Re: V-2 anniversary)
         Math programs with arbitrary precision for the Mac?
             South Africa tests Satellite launch vehicle
                              Space.gifs
            The Committee Staffer/Bureaucratic Conversion
                     UFO EVIDENCE VS. Carl Sagan
                     W. Schirra interview, copied
             WE ARE STILL HERE: THE 500 YEARS CELEBRATION

    Welcome to the Space Digest!!  Please send your messages to
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----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 13 Oct 92 21:21:49 GMT
From: "Edward V. Wright" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Bootstrap hardware for LunaBase
Newsgroups: sci.space

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

>You are also still completely missing the point that lower
>launch costs benefit every kind of space project, and do
>not change the comparison of lunar mining vs. alternatives.

Yes, provided you are absolutely pigheaded about ignoring
other costs.

The cost of building a black-box that costs $100,000 per
pound to fabricate does not go down when launch costs do.

When launch costs drop enough, it becomes more cost-effective
to use ten black boxes, each weighing ten times as much, but
costing less than $1000 per pound to fabricate.

And instead of throwing away expensive hardware everytime
it breaks down, it's more cost-effective to send the Maytag
man up there to fix up.

And when you've got a lot of equipment up there, meaning a
lot of equipment breaking down, it becomes more cost-effective
to keep the repairman there full time.

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

Date: 13 Oct 92 22:26:09 GMT
From: "Edward V. Wright" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Bootstrap hardware for LunaBase
Newsgroups: sci.space

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

>Please use reasonable accounting practice when you state things like
>this. Boeing and the 747 is a reasonable model of how to charge the
>R&D and manufacturing facilities against N units of a product over a
>long time period.

Boeing is not the only model for "reasonable accounting practices."
It is not uncommon in the software industry for a company to develop
a custom software package for a single client, charge the entire
development cost to that first client, then turn around and market
the package with minimal modifications to the world at large.

>BELIEVE ME. The second unit is NOT just the cost of bent metal.

Yes it is.  The cost he is talking is what economists call *marginal*
cost.  The cost you are talking about is called *average* cost.  Both
measurements are meaningful within particular contexts.

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

Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1992 21:32:14 GMT
From: "Edward V. Wright" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Bootstrap hardware for LunaBase
Newsgroups: sci.space

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

>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Henry Spencer) writes:

>More than enough money _where_?  The SEI budget is in the $10's
>of millions.  Commercial funding for moon ventures is zero.

And exactly how much is commercial funding for asteroid ventures,
Nick?

I'd really like to know.  Every time someone mentions a potential
project that is not backed by Nick Szabo Enterprises, you tell us
that it's already been rejected by private enterprise.  So, please
give us a list of Fortune 500 companies that have invested in you.

You tell us that private enterprise has always rejected manned space
missions, which are the "socialist road to space," and given its
blessing to unmanned space missions instead.  You use communications
satellites as your example.  So, please, tell us, how many fully-automated
mining missions has private enterprise financed, either in space or
on Earth?  How many communications satellites are capable of manipulating
the mass of even a small asteroid or repairing themselves on orbit?

Why is anyone who advocates a manned space program, even one that's
not run by the government, denounced as a socialist because you think
manned spaceflight is a socialist technology?  And how can you, then,
claim to be the great capitalist savior when you want to build a space
ship based on AI that came out of the same NASA labs?  (Or rather, that
is promised by the same NASA labs, has been promised for decades now,
but has still not advanced even to the prototype stage.)

And why do you wax poetic about how your asteroid-mining robots
will allow thousands or millions of people to live in wonderful
colonies in space, with robots serving their every need, when you
so strongly deny that man is ever cost-effective in space.  What
"mass delusion" will induce private enterprise to send large numbers
of people into space to do a job that you say robots can do better
and cheaper?

Is it because you can't stand the idea that the first *real* space
colonies will be founded by men and women living in grubby little
tin cans because there's a job to do, discovering new ways to live
and work and die, just as pioneers have always done, instead of
being the beautiful shining cities in space depicted by people
like Gerard O'Neill?


Oh, BTW, commercial funding for Moon ventures is about the same
as commercial funding for aviation ventures -- in 1902.

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

Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1992 21:58:56 GMT
From: "Edward V. Wright" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Bootstrap hardware for LunaBase
Newsgroups: sci.space

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

>Furthermore, your thesis (>volume => <cost) has several exceptions, including
>the last magical launch-cost reducer, STS.  The more they tried to increase
>STS's launch rate, the more things broke, until they finally went "boom"
>with Challenger.

Well, that's what happens when you're developing technology in the
real world, rather than the world of "I, Robot."  You push things
until they break.  Then you figure out why they broke, go back, and
fix them.  This is the same way every aircraft is developed.  Except
that no aircraft is declared operational after four test flights. It
takes hundreds of flights.  And not infrequently, aircraft prototypes
do go boom during the development stage.  The problem with the Shuttle
is that each flight required so much preparation that it was not possible
to carry out that many test flights -- at least, not within a period of
less than 20 or 30 years.


>The saddest thing of all is the current SEI and SSTO
>strategies are repeating the strategy of the Shuttle -- build something for
>astronauts and then start trying to stuff in commercial projects as peripheral
>add-ons.  Commerce learned its lesson getting burnt with the STS.

Yes, commerce launches its satellites on vehicles developed
to carry atomic warheads, which later accomodated commercial
payloads as peripheral add-ons.  Big difference.  Except, of
course, that the Atlas and Titan, two of the rockets used most
frequently by commercial customers, were modified to carry
astronauts at roughly the same time they were modified to
carry satellites.

And even with the most expensive satellites on top, these
missiles still have a tendency to go "boom" as frequently
as the Space Shuttle.

Oh, you might also see if you can dig up a philosophy professor
somewhere and ask if he'll explain the logical fallacy called
"extrapolating from a single example."


>Finally, the major volume-expanding market already exists, comsats.
>But your culture, the NSS lobbyist and NASA contractors, have chosen
>to snub comsats, and really commerce and general, as some sort of
>hanger-on.   You promote projects like SSTO and SEI that are not
>targeted at comsats.

You, on the other hand, are completely different.  You snub comm sats
in favor of mining the asteroids.


>Too bad, because they remain the biggest launcher
>market, and the biggest potential customer of lower cost and more reliable
>launch services.  It also reveals that your invocation of "commerce"
>is just a ruse;

Or maybe, just maybe, Nick, they have enough imagination to believe
that space is big enough for more than *one* businesses.


>>If the project where executed, launch costs (among other costs) would be
>>an order of magnitude lower than you estimate.

>Last you were talking it was _two_ orders of magnitude.  Make up your
>mind!

>(Notice how Allen avoids posting actual numbers, and is quick to flame
>those who dare mention costs. That will really impress the investors,
>Allen :-)

The numbers he's talking about, Nick, are yours.  It doesn't matter
whether the number is two orders of magnitude higher or one; you'll
just take whatever seems like a credible estimate and tack as many
zeroes onto the end of it as you need to make your point. Generally,
you do this at several stages of the calculation, so that you can
come up with a really whopping figure at the end.

Meanwhile, you refuse to be pinned down about any of the holes
in your scheme, which depends on the commercial availability of
AI technologies that don't exist even in the laboratory.


>You're right.  I am a fool for repeating over and over the same
>common-sense business facts to folks who have their minds made
>up, and really couldn't give a damn about business anyway, but
>just want to use it to justify the same old failed junk.

Kid, I was running a business probably before you were old enough
to have a paper route.

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

Date: 13 Oct 92 21:09:59 GMT
From: Justin Smith <[e-mail]>
Subject: Cosmic strings
Newsgroups: sci.space

Are any cosmic strings known (or believed) to exist?
--
Justin R. Smith
Department of Mathematics and Computer Science
Drexel University
Philadelphia, PA 19104                    [phone]

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

Date: 13 Oct 92 22:22:23 GMT
From: Josh 'K' Hopkins <[e-mail]>
Subject: Diesen sphere or Strungen Sphere
Newsgroups: sci.astro,sci.space

[e-mail] (Alan M. Carroll) writes:

>In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] writes:
>> Does anyone know any thing about a Diesen sphere or a Strungen Sphere?
>> It is supposed to be a sphere with a star in the middle.

>Named after Freeman Dyson, who postulated it would be built by a
>civilization that needed all the energy of their star. They would
>therefore enclose their star in artifact in order to capture the
>energy.

Can someone explain to a poor engineer how this is done?  Ignoring the design
and assembly for the moment, a short spell with an envelope and the apendix of
an astronomy text tells me the following:

A Dyson sphere with a radius of one A.U. (as postulated in the Start Trek
episode to which the poster refered - it's also a nice round number) and 1 km
thick would require about 10e17 cubic km of materials.

Earth has a volume close to 10e12 cubic km.  Jupiter is about 100 times bigger.

Where is there enough stuff to build out of?


--
Josh Hopkins                                          [e-mail]
     The views expresed above do not necessarily reflect those of
ISDS, UIUC, NSS, IBM FSC, NCSA, NMSU, AIAA or the American Association for the
                      Advancement of Acronymphomaniacs

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

Date: 13 Oct 92 21:34:08 GMT
From: Al Guintu <[e-mail]>
Subject: HRMS/SETI Answers
Newsgroups: sci.space

In <[e-mail]>,
[e-mail] (Edward T. Olsen) wrote:

> IT IS A REQUIREMENT THAT ANY ETI SIGNAL DETECTION BE REOBSERVABLE, NOT
> ONLY WITH THE NASA HRMS SEARCH SYSTEMS, BUT ALSO BY SIMPLE
> CONFIRMATION SYSTEMS. THIS REQUIREMENT FOR REOBSERVABILITY IS CRUCIAL
> AND ALL PREVIOUS SEARCH "CANDIDATES" HAVE FAILED TO MEET IT.

Q: "WHAT IF ETI STOPS SENDING?"
   what about a hypothetical eti civilization that stopped
   transmission for example, because their government
   cut off the resources for the work  ;->  ?  would the current
   research ignore observation of the tail end of such a
   transmission?


> The strong military radars which have been used over the last decades
> to detect possible bomber attacks and ICBM attacks are another source
> of signals which HRMS could detect from nearby stars.

Q: "ETI DETECTION MAY, BY DEFINITION BE NEAR-IMPOSSIBLE"
   i'm sure someone has already brought this up, but the statement
   above brings up a hypothetical question: would eti be increasingly
   harder to detect as its technology and society advances?  just
   look at the way *our* technology and society is advancing (no
   religious/political flames here, please ;->):

   1.  many high-power transmission systems of the past are continually
       being replaced by low-power transmitters and sensitive receivers.
   2.  technologies such as fiber optics, and infrared communications
       will not leak signals that can travel light years.
   3.  digital communications poses another problem:  broadcast digital
       transmissions will probably involve an increasing amount of
       sophisticated encryption, which may be observed as background
       noise by eti.
   4.  overall global peace could cause the dismantling of large
       military radar arrays, propaganda broadcasts, etc.

   my point here is that if *we* are becoming increasingly harder
   to detect, what about eti?  maybe eti is *not* reobservable
   because of data encryption that makes eti signals look random
   or (worse) natural in source.



/al

+-----------------------------------------------------+--------------------+
| "The ideas and opinions expressed here are my own   | [e-mail]  |
| and are NOT those of Morgan Stanley & Company."     |                    |
+-----------------------------------------------------+--------------------+

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

Date: 13 Oct 92 10:25:57 GMT
From: Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey <[e-mail]>
Subject: It wasn't Amsterdam. (was Re: V-2 anniversary)
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Rudi Rynders) writes:
> ###/ hpdmd48:sci.space / [e-mail] (Frank Dahncke) / 10:37 am  Oct  4, 1992 /
> ###In <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Bruce Watson) writes:
> ###>Trivia question: Which city was targeted and hit by the most number
> ###>of V-2s?
> ###
> ###Amsterdam, Holland.
> You can be sure that is was NOT Amsterdam. I witnessed many launchings of V-2's
> during 1944 and the first half of 1945 from around The Hague, and while some
> malfunctioning ones landed in The Hague, I can not remember any falling on
> Amsterdam.

Antwerp.  Hey, it's easy to get those "A" cities in the Low Countries
mixed up, right?

"Read my lips, Hal:         Bill Higgins
Open the Pod Bay doors!"    Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
                            Bitnet:     [e-mail]
                            SPAN/Hepnet: 43011::HIGGINS
                            Internet:  [e-mail]

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

Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1992 22:40:11 GMT
From: David Seal <[e-mail]>
Subject: Math programs with arbitrary precision for the Mac?
Newsgroups: sci.space

Having been duly inspired by an episode of northern exposure i tried
fiddling with ramanujan's and borwein and borwein's formulas for
computing pi on my mac.  however, the floating point accuracy
for MATLAB (which i was using) isn't settable and i can't get past
the sixteenth decimal place or so.  other mac programs or ways of computing
pi?  thanks.

ds
--
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
David Seal                 |  Jet Propulsion Laboratory  |     sunset: 7:54pm
[e-mail] |       Mission Design        |   temp: 82 degrees

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

Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1992 20:22:38 GMT
From: Josh 'K' Hopkins <[e-mail]>
Subject: South Africa tests Satellite launch vehicle
Newsgroups: sci.space

[e-mail] writes:

> Don't know if it's known internationally *yet*, but South Africa successfully
> tested a solid-fuel rocket motor with ballistic potential recently...

> Comparable costs are half that of a similar US launch and South Africa hopes
> that within the next few years to be launching up to 70 satellites annually.

I'd be _very_ surprised to see them launching 70 satellites, especially if
they don't have any history to go on and can't reach GTO.  Do you know what the
cost figure was based on?

--
Josh Hopkins                                          [e-mail]
     The views expresed above do not necessarily reflect those of
ISDS, UIUC, NSS, IBM FSC, NCSA, NMSU, AIAA or the American Association for the
                      Advancement of Acronymphomaniacs

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

Date: 13 Oct 92 19:31:58 GMT
From: Doug Egan <[e-mail]>
Subject: Space.gifs
Newsgroups: sci.space

In <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Micky Brus) writes:

>Just needing some help in reading gifs.  I have downloaded some space gifs
>from Ames, but can`t get them to work on my gif reader.  I am using Cshow and
>have not had trouble reading gifs until I tried the ones that are downloaded of
>f Internet.  I use binary mode instead of ascii.  Is there anything that I
>am missing?  Thanks for your help.


Perhaps you need to uudecode it...


--
=========================================================================
 Doug Egan                                   "...Engineers, they LOVE to
 Lockheed Engineering and Sciences Co.        change things!"
 Houston, TX                                    Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy

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

Date: Tue, 13 Oct 92 09:03:10 PDT
From: Jim Bowery <[e-mail]>
Subject: The Committee Staffer/Bureaucratic Conversion
Newsgroups: sci.space

Mark Goodman writes:
>
>By the way, thanks for the many kind words of encouragement
>regarding my Congressional Science Fellowship.
>
>In this regard, Edmund Hack wites:
>
>>(quoting me):
>>>...  Congressional staff
>>>members are not expected to pursue their own agendas, but those
>of their
>>>bosses.
>>
>><HA! HA! ROFL>
>>The staffers of the various subcommittees have agendas of their
>own and
>>pursue them with vigor. Ask around. Read the book "Hill Rat" that
>a
>>former staffer wrote. It is in hardback right now.
>
>It is true that Congressional staffers have a certain degree of
>discretion to pursue policy agendas of their own, but ultimately
>this depends on the autonomy their bosses give them, which can
>vary widely.  They serve at the pleasure of their bosses, and
>their bosses are ultimately accountable for the actions of their
>staffs.

I have talked to Congressmen about the fact that they feel they
have lost control of Congress to the COMMITTEE staffers.  My
direct experiences in getting legislation introduced and past
confirms that Congressmen have, indeed, lost control of Congress
to the committee staffers.  Actually, they have lost control
to something I might call "The Committee Staffer/Bureaucratic
Complex" because it is the symbiosis between government agencies
and programs and their committee staffers that has wrested
control of Congress from the elected representatives of the people.

If you are young, power-mad and worthless, there is no quicker way
to feed your appetite than to do whatever it takes to become a committee
staffer -- no matter how lowly a position you might occupy at first.

At present, the attempt to shift money away from military into
GOVERNMENT civilian "R&D" is actually an attempt by The Committee
Staffer/Bureaucratic Complex to put ever greater amounts of power in
the hands of committee staffers and bureaucrats without the harsh
accountability of victory vs defeat in war OR elections -- let alone
profit vs bankruptcy in business.

This sort of "economic conversion" under the control of committee
staffers is a parasite's dream come true.

--
INTERNET:  [e-mail] (Jim Bowery)
UUCP:   ...!ryptyde!netlink!jim
NetLink Online Communications * Public Access in San Diego, CA [phone]

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

Date: 13 Oct 92 19:09:46 GMT
From: Patrick Chester <[e-mail]>
Subject: UFO EVIDENCE VS. Carl Sagan
Newsgroups: sci.space

Lines: 10
Source-Info:  Sender is really [e-mail]
Source-Info:  Sender is really [e-mail]

Oh no. Not THIS guy again. Why can't the aliens kidnap HIM?

Guess I should arm my plasma thrower.... :)
--
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Patrick Chester            |"The earth is too fragile a basket in which to keep
[e-mail] |  all your eggs." Robert A. Heinlein
Politically Incorrect      |"The meek shall inherit the earth. The rest of us
Future Lunar Colonist      |  are going to the stars." Anonymous
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

Date: 13 Oct 92 20:05:31 GMT
From: Mark Thompson <[e-mail]>
Subject: W. Schirra interview, copied
Newsgroups: sci.space

Rhymes With Hurrah
by Claudia Pearce

If the Right Stuff can be inherited, Walter M. Schirra must have got
his from his parents, who were daredevils in a flying show (dad flew
the biplane, mom walked the wings). Schirra's mother liked to say she
stopped wing-walking when Wally was "in the hangar."

Schirra started flying at 13, soloed at 16 and flew over 90 missions
in the Korean War as a Navy fighter pilot. After being selected as one
of the original seven NASA astronauts, he orbited the earth in Mercury
8 in 1962, commanded the first space rendezvous in Gemini 6 in 1965
and commanded the Apollo 7's test run for the moon shot in 1968. He
retired from the space program in 1969 to spend more time with his
family. Since then he's made a comfortable living with public
appearances, speeches and commercials.

We interviewed Schirra in the study of his spacious Rancho Santa Fe
home. As we talked, he pointed out various mementos -- a wildebeest
head, a zebra-skin rug, and other game trophies from his worldwide
hunting trips; autographed pictures from his astronaut days -- with
President Kennedy, with President Johnson, with other astronauts; a
large-screen TV for watching "NASA select," NASA's own private channel
that he receives from a backyard satellite dish; and model rockets,
space ships, and jets.

Over the study door is a placard reading "It's good to have money, it
keeps the kids calling." Apparently, Schirra hasn't passed on his
flying genes to his children: His son deals in coins and antique
furniture in San Francisco and his daughter runs an art gallery in
Vail, Colorado.

Claudia Pearce: How did you feel your first time in space? Were you
scared, claustrophobic?

Wally Schirra: Well, no, I wasn't. We trained out fear. I like to say
we subjugated fear to apprehension. They simulated everything that
could possibly happen. We did our very best to avoid any kind of
surprise, to control the unknown.

CP: What about the surprise you had on your second mission -- Gemini?
When the rockets were ignited you came very close to being blown up.

WS: The preflight simulation didn't have that one. I knew what liftoff
felt like, and I knew we hadn't lifted off. All this went through my
brain in a split second. If we had lifted off -- even an inch or so --
and then settled back down, and I hadn't ejected, we'd have been
incinerated. But I intuitively knew we hadn't lifted off, so I was
able to make the decision not to eject, which would have ruined the
space ship.

CP: There's always the possibility that something will go really
wrong, like the Apollo fire, in which three astronauts died.

WS: Yeah, we were in there the night before them, doing the same test
they did, but ours was a walk-through with regular air. They were in a
dress rehearsal in a pure-oxygen environment. We think an electric
spark caused the explosion. They knew there were some electrical
problems, but kept going. They had warnings that would have been
enough to justify them getting out of there, but they didn't. That's
when I gave up smoking.

CP: What about the Challenger disaster?

WS: That was kind of predictable. We've been surprised that of the
original seven astronauts, six of us are still alive today. [Virgil
Grissom died in the Apollo fire.] The Challenger accident proved that
we had gone too far by calling the shuttle a "Space Transportation
System." Well, it's not. You don't want senators or congressmen or
schoolteachers in this tough environment. Most of us in the test-pilot
business say it's still a test article, it's not a transportation
system.

CP: Do you think NASA is more cautious as a result?

WS: They're always worried about another accident. If another shuttle
accident occurred, I imagine it would be the death knell for the space
station. They're already fighting like mad to get Congress to approve
financing for it.

CP: How important is the space station?

WS: That's where we're going to learn more about the physiology of men
and women in space. We also need the space station to launch missions.
It's much easier to get out once you leave earth's atmosphere.
To get to Mars with the power plants we have today, it's about a
three-year trip, counting some stay-time on Mars to justify the cost
of the trip. That long a period of time in weightlessness is something
we don't know how to handle. And we don't know how to handle a person
bottled up that long in an isolated environment. They're a three-year
bubble baby. And they come back to earth and they've been in a pure
environment for three years and are wide open to all the latest
viruses. They'll have to go through a slow withdrawal. We don't know
any of these things yet, and a space station would give us that kind
of information.

CP: Do you feel there is a "leadership vacuum" in space exploration?
WS: Even though I'm an avowed Republican, I have to say that Quayle
really messed up. The Vice President is in charge of the national
space counsel. Johnson did a great job of it. I didn't admire him, but
I did respect him.
Well, Quayle's got these far-out ideas that we must start working on
going to the moon and to Mars and they just aren't practical. The
country can by no means afford the trip to Mars at this time. That's
really amateurish political thinking in my mind. And because Richard
Truly [until March, 1992, NASA's top administrator] was not a fan of
Quayle's views, he fired him.
Quayle had a reception for all the astronauts and the people from the
new Star Trek television series. All of us were there, and his wife
was playing tennis in Florida. She didn't bother to show up. The whole
thing gave me a funny feeling.
I talked to John Glenn a couple of days ago and I told him, "It's a
damn shame George Bush wasn't picked up by a PBY instead of a
submarine in the war."
Now the Navy is run by sub people instead of aviators. If they'd been
good leaders they could have snuffed that Tailhook thing in no time.
They could have punished the offenders long before Peppermint Patty
(that what we call Pat Schroeder) got wind of it.

CP: Is there public support for the Mars mission?

WS: What the manned program did was prove that the public will support
humans in the pioneering mode. They could care less about some
unmanned vehicle. The quest is there, just like the men and women who
had the urge to go across country in a covered wagon. But in those
days, they struggled along with their own team of oxen and their own
supplies. They didn't have to depend upon the government to help them.
Now we're asking all the taxpayers to pay, and it's a big difference.
We can't go on doing these "gee whiz" things.

CP: What about the race to the moon? Wasn't that a "gee whiz" thing?

WS: I think the moon trip was valid at the time. The country was very
despondent about Viet Nam and discouraged about being second in
technology, which it turned out we weren't. We needed something to get
excited about besides this degrading Vietnamese thing. So it was
perfect timing.

CP: What do you think about "Mission to Planet Earth," the concept
Sally Ride promoted in her "Ride Report?"

WS: That's my favorite. ALl the "ologists" are excited about what they
see from earth's orbit. Roger Revelle, the guru of oceanography, told
me satellite data indicated conclusively that underwater storms are
moving 20 to 25 miles an hour. That's very, very fast. That means you
can disperse all kinds of things. That means if we can get our offshore
sewage pipe in San DIego another mile out to that storm area, we could
really whip that stuff all over the ocean in a hurry and "skaboot" it
down to nothing. That's one example [of how space technology can help
us understand earth].
And now we're getting global positioning from satellites. WIth global
positioning you can get your altitude, latitude and longitude within
about 50 feet. I was amazed. It's a waterproof 3-by-8-inch box that
uses six double-A batteries that takes readings from the satellites to
tell exactly where you are. I have one in my boat. So "Mission to
Planet Earth" helps in many ways. The satellites can look at rain
forests, water currents, volcanoes.

CP: Have we got enough satellites to do the job?

WS: No, we need more equipment, a lot of it unmanned. And we can store
the data in the platoons of computers that the National Security
Agency has stuffed with useless stuff about the Soviet Union that
didn't do us a damn bit of good. We can fill them with data from
planet earth.

CP: Humans have made a mess of much of earth. Are you worried about us
doing the same to space?

WS: No, space is our ally. We can look at earth and document it
carefully.

CP: So you don't think that we'll much up space like we have the
earth?

WS: Oh no, I think we have more sense than that, although we did want
to leave a seashell on the moon.

CP: What about the debris we've left floating around?

WS: Well space is so big compared to earth...

CP: We thought that about North America and the ocean at one time.

WS: Yeah, that's true. And we have some penalties. But if the stuff is
in lower orbit it will eventually fall down and burn up in the
atmosphere.

CP: Did you or any of your fellow astronauts have an especially
meaningful, metaphysical experience in space?

WS: A couple have, Jim Irwin had a thing called "high flight," which
was a born-again Christian type of thing on the moon. I'd tease him
about it. It's an odd place for that to happen.
And Ed Mitchell was into ESP. He carried cards on his flight to see if
ESP was enhanced in flight, but I think it came out normal. And then
he made a career out of it afterwards.

CP: When you were in space, were you able to enjoy the experience, or
were you too busy?

WS: Finally on Apollo we had a lot of quiet time. I wore this calendar
watch band. And the band has the days of October, 1968, scratched off
like the days of a prisoner in jail. There was a lot of time to look
around during that flight. And it eventually got boring. Especially
since the window was so thick, the light diffracted and you couldn't
see the stars much better than you could on earth. But even though you
were watching it go by at five miles a second, the view of earth was
unreal.
--
---
Rocket J. Squirrel            {uunet,ucsd,sun}!megatek!mark
    "Hey Rocky! Watch me pull a Rabbit out of my hat!"
        "Again!? But that trick never works!"

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

Date: 13 Oct 92 21:55:33 GMT
From: Patrick Chester <[e-mail]>
Subject: WE ARE STILL HERE: THE 500 YEARS CELEBRATION
Newsgroups: alt.activism.d,sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Simon E. Booth) writes:
>
>To all you politically correct people out there:
>
>HAPPY COLUMBUS DAY.  Remember, this is the 500th aniversary of Columbus
>DISCOVERING the new world.
Well, the first widely distributed charted course to the New World; even if
Columbus didn't know what he'd found. I do agree a little w/the claim about
the natives knowing where they were. But I haven't heard of any accurate world
maps found among the booty taken by conquistadores. ;>

Hooooo boy. Bet he's going to get some hate-email.

By the way, has anyone confirmed that claim about the three solar-powered
spacecraft to Mars in honor of Columbus? Or is it another blatant lie by
the "progressives" as I thought it was when I first read it. Wouldn't
surprise me if they start a campaign on the "neo-colonialist" ideals
inherent in space travel. Naaah, getting too paranoid. :)
--
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Patrick Chester            |"The earth is too fragile a basket in which to keep
[e-mail] |  all your eggs." Robert A. Heinlein
Politically Incorrect      |"The meek shall inherit the earth. The rest of us
Future Lunar Colonist      |  are going to the stars." Anonymous
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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End of Space Digest Volume 15 : Issue 314
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