Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/mac/TEXT/SPACEDIG/V15_3/V15NO338.TXT

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Date: Sat, 24 Oct 92 05:10:16
From: Space Digest maintainer <[e-mail]>
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Subject: Space Digest V15 #338
To: Space Digest Readers
Precedence: bulk


Space Digest                Sat, 24 Oct 92       Volume 15 : Issue 338

Today's Topics:
                            Alternate Nets
                             DCX Status?
                             Dyson sphere
                 HEALTH COSTS KILLING WORKERS' WAGES
                              MET-4 VHRR
               Need Translation: Astronomical Mnemonics
                             Quayle Quote
                     Space for White People only?
           Turning SDI into the Space Domination Initiative

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

Date: Fri, 23 Oct 92 09:40:50 -0500
From: [e-mail] (Phil G. Fraering)
Subject: Alternate Nets

>Or the Federationers are posting from an alternate Alaska, where they
>still have nobility ("Lady" Rhavyn) and you can find a molecular-beam
>epitaxy setup in every Kinko's.

>No wonder these people seem perplexed by *our* reality.

Posting from mine via the isu post-by-mail-to-alternate-realities
setup, we don't have an epitaxy setup in every Kinko's. But Bill,
you're telling me that science in your reality isn't hereditary?
You didn't inherit your position of "Beam Jockey?"

In this reality, the profession of scientist was made hereditary a
long time ago. It was thought to make things simpler, since a) no
skill was involved, and b) noone wants the job anyway, since it
mainly seems to involve pretending to confirm the existance of
whatever ecocrisis the politicians that fund science (you see,
government funding of science became prevalent in the '20's
instead of the 40's, so we're 20 years further down this road than
y'all) are using to consolidate the state's immense economic
power, although I don't think a society where you can't even
get fire extinguishers has economic power anymore...

>(I think Jordin and I live in the same one... I mean, I've seen him in
>mine... or was that an alternate Jordin?)

The thought of alternate ex-girlfriends and alternate me's still
being an alternate item somewhere makes me feel rather nihilistic...

>Where I come from, we need machines a little bigger than a 51-cm
>crystal to tickle the Strong Nuclear Force.  And counter-rotating
>discs hardly ever neutralize gravity.  Your mileage may vary.

Hmmph. I thought one could, at least in this universe, build
small fusion machines for use as neutron sources and send them
down-hole with a scanner to determine the composition of rock
surrounding the well hole. Can y'all do that?

No luck with the counter-rotating discs, although some success
has been reported with "throwing yourself at the ground and missing."

>     O~~*           /_) ' / /   /_/ '  ,   ,  ' ,_  _           \|/
>   - ~ -~~~~~~~~~~~/_) / / /   / / / (_) (_) / / / _\~~~~~~~~~~~zap!
> /       \                          (_) (_)                    / | \
> |       |     Bill Higgins   Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
> \       /     Bitnet:     [e-mail]
>   -   -       Internet:  [e-mail]
>     ~         SPAN/Hepnet:      43011::HIGGINS

Hey, something's changed. You used to sign off "Beam Jockey" or
sometimes "Count of the Hadron Marches."


--
Phil Fraering [e-mail] where the x is a number from 1-5.
Phone: [phone] SnailMail: 2408 Blue Haven Dr., New Iberia, La. 70560
---------------------
Disclaimer: Some reasonably forseeable events may exceed this
message's capability to protect from severe injury, death, widespread
disaster, astronomically significant volumes of space approaching a
state of markedly increaced entropy, or taxes.

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

Date: 23 Oct 92 05:45:46 GMT
From: Henry Spencer <[e-mail]>
Subject: DCX Status?
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Mary Shafer) writes:
>...DC-Y is unlikely to ever happen, having been cancelled...

It's hard to say it was "cancelled" when it was never really begun in the
first place...  DC-Y's current status is essentially the same one it has
had for some time:  nobody has yet provided significant funding for it,
and the backers of DC-X (SDIO) are unlikely to do so.  There may be enough
support for DC-Y to find it a home elsewhere, if DC-X works.

The biggest threat to DC-Y right now is the possibility of a Clinton/Gore
victory next month, I'm afraid.  The Bush/Quayle administration has been
at least mildly friendly to the idea; Clinton/Gore appear to be at least
mildly hostile.  That's not necessarily a fatal difference but it's an
ominous one.
--
MS-DOS is the OS/360 of the 1980s.      | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
              -Hal W. Hardenbergh (1985)|  [e-mail]  utzoo!henry

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

Date: 22 Oct 92 21:16:50 GMT
From: Charles Frank Radley <[e-mail]>
Subject: Dyson sphere
Newsgroups: sci.astro,sci.space

Does a Dyson sphere spin or rotate?

For a nonspinning sphere, does it have an atmosphere on the outside(for lifeforms to breathe?

Heavy objects on the inside of the sphere will fall into the Sun,
so inhabitants must live on the outside, in near total darkness.

Otherwise maybe there will be small areas artifically illuminated
but it will take too much energy to illuminate the entire exterior

Maybe the inhabitants will see in infra-red

Comments anyone?

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

Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1992 20:25:46 GMT
From: Jeff Bytof <[e-mail]>
Subject: HEALTH COSTS KILLING WORKERS' WAGES
Newsgroups: sci.space

> FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
> Clinton/Gore Email Campaign
> October 22, 1992

While this sort of stuff has no place on sci.space, I must recommend
to everyone that they view the PBS Frontline special on Clinton and
Bush that will probably be repeated at least once before the election.

---------------------
[e-mail]




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

Date: 23 Oct 92 10:01:49 GMT
From: bertilg <@bertilg:[e-mail] (BERTILG)>
Subject: MET-4 VHRR
Newsgroups: sci.space

Hello,
We are two computer engineers working on a project in reciveing weather
sattelite pictures. Now we wonder if anyone has recieved high resolution
pictures from MET-4 somwhere in Europe. We also want some advice on which
reciever to use and software to use.

Erik Johansson / Reza Abbasi
University of Karlstad, Sweden
E-mail adress:  [e-mail]

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

Date: 22 Oct 92 19:51:45 GMT
From: Curtis Roelle <roelle@uars_mag.jhuapl.edu>
Subject: Need Translation: Astronomical Mnemonics
Newsgroups: sci.astro,sci.space,soc.culture.german

FAQs for both sci.astro and sci.space include crutch ditties to aid
one in recollecting special mnemonic sequences.  In
<roelle.719695077@uars_mag> soc.culture.german newsreaders were asked
to translate two which are in German.  Numerous replies were received,
and while the spirit of each is consistent, there exists slight
variations among them.

The results are presented below.  If you are familiar with the
language, you might e-mail a vote indicating which you consider to
be the closest translation, and I will notify the FAQ editor.
=============================================================================
A. Order of Galilean Satellites:
  Io,  Europa,         Ganymede, and Callisto
  "Ich Erschrecke alle Guten         Christen"

(1) from Joachim, Paul R Work, Erwin Klock, and Johannes Ullrich,
  "I frighten all good christians"

(2) from Siri J. Flocke,
  "I scare all good chrisitans"

(3) from David Weisbeger,
  "I shock all good Christians."

(4) from Heinrich Kraemer,
  "I embarrass all good christians"

Note that removing "all" from (4) works well as an English mnemonic saying.
==============================================================================
B. Order of Planets:
 Mercury, Venus, Earth,   Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto
 "Mein    Vater  erklaert mir   jeden    Sonntag unseren niedlichen   Pleneten"

(1) from Paul R Work, and Erwin Klock,
  "My Father explains to me every Sunday our cute planets."

(2) from Joachim,
  "My father explained to me every Sunday our lovely planets"

(3) from David Weisberger,
  "My father explains our neat little planets to me every Sunday."

(4) Siri J. Flocke,
 "Every Sunday my father explains our tiny planet to me"

(4) Johannes Ullrich,
  "My father explains me every sunday our neat planets"

(5) In addition, Johannes Ullrich offered this slight variation:
  "Mein Vater erklaert mir jeden Sonntag unseren neun Pleneten", or
  "My father explains me every sunday our nine planets"
============================================================================

Many thanks to those above who responded.

Curt Roelle
[e-mail]






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

Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1992 19:04:49 GMT
From: Jeff Bytof <[e-mail]>
Subject: Quayle Quote
Newsgroups: sci.space

>Mars is essentially in the same orbit... somewhat the same distance from the
>Sun, which is very important.

In terms of cosmic distances, Earth and Mars are close together, with
Mars just slightly outside the Sun's ecosphere.  Most of the materials
that are solids and gasses on Earth are solids and gasses on Mars...

>We have seen pictures where there are canals,
>we believe, and water.

There is a huge canyon, Valles Marineris, and many channels that
appear to be carved by once running water.  Water may exist as permafrost
under the surface of Mars at temperate latitudes.

>If there is water, that means there is oxygen. If
>oxygen, that means we can breathe.

Using electrolysis, water can be broken down into hydrogen and breathable
oxygen.

>                -- Vice President Dan Quayle

The man's no dummy!  He's just trying not to bore people.

---------------------
[e-mail]

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

Date: 22 Oct 92 18:25:32 GMT
From: "Robert J. Hall" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Space for White People only?
Newsgroups: talk.politics.space,sci.space

>[e-mail] (James Thomas Green) writes:
>
>>I had a rather disturbing conversation Saturday evening.
>
>>I was talking to a Hispanic Woman (a business major) who
>>said that we shouldn't spend a single dollar on space
>>because "it only benefits white people."  She was rather
>>angry about the mere thought that any money at all was spent
>>on space.

>[e-mail] (Josh 'K' Hopkins) writes:
>Others have posted details about spinoffs etc, but there's another side to this
>I think part of the reason people may associate space with middle aged white
>men is the ratio of people who work in the industry.  This perception may have
>been true in 1960, when minority and female engineers were hard to find.  This
>has changed however.  When I was at IBM in Houston, the highest level manager
>I met was a woman.  A significant number of my coworkers were minorities,
>women, "disabled" or others who don't fit the stereotype of an white collar
>worker.  Space isn't just for white folks.

While this is true, I think the fact that the Space program has been placed in
the same budget slice as several government social programs has (unfairly)
made it the target of the liberal propaganda machine. As long as NASA and the

social programs are competing for the same shrinking dollar, you can expect
the jingoism and dogmatic criticism to continue.

There are two ways we could fight this trend:

  1. Lobby to have NASA moved to the Military 'slice' of the budget. (They
     already have much in common.)

  2. Reply with our own dogmatic propaganda.

Anybody for a "Two Percent for Space" campaign?

--
 Bob Hall
 Boeing Computer Services
 [e-mail]

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

Date: 23 Oct 92 06:58:24 GMT
From: Patrick Chester <[e-mail]>
Subject: Turning SDI into the Space Domination Initiative
Newsgroups: alt.activism.d,sci.space

Okay, I got permission from the poster to reprint this into these newsgroups.
I did not write this article, nor do I necessarily agree with it. Since this
comes from misc.activism.progressive I warn all readers to treat this as a
very biased source. I will not insert commments because I want all of the
readers to have the chance to read it as it originally came out. I may or may
not do a critique in a later post. I encourage everyone else to comment on this
article.

Anyway, here it is:

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Rich Winkel) writes:
=          Star Wars:  Turning the Strategic Defense Initiative
=                  into the Space Domination Initiative
=
=                    by Jeffrey Klein and Dan Stober
=
=     Reprinted with permission from In These Times, Sept. 30 - Oct.13
=                     [Subscription info at bottom]
=
=A good place to comprehend how the U.S. plans to fight 21st-century wars
=is beneath a mountain in Colorado.  A 1,400-foot tunnel bored through
=Cheyenne Mountain leads to an underground village of spring-mounted
=buildings built to sway in a nuclear attack.  These headquarters of
=the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) are webbed to the
=nearby Falcon Air Force Base, the first operational center for "star
=wars."
=
=Their combined computers, crunching data from radar installations,
=ground-based telescopes and satellites 22,300 miles above Earth, offer
=a real-time view of all missile launches and bomber runs around the
=world, and everything orbiting the planet, down to space junk the size
=of a softball.
=
=A good part of the most recent war was fought from here.  The hot
=exhaust flames of Saddam Hussein's Scud missiles were caught by
=satellite sensors, and the news was beamed to computer screens inside
=this mountain, here the targets were calculated instantaneously and
=warnings flashed via space back to Saudi Arabia or Israel.
=
=Space gave the U.S. forces every conceivable advantage in the Gulf War.
=Satellites told commanders exactly where their own troops were and
=helped pick targets on the other side.  Allied communications were
=handled by satellites, while Saddam's forces lost their ground-based
=communications early in the bombing.  The U.S. had an advantage even in
=predicting the weather, a key element in the aerial campaign.  In short,
=U.S. troops saw everything, and Irag was left deaf, dumb and blind in
=what the Air Force calls the "first space war.
=
=The pentagon wants the next war to be controlled and all but decided
=with weapons in the "high ground" of space, directed from
=electronic-control rooms in places like Cheyenne Mountain.
=
=With the realization that control of space leads to worldwide military
=superiority comes the further realization that the first country to
=flood Earth's orbital lanes with weaponry may be able to prevent anyone
=else from doing the same.
=
=Wouldn't the U.S. be smart to secure dominance while it has no
=competitors, while the former Soviet Union is on the ropes and the next
=enemy--whoever that might be--hasn't started building up?
=
=The answer from the leading edge of the defense establishment is a
=resounding yes.  The technological research is already underway to
=convert the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), the "star wars"
=anti-missile program, from a supposedly defensive system into a web of
=expensive, Earth-circling offensive weapons.
=
=This militarization of space would represent a quantum leap in weaponry
=similar to the invention of the nuclear weapon and the Intercontinental
=Ballistic Missle.  And yet, there's been little discussion in Congress
=or elsewhere of the tremendous financial costs, the technical problems
=or the odds that generating a space-based arms race may leave the
=world a more dangerous place than it is now.
=
="You cannot start shooting down satellites.  What kind of law-abiding
=country are we? asks Kosta Tsipis, a Massachusetts Institute of
=Technology physicist and SDI expert.  "We don't want to knock down
=civilian satellites.  We don't want somebody else shooting down ours."
=
=But the confidence that we can police the world without retaliation was
=reflected earlier in the year in a leaked Bush administration defense
=planning document for 1994-1999.  The draft proposed that potential
=competitors "be deterred from even aspiring to a larger regional or
=global role" by keeping them inside U.S.-dominated security alliances.
=
=A space blockade would effectively ring the planet with barbed wire,
=making the whole world a security zone.  Errant countries would be
=punished from the sky, with American troops entering the fray only to
=mop-up.
=
=Behind this movement are many of the same men and organizations
=responsible for launching "star wars" a decade ago.
=
=They include Edward Teller, co-inventor of the hydrogen bomb, adviser to
=presidents and currently Cold Warrior without a cause; Lowell Wood,
=Teller's protege and technological guru at Lawrence Livermore
=Laboratory; Daniel Graham, the space-obsessed retired Air Force general
=who runs the lobbying and research group High Frontier; and the Her-
=itage Foundation, the conservative think tank that has been highly
=influential in the Reagan-Bush era.
=
=BRILLIANT PLANS
=
=To learn more about the clandestine shifts taking place in SDI, we went
=to the annual gathering of the U.S.  Space Foundation, in the shadow of
=NORAD's Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado Springs.
=
=In formal speeches in the convention center auditorium, the generals
=and admirals talked enthusiastically about using space for military
=missions.  In the hallways and in the exhibit center, around the
=rocket-and-satellite booths of the defense contractors, the profes-
=sionals revealed what was already underway.
=
=The reconfiguration of SDI has already begun in the national labs and
=the workshops of defense organizations in an ad hoc fashion.  The new
=version is a war-fighting machine capable of dominating battlefields and
=threatening a space blockade.  It will be built on Brilliant Pebbles
=and Brilliant Eyes, the satellites with the odd names that are at the
=heart of the Bush administration's plans for SDI.
=
=The official anti-missile scheme calls for a constellation of
=surveillance satellites (Brilliant Eyes), watching for fiery rocket
=plumes, the telltale indicator of an enemy launch.  In a lower orbit, a
=larger constellation of human-sized interceptors (Brilliant Pebbles)
=wait for the signal, then attack the missiles and destroy them.
=
=In the unofficial version, much of which has been invented at Livermore,
=the Eyes will be equipped with radars, lasers, telescopes, antennae and
=sensors to allow military commanders to see practically every square
=foot of Earth--and analyze that information instantly.
=
=The satellites would employ laser communications to pass the data from
=one Eye to another, data circling the globe at the speed of light.  In
=the heat of war, Eyes would beam consolidated pictures of the
=battlefield directly to the on-scene commander below, in real time,
=bypassing the delays and confusion of the Gulf war, when satellite
=signals were first sent to the U.S. and then relayed to Saudi Arabia.
=
=And the Pebbles?  They would serve multiple combat and blockade roles.
=
=In a conventional war, according to a proposal being promoted around
=the Pentagon by Lowell Wood, Brilliant Pebbles would be ordered to leave
=their orbits and fly downward at high speed to hit targets on the sur-
=face of the planet with great precision.
=
="Lowell has argued that you could use these things to attack tanks,
=airplanes, anything else," says a Lawrence Livermore physicist.
="They like to say that around here, but not when they go to Congress."
=
=In Colorado Springs, we asked Teller while he was walking to lunch one
=day if Pebbles could be used to hit enemy command bunkers, a
=high-priority target in the war with Iraq.  He stopped walking.
=
="Look," he said, in his commanding form of speech.  "Yes.  And in a war,
=you would."
=
=In a hallway at Colorado Springs, we also asked James Carlson, the SDI
=office deputy for strategic defense, about Wood's claims.  "I know," he
=sighed with a shrug.  "He calls them Endopebbles."  The prefix endo-
=means Within"--in this case, within the Earth's atmosphere.
=
=Could Endopebbles be what is code-named Brilliant Fingers, one of the
=many "black budget" programs on which Wood is working?  The Pentagon
=has traditionally hidden its most controversial research and development
=projects in its secret budget.  "Think of the human anatomy," confides a
=Lawrence Livermore physicist.  "For every anatomical part, there's a
='Brilliant' technology.  "Star wars" scientists are also researching,
=for example, tiny sensors, disguised to look like rocks, that would be
=dropped in large numbers over the battlefield.  They would then, their
=inventors promise, transmit data to satellites.
=
=But these endoweapons may be fringe projects.  Threatening enemy
=satellites would seem to be Pebbles' main goal.
=
=In their blockade role, Pebbles would be transformed into enforcement
=battleships, poised to destroy any missile attempting to run the
=blockade and put a satellite in orbit.
=
=HIGH FRONTIER DIRECTOR
=
=Daniel Graham is blunt.  Standing in the exhibit area near a full-scale
=model of a Pebble, he said:  "What Brilliant Pebbles would give you is
=control of access to space.  You can say, 'You can come up here if
=you're on a peaceful mission, but you can't come up if you're going to
=do something nasty.'"  Pebbles would provide, Graham explained, "the
=kind of control that the British once had on the high seas."  The
=British, of course, used that control not only to defend that homeland
=but also to create an empire.
=
=Pebbles, according to some experts in Colorado Springs, would make
=ideal blockade ships.  Their original mission, after all, was to shoot
=down missiles--and knocking down a single missile attempting to launch,
=for example, a North Korean spy satellite would be light years easier
=than stopping a barrage of Russian submarine-launched missiles.
=
=A senior executive with a defense contractor, a manager with a long
=history of involvement with U.S. space policy, said the use of
=Brilliant Pebbles for space-blockade purposes would be "profound," and
=that such a use "had been discussed in Secretary of Defense Dick
=Cheney's office."
=
=Equally important is the role of Pebbles as anti-satellite weapons, or
=ASATs, to knock out satellites already in orbit.  Having the ability to
=eliminate any satellite, whether military or commercial (the difference
=between the two is diminishing), would provide the U.S. with a drastic
=military advantage in war and a huge bully stick in peacetime.
=
=Without satellites, potential adversaries would be as much in the dark
=as Saddam's forces were during the Gulf War.  Without space systems,
=Saddam was blind.  With them, noted Gen.  Kutyna, "he would have seen
=Schwarzkopf's left hook, his Hail Mary maneuver [into Iraq], and allied
=lives would have been lost."
=
=We asked Kutyna about Brilliant Pebbles as an ASAT weapon.  Pebbles were
=not "optimized" for that task, he said, but added, "that technology,
=however, could be applicable.  So a spinoff of a Brilliant Pebble could
=be developed that could become an ASAT weapon."
=
=Already in orbit, with its own propulsion and guidance system, a Pebble
=could easily steer itself into the path of the satellite of another
=nation.  Daniel Graham described this ASAT ability as "the great
=unspoken" of the SDI program.
=
=Although the U.S. military has long wanted ASAT weapons, Congress has
=denied them, fearing an expensive arms race in space.  But the generals
=have not given up.
=
="I still have an ASAT very high on my priority list," Kutyna said in
=Colorado Springs.
=
="Several of the things that SDI is doing are applicable to the broader
=purpose of space control," concludes Baker Spring, a "star wars"
=advocate at the Heritage Foundation.
=
=A few short years ago, the warrior's dream of dominating space would
=have been all but impossible, for one very simple reason:  The U.S.
=shared military dominance of the planet with the Soviet Union.  Treaties
=were in place to block a costly and dangerous space arms race, and each
=side closely monitored the other's progress.
=
=In his 1983 "star wars" speech, President Reagan offered to share with
=the Soviets a leak-proof umbrella that would render nuclear weapons
=obsolete.  Today, the former Soviets still being invited to come in
=under our umbrella not as partners in a missile-proof world but as
=blue-collar workers helping us to arm the heavens.  They'd do the heavy
=lifting.
=
=The day we visited with Edward Teller in his office at the Hoover
=Institution, he said his chief geopolitical worry was finding employment
=for his former counterparts, the Russian defense scientists.
=
=Teller, worried about the Russians?  It turned out that for many months
=he'd been lobbying the Bush administration to buy the SS-18s, the big
=missiles of the Soviet Union, and use them to launch Brilliant Pebbles,
=which currently are stranded without a ride.
=
="This might be nonsense," he said later, in that way that telegraphs
=that he is completely serious.  "Why not transform them ... for the
=delivery of these low-flying satellites?  In this way, we can have them
=in two years rather than three or four."
=
=Recently, Henry Cooper, head of the SDI program, went public with the
=same proposal.
=
=The Russian scientists could use the work, and their government could
=use the money.  But the use of those SS-18s to launch Brilliant Pebbles
=would violate the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, which has governed
=nuclear relations between the superpowers for decades.
=
=Because the treaty obstructs the star warriors' way at every step, the
=Bush administration is determined to get out of it.
=
=So bothersome is the ABM treaty that President Bush is personally
=pushing Boris Yeltsin to yield.  Teller's missile purchases would be a
=way of buying the Russians out of the treaty.  On the other hand, U.S.
=military contractors don't want competition in the launch-vehicle
=business.  Some advisers suggest that the Russians can simply be
=silenced with foreign aid.
=
="If the Russians want billions in economic assistance, we should at
=least ask for some relief from the ABM treaty, and then we could move
=forward," argues Jim Hackett, a policy executive at Titan Systems in San
=Diego and a member of Bush's Arms Control Advisory Board.
=
=When the public marketing of space control finally begins, the main
=selling point will doubtless be the proliferation of missile tech-
=nology and nuclear weapons in the Third World countries, an ironic
=pitch, since the Bush and Reagan administrations have done little to
=curtail this proliferation.
=
=Space domination is already being testmarketed with hard and soft
=sells.
=
=The Heritage Foundation, Washington's premier conservative think tank,
=is proposing the hard sell:  The U.S. should simply seize control of
=space preemptively.  We should warn other countries that they have no
=guaranteed right of access to space.
=
="If Third World leaders realize that the U.S. and its allies will
=destroy their satellites or render them useless in case of war, they
=will be less likely to make the investment in the first place," says a
=Heritage paper by Baker Spring published in May.
=
=Space technology is becoming the "equalizer" that makes small countries
=a military danger to larger ones, and something must be done.  "The
=primary obstacle in the effort to control space technology is the
=presumption in the international community that all countries are
=entitled to access to space," the report concludes, adding, almost
=indignantly:  "This principle even is embodied in a treaty."
=
="KEEP-OUT" ZONES
=
=The Heritage Foundation backgrounder proposes that the U.S. opt out of
=this treaty--the 1967 U.N.  Treaty on Outer Space.  To mollify
=international concerns a bit, small countries with a need for civilian
=communications satellites would be allowed to purchase launch services
=from the U.S.  But since any satellite is suspect in wartime, the U.S.,
=the backgrounder says, should quickly develop a "capability to enforce a
=military 'keep-out' zone in space over a battle area."
=
=In the same vein, Gen.  Donald Hard, director of space programs for the
=Air Force, wistfully noted in a speech to the National Space Club in
=June that there was no technical reason why the U.S. could not have
=weapons in space.  "It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out
=that you can crater an enemy runway with a space-based offensive weapon,
=but first you had better figure out how to get through that policy
=debate in Congress to get agreement to go ahead and shoot those kinds of
=technologies."
=
=Astronomer Carl Sagan is repelled by the prospect of space keep-out
=zones, endoweapons and imperial grabs.  "There is nothing more
=appropriate than exploring and utilizing space on behalf of the human
=species and not on behalf of whichever nation was lucky enough by
=historical circumstances to get to space first."
=
=Sagan grants that grabs have been "the historic practice of the human
=species.  You either copy the guys with leading weaponry or you're
=inundated by them.  Eventually, the whole planet is filled with the
=military culture of the most technically fearsome society.  That works
=fine up to the point that world-transforming technologies are
=available.  At that point, the conquistadors have to be very careful,
=because their weaponry could redound to destroy them."
=
=The star warriors are aware that peaceful global perspectives are in
=vogue.  Publicly taking the soft-sell tack, Teller and Wood are pro-
=moting the civilian uses of a fleet of Brilliant Eyes.  The Eyes, they
=say, could be used to study crops, spot fires, give a quick first glance
=at disaster areas, chart forest patterns, analyze clouds and the
=atmosphere (with orbiting lasers), monitor global warming and trans-
=form weather forecasting from voodoo into a science.
=
=This attempt to broaden SDI's base of support is backed by market
=research.  According to a poll released in March by Rockwell Inter-
=national Corp., deployment of satellites to monitor the Earth's
=environment is by far the favorite space program of American voters.
=
=Still, there remains an enormous political hurdle before a full-scale
=space weapons system wins public backing.  It is the absence of what
=Air Force Lt.  Gen.  Thomas Moorman Jr. called "an acceptable threat,"
=now that the Cold War is over.
=
=With no credible enemies on the horizon, and the historical need to
=rationalize military buildups as defensive in nature, some star warriors
=are advocating the use of space weapons to protect our allies against
=enemy missile attacks in foreign theaters.
=
=Even with an ostensibly defensive armada, the U.S. may be tempted to
=intervene all around the globe.  Consider the argument put forth by
=James Carlson, the SDI office deputy for strategic defense, in support
=of anti-ballistic missiles.
=
=Suppose, he suggested, that the U.S. was in a limited conflict with a
=future Saddam, instituting a trade embargo against him and bombing his
=factories.  What if Saddam then said, "I have a secret nuclear weapon on
=a missile, and if you don't lift your trade embargo and stop bombing our
=factories, I'll launch it!"  With an SDI system in place to stop this
=missile, Carlson said, we could call his bluff.  Carlson's example is
=telling.  In it, the U.S. has already inflicted an embargo and bombed a
=foreign country.  ABMs would allow us to continue these actions with
=impunity.  And, of course, Carlson's system is not primarily defensive;
=the ABMs are cogs in a war machine.
=
=Other star warriors are looking at renascent empires for grand
=acceptable threats to match our grand military ambitions.
=
="I think the country most likely to challenge American control of
=access to space is the Japanese, says Graham, the founder of High
=Frontier.  "Star wars" would thus become another Great White Fleet,
=steaming over to Tokyo to frighten the Japanese once again.
=
=Meanwhile, Edward Teller is saying that we must prepare for an
=inevitable military challenge from a reunited Germany.
=
=In the presence or absence of an enemy, none of the plans to dominate
=space is guaranteed to work.  There are voluminous technical
=difficulties; hardly anything has actually been tested in space, and
=much of that has failed.  In fact, almost 10 years after Reagan's
=speech, the V.S. has spent at least $29 billion on one of the largest
=research and development projects in the nation's history, with vir-
=tually nothing to show.  There is no missile shield of any kind.  The
=overall blueprint has changed almost annually, while entire projects
=have simply been abandoned.
=
="Star wars has failed ... it is a fraud," concludes Aldric Saucier
=with sadness and anger.  The highest-ranking member of the "star wars"
=bureaucracy to break ranks, Saucier says the entire SDI program has
=become little more than a pipeline of cash to defense contractors, "like
=a big Toys R Us."
=
=The missile tests of Bebbles and other SDI interceptors have been, in
=essence, rigged, Saucier claims.  Far from having to find a speeding
=target in space and destroy it under realistic conditions, the
=interceptors have been guided right to their targets, he says.  And even
=then, some of them have missed.
=
=The most recent miss was a June 19 warhead interception experiment,
=one of three admitted failures in 1992 alone.  SDI has also been plagued
=by launch explosions, forced destructions of off-course rockets,
=premature detonations and malfunctioning sensors and satellites.  In
=contrast to the hoopla surrounding space shuttle delays, these failures
=have received notice only in the military trade press.
=
=Despite SDI's lack of technical success an frequent predictions of its
=demise in Congress, the president has pressed aggressively ahead each
=year with a new round of funding The criticism that SDI's shield is full
=of hole hasn't been taken too seriously by its proponents, because the
=real purpose of "star wars is to rule space.  Pentagon officials know
=that although a defensive team system must be almost perfect--one
=mistake could mean a city obliterated by a hydrogen bomb--an offensive
=system does not have to reach such high standards.  If you miss your
=target the first time, you simply take another shot.
=
=Similarly, a price tag $1 trillion, which i what Rep.  Leon Panetta
=(D-CA), the head a the House Budget Committee, says a completed SDI
=would ultimately cost, doesn't seen too high to the military if the
=prize might b control of space.
=
=Militarizing space, of course, means further pollution of space.  Before
=Sputnik was launched, there were no man-made object circling the globe.
=Now there are millions, i you count the fingernail-size flecks of pain
=and other material from old spacecraft that have exploded or collided
=with each other Traveling at 17,000 miles per hour, the smallest piece
=of space junk can have deadly consequences for whatever it strikes.
=Once we begin testing ASATs, we will generate more debris, which will
=increase the probability of accidental collisions.
=
=Then there are intentional collisions.  Even if the U.S. establishes a
=dominant presence, other nations may respond with variations of Saddam's
=torched-oil-wells strategy.  They may try to counteract a space blockade
=by exploding nuclear weapons in space or littering the orbital lanes
=with so much fast-moving shrapnel that nothing can survive there.
=
=The Pentagon views such confrontations with equanimity, as business as
=usual.  To the military mind, such a scenario paradoxically proves that
=the U.S. needs to secure the high ground before the crazies gain a
=foothold.
=
=Richard Garwin, an IBM fellow and longtime defense consultant to the
=U.S. government, warns that we can become the crazies. b "One really
=has to watch out for these harebrained schemes that will convert the
=U.S. into a benevolent dictator that will run the entire world for the
=overall benefit of humankind as we see it.  We have to have a reasonable
=sharing of power with other people because otherwise we will be
=deposed from that king-of-the-heap position."
=
=Carl Sagan agrees that our treaty-busting attempts to rule space are
=likely to earn us the hatred of developing countries.  "As in biological
=evolution, every measure has a countermeasure.  If, in fact, the U.S.
=Iooks to be developing a credible threat, there would be a really
=strong impetus for the French, the Japanese, the Chinese, the European
=Community as a whole, the former Soviets to now develop comparable
=capabilities of their own."
=
=Gen.  Kutyna is clearly expecting some reaction.  "Whatever the enemy
=space systems will be ... we'll develop countermeasures," he said.
=
=And thus the space arms race will be on, with no convincing argument
=that anyone will be the safer for it.
=
=--------
=
=Dan Stober is a San Jose Mercury News staff writer.
=
=Jeffrey Klein is the new editor of Mother Jones.
=
=--------
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=
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=
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=Phone: [phone]

Interesting, wasn't it? I encourage comments for/against the viewpoint that is
expressed in this article. Anyone notice any errors, exagerrations, etc.?
That is why I said this was a very biased source. Of course, the Bush/Clinton
newsgroups are also biased but I didn't get this from there.:)

Keep the flamage down, though. This means you McElwaine. :)


--
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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 338
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