Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/mac/TEXT/SPACEDIG/V15_4/V15NO403.TXT

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Date: Tue, 10 Nov 92 05:04:38
From: Space Digest maintainer <[e-mail]>
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Subject: Space Digest V15 #403
To: Space Digest Readers
Precedence: bulk


Space Digest                Tue, 10 Nov 92       Volume 15 : Issue 403

Today's Topics:
                      astronauts voting (4 msgs)
                         Drop nuc waste into
                Lunar "colony" reality check (3 msgs)
                           Man in space ...
                        Mars over the Moon???
                        NASA Coverup (3 msgs)
          Soviet lunar sample return [was Re: NASA Coverup]
                Swift-Tuttle Comet a threat to earth?
         Weekly reminder for Frequently Asked Questions list

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Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1992 19:38:10 GMT
From: Crispin Cowan <[e-mail]>
Subject: astronauts voting
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (James Davis Nicoll) writes:
>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Leigh Palmer) writes:
>>Steve Maclean (probably misspelled) was actually in orbit when Canada held its
>>recent "referendum" on constitutional matters. If the Canadian Space Agency was
>>on its toes then he must have cast an absentee ballot. Not to have done so
>>would have been politically incorrect.
>    With the exception of voters in  Quebec (Quebec ran its own
>'referendum' with slightly different rules), I do not think Canadians
>were allowed absentee ballots  in  the recent 'referendum'.
>
>                        James Nicoll

This is false.  I have two friends who used absentee ballots for the
referendum.

Crispin
-----
Crispin Cowan, CS grad student, University of Western Ontario
Phyz-mail:  Middlesex College, MC28-C, London, Ontario, N6A 5B7
E-mail:     [e-mail]          Voice:  519-661-3342
"Clearly, no system can be totally fault tolerant.  For instance, had
the Silver Surfer not developed an affection for the people of Earth,
all computing systems would have failed more or less permanently in the
digestive tract of his evil planet-eating master, Galactus\cite{surfer}!"
        --Andy Lowry, _Generic Support for Optimistic Computations_

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

Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1992 19:49:13 GMT
From: Leigh Palmer <[e-mail]>
Subject: astronauts voting
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail]
(James Davis Nicoll) writes:

>        With the exception of voters in  Quebec (Quebec ran its own
>'referendum' with slightly different rules), I do not think Canadians
>were allowed absentee ballots  in  the recent 'referendum'.

They were in British Columbia. I think that was quite general.

Leigh

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

Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1992 20:12:05 GMT
From: John Manuel <[e-mail]>
Subject: astronauts voting
Newsgroups: sci.space

James Davis Nicoll writes
>     With the exception of voters in  Quebec (Quebec ran its own
> 'referendum' with slightly different rules), I do not think Canadians
> were allowed absentee ballots  in  the recent 'referendum'.

I know several Canadians who cast their referendum ballots in advance polls.
There were several opportunities in the week or so before referendum day.

--
John R. Manuel                   Department of Physics, University of Alberta
[e-mail]                   Edmonton, Alberta, CANADA, T6G 2J1

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

Date: 9 Nov 92 20:58:54 GMT
From: James Davis Nicoll <[e-mail]>
Subject: astronauts voting
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Crispin Cowan) writes:
>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (James Davis Nicoll) writes:

>>    With the exception of voters in  Quebec (Quebec ran its own
>>'referendum' with slightly different rules), I do not think Canadians
>>were allowed absentee ballots  in  the recent 'referendum'.
>
>This is false.  I have two friends who used absentee ballots for the
>referendum.

    The one recent posting  I make  that gets  general commentary,
and I screw  up. For the record, I was wrong.

    The funnt thing is, I could swear  I read  a  posting from a
Canadian abroad who wasn't allowed to vote...

                        James Nicoll

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

Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1992 21:34:50 GMT
From: "Richard A. Schumacher" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Drop nuc waste into
Newsgroups: sci.space

Dumping it on Luna leaves real estate contimated, and the
radioactives unrecoverable (they'll mostly vaporize when they
hit and come back down as dust). Soft landing it on Luna adds
enormously to the cost.

As for dumping it into Venus: by the time we are able
to terraform Venus a miserable few billion Curies of well
dispersed radioactivity will be a trivial consideration.

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

Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1992 19:24:39 GMT
From: "Allen W. Sherzer" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Lunar "colony" reality check
Newsgroups: sci.space,alt.sci.planetary

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

>* The moon has no significant sources of hydrogen, nitrogen,
>  or carbon.

Well it looks like we won't need those Lunar geochemical mapping missions
Griffin requested. Good thing they didn't get funded. This was previously
regarded as an open question and now Nick has solved it for us. All
that we need now is for Nick to tell us just HOW he discovered this. So
how about it Nick? How do you know there are no volitals on the moon? Your
Nobel Prize awaits.

>  Wishful thinking about polar volatiles or

The discovery of what seems to be ice at the polls of Mercury make the
posibility of Lunar ice a lot more than wishful thinking.

>  scrounging solar wind particles are hardly significant.

Depends on what your doing. If your mining He3, then huge amounts of
water will be produced as waste.

>* A livable atmosphere is mostly nitrogen, not oxygen.

Which comes as a rude suprise to the astronaust who lived for
weeks on end on pure oxygen.

>* Plants and animals need copious amounts of hydrogen, nitrogen,
>  and carbon.

Recycle.

>* There is no affordable way to crack oxygen out of lunar
>  rock or to recycle it.  This would cost, at bare minimum,
>  tens of millions of dollars per astronaut per year.

Nick is behind on the literature. Several inexpensive methods exist
and have been tested.

>* Because of transportation costs for recycling equipment,
>  recycling on the moon is far more expensive than recycling on
>  earth.  Even on earth the best attempt at building a livable,
>  working biosphere masses hundreds of thousands of tons and leaks
>  over tens of tons of air per year.

Biosphere II is a different problem Nick. Extrapolating Lunar mass
costs from this isn't going to get you anywhere.

>* Hydrogen is extremely innefficient to transport from
>  earth.  The stoichiometric volume of LH to make water is
>  _larger_ than the volume of oxygen; huge amounts will
>  be wasted on tankage.  Much of the LH will leak before
>  it can be used; it's extremely difficult and expensive
>  to store even for the few days trip.

Good point. I guess we will need to ship it in another form like
methane or some other hydrocarbon. We can mix it with Lunar oxygen
to make water from the hydrogen and use the carbon for life support.
This kills two birds with one stone.

>* The annual per capita consumption of water in the
>  U.S. is over 500 tons.

How many uses of water will there be on the moon for the average person?
A large fraction of that 500 tons is likely used to water lawns; we won't
be doing that on the moon. Between recycleing and finding alternative
ways most of that can be eliminated.

>finished steel, ton    40,000
>automobiles, unit    12,000
>trucks, buses, unit    20,000
>ref: Mark's Standard Handbook for Mechanical Engineers, 1987

Most of this is for processes which will have lunar equivalents which
don't use water. Abundant and cheap solar energy will provide alternatives.

>* There is no signficant economic resource on the moon.
>  Revenues as a percentage of costs will be 0%.

1. Contract research. There is still a lot we don't know about the moon and
   some money can be made selling research services.
2. He3. May not pan out for a while but if it does....
3. Energy. The moon can supply energy for Lunar or orbital bases
   power beaming to Earth.
4. Shielding for spacecraft. Bulk shielelding will be cheaper to transport
   from the moon than from Earth.
5. Oxygen. The moon will provide a cheaper (enenrgy wise) source of oxygen
   for space stations, and upper stages. If water is found at the polls then
   all fuel requirements for beyond LEO could be met from the moon.
6. Test facilities. When Nick sends his automated astroid miners out there
   he will need a local test facility to qualify hardware and test
   technology. The moon is the obvious choice.

>* SSF bare-bones habitat operations costs will be $2 billion
>  per year.

We have delt with this one before. You are still overestimating launch
costs by one to two orders of magnitude. This estimate was both unsupported
and wrong then and now.

   Allen

--
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Allen W. Sherzer | "A great man is one who does nothing but leaves        |
|  [e-mail]     |  nothing undone"                                       |
+----------------------166 DAYS TO FIRST FLIGHT OF DCX----------------------+

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

Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1992 20:23:06 GMT
From: Henry Spencer <[e-mail]>
Subject: Lunar "colony" reality check
Newsgroups: sci.space,alt.sci.planetary

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:
>>  ... Much of the LH will leak before
>>  it can be used; it's extremely difficult and expensive
>>  to store even for the few days trip.
>
>Funny that the Apollo SIII stage had no problem with that. It worked for
>several days at a time to push the astronauts to the moon...

While I hate to disagree with anyone picking on Nick :-) :-), note that
there was no S-III stage (the Saturn V was S-IC, S-II, S-IVB) and even
the S-IVB's on-orbit lifetime was only a few hours.

However, hauling substantial amounts of LH2 to the Moon appears to pose
no particular problem.  The Apollo spacecraft all did it for their fuel
cells, and Griffin's FLO proposal uses LH2-LOX engines (RL10s, in fact)
in the lander's descent stage.
--
MS-DOS is the OS/360 of the 1980s.      | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
              -Hal W. Hardenbergh (1985)|  [e-mail]  utzoo!henry

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

Date: 9 Nov 92 21:22:27 GMT
From: Doug Mohney <[e-mail]>
Subject: Lunar "colony" reality check
Newsgroups: sci.space,alt.sci.planetary

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Nick Szabo) writes:
>Lunar "colony" reality check:
>
>* The moon has no significant sources of hydrogen, nitrogen,
>  or carbon.  Wishful thinking about polar volatiles or
>  scrounging solar wind particles are hardly significant.

Until a full recon of the moon is done, it's hardly significant to
comment about polar volatiles. Unless you've already been there, hm?

>* There is no affordable way to crack oxygen out of lunar
>  rock or to recycle it.  This would cost, at bare minimum,
>  tens of millions of dollars per astronaut per year.

You're full of it here. One of your heros, Robert Zubin, whom you quoted
earlier in the year, says oxygen can be pulled out of the rock. You have free
power from sunlight (let me simplify for you: SOLAR CELLS) once the factory is
on site.

Or would you like to say Zubin, who has put forth proposals for "Lunar Direct"
and "Mars Direct" is just flat-out wrong?

>* Because of transportation costs for recycling equipment,
>  recycling on the   moon is far more expensive than recycling on
>  earth,   .  Even on earth the best attempt at building a livable,
>  working biosphere masses hundreds of thousands of tons and leaks
>  over tens of tons of air per year.

If you're citing Biosphere II, the science being done is highly questionable.

>* Hydrogen is extremely innefficient to transport from
>  earth.  The stoichiometric volume of LH to make water is
>  _larger_ than the volume of oxygen; huge amounts will
>  be wasted on tankage.  Much of the LH will leak before
>  it can be used; it's extremely difficult and expensive
>  to store even for the few days trip.

You don't have to store hydrogen in liquid form. Pick an intermediary which
doesn't go poof. You also assume a flat-line technology for storage.

>* The annual per capita consumption of water in the
>  U.S. is over 500 tons.  In this as in many other
>  areas, the "colony" will be living in abject
>  poverty despite the $billions spent on its
>  construction.

Gosh Nick. You need to talk to the Greenpeacers. They'll tell you that our
consumption of water is one of the most wasteful in the world.

{Our: Refering to the United States of America. I would not propose to speak
for the masses of Maple-Leaf land :) }

Pulling THAT particular statistic off the wall borders, on, well, stupid.

>* It takes more than a rocket payload full of hydrogen
>  to make the water needed by industry.  If we're to have any
>  significant manufacturing industry in space, we're going to need
>  tons of volatiles.

Assuming we use same processes here on earth as we would in space. Without
taking advantages of the unique advantages of the environment.

>  For example, here is the water used to make
>  a few kinds of products on earth:
>
>            gallons/unit
>            ------------
>finished steel, ton    40,000
>automobiles, unit    12,000
>trucks, buses, unit    20,000
>ref: Mark's Standard Handbook for Mechanical Engineers, 1987

Sure. And figures cited are open-loop processes. Not closed-loop. You can
afford to dump water into the ecosystem and it'll come back for re-use.
Off-planet, you won't want to do dat.

I wouldn't be surprised if some of those meaningless-to-this-discussion figures
have gone DOWNWARD as a result of the late '80s push to be more environmentally
friendly. More inputs, such as water, mean higher costs. Certain companies,
such as 3M, recognize the phrase of "waste not, want not."

Oh, by the way, you don't say if the gallons/unit is a U.S. large-steel
factory, a mini-mill, or made in Japan. Which is it?

>* There is no signficant economic resource on the moon.
>  Revenues as a percentage of costs will be 0%.

Based on your peanut-gallery facts, certainly.

However, since most of your other assumptions are baloney, I can't see how any
of your other assertions can be taken as valid.

>* SSF bare-bones habitat operations costs will be $2 billion
>  per year.  Scaling for transport costs gives over $10 billion
>  per year for a bare-bones lunar "base".   Redesign will cost
>  even more than SSF cost,  since industry has no reason to
>  participate beyond the usual NASA-contractor mode.

This has already been addressed earlier, mostly with your assumption of major
hardware bending.

Give it up. If it's not an asteroid or comet, you urinate on it.


                 Play in the intelluctual sandbox of Usenet

  -- >                  [e-mail]                        < --

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

Date: 9 Nov 92 21:37:50 GMT
From: Henry Spencer <[e-mail]>
Subject: Man in space ...
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> jenkins@fritz (Steve Jenkins) writes:
>... At normal arterial O2 partial pressure (about 100 mmHg),
>the blood is almost completely saturated with oxygen.  You can raise
>the partial pressure by hyperventilating, but not the oxygen content.

How do the breath-holding effects of hyperventilation work, then?
Flushing CO2 out to suppress the desire to breathe, as opposed to
providing more internal oxygen to eliminate the need to breathe?
Certainly the desire to breathe can be suppressed for surprisingly
long periods by hyperventilating first, even if you're holding
breath *out* to minimize oxygen in the lungs.

>The best you could do in anticipation is to prepare to hold your
>breath (carefully!) so as to maintain some O2 pressure in the lungs...

Probably a bad idea, since it doesn't take very much internal overpressure
to cause serious lung damage.
--
MS-DOS is the OS/360 of the 1980s.      | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
              -Hal W. Hardenbergh (1985)|  [e-mail]  utzoo!henry

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

Date: Mon, 9 Nov 92 19:33:01 GMT
From: Dave Jones <[e-mail]>
Subject: Mars over the Moon???
Newsgroups: sci.space

Dr.Savory ([e-mail]) wrote:
> Any body to be terraformed should have sufficient gravity to retain
> an atmosphere (obvious?), so exclude the moon, OK ;)

In the long term, maybe.  But in the short term, say 100,000 years or so,
it might retain quite a decent atmosphere.  That ought to be long enough
for a few weekend visits.

Of course the slow rotation would make for interesting weather patterns....

--
||Halloween Candy: the office snack    |
||from Nov. 1st onwards............... |Puff the Magic Dragon
||-------------------------------------|Lived by the sea
||Dave Jones ([e-mail])|Who knows what's in the autumn mists
||Eastman Kodak Co. Rochester, NY      |In the mind of Yadallee?

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

Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1992 17:41:33 GMT
From: Gary Coffman <ke4zv!gary>
Subject: NASA Coverup
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy,sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Craig "Powderkeg" DeForest) writes:
>In a rather misleading article, [e-mail] (Gary Coffman) writes:
>   In article <foo> [e-mail] writes:
>   > Dillon Pyron writes:
>   >> To  the point.  Your calculations assume that the earth and moon have the
>   >> same density, and that it is homogenous.
>   >Beiser states , on page 118 , "A spherical object behaves  gravitationally
>   >as  if  it's  mass  were concentrated at it's center"
>
>   Beiser's assumption holds up as a close approximation when the two bodies
>   are far enough apart that their radius is an insignificant part of their
>   separation distance, say Earth-Sun distance. But they fail miserably when
>   the separation is less than a few body radiuses. The mascons will warp the
>   orbit of the satellite a measurable amount.
>
>Actually, Beiser's assumption holds up extremely well, for snarfy's purposes.
>The gravitational force from, say, the Earth on a small test mass near it
>is the integral over the entire volume of the Earth of the pull from each
>little chunk of mass inside the Earth.  With the assumption that the Earth
>is homogenous, the integral can be done in closed form, easily.  One finds
>that the pull is the same as that of a point mass at the center of the Earth.
>
>If the mascons had a significant effect (say, 10%) on the local gravity
>somewhere in the Earth's neighborhood, we'd find significant `mountains' in
>the middle of the ocean.  While mascons do cause small (I seem to recall
>order of 50') changes in sea level in certain places, a 10% shift in local
>gravity at the surface would result in a change in sea level of the order
>of (R-sub-earth) * (10%)^2, or about 50 miles, much higher than Mt. Everest!
>
>Since we don't see 50-mile humps in the ocean (the CRC lists Earth's minimum
>radius [the polar one] at 6357 miles, and maximum [equatorial] at 6379 miles),
>we can assume that, to within better than 10%, the Earth is a homogeneous
>sphere.  QED.

Sorry, pulling a 10% number out of the air has no bearing on the discussion.
It's a strawman argument. The Earth, and the Moon, are both inhomogeneous
bodies. The average pull is not 100% symetrical about a center. No claim
of a 10% asymetry was made by anyone but you as a strawman to convienently
knock down. Note that a probe trajectory from Earth with a 50 foot course
error caused by a mascon at engine cutoff translates into a 500 mile error
at Lunar distance. That's nasty for a Ranger probe.

>   The existance of tides is a direct result of the effect
>   of differentials in gravitational potential across the diameter of a
>   body. Using Beiser's simplifing assumption, there could be no tides on
>   Earth. Since we can easily observe that there are, his assumption is
>   invalid for bodies as close together as the Earth and the Moon.
>
>This is plain wrong.  Using Beiser's simplifying assumption, there could be
>tides on Earth.  The tides are due to the fact that the parts of the Earth
>closer to the Moon are, well, closer to the Moon and therefore attracted more
>strongly than those farther from it.  This is true for every point mass in
>the Earth's vicinity, including Gary Coffman, who (if he lives in the
>United States) attracts the Empire State Building considerably more than he
>does the Opera House in Sydney.

Well that's exactly what I said. The Earth isn't a point mass, different
parts of it are attracted with different force by the Moon. And the reverse
is also true, different parts of the Earth attract the Moon by differing
amounts. Treating the Earth as a point means there's no gradient, and that's
observably false.


>   The other assumption Beiser uses is that of spherical objects. Neither
>   the Earth nor the Moon are spheres. The Earth is an oblate spheriod, and
>   the Moon is somewhat pear shaped with the greatest mass on the side facing
>   Earth. This is again significant when the separation distance is a few
>   planetary radiuses.
>
>It's not significant unless the separation distance is less than a few times
>the deviation from a sphere, considerably less than a planetary radius!

If you insist on a value of 10% to indicate significance, then it's not
significant. I make no such demand. This was in response to the Ranger
"misses" spoken of by Snarfy. As I noted with mascons above, a small
error here can make a large difference there.


>   The most damning evidence against your theory that the Moon has a
>   gravity of .6 G is that we know the orbital period of the Moon to
>   a great accuracy, and we know the mass of the Earth and the distance
>   to the Moon. With those three numbers, we can calculate exactly how
>   much centrifigual force is in the system, and thus how much gravitational
>   force is required to counterbalance it. So if the Moon stays in orbit,
>   and it does, we can state it's gravitational pull to a high degree of
>   accuracy.
>
>This is semi-right, but I'm not sure whether Mr. Coffman understands exactly
>what he's saying.  If we assume that the Earth is much more massive than the
>Moon, then knowing the distance to the moon and the mass of the Earth tells us
>nothing about the mass of the moon.  The reason is that, with Me >> Mm, the
>Moon could be made out of lead or out of papier-mache, and it would orbit with
>the same period: the heavier the Moon is, the harder the Earth must pull it
>to keep it in orbit; but the harder the Earth *does* pull it.

But of course we *are* assuming that the Moon is within a couple of orders
of magnitude of the same mass as the Earth. The correct value is about
.01 Earth and Snarfy needs it to be a little over .1 Earth. Thus we have
a two body problem with the bodies revolving around a common center. We
know the orbital motion of the Moon very precisely, and we know the distance
to the Moon. From the motion of the two bodies around the common center
we can establish a ratio of the masses of the two bodies. Since I postulated
that we know the mass of the Earth, the Moon's mass is then trivially
calculated.

Ok, I stated it very badly the first time. What I was trying to say
up there is that if we assume the Moon's gravity is .6 G as Snarfy
claims, then we know the combined pull of the two bodies, and we know
their revolution rates. The centripedal force caused by the motion has
to exactly balance the combined gravitational pull of the two bodies.
Knowing the mass of the Earth, we should then be able to see if the
revolution rate makes sense with a .6 G Moon. It won't, it's too
slow, the Moon should be spiraling in to the Earth.

>[BTW, one of my pet peeves is people who say "it's", short for "it is", when
>they really mean "its", which is the proper form of the singular neuter
>possesive pronoun in English.  So there!]

Oooh, a spelling flame, I'm crushed.

Gary

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

Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1992 20:01:37 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: NASA Coverup
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Paul Dietz) writes...
>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:
> > Wouldn't a collision with something that size totally destroyed the Earth,
> > blasting it (and the Mars-sized thing) out of existance leaving not
> > much more than an asteroid belt?  If not, wouldn't the system be in a
> > rather elliptical orbit?
>
>Answered in order: (1) no, there is insufficient energy available
>(recall that the gravitational binding energy of a sphere at constant
>density goes as the 5/3 power of the mass), and (2) the earth *is* in
>an elliptical orbit.  Just how elliptical would depend on when the
>earth was hit.  A collision near apohelion of the proto-earth's orbit
>could decrease, rather than increase, eccentricity.


I was thinking of the Voyager picture of one of the outer moons (forgot which
one) which has a comparatively huge impact crater, and it was stated that if
the impacting body was much larger the moon would have been shattered.
Typically impact craters are larger than the body itself so the radius ratio
and thus the mass ratio would have been quite large.

Mars has about 1/6th the mass of Earth if I remember correctly, and if the
impact of a measly comet (Swith-Tuttle) is measured by the popular press in
millions of Hiroshima-bombs, I'd think something the size of Mars would
obliterate both bodies unless the closing speed was really low.  But Earth is
much larger than that moon, maybe the 5/3 power is enough to "save" it, even
from a Mars.

> >Could the Earth have captured the Moon if the Moon was originally a separate
> >planet in "somewhat the same orbit" as the Vice President would say, and
> >eventually the Earth-moon perturbed each other into a common orbit?

> >Also the process that forms binary stars must be common, why not have the
> >same process form a sort-of binary planet?

>Capture without some sort of dissipation (like collision) is very
>difficult; this has effectively ruled out this theory.

Just out of curiosity, what would happen in the solar system if there was
an Earth-sized body (with no moon) at 1AU, and a Moon-sized body at 0.95 AU
or 1.1 AU?  Such orbits are unstable, correct?

>Binary stars coaccrete; they don't form then become bound (well,
>except in very dense cores of globular star clusters where 3-body
>collisions can occur).

I consider the binary accretation as a separate theory from the "somewhat
the same orbit" capture.  A cloud of gas, dust, planetesimals coaccrete
into 2 bodies in orbit instead of one planet perhaps by whatever process forms
binary stars.

I realize the missing volatiles is evidence against the last 2 theories.

How about all the other moons that the outer planets have?  Any theories
to what created all of them?  I lost count of the total # of known moons there
are in the solar system.  A collision with a gas giant seems unlikely to
create them.  I realize many are just glorified captured asteroids.

-Mike

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

Date: Mon, 9 Nov 92 19:46:19 GMT
From: Dave Jones <[e-mail]>
Subject: NASA Coverup
Newsgroups: sci.space,alt.conspiracy

[e-mail] wrote:
>
>    As promised ,here come the ...
>
>                     TEN EMBARRASSING QUESTIONS ABOUT THE MOON
>
When this all started I thought of that nonsensical 70's paperback
that pushed the idea of a hollow moon as a giant starship.  On reading
the "questions" it's apparent, dear Snarfy, that you're either reading
that book, or else reading one which, in the best Bermuda Triangle
tradition, is simply rehashing it.  When will you start quoting the
suspicious transcripts from the Apollo missions?

||Halloween Candy: the office snack    |
||from Nov. 1st onwards............... |Puff the Magic Dragon
||-------------------------------------|Lived by the sea
||Dave Jones ([e-mail])|Who knows what's in the autumn mists
||Eastman Kodak Co. Rochester, NY      |In the mind of Yadallee?

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

Date: 9 Nov 92 12:49:52 EST
From: Chris Jones <[e-mail]>
Subject: Soviet lunar sample return [was Re: NASA Coverup]
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]>, snarfy@cruzio writes:
>                    The  Soviets  announced  that  pure  iron
>   particles  brought back by the remote controlled lunar probe Zond 20

There was no Zond 20.  Three Soviet Luna missions did bring back lunar soil
samples, and I believe Luna 20 was one of them.
--
Chris Jones    [e-mail]

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

Date: 9 Nov 92 19:23:34 GMT
From: Dave Jones <[e-mail]>
Subject: Swift-Tuttle Comet a threat to earth?
Newsgroups: sci.astro,sci.space

keith farmer;S10000 ([e-mail]) wrote:
> In article <pad.720924805@probitas> [e-mail] (Paul A Daniels) writes:
> >    Geologists belive that the earth originally had a super continent
> >don't ask me to spell it's name. I'm just curious, could it have broken
> >up due to a meteor stike?
> >
> >Paul.
> >
> If I remember correctly, Pangaea and Gwandonaland are two names fro the super-continent...
>
> Keith

Not quite.  Pangaea was the original supercontinent.  It split into
Laurasia (the Canadian Laurentian Shield and East Asia together) and
Gondwanaland (just about everything else).

--
||Halloween Candy: the office snack    |
||from Nov. 1st onwards............... |Puff the Magic Dragon
||-------------------------------------|Lived by the sea
||Dave Jones ([e-mail])|Who knows what's in the autumn mists
||Eastman Kodak Co. Rochester, NY      |In the mind of Yadallee?

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

Date: 9 Nov 92 02:15:05 GMT
From: Jon Leech <[e-mail]>
Subject: Weekly reminder for Frequently Asked Questions list
Newsgroups: sci.space,sci.astro,sci.space.shuttle

    This notice will be posted weekly in sci.space, sci.astro, and
sci.space.shuttle.

    The Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) list for sci.space and sci.astro is
posted approximately monthly. It also covers many questions that come up on
sci.space.shuttle (for shuttle launch dates, see below).

    The FAQ is posted with a long expiration date, so a copy may be in your
news spool directory (look at old articles in sci.space). If not, here are
two ways to get a copy without waiting for the next posting:

    (1) If your machine is on the Internet, it can be obtained by anonymous
FTP from the SPACE archive at ames.arc.nasa.gov (128.102.18.3) in directory
pub/SPACE/FAQ.

    (2) Otherwise, send email to '[e-mail]'
containing the single line:

help

    The archive server will return directions on how to use it. To get an
index of files in the FAQ directory, send email containing the lines:

send space FAQ/Index
send space FAQ/faq1

    Use these files as a guide to which other files to retrieve to answer
your questions.

    Shuttle launch dates are posted by Ken Hollis periodically in
sci.space.shuttle. A copy of his manifest is now available in the Ames
archive in pub/SPACE/FAQ/manifest and may be requested from the email
archive-server with 'send space FAQ/manifest'. Please get this document
instead of posting requests for information on launches and landings.

    Do not post followups to this article; respond to the author.

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


    id AA02353; Mon, 9 Nov 92 20:19:38 GMT
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    id AA08552; Mon, 9 Nov 92 20:19:37 GMT
Date: Mon, 9 Nov 92 20:19:37 GMT
From: [e-mail]
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Subject: Early life discussions

There was another spate of discussion on early life recently, some of
which mentionied clay substrates. I thought this reference might be
of interest to those debaters:

    Oligomerization of Ribonucleotides on Montmorillonite:
    Reaction of the 5'- Phosphorimidazolide of Adenosine
        James P. Ferris and Gozen Ertem
    Science, 4-Sep-92, V257, p1387-1389

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End of Space Digest Volume 15 : Issue 403
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