Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/mac/TEXT/SPACEDIG/V15_4/V15NO405.TXT

Internet Message Format | 1993-07-13 | 17KB

Date: Tue, 10 Nov 92 05:12:58
From: Space Digest maintainer <[e-mail]>
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Subject: Space Digest V15 #405
To: Space Digest Readers
Precedence: bulk


Space Digest                Tue, 10 Nov 92       Volume 15 : Issue 405

Today's Topics:
                          astronauts voting
                                Errors
                     Lunar "colony" reality check
                           Man in space...
                     More lunar gravity questions
                             NASA Coverup
                          reality check (2)
                          Satellite Tracking

    Welcome to the Space Digest!!  Please send your messages to
    "[e-mail]", and (un)subscription requests of the form
    "Subscribe Space <your name>" to one of these addresses: listserv@uga
    (BITNET), rice::boyle (SPAN/NSInet), utadnx::utspan::rice::boyle
    (THENET), or [e-mail] (Internet).
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 10 Nov 92 04:57:05 GMT
From: Mike van der Velden <[e-mail]>
Subject: astronauts voting
Newsgroups: sci.space

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

Don't be so quick to apologize, James.  You were right.  Canadians
abroad were not allowed to vote, unless they were from Quebec.  I
should know.

I think Crispin is confused by the term "absentee ballot."  In Canada
there is a slightly different type of absentee ballot, known as the
"advance poll," where you vote in the election/referendum a few days
early if you know you're going to be out of town on voting day.  On
the other hand, if you are a Canadian citizen living abroad there is
no mechanism in place by which you can cast an absentee ballot in the
American sense of the word.

I've lived my entire 27 years in Canada except for these past 5 months
(I'll return in 2 more for a total of 7 months spent abroad), yet I
was not allowed to vote in this important referendum.  Silly, eh?

However, if it turns out that citizens of Ontario living abroad were
indeed allowed to cast their ballots while those of us from BC were not,
it would be Yet Another Example of Western Alienation.  :-)

--
Mike van der Velden
s-mail: Distributed Systems Laboratory, Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd.
        1015, Kamikodanaka Nakahara-ku, Kawasaki 211, Japan
e-mail: [e-mail]

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

Date: 10 Nov 92 03:16:37 GMT
From: Andrew Haveland-Robinson <[e-mail]>
Subject: Errors
Newsgroups: sci.space

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

>-From: [e-mail] (Andrew Haveland-Robinson)
>-Subject: NASA Coverup
>-Date: 8 Nov 92 03:34:51 GMT
>-Organization: Haveland-Robinson Associates
>
>-As one working in the media as a typesetter typos are a statistical fact,
>-following the same lines as bugs in code - they are never eradicated, just
>-get less significant.
>
>-It is therefore reasonable to expect that out of the 1000s of articles on
>-the subject and the complexity of editorial processes errors will occur.
>-Some information will be inaccurate or completely wrong.
>
>And once those errors get in, they tend to propagate indefinitely - it's
>impossible to get correction notices to everybody who read the original
>articles. That gives refereed publications a considerable advantage in
>accuracy.
>
>John Roberts
>[e-mail]

This propagation can be a real pain - hence the need for version control
on software projects.  This is directly related to genetic axioms where
"traits" (bugs, incorrect versions, mistakes etc)  get propagated.

Last year I produced all the colour graphics for a multimedia point-of-sale
machine using touch-screen technology for a large bank.

There were 130 colour images with graphic text to produce, with some elements
whittled down from 500 meg of scans...

If one image was used as a parent of child images then any errors or
modifications that needed doing had to be applied to the entire family.
It became clear that tracking these traits would become a major nightmare,
as they wouldn't be really evident until the images were running in sequence,
or would only be discovered in the process of modifying something else...

My solution was to build a massive "parts list", from which the images could
be created from scratch on demand, with the use of macros on the rare
occasions I needed to sleep!!  After three months of designing creating
editing and refining the images and working out just what the hell was going
on (palettes), the images were assembled semi-automatically in a week or so
for final delivery.

Perhaps there's a paradigm here...

Andy.

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Haveland-Robinson Associates   | Email: [e-mail]         |
| 54 Greenfield Road, London     |        [e-mail] |
| N15 5EP England. 081-800 1708  | Also:  0621-88756 081-802 4502       |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
>>>> Those that can, use applications. Those that can't, write them! <<<<
> Some dream of doing great things, while others stay awake and do them <

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

Date: 10 Nov 1992 03:50:50 GMT
From: Carl J Lydick <[e-mail]>
Subject: Lunar "colony" reality check
Newsgroups: sci.space,alt.sci.planetary

Reply-To: [e-mail]
Nntp-Posting-Host: sol1.gps.caltech.edu
Sender: [e-mail]
Source-Info:  Sender is really [e-mail]

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Louis Giglio) writes:
>|> >* A livable atmosphere is mostly nitrogen, not oxygen.
>|>
>|> Which comes as a rude suprise to the astronaust who lived
>|> weeks on end on pure oxygen.
>                   ^^^^ ^^^^^^
>
>I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with either party, but I want to point
>out that
>this can't possibly be correct.  The oxygen had to be diluted with
>something.
>They would have died otherwise.

You would be correct had the vehicle been pressurized to 1 atmosphere.
However, your conclusion does not follow if the cabin pressure was .2
atmosphere.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Carl J Lydick | INTERnet: [e-mail] | NSI/HEPnet: SOL1::CARL

Disclaimer:  Hey, I understand VAXen and VMS.  That's what I get paid for.  My
understanding of astronomy is purely at the amateur level (or below).  So
unless what I'm saying is directly related to VAX/VMS, don't hold me or my
organization responsible for it.  If it IS related to VAX/VMS, you can try to
hold me responsible for it, but my organization had nothing to do with it.

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

Date: Tue, 10 Nov 92 01:06:44 EST
From: John Roberts <[e-mail]>
Subject: Man in space...

-From: jenkins@fritz (Steve Jenkins)
-Subject: Re: Man in space ...
-Date: 9 Nov 92 18:20:37 GMT
-Organization: Jet Propulsion Laboratory (NASA)

-In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Henry Spencer) writes:
->As Clarke has pointed
->out, if you *expect* the decompression, you can boost your internal oxygen
->supply considerably by hyperventilating first.

-But not by much.  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.
-Hemoglobin is remarkable stuff.

The world record for voluntarily remaining underwater (and conscious) is
something like 13 minutes. The fellow hyperventilated pure (1 Atm) oxygen
(don't try this at home!) ahead of time. Does this fit in with your model?
(I realize his lungs weren't exposed to vacuum, but he didn't have any way
of getting more oxygen except perhaps very slow diffusion from the water.)

-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, and
-hence in the arterial blood.  If the lung pressure goes to zero, so
-immediately does the arterial PO2.  The transport delay from lungs to
-brain is on the order of 20 seconds, so you can't expect to maintain
-consciousness much longer than that.  The oxygen demand of the brain
-is high, and there are no signifcant stores of oxygen anywhere in
-the body outside of the lungs and arterial blood.

What's the mechanism by which the hemoglobin gives up its oxygen where
it's needed? And is there a 100% oxygen turnover on each pass of the
blood through the lungs?

-Note that it's the partial pressure, not the concentration that
-matters.  Even breathing pure O2 from a tank doesn't help much at low
-ambient pressure.  That's why climbers on Everest are at the limits
-even with supplemental oxygen.

People seem to do "reasonably" well breathing air at around half normal
pressure, which would imply an oxygen partial pressure of 80mm Hg or not
much over. What's the lowest pressure of pure oxygen that people can
manage on? And what is the air pressure on the top of Mt. Everest? (It
has been climbed (strenuous physical activity) without supplementary
oxygen. It's very dangerous, but it has been done.)

There's an article in a recent Scientific American on altitude sickness -
I haven't had time to more than scan it. Apparently it's not really healthful
to breathe air at any pressure noticeably less than sea level pressure, and
some people are much more susceptible than others to altitude-related
health problems.

John Roberts
[e-mail]

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

Date: 10 Nov 92 03:32:12 GMT
From: Andrew Haveland-Robinson <[e-mail]>
Subject: More lunar gravity questions
Newsgroups: sci.space

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

>-From: [e-mail] (Andrew Haveland-Robinson)
>-Subject: Ten embarrassed questions about the moon (very long)
>-Date: 8 Nov 92 03:34:44 GMT
>-Organization: Haveland-Robinson Associates
>
>-In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:
>-...
>-An excellent article!  I have a couple of questions...
>
>-What is the ratio of density of the mascons to the "masdeps" (depletions)?
>
>Here's what I can find in the reference:
>
Lots of interesting stuff unfortunately deleted :-)

Thanks very much for the comprehensive article John, I wish I had more
time to comment on it... :-(

I have no idea what a mgal is either (apart from being a unit of some
gravity!), mG is almost ambiguous...

Interior viscous motion within the bodies must have caused the locking,
and this massaging would coax heavier masses closer to the Earth.
If there were a tectonic system hundred of millions of years ago then
perhaps the denser plates would have "slid" round to face the Earth after
locking had stabilised, much of the moon's mass would have been molten
after the severe tidal squidging...

Perhaps the thicker and lighter crust on the far side of the Moon is
caused in much the same way that there is always a high tide on far side
of the Earth?

I think that this would explain why the masscons are located just beneath
the surface, and spread out...

(If the moon were totally solid it wouldn't lock, its local axis rotation
velocity would oscillate continuously, the difference of 2000 mile diameter
over 230,000 distance would be a very small difference in gravitational
potential - perhaps this would be enough to keep it locked?)

Andy.

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Haveland-Robinson Associates   | Email: [e-mail]         |
| 54 Greenfield Road, London     |        [e-mail] |
| N15 5EP England. 081-800 1708  | Also:  0621-88756 081-802 4502       |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
>>>> Those that can, use applications. Those that can't, write them! <<<<
> Some dream of doing great things, while others stay awake and do them <

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

Date: 10 Nov 92 06:13:29 GMT
From: Gregory Newton <[e-mail]>
Subject: NASA Coverup
Newsgroups: sci.space,alt.conspiracy

[e-mail] (Seth Bradley) writes:

>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:
>>   there is a solid pillar of iron of unknown age  near  New  Delhi  ,India,
>>   that has never rusted ,and no one knows why .

>This is a popular myth promoted by Van Daniken.  The pillar does indeed
>rust.  It is regularly cleaned of said rust.  End of mystery.

    He also gets the place wrong and some of the the Von Daniken
follows claim (and i've heard but can't verify von Daniken) that it is
made of "a strange alloy unkown to earth" and is "welded together".
    It apparently was built as a monument to a prince of some sort
where von Daniken claims it's origen is unknown.

    Von Daniken also make a lot of dishonest (or _extremely_ ignorant)
claims about a lot of other quite mundane objects from all over the
world. Someone has compiled a list of such and it is included as part
of a book whose name and author I can't remember. The title had
something like "unexplained mysteries" in it and I think it was published
by Readers Digest. There is a more complete list somewhere else but
I can't remember even vague details about it. There might be a reference
to it in the fisrt.

ObConspiracy(quite possibly true): Von Daniken wrote a lot of crap with
evidence he made up in order to sell books (to the gulible) and make
himself very rich.


    - Cloud (Greg N)

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

Date: Tue, 10 Nov 92 00:39:31 EST
From: John Roberts <[e-mail]>
Subject: reality check (2)

-From: [e-mail] (Allen W. Sherzer)
-Subject: Re: Lunar "colony" reality check
-Date: 9 Nov 92 19:24:39 GMT

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

They also had some health problems that were probably related to the lack
of full atmospheric pressure. There's been talk of using helium as a "filler"
gas, but I suspect the first long-term lunar settlements will use nitrogen.

->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.

Abundant - yes, cheap - no (at least by Earth standards). It may actually
make sense to start with fission and imported fuel (or a combination of
fission and solar power - performing the energy-intensive tasks only
during the day), until large power storage facilities can be brought on line.

I'm in favor of establishing permanent human settlements on the moon, but I
think there's a tendency to underplay the problems (or overplay them :-).

We need vigorous technology development to make it worthwhile and affordable.
I have a neutral opinion on whether asteroid mining should be a precursor
to lunar settlement - I'm sure it will be important in the long run.

Also, I think the lunar settlement people should place more emphasis on
robotics and teleoperation from Earth. A few humans and a large number of
robots should be able to do a much better job than a large number of humans
with only a few robots.

John Roberts
[e-mail]

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

Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1992 04:39:41 GMT
From: Paul Mc Mullen <[e-mail]>
Subject: Satellite Tracking
Newsgroups: sci.space,alt.sci.planetary

Does anybody know the whereabouts of a public domain (shareware)
satellite tracking program, or for that matter whether they exist in
this form. I would very much appreciate if anybody knows where a PC
version for the IBM could be found.

       Thanks in advance Paul.

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

End of Space Digest Volume 15 : Issue 405
------------------------------