Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/mac/TEXT/SPACEDIG/V16_4/V16NO425.TXT

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Date: Tue,  6 Apr 93 05:29:34
From: Space Digest maintainer <[e-mail]>
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Subject: Space Digest V16 #425
To: Space Digest Readers
Precedence: bulk


Space Digest                Tue,  6 Apr 93       Volume 16 : Issue 425

Today's Topics:
          Alaska Pipeline and Space Station, Go Commerical.
             Area Rule (was Re: Space Research Spin Off)
                       Celebrate Liberty!  1993
               Comet in Temporary Orbit Around Jupiter?
               DC-X: Vehicle Nears Flight Test (2 msgs)
                 Griffin / Office of Exploration: RIP
                     MACH 25 landing site bases?
                     Magellan Venus Maps (Thanks)
                            nuclear waste
                  Portable Small Ground Station?dir
                  So I'm an idiot, what else is new?
                          space food sticks
                     SSF Redesign: Constellation
            Terraforming Venus: can it be done "cheaply"?

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

Date: Tue, 6 Apr 1993 03:17:01 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Alaska Pipeline and Space Station, Go Commerical.
Newsgroups: sci.space

Sounds liek what the FED has to do is sign a 50 or more year lease to use
certain parts of a space station that is built and designed and such by a
commerical company or consortium of companies (such as like Alyeska) for a
small amount of rent in return for certain incentives and such.. Such as tax
and other right off and also a monopoly on certain products.. The commerical
builders would have certain perks given to them to make there end easier (taxes
, contracts, regulatory concesions and such..)

Is it workable, just might work..

After all, if China can lease out Hong Kong and the people of Hong Kong can
make money, this could work..

==
Michael Adams, [e-mail] -- I'm not high, just jacked

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

Date: Tue, 6 Apr 1993 06:47:20 GMT
From: "Gregory N. Bond" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Area Rule (was Re: Space Research Spin Off)
Newsgroups: sci.space

Can somebody elaborate on "Area Ruling".  I gather it's something to
do with aerodynamics of trans-sonic planes, and can be summarised as
"Coke bottle good, Coke can bad".  Anyone provide more details,
derivation etc?
--
Gregory Bond <[e-mail]> Burdett Buckeridge & Young Ltd Melbourne Australia
   Knox's 386 is slick.            Fox in Sox, on Knox's Box
   Knox's box is very quick.       Plays lots of LSL. He's sick!
(Apologies to John "Iron Bar" Mackin.)

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

Date: Tue, 6 Apr 1993 08:00:12 GMT
From: Bob Waldrop <[e-mail]>
Subject: Celebrate Liberty!  1993
Newsgroups: rec.ham-radio,rec.nude,rec.radio.amateur.misc,rec.radio.cb,rec.radio.shortwave,sci.aeronautic,sci.aeronautics,sci.astro,sci.econ,sci.med,sci.misc,sci.space,soc.bi

Bob.Waldrop send the referred to message to a lot of apparently
inappropriate groups.  If you consider them such, maybe he would
appreciate learning that.

>Lines: 323
>
>Announcing. . . Announcing. . . Announcing. . .Announcing. . .
>
>                             CELEBRATE LIBERTY!
>                 1993 LIBERTARIAN PARTY NATIONAL CONVENTION
>                             AND POLITICAL EXPO
>
--
doug foxvog
[e-mail]

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

Date: Tue, 6 Apr 1993 06:13:29 GMT
From: Eric H Seale <[e-mail]>
Subject: Comet in Temporary Orbit Around Jupiter?
Newsgroups: sci.space,sci.astro,alt.sci.planetary

[e-mail] (Ron Baalke) writes:
>According the IAU Circular #5744, Comet Shoemaker-Levy 1993e, may be
>temporarily in orbit around Jupiter.  The comet had apparently made a
>close flyby of Jupiter sometime in 1992 resulting in the breakup of the
>comet.

Ooooh -- who would have thought that Galileo would get the chance to
check out a comet TOO?!?

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

Date: Tue, 6 Apr 1993 03:10:11 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: DC-X: Vehicle Nears Flight Test
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Henry Spencer) writes:
> In article <2736@snap> [e-mail]-mrc (Paul Johnson) writes:
>>This bit interests me.  How much automatic control is there?  Is it
>>purely autonomous or is there some degree of ground control?
>
> The "stick-and-rudder man" is always the onboard computer.  The computer
> normally gets its orders from a stored program, but they can be overridden
> from the ground.
>
>>How is
>>the transition from aerodynamic flight (if thats what it is) to hover
>>accomplished?  This is the really new part...
>
> It's also one of the tricky parts.  There are four different ideas, and
> DC-X will probably end up trying all of them.  (This is from talking to
> Mitch Burnside Clapp, who's one of the DC-X test pilots, at Making Orbit.)
>
> (1) Pop a drogue chute from the nose, light the engines once the thing
>     stabilizes base-first.  Simple and reliable.  Heavy shock loads
>     on an area of structure that doesn't otherwise carry major loads.
>     Needs a door in the "hot" part of the structure, a door whose
>     operation is mission-critical.
>
> (2) Switch off pitch stability -- the DC is aerodynamically unstable at
>     subsonic speeds -- wait for it to flip, and catch it at 180
>     degrees, then light engines.  A bit scary.
>
> (3) Light the engines and use thrust vectoring to push the tail around.
>     Probably the preferred method in the long run.  Tricky because
>     of the fuel-feed plumbing:  the fuel will start off in the tops
>     of the tanks, then slop down to the bottoms during the flip.
>     Keeping the engines properly fed will be complicated.
>
> (4) Build up speed in a dive, then pull up hard (losing a lot of speed,
>     this thing's L/D is not that great) until it's headed up and
>     the vertical velocity drops to zero, at which point it starts
>     to fall tail-first.  Light engines.  Also a bit scary, and you
>     probably don't have enough altitude left to try again.
> --
> All work is one man's work.             | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
>                     - Kipling           |  [e-mail]  utzoo!henry

Since the DC-X is to take off horizontal, why not land that way??
Why do the Martian Landing thing..  Or am I missing something.. Don't know to
much about DC-X and such.. (overly obvious?).

Why not just fall to earth like the russian crafts?? Parachute in then...

==
Michael Adams, [e-mail] -- I'm not high, just jacked

Please enlighten me... Ignorance is easy to correct. make a mistake and
everyone will let you know you messed up..

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

Date: Tue, 6 Apr 1993 05:45:33 GMT
From: Josh Hopkins <[e-mail]>
Subject: DC-X: Vehicle Nears Flight Test
Newsgroups: sci.space

[e-mail] writes:

[Excellent discussion of DC-X landing techniques by Henry deleted]

>Since the DC-X is to take off horizontal, why not land that way??

The DC-X will not take of horizontally.  It takes of vertically.

>Why do the Martian Landing thing..

For several reasons.  Vertical landings don't require miles of runway and limit
noise pollution.  They don't require wheels or wings.  Just turn on the engines
and touch down.  Of course, as Henry pointed out, vetical landings aren't quite
that simple.

>Or am I missing something.. Don't know to
>much about DC-X and such.. (overly obvious?).

Well, to be blunt, yes.  But at least you're learning.

>Why not just fall to earth like the russian crafts?? Parachute in then...

The Soyuz vehicles use parachutes for the descent and then fire small rockets
just before they hit the ground.  Parachutes are, however, not especially
practical if you want to reuse something without much effort.  The landings
are also not very comfortable.  However, in the words of Georgy Grechko,
"I prefer to have bruises, not to sink."


--
Josh Hopkins                                          [e-mail]
          "Tout ce qu'un homme est capable d'imaginer, d'autres hommes
                     seront capable de la realiser"
             -Jules Verne

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

Date: Tue, 6 Apr 1993 05:26:12 GMT
From: Josh Hopkins <[e-mail]>
Subject: Griffin / Office of Exploration: RIP
Newsgroups: sci.space,talk.politics.space

[e-mail] (Brian Yamauchi) writes:

>Any comments on the absorbtion of the Office of Exploration into the
>Office of Space Sciences and the reassignment of Griffin to the "Chief
>Engineer" position?  Is this just a meaningless administrative
>shuffle, or does this bode ill for SEI?

Unfortunately, things have been boding ill (is that a legitimate conjugation?)
for a while.  While the Office of Exploration had some great ideas, they never
got much money.  I've heard good things about Griffin, but it's hard to want
him back in a job where he couldn't do anything.

>Does anyone know what his new duties will be?

The group examining the Freedom-based space station redesign proposals is
headed by Michael Griffin, "NASA's cheif engineer" in the words of Space News.
I believe this is him.

--
Josh Hopkins                                          [e-mail]
          "Tout ce qu'un homme est capable d'imaginer, d'autres hommes
                     seront capable de la realiser"
             -Jules Verne

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

Date: Tue, 6 Apr 1993 03:38:29 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: MACH 25 landing site bases?
Newsgroups: sci.space

The supersonic booms hear a few months ago over I belive San Fran, heading east
of what I heard, some new super speed Mach 25 aircraft?? What military based
int he direction of flight are there that could handle a Mach 25aircraft on its
landing decent?? Odd question??

==
Michael Adams, [e-mail] -- I'm not high, just jacked

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

Date: Tue, 6 Apr 1993 07:49:55 GMT
From: Roland Karlsson <[e-mail]>
Subject: Magellan Venus Maps (Thanks)
Newsgroups: sci.space,sci.astro,alt.sci.planetary

Thanks Ron and Peter for some very nice maps.

I have an advice though.  You wrote that the maps were reduced to 256
colors.  As far ad I understand JPEG pictures gets much better (and
the compressed files smaller) if you use the original 3 color 24 bit
data when converting to JPEG.

Thanks again,

--
Roland Karlsson             SICS, PO Box 1263, S-164 28 KISTA, SWEDEN
Internet: [e-mail]    Tel: [phone]          Fax: [phone]
Telex: 812 6154 7011 SICS   Ttx: 2401-812 6154 7011=SICS

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

Date: 5 Apr 93 01:48:27 GMT
From: Kenneth Ng <sugra!ken>
Subject: nuclear waste
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]: [e-mail] (fred j mccall 575-3539) writes:
:Just a bit off, Phil.  We don't reprocess nuclear fuel because what
:you get from the reprocessing plant is bomb-grade plutonium.  It is
:also cheaper, given current prices of things, to simply fabricate new
:fuel rods rather than reprocess the old ones, creating potentially
:dangerous materials (from a national security point of view) and then
:fabricate that back into fuel rods.

Fabricating with reprocessed plutonium may result in something that may go
kind of boom, but its hardly decent bomb grade plutonium.  If you want bomb
grade plutonium use a research reactor, not a power reactor.  But if you want
a bomb, don't use plutonium, use uranium.

--
Kenneth Ng
Please reply to [e-mail] for now.
"All this might be an elaborate simulation running in a little device sitting
on someone's table" -- J.L. Picard: ST:TNG

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

Date: Tue, 6 Apr 1993 02:57:00 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Portable Small Ground Station?dir
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Henry Spencer) writes:
> In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:
>>How difficult would it be to set up your own ground station?
>
> Ground station for *what*?  At one extreme, some of the amateur-radio

> satellites have sometimes been reachable with hand-held radios.  At the
> other, nothing you can do in your back yard will let you listen in on
> Galileo.  Please be more specific.
> --
> All work is one man's work.             | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
>                     - Kipling           |  [e-mail]  utzoo!henry


SPECIFIC:
Basically to be able to do the things the big dadies can do.. Monitor, and
control if need be the Shuttle...

Such as the one in Australia and such....

==
Michael Adams, [e-mail] -- I'm not high, just jacked

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

Date: Tue, 06 Apr 1993 07:12:01 GMT
From: Dave Rickel <[e-mail]>
Subject: So I'm an idiot, what else is new?
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (R. E. McElwaine) writes:
|> RUSSIA'S OPERATIVE
|>
|>                In March 1993, Russian President Boris Yeltsin
|>           proposed to the United States and the United Nations a global
|>           defense shield (with "Star Wars"-type weapons) AGAINST
...

Funny.  A bit disturbing.  Forging a posting seems somewhat unethical, even
if the subject is as notorious as McElwaine.

Followups should definitely not go to sci.space.


david rickel
[e-mail]

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

Date: 6 Apr 1993 05:54:10 GMT
From: ";;;;RD48" <[e-mail]>
Subject: space food sticks
Newsgroups: sci.space

I had spacefood sticks just about every morning for breakfast in
first and second grade (69-70, 70-71).  They came in Chocolate,
strawberry, and peanut butter and were cylinders about 10cm long
and 1cm in diameter wrapped in yellow space foil (well, it seemed
like space foil at the time).

The taste is hard to describe, although I remember it fondly.  It was
most certainly more "candy" than say a modern "Power Bar."  Sort of
a toffee injected with vitamins.  The chocolate Power Bar is a rough
approximation of the taste.  Strawberry sucked.

Man, these were my "60's."


--
Gavin Helf
UC Berkeley Political Science
Berkeley-Stanford Program in Soviet Studies
[e-mail]

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

Date: Tue, 6 Apr 1993 08:20:38 GMT
From: Nick Szabo <[e-mail]>
Subject: SSF Redesign: Constellation
Newsgroups: sci.space

SSF is up for redesign again.  Let's do it right this
time!  Let's step back and consider the functionality we want:

[1] microgravity/vacuum process research
[2] life sciences research (adaptation to space)
[3] spacecraft maintenence

The old NASA approach, explified by Shuttle and SSF so far, was to
centralize functionality.  These projects failed to meet
their targets by a wide margin: the military and commercial users
took most of their payloads off Shuttle after wasting much effort to
tie their payloads to it, and SSF has crumbled into disorganization
and miscommunication.  Over $50 billion has been spent on these
two projects with no reduction in launch costs and littel improvement
in commercial space industrialization.  Meanwhile, military and commercial
users have come up with a superior strategy for space development: the
constellation.

Firstly, different functions are broken down into different
constellations placed in the optimal orbit for each function:
thus we have the GPS/Navstar constellation in 12-hour orbits,
comsats in Clarke and Molniya orbits, etc.  Secondly, the task
is distributed amongst several spacecraft in a constellation,
providing for redundancy and full coverage where needed.

SSF's 3 main functions require quite different environments
and are also prime candidates for constellization.

[1] We have the makings of a microgravity constellation now:
COMET and Mir for long-duration flights, Shuttle/Spacelab for
short-duration flights.  The best strategy for this area is
inexpensive, incremental improvement: installation of U.S. facilities
on Mir, Shuttle/Mir linkup, and transition from Shuttle/Spacelab
to a much less expensive SSTO/Spacehab/COMET or SSTO/SIF/COMET.
We might also expand the research program to take advantage of
interesting space environments, eg the high-radiation Van Allen belt
or gas/plasma gradients in comet tails.  The COMET system can
be much more easily retrofitted for these tasks, where a
station is too large to affordably launch beyond LEO.

[2] We need to study life sciences not just in microgravity,
but also in lunar and Martian gravities, and in the radiation
environments of deep space instead of the protected shelter
of LEO.  This is a very long-term, low-priority project, since
astronauts will have little practical use in the space program
until costs come down orders of magnitude.  Furthermore, using
astronauts severely restricts the scope of the investigation,
and the sample size.  So I propose LabRatSat, a constellation
tether-bolo satellites that test out various levels of gravity
in super-Van-Allen-Belt orbits that are representative of the
radiation environment encountered on Earth-Moon, Earth-Mars,
Earth-asteroid, etc. trips.  The miniaturized life support
machinery might be operated real-time from earth thru a VR
interface.  AFter several orbital missions have been flown,
follow-ons can act as LDEFs on the lunar and Martian surface,
testing out the actual environment at low cost before $billions
are spent on astronauts.

[3] By far the largest market for spacecraft servicing is in
Clarke orbit.  I propose a fleet of small teleoperated
robots and small test satellites on which ground engineers can
practice their skills.  Once in place, robots can pry stuck
solar arrays and antennas, attach solar battery power packs,
inject fuel, etc.  Once the fleet is working, it can be
spun off to commercial company(s) who can work with the comsat
companies to develop comsat replaceable module standards.

By applying the successful constellation strategy, and getting
rid of the failed centralized strategy of STS and old SSF, we
have radically improved the capability of the program while
greatly cutting its cost.  For a fraction of SSF's pricetag,
we can fix satellites where the satellites are, we can study
life's adaptation to a much large & more representative variety
of space environments, and we can do microgravity and vacuum
research inexpensively and, if needed, in special-purpose
orbits.

N.B., we can apply the constellation strategy to space exploration
as well, greatly cutting its cost and increasing its functionality.
Mars Network and Artemis are two good examples of this; more ambitiously
we can set up a network of native propellant plants on Mars that can be used
to fuel planet-wide rover/ballistic hopper prospecting and
sample return.  The descendants of LabRatSat's technology can
be used as a Mars surface LDEF and to test out closed-ecology
greenhouses on Mars at low cost.


--
Nick Szabo                     [e-mail]

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

Date: 6 Apr 93 00:47:12 GMT
From: Paul Dietz <[e-mail]>
Subject: Terraforming Venus: can it be done "cheaply"?
Newsgroups: sci.space

Would someone please send me James Oberg's email address, if he has
one and if someone reading this list knows it?  I wanted to send
him a comment on something in his terraforming book.

    Paul F. Dietz
    [e-mail]

    Potential explosive yield of the annual global
    production of borax:  5 million megatons

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

End of Space Digest Volume 16 : Issue 425
------------------------------