Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/mac/TEXT/SPACEDIG/V16_5/V16NO526.TXT

Internet Message Format | 1993-07-13 | 33KB

Date: Wed,  5 May 93 06:32:30
From: Space Digest maintainer <[e-mail]>
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Subject: Space Digest V16 #526
To: Space Digest Readers
Precedence: bulk


Space Digest                Wed,  5 May 93       Volume 16 : Issue 526

Today's Topics:
           ASTRONAUTS---What does weightlessness feel like?
           Boeing TSTO (Was: Words from Chairman of Boeing)
                      Boeing TSTO / SSTO vs NASP
                   Communication satellite station
                         Drag-free satellites
             HST Servicing Mission Scheduled for 11 Days
                               Level 5?
                  Mars Observer Update #2 - 04/30/93
     Minovitch's hat trick (was Re: Mothership for Flybys and...)
              Mothership for Flybys and cutting costs..
             Two-Line Orbital Element Set:  Space Shuttle
    U.S. Government and Science and Technolgy Investment (2 msgs)
                    Vandalizing the sky. (2 msgs)
      Will NASA's Mars Observer Image the Face on Mars? (2 msgs)

    Welcome to the Space Digest!!  Please send your messages to
    "[e-mail]", and (un)subscription requests of the form
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    (THENET), or [e-mail] (Internet).
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Sun, 2 May 1993 01:50:28 GMT
From: "Robert B. Love " <raptor![e-mail]>
Subject: ASTRONAUTS---What does weightlessness feel like?
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]>
[e-mail] writes:
>
> At the on-set of weightlessness, my shoulders lifted and my spine
> straightened.  I felt a momentary panic, and my hands tried to grab
> onto something (like the strap keeping me firmly against the floor)
> to prevent me from falling; I remember conciously over-ruling my
> involuntary motions.  My ears felt (not heard) a rush and I could
> feel fluid moving in my head (like when you get up from bed while
> you have a cold).

I have over 2 hours in free fall aboard the KC-135 and have
participated in the spinning chairs, acceleration sled and electro-shock
experiments.   The immediate panic that goes along with falling
immediately subsides and a rather pleasant sensation follows.  After
a parabola or two its no big deal.  Sudden head movements can be
disorienting (degree depending on the individual) but the constant cycle
of 0 gee followed by 2 gee is easily adapted to.  Kind of reminds me of a
boat in choppy seas.

There is one other pheneomena that occurs as the plane is heading back for
Ellington that seems to bring out motion sickness.  Some plane crew chief
will always ask "Hey, anyone wanna go for barbecue".  There is a cajun
place just across the street.

--Bob Love

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

Date: Mon, 3 May 1993 19:29:32 GMT
From: "Allen W. Sherzer" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Boeing TSTO (Was: Words from Chairman of Boeing)
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Matthew DeLuca) writes:

>One thing I think people need to be careful about is falling into the
>One True Faith mode of thinking where SSTO (as represented by Delta
>Clipper) is the One True Way to better and cheaper access to space....

Well said. The goal is low cost access to LEO, not how you do it.

  Allen

--
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Lady Astor:   "Sir, if you were my husband I would poison your coffee!"   |
| W. Churchill: "Madam, if you were my wife, I would drink it."             |
+----------------------44 DAYS TO FIRST FLIGHT OF DCX-----------------------+

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

Date: Mon, 3 May 1993 21:28:32 GMT
From: Keith Mancus <[e-mail]>
Subject: Boeing TSTO / SSTO vs NASP
Newsgroups: sci.space

[e-mail] writes:
> NASA/DOD/DOT are trying to put together a coherent strategy
> for future US gov't space transportation systems, and trying to
> juggle near-term launch needs (like for DoD and NASA) against
> medium-term needs (including commercial considerations), and against
> the investment and risk of going to "leap frog" new technologies
> like SDIO/SSTO and NASP and Beta.

  Good posting overall, Wales, but I have to comment on this
last.  I don't think it's fair to lump technologies like SSTO/Beta
together with NASP.  NASP requires breakthroughs in many areas,
and requires a long-term development program with a lot of basic
research.  As my GN&C professor put it, "You could make a career out
of NASP."  SSTO/TSTO, on the other hand, is an incremental technology
that builds on what has gone before.  Most of the parts are taken
off the shelf, or small evolutions of off-the-shelf parts.
  In short, I think we can have a flying SSTO/TSTO much sooner than
a NASP, and spend a lot less money designing it.

--
| Keith Mancus    <[e-mail]>                           |
| N5WVR           <[e-mail]>                        |
| "Black powder and alcohol, when your states and cities fall,          |
|  when your back's against the wall...." -Leslie Fish                  |

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

Date: Mon, 3 May 1993 21:46:34 GMT
From: Mark Elowitz <[e-mail]>
Subject: Communication satellite station
Newsgroups: sci.space

Does anyone know if NASA has explored the possibility of placing
a communication relay satellite stations in highly elliptical
orbits in the Jovian and Saturnian systems. This would provide
a communication platform for future planetary probes sent to these
planets. The orbiting communication relay satellite station
could be equiped with very large antennas, allowing high bit
rates to transmitted back to earth from future planetary probes.
It was also eliminate the need for large bulky antennas to be
placed on the probes. The planetary probe would utilize the
communication relay satellite once it has been placed into
its proper orbital tour.

Also, has anyone explored the possibility of transmitting
telemetry back to earth via laser or are the power constraints
too large.


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

Date: 3 May 1993 19:26:42 GMT
From: Isaac Kuo <[e-mail]>
Subject: Drag-free satellites
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Matthew R. Feulner) writes:
>In article <1s3jqi$[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Isaac Kuo) writes:
>|> In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:

>|> >The earth's mass distribution is not spherically symmetric, so neither
>|> >is its gravitational field.  The small differences from spherical can
>|> >be expressed as a series of generalised harmonic functions (modified
>|> >Lagrange polynomials for latitude dependence by sin/cos terms for longitude).
>    ^^^^^^^^
>              Legendre
>|>
>|> Well, you can certainly express any smooth function as the sum of an infinite
>|> number of harmonic functions.  I wouldn't, and neither would any other
>|> mathematician, call such summands "harmonics".


>|> In any case, the small difference from spherical that the Earth is is
>|> ridiculously small.

>Not so.  Since LEO (low earth orbit for the mathematicians) is only at an
>altitude of a few (2-3) % of the radius of the earth, these HARMONICS are very
>important.

I stand corrected.

>|> Even if the Earth were significantly flattenned, it would be flattenned on
>|> the axis of rotation, and thus the gravitational field does not rotate and
>|> thus no orbiting satellite can derive energy from the non-changing
>|> gravitational field.

>What a proof!  Why didn't I think of that?  I haven't seen the references
>myself, but it's possible it's supposed to gain energy in the sense that
>the mean semi-major axis is increasing - not necessarily in the total energy
>sense.  Or it could be total energy.

Wait a minute.  In a nonchanging gravitational field, you cannot increase
total energy just from the gravitational force.  Since gravity has no curl,
it is a potential field, so there's just no way for an orbiting body to
increase its total energy.

Now, there might be something funny with the semi-major axis increasing at
the expence of another, but the total energy (gravitational potential plus
kinetic energy) will not go up.  Now, if the satellite is in LEO and thus
subject to atmospheric drag, it will continually lose total energy unless

something other than gravity gives it some more (a rocket etc...).  In
this case, I am puzzled as to why this sort of satellite can be considered
"drag-free" in any way.

I'll admit that the oblateness of the Earth may have a significant effect in
LEO.  However, there's no way in which this somehow imparts extra total energy
to a LEO satellite.
--
*Isaac Kuo -->[e-mail]<--       *       ___
*                            * _____/_o_\_____
*    Who am I?  Where am I?  What do        *(==(/_______\)==)
*    I do?  The address says it all.        * \==\/     \/==/

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

Date: Mon, 3 May 1993 20:00:57 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: HST Servicing Mission Scheduled for 11 Days
Newsgroups: sci.space,sci.space.shuttle,sci.astro

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (David Ward) writes:
> In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (David M. Palmer) writes...
>>
>>You may want to put Hubble back in the payload bay for a reboost,
>>and you don't want to clip off the panels each time.
>
> The "artist renderings" that I've seen of the HST reboost still have
> the arrays fully extended, with a cradle holding HST at a ~30 degree
> angle to the Shuttle.  I think the rendering was conceived before the
> array replacemnet was approved, so I'm not sure if the current reboost
> will occur with the arrays deployed or not.  However, it doesn't
> appear that an array retraction was necessary for reboost.
>>

The phrase: "the current reboost" implies that there will be a reboost
coming up soon - presumably during the servicing mission.  As posted
several times, a reboost is NOT part of any plans for this servicing
mission that any of us here know about.  If you know of such, please
supply some reason for this rumour.  It can be confusing to readers
of the net to see contradictory posts on this.  If you do not know of
any real plans to reboost on the next mission, please clarify your post.
Speculation on _how_ such could be accomplished is fun and I encourage
it, but come on ... .  The servicing mission will do a LOT and is quite
interesting in itself but it can be misleading to allow the public to
think something (a reboost) is going to happen when it will not.

..
>>--
>>        David M. Palmer        [e-mail]
>>                    [e-mail]
>
> David W. @ GSFC


Wm. Hathaway
Baltimore MD

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

Date: 1 May 93 18:31:32 MDT
From: Andrew Folkins <[e-mail]>
Subject: Level 5?
Newsgroups: sci.space

In <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Bret Wingert) writes:
>In <[e-mail]> Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey writes:
>>
>>Will someone tell an ignorant physicist where the term "Level 5" comes
>>from? It sounds like the RISKS Digest  equivalent of Large, Extra
>>Large, Jumbo... Or maybe it's like "Defcon 5..."
>
>Level 5 refers to the Carnegie-Mellon Software Engineering Institute's
>Capability Maturity Model.  This model rates software development
>org's from1-5.  with 1 being Chaotic and 5 being Optimizing.  DoD is

A good description is chapter 4 of "Decline & Fall of the American
Programmer" by Edward Yourdon (ISBN 0-13-203670-3).  Basically, level 1 is
code hacking.  You don't know how long it will take, how much it will cost,
or how well it will work.   At level 2, you can create and usually meet
budgets and schedules, mostly though capable project management.  In level
3, the development process has been defined, formalized and written down,
process improvment is now possible.  Level 4 adds quantitative metrics to
measure the process.  Level 5 uses those statistics to optimize the
process.

Some results from an SEI survey of 50-some mostly aerospace sites,
including places like JPL, SAC, TRW, and GTE, showed 81% of sites at level
1, 12% at level 2, 7% at level 3, and NONE at levels 4 or 5.  Of close to
300 projects at those sites, 88% were at level 1, 5% at level 2, 5% at
level 3, (no data for level 4), and 2% were at level 5.  The IBM site for
shuttle software was one of the few level 5 projects.

Now you know why the software on your PC is so bad.

--
  Andrew Folkins  [e-mail]    [e-mail]
                  ...!cs.UAlberta.CA!ve6mgs!cuenews!andrew

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

Date: 3 May 1993 22:09 UT
From: Ron Baalke <[e-mail]>
Subject: Mars Observer Update #2 - 04/30/93
Newsgroups: sci.space,sci.astro,alt.sci.planetary

Forwarded from:
PUBLIC INFORMATION OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIF. 91109. TELEPHONE [phone]

                  MARS OBSERVER MISSION STATUS
                         April 30, 1993

     The Mars Observer spacecraft switched to an automatic fault
protection mode, called "contingency mode," at approximately 1:30
a.m. Pacific Daylight Time on Thursday, April 29.  Ground-
controllers at JPL discovered the situation at 6 a.m. PDT, when
the Madrid Deep Space Network facility did not receive the
expected spacecraft signal at the scheduled acquisition time.
All telemetry indications were normal at conclusion of the
preceding pass at Goldstone.  At reacquisition, indications were
that the spacecraft was no longer in normal inertial reference
mode.

     Contingency mode is designed to restore communications when
the spacecraft loses attitude reference and cannot point the
high-gain antenna at Earth.  The reconfiguration automatically
switches spacecraft communications from the high-gain to the
low-gain antenna.  Data rates are reduced and the solar arrays
are repositioned to a more favorable orientation toward the sun.
Preliminary indications suggest that the spacecraft lost inertial
reference to the sun, which triggered the fault protection mode.

     The incident, which last occurred on April 9, 1993, is
understood and not considered serious.  No hardware problems were
involved and the spacecraft performed perfectly in switching to
contingency mode.  The Mars Observer flight team planned to
return the spacecraft to normal cruise mode today.

     Today the Mars Observer spacecraft is about 22 million
kilometers (13.5 million miles) from Mars and 204 million
kilometers (127 million miles) from Earth. The spacecraft is
traveling at a velocity of about 7,200 kilometers per hour (5,000
miles per hour) with respect to Mars.

                             #####
     ___    _____     ___
    /_ /|  /____/ \  /_ /|     Ron Baalke         | [e-mail]
    | | | |  __ \ /| | | |     Jet Propulsion Lab |
 ___| | | | |__) |/  | | |__   M/S 525-3684 Telos | Once a year, go someplace
/___| | | |  ___/    | |/__ /| Pasadena, CA 91109 | you've never been before.
|_____|/  |_|/       |_____|/                     |

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

Date: 3 May 93 17:57:47 -0600
From: Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey <[e-mail]>
Subject: Minovitch's hat trick (was Re: Mothership for Flybys and...)
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Anthony Frost) writes:
> There was an interesting paper published on this theme in the December 1991
> issue of the Journal of The British Interplanetary Society, "Exploring the
> Solar System with Multiple-Launched Gravity Propelled Miniaturised
> Spacecraft" by M A Minovitch.

Thanks, Anthony, I was gonna bring this up.  It's interesting to note
that Minovitch is credited with cooking up the first gravity-assist
trajectory studies (of the sort used by Mariner 10, Pioneer 11, the
Voyagers, and Galileo) as a grad student in the early Sixties.

Bill Higgins, Beam Jockey              | "There's only four things we do
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory  | better than anyone else:
Bitnet:           [e-mail]  | music/movies/microcode(software)/
Internet:       [e-mail]  | high-speed pizza delivery"
SPAN/Hepnet:           43011::HIGGINS  |   --Neal Stephenson, *Snow Crash*

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

Date: Sun, 2 May 1993 20:16:46 +0000
From: Anthony Frost <[e-mail]>
Subject: Mothership for Flybys and cutting costs..
Newsgroups: sci.space


  >> ... design a mother ship that has piggy backed probes for
  >> different missions,namely different planets...

  > Not useful unless you've got some truly wonderful propulsion
  > system for the mother ship that can't be applied to the
  > probes.  Otherwise it's better to simply launch the probes
  > independently.  The outer planets are scattered widely
  > across a two-dimensional solar system, and going to one is
  > seldom helpful in going to the next one.

There was an interesting paper published on this theme in the December 1991
issue of the Journal of The British Interplanetary Society, "Exploring the
Solar System with Multiple-Launched Gravity Propelled Miniaturised
Spacecraft" by M A Minovitch. It described a possible mission using a Titan
IV/Centaur F to launch 65 100kg craft on a trajectory towards Venus. Some
time before the Venus encounter, the individual probes start deploying from
the carrier structure and diverging from its trajectory. The timing of the
seperation and amount of push given to each probe gives access to a wide
range of post Venus encounter trajectories, allowing virtually
any destination to be picked for each of the probes in a launch. The example
given in the paper allows six units to be sent to Pluto, two Ranger style
impacters, two flybys and two orbiters. The varying trip times and numbers
of encounters for each probe stagger arrival times so that the tracking
network is not overloaded after the initial Venus flyby.

          Anthony

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

Date: Mon, 3 May 1993 21:57:57 GMT
From: TS Kelso <[e-mail]>
Subject: Two-Line Orbital Element Set:  Space Shuttle
Newsgroups: sci.space

The most current orbital elements from the NORAD two-line element sets are
carried on the Celestial BBS, [phone], and are updated daily (when
possible).  Documentation and tracking software are also available on this
system.  As a service to the satellite user community, the most current
elements for the current shuttle mission are provided below.  The Celestial
BBS may be accessed 24 hours/day at 300, 1200, 2400, 4800, or 9600 bps using
8 data bits, 1 stop bit, no parity.

Element sets (also updated daily), shuttle elements, and some documentation
and software are also available via anonymous ftp from archive.afit.af.mil
(129.92.1.66) in the directory pub/space.

STS 55
1 22640U 93 27  A 93122.24999999  .00042636  00000-0  11930-3 0   160
2 22640  28.4594 226.9083 0013262 304.5132  54.6481 15.91929165   893
--
Dr TS Kelso                           Assistant Professor of Space Operations
[e-mail]                    Air Force Institute of Technology

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

Date: Mon, 3 May 1993 20:10:07 GMT
From: Herman Rubin <[e-mail]>
Subject: U.S. Government and Science and Technolgy Investment
Newsgroups: sci.space,talk.politics.space,sci.research,talk.politics.misc,talk.politics.libertarian,misc.education

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Marc Roussel) writes:
>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail]
>(Herman Rubin) writes:
>>Also, the government did a job on private foundations,
>>making it more difficult for them to act to support research.

>     How did they do that?

They put a lot of restrictions on how private foundations can spend and
invest their endowments.  They also added to the red tape and put in all
sorts of "accountability" regulations.

In addition, there are some restrictions on what private foundations
can support; these are not too onerous yet, but they are getting there.
--
Herman Rubin, Dept. of Statistics, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette IN47907-1399
Phone: [phone]
[e-mail] (Internet, bitnet)
{purdue,pur-ee}!snap.stat!hrubin(UUCP)

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

Date: Mon, 3 May 1993 20:27:41 GMT
From: Herman Rubin <[e-mail]>
Subject: U.S. Government and Science and Technolgy Investment
Newsgroups: sci.space,talk.politics.space,sci.research,talk.politics.misc,talk.politics.libertarian,misc.education

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Jason Christian) writes:
>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Herman Rubin) writes:

            .............................

>>proposing today I may solve before the funding is granted, I may find
>>impossible, or I may find that it is too difficult.  In addition, tomorrow
>>I may get unexpected research results.  Possibly I may bet a bright idea
>>which solves yesterday's too difficult problem, or a whole new approach to
>>something I had not considered can develop.  This is the nature of the beast,
>>and except for really vague statements, if something can be predicted, it
>>is not major research, but development or routine activity not requiring
>>more than minimal attention of a good researcher.


>I don't this is exactily correct.  While it is true that NSF builds its
>researcher support (let's preserve the distinction between that and
>facilities support) around the research proposal (except for the
>Presidential Young Investigators program), it is also true that the
>proposal review explicitly includes considerations of the researcher's
>record.  In addition, the concept of supporting good *researchers* is
>well-embedded in the NSF folkways.  Program staff is well aware (or was
>in the mid-80s) that the research proposal may describe work that is now
>being completed, and that the funds being doled out at the moment
>may well be spent on some other work.  Programs in general would prefer
>to make longer-term committments, to the researcher, than spend lots of
>time niggling over the documentary details of one- or two-year grants.
>Of course the longer-term awards also reduce flexibility...

I expect that you are at least partially correct, but even so, if this is
not known and publicized, it has little effect.  It is quite definitely the
case that the reviewers are not made aware of this attitude, although again
some of the reviewers take it on themselves to act this way.  I believe that
the military manage to do this better.  In addition, there are many times
that NSF has spent money on things which the scientific community considers
a bad way to do things.

The NSF is not the only, nor even the largest, supporter of research.  I
believe that NIH really looks at the proposal.

>>I believe that at this time less quality research is being done than would
>>have happened if the government had never gotten into it, and the government
>>is trying to divert researchers from thinkers to plodders.

>I think maybe

>:s/trying to divert/tends to change/

>would improve the accuracy of that.

The proposal to move much of NSF money from research into development and
"technology transfer" is not an attempt to divert?  But even the proposal
system, with peer review, no matter how well done, does this.

Things were not too bad when there was more research money than could be
reasonably spent.  But now the competition keeps too many researchers from
open discussion.  An open research atmosphere at research universities,
where collegiality and intellectual interaction are rampant, is needed
to restore the American research potential.

--
Herman Rubin, Dept. of Statistics, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette IN47907-1399
Phone: [phone]
[e-mail] (Internet, bitnet)
{purdue,pur-ee}!snap.stat!hrubin(UUCP)

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

Date: Mon, 3 May 1993 22:01:40 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Vandalizing the sky.
Newsgroups: sci.astro,sci.space

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (fred j mccall 575-3539) writes:
> In <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:
>> (stuff) ...

> Object as you like.  Do as you like.  But if you think that a minority
> 'right' that doesn't exist should be allowed to stand in the way of
> research just because you don't like the idea that part of it is being
> funded by 'grubby commercialism', then I would suggest that you come

  (huh?  this wasn't _my_ reason for objection, but does it matter?)

> up with better solutions for where to get the money from.  I'm sure
> they'd be more than happy to listen to you, if you should come up with
> something workable.
>
>>Somehow I think this whole shoving
>>contest has gotten way off the track.  I'm ready to let this thread
>>die a quick and merciful death.
>
> No doubt you are, after trying to have the last word on it.  If you're
> ready to let it die, why did you even write a note?
>

Because I imprudently allowed myself to get annoyed by the beside-the-point
'rights/non-rights' argument.  I push to persuade, not to 'prohibit' and
it bothers me for someone to think I could force my views on anyone.
I'm just not that kind of person.  Views (sky sights) forced on me by
others is another matter.  Would it make a difference to the advertisers
if I would _not_ be likely to buy their product just because I saw it
in the sky?  Or that others might refuse to use their product for just that
reason?  If they want to be effective with their advertising dollars,
shouldn't they consider the effectiveness of the way they spend it?
Maybe we _should_ accept money anyway we can get it, but maybe we
should also consider the consequences.

> --
> "Insisting on perfect safety is for people who don't have the balls to live
>  in the real world."   -- Mary Shafer, NASA Ames Dryden
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> [e-mail] - I don't speak for others and they don't speak for me.


Regards,
Wm. Hathaway
Baltimore MD (I certainly don't speak for the city either.)

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

Date: Mon, 3 May 1993 22:16:13 GMT
From: "George F. Krumins" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Vandalizing the sky.
Newsgroups: sci.astro,sci.space

[e-mail] writes:

>In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (fred j mccall 575-3539) writes:
>> In <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:
>>> (stuff) ...

>> Object as you like.  Do as you like.  But if you think that a minority
>> 'right' that doesn't exist should be allowed to stand in the way of
>> research just because you don't like the idea that part of it is being
>> funded by 'grubby commercialism', then I would suggest that you come

>  (huh?  this wasn't _my_ reason for objection, but does it matter?)

>> up with better solutions for where to get the money from.  I'm sure
>> they'd be more than happy to listen to you, if you should come up with
>> something workable.
>>
>>>Somehow I think this whole shoving
>>>contest has gotten way off the track.  I'm ready to let this thread
>>>die a quick and merciful death.
>>
>> No doubt you are, after trying to have the last word on it.  If you're
>> ready to let it die, why did you even write a note?
>>

>Because I imprudently allowed myself to get annoyed by the beside-the-point
>'rights/non-rights' argument.  I push to persuade, not to 'prohibit' and
>it bothers me for someone to think I could force my views on anyone.
>I'm just not that kind of person.  Views (sky sights) forced on me by
>others is another matter.  Would it make a difference to the advertisers
>if I would _not_ be likely to buy their product just because I saw it
>in the sky?  Or that others might refuse to use their product for just that
>reason?  If they want to be effective with their advertising dollars,
>shouldn't they consider the effectiveness of the way they spend it?
>Maybe we _should_ accept money anyway we can get it, but maybe we
>should also consider the consequences.

>> [e-mail] - I don't speak for others and they don't speak for me.

>Regards,
>Wm. Hathaway
>Baltimore MD (I certainly don't speak for the city either.)

I agree with Wm.  I would be the first to boycott a product that advertised
this way.  Since so many seem to only understand the bottom line (MONEY),
of legal action (the LAW), and nothing so flakey as beauty (oh my Lord, you
can't be serious?!), I can argue on those terms, too. But to me that seems
just a bit silly (just my opinion).

It seems obvious that most (certainly not all) of the people need to be
persuaded on these grounds.

The actuality of an orbiting billboard seems a bit far away.  This is why it's
a good point of discussion now.  I would be willing to bet that the people
pushing for an orbiting billboard have (or at least should) deal with all
the different points of view, and they are well reflected in these discussions.

George

--
Pufferfish Observatory         |^^^^^\^^^^|     The Universe had its origin
[e-mail]       ^^^/\ \^^^      in two hockeysticks colliding
                                  / /\ \
       "Home of the Hockeystick  /_/  \_\  Memorial Telescope"

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

Date: Mon, 3 May 1993 17:40:50 GMT
From: fred j mccall 575-3539 <[e-mail]>
Subject: Will NASA's Mars Observer Image the Face on Mars?
Newsgroups: sci.space

In <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Gene Wright) writes:

>All consipiracy theories aside, (they are watching though :-)), will NASA
>try to image the Cydonia region of Mars where the "Face
>" is? If they can image it with the High resolution camera, it would
>settle the FACE question once and for all. I mean, with a camera that
>will have a pixel resolution of about 6 feet, we'd know whether all this
>stuff is real or imagination.

As I understand it, initially there were no plans to do this (because
it is apparently in a basically uninteresting area), but 'lunatic
fring' outcry has gotten things set up so that they will now run at
least one image of the area.

From what I understand, the *original* picture is enough to convince
everyone whether this stuff is real or imagination, with the exception
of those folks who really want to believe in it.

>Come on JPL and NASA folks, try to image it and settle this thing.

Do you seriously expect to settle this kind of thing with *facts*?
That almost never works.  It's not like it hasn't been tried in the
past.

--
"Insisting on perfect safety is for people who don't have the balls to live
 in the real world."   -- Mary Shafer, NASA Ames Dryden
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[e-mail] - I don't speak for others and they don't speak for me.

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

Date: 3 May 1993 22:21 UT
From: Ron Baalke <[e-mail]>
Subject: Will NASA's Mars Observer Image the Face on Mars?
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Gene Wright) writes...
>Will NASA
>try to image the Cydonia region of Mars where the "Face"
>is?

Yes, images of the face will be taken with the high resolution camera
on Mars Observer.  The Viking landing sites will also be targeted.
     ___    _____     ___
    /_ /|  /____/ \  /_ /|     Ron Baalke         | [e-mail]
    | | | |  __ \ /| | | |     Jet Propulsion Lab |
 ___| | | | |__) |/  | | |__   M/S 525-3684 Telos | Once a year, go someplace
/___| | | |  ___/    | |/__ /| Pasadena, CA 91109 | you've never been before.
|_____|/  |_|/       |_____|/                     |

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End of Space Digest Volume 16 : Issue 526
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