Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/mac/TEXT/SPACEDIG/V16_5/V16NO585.TXT

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Date: Tue, 18 May 93 05:55:09
From: Space Digest maintainer <[e-mail]>
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Subject: Space Digest V16 #585
To: Space Digest Readers
Precedence: bulk


Space Digest                Tue, 18 May 93       Volume 16 : Issue 585

Today's Topics:
                       Commercials on the Moon
                         Dance of the Planets
                            DC-X Publicity
             Details of DC-X followon vehicle firming up.
                            Give it a rest
                            Greatest minds
                  I want to be a (NASA) space cadet
Liberal President murders spaceflight? (was Re: SDIO kaput!) (2 msgs)
          Nasa volunteers (was WHAT DOES WEIGHTLESSNESS...)
                     Over zealous shuttle critics
                Questions for KC-135 veterans (2 msgs)
Safety records, STS & Soyuz (was Re: landing at Edwards vs. the Cape)
                 Satellite Capabilities-Patriot Games
            Space Marketing would be wonderfull. (3 msgs)
                      Ulysses Update - 05/17/93
                         Vandenberg launches?
                     Who is Henry Spencer anyway?

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

Date: 17 May 93 23:07:47 GMT
From: Daniel John Lee Parnell <[e-mail]>
Subject: Commercials on the Moon
Newsgroups: sci.space

Hi All.
    In the comic book 2000AD some time ago, there was a story about a
Cola company that took over the world.  What they did was to develope a moss
that would grow on the moon to spell out the words...

    IT'S AN OKAY COLA WORLD


        Or something like that anyway.

                Daniel


P.S.  2000AD is the galixy's greatest comic!


--
Daniel Parnell  -  Email to [e-mail]   -  AMIGA 500 1 MEG
Theres no point in being grown up if you cant act childish sometimes : Dr Who
 Second Year Applied Physics student at R.M.I.T. Melbourne Australia.   *:|()
        There's no fate but what we make for ourselves - John Connor

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

Date: Mon, 17 May 93 14:04:15 GMT
From: Karl Buchmann <[e-mail]>
Subject: Dance of the Planets
Newsgroups: sci.space

Someone had asked about the program, "Dance of the Planets" (sorry, I lost
the original post before I could email you directly - thus the repost).

I have the program in a DOS/VGA version. It's a commercial package from:

   ARC Science Simulations Software
   P.O. Box 1955
   Loveland, CO 80539
   1-303-667-1168

It requires at least a 286, 640 K RAM, DOS 3.X and up, and suggests a math
coprocessor. It is not just a "drawing" program - it actually calculates
the dynamic state of the objects you are looking at. It contains a catalog
of all planets, moons, several asteroids, many stars, etc. It allows one
to "skip forward and backward in time" several thousand years to look at
different planetary configurations, star charts, etc.

I would recommend it. You can get the most recent price/version from that
address.

Hope this helps.

-Karlucco
=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
 ____  _________
 \  / /_______ /      MIT Lincoln Laboratory
  \/ __   __ ||     Millstone Hill Radar Site
  || \ \^/ / || "All the satellites fit to track."
  || /\/v\/\ ||
  || \/\|/\/ ||    Post softly,
  || /\/|\/\ ||       but carry a big .sig
  || \/\^/\/ ||
  || /_/v\_\ ||         Karl P. Buchmann
  ||______   /\        [e-mail]
 /________/ /__\ (Back off, man! I'm a scientist.)
=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+

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

Date: 17 May 93 15:05:42
From: Steinn Sigurdsson <[e-mail]>
Subject: DC-X Publicity
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <1t48no$[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Pat) writes:


   No.  Do this.

   Have the DC-X1, make an unscheduled landing at teh 50 yard
   line during the halftime show of This years Superbowl.

It is hard to know which would have greater impact on humanity,
the incineration of the half-time entertainer on live TV (maybe
pepsi could be a co-sponsor), or the effect of the exhaust footprint
sweeping across the luxury seats at the 50 yard marker...

;-)

|  Steinn Sigurdsson    |I saw two shooting stars last night        |
|  Lick Observatory    |I wished on them but they were only satellites    |
| [e-mail] |Is it wrong to wish on space hardware?        |
| "standard disclaimer"    |I wish, I wish, I wish you'd care - B.B. 1983    |

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

Date: Mon, 17 May 1993 16:59:51 GMT
From: fred j mccall 575-3539 <[e-mail]>
Subject: Details of DC-X followon vehicle firming up.
Newsgroups: sci.space,talk.politics.space

In <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Jon Leech) writes:

>In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Allen W. Sherzer) writes:
>|> In addition, the time and cost have been approved by OMB. Equally important,
>|> this vehicle can be built within the Clinton Administration which will help
>|> it gain administration support.

>    Wow. I didn't think there were any rooms in the White House tall enough
>to hold DC-X, let alone the followon. But won't there be objections from the
>cleaning staff about those messy fuel spills on the rugs?

>    I take it you meant to say that the followon is something the
>Administration may be willing to support?

I took it that he meant just what he said -- that it could be built
within the Clinton Administration; i.e., that it could be completed
before the next Presidential elections.  Whether they would be willing
to support it or not remains to be seen, but being able to complete it
so that they can point to it for the next election as something neat
that they did is a possible plus.

--
"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: Mon, 17 May 1993 17:09:47 GMT
From: fred j mccall 575-3539 <[e-mail]>
Subject: Give it a rest
Newsgroups: sci.space

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

>Ken sez;
>>>I was a test subject in that thing.  They're calling it the Pre-flight
>>>Adaptation Trainer (PAT).  Dr. Harm here at MSC (oops, I mean JSC)
>>>seems to be in charge.

>Fred responds:
>>Hey, a gadget designed to make you barf and it's named PAT.  Now,
>>that's so nigh-on to a perfect straight line that I can't pass up
>>comment.  ;-)

>This from the same guy that interprets anyone's jokes as 'flame-bait'.
>Control your emotions, Fred.

My emotions are fine, Tommy, but you seem to be having trouble with
yours.  After all, you're the guy who has to sound off every chance he
gets, even disregarding the volumes of private mail which you continue
to send despite my telling you repeatedly to go away because I'm not
interested in what you have to say.  And all this because I 'snubbed'
your opinion way back when when you were leaping to the defense of
good old Nick Szabo.

Yes, it looks like there may indeed be emotional problems involved
here.  But not mine.

[Once again, someone who calls sniping at me 'jokes' and my doing the
same thing back 'flames'.  Shove it, Tommy.]

--
"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: Mon, 17 May 93 19:07:17 EDT
From: Tom <[e-mail]>
Subject: Greatest minds

Conor sze;
>>>Huh?  Please state your criteria for selecting the "greatest philosopher"
>>>title.  P.S. Ever read any Nietzsche?

Gregory replies:
>>Greatest = most likely to be remembered five hundred years hence.

By this criteria, we should all just give up, since it means that anyone
that lived before 1600 or so can't be judged by us.  Socrates was hated by
his contemporaries, but he made the 500-year criteria, for example.

>>I must admit that that makes many of my personal favorites not
>>that great.  I make no comment on Nietzche except to remark that
>>he was no Immanuel Kant.  Interpret that cryptic remark as you
>>please.

Phil sez;
>Some people have appended that remark, that Nietzche was no Kant,
>with "thankfully." I haven't read enough of either to comment, although
>everyone tells me I should read Nietzche.

In my mind, Kant's greatest achievment was when he completely jumped
outside his favorite field, ethics, and correctly preidicted the
shape of our galaxy before anyone else.  Probably a lucky guess, but
what the heck, he made the call.

-Tommy Mac
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tom McWilliams 517-355-2178 wk   \ They communicated with the communists,
[e-mail] 336-9591 hm \ and pacified the pacifists. -TimBuk3
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

Date: Mon, 17 May 1993 22:57:38 GMT
From: Henry Spencer <[e-mail]>
Subject: I want to be a (NASA) space cadet
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (CZ45000) writes:
>    How much of an astronaut's (mission specialist) time is spent acting
>    as a subject for medical experiments, as opposed to controlling
>    physics/astronomy/remote sensing experiments and equipment?

That depends a whole lot on what kind of mission he gets assigned to.
He's got some say in that, but not a whole lot.  Some missions do
virtually no medical stuff; others are largely devoted to it, and
then everybody aboard is a guinea pig to some degree.

>    What does a mission specialist really do - both during a mission
>    and between them?

During a mission, everything but fly the plane :-).  He's a high-paid
laboratory technician, operating and fixing equipment for other people.
Only occasionally would his own research interests, if any, be relevant.
Payload specialists sometimes come along for specialized experimental
work; they know more about their own gear but less about the orbiter
and its systems, so they sometimes need help.  Mission specialists look
after any experiment that isn't important enough to rate its own payload
specialist.  When one of the (fairly rare) spacewalks gets done, it's
a mission specialist who does it.

Between missions, lots of things.  If he's in training for an upcoming
mission, that's what he spends his time on.  If not, he'll do everything
from public relations tours, to helping with other missions, to helping
with development work on new projects.  It is a very busy life, and one
major reason why astronauts quit is that they're tired of seeing so
little of their families.

Note that being an astronaut is a full-time job; it is not compatible
with undertaking your own scientific research.

>    Why does NASA seem to prefer candidates with Ph.D.'s?  From the
>    astronaut's point of view is his scientific training used or wasted?

Largely wasted, barring some unusual missions.  The preference for PhDs
is not because a PhD is particularly helpful, but because it's one more
way of disqualifying applicants.  NASA gets far, far more adequately-
qualified applicants than they could ever use, so setting the specs
much higher than necessary helps thin out the crowd.  See the sci.space
FAQ for more detail.
--
SVR4 resembles a high-speed collision   | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
between SVR3 and SunOS.    - Dick Dunn  |  [e-mail]  utzoo!henry

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

Date: 17 May 1993 15:16 PDT
From: "Horowitz, Irwin Kenneth" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Liberal President murders spaceflight? (was Re: SDIO kaput!)
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey) writes...
>I'm sorry, Simon.  It's true the human race has made only slow
>progress toward a Buck Rogers future. You'll have to come up with a
>more convincing explanation than blaming it on a single President
>who's been in office a few months.  (Hint #1:  Maybe you can't lay the
>blame fully on any President or set of Presidents.  Hint #2:
>Americans are not the only people with rockets.)
>
And Hint #3...if you really want to find a scapegoat who has occupied the
Oval Office, how about that guy who killed Apollo...what was his name?  Nixon?
:-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-)
(OK...Congress didn't exactly go out of its way to save Apollo either back
then).
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Irwin Horowitz                        |
Astronomy Department                  |"Whoever heard of a female astronomer?"
California Institute of Technology    |--Charlene Sinclair, "Dinosaurs"
[e-mail]                |
[e-mail]                 |
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

Date: Mon, 17 May 1993 23:26:06 GMT
From: "Phil G. Fraering" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Liberal President murders spaceflight? (was Re: SDIO kaput!)
Newsgroups: sci.space

[e-mail] (Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey) writes:


>(I won't ask what SDI has to do with never going to Mars, though you
>seem to think there's a connection.)

Perhaps the fact that before getting rescoped into upscale
patriot systems, they had basically the only advanced propulsion
system development going on in this country, not to mention one
of the only launcher programs that's actually looking like it'll
produce results instead of simply jobs in backwater Mississippi.

You're right, there's plenty of blame to go around. Which is
basically why the American people are starting to actively despise
both political parties.
--
Phil Fraering         |"Number one good faith! You convert,
[e-mail]|you not tortured by demons!" - anon. Mahen missionary

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

Date: Mon, 17 May 93 19:38:38 EDT
From: Tom <[e-mail]>
Subject: Nasa volunteers (was WHAT DOES WEIGHTLESSNESS...)

Ken Jenks sez;
>Yup.  "I risk my career AND my body for science."  We NASA people
>sometimes go overboard for space.

Hmm.  That's sort of the short defenition of "EVA", huh? :-)

-Tommy Mac
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tom McWilliams 517-355-2178 wk   \ They communicated with the communists,
[e-mail] 336-9591 hm \ and pacified the pacifists. -TimBuk3
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

Date: 17 May 1993 10:44:04 -0400
From: Pat <[e-mail]>
Subject: Over zealous shuttle critics
Newsgroups: sci.space

I suspect that 50 years from now, one will find an engineering history
book with  the shuttle, the great eastern,  and the spruce goose
all in one chapter.

pat

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

Date: 17 May 1993 18:16 CDT
From: IGOR <[e-mail]>
Subject: Questions for KC-135 veterans
Newsgroups: sci.space

>> computer equipment.  I know the operational limit of 2.5 G downward
>> during operation, but I get long pauses out of computer company reps
>> when I ask them if their hardware (esp. hard drives) can take that.
>>
>> If anyone has experience with the KC-135, planning or designing hardware
>> for it, and would be willing to answer a few questions, please contact
>> me email.  Many thanks.
>>
>
>You might also want to talk to some of the memory/chip manufacturers
>directly about the possibility of getting your hands on a flashram box.
>It'll give you storage that's just as invulnerable to G as the board it's
>mounted on.
>
>Of course, it's still a little experimental....

we used a PC-XT and read and wrote during the 2-g's period, It did fine.
same thing for a 486 clone. I also know some other people who used a
Mac II with hard dirve and they never seem to have a problem. For the drive,
if you think you may have some problems you may want to make it stand up on the
side so that the Gees won't affect too much the writing on the disk or on the
hard disk....

hope this helps,




Igor Carron
Dept of Nuclear Engineering
Texas A&M University

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

Date: 17 May 1993 23:17:37 GMT
From: Dave Akin <[e-mail]>
Subject: Questions for KC-135 veterans
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <1t8h49$[e-mail]> Michael Q. McHenry,
[e-mail] writes:
>Greetings.  I am working on a proposal for my graduate school research
>in the effects of microgravity on the vestibular system, and have some
>questions about the nitty gritty details of hardware requirements for
>the KC-135A aircraft from the user's point of view.  I have the Reduced
>Gravity Program User's Guide but still have some specific questions
>such as how picky the structural/operational requirements are for
>computer equipment.  I know the operational limit of 2.5 G downward
>during operation, but I get long pauses out of computer company reps
>when I ask them if their hardware (esp. hard drives) can take that.
I've flown a number of electronic devices on the KC-135,
including HP 8-track FM recorders, various video cameras,
and the old original (sewing-machine sized) Compaq
computer with a hard disk. We never had any troubles with
anything due to g loading. (We did blow out the Compaq
power supply, but that was an occupational hazard with
those machines...) Ruggedized equipment is a good idea, if
only because it's usually rack-mounted and therefore easier
to secure to the 9 g crash load criteria. A larger
consideration is that the amount of 120V 60Hz AC power
on the K-bird is limited, and if you're going to be loading
up with hardware, they prefer that you use the main aircraft
electrical bus (28V DC). Have fun - it's a unique (and quite
wonderful) experience...

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

Date: 17 May 1993 17:03 EST
From: "Charles Radley (EBASCO" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Safety records, STS & Soyuz (was Re: landing at Edwards vs. the Cape)
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Bill Higgins-- B>
In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Claudio Oliveira Egalon) writes:

>
>3(?) pad aborts after main-engine start
>1 abort to orbit (STS-51F, 29 July 1985)
>
>Soyuz:
>Aborts included Soyuz 18A in 1975 and one in the early Eighties that I
>can't locate, which involved the only use of the escape-rocket system.
>

Soyuz-18A was 5 April 1975, crew V. Lazarev and O. Makarov

Soyuz-T-10A 26 September 1983, crew V. Titov and G. Strealokov was
the launch pad abort.

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

Date: Mon, 17 May 93 21:43:13 GMT
From: Daniel Briggs <[e-mail]>
Subject: Satellite Capabilities-Patriot Games
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]>
  [e-mail] (Henry Spencer) writes:
>The "few cm" I quoted is the diffraction limit for a circa 2m mirror
>in visible light, ignoring atmosphere issues entirely.  You'd need a
>monstrous mirror to get centimeter-range resolution in thermal infrared
>from orbit, unless the NRO lads have discovered some entirely new physics.

Nah.  Clearly they were just doing interferometry with a pair of KH-11's.

:-), as if it were really needed.

--
| Daniel Briggs  ([e-mail])                      |  USPA B-14993
| New Mexico Tech / National Radio Astronomy Observatory |      DoD #387
| P.O. Box O / Socorro, NM 87801   [phone]        |
Support the League for Programming Freedom   (info from [e-mail])

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

Date: 17 May 1993 21:34:41 GMT
From: "David M. Palmer" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Space Marketing would be wonderfull.
Newsgroups: sci.astro,sci.space

[e-mail] (Frank Crary) writes:

>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (R. Lee Hawkins) writes:
>>>because of his doubtfull credibility as an astronomer. Modern,
>>>ground-based, visible light astronomy (what these proposed
>>>orbiting billboards would upset) is already a dying field: The

>>Ahh, perhaps that's why we've (astronomers) have just built *2* 10-meter
>>ground-based scopes and are studying designs for larger ones.

>Exactly what fraction of current research is done on the big,
>visable light telescopes? From what I've seen, 10% or less
>(down from amlost 100% 25 years ago.) That sounds like "dying"
>to me...

Grabbing an issue of 'Astronomical Journal' at random (May '93),
I get 21/34 papers are optical.  The 34 includes computational astronomy.
I don't think any of the optical papers were Hubble-based.

>>Seriously, though, you're never going to get a 10-meter scope into orbit
>>as cheaply as you can build one on the ground, and with adaptive optics
>>and a good site, the difference in quality is narrowed quite a bit
>>anyway.

>That would be true, if adaptive optics worked well in the visable.
>But take a look at the papers on the subject: They refer to anything
>up to 100 microns as "visable". I don't know about you, but most
>people have trouble seeing beyond 7 microns or so... There are
>reasons to think adaptive optics will not work at shorter
>wavelengths without truely radical improvements in technology.

Adaptive optics, speckle, etc. works well in the optical.  Or at least a lot
better than old-fashioned, slap-a-plate-into-the-holder-and-point optics.

>>What deparment are you in anyway, Philosophy?  You obviously are not
>>qualified to speak about astronomy...

>The sign the office door says, "Astrophysical, Planetary and
>Atmospheric Sciences."  Although perhaps my degree in astrophysics
>from Berkeley doesn't qualify me either... On the other hand,
>I just might not be too attached to one particular way of collecting
>astronomical data.

What field are you in?  My field, gamma-ray bursts, is one of the
fields of astronomy which least relies on ground-based optical observations.
One of my colleagues is about to go to Kitt Peak to observe optically.

In the same interminable thread, [e-mail] (Frank Crary) writes:

>That's extremely doubtfull: Adaptive optics require moving the
>optical elements around with cycle times (including time for
>vibrations to die down) of order 10-50 miliseconds. Unless you
>make "the largest telescopes" out of tens of thousands of seperate
>pieces, active corrections will be of limited value to these
>telescopes (judging from the expense and development problems
>associated with the new, 36-element mirror, I don't think
>thousands of elements is likely.)

You don't have to move the primary mirror.  The movable elements
can be in the secondary or tertiary.  Or in post-processing in some schemes.
And most of the trouble with Keck has been in the mirror grinding,
not in the element positioning.

--
        David M. Palmer        [e-mail]
                    [e-mail]

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

Date: Mon, 17 May 1993 23:33:21 GMT
From: "Phil G. Fraering" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Space Marketing would be wonderfull.
Newsgroups: sci.environment,misc.consumers,sci.astro,talk.environment,talk.politics.space,sci.space,rec.backcountry,misc.rural,misc.headlines,k12.chat.teacher

[e-mail] (OPIRG) writes:

>beautify the world.

>>
>>We have a "boycott" there, on weapons trade. As a result the side with
>>a weapons stockpile is committing genocide on the side without one.

>How is this relevant? Are you saying all boycotts are somehow
>miraculously responsible for the genocide?

I didn't mean to say there was a connection between the Sky
Billboard boycott and the tragedy in Bosnia. But there is a
boycott on the arm trade there.

>But there is a connection here after all. Both issues turn on the
>wisdom of assuming that it's okay to put everything up for sale. Maybe
>if people hadn't assumed that it would be sane to treat the arms trade
>as an industry like any other, various genocides wouldn't have been
>possible in the first place.

No, but if we had put an arms boycott on Europe during WWII
Canada would be filled with whatever English and French had
managed to escape the German "ethnic cleansing" of England
and France to make room for more Nice Bright-Eyed Blond Aryans.

>Try living on a different *place* on Earth for a while. Somewhere
>where not everyone places the freedom to advertise at the pinnacle of
>their values.

Advertising is just another form of speech; and the judgement between
what's "good," "bad," and "advertising" is so arbitrary as to be
dangerous. I've spoken with lots of people who have lived in places
where that judgement has gone disasterously wrong, and cost people
their lives.

And I have _no_ desire to live in one of those countries. I want to
try to keep the US from being one of those countries. Badly.

(This may sound like a stupid argument to you, but whenever the State
sets the precedent for getting rid of someone's rights, they _ALWAYS_
start with something distasteful like advertisement first, and _then_
go on to the real power freak stuff.)

>>fantasyland you've imagined where the worst thing people have to
>>think about (and not everyone hates it!) is an orbiting billboard,
>>visible only shortly before or after twilight...

>Did anyone suggest "orbiting billboards" were "the worst thing"?

The way some people are talking, it's the Whore of Babylon foretold in
Revelations that is going to corrupt the world right before the end...

>Reid Cooper

--
Phil Fraering         |"Number one good faith! You convert,
[e-mail]|you not tortured by demons!" - anon. Mahen missionary

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

Date: Mon, 17 May 1993 23:46:20 GMT
From: "Phil G. Fraering" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Space Marketing would be wonderfull.
Newsgroups: sci.environment,misc.consumers,misc.invest,sci.astro,talk.environment,talk.politics.space,sci.space,rec.backcountry,misc.rural,misc.headlines,k12.chat.teacher,misc.legal

[e-mail] (Len Evens) writes:

>Would Mr. Hart please explain how one could get every nation on
>earth and every corporation to agree that astronomers own the
>night sky without `coercion'.

<snip!>

>Some of us nutty environmentalists think it might make sense first
>to try to mobilize public opinion against advertising in space
>and also to use governmental actions (like taxing power, for example)
>to discourage them.   This of course would be too coercive for
>Mr. Hart.

Given that I could buy a booster from the CIS and launch it using
a dummy corporation based in any country on Earth from whatever
country will let me use a flat space of ground, the nutty environmental-
ists are as dependent on getting _every_ country to agree with them
to stop the billboard as Mr. Hart's proposal is. In fact, there's
probably even more dependance, since there's more pressure to defect.

--
Phil Fraering         |"Number one good faith! You convert,
[e-mail]|you not tortured by demons!" - anon. Mahen missionary

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

Date: 17 May 1993 22:24 UT
From: Ron Baalke <[e-mail]>
Subject: Ulysses Update - 05/17/93
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]

                     ULYSSES MISSION STATUS
                          May 17, 1993

     All spacecraft and science operations are performing well.
Ground-controllers are carrying out routine data-gathering
activities and experiment reconfigurations as required.  The 34-
meter (112-foot) and 70-meter (230-foot) ground antennas are
tracking the spacecraft as it continues to move farther south of
the ecliptic plane -- the plane in which the planets orbit.

     Earth-pointing maneuvers continue to be carried out about
every five days.  The last maneuver was performed on May 12,
1993.

     Today Ulysses is about 683 million kilometers (424 million
miles) from Earth, traveling at a heliocentric velocity of about
36,000 kilometers per hour (24,000 miles per hour).  The
spacecraft is now more than 30 degrees south of the sun's
equator.

                              #####
     ___    _____     ___
    /_ /|  /____/ \  /_ /|     Ron Baalke         | [e-mail]
    | | | |  __ \ /| | | |     Jet Propulsion Lab |
 ___| | | | |__) |/  | | |__   M/S 525-3684 Telos | Never laugh at anyone's
/___| | | |  ___/    | |/__ /| Pasadena, CA 91109 | dreams.
|_____|/  |_|/       |_____|/                     |

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

Date: 17 May 1993 17:17 EST
From: "Charles Radley (EBASCO" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Vandenberg launches?
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Henry Spencer) writes...
>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Paul Carroll) writes:
>>I know about the phone numbers, etc. to get Kennedy/Canaveral
>>launch information, but is there any equivalent way of finding out
>>about launches at Vandenberg?
>
>Bear in mind that a lot of the Vandenberg launch traffic is military and
>at least semi-secret.  They aren't interested in publicizing it beforehand.
>--

NASA launches from VAFB are highly publicised, and US citizens over
18 years of age are bussed on to the site to view them.   I watched
a GOES launch on an Atlas as a member of the public.

Call NASA at VAFB, try (805)-734-8232 (the VAFB switchboard)

Also, some launches for "WSMC" are unclassified, call the same
number again and ask for WSMC.

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

Date: 17 May 1993 10:46:51 -0400
From: Pat <[e-mail]>
Subject: Who is Henry Spencer anyway?
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Ward Paul) writes:
>We will shortly start an RFD for alt.god.henry-spencer.  All in
>favour please face Toronto and fall prostrate and repeat after
>me "C-News is God's gift to Usenet".


C-news  reminds me of the old chinese adage.

Don't wish for something too hard.  You may get it.

pat

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End of Space Digest Volume 16 : Issue 585
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