Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/mac/TEXT/SPACEDIG/V16_5/V16NO599.TXT

Internet Message Format | 1993-07-13 | 21KB

Date: Thu, 20 May 93 05:47:29
From: Space Digest maintainer <[e-mail]>
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Subject: Space Digest V16 #599
To: Space Digest Readers
Precedence: bulk


Space Digest                Thu, 20 May 93       Volume 16 : Issue 599

Today's Topics:
                  About the mercury program (3 msgs)
                Liberal President murders spaceflight?
                           Murder in space
                Neil Armstrong's first words (the real
                    Post Doctoral Position at NASA
                 Satellite Capabilities-Patriot Games
                    Soyuz and Shuttle Comparisons
              Space Billboard - How visible would it be?
                 Space Marketing -- Boycott (2 msgs)
            Space Marketing would be wonderfull. (2 msgs)

    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: Wed, 19 May 1993 21:26:38 GMT
From: "Andrew W. Robinson" <[e-mail]>
Subject: About the mercury program
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article [e-mail], [e-mail] (Pat) writes:
>
>
>Also there were 7 mercury astronauts, but i believe only
>6 flights.  I think slayton didn't fly.  Why was his flight cancelled?
>

Slayton was grounded due to a heart murmur, I believe. He was finally
cleared for space flight in time for the Apollo-Soyuz mission (1974?).

Andrew Robinson
[e-mail]

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

Date: Thu, 20 May 1993 07:56:24 GMT
From: Dave Michelson <[e-mail]>
Subject: About the mercury program
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> Leigh Palmer <[e-mail]> writes:
>
>...It seems that the importance of Man in space was to be highlighted by
>having an astronaut perform a biological experiment on an early Mercury
>flight. Sea urchin eggs and sperm were placed in a two-chambered acrylic
>container fitted with a crank. Turning the crank would fertilize the eggs
>and increase the sea-urchin count in space by several embryos...
>
>...Which brings us back to the fellow with the plastic box. At the appointed
>time our hero turned the crank. Unfortunately he turned it too hard, and
>it broke! Thus was demonstrated the importance of Man in space. A
>machine, after all, can't be expected to do science.

If it really happened, it would have been aboard Carpenter's flight.  A
quick check through the post-mission report would show whether such
an experiment had actually been carried.

--
Dave Michelson  --  [e-mail]  --  University of British Columbia

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

Date: 19 May 93 16:47:12 EDT
From: Chris Jones <[e-mail]>
Subject: About the mercury program
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <1tb0uo$[e-mail]>, prb@access (Pat) writes:
>
>
>a few questions.
>
>    When Glenn flew in Friendship 7,  he spotted a large
>cloud of "fireflies".  What were they?

On the next flight, Carpenter was able to reproduce them by banging on the
inside walls of his capsule.  I believe they were concluded to be ice
particles.

>                            Glenn had some
>trouble  with  a bad sensor  indicating a false  landing bag deploy
>forcing a manual re-entry.

He manually overrode the release of the retropack after retrofire in an attempt
to hold the heat shield in place.  I don't believe much else was manual on that
reentry.

>                 Cooper also had some electrical
>problems and had to fly in by hand.   IF the manual systems
>had not been put in at Wally schirra's insistence,  would they
>have lost Coopers  flight?

Although I don't know if it was due to Schirra that there were manual systems
for Cooper to use, I think that flight would have been lost without them.
There was a near total electrical failure, according to Cooper (he said he had
a radio, and could control his attitude by mechanical linkages opening valves).
>
>Also there were 7 mercury astronauts, but i believe only
>6 flights.  I think slayton didn't fly.  Why was his flight cancelled?

He was diagnosed with a heart murmur and removed from flight status (he would
have flown after Glenn, on the flight Carpenter made).  After spending over a
decade in charge of the astronaut office, he managed to fly in 1975 on the last
Apollo to fly, on the Apollo-Soyuz test project.

--
Chris Jones    [e-mail]

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

Date: Wed, 19 May 1993 21:43:49 GMT
From: "Andrew W. Robinson" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Liberal President murders spaceflight?
Newsgroups: sci.space

Proper attribution lost:
>>
>> Mr. Bush was trembling on the verge of leading us all into space, when
>> the triumph was abruptly yanked away by the election of a sort-of
>> liberal guy?  Reagan presided over the first steps of opening up the
>> solar system?
>

As I recall, Reagan payed great lip service to manned-space
exploration, but his words spoke much louder than his actions. He did
not even show up at the press conference announcing the grand plan put
together under his administration.

Andrew Robinson
[e-mail]

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

Date: Thu, 20 May 93 08:20 GMT
From: Steven Fisk <[e-mail]>
Subject: Murder in space



>If you murdered someone in space, whose jurisdiction is it. i.e who
>will prosecute you for it? The boundaries of individual countries
>stop in the upper atmosphere so what happens???

     Aside from the legal aspects of murder in space, I can't help but wonder
  what kind of havoc such a crisis would have. For example, assuming that the
  murderer was the only one left aboard one of the space shuttles, how are
  you going to get him/her to land the thing?! I realize that eventually all
  of the oxygen, food, water, etc. would be used up, but the murderer might
  also decide that going back to earth and facing an arrest not to mention
  the electric chair would be just as bad or worse than dying in space. There
  is also the possibility that anyone who murders someone in space will be
  crazed and desperate enough to hold the other astronauts hostage: what
  then? I guess the basic question I'm asking is whether or not NASA or any
  of the other space agencies have certain procedures to be followed in the
  event of such an emergency.

  Steven Fisk
  Internet: [e-mail]



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

Date: Wed, 19 May 1993 21:22:32 GMT
From: "Andrew W. Robinson" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Neil Armstrong's first words (the real
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article [e-mail], [e-mail] (Bob McGwier) writes:
>
>Dave says Neil said:
>
>"That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind"
>
>I agree with Dave.  Arts and Entertainment replied most of the major NBC
>coverage in 1989 during the 20-th anniversary.  I have that on videotape.
>NO I WILL NOT MAKE YOU A COPY.  I re-listened and agree with Dave.
>
>Bob

In my recollection from 24 years ago, Armstrong made some technical
comments as he descended the LM ladder, but he very deliberately made
his famous statement when he first stepped off the pad onto the lunar
surface. Before and during the flight, Armstrong had been EXPECTED to
make some grand statement, and he made sure the viewing audience got
their money's worth.  I even remembering the local paper running a
contest to guess what those first words would be. With all the
speculation on what he might say, I recall everyone being generally
pleased that the statement was properly grand and properly memorable.

Of course, my memory may be faulty :-).

Andrew Robinson
[e-mail]

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

Date: 20 May 1993 17:01:58 +1000
From: Edward Simon Dunstone <[e-mail]>
Subject: Post Doctoral Position at NASA
Newsgroups: sci.space

I am currently finnishing my PhD in vision processing and neural nets from
a Uni in Australia. I am interested to know if anyone has any information
on the possiblity of an overseas post-doc position at NASA (or other US
space related research centre).

Thanks in advance,

Ted Dunstone

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

PhD Student
CITR Neural Network Research Group
University of Wollongong
N.S.W.
Australia.

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

Date: Thu, 20 May 93 04:33:52 GMT
From: Dean Adams <[e-mail]>
Subject: Satellite Capabilities-Patriot Games
Newsgroups: sci.space

[e-mail] writes:
>[e-mail] (Dean Adams) writes:
 >>but "real-time imaging" does not have to mean live 30 fps video.

 >YES, but is it your contention that because it does not *have* to
 >mean live 30 fps video that it *does not* mean 30 fps video?  In other
 >words, are you asserting as fact that no such system exists?

I would "assert" that for a wide variety of reasons, that does not seem
very likely to be the type of output provided by space based platforms
such as the Advanced KH-11 series...  These satellites are designed to
give *very* high resolution images, and I seriously doubt their imaging
capability approaches full motion video.  For one thing at the resolutions
involved the data downlink requirements would be horrendous, combined with
the fact that 2-3 of these birds are typically on orbit... AND you also have
two Lacrosse RADAR imaging satellites sharing the same communicaitons paths,
generating daily a tremendous amount of SAR data.

 >[Note that I am *not* asserting the fact of the existence of such a
 >system with a 30fps or similar frame rate.  However, I can think of
 >situations where such a system would be useful or desirable by people
 >who could get allocation for funding of such a project and can think
 >of no specific technological impossibilities involved in its creation.

Such a system does not have to be a "technological impossibility"
to not be a PRACTICAL application for a space based system.

 >You may feel free to draw your own conclusions from there, however it
 >seems a reasonably safe bet, unless you can come up with reasons why
 >such a system would be impossible, that such a system exists.]

There *are* "real time" C3I systems of this sort that can be used on
some AIRBORNE reconnaissance platforms, but I still see no "safe bet"
that our spy satellites operate with "live video"...

As for aircraft... SR-71 Blackbirds did not have a real time capability,
for one thing they used primarily FILM cameras for their photorecon work.
The U-2/TR-1 is pretty much the same, although there were at least some
tests done with a TR-1 carrying a live satellite uplink package.

However, the still-classified TR-3A is supposed to be capable of delivering
real-time tactical reconnaissance data to battlefield commanders...

{ Dean Adams }

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

Date: Thu, 20 May 1993 07:21:07 GMT
From: Rob Geraghty <[e-mail]>
Subject: Soyuz and Shuttle Comparisons
Newsgroups: sci.space

[e-mail] (Allen W. Sherzer) writes:
>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Thomas A. Baker) writes:
>>I like this statement, though for my own reasons.  Cost comparisons depend
>>a lot on whether the two options are similar, and *then* it becomes very
>>revealing to consider what their differences are.  Can Soyuz launch the
                                ^^^^^
>>Long Exposure Facility?  Course not...
>I think it is better to look at overall space infrastructure. The
>Russians can't operate LDEF or Spacelab, true enough. On the other
>hand, they don't need to. Soyuz/Mir gives them far more capability
>for far less cost then Shuttle/LDEF or Shuttle/Spacelab.

Hang on a minute, what happened to the Energia booster?  Energia was
capable of lifting *more* than Shuttle.  Aside from that, what happened
to the Soviet copy of the Shuttle?  Couldn't that be used in the same
way as shuttle itself?

(Note my emphasis above - Soyuz is *not* the Russian heavy lift vehicle)

I suspect that the answers to my questions consist mostly of "they can't
afford to operate them"...

Rob

--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rob Geraghty               | 3 things are important to me
[e-mail]         | The gift of love, the joy of life
CITR                       | And the making of music in all its forms

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

Date: 20 May 1993 19:16:55 +1000
From: Glenn Durden <[e-mail]>
Subject: Space Billboard - How visible would it be?
Newsgroups: sci.environment,misc.consumers,sci.astro,talk.environment,talk.politics.space,sci.space,rec.backcountry

[e-mail] (Terry Morse) writes:
>>and visually unimportant that fairly accurate directions about
>>where and when to look will be needed to observe it (for
>>  Anyway, he suggested that the
>>visual impact would approximate that of a jumbo jet
>>at 45k feet (12km) altitude.

>  If this is the case, then what is the point?  Who and how big is the
>target audience?  The world's optical astronomers?  Something here doesn't
>compute.

The way this tread has been running, you'd think the thing was going to
cover half the sky.    ok, lets do some maths here...
Assuming it is 1 mile wide (one figure I heard), and assuming it is... hmm..
200 miles away (gonna vary wildly in seconds as it moves)...  then...
my calculator says  HALF A DEGREE in size.

Guess how big the moon is.   :-)

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

Date: 19 May 93 17:09:13 GMT
From: Bruce Watson <[e-mail]>
Subject: Space Marketing -- Boycott
Newsgroups: sci.environment,misc.consumers,sci.astro,talk.environment,sci.space

In article <[e-mail]| [e-mail] writes:
|Well, I just got off the phone after talking to someone at
|Space Marketing.
|
|According to the person I talked to, the proposed "billboard"
|will be too small to resolve with the naked eye -- so small
|and visually unimportant that fairly accurate directions about
|where and when to look will be needed to observe it (for
|laymen; I assume you astronomers and space enthusiasts
|will know the exact ephemerides, and be painfully aware
|of the damn thing).
|
|  Anyway, he suggested that the
|visual impact would approximate that of a jumbo jet
|at 45k feet (12km) altitude.
|
What orbital height did they say it was planned for?

--
Bruce Watson ([e-mail])

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

Date: Thu, 20 May 1993 07:18:17 GMT
From: Frank Crary <[e-mail]>
Subject: Space Marketing -- Boycott
Newsgroups: sci.environment,misc.consumers,sci.astro,talk.environment,talk.politics.space,sci.space,rec.backcountry

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Chris Best) writes:
>> According to the person I talked to, the proposed "billboard"
>> will be too small to resolve with the naked eye -- so small
>> and visually unimportant...

>>   Anyway, he suggested that the
>> visual impact would approximate that of a jumbo jet
>> at 45k feet (12km) altitude.

>Are you sure he didn't tailor his comments according to what he guessed
>you wanted to hear?  In other words, LIE?  Think about it - what good
>would a billboard do for an advertiser if nobody can see it?  Who would
>advertise, telescope companies?  Pretty narrow audience here.

Actually, a telescope can't track fast enough to follow an object
in a Low Earth orbit: It would just be an annoying blur.

But the Soviets used to get alot of public relations milage out
of such a dim, hard to spot object: Whenever they had "guests"
for another country on their space station, they always made
sure the station could be seen from the guest's home nation. They
then pointed out the point of light and reminded people that one
of their countrymen was on it...

I could imagine _some_ similar PR value in a unmanned satellite: What
if AT&T could show you the satellite they put on orbit and which
you use every time you make a long-distance call?

                                                 Frank Crary
                                                 CU Boulder

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

Date: Thu, 20 May 1993 04:08:50 GMT
From: OPIRG <[e-mail]>
Subject: Space Marketing would be wonderfull.
Newsgroups: sci.environment,misc.consumers,sci.astro,sci.space,rec.backcountry,misc.headlines

In article <1tdpk5$[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Jeffrey L. Cook) writes:
>
>On the contrary, the luddite communist technophobes ruled the roost for
                      ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>almost three-quarters of a century in the former Soviet Union, and
>turned their beautiful country into a toilet.

You mean the people who brought us Sputnik?

>  Billowing smokestacks are symbolic of their failure, not our success.

Ever been to Detroit?


Reid Cooper

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

Date: Thu, 20 May 1993 07:07:17 GMT
From: Joe Dellinger <[e-mail]>
Subject: Space Marketing would be wonderfull.
Newsgroups: sci.astro,sci.space,rec.backcountry

In article <1tda1f$[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (David C Daye) writes:
|>
|> I'd love to hear from someone in one of these businesses to confirm, but
|> I'm betting there are a lot of natural checks to this kind of advertising.
|> Among them are probably the fact that people aren't looking for messages
|> when they look up, the possibility that significant numbers of people can
|> get pretty annoyed after moderate exposure, and the extremely low information
|> content achievable.

    You know, I once was in a popular Honolulu city park flying a kite
in the evening twilight (dark enough that some stars were visible, prime
satellite time). There were fair numbers of people around all over the place;
it was a very pleasant Sunday evening. Well I was looking up because I was
watching my kite "flying among the stars". And then this incredibly _bright_
point of light appeared right next to my kite and expanded out into a ~30
degree wide glowing white donut in the sky over the next minute. WOW! It
was bright enough to cast a slight shadow! AMAZING!

    I yelled, of course, "wow, look up! What's that!". (I found out later
it was an unannounced military star-wars test launched from Kaua`i.)

    After it was over I ran around and asked the other people in the park
what they thought it was...

    NONE of them saw it, except for _one_ person who looked up _because of
my yelling_. I realized then that most people DON'T LOOK UP. Even something
that big and bright wasn't enough to attract their attention... people aren't
expecting to see anything interesting in the sky.

    If that's true, which I'm pretty sure it is, I don't think we have
much to fear from "space advertising". Except for maybe the first time when
(a few) people would be excited enough to go out and look at _just the right
time_, it would be a complete waste of money _for advertisers_! They aren't
going to pay for it more than once, because the average person

    NEVER

    LOOKS

    UP!

     /\    /\    /\/\/\/\/\/\/\.-.-.-.-.......___________
    /  \  /  \  /Hawaii Institute of Geophysics, Honolulu\/\/\.-.-....__
___/    \/    \/Joe Dellinger, Internet: [e-mail]\/\.-.__
____________________________________________________
Objectivity is not an unobtainable emptying of mind |
but a willingness to abandon a set of preferences   |----> Stephen J. Gould
when the world seems to work in a contrary way.     |

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

Newsgroups: sci.space

From: Josh Hopkins <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Billboards in Space
Date: Thu, 20 May 1993 03:55:38 GMT
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Sender: Net Noise owner <[e-mail]>
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Lines: 18
Source-Info:  Sender is really [e-mail]
Source-Info:  Sender is really [e-mail]

[e-mail] (Phil G. Fraering) writes:

>True. But you also let the whole world see, in plain view, that
>you're an even bigger jerk than someone who puts up adsats.

>I mean, just think for a second: when was the last time you saw
>anyone who shot at the goodyear blimp described as something other
>than mentally deficient?

I've never heard them described as anything.  However, I have heard that they
do have to patch up the blimp on a fairly regular basis because people shoot
at it.


--
Josh Hopkins                                          [e-mail]
            "Find a way or make one."
                 -attributed to Hannibal

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

End of Space Digest Volume 16 : Issue 599
------------------------------