Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/mac/TEXT_ZIP/spacedig/V09_2/V9_257.ZIP/V9_257

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Subject: SPACE Digest V9 #257

SPACE Digest                                      Volume 9 : Issue 257

Today's Topics:
      Phobos II probe to take next pictures of Phobos on Feb 28
     Mir surpases other Soviet space stations in February
          Soviets outline crew plans for Mir
              question.shuttles
              Re: 1992 moon base
               Re: SPACE Digest V9 #247
      Government/Commercial Research, Development and Operations
              First Phobos image in 1969
              Re: 1992 moon base
           First concert from space--update
            Re: question.shuttles
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Thu, 23 Feb 89 10:41:33 EST
From: Glenn Chapman <[e-mail]>
Subject: Phobos II probe to take next pictures of Phobos on Feb 28

     The USSR's Phobos II probe completed the first pass pictures of
the Martian moon and will take a second pass on Feb. 28th.  This new set
will be photographed at a distance of 100 to 150 Km (63 - 94 mi.)
according to Radio Moscow, indicating that the new circular orbit (done by a Feb. 19th burn - see my posting of Feb. 21) is closer than the
initially planed 320 Km (200 mi.).  This may represent a change in the
calculated burn, or the uncertainty in the position of Phobos.  Either
way it will certainly allow much better pictures of the moon during this
30 day period before the final encounter attempt.  Based on the stated
resolution of the surface mapping camera at closest approach 6 cm at 50
meters (2.5 in. at 162 ft.) this suggest that objects 120 to 180 meters
(394 ft. to 590 ft.) in diameter can be resolved during the next picture
set (take that number as rather uncertain - other articles talk about
surface resolutions of 1 cm.)  This should be less than the current
Viking Orbiter 1 photographs taken on Oct. 19, 1978 from 612 Km (382 mi.)
with a resolution of 15 meters (49 ft. - as taken from the one reference
I could find).  Note that as Larry Klaes said in Space Digest V9 #252,
pictures of the Martian moons were indeed taken by Mariner 9.  The dates were
Nov. 29/30 1971 for Phobos and Nov. 26/27 for Deimos
(these were taken in part due to a dust storm on Mars at that time,
which meant that there was little point in looking at the planet
itself).  I could find no reference to pictures by Mariner 6/7 of the
moons but maybe I was not looking at complete enough reports.
Note also that Deimos' orbit is at 23,500 km (14,600 mi.) from
Mars center while Phobos is only 9378 Km (5827 mi).
     Unfortunately, this shift to an early attempt at Phobos will
certainly degrade the pictures of Mars itself which were to be taken at
the 4200 Km x 79,000 Km (2610 mi x 49,100 mi) injection orbit, just 800
Km (500 mi) from the Mars surface, compared to the present 6300 Km (3940
mi) altitude.  However, there is some compensations as the present orbit
is circular rather than highly elliptical, allowing more time for
close up pictures of Mars, though at 1/8 the resolution of the
best possible previously.
    Yes Russian equipment is not as good as the US could have made.  But
then they are there and this country is not.

                                                  Glenn Chapman
                                                  MIT Lincoln Lab

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

Date: Thu, 23 Feb 89 10:23:28 EST
From: Glenn Chapman <[e-mail]>
Subject: Mir surpases other Soviet space stations in February

     This month saw two significant anniversaries for the Mir/Kvant space
complex.  Little noticed by the media (including the professional press
such as Aviation Week, Defense Daily and Areospace Daily) Feb. 6 marked
the second anniversary of permanent manned presence in space, while Mir
itself has been continuously occupied since Feb. 9, 1987.  In the second
"birthday" Feb. 20 was the third year of Mir's orbital life.  Mir is now
by far the most useful of the Russian space stations.  It has been
occupied for 818 days, compared to 676 days for the earlier Salyut 6
(Sept. '77 to July '82) and 712 days for Salyut 7 (Apr. '82 to present).
By comparison the US's Skylab (May '73 to July '79) held crews for only
171 days.  In terms of the fraction of the orbital time these stations
were occupied (taken from launch to the date the last crew left to give
a fairer comparison), 75% is Mir's currently manning level, 51% for
Salyut 6, 47% for Salyut 7 and 64% for Skylab.  Mir has also reached
1962 mandays, exceeding the previous record of 1821 mandays for Salyut 7
(Skylab had 512 mandays, only 26% of Mir's).  Indeed occupation of Mir
alone exceeds by 20% the total US space experience (1642 mandays) over
the past 27 years!  The Soviets now have 6105 mandays or 3.7 times the
space experience of the USA, and Mir represents 32% of their total time
in orbit.
    On board the space station Feb. 7 saw the ejection of the Progress
39 cargo ship (then filled with garbage) and its reentry destruction.
Progress 40 was launched on Feb. 10 to bring up another 2.3 Tonnes of
supplies.  Alexander Volkov and Sergei Krikalev (Soyuz TM-7) have been
up in orbit for 89 days, exceeding the Skylab 4 crew (USA's longest
mission) of 84 days, while Dr. Valrey Polyakov (Soyuz TM-6) has 176
days.  Cosmonauts, by the way, now hold the first 22 places in terms of
personal cumulative orbital time, while the Skylab 4 crew occupies the
23-25 positions.
   [Sorry about the delay in posting the stuff around Feb. 10th. The
mailer ate my message on those events so I combined them with the most
recent ones]
   In spite of statements from certain people in Washington the Soviet
program is clearly not at a plateau.  These records show it - ignore
them only if you want to hide your head in the sand.

                                                 Glenn Chapman
                                                 MIT Lincoln Lab

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

Date: Thu, 23 Feb 89 14:17:30 EST
From: Glenn Chapman <[e-mail]>
Subject: Soviets outline crew plans for Mir

    A report was published in the Soviet publication Turd by the head of
cosmonaut training, Lt. Gen. Vladimir A. Shatalov (himself a cosmonaut on
Soyuz 4, 3 days in Jan. '69, Soyuz 8, 5 days in Oct. '69, and Soyuz 10,
2 days in Apr. '71 - docked with Salyut 1, but could not enter the
first Russian space station).  He stated that 10 cosmonauts are in
training for Mir missions, each with 2 men per flight.  Researcher
cosmonauts who are to run experiments on Mir might be added to these crews
later on.  With the exception of a few long duration missions to expand the
research on weightlessness, most missions would last 6 months.  However,
each flight would have about a 2 month overlap with the previous mission
so that each experienced crew could train their replacements.  Two to three
missions a year would be done this way. Foreign cosmonauts could work on
Mir during that overlap period.  For example French will be sending a
spationaut to Mir every second year.  Thus Michel Tognini, the backup
for Jean-Loup Chretien's flight in Soyuz TM-7 (Nov. '88) is considered a
good candidate for a 1990-91 mission.  This would give the USSR between
970 mandays (2 person crews only) to 1456 mandays (3 person crews) of
experience per year.
   He also stated that 7 cosmonauts are in training for Soviet shuttle
missions, I. Volk (group leader), V. Zabolotskiy,
R. Stankyavichyus, U. Sultanov, M. Tolovoyev, S. Tresvyatskiy, and
Yu. Sheffer.  The cosmonauts are pushing for the next flight of the
shuttle Buran to be manned, but the results of the first flight must be
studied before a decision is reached.
   No women crews are currently being trained.  Svetlana Savitskaya
(Soyuz T-7, 8 days in Aug. '82, and Soyuz T-12, 11 days in July '84)
the second woman cosmonaut, was to head an all female crew of
engineer Ye. Ivanova and physician Ye. Dobrovakshina in about 1985,
but the flight was delayed.  There problems with Salyut 7 at that time,
control systems failed early in 1985, resulting in the requirement
to send a repair mission of Soyuz T-13 in June '85.  Unfortunately,
by the time the situation stabilized Savitskaya had become pregnant
and the stand by crew was all male due to the lack of a qualified
women cosmonaut with space flight experience (one experienced
cosmonaut is required on each mission).  A. Viktorenko and
A. Alexandrov from that stand by flew the Soyuz TM-3 mission with
the Syria guest cosmonaut in June 1987, while the other, A. Solovyov,
went up on the Soyuz TM-5 in June 1988.  (This does not explain why
they did not have a mixed crew of two rookie women and one experienced
man to generate other exerienced women - they probably were just not
interested.)
    He also said some of their recent problems with the Soviet
program came from the large number of new personal being brought in
due to the expansion of their space operations.  Not all of them were
as well trained as they should have been.  They are working on systems
to guard against this. (from Aerospace Daily, Feb. 7).
    Sounds like in spite of their troubles the Russians are planning
an expansive space program for the next few years.

                                                  Glenn Chapman
                                                  MIT Lincoln Lab.

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

Date: 19 Feb 89 18:42:30 GMT
From: pacbell!sactoh0!tree![e-mail]  (Lord Shadowhawk)
Subject: question.shuttles

I'm just curious if anybody knows whether or not two space shuttles can be
launched simultaneously.....like the Atlantis and Discovery??

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

Date: 20 Feb 89 08:30:56 GMT
From: vsi1!v7fs1![e-mail]  (Mike Van Pelt)
Subject: Re: 1992 moon base

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Paul Dietz) writes:
>I noted with interest that the quotes from the document describing the
>moon base mentioned teleoperated rovers.  This is a wonderful idea.  I
>assume the teleoperation is from Earth.  If so, isn't their use
>independent of whether a manned base is set up?

I don't think that teleoperation from Earth would work out very well,
given a 3-second or so round-trip delay.  It would certainly slow
things down quite a bit.

Of course, teleoperation of a rover on Mars would be even more of
a problem.
--
...Defending the truth...is not something one     |  Mike Van Pelt
does out of a sense of duty or to allay guilt     |  Video 7
complexes, but it is a reward in itself.          |  ..ames!vsi1!v7fs1!mvp
                  --  Dr. Petr Beckmann

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

Date:         Mon, 20 Feb 89 12:12:06 EST
From: Eric Harnden <[e-mail]>
Subject:      Re: SPACE Digest V9 #247

     re: telecope stories

what about: there's  a guy i know who uses his cat to clean his instrument.
he removes the optical component package at the viewing end and slides the
animal through the tube to pick up the dust.

Eric Harnden
EHARNDEN@AUVM

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

Reply-To: mordor!rutgers!pnet01.cts.com![e-mail]
Date: Mon, 20 Feb 89 17:52:41 PST
From: mordor!rutgers!pnet01.cts.com![e-mail] (Jim Bowery)
To: ucsd!nosc!crash![e-mail]
Subject: Government/Commercial Research, Development and Operations

There are many ways to slice and dice the issue of space policy.
One of the least appropriate and most distracting is to
portray space policy as a "manned vs unmanned" debate.

NASA has succeeded in defining the terms of debate about space
policy.  This success is most obvious in the pointlessly divisive
debate on manned vs unmanned programs between two of the, otherwise,
most informed and reasonable people on the net.

The real space policy issue is not between manned vs unmanned,
expendable vs reuseable, moon vs mars, nor even between GOCO and
COCO.

The real space policy issue is where, on the spectrum of
technical maturity and risk from research to development to operations,
should the government be prohibited from stepping in to provide
direct support/subsidy and what controls should be put on that
support so as to avoid self-serving porkbarrel and good-ole-boy
networks?

Various dogmatists such as Libertarians or NASA-socialists, place the
boundary at one end or the other.   Most of us, however, have enough
freedom of thought to allow a more multidimensional discussion.  Let's
focus our limited energies on that phase-space.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jim Bowery    Phone: [phone]
PO Box 1981                  Join the Mark Hopkins Society!
La Jolla, CA 92038   (A member of the Mark Hopkins family of organizations.)

UUCP: {cbosgd, hplabs!hp-sdd, sdcsvax, nosc}!crash!pnet01!jim
ARPA: crash!pnet01![e-mail]
INET: [e-mail]

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

Date: 19 Feb 89 18:58:53 GMT
From: hp-ses!hpcea!hpldsla![e-mail]
Subject: First Phobos image in 1969


Some more Phobos trivia;

Mariner 9 returned images of Phobos in 1971-72, showing its cratered
surface and irregular shape. Granted the resolution was poor by Viking
standards, but at the time the images were considered to be spectacular.

In fact, the very first image of Phobos was returned by the the 1969 flyby
probes Mariners 6 and 7. In this image, Phobos is seen against the backdrop
of the Martian surface, as a tiny black blob only a few pixels wide (i.e., the
picture was taken from a vantage point "above" Phobos, looking down towards
Mars!).  Although no features are visible on Phobos' surface, the moon's shape
is clearly irregular. I don't remember which of the two probes actually acquired
the image.  Again, the image was pretty primitive and the information content
pretty low, but it sure fired up the imagination of more than one 14-year-old.
I think the picture appeared in _Sky and Telescope_ in September of either
1969 or 1970.

Tom O'Reilly
[e-mail]

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

Date: 20 Feb 89 12:59:07 GMT
From: rochester![e-mail]  (Paul Dietz)
Subject: Re: 1992 moon base

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Mike Van Pelt) writes:
>>I noted with interest that the quotes from the document describing the
>>moon base mentioned teleoperated rovers.  This is a wonderful idea.  I
>>assume the teleoperation is from Earth.  If so, isn't their use
>>independent of whether a manned base is set up?
>
>I don't think that teleoperation from Earth would work out very well,
>given a 3-second or so round-trip delay.  It would certainly slow
>things down quite a bit.

There will also be a communication delay for lunar operators, if they
place a comsat at the L1 point.  Or were they planning on restricting
the rovers to within line-of-sight of the base?

While earth-operated rovers may be slower, they could be operated around
the clock (at least during the lunar day).  Earth-bound operators would be
many times less expensive than lunar colonists.

    Paul F. Dietz
    [e-mail]

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

Date: 19 Feb 89 18:19:53 GMT
From: [e-mail]  (Shel Talmy)
Subject: First concert from space--update

A company in Los Angeles called Orbit Productions has been formed to
stage the first ever concert from space.  A large portion of the proceeds
from this venture is to be donated to various charities.

The following is a letter that was sent to Mikhael Gorbachev that
explains the current position to date.



Chairman Mikhael Gorbachev
The Kremlin
Moscow, Russia


Dear Chairman Gorbachev:

We  have organized a company in the U.S.A.  whose
main goal is to produce the first ever musical concert  broadcast
from space.  To that end, we are in negotiations with some of the
most  famous  musical  stars  in the world,  many  of  whom  have
expressed an interest in performing while orbiting high above the
earth.   We  of course,  have been in touch with NASA,  and while
they  are  receptive to the idea,  are not booking  civilians  on
shuttle flights for the foreseeable future.

We  would like to explore the possibility of booking passage  for
our  "star",  on  one  of your spacecraft  with  a  view  towards
broadcasting  the  concert live from your space station  while  a
pre-rehearsed band plays the accompaniment on earth from a yet to
be determined venue.

The  boldness  of the concept provides a  unique  opportunity  to
further  stimulate  international  harmony between  our  nations,
where  the  artist  would be American,  but the  stage  would  be
Soviet.   Our aim is to do this concert as close to Christmas  of
1990  as  possible.   We would appreciate learning what  are  the
available launch dates.   We are prepared to pay any price within
reason.

We intend to donate a portion of the proceeds to further research
into  the cure of Retinitis Pigmentosa,  the World Wildlife  Fund
and  others.   We  would  also  be happy to donate  some  of  the
proceeds to a charity of your choosing.   We await your favorable
reply.

Yours sincerely,

Stanley Ralph Ross
Martin Genis

Directors

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Stanley Ralph Ross would appreciate any technical suggestions that will
make this "space concert" better.  Please direct all your suggestions
or questions to Stanley Ralph Ross, Orbit Prods., 7865 Willoughby Ave.,
Los Angeles, CA  90046, FAX #[phone].

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

Date: 20 Feb 89 22:01:06 GMT
From: m2c!wpi![e-mail]  (George Regnery)
Subject: Re: question.shuttles

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Lord Shadowhawk) writes:
> I'm just curious if anybody knows whether or not two space shuttles can be
> launched simultaneously.....like the Atlantis and Discovery??

  I once heard of a plan that wherer there would be simultaneous shuttles in
flight- one would be launched from the Cape, the other from Vandenburg I
believe.

--
George M. Regnery       ! Worcester     ! Albedo 0.39    ! Going on means
[e-mail]  OR ! Polytechnic   !  --Vangelis    ! going far. Going
[e-mail]      ! Institute     ! (a good album) ! far means returning.
CompuServe: 73300,3655  ! (Worc, Mass.) ! =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=!     --Tao Te Ching

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

End of SPACE Digest V9 #257
*******************