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Subject: SPACE Digest V9 #327

SPACE Digest                                      Volume 9 : Issue 327

Today's Topics:
             more on cold fusion
     Re: Room Temperature fusion - possible indications?
               PHOBOS 2 dead ?
        Re: Success with cold fusion reported
  Re: Civilians in space (Was Re: First concert from space--update)
          Room Temperature fusion, expert skepticism
               Re: Cold Fusion
                   Magellan
                Phobos
             Skepticism is not ostrichism
         Re: Discovery - UFO Close Encounter?
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date:     Wed, 29 Mar 89 11:54 EDT
From: <[e-mail]>
Subject:  more on cold fusion


        I think if this is legitimate Great, if it is tabloid filler, they
should and will be skewered alive by the scientific community.  I wonder
when they will come out with a "Mr. Fusion" for my 71 Datsun 510?  Regular
gas is getting real hard to find, and my mileage isn't what it used to be. ;)

        Seriously, though, when you hear it being knocked by "eminent"
scientists, see if that person is working for a current fusion project
or an energy company.....since their livelyhoods are at stake, their opinions
are biased (in my opinion, etc.).  I applaud them for the "outrageous" way
they released their info.  That way, if it is legitimate, enough people all
over have the basic details to check it out, and no government or industry
can squash it before it gets out, ala the 400 mpg engine.  If it is garbage,
they look like fools,  if it's not.....


        By the way, anyone know how difficult it is to get the Deuterium out
of seawater?  The process efficiency might determine how expensive fusion
could get.  I heard somewhere that a gram of D = 2400 barrels of fuel oil
if it is all fused into He and you use all the energy (WSJ article, so
no guarantee of accuracy).
                                Korac MacArthur

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
        No accountability of opinion required   :p
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

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

Date: 29 Mar 89 19:47:52 GMT
From: [e-mail]  (Matthew T. DeLuca)
Subject: Re: Room Temperature fusion - possible indications?

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Abhay Sawant) writes:
>AAAARGH!!!!!   Why so many people here using fps?  I thought higher
>education in the US used SI only.

Nope.  My aerospace engineering courses use FPS routinely.  I hate it.



--

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------Matthew DeLuca                      :
Georgia Institute of Technology     : Remember, wherever you go, there you are.
ARPA: [e-mail]        :

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

Date: 29 Mar 89 08:12:36 GMT
From: mcvax!ukc!axion!phoebe![e-mail]  (swaraj jeyasingh)
Subject: PHOBOS 2 dead ?


Just heard on the radio (BBC World Service) last night that the Soviets
have lost contact with PHOBOS 2. Anyone out there know anything ?
No further info was given on that broadcast which I first heard at 2300GMT
on Tuesday 28th and again at 0600GMT on Wed 29th.



(Usual disclaimer etc )
Swaraj Jeyasingh                        [e-mail]
British Telecom Research Labs
Martlesham Heath,
IPSWICH
 UK

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

Date: 29 Mar 89 16:24:01 GMT
From: encore!cloud9!jjmhome!cpoint![e-mail]  (Alien Wells)
Subject: Re: Success with cold fusion reported

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Miroslav Kocic) writes:
>
>The discussion in this newsgroup has so far been about the authenticity of the
>Utah breakthrough, but I have two different concerns.  First, what if fusion
>turns out to create problems we don't foresee?  We didn't foresee radioactive
>waste or meltdowns back when fission was at this stage, and, if history teaches
>anything, it teaches that every benefit has a proportional price.  Second, what
>if cold fusion becomes the crack-cocaine of energy production?  I can imagine
>a thousand fanatics in 750 terrorist cells making an H-bomb in their kitchen.

    1) The problems with fission WERE forseen at this stage with fission.
In fact, one of the two original designs submitted to the government when it
requested proposals for fission power plants could not melt down (similar to
most US university reactors).  The US govt made a decision that meltdowns
were unlikely enough that they were not an issue, and required all utilities
to use light water reactors instead.  When the utilities objected (utilities
are, after all, extremely conservative) the US govt assumed all liabilities
from a catastrophic meltdown.  Of course, they recently decided that was
unfair and capped what the govt will pay ... In addition, radioactive waste
was considered a problem immediately.  Again, utilities were unwilling to
come to the table until the US govt assumed all responsibility for waste
disposal.  Of course, the govt did nothing ...

    2) History does not teach us that everything has a proportional
price, it teaches us that people will use something until its price is as
much as the benefit.  Before cars, there were serious concerns that horse
waste (manure) was destroying public health and would destroy cities as
viable entities.  Cars pushed transportation down to the middle and lower
classes and saved cities until the price got to the break-even point.

    3) You cannot make an H-bomb with catalized fusion of the type
described.  That is as silly as saying you can make an atom bomb from
radioactive watch dials.

--
=============================================================================
        A path is a terrible thing to waste ...
    decvax!frog!cpoint!alien    bu_cs!mirror!frog!cpoint!alien
=============================================================================

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

Date: 29 Mar 89 15:23:46 GMT
From: mcvax!ukc!etive![e-mail]  (Bob Gray)
Subject: Re: Civilians in space (Was Re: First concert from space--update)

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Steve Philipson) writes:
>Soviets don't have that problem (yet), and their leadership can set
>priorities and direct efforts to accomplish them with far less in the way
>dissent.  If they have an edge because of the differences in political
>systems, we just have to chalk that up to part of the price of democracy.

The first dissent is already showing.

In the recent soviet elections, Boris Yeltzin was elected to
represent Moscow with 90% of the vote. He was standing
against the official Communist party candidate.

One of his election promises is to cut the Soviet spending
on space exploration and spend the money on housing or
other public projects to improve the quality of life for the
ordinary citizen.

Sounds quite familiar.
    Bob.

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

Date: 29 Mar 89 13:20:09 GMT
From: thorin!lhotse![e-mail]  (James Symon)
Subject: Room Temperature fusion, expert skepticism

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Emmett Black) writes:
> . . .
> I'm inclined to believe them, too.
>

I'm inclined not to. My father is a theoretical physicist who worked
for years in plasma research. I called and asked him "Say Dad, do you
suppose if I squeezed some deuterium into a metal lattice it might
fuse?" He just said, "No."

Then again, there is a wild, cheering, science enthusiast in the back
of my head yelling, "Experts have been wrong before, wrong before,
wrong before!" I bet my father has the same demon in action but
probably under many more muffling layers of knowledgable skepticism.

jim
[e-mail]
{decvax uunet}!mcnc!unc!symon

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

Date: Wed, 29 Mar 1989 11:31-EST
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: Cold Fusion

Question:

    If the fusion is occuring because of the "overlap" of the wave
functions, could it be that the cross section for the proton branch and
the neutron branch are sensitive to the precise distance? Can you
effectively "tune" the n,p output by controlling the distance?

I am suggesting (with out the experience to go off solving wave
functions myself) that the lattice separation in the Palladium may
control which reaction occurs. We would never have seen this before
because we have not had atoms at "static" distances from each other, we
have been slamming them as close together as possible as quickly as
possible.

Can anyone do the math? Seems like this might be down Bill Higgins or
Mr. Koloc's alley.

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

Date: Wed, 29 Mar 89 16:38:10 PST
From: Peter Scott <[e-mail]>
Subject: Magellan
X-Vms-Mail-To: EXOS%"[e-mail]"

The following is excerpted without permission from NASA Activities, February
1989, Volume 20, #2:

                  Magellan: Exploring Venus as Never Before
                  -----------------------------------------

Scheduled for launch April 28, 1989, aboard Space Shuttle Atlantis,
the spacecraft Magellan will conduct the most comprehensive observation
of the surface and gravitational features of Venus ever undertaken.
During its 243-day (one Venus rotation) primary mission, the spacecraft
will map up to 90% of the planet with high-resolution imaging radar.

[...]

Magellan's high-resolution radar will reveal surface features as small as
273 to 377 yards [by curious coincidence, these figures just happen to
be close to 250 to 345 meters...].  This performance exceeds that of all
previous U.S. and Soviet missions to the sister planet.

[...]

After launch from the shuttle, Magellan will be propelled onto its Venus
trajectory by an Inertial Upper Stage, two-stage booster rocket.  Once away
from the gravitational pull of Earth, the spacecraft will cruise for 15
months (1.5 orbits of the Sun) before reaching its destination.  [...]

Magellan is a 7,826-pound, three-axis-stabilized craft.  Solar panels and
three gyroscopic momentum wheels will provide energy and control the motion
of the spacecraft.

Onboard electrical power will be supplied by the two solar panels, totalling
15.1 square yards.  The array will always be pointed towards the Sun, despite
the changing Earth-Sun-spacecraft geometry during the mission, and will
be capable of producing 1,029 watts during the mapping phase.  Two
nickel-cadmium batteries will provide power during times of solar occultation
and allow normal spacecraft operations independent of solar illumination.

[...]

With conventional radar, the resolution of an image depends on antenna size:
the bigger the antenna, the better the resolution.  A large antenna on a
spacecraft, however, would be expensive and difficult to manipulate.  To
solve this problem, Magellan's synthetic aperture radar (SAR) will create
high-resolution radar images by using computer processing on Earth to simulate
a large antenna on the spacecraft.  The onboard radar system will operate
as though it has a huge antenna, hundreds of yards long, when the antenna
is actually 12 feet in diameter.

During the 37.2-minute data acquisition phase of each orbit, the SAR will
transmit several thousand pulses of radio energy each second.  [...] the
pulses will illuminate a 15.5-mile-wide swath of the planet's surface [...].

[...]

Magellan's orientation will be carefully controlled by three momentum wheels,
assisted, when necessary, by 12 small gas-thruster motors.

Magellan is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif
[yay!].

Peter Scott ([e-mail])

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

Date: 29 Mar 89 07:02:24 GMT
From: jarthur![e-mail]  (David L. Williamson)
Subject: Phobos

I just saw a report on the news stating that contact with the Phobos probe
currently in orbit around Mars has been lost.  This would appear to be a
major blow to the Soviet exploration of Mars.  Anybody have better
information about precisely what's going on???

                        -/ david /-

--------------------------------------------
Bitnet:  DWILLIAMSON@HMCVAX
Snail :  David L. Williamson
         Platt Campus Center
         Harvey Mudd College
         Claremont, CA  91711

Disclaimer:    Who would WANT to think anything that I think of?!?!?

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

Date: 30 Mar 89 03:23:04 GMT
From: leah!rpi!sun.soe.clarkson.edu![e-mail]  (Russ Nelson)
Subject: Skepticism is not ostrichism

UFO drivel is NOT welcome in sci.space [1], but there is no talk.ufos.
Followups to sci.misc.

    [1] Fortunately, this isn't drivel.  Yet.  We're still operating in the
    sci.entific realm here.

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

   In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Russ Nelson) writes:
   > In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Matthew T. DeLuca) writes:
   >
   >    This is patently ridiculous, ... Most likely ...
   >
   > How do you know that?  I counter your skepticism with my
   > skepticism.

   I will admit, the evidence for my conclusion is as skimpy as the
   evidence for the UFO theory, but let's be realistic.
So why do you advance further guesses below?  Your skepticism seems to be
as hard a belief as the UFOnatics.  Skepticism means looking at the facts,
and if the facts say "we don't know", then we don't know.
   Astronauts have been seeing 'UFO's' since the dawn of the space
   age, and the vast majority, if not all, have been sightings of
   expended booster segments, ejected garbage, and frozen urine.
So?  Most lottery tickets aren't winners either.  That doesn't mean that
*all* lottery tickets are losers.
   Each time, the UFO crowd came running, and each time there was a
   very reasonable explanation for the phenomenon.
Not true.  There is always a small percentage of unexplainable occurrences.
Whether you believe these are noise or genuine UFOs depends upon your beliefs.
   Each time, the UFO crowd then claimed that there was a massive
   coverup.
Unfortunately for you, the coverup explanation fits many facts just as well
as the no-UFOs explanation.  For example, many of Philip Klass's objections
to the MJ-12 papers can be answered by "of course that would happen if it were
being covered up."
   Well, it's been a quarter of a century now since these sightings
   from space have started, and I find it difficult to believe that an
   event of such magnitude as contact with alien life or alien
   technology could be kept secret.
Unfortunately, you can't prove a negative, so we're back to beliefs again.
   When alien life *does* contact us (and I am of the opinion that we
   are not alone in the universe, although I am not on the edge of my
   seat, waiting for them to come along), it will hit us like a ton of
   bricks.  Two tons of bricks.
More guesses.
   A very possible explanation of this occurrence comes to mind: since the
   frequency of the alleged transmission is in the middle of the commercial
   radio band, it is possible that someone with a radio set to that frequency
   broadcast the two items to see what happened, knowing that someone might be
   listening.  A pretty good joke, if you ask me.
More guesses.  If you don't know, just say so.
--
--russ (nelson@clutx [.bitnet | .clarkson.edu])
If you can, help others.  If you can't,       |        Leftoid and proud of it
at least don't hurt others--the Dalai Lama    |

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

Date: 29 Mar 89 23:09:21 GMT
From: vsi1!daver!lynx![e-mail]  (Neal Woodall)
Subject: Re: Discovery - UFO Close Encounter?

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

>More likely, if an alien ship
>did appear near the shuttle, the crew would turn around and head for home, under
>orders from the ground, since they're not equipped for alien contact.

I thought this whole thing was some kind of early April Fool's joke, but now
this! What do you mean "not equipped for alien contact." (maybe you have been
reading too much science fiction) I didn't know that our government or space
program even had any "rules" for alien contact, much less that they have
special "equipped for alien contact" shuttles!

>Finally, *real* aliens would make contact with government officials

Don't you think that they would seek out some more intelligent examples of our
species?

>and we can assume that this didn't happen, since at last check, Bush was at
>some elementary school, talking about U.S. drug policy.

Like I said, why not some more intelligent examples of our species (or maybe
they communicate by reading lips! :-)?

Cheers,


Neal

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

End of SPACE Digest V9 #327
*******************