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Subject: SPACE Digest V9 #368

SPACE Digest                                      Volume 9 : Issue 368

Today's Topics:
     Myers' statement on Truly, Thompson nominations (ForwardeD)
            long ago and far away
          Soviets will suspend manned space program
        Re: Soviets will suspend manned space program
             Re: Shuttle Centaur
                  Re: Ozone
               Re: Bored public
              RE: Hubble Space Telescope
            Re: RE: Hubble Space Telescope
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 13 Apr 89 03:13:38 GMT
From: trident.arc.nasa.gov![e-mail]  (Peter E. Yee)
Subject: Myers' statement on Truly, Thompson nominations (ForwardeD)

David W. Garrett                           April 12, 1989
Headquarters, Washington, D.C.


N89-31

NOTE TO EDITORS/PROGRAM DIRECTORS

MYERS' STATEMENT ON TRULY, THOMPSON NOMINATIONS

     Dale D. Myers, acting administrator, National Aeronautics
and Space Administration, made the following statement after
President Bush's nomination of Radm. Richard H. Truly to be NASA
administrator and J.R. Thompson to be deputy administrator.

     "I am delighted by President Bush's nomination of Dick Truly
to be the next Administrator of NASA.  During the past three
years I have come to know Adm. Truly and his capabilities well.
His experience and accomplishments demonstrate that he is well
qualified to lead America's civil space program into a period of
significant expansion of scientific, commercial and exploratory
activities.

     "The new Administrator will be inheriting an organization of
people who demonstrated anew their ability and determination by
the way they recovered from the Challenger disaster and returned
the nation to space flight.

     "In nominating J.R. Thompson, who currently heads our
Marshall Space Flight Center, to be the agency's deputy
administrator, the President has created a superb team to guide
NASA into the future.

     "All of my colleagues at NASA are delighted with these
nominations."

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

Date: 12 Apr 89 17:30:25 GMT
From: mailrus!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!utzoo![e-mail]  (Henry Spencer)
Subject: long ago and far away

28 years ago today, April 12, Yuri Gagarin was the first human in space.

His successors are still using most of the hardware that got him there,
and very successfully too.
--
Welcome to Mars!  Your         |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
passport and visa, comrade?    | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry [e-mail]

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

Date: 12 Apr 89 19:45:53 GMT
From: pasteur!scam.berkeley.edu![e-mail]  (Peter Yee)
Subject: Soviets will suspend manned space program



[Disclaimer:  This represents personal input, and should not be construed as
official NASA policy or comment.  I'm typing in the following article so that
those folks who have been raising questions about the shutdown on Mir can get
some info from the regular news service. -PEY]

[Reprinted without permission.  Typographical errors are my fault -PEY]

Kathy Sawyer
The Washington Post

    In an abrupt turnabout on its premier space achievement, the Soviet
Union has decided to suspend its manned space program at the end of this
month, apparently for economic reasons.

    The decision was conveyed in an announcemet by the Soviet news agency
Tass that the space station Mir, the world's only permanently manned outpost
in space, will be left unmanned for the first time in more than two years after
the current, three man crew returns to Earth on April 27.

    Tass made no mention of a space mission scheduled for April 19 that
was to have sent two replacement cosmonauts to Mir.  That launch has apparently
been canceled.

    American space consultant and author James Oberg, an exper on the
Soviet space effot, called the Soviet decision a "stunning turnaround" for
space program that "was on such a roll two years ago.  They've been smacked
in the face with . . . Gobachev's need for short-term economic improvement."

    The decision, which followed days of rumors, came on the heels of the
Soviets' loss of two unmanned probes to Mars' moon Phobos, another high-
visibility and scientifically ambitious project, which cost $500 million and
involved scientists from 13 nations.

    It also come in the midst of an unprecedented push by the Soviets to
market their space services abroad.  Mir's fist commercial payload, an
American pharmaceuticals experiment, was to have flown aboard the space
station soon.

    No official reason has been given for the evacuation of Mir, but a
science writer for the Soviet Communist Party newspaper Pravda, Vladimir
Gubaryev, suggested last week that growing public criticism of the high cost
of space activity is a factor.

    During the recent political campaign to elect a revamped Soviet
legislature, political mavericks such as Boris Yeltsin, the ousted
Communist Party leader of Moscow, gained strong popular support for
advocating the need to divert resources from the space program toward
production or more and better quality consumer goods.

    "If they shut id down, they will some serious adverse press," said
Nicholas Johnson of Teledyne Brown Engineering in Colorado, who publishes
an annual report on the Soviet space program.

    But Johnson cautioned against drawing dramatic conclusions.  "Even
this, combined with the Phobos failure, is no worse than all the problems
they had last year.  The problem is with the perception.  These are their
two most visible program. . . .There's noeveidence to suggest the Soviet
program is in dire straits."

    Long-duration human space filght is one of the few areas in which
the Soviet Union holds an undisputed lead over the United States.  Mir --
the Russian word peace -- has been occupied continously for more than 800
days by a succession of crews, the first such permanently manned space
outpost in history.

    Analysts speculated that the Soviets have reached a "rational
decision" based on financial balance sheet that they should evacuate Mir
until at least one of two major additions being prepared for the station is
ready for launch, possibly late this year.  Those two modules, each the
size of the core station, would together double the size of Mir, Oberg
said.  Both have suffered preparation delays.

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

Date: 13 Apr 89 03:33:19 GMT
From: rochester![e-mail]  (Brian Yamauchi)
Subject: Re: Soviets will suspend manned space program

If the shuttle was still grounded, this would be disconcertingly
reminiscent of Gibson & Sterling's "Red Star, Winter Orbit."

_______________________________________________________________________________

Brian Yamauchi                University of Rochester
[e-mail]        Computer Science Department
_______________________________________________________________________________

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

Date: 12 Apr 89 16:10:57 GMT
From: [e-mail]  (Timothy Roberts)
Subject: Re: Shuttle Centaur


    In response to the question "what is shuttle centaur and why did it
die?" I say this:
    The shuttle Centaur project was to be a high energy upper stage for
the space shuttle allowing deep space probes and *very* heavy clark orbit
satellites to be launched from the shuttle payload bay.  The vehicle was
actually little more than an expanded centaur upper stage from the Atlas
ELV with dumping capabilities to ensure safe shuttle landing weights.  The
fuel was hydrazine and highly caustic.  Thus (in the event of aborted take-
off) the fuel would have had to be dumped over uninhabited areas at low
altitudes to prevent possible serious damage to the environment.  Then the
Challenger was destroyed and crew safety ruled out the use of the upper stage
altogether.  This may be one of the decisions that limits the shuttle to
use as something very different than its original designs.  Deep space probes
must now use the Inertial Upper stage and take ridiculous time periods to get
where they need to go.

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

Date: 11 Apr 89 00:33:51 GMT
From: tektronix!psueea!parsely!agora!ihf1![e-mail]  (Stephen Hutchison)
Subject: Re: Ozone

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:
:[e-mail] (Stephen Hutchison) writes:
:>Could some kind person clarify this for me?  I've been told by an
:>acquaintance who I would expect to have some knowledge of chemistry,
:>that the Ozone layer gets rebuilt at night (since catalysts work both
:>ways) and that it may actually be rebuilt somewhat in excess of the
:>day's losses.  Has anyone tested this?
:
:     The ozone layer is produced by the action of ultraviolet light on
:oxygen in the upper atmosphere.  Thus, it is replenished during daylight,
:not at night.

That's what I thought the model was.  Has it been verified?  CAN it be
verified?

:     I don't know what you mean by "since catalysts work both
:ways".  First of all, not all catalysts work "both ways", and secondly
:(if I may assume that you are referring to "catalytic" destruction of
:ozone by chloride radicals) the process by which chloride radicals (from
:chloroflourocarbons) destroy ozone would definitely not be occur in the
:reverse spontaneously.

I am quoting my acquaintance; I have no reason to think that catalysts
have any universally consistent behaviour.  Other than catalyzing.
I will remain skeptical of the claims pending more concrete information.

:Jim Kowalczyk
:[e-mail]
:
:[What a cross-post!  Only group missing was sci.chem :-)
I posted as a follow-up to "Greenhouse effect" - see the massive References:
line in the header? - anyway, I forgot to trim the Newsgroups: line.

Hutch

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

Date: 13 Apr 89 01:01:15 GMT
From: sco![e-mail]  (Joe Di Lellio)
Subject: Re: Bored public

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Scott Hess) writes:

[stuff about people being afraid of technology]

I'm afraid I agree completely. There is quickly developing a huge majority
of people who not only know little about technical related subjects, but are
downright proud of it. I'm still a student at UCSC (well, sort of;>), and I
know of several non-science major types (as well as a few soft science types
[like ecology or sociology] who should _not_ have this attitude) who brag
about it. It's being considered popular, even healthy, attitude to have.

Its things like this that really scare me. Seeing Joe Average have an aversion
to these things is painful, but acceptable. Having a sociologist know nothing
about statistics, or an ecologist who "doesn't DO chemistry and math", spooks
the hell out of me. We might as well go back to checking chicken entrails and
tea leaves.

-Joe Di Lellio, just lacking a .sig for the moment.

P.S. The above mentioned eco major is the same one who dislikes (if we ever
     had the reason for it) dumping nuke waste into the sun, since "it will
     all come back to us in the solar wind", or in deep space, since "there's
     only so much space out there".

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

Date: 12 Apr 89 17:57:05 GMT
From: hp-pcd!hpcvlx![e-mail]  (Greg Goebel)
Subject: RE: Hubble Space Telescope

There was a posting a few days back concerning the Hubble Space Telescope
concerning its possible use as a recon satellite.

I posted a response saying a KH-12 was probably better for the purpose,
and got some (friendly) mail over it with a few comments.  I replied
that I was just parroting material from a recent SCIENCE article on spy
sats ... and received a suggestion that I post that article.

So ...

Greg Goebel
Hewlett-Packard CWO / 1000 NE Circle Boulevard / Corvallis OR 97330
[phone]
INTERNET: cwo_online@hp-pcd
HP DESK:  CWO ONLINE / HP3900 / 20

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

Date: 12 Apr 89 17:57:35 GMT
From: hp-pcd!hpcvlx![e-mail]  (Greg Goebel)
Subject: Re: RE: Hubble Space Telescope

Spy Satellites:  Entering a New Era

   Daniel Charles

   SCIENCE / VOL 243 / 24 MAR 89 / PP 1541-1543

* After waiting two years for the return of the space shuttle, America's
intelligence agencies have begun to launch a constellation of new spy
satellites.  All three of the shuttle launches since the Challenger accident
have added important links to this surveillance network.  By the end of 1989,
if all goes well, three new reconnaissance spacecraft will be in orbit,
collecting unprecedented amounts of information on military "targets" around
the world.

The first of the new satellites flew into orbit last December aboard the
shuttle Atlantis; it is apparently a high-resolution radar-reconnaissance
satellite, the first such military satellite that the US has put into orbit.
The system's codename is apparently Lacrosse (but was earlier referred to as
Indigo).

Late this year, the first two KH-12 spy satellites are scheduled to fly into
orbit aboard Titan IV rockets.  The KH-12 is the latest and most advanced in a
long line of photoreconnaissance satellites, which use a powerful telescope to
take pictures in the visible and infrared.

Equally important in this network are the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite
System (TDRSS) satellites, the third of which was launched by Discovery in
March.  Although the military capabilities of TDRSS are secret, most observers
believe that Lacrosse is using the satellite to relay its data back to Earth.
The KH-12's images will probably be relayed through TDRSS as well.

TDRSS is where NASA's science missions and the secret world of military
reconnaissance come in close contact.  Both the military and the shuttle are
"priority 1" users of TDRSS's communications channels.  The satellite's data
flow is scheduled by computer at the TDRSS ground station, located at the White
Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.

Lower priority users of TDRSS, such as the Hubble Space Telescope or the
Landsat Earth-Imaging satellites, must submit their requests to use TDRSS
without knowing which times are blocked out for military use.

The peak rate at which the HST's instruments will send data through TDRSS -- 1
megabit per second (MBPS) -- is a trickle compared with the flood of data
generated by the new spy satellites.  Synthetic-aperature radars like Lacrosse,
in particular, tend to swamp any available data relay, because transmission
capacity and available computing power, not the radar itself, generally limit
the quality and size of the images that the system can produce.

Robert Cooper, former head of DARPA (now president of Atlantic Aerospace
Electronics Corporation) noted in an interview that a radar system with a
resolution of 1 foot can generate raw data at a rate of many billions of bits
per second -- far beyond the capacity of any existing links in space.
.PAGE_BREAK



Reducing the raw data to images -- a data stream small enough for TDRSS to
handle -- would require the world's largest supercomputers on board the
spacecraft, said Cooper.  A more likely way of getting around the data
bottleneck is for Lacrosse only to operate intermittently, storing burst of
data on recorders.  These devices could then transmit the data at a slower rate
through TDRSS to Earth.

NASA plans to launch its own imaging radar as part of its Earth Observing
System (EOS) sometime in the late 1990s.  The instrument will detect objects
roughly 30 meters across in a swath 50 kilometers wide, with less detail when
the swath is expanded to its maximum width of 700 kilometers.  The data rate of
its transmissions is limited to 300 MBPS, the maximum capacity of TDRSS' two
high-capacity channels.  "The data rate limits everything.  It limits
resolution, gray scale accuracy, and field of view," said one of EOS' designers
at JPL.

Because Lacrosse's performance is limited by the capacity of TDRSS, the
pictures it furnishes are less detailed than those from optical systems like
the KH-12, which can detect objects only a few inches across.  According to
John Pike of the American Federation of Scientists, Lacrosse can probably
detect objects as small as 1 meter across, since that level of detail is
necessary to identify important items like Soviet mobile missiles.

The radar's chief advantage, however, is its ability to see through the clouds
that generally hide much of the Soviet Union and Europe.

Compared with the novelty of Lacrosse, the KH-12 is practically a known
quantity.  In fact, it probably bears a strong resemblance to the HST, since
both were built to fit inside the shuttle cargo bay.  The primary mirror of the
KH-12's telescope can be little larger than the HST's.

As a comparison, a telescope with the HST's power in an orbit 200 nautical
miles above the earth could detect objects on the surface 7 inches across.
According to Pike and Jeffrey Richelson of the private National Security
Archive, the KH-12 carries a large quantity of fuel so that it can maneuver to
a low 100-mile orbit to see details half as large.  In order to counter the
distortions caused by the atmosphere, spy satellites use computer-controlled
"adaptive optics" that vary the surface of the mirror minutely.

Detecting ever smaller objects, however, is no longer the key to more effective
spying from space, according to reconnaissance experts.  The greatest technical
challenges now lie in programming high-speed computers to unearth valuable
information buried in the mountain of data.

Technical experts for the CIA, the Pentagon, and the National Reconnaissance
Office now are struggling to harness computers to the task of filtering out
data sent down from space.  Computers, says former Air Force Secretary Edward
Aldridge (now president of McDonnell Douglas Electronics Corporation),
eventually may help solve a typical dilemma confronting intelligence analysts:
"Somewhere in that data there is a target.  Now, how do you find it ... unless
you take the population of the United States and make them photo interpreters?"
.PAGE_BREAK



The sheer volume of data streaming down through TDRSS, threatening to overwhelm
even armies of analysts, is one source of pressure to automate the
interpretation of photographic intelligence.  But skyrocketing demands on the
intelligence system are even more important.

Rather than simply monitor known sites, such as missile silos and airfields,
satellites are now required to find and track Soviet nuclear missiles that move
about from day to day.  This will be necessary to verify future arms control
treaties, but the Air Force also has a less enlightened aim:  targeting the
missiles for destruction in wartime.

"As we see [Soviet] leadership and military forces becoming more mobile, it's
putting more demands on us to detect, localize, and hold at risk those forces,"
said Aldridge.  "The biggest difficulty is not searching the target area.  Even
if the sensor has flown over the target, and it is in the database, it still
has to be found."

Computers can search the data from a wide area, looking for an electronic
signal that matches the known return from a Soviet missile launcher.  But while
simple in concept, teaching computers to recognize an object -- particularly
when the Soviets are hiding the targets under cover and behind trees -- has
proved difficult in practice.  "We're still 5 years away from the point where
some data comes in and rings a bell and says I've got a target X in location
Y," said Aldridge.

The most valuable contribution of computer analysis, said Thomas Rona, deputy
director of the White House Science Office, may be in integrating information
from various sensors, so that one instrument can correct the other's blind
spots.  While the KH-12 might be fooled by a plastic decoy built to look like a
tank, for example, the radar of Lacrosse could immediately tell the difference.
"All sensors lie a little," said Rona.  "The reason that you coalesce
information from all sorts of sensors is that you don't trust any of them."
Attempts to write software capable of integrating data from many sources,
however, have run into major problems, and are not expected to be available for
several years.

Complicating the job even more is the growing demand for data from satellites.
Not only the President, but every major military commander around the world can
now request pictures from satellites to help plan military operations.

The trend began ten years ago, when the armed forces started a program called
TENCAP (Technical Exploitation of National Capabilities) aimed at making
information from space reconnaissance available to military commanders.  In
1981, the Marines established a TENCAP elective at their staff college; with
the knowledge of TENCAP's existence, under the pressure of crises (such as the
military operations in Beruit and the Persian Gulf) decisions were made to
distribute information that had once been kept under tight control.
.PAGE_BREAK



Said Donald Latham, former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Command, Control,
Communications, and Intelligence:  "We can move imagery today, worldwide, with
our communications systems.  We've even got suitcase versions of these systems,
where you can look at [an image] and do things with it -- all with soft copy,
without film."

It now takes only hours for a picture of a particular scene to get from the
satellite to the military commander who ordered it.  In the future, said
Aldridge, field commanders may be able to look at a scene at the very moment
that the satellite is photographing it.

These technical marvels do not come cheap.  The Army is estimated to have
spent somewhere between $840 million and $1 billion during the past decade on a
single system, called the All Source Signal Analysis System, that is designed
to distribute information from various intelligence sources to Army commanders.
Primarily because of problems with software, its delivery is estimated as 2 or
3 years and several hundred million dollars away.

According to published reports, the White House has agreed to a demand by the
Senate Intelligence Committee that it spend $6 billion on improving
surveillance systems during the next 5 or 6 years.  The FAS' Pike estimates
that each KH-12 satellite costs between $1.5 and $2 billion, excluding launch
costs.

[<>]

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

End of SPACE Digest V9 #368
*******************