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Date: Wed, 10 May 89 05:17:28 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: SPACE Digest V9 #423

SPACE Digest                                      Volume 9 : Issue 423

Today's Topics:
                Tesla coverups
         Re: Brilliant (but old hat) Pebbles
        Re: Earth based - will it always win?
           Re: citizens in space -- risk silliness
       Re: Final Frontier June 1989....EXCELLENT ISSUE
            Re: Meme me up, Scotty
           Re: DO IT YOURSELF SPACE-PROBES?
           Re: Some comments on comments...
            Re: Citizens in Space
    Rendezvous with Rama (was Re: Re: Asteroid Encounter)
                  Re: Giotto
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Mon, 8 May 89 16:58:49 EDT
From: [e-mail] (John Karabaic)
To: "[e-mail]"@aagate.arpa
Cc: "[e-mail]"@aagate.arpa
Subject: Tesla coverups


    So, as far as can be determined, the documents remain at Wright
    Patterson to this day. Perhaps Lt. John S. Karabaic
    ([e-mail]), who posted the first question
    regarding Tesla and the book "Fer-del-lance, A briefing on Soviet
    Scalar Electromagnetic Weapons", By T E Bearden, and who appears
    to work at this self-same Wright-Patterson AFB would care to
    comment. Perhaps Lt. Karabaic's boss REALLY has a "sense of humor."

OK, OK, I confess.  We've been interrogating the aliens in Hangar 18 and
they are confirmed statist radical communist imperialists (no
fooling!) who plan to invade Friday, 19 May.  Since the Soviets
and Chinese are in cahoots with them, we desperately need to develop
these weapons.  The records Henry Hardy speaks of were put on base
somewhere around 1947, but when the Army Air Corps became the Air
Force on 1 September 1947, they got lost during the moving (damn
low-bid moving company...).  We're desperately trying to piece
together the secrets of that Croatian-American hero, Nick Tesla (my
father hails from Punat, Croatia, himself).

If we recover the information in those documents, we will go to
Congress with a proposal to develop the weapons.  Given the nature of
military procurement and the Fairness in Contracting Act, we should
have production articles (notice I didn't say prototypes, much less
working prototypes) by August of 1994.  We plan to use concurrent
engineering to cut risk and speed the schedule.

Of course, by then the aliens should be comfortably settled in and
have their Toyotas paid off.

I'm glad I got that off my chest.
!!!!!!!!!!!!Don't use *reply*; our mailer is not working properly!!!!!!!!!!!
        Lt John S. Karabaic ([e-mail])
     WRDC/TXI                    513 255 5800          It's not just a job.
     WPAFB, OH 45433-6543        AV 785 5800            It's an indenture.
                These opinions are mine.
            I separate from the USAF 19 May; no one cares what I say.


PS For those who got this far and aren't chuckling yet, this is a
joke.  For Henry, there are 40,000 employees on this base (the largest
single-site employer in Ohio; enough wasted lives to make a
Libertarian out of Sen Paul Simon).  I wouldn't doubt that if those
records *did* exist here they aren't accessible now.  Ever see
*Raiders of the Lost Ark*?  There are a whole lot of buildings here on
base which look like that final scene in the basement.  If you're
interested in looking for that stuff, file under the Freedom of
Information Act.  Part of the Air Material Command became Air Force
Systems Command Aeronautical Systems Division in the early 60's, so
try them and Air Force Logistics Command, another organization sprung
from the loins of Air Materiel Command.  You might want to try AFSC
Electronic Systems Division at Hanscom AFB in Massachusetts, also.
Good luck.

I'll say "hello" to the aliens in Hangar 18 for everyone :-)

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

Date: 8 May 89 15:02:23 GMT
From: unmvax!deimos.cis.ksu.edu!cveg!hcx![e-mail]  (JAMES WILLIAM SMITH)
Subject: Re: Brilliant (but old hat) Pebbles


In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Sean Malloy) writes:
> It may sound facetious, but to quote a bumper sticker I saw recently:
>
>     STOP SDI -- MAKE THE WORLD SAFE FOR NUCLEAR WARHEADS

I think the correct wording of that sticker should be:

   PROMOTE SDI -- MAKE THE WORLD SAFE FOR 1 PER 1000 NUCLEAR WARHEADS

Food for thought:  if only one missile per 1000 (or 10,000 or 1E8) gets
through a Peace Shield, and you want 100 missiles to get through, how
many missiles do you have to build to reach your goal?

Happy Arms Race,

 /--------------------------------------------------------------------------\
|  James W. Smith, University of Arkansas   |                                |
|  ...uunet!harris.cis.ksu.edu!jws3@hcx     |    We must love one another    |
|  harry!hcx![e-mail]       |            or die.             |
|  Telenet:  jws3@130.184.7.209             |                  --A. Clarke   |
|  515 Skyline Dr., Fayetteville, AR 72701  |                                |
 \--------------------------------------------------------------------------/

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

Date: 8 May 89 15:48:38 GMT
From: cfa!cfa250![e-mail]  (Steve Willner)
Subject: Re: Earth based - will it always win?

From article <sYMV8sy00Uo5M=[e-mail]>, by
[e-mail] (Daniel Alexander Davis):
> Still, going to Mars is very different from putting HST in earth's
> orbit.  While HST is not on the Earth (well, rather it is.  Shit.),
> it is "earth-based."  My question is whether a project to examine
> the solar system from orbit using HST, or some other, future
> on orbit facility wouldn't do a better job.

The answer is a definite "maybe."  Or rather, it depends on what you
want to do.  Planetary missions are not particularly more expensive
than large instruments in Earth orbit, so if you only want to look at
one planet, it's probably better to go there.  On the other hand, if
you want to examine several planets with the same instrument, you
might as well build just one and keep it nearby, unless the type of
instrument requires a close approach (e.g. magnetic field/charged
particle measurements).

The above reasoning may give a sense of the usual reasoning, but in
planning real missions, the details matter, and one has to decide on
a case-by-case basis.
--
Steve Willner            Phone [phone]         Bitnet:   willner@cfa
60 Garden St.            FTS:      830-7123           UUCP:   willner@cfa
Cambridge, MA 02138 USA                 Internet: [e-mail]

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

Date: 8 May 89 15:03:51 GMT
From: dinl![e-mail]  (kevin w. holroyd)
Subject: Re: citizens in space -- risk silliness

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (steve emmerson) writes:
>        <stuff deleted>
>Something like that.  Do you know if she was told that one study
>(the Air Force's I believe) estimated that 25 flights was the mean
>time to catastrophic failure due to SRB malfunction?

Is that really important?  I wonder if good old Chris Colombus got any
estimates of his chances of success before he charged off?  At some
point in life, people have to take responsibility for their actions.  She
CERTAINLY had enough information available to her to make a decision. Can
you imagine a test pilot's family suing the government because he wasn't
shown a metallurgical report about a rivet contained in his airplane that
caused a catastrophic failure?  The shuttle is STILL an experimental
vehicle, and I hate to sound morbid but, in all probability, we haven't
lost the last one.  In fact, I would say that even if the shuttle program
continues at its present rate (God forbid; hopefully it will get better) it
is almost certain that we will lose another one.  Will their families be
able to find someone to blame, thus bringing forth another lawsuit?  You
can ALWAYS find someone to blame for something, but the real truth is these
people (shuttle crew) know they are taking risks, and have chosen to take
those risks.  They may not know ALL of the risks, no one EVER does, but
they do know that what they are doing is dangerous, and THEY have made the
decision (not their lawyers).

--
*******************************************************************************
Kevin W. Holroyd            *
CFI Aspen Flying Club            * Got tired of last .signature file
Denver CO.                *
*******************************************************************************

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

Date: 8 May 89 17:50:15 GMT
From: ncrlnk!ncrcce![e-mail]  (Wayne D. T. Johnson)
Subject: Re: Final Frontier June 1989....EXCELLENT ISSUE

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Bob Myers) writes:
>>>>"Should NASA resume its program to take ordinary citizens on the shuttle?"
>
>Personally, I'd give a qualified "no."  At present, a seat on the shuttle
>is simply too blinkin' expensive to be able to justify a joy ride for an
>"ordinary citizen", even if we had a system which was 100% safe (which we
>most certainly do NOT have at present).  As much as I'd LIKE to see (and BE)
>an "ordinary citizen" flying in the Shuttle, there's simply no argument I
>can make for spending zillions to put him/her/me there.
>
Gee, the accounting course I'm taking this quarter DOES have some merit...

When you are counting the cost of putting a person into space, you can not
count the costs that would be incured anyway.  For example, there is a certain
depreciation cost for the use of the SSME and SRB motors, they only last for
just so many launches, the depreciation would be the cost to develop and build
the engine / number of expected uses.  These costs are fixed overhead, and
(by standard accounting practices) not included in the costs used to make the
decision on if the person should fly or not.  Since your going to launch
anyway, this extra person is just a leveraged benefit.

Of course there are real costs to putting this extra person into space.  The
cost of extra fuel, extra food, water, toilet paper...  Does anyone know
the cost of these things? It can't be too high with the price that NASA
charges on some of its "getaway specials".  Of course the cost of life
insurance may be a little overwhelming.

Disclaimer:  I'm afraid I haven't priced liquid oxygen lately.
--
Wayne Johnson                 (Voice) 612-638-7665
NCR Comten, Inc.             (E-MAIL) [e-mail] or
Roseville MN 55113                    [e-mail]
These opinions (or spelling) do not necessarily reflect those of NCR Comten.

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

Date: 8 May 89 03:53:00 GMT
From: portal!cup.portal.com![e-mail]  (Mark Robert Thorson)
Subject: Re: Meme me up, Scotty

> I wonder if some one of our glorious New Age types on the net could
> post an explanation in 25 words or less of what the difference is
> between a "meme" and an "idea." I keep seeing this word crop up in the
>
>     "Truisms aren't everything."    Internet: [e-mail]

Memes have no connection with the New Age, which is just old-fashioned
spiritualism polished up and set on a shelf with a new, higher price tag.

But getting back to your question, memes are a subset of ideas.  An idea
like "I think I'll have eggs for breakfast." is not a meme because it is
not contagious.  But an idea like "Soup is good food." can become a meme
when people find it to be a useful rule of thumb when planning meals for
their children.  Of course it is even more of a meme when it harnesses
the replication machinery of mass media backed up by millions of dollars
from a soup company.

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

Date: 8 May 89 17:42:21 GMT
From: agate!shelby!Portia!Jessica![e-mail]  (Paul Flaherty)
Subject: Re: DO IT YOURSELF SPACE-PROBES?

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (William Lewis) writes:
>    Seems to me I remember an article about this in a magazine a while back,
>maybe a year or 8 months ago. It covered some people who built satellites
>on their own. The satellites were called OSCAR ### (i.e., OSCAR 1, OSCAR 2,
>and so on) They were launched in extra spaces of boosters being used for
>other purposes (communications satellites) and so they didn't have much
>choice about the orbits. However, the article said that many were operating
>at the time it was written. I forget what theyw were geing used as.

The OSCAR satellites (as opposed to Oscars, which are milsats) are built by
any of a number of organizations within the amateur radio community.  Their
primary mission is to provide reliable VHF and UHF communication between
properly equipped amateur stations, although two satellites (OSCARS 9 and 11,
built by the University of Surrey) are planetary science experiments.

We build the world's cheapest satellites.

-=Paul Flaherty, N9FZX      | "Research Scientists need Porsches, too!"
->[e-mail] |            -- Bloom County

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

Date: 8 May 89 21:47:19 GMT
From: vsi1!daver!lynx![e-mail]  (Neal Woodall)
Subject: Re: Some comments on comments...

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Forrest Gehrke) writes:

>I read somewhere (source unremembered)
>that the Russians lost one of their Phobos probes due to an
>inadvertant steering of the probe's antenna away from earth
>by a ground controller.

>Seems like such an obvious measure; I wonder why the Russians
>failed to take it into account?

For the same damn reason they would build a radar spysat powered by a
nuclear reactor with no radiation shielding....see this month's Sky
and Telescope for a description on how the Soviet Rorsats have been
screwing up US and Japanese gamma ray orbiting observatories.


Neal

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

Date: 8 May 89 16:05:42 GMT
From: cfa!cfa250![e-mail]  (Steve Willner)
Subject: Re: Citizens in Space

From article <[e-mail]>, by [e-mail]:
> I was appaled at the Challenger incident.  First because it
> happened at all but more importantly at the fact that the family of
> the officers were sueing the government. ...The fact that the
> families of the officers, sworn to the country sued shows that
> there is no way we should put (pardon me) normal citizens into space.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe Christa McAuliffe's
family has sued over the Challenger accident.  Doesn't this imply
that _only_ "normal citizens" should fly in space?
--
Steve Willner            Phone [phone]         Bitnet:   willner@cfa
60 Garden St.            FTS:      830-7123           UUCP:   willner@cfa
Cambridge, MA 02138 USA                 Internet: [e-mail]

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

Date: 7 May 89 12:21:14 GMT
From: mcvax!ukc!reading!cf-cm!cybaswan![e-mail]  (Steve Hosgood)
Subject: Rendezvous with Rama (was Re: Re: Asteroid Encounter)

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Greg Goebel) writes:
>
> [lost of stuff deleted]
>
>Since 1973, Shoemaker has been photographing the sky in search of asteroids
>that periodically cross the Earth's orbit and thus pose a danger of collision.
>To date, he says, 57 such asteroids at least 1 km in diameter have been
>catalogued.  In addition, about three Earth-crossing comets are detected each
>year.  From the rate at which new Earth-crossers are detected, Shoemaker
>estimates that there are some 2,000 asteroids in this category and that 100
>comets intersect the Earth's orbit every year.
>
>His calculations suggest that asteroids packing the explosive energy of one
>megaton should enter the atmosphere on an average of once every 30 years,
>larger asteroids with a 20-megaton punch every 400 years, and a 1 km, 10,000
>megaton comet or asteroid once in 100,000 years.
>
>This century has already seen a major meteorite blast.  In 1908, either an
>asteroid or comet exploded about five miles above the remote Stony Tunguska
>River region of Siberia, igniting and flattening trees over hundreds of square
>miles.  From descriptions of the blast and photographs of the damage,
>scientists have estimated that the object was at least 200 feet across and
>caused a 12-megaton explosion.
>

Arthur C. Clarke's book "Rendezvous with Rama" postulated that Earth needed to
be warned about approaching meteorites after several near-misses such as those
described above. Deep-space tracking stations were deployed to detect
such objects sufficiently early that countermeasures could be brought into
play to defend the planet if required.

I suspect that you'd need an awful lot of detector probes to cover the
approaches to Earth. Assuming you put them out in orbit around the sun a bit
furthur out than Mars, would you get sufficent warning to launch defensive
missiles? Does anyone know if it's better to make those probes sun-orbiters
or far-out Earth orbiters? Obviously, you'd need fewer probes if they orbited
Earth, but would that give sufficient warning time? I suspect not somehow.

Steve

P.S. I wonder if A.C.C reads the Net?
-----------------------------------------------+------------------------------
Steve Hosgood BSc,                             | Phone [phone]
Image Processing and Systems Engineer,         | Fax [phone]
Institute for Industrial Information Techology,| Telex 48149
Innovation Centre, University of Wales, +------+ JANET: [e-mail]
Swansea SA2 8PP                         | UUCP: ..!ukc!cybaswan.UUCP!iiit-sh
----------------------------------------+-------------------------------------
            My views are not necessarily those of my employers!

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

Date: 8 May 89 15:58:22 GMT
From: mcvax!ukc!etive![e-mail]  (Bob Gray)
Subject: Re: Giotto

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] () writes:
>Giotto is functional? Please forgive me my ignorance, but what is it studying after
>the Halley mission? Is it still returning data? Of what?What are it's mission
>plans?

Giotto is currently in "hibernation" in a solar orbit.

ESA has just finished a preliminary series of tests on how
well it has survived, and will re-activate it early next and
cary out a full performance evaluation.

If everything goes well, and it is decided to proceed,
Giotto will use the Earth's gravity during its close approach
on July 2, 1990 to alter its course to intercept comet
Grigg-Skellerup on July 10, 1992.
    Bob.

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

End of SPACE Digest V9 #423
*******************