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Subject: SPACE Digest V9 #534

SPACE Digest                                      Volume 9 : Issue 534

Today's Topics:
         Space Deaths (was Re: Killing Borgs easily)
           Payload Status for 06/30/89 (Forwarded)
            Re: NASA Prediction Bulletins
         RE: Simulation of planetary motions.
             Re: Space station computers
             Re: new space goals
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 30 Jun 89 21:59:07 GMT
From: bucsb![e-mail]  (Christopher Davis)
Subject: Space Deaths (was Re: Killing Borgs easily)

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (William G. Hutchison) writes:
- In article <[e-mail]>, rjd@brunix (Rob Demillo) writes:
- > Seven people were lost in our effort to get off this planet...
-
-  Eleven (Twelve?),
-
- including Apollo astronauts (on the ground)
- and Russian Cosmonauts.

I'll give this a try.  Crossposted to sci.space, with followups there...
this way, I'll get corrected quickly and precisely. :-)

US spacecraft: 7 deaths in-flight (Challenger) and 3 in a pad fire (Apollo 1).

USSR: 3 deaths on Soyuz 1, 3 on Soyuz 11, others "suspected."

So at least 16.

- Bill Hutchison, DP Consultant    rutgers!cbmvax!burdvax!ubbpc!wgh
--
  /\  | /  |\  @bu-pub.bu.edu <preferred>  | Christopher K. Davis, BU SMG '90
 /    |/   | \ [e-mail] |      uses standardDisclaimer;
 \    |\   | /  <for stupid sendmails>     |       BITNET: smghy6c@buacca
  \/  | \  |/  @bucsb.UUCP <last resort>  or ...!bu-cs!bucsb!ckd if you gotta.
 --"Ignore the man behind the curtain and the address in the header." --ckd--

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

Date: 30 Jun 89 17:57:40 GMT
From: trident.arc.nasa.gov![e-mail]  (Peter E. Yee)
Subject: Payload Status for 06/30/89 (Forwarded)


                                   Payload Status Report
                                   Kennedy Space Center
                                   Friday, June 30, 1989


          George H. Diller



          Galileo/IUS-19

               In the SAEF-2 planetary spacecraft checkout facility, the S-
          Band/X-band high gain antenna was hoisted atop Galileo on
          Thursday, June 29.  Earlier this week, the installation of 120
          radioisotope heater units was completed.  These are small heat
          devices that keep the science experiments and moveable spacecraft
          elements warm in the very cold environment of deep space.  There
          are 84 on the spacecraft, and 36 on the probe for a total of 120
          RHU's.

               Also this week, a stand-alone functional test of the S-
          Band/X-band high gain antenna was conducted.  On Monday, June 26,
          the antenna was deployed.  The following day, a check of antenna
          radio power was conducted.  On Wednesday, June 28, the antenna
          was stowed for flight and prepared for mating with the
          spacecraft.  Today, now that installation on Galileo is complete,
          the antenna will be turned on and the test of radio power
          repeated.  The data will be compared with the earlier results to
          verify that the antenna is properly connected and performing as
          required.  This antenna is used to transmit and receive signals
          between the spacecraft and the Deep Space Network tracking
          stations.

               Also scheduled for today is a deployment check of Galileo's
          science boom.  Continuing in work are electrical tests of the
          pyrotechnic devices which have been installed.  These devices are
          associated with boom deployment, removal of optical covers, and
          release of the probe.  Next week, final installation of the
          thermal blankets will begin, and there will be a deployment check
          of the two RTG booms.

               The Inertial Upper Stage booster is undergoing checkout on
          Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.  The testing of the avionics
          systems is complete and checkout of the first and second stage
          interfaces will now begin.

          SSBUV

               On the Shuttle Backscatter Ultraviolet (SSBUV) experiment,
          which will have fixed attachments in the payload bay of Atlantis,
          calibration testing of the experiment has been completed.  The
          flight batteries have been undergoing installation this week.  It
          will be transported from the Hangar AE cleanroom on Cape
          Canaveral Air Force Station to the Orbiter Processing Facility in
          about another week.  It is scheduled for installation in the
          orbiter's payload bay on July 13.

          AC-68/FltSatCom F-8

               Power-on testing continues.  The nose fairing has arrived
          and has been taken to Hangar J for storage.  The Terminal
          Countdown Demonstration test, the practice countdown which
          includes a complete fueling of the launch vehicle, is scheduled
          for August 9.

               The FltSatCom F-8 spacecraft is at the TRW plant in Redondo
          Beach, California, being prepared for shipment.  It will arrive
          at Cape Canaveral on July 31.

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

Date: 28 Jun 89 17:34:19 GMT
From: hpfcdc!hpldola!hp-lsd![e-mail]  (David Geiser)
Subject: Re: NASA Prediction Bulletins

- NASA Prediction Bulletins -

Effective January 1986, this system began posting the most recent element sets
received from NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center for several categories of
satellites:  Amateur Radio, Earth Resources, Manned Spacecraft, Navigation,
Weather, and NASA's 30 Day Specials (which contain objects launched within the
last 30 days and are often easy to spot visually).  More specifically, these
include the following satellites or satellite series:  OSCAR, Radio Sputnik,
UOSAT, Cosmos, LandSat, SeaSat 1, SPOT, Mir, Salyut 7, Soyuz, LDEF, US Space
Shuttle, NAVSTAR (GPS), GOES, Meteor, and NOAA.

These elements will be maintained in ASCII format in the file BULLETIN.TXT
which may be viewed with the 'B'ulletin command.  They are also maintained in
an archive, NPB-xxx.ARC, where xxx is the current file version (a number from
000 to 999) and will serve to indicate whether the file has been updated
recently.  This file is on Drive C0: in CP/M.

Data for each satellite will consist of three lines in the following format:

AAAAAAAAAAA
1 NNNNNU NNNNNAAA NNNNN.NNNNNNNN +.NNNNNNNN +NNNNN-N +NNNNN-N N NNNNN
2 NNNNN NNN.NNNN NNN.NNNN NNNNNNN NNN.NNNN NNN.NNNN NN.NNNNNNNNNNNNNN

Line 1 is a eleven-character name.
Lines 2 and 3 are the standard Two-Line Orbital Element Set Format identical
to that used by NASA and NORAD.  The format description is:

Line 2
Column     Description
 01-01     Line Number of Element Data
 03-07     Satellite Number
 10-11     International Designator (Last two digits of launch year)
 12-14     International Designator (Launch number of the year)
 15-17     International Designator (Piece of launch)
 19-20     Epoch Year (Last two digits of year)
 21-32     Epoch (Julian Day and fractional portion of the day)
 34-43     First Time Derivative of the Mean Motion
        or Ballistic Coefficient (Depending of ephemeris type)
 45-52     Second Time Derivative of Mean Motion (Blank if N/A)
 54-61     BSTAR drag term if GP4 general perturbation theory was used.
           Otherwise, radiation pressure coefficient.
 63-63     Ephemeris type
 65-68     Element number
 69-69     Check Sum (Modulo 10)
           (Letters, blanks, periods = 0; minus sign = 1; plus sign = 2)

 Line 3
Column     Description
 01-01     Line Number of Element Data
 03-07     Satellite Number
 09-16     Inclination [Degrees]
 18-25     Right Ascension of the Ascending Node [Degrees]
 27-33     Eccentricity (decimal point assumed)
 35-42     Argument of Perigee [Degrees]
 44-51     Mean Anomaly [Degrees]
 53-63     Mean Motion [Revs per day]
 64-68     Revolution number at epoch [Revs]
 69-69     Check Sum (Modulo 10)

All other columns are blank or fixed.

Example:

NOAA 6
1 11416U          86 50.28438588 0.00000140           67960-4 0  5293
2 11416  98.5105  69.3305 0012788  63.2828 296.9658 14.24899292346978

Note that the International Designator fields are usually blank, as issued in
the NASA Prediction Bulletins.  All epochs are UTC.
Satellites will be ordered by their NASA Catalog Number.  The data file will
be updated as soon as possible after receipt of new element sets or whenever
element sets are received for the Space Shuttle.

Hopefully, this service will provide a central location for users to obtain
this data in a timely manner and help eliminate the tedious process of
entering data directly from the NASA Prediction Bulletins.

If any users wish to see other satellites included or have suggestions for
improvements in these data dissemination procedures, please leave a
message/comment for the SYSOP and I will get back to you.

                                       - TS Kelso
                       via dag :-)

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

Date: Fri, 30 Jun 89 10:35 CST
From: I am Beatrice <[e-mail]>
Subject: RE: Simulation of planetary motions.

   Most first year physics books should give you alot of what you need, at least
in round numbers.  If I were you, I'd find one of these physics students.
You mentioned that you'd found a lot of masses, etc, and didn't really
have what you wanted - this is what you wanted!  Its simple enough to
get the data.  Check the library.  I did this last spring in an evening.
And I'm only a sophomore, with decent physics and computer background
(I'm a CS/Math major.)  I know, you want precise data, etc, etc.  I'm sure
that can be found in almost any college library, out to a decent number of
decimals.

PS: I'd recommend not doing it in real time.  It takes hundreds of years for
the outer planets to complete an orbit about the sun :-)  I found that when
I speed my simulation up enough to get movement on the outside, the inner
planets go WAY too fast.  You really cannot win this one.

Scott Hess
[e-mail]

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

Date: 30 Jun 89 16:37:07 GMT
From: jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!utzoo![e-mail]  (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Space station computers

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:
>>    At normal viewing distances, 120dpi (which is only twice what
>>    my Mac delivers) would be more than acceptable...
>
>120 dpi is not acceptable for archival purposes. 400dpi is probably
>marginal. Would you want the Mona Lisa archived for historians at only
>120dpi? I wouldn't even store my personal archives at that low a dpi.
>And even if you store high and downsample on display, then you still
>have to do hardcopy everytime you want to study color pictorial
>material.  I would not want to store and display photographic material
>at a resolution less than the grain size of the film...

Gee, what do you do now? :-)

Settling for more modest display resolution is likely to have major effects
on performance, reliability, and cost for quite a while to come.  Display
resolution and archival-storage resolution are entirely separate questions.
If you need to study something at full resolution, you don't print it, you
just zoom in.  It's not exactly common to go over a 4Kx4K image pixel by
pixel.  For that matter, it's rare to go over an image at current screen
resolutions pixel by pixel -- a fair bit of the resolution is there to
make it look good, not because every last dot is used.  (When considering
what makes things look good, remember that the dynamic range of the screen
is different from that of hardcopy, and this matters to the human visual
system.)

>..... Or spanning the text with two fingers, saying
>"Move", pointing at the insertion point and saying "HERE"?

And getting two characters too many at the start and three too few at the
end because your fingertips are too big, and having it inserted at the
wrong place because somebody in the background said "HERE!" at the wrong
time.  Not to mention having to grab for the can of Windex every ten
minutes to clean up the screen, and getting snarls from your buddy who's
trying to concentrate while you're shouting at your computer.

There are reasons, quite apart from technical feasibility, why touch
screens and voice input have never been terribly popular except for
specialized applications.
--
NASA is to spaceflight as the  |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
US government is to freedom.   | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry [e-mail]

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

Date: 30 Jun 89 17:47:03 GMT
From: jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!utzoo![e-mail]  (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: new space goals

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Tom Neff) writes:
>>If I was trying to set an ambitious goal, I'd make it initial deployment
>>in 2001 and full operation by 2005.  A determined effort ought to be able
>>to get the necessary hardware development done in a decade, even starting
>>from the current mess.
>
>It took twelve years from Sputnik to Tranquillity.  Twenty years after
>*that*, space is once again a certified people-free zone.  Mars is such
>a mammoth project (much harder than the Moon)...

Uh, why is it much harder?  Remember, going from Sputnik to Tranquillity
required developing a lot of new technologies.  I see no comparable
requirement for Mars orbit+surface bases.  We have adequate rocket engines.
We have adequate power systems, life support, landing technology, tracking
and telemetry, communications, etc.  Better closed-cycle life support
would help a bunch, and incremental improvements on a lot of the above
would be useful, but basically we have the technology we need.  The greater
distances to Mars simply require bigger vehicles (for larger crews and
more supplies); otherwise distance is just waiting time, and Mars is not
much harder than the Moon.  In some ways it's easier, because we have
Phobos and Deimos as potential resources, and the Martian surface has
useful supplies of things like water.

We also have the immense advantage of the beginnings of a private space
launch industry.  The clear number one problem for a major Mars effort
is the high cost of launch to low Earth orbit.  The way to fix that is
to say, *believably*, "starting in 1995, we will buy one million pounds
a year of freight capacity to low orbit from the lowest qualified bidders,
price not to exceed $500/lb, tested hardware required; development funding
must be private, the Mars project will provide none".  General Dynamics,
Martin Marietta, McDonnell Douglas, Arianespace, etc., will scream bloody
murder, hire lobbyists, and start talking excitedly to Congressthings,
because they simply can't do it.  Amroc, Pacific American, SSIA, Orbital
Sciences, etc., will scream with joy, hire engineers, and start talking
excitedly to venture capitalists, because THEY CAN... given a reliable
market to justify the investment.

And cheap transport to low orbit makes the whole thing much easier and
much less demanding, because it's no longer necessary to pare every gram
off the project's hardware.

>What we can do in 10 years simply doesn't last.  What we can do in 50
>might.  I want to follow the Antarctica model - establish an
>international scientific outpost in a distant, hostile environment.

Why can't we get the hardware in place for that in 10 years?  If we are
assuming (a) that this is meant as a challenging project, not an easy
100%-assured one, (b) that there is strong political support, and (c) that
the objective is considered more important than empire building, I see no
reason why it can't be done in that length of time.  Apollo took 8, it
was harder because it started with less, and it developed -- but was
never allowed to *use* -- most of the hardware needed for more permanent
follow-ons.  (Anyone who claims that Apollo was always meant to be a
one-shot has never seen some of the work Apollo did on follow-ons to the
early missions.  Apollo was strangled in infancy.)

>By drawing the program out timewise, you provide an ongoing focus of
>activity that *defines* a half century of endeavor...

You also tell everyone involved with it now that they will be old or dead
before they see results.

If you want half a century of endeavor, as opposed to half a century of
marking time and wasting money, set your sights higher.  Mars is not that
hard.  In half a century, we could see the solar system explored and
beginning to be settled, and the first starships abuilding.

>>...  The US does... um... well...
>
>Simple, Henry.  The US builds an elaborate Peace Shield to protect the
>Mars outpost from surprise nuclear attack.  :-)

Alan M. Carroll <[e-mail]> sent me the following in mail, and
has given me permission to post it:

---------
Top Ten list of Things the US could do for the Mars Stations :

10. Have Congress pass a law saying "This is a good thing, some company should
    put up the cash to do it".
9.  Impose import quotas on Martian materials.
8.  Create 4 congressional sub-committee and 5 commissions to study the issue,
    and maybe find a scientist or engineer, even.
7.  Decry it as unfair foreign competition.
6.  Generate the paperwork, which could then be used as radiation shielding.
5.  Draw up the astrological charts for when would be the best time to launch,
    and provide telepaths for the communications systems.
4.  Pass Anti-Trust laws to prevent internal US cooperation, or US firms
    aiding the effort.
3.  Require English units on all parts.
2.  Duplicate everyone else's work, at twice the price and twice the time.

And number 1,
1.  Provide lawyers for lawsuits the first time someone gets spacesick.
---------

>Oh yes, and you "North Americans" can build some more RMUs.  It's what
>you do, after all -- and you do it so well.  Who'd have guessed that
>Canada's role in space would turn out to be exporting arms?

That one is a bit of a surprise, all right!

(The folks at Spar Aerospace are fond of pointing out that the question
of who would build the arm finally came down to Canada vs. an unnamed US
company.  Canada won.  The US company [Spar refuses to identify them!]
went after, and got, the contract to build... the shuttle toilet.)

>Let's see... Glavkosmos is to spaceflight as the USSR is to vodka?  :-)

That's not a bad analogy, actually...
--
NASA is to spaceflight as the  |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
US government is to freedom.   | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry [e-mail]

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

End of SPACE Digest V9 #534
*******************