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Subject: SPACE Digest V9 #613

SPACE Digest                                      Volume 9 : Issue 613

Today's Topics:
          Re: Does This Proposal Make Sense
              Re: Eggs & baskets
          Re: Space telescope - why only 1200 hours?
            Re: Questions about Apollo 11
        Re: What is the Solar Impact Mission?
      Re: Cheerleading (was Re: Henry's (not Weinhards))
           Re: Quick and Dirty Won the Race
           Re: Quick and Dirty Won the Race
              Re: Eggs & baskets
               News of the Week, Aug 4
        Re: NSS Elections -- Comments anyone?
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 4 Aug 89 15:20:09 GMT
From: skipper![e-mail]  (Mary Shafer)
Subject: Re: Does This Proposal Make Sense

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Henry Spencer) writes:

   It may not have come to your attention, but the sexiest new launcher, due
   to fly most any time now, is a purely private venture that is costing OSC
   and Hercules a total of about $70M.  (They have some government customers,
   and said customers are supplying the launch aicrcraft for carrying Pegasus
   up to altitude for their launches, but Pegasus itself is all-private.)

NASA is providing a B-52 and all its support for the 7 or 8 initial
test flights, at a price ridiculously below what it would cost to buy
their own airplane, modify it and maintain it.  It may be private, but
it's subsidized by NASA and hence our taxpayer dollars.

No benefit other than testing and demonstration of flight-worthiness
will come from those first 7 or 8 flights.  They aren't government
launches or mission.  They're just being undertaken to prove that
Pegasus works and to make it marketable.

NASA will also provide the B-52 for the _one_ DARPA mission.
--

M F Shafer                          [e-mail]
NASA Ames Research Center           arpa!elxsi.dfrf.nasa.gov!shafer
Dryden Flight Research Facility
                Of course I don't speak for NASA

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

Date: 4 Aug 89 15:48:04 GMT
From: mailrus!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!utzoo![e-mail]  (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Eggs & baskets

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Tom Neff) writes:
>-- this is pretty much what I was trying to convey.  You won't be likely
>to find someone who's been brought up to understand what it means to
>sail the waters off Martha's Vineyard or hike the Sierras or attend
>opening night at Radio City Music Hall or attend an English coronation
>or snorkel with a school of bottlenose, choosing the ant tanker's life
>in space exile instead...

"Speak for yourself, son."

Or as Arthur C. Clarke puts it, when asked what life in a space colony
would be like:  "I'll have to refer that question to my friend Isaac
Asimov, who lives in New York City."
--
1961-1969: 8 years of Apollo.  |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
1969-1989: 20 years of nothing.| uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry [e-mail]

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

Date: 4 Aug 89 18:23:15 GMT
From: haven!uvaarpa!hudson!astsun.astro.Virginia.EDU![e-mail]  (Greg S. Hennessy)
Subject: Re: Space telescope - why only 1200 hours?

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Tom Neff) writes:
#Speaking of HST, there was a very interesting squib in this month's
#ASTRONOMY.  Seems a team has taken the Palomar 5-meter scope to the
#*diffraction limit* using optical interferometry (a technique adapted
#from radio astronomy), easily splitting two different double stars with
#separations of a small fraction of an arcsecond.

It is nice, but you need bright stars to do it with. HST is STILL the
only way to get the high resolution images on a faint source.


-Greg Hennessy, University of Virginia
 USPS Mail:     Astronomy Department, Charlottesville, VA 22903-2475 USA
 Internet:      [e-mail]
 UUCP:        ...!uunet!virginia!gsh7w

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

Date: 4 Aug 89 09:03:30 GMT
From: jacobs.CS.ORST.EDU![e-mail]  (Kelly St.Clair)
Subject: Re: Questions about Apollo 11

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] wrote:
>it had more than its share of inflight catastrophic self disassemblies.

In other words, it went boom.

Geez, you guys...gotta have a long buzzword for EVERYTHING!
8 )

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

Date: 4 Aug 89 16:30:07 GMT
From: bfmny0![e-mail]  (Tom Neff)
Subject: Re: What is the Solar Impact Mission?

If you can use a Venus gravity assist to do a Mercury flyby, I bet you
could use it to do a Solar re-entry.
--
"We walked on the moon --    ((    Tom Neff
    you be polite"         ))     [e-mail]

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

Date: 4 Aug 89 07:25:17 GMT
From: portal!cup.portal.com![e-mail]  (Paul L Schauble)
Subject: Re: Cheerleading (was Re: Henry's (not Weinhards))

I was a bit hasty in posting my last message. I really should have explained
my choice of dates.

John W Campbell said that the US became a democracy with the passage of the
Constitutional amendment that provided for the direct election of Senators.
I incorrectly gave this as 1906, it was actually 1913.

I claim that the US became a democracy in 1964 with the passage of the Civil
Rights Act that effectively remove qualifications from voters, thus
establishing universal sufferage, at least for those who bothered.

I think that the second date matches up rather will with the start of the
decline in US politics.

  ++PLS

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

Date: 4 Aug 89 17:42:01 GMT
From: [e-mail]  (Jon C. Slenk)
Subject: Re: Quick and Dirty Won the Race

God, how true.

What, pray tell, is the use of the Shuttle? "Reusable." Big fat hairy
deal. The only parts that are (right now) resues are the booster pods
and shuttle. Bye bye main tank.

The Shuttle is too expensive as far as I am concerned. Any "space plane"
is too expensive, as far as I am concerned. We don't need to take up
payload with a plane! We need to toss it into orbit as simply as
possible. I posit that the Shuttle is not the simplest (sp?) way to do
it.

Laser Launchers. This would put mass into orbit cheaply and easily.

Admittedly the accelerations woulSincerely,
Jon Slenk / js9b CMU.

----------------------------+-----------------------
`Land property marked the   | Capitalism:
beginning of civilization.' | Every man for himself.
d make mince meat out of astronauts, but the point of a l. l. is not to
get people into orbit, but mass. If you want people, *then* you take the
Shuttle, with the 'bay packed with bodies.

We should not use the Shuttle for simply putting satellites into orbit.
I believe there are more effiecient ways of doing it: ways that are
cheaper and put up more mass per shot and per $.

My $0.02.

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

Date: 4 Aug 89 20:48:43 GMT
From: mailrus!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!utzoo![e-mail]  (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Quick and Dirty Won the Race

In article <[e-mail]> the Sydney Morning Herald writes:
>The cannon ball was the preferred means during the space race.  It was
>the quick and dirty approach.  The necessary technology had already
>been mastered by both the Americans and the Russians for transporting
>their weapons of mass destruction.  However, a new vehicle is required
>for every flight, so the cost is high.

The cannon ball is still the preferred means if you are interested in
doing things cheaply.  Mass production can bring costs down drastically.
(This is true even of reusable rockets -- it would have cost NASA very
little more to have had 20 production-line shuttle orbiters instead of
4 hand-built ones.)  The economics of reusability are badly hurt by the
need to build everything to last many missions, and the need to check it
all over to make sure it's still okay for the next one.  (After each
shuttle flight, some 5000 parts need to be removed, inspected, and either
replaced or refurbished... on each SRB!  The situation on the orbiter
does not bear thinking about, with (for example) *every tile* requiring
inspection, bond testing, and gap measurement.)  Wings look nice, but they
are heavy and difficult to protect against heat.

>In the long term, reusable winged craft are more economical for routine
>access to space...

This is undoubtedly true, given adequate technology and high flight rates.
It is not at all clear that we have the technology to do it well; it is
very doubtful that we are anywhere near the required flight rates.

>The US achieved the dubious honour of being first to the moon by
>constructing the largest rocket that would ever fly...

Nope, the third largest, after Energia and the abortive "G" booster.

>... In short, NASA
>should have opted for the sort of space program the Russians run.

No argument on this one.  Expendables and cannonballs all the way, with
volume production for high flight rates.

>Believers in the one true winged path into space convinced President Reagan
>to fund the X-30 National Aerospace Plane.  It will be completely reusable;
>it won't require booster rockets; it will scoop up air to burn its hydrogen
>slush fuel, resorting to rockets only for the last small push into space.

And, to approximately quote Gary Hudson, "you expect a cross between the
Space Shuttle and the Concorde to be on time, on budget, and fully working?".
--
1961-1969: 8 years of Apollo.  |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
1969-1989: 20 years of nothing.| uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry [e-mail]

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

Date: 4 Aug 89 23:56:32 GMT
From: rochester![e-mail]  (Paul Dietz)
Subject: Re: Eggs & baskets

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Henry Spencer) writes:

>As Gerry O'Neill pointed out rather a long time ago -- how quickly we
>forget! -- space is actually quite a benign environment in many ways.
>It is not, by itself, as suited to us as the *average* conditions on
>Earth's surface.  However, it is much more *controllable*; the difference
>between average case and worst case is much less severe.

This doesn't change the basic point.  On Earth, essential elements
like hydrogen, carbon and nitrogen are ubiquitous.  Gravity is
available for free.  Breathable air can be readily obtained anywhere
on the surface.

Space doesn't have weather or temperature extremes, but it does have
occasional lethal radiation the requires shielding all habitable and
agricultural areas.  I suggest that the engineering required to make
earthquake/flood/weather/fallout resistant structures on Earth is
easier than that needed to make space colonies.

>>I have a hard time imagining how a nuclear war or chemical pollution
>>could render the Earth any less habitable than space already is.
>
>There are areas of Earth which are already as uninhabitable as space,
>for all practical purposes.

Surely this is hyperbole.  Whether an unprotected person would die is
a poor measure of the habitability of a region.  A better measure is
the cost of surviving there.  Certainly by that measure just about
all areas on Earth are currently more habitable than space.

> [space station could be 100x cheaper]

Sigh.  I wish these people who make these kind of statements would
put their capital where their mouths are.  As far as I can tell,
existing private space efforts are going to be somewhat cheaper
than NASA, but not 100x cheaper.  Feel free to offer concrete
contradictory evidence.

Also, to be rigorous, a self-sufficient space colony would have to be
beyond LEO (there's no ET resources in LEO), which boosts the cost
beyond existing LEO space stations, and requires shielding.  Also, the
ratio of the proposal I criticized to the NASA space station is 3000x
the population, not 1000x as I stated.

I think eventually you could build a multi-thousand person space colony
much more cheaply than now.  Prices go down in the long run.  I don't
think you could do it now, from a standing start, for only $35G.

> Self-sufficiency I am a bit less certain about, although large
>size helps -- it is known that a large ecosystem can be self-sufficient
>without major development costs.  (Proof by example -- look out your window.)
>Doing it on a small scale is trickier, but there are encouraging signs
>that it may not be that hard.  The Biosphere people should be able to
>tell us within a few years.

I was refering to self-sufficiency in technology.  A space colony that
cannot propagate itself, after being cut off from Earth, doesn't increase
the species' survival odds at all.

    Paul F. Dietz
    [e-mail]

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

Date: 4 Aug 89 16:41:26 GMT
From: frooz!cfa250![e-mail]  (Jonathan McDowell)
Subject: News of the Week, Aug 4


Jonathan's Space Report

Aug 4, 1989 (no. 21)

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

OV-102 Columbia is on pad 39B. The payload is a new imaging
recon satellite, presumably KH-12.
Mission STS-28 is due for launch on August 8.

The Hipparcos astrometry satellite is ready for launch
by Ariane, also due on Aug 8.

Kosmos-2033 was launched on Jul 24 by the military version
of the Tsiklon booster from Baykonur. It is an ELINT (Electronic
Intelligence) ocean reconnaissance satellite, which picks up
transmissions from US Navy ships. The satellite carries a
low-thrust ion engine to maintain a precise orbit.

Kosmos-2034 was launched on Jul 25 by Kosmos launch vehicle
from Plesetsk. It is the Soviet Navy variant of the Nadezhda-class
navigation satellite, a clone of the US Navy Transit system.


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

Contest for readers: 8 nations plus one international agency have
launched their own satellites. Can you name all 9, in chronological
order of first successful orbital launch? (Entries by email, no
prizes except fame).

 .----------------------------------------------------------------.
 |  Jonathan McDowell       |  phone : [phone]              |
 |  Center for Astrophysics | uucp: husc6!harvard!cfa200!mcdowell |
 |  60 Garden Street        | bitnet : [e-mail]        |
 |  Cambridge  MA 02138     |  inter : [e-mail]   |
 |  USA                     |   span : cfa::mcdowell              |
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 |                          |    FAX : [phone]              |
 '----------------------------------------------------------------'
(c) 1989 Jonathan McDowell

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

Date: 4 Aug 89 20:53:12 GMT
From: mailrus!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!utzoo![e-mail]  (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: NSS Elections -- Comments anyone?

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Brian Yamauchi) writes:
>I just received my ballot for the NSS Board of Directors Election.
>While I am familiar with a few of the names (Ben Bova, Hugh Downs,
>Eric Drexler, and Christine Peterson), I am completely unfamiliar with
>most of the candidates.  Does anyone have any comments ...

One algorithm you can use, which is probably significantly better than
random choice, is to vote FOR people nominated by petition and AGAINST
people nominated by the nominating committee.  The worst excesses of said
committee have been toned down a bit this year, but it's still a lousy idea.

I haven't studied most candidates carefully yet myself, but Mark Hopkins
quite definitely gets a NO from me -- too many unanswered questions about
his connections, too much involvement with some of NSS's worst stupidities
(like the way last year's election was run).
--
1961-1969: 8 years of Apollo.  |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
1969-1989: 20 years of nothing.| uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry [e-mail]

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

End of SPACE Digest V9 #613
*******************