Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/mac/TEXT_ZIP/spacedig/V09_6/V9_616.ZIP/V9_616

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Subject: SPACE Digest V9 #616

SPACE Digest                                      Volume 9 : Issue 616

Today's Topics:
             signature wars! :-)
        Re: What is the Solar Impact Mission?
              shuttle vs. heavy boosters
             Re: Public Interest in Space
                going to Pluto
         Re: exploding Saturns, lack thereof
                Re: Satellites
 Re: space news from June 19 AW&ST, and Apollo-anniversary editorial
                 Face on Mars
                Re: Satellites
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 5 Aug 89 04:01:33 GMT
From: jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!utzoo![e-mail]  (Henry Spencer)
Subject: signature wars! :-)

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Tom Neff) writes:
>"We walked on the moon --    ((    Tom Neff
>    you be polite"         ))     [e-mail]

Say what?  Your fathers walked on the Moon.  *You* haven't, and can't.
"When we dropped it, it broke."
--
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 08:36:37 GMT
From: sgi!shinobu!odin!sgi.com![e-mail]  (Scott Henry)
Subject: Re: What is the Solar Impact Mission?


On 4 Aug 89 02:45:51 GMT,
[e-mail] (Henry Spencer) said:

hs> In article <24.Jul.89.09:32:[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:
>OK, What is the "Solar Impact Mission"  and why is it so hard to
>hit the Sun? After all we have already had close ups of Mercury.

hs> I don't particularly remember hearing about this one, but almost certainly
hs> it's a mission to go straight down into the Sun, doing some observations on
hs> the way.  The hard part is that to do it, you have to kill *all* Earth's
hs> orbital velocity, which is about 50 km/s.  A Saturn V could have dropped a
hs> couple of hundred kg into the Sun, as I recall.  The shuttle, forget it,
hs> unless you use in-orbit assembly.  A beefed-up Energia with about four
hs> upper stages could probably put a modest probe into the Sun.  Advanced
hs> propulsion technologies would really help.

I remember reading about this type of mission in an astrodymanics book:
You use a Jupiter gravity (un)assist: you go "backwards" around Jupiter to
kill your solar-orbital velocity. You can even get the spacecraft into a
substantially retrograde solar orbit by trading off travel time to Jupiter
(longer travel time -> more retrograde), and a smaller miss parameter at
Jupiter encounter. If the spacecraft is intended to function close to the
solar surface, the radiation environment at Jupiter should be mild by
comparison...

--
      Scott Henry <[e-mail]>
#include <std_disclaimer.h>

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

Date: 5 Aug 89 03:46:09 GMT
From: jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!utzoo![e-mail]  (Henry Spencer)
Subject: shuttle vs. heavy boosters

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Jeffrey W Percival) writes:
>>>Welcome to the joys of "manned presence in space."
>>Name an unmanned system, except Energia, that could do better for a payload
>>that big.
>
>Ah, but maybe without the emphasis on manned shuttles, we could have
>named such a thing.

Really?  How would that have come about?  I can't see it.  The only reason
the Shuttle is as *big* as it is was the USAF involvement, and the USAF
wouldn't have gotten involved if it had promised to be just another
expendable -- the USAF already had its own expendables, remember, and
was very reluctant to give them up for a NASA-controlled system.  (In
the end, it managed to keep them anyway, after fouling up the shuttle
design fairly seriously first.)

I would welcome an explanation of how a heavylift booster would have
come about in the absence of the shuttle.  I can't see any way myself.
The Saturn V, the obvious choice, was shelved because Congress wouldn't
fund any further production or use of it.  (There was no shortage of
ideas for missions to use it, both in a general sense and in the specific
sense of Saturn Vs numbers AS-514 and AS-515 -- the last two heavylift
boosters the US built -- which now have pigeons nesting in their engines.)
--
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 19:39:20 GMT
From: visdc![e-mail]  (John E Van Deusen III)
Subject: Re: Public Interest in Space

In article <[e-mail]>
[e-mail] (Brian Yamauchi) writes:
>
> ... If the average American has no enthusiasm for space at all, how
> can you explain all of the mass media Apollo 11 Anniversary Specials?
> The media doesn't do such things unless they expect a lot of people to
> watch.

I believe that the media *thought* that they could some how exploit the
fact that we went to the moon twenty years ago and then didn't do
anything nearly that ambitious again.  The probable logic was that
people under thirty might "be amazed".  Well, the networks have been
wrong before, and they will be wrong again.

The real problem is that the media producers are for the most part under
thirty themselves, and they didn't have access to an important piece of
information that many of us "oldsters" recall.  To quote Norman Mailer,
"They [NASA] actually succeeded in making going to the moon boring".
Even with color footage substituted from a later mission, it took barely
ten seconds of watching for it all to come back to me: "Space ship
sitting on the moon; dead silence; nothing; crackle; nothing; Uh, Roger;
nothing; ..." -- *click*.

> I think the real problem is that the emotions which space exploration
> stimulates (wonder, excitement, and exhilaration) are not considered
> valid emotions for adult behavior in general and public policy in
> particular.  The socially acceptable emotional motivations for public
> policy are primarily fear (of the Soviets, nuclear war, the greenhouse
> effect, the budget deficit, the trade deficit, and crime), guilt
> (about the homeless, the poor, and the third world), and
> self-righteousness (in regard to money, sex, illegal drugs, insider
> trading, political ethics, and flag burning).

It is clear from this that manned space exploration buffs are Walter
Mittyish escapists.  Catch the tail of that comet.  Once we begin to
mine the asteroids, all our problems will melt away.

The hard fact is that manned space exploration is dangerous, stupid, and
obscenely expensive.  The harder fact is that we have already blown all
our money.  When the President says, "We're going to the moon to
establish a permanent presence, and we are following this by a manned
mission to Mars, and now Dan Quayle will explain how we are going to pay
for it.", the man is clearly trying to let you down easy.

Let us consider just one manned space project, the space station.  Keep
in mind that the current defense budget for protecting the US, Europe,
and Japan from the world's economic basket case, Russia, is 305 billion
dollars.  Add to that the 50 billion needed, just this year, to insure
the continued existence of ailing S&Ls, most of which are located in the
President's home state.  Given those problems, one might wonder why we
would be building a space station?  Our government must really be
committed to advancing the frontiers, right?  Actually the space station
is a last-ditch effort to stave off a major depression in the military-
industrial complex.  It is the only way that the elected officials of
the affected states, such as California, will allow the administration
to even consider further arms reduction treaties.  You can't get 305
billion dollars a year from the American tax payers to counter the
threat posed by few-dozen, sun-crazed mullahs.

Regardless of the motivation for building the space station, will it be
built?  I think not.  It is now projected that there is a 78% chance
that one of the space shuttle turkeys will blow up before the project is
completed.  There are people screaming in congress right now that we
have to build another shuttle, in addition to the replacement for
Challenger (for which school children sent in their lunch money),
because the project can't be completed with only three shuttles.  Well
I'm sorry, but when the next shuttle blows up, that will be it for
manned space exploration.  The partially-finished, derelict hulk will
just drift around and around.  This fact is so obvious that I really
doubt that anyone will actually put anything up.  Especially since there
is plenty of good money to be made just studying the thing to death.

It once was said that America could make one of something, the Germans
ten, the Japanese a thousand, and so on.  The things we make in America
are now so fantastically wonderful, take for instance SDI, that it is no
longer necessary (or even possible) for us to make even one.  The B2 may
go down in history as the last fantastic, one-of-a-kind, horribly
expensive, stupid thing that we ever made.  A small consolation.
--
John E Van Deusen III, PO Box 9283, Boise, ID  83707, [phone]

uunet!visdc!jiii

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

Date: Sat, 5 Aug 89 03:35 EST
From: [e-mail]
Subject: going to Pluto

If we wanted to send a spacecraft to Pluto, what would be the
earliest date we could reach it (given current technology)?
I assume a fly-by of Jupiter would shorten the trip (with
respect to a direct flight), but by how much?  Would going
via a third planet, perhaps prior to Jupiter, make the trip
any shorter?

Thanks,
Bob

[e-mail] (internet) or
krovetz@umass (bitnet)

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

Date: 4 Aug 89 15:50:52 GMT
From: sco![e-mail]  (Hiram Clawson)
Subject: Re: exploding Saturns, lack thereof

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Henry Spencer) writes:
>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Brian P. Dickson) writes:
.>In the motion picture _Koyaniskaaski_ (sp?), there is a five minute
.>sequence at the end, where what appears to be a Saturn V is launched,
.>and in one continuous shot, explodes, with the camera following one
.>of the enormous engines for a very long time. Does anyone (Henry?) know
.>which vehicle this was, and why it detonated? ...

As Henry Spencer explained, there were no Saturn V's that exploded.
I remember Koyannisquatsi (sp?), and what you are seeing is the
spent first stage, just as Henry explains its appearance.

--Hiram  (uunet!sco!hiramc  ||  [e-mail])

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

Date: 4 Aug 89 15:44:26 GMT
From: mcvax!ukc!axion!vision![e-mail]  (Simon Taylor)
Subject: Re: Satellites

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Bill Chiarchiaro) writes:
>
>[...stuff about watching satellites deleted....]

>A good book on visual satellite spotting is "Observing Earth
>Satellites" by Desmond King-Hele, Van Nostrand Reinhold Co., 1983, 184
>pp hardcover.  You can order it from Sky Publishing (i.e. Sky &
>Telescope), Cambridge, MA, 617-864-7360 for about $16.50.


    I called Sky Publishing today, they said this book was out of
    print, does anyone know of any other similar publications, and
    where I can get them.

        Thanks in advance

            Simon Taylor


--
Simon Taylor                    UUCP    : [e-mail]
VisionWare Ltd                  BANGNET : ...!uunet!mcvax!ukc!vision!simon
Systime House                   PHONE   : [phone] Ex. 2458
Leeds Business Park             FAX     : [phone]
Leeds LS27 0JG                  TELEX   : 556283 SYSTIM G
England

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

Date: 5 Aug 89 20:24:38 GMT
From: bfmny0![e-mail]  (Tom Neff)
Subject: Re: space news from June 19 AW&ST, and Apollo-anniversary editorial

It's hard to standardize on a platform when you wait decades between
programs.  The MM2 concentrates on propulsion and communications, I
think, with no specific commitment to one kind of, say, camera or
magnetometer, so it should be good for a while.  At this rate it had
better be...
--
"We walked on the moon --    ((    Tom Neff
    you be polite"         ))     [e-mail]

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

Date: 4 Aug 89 23:04:00 GMT
From: cica!ctrsol!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!indri!pikes!udenva!isis!scicom!paranet![e-mail]  (Michael Corbin)
Subject: Face on Mars

I am curious to know if anyone has any information about the
Soviets finding an unusual anomaly on Phobos as recounted in an
AP story.


THE FOLLOWING NEWS ITEM APPEARED ON AP (ASSOCIATED PRESS) AT
4:41 PM EST MARCH 30, 1989:
.
"SOVIET RESEARCH CENTERS ARE NOW TRYING TO INTERPRET SO FAR
'UNEXPLAINED OPTICAL PHONOMENA' ON THE PICTURES OF THE MARTIAN
SURFACE.  THE PICTURES SHOW AN INIGMATIC STRIP 23-25 MILES
WIDE AND A LARGE SPINDLE-SHAPED FORMATION."
.
According to NASA liason spokepersons in Moscow, the Soviets
had not turned on their camera and WERE NOT even taking
pictures of the Martian surface.  This is the information
which was relayed only a few weeks ago.  AP also stated
that the Soviet news program "Vremya" showed a detailed
map of Mars "compiled from photos taken during the mission."
It DOES now appear that the Soviets WERE taking pictures and
furthermore, it looks like they may have found something
in those photographs which is quite interesting.
.
=============================================================
Uploaded by Martin Arant on ParaNet Alpha
[phone]

Mike

--
Michael Corbin - via FidoNet node 1:104/422
UUCP: ...!scicom!mcorbin
INTERNET: [e-mail]

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

Date: 4 Aug 89 22:49:00 GMT
From: cica!ctrsol!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!indri!pikes!udenva!isis!scicom!paranet![e-mail]  (Michael Corbin)
Subject: Re: Satellites


 > From: [e-mail] (Kendall Auel;685-2425;61-
 > 028;;pooter)
 > Date: 31 Jul 89 16:47:22 GMT
 > Organization: Tektronix, Inc., Wilsonville, OR
 > Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
 > Newsgroups: sci.space
 >
 > In article <[e-mail]>
 > [e-mail] (Michael Corbin) writes:
 > >I am new to this newsgroup and am curious about something that I
 > >have seen in the night sky.
 > >
 > >I have noticed a variety of objects which appear to be the size
 > >of a medium star moving in different directions across the sky.
 > >Some of them are probably satellites, however there have been a
 > >few which pulse or flash very intensely at times and do not seem
 > >to be rythmic.  Could anyone enlighten me on what these objects
 > >could be?
 > >
 >
 > I think it is unlikely that what you are seeing are
 > satellites.  What you
 > are probably seeing instead are passenger jets passing by
 > at high altitudes.
 > You generally won't hear them, and the pulsing or flashing
 > can be caused
 > by a couple of things.  First of all, some of the lights
 > are directional,
 > so that as the aircraft passes by, you will see varying
 > degrees of brightness.
 > Also, there are strobe lights on the tail and wings, I
 > believe, that flash
 > at a regular interval.
I have clearly identified passenger jets as I use a pair of 10X50
binoculars and a 6" Celestron Telescope.  What I am seeing is not
these objects.

 > Here's my one and only UFO encounter:  I was looking out to
 > the horizon one
 > evening and saw a star.  So, I made a wish.  Over about ten
 > minute's time,
 > I noticed that the star seemed to be getting brighter.  I
 > went inside and
 > got my sister to come out a take a look at it.  As we
 > watched, it did indeed
 > get brighter.  It was completely stationary, because it was
 > just to one
 > side of a large tree and remained a constant distance from
 > it.  We went
 > inside again and got the rest of the family to come out and
 > watch it.  There
 > was a lot of conjecture about what it was.  We talked about
 > super-novas and
 > satellites, and even UFO's.  As we sat and watched and
 > talked (about another
 > 15 minutes), the object got brighter and brighter, and
 > stayed in its fixed
 > position.  Suddenly, it started moving upward, slowly then
 > faster and faster.
 > At the same time it got very bright, almost hard to look
 > at.  Then came
 > a thunderous scream as an F-4 phantom jet flew directly
 > over our heads at
 > low altitude.  Wow!
Very interesting report Kendall.  Perhaps you should send me net
mail at [e-mail] so we can discuss this
further.

Mike

--
Michael Corbin - via FidoNet node 1:104/422
UUCP: ...!scicom!mcorbin
INTERNET: [e-mail]

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

End of SPACE Digest V9 #616
*******************