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Subject: SPACE Digest V10 #92

SPACE Digest                                      Volume 10 : Issue 92

Today's Topics:
                 DSP/Rhyolite
          San Diego L5 Space Activism Report 9/20/89
               Re: Pluto meets Neptune
           PostScript code for viewing Mars images
     Re: Galileo Jovian atmospheric probe -- is it sterilized???
               Re: Pluto meets Neptune
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 22 Sep 89 13:22:47 GMT
From: mcsun!ukc!icdoc!syma![e-mail]  (Nick Watkins)
Subject: DSP/Rhyolite

Summary of responses to my original query posted to sci.space (and
later, in revised form) to sci.military. Hope it is of general interest.

> I am researching an article, provisionally for "New Scientist", on
> military satellites and have a few queries about the DSP and
> Rhyolite/Chalet series of spacecraft. From the work of Des Ball (the
> books "Pine Gap" & "A Base for Debate"), plus recent issues of AW&ST
> (i.e. all unclassified sources) I have the following list:

> 1968-63a  6 Aug  1968 AAD  Early Warning Test (Project 949)
> 1969-36a  13 Apr 1969 AAD  Early Warning Test
> 1970-46a  19 Jun 1970 AAD  Rhyolite SIGINT
> 1970-69a  1  Sep 1970 AAD  Early warning Test

> 1) Which of 1970-46 or 1970-69 was more likely to be a Rhyolite? Ball is
> certain that one was.
> Although the former was often cited as having failed to go into GEO, the
> reports at the time in AW&ST were contradictory and various sources list
> a GEO not GTO. The launcher for both was occasionally described as an Atlas
> Agena D plus a kick stage, anyone know anything about this?

It seems that 70-46 has to be a Rhyolite, mainly on account of the
prevarication about its orbit. What 70-69 was (949 or RH) is not really known.
Launcher was probably just an Atlas Agena D but Rhyolite would have had to
carry its own apogee motor if the Agena did not circularise the GEO.

> 1975-55a  18 Jun 1975  T3C Argus  SIGINT

This was corrected after the  earlier posting to sci.space. I had thought
it was a T3C launch, but apparently Patrick AFB, and General Dynamics
(who make the Atlas), have confirmed this was an Atlas Agena D.

> 1984-09a  31 Jan 1984  T34D DSP11 (failed?)
> 1984-37a  15 Apr 1984  T34D DSP12
> 1984-129a 22 Dec 1984  T34D Chalet SIGINT
> 1985-10b  24 Jan 1985  STS  Magnum SIGINT

> 2) Of the launches in 1984, did DSP11 fail to reach GEO as reported by
> Ball, and are the identifications of it, DSP12 and the fourth Chalet
> (1984-129) correct and in the right order?

The order is more likely to be Chalet, DSP 11, DSP 12, Magnum. There is
no real reason to believe that 1984-09a failed to reach GEO. The orbit
filed with the UN is probably just a parking orbit.

> AAD = Atlas Agena D
> T3C = Titan 3C
> T34D = Titan 34D
> STS = Space Shuttle

Many thanks to all those who took the trouble to reply. Followups by email
or to the Net.

Nick








--
Nick Watkins, Space & Plasma Physics Group, School of Mathematical
& Physical Sciences, Univ. of Sussex, Brighton, E.Sussex, BN1 9QH, ENGLAND
JANET: [e-mail]   BITNET: [e-mail]

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

Date: Fri, 22 Sep 89 14:11:39 PDT
From: mordor!lll-tis!oodis01!riacs!rutgers!pnet01.cts.com![e-mail] (Jim Bowery)
To: ucsd!nosc!crash![e-mail]
Subject: San Diego L5 Space Activism Report 9/20/89

Members of San Diego L5 met with US Representative Jim Bates Sunday,
Sept. 17 in his San Diego office to advocate that he cosponsor HR2674, the
Space Transporation Services Purchase Act of 1989.  Congressman Bates
had his own axe to grind vis HR2699, a clean-air bill introduced by
Rep. Bates and other House Democrats in response to President Bush's clean-
air initiatives.  During a prior visit with Rep. Bates, he mentioned
two conditions of cosponsorship of HR2674, 1) that Rep. George Brown (D)
of Riverside be a sponsor and 2) that our group advocate reciprocal support
of HR2699 with Rep. Ron Packard, the original sponsor of HR2674.  Through
prior contacts with both Representatives, SDL5 had fulfilled both
requirements.
Rep. Bates reemphasized his desire for us to continue our advocacy of HR2699
with Rep. Packard which we agreed to do.  Upon this agreement, Rep. Bates
then agreed to cosponsor HR2674, much to our delight.

Two of us (Dr. Andrew Cutler and myself) had prior contact with Rep. Bates
on HR2699 through our work on the Sierra Club's Greenhouse Effect policy
paper.  This history gave our group credibilty with Rep. Bates when we
promised to continue to advocate cross-sponsorship with Rep. Packard and
points to the fact that activism can be synergistic.

The meeting continued with comments on HR2699, particularly as it
pertains to NASA's role in atmospheric monitoring.  I pointed out
to Rep. Bates that the job of monitoring the atmosphere is too critical
to be left under the primary juristiction of any one agency -- ie: NASA.
Rather support of atmospheric measurement from space as well as within
the atmosphere, should be distributed evenly throughout agencies with
appropriate purview such as NOAA and NSF as well as NASA for 3 reasons:

1) overlapping purview guarantees independent scientific validation of results
2) competition between the agencies would avoid bureaurcratic inertia
   in a time-critical arena
3) NASA, having refused to provide Nimbus-7 satellite data to British
   researchers when those researchers believed they were measuring
   an ozone-hole in contradiction to NASA reports of Nimbus-7 measurements,
   proved that NASA could not be entrusted with a sole-source position
   on atmospheric data, nor could NASA's reassurances to the contrary
   be trusted given the critical nature of the issues involved

Rep. Bates was rather surprised to hear NASA had delayed decisive action
on the ozone-hole through their refusal to be open with publicly funded
research and asked that we provide him with further documentation
before he would pursue corrective legislative action.  We agreed to do
so (having already done so for the Sierra Club policy paper).

He then asked if we were for or against NASA.  The consensus was that
we were for redirecting NASA to responsible research habits rather
than arbiter of access to space transportation and facilities.

At one point, in the middle of the meeting, a member of the
Planetary Society, who had attended a few of SDL5's events, came into
Rep. Bates' office.  When Rep. Bates asked us for our vision of how
NASA should be redirected, the Planetary Society member began speaking in
very mealy-mouthed terms about how he wished to provide NASA with a
meaningful goal to refocus its efforts, as had been the case with Apollo.
He then began voicing the Joint-US-USSR-Manned-Mars-Mission-For-The-Good-
Of-All-Mankind script.  I felt compelled to inform Rep. Bates that he
was NOT speaking for SDL5, whereupon the other members of SDL5 nodded
agreement.  He stated this was the Planetary Society vision as articulated
by Carl Sagan, and continued to state platitudes about some vague future
mission that would be really wonderful.  When he finished we didn't have
enough time to state our views to Rep. Bates on the matter.  Needless
to say, this individual is persona-non-grata at all future meetings
with Congressmen.  The positive aspect of the situation is that we
probably couldn't have devised a more effective way of discrediting
Carl Sagan's hair-brained "vision" in front of a Congressman.

Please post accounts of YOUR visits with your Congressmen and let others
see what REAL space activism consists of!  If you haven't seen your
Congressman recently, DO IT!

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jim Bowery    Phone: [phone]
PO Box 1981                  Join the Mark Hopkins Society!
La Jolla, CA 92038   (A member of the Mark Hopkins family of organizations.)

UUCP: {cbosgd, hplabs!hp-sdd, sdcsvax, nosc}!crash!pnet01!jim
ARPA: crash!pnet01![e-mail]
INET: [e-mail]

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

Date: 22 Sep 89 20:27:29 GMT
From: portal!cup.portal.com![e-mail]  (Laurence Larry Sheldon)
Subject: Re: Pluto meets Neptune

Some times Pluto is closer to the Sun, sometimes Neptune is, right?

To a non-astronomer (me) it would appear that (given common centers, the
Sun) at some time the orbital "discs" must intersect, and would thus
provide for a collision.  What am I missing?

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

Date: 22 Sep 89 02:47:55 GMT
From: ogccse!littlei!reed!lclark![e-mail]  (Lynn Wood)
Subject: PostScript code for viewing Mars images



Here's the PostScript code that sends the mars images to the LaserWriter.
I more or less copied this out of the green PS book and put in into MS Word
in Postscript style, then sent it to the printer.  sorry, but I still think
it's a lump of dirt...

        -Lynn Wood

-----------------------CUT HERE---------------------------
/concatprocs
{/proc2 exch cvlit def
/proc1 exch cvlit def

/newproc proc1 length proc2 length add array def
newproc 0 proc1 putinterval
newproc proc1 length proc2 putinterval
newproc cvx
} def

/inch {72 mul} def
/picstr 3 string def

/imagemars
{100 100 8 [100 0 0 -100 0 100]
{currentfile picstr readhexstring pop}
image
} def

gsave
1 inch 1 inch translate
6 inch dup scale


imagemars

% PUT MARS DATA HERE

grestore
showpage

--
\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\  Lynn S. Wood - [e-mail]
\\ "Darn it!  Even in the future \\  (or) !tektronix!reed!lclark!wood
\\ nothing works!"  -Dark Helmet \\  Lewis & Clark College
\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\  Portland, OR

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

Date: 23 Sep 89 01:16:43 GMT
From: bfmny0![e-mail]  (Tom Neff)
Subject: Re: Galileo Jovian atmospheric probe -- is it sterilized???

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Paul Dietz) writes:
>I predict that any impact our activities have is going to be
>peanuts compared to that of future generations.

 1) Only if future generations are as dumb as us.  Quite possible!

 2) Regardless, it's a tragedy-of-commons class fallacy.  Given continually
    expanding human influence over nature it will ALWAYS be true that what
    the next fellow does matters more, but ALSO true that what we do
    matters too.  The accumulation of each generation's less-than-the-next-
    generation impact = everything.

Ooh ain't philosophizing grand. :-)
--
"Take off your engineering hat   | "The filter has      | Tom Neff
and put on your management hat." | discreting sources." | [e-mail]

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

Date: 23 Sep 89 15:54:30 GMT
From: bfmny0![e-mail]  (Tom Neff)
Subject: Re: Pluto meets Neptune

Alright, alright, enough!  WE ADMIT IT.  Neptune and Pluto's orbits
intersect precisely in two places, and in fact they go >BONK!< every
3,247.8 years, bounce off each other, and resume their orbits in
retrograde.  This has been a big hushed up secret in astronomy for
years, known only to those who actually crack a book before posting.
Sci.space readers evidently have no worries in this regard. :-)

--
"Nature loves a vacuum.  Digital    \O@/    Tom Neff
  doesn't." -- DEC sales letter     /@O\    [e-mail]

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

End of SPACE Digest V10 #92
*******************