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Subject: SPACE Digest V10 #173

SPACE Digest                                     Volume 10 : Issue 173

Today's Topics:
            space news from Sept 11 AW&ST
           Re: "Terraforming", so-called...
             ClariNet writers on Galileo
           Re: ClariNet writers on Galileo
                 Aurora alert
         Re: Asteroids as weapons of mass destruction
              Re: Jane's Books.
       Re: Cognitive Dissonance Over Fake Space Program
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 30 Oct 89 03:29:10 GMT
From: mailrus!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!utzoo![e-mail]  (Henry Spencer)
Subject: space news from Sept 11 AW&ST

Preliminary selection of the first commercial British astronaut, for the
1991 Mir mission, short-lists ten women and 25 men, mostly scientists and
engineers.

SDI planners bracing for budget cuts point finger at Zenith Star space
laser experiment and Pegasus particle-beam experiment [unrelated to the
Pegasus launcher] as probable victims.

SDI prepares two experiments for January Delta launch:  LACE (Low-power
Atmospheric Compensation Experiment, a satellite to measure properties
of low-powered laser beams from ground sites) and the Relay Mirror
Experiment (experimenting with bouncing a ground-generated laser beam
off an orbiting mirror).  Various minor auxiliary experiments go along.
This pair was originally planned for launch in Aug 1988, but various
problems (including budget cuts) delayed things.

Energia project officials say Energia launch rate will be low for the
next few years due to a shortage of missions requiring large payloads.
(They observe that the US has the opposite problem:  missions but no
launcher for them.)  The next test will be next year, carrying about
80 tons into orbit, details unspecified.  That flight will also try to
recover the strap-on boosters, for the first time.  Recovery of the
core section is now considered too difficult to try any time soon.

Viktorenko and Serebrov launched to revive Mir, after preparations
including the Progress M upgraded freighter launched to Mir in August.
Launch of the first Mir expansion module is set for Oct 16 [since
delayed due to an electronics problem].  Of note is that the Soyuz
launch carrying the latest crew carried an advertising logo from the
Italian insurance company Generali.

Last Titan 34D carries a secret military payload up, probably into Clarke
orbit, from the Cape Sept 4.  This was also the last flight of the
Transtage upper stage.  Complex 40, the launch site, will now be
modified for Titan 4/Centaur and Commercial Titan.  The first C.T.
launch is set for November, carrying Skynet 4 (British military comsat)
and JCSat (Japanese domestic comsat).

[Flight International 2 Sept issue notes termination of the mission of
the mysterious Cosmos 1870, a Mir-sized satellite in a high-inclination
orbit.  The official word is that it was a radarsat, but there is
speculation that it was a prototype manned military reconnaissance
base.  Indications are that the Priroda natural-resources agency, the
official user of its data, was not actually operating the satellite.]

[More from Sept 2 Flight:  GStar III, the GTE Spacenet comsat stranded
in transfer orbit last year when its apogee motor failed, has now been
moved into Clarke orbit using its attitude thrusters.  Its life will
be short due to lack of fuel, and it cannot make its intended orbital
position at 125degW, so GTE has asked FCC permission to operate from
93degW and put GStar IV into 125degW.]

[And a third item:  Matra wins study contract for the Rosetta mission,
a joint ESA/NASA mission for a comet sample return.  Rosetta would go
up in 2001 or thereabouts and reach comet Churyumov-Guerassimenko in
2005.  It would drill down 3m or so for uncontaminated samples, and
keep them properly chilled until recovery on Earth a year or two later.
Total sample return would be about 20kg.  ESA would supply landing gear
and the reentry capsule, while the spacecraft bus would be a Mariner
Mark 2.]
--
A bit of tolerance is worth a  |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
megabyte of flaming.           | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry [e-mail]

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

Date: 21 Oct 89 23:16:41 GMT
From: mailrus!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!utzoo![e-mail]  (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: "Terraforming", so-called...

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Steve Rehrauer) writes:
>    ...  Is anyone blue-skying the
>    feasibility of this sort of thing in a serious way?

More or less.  You might want to check out Oberg's book "New Earths".

>    ... Is it at all plausible to suppose that we could
>    seed the clouds of Venus, say, and expect to alter conditions
>    there such that your garden-variety homo sapiens could live
>    there without armor & suit & techno-supports?

Unfortunately, it's difficult.  Even if we could wave a magic wand and
turn all of Venus's CO2 into oxygen, there is far too *much* of it.  We
have to get rid of about 99% of the atmosphere somehow, perhaps by
reacting the oxygen with iron extracted from rocks.  (The surface rock
itself would probably absorb some, once free oxygen became available in
the atmosphere, but almost certainly not enough.)  After dealing with
that big one, there are other difficulties, notably the glacially slow
rotation and the severe shortage of water.  A big job, alas.  Mars is
probably easier.

>Would this likely
>    take decades?  Centuries?  Millenia? ...

This depends on how much technological leverage we have on the problem.
Genetic engineering of suitable organisms would help.  Self-reproducing
robots would help more.  Certainly it's millenia or worse if we tried
to do it with today's technology.

> -  It would seem to me, and I admit my naivete in this area, that
>    such a goal (the "creation" of another habitable world, presumably
>    a modified Venus or Mars) is the sort of thing that would create
>    intense excitement in people throughout the world...

Intense excitement is the word, notably at the Christic Institute and the
Sierra Club... :-) :-)  The Environmental Impact Statement for the project
will be quite something to see...  ("Maximum environmental impact is the
specific objective of this project...")

More seriously, the biggest problem with doing this any time soon will be
high costs and long-delayed results.  Either costs must come down a whole
lot, or the process must be speeded up to the point where tangible results
(not just "we've achieved 0.01% of the objective, isn't it exciting!") appear
within a few decades.  Preferably both.
--
A bit of tolerance is worth a  |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
megabyte of flaming.           | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry [e-mail]

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

Date: 21 Oct 89 22:46:53 GMT
From: agate!shelby!csli![e-mail]  (John Kallen)
Subject: ClariNet writers on Galileo

Found this on ClariNet:

>CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (UPI) -- The costly Galileo Jupiter probe
>launched from the shuttle Atlantis weathered a major solar storm
>Saturday....  [The] $1.4 billion Galileo probe, launched from Atlantis
>Wednesday, plowed through a hail of bullet-like atomic particles
>blasted into space by a major solar flare in a fortuitous coincidence
>that gave its instruments an early workout.

Interesting: is Galileo so well shielded it's bullet-proof? At >11
km/s?  Giotto should have been so lucky :-) I wonder what those
particles are like; they must be *really* heavy hadrons...

_______________________________________________________________________________
 | |   |   |    |\ | |   /|\ | John K{llen       "If she weighs the same as a
 | |\ \|/ \|  * |/ | |/|  |  | PoBox 11215         a duck...she's made of wood"
 | |\ /|\  |\ * |\ |   |  |  | Stanford CA 94309   "And therefore?" "A WITCH!"
_|_|___|___|____|_\|___|__|__|[e-mail]___________________________

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

Date: 22 Oct 89 01:49:11 GMT
From: agate!shelby!portia![e-mail]  (Joseph Brenner)
Subject: Re: ClariNet writers on Galileo

Brief review of clari.tw.space:

(If you don't know, the clarinet is a new venture to bring
the UPI wire service to the usenet.  Currently they're doing
free samples, which we're lucky enough to recieve here at
Stanford.  If you're not getting them, I'm not sure who you
should write to for info, maybe: [e-mail]).

As John Kallen has pointed out, the UPI writers seem to be
having problems with particle physics.  They've most recently
referred to the solar wind as "bullet-like particles".
Concerning the recent discoveries at SLAC and CERN, they seem
to have confused the idea of three fundamental particles with
three phases of matter (solid, liquid, gas).

But aside from these notable blunders, I think they're doing a great
job of reporting technical news, especially space news.  They've
published a number of articles about the Galileo RTG controversy
that are all refreshingly restrained: free of technical gaffs and
alarmist propaganda.  They've also supplied background articles full
of facts and figures (e.g. the Galileo spacecraft weighs 5990 lbs).

Clari.tw.space was also the first place I found a really detailed
description of what happened with the Amroc launch fire, within
a day or so after it happened.  (BTW, I cross-posted this to sci.space:
this was dumb, because unlike other newsgroups, the UPI articles
are copyrighted.  Something to get used to.)

It's actually kind of distressing to realize that most newspapers
recieve this stuff and convert it into the pap you see in the
Tuesday Science supplements.

There are some other clarinet newsgroups of interest as well:
clari.tw.aerospace, clari.news.aviation and clari.news.science.

-- Joe B.

([e-mail]  Materials Science Dept/Stanford, CA 94305)

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

Date: 20 Oct 89 17:43:13 GMT
From: [e-mail]  (David Palmer)
Subject: Aurora alert

For all you Aurora watchers out there, there's a big solar flare going
on right now.

Yesterday the proton flux was 500 /cm s sr, which is considered a fair-sized
flare.

Today the flux is ~60,000 /cm s sr, and still rising.

Apparently the shuttle astronauts are well sheilded by the magnetosphere,
especially since they are in a low-inclination orbit, but the Galileo
fields and particles people here are excited, and anxiously waiting for
that part of the instrument to be turned on.

More as it develops.

        David Palmer
        [e-mail]
        ...rutgers!cit-vax!tybalt.caltech.edu!palmer
    Meanwhile, on eng.string.floss, the waxed vs. unwaxed flamewar
    continues unabated.

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

Date: 23 Oct 89 10:59:58 GMT
From: ibmpa![e-mail]  (Nick Szabo)
Subject: Re: Asteroids as weapons of mass destruction

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Christopher Neufeld) writes:
>Disclaimer: I am NOT professor Griffin. If you use "F", please check the
>attribution against the signature.

>   Well, by my calculations, an object which is in a circular orbit at a
>distance of 1 astronomical unit from the sun will, after applying .001 km/s
>of delta-v, be in a slightly eccentric elliptical orbit. The maximum
>deviation of the ellipse from the original circular path is 20000 km, which
>which the original impact parameter would be about 2 000 000 km, which is
>roughly the margin of miss we got on that asteroid a few months ago. What's
>the best delta-v one could put on a 100m asteroid?
>   Based on this, I don't believe that a mass large enough to be dangerous
>could be aimed to within 1000 km on the earth's surface

1) We are talking about moving an asteroid, not the earth.  What is the
corresponding figure for a highly elliptical asteroid?  The way you
calculated it, the maximum deviation could be off by an order of
magnitude.

2) You did not take into account the possibility of using Venus, Mars or
the Moon for gravity assist (even gravity assists at several million km can
provide a small delta-v).

3) We were only able to detect the asteroid that came within 2e6 km because
it was _big_ and we were lucky.  What are the statistical estimates for
the number of asteroids per year between 10m and 1,000m across-- which almost
always go undetected at our current efforts-- that come within 2e6 km of
Earth every year?  Probably a large number, considering there are an
estimated 100,000 asteroids >100m across with delta-v's closer than the
lunar surface.  Even an asteroid only 10m across could wipe out several
acres of an urban area.

4) The terrorists can arrange for a delta-v greater than .001 km/s, if
they really need to, with larger nuclear warheads.

Now you might ask, why go to all the trouble of launching nukes way out
in space when a city could just be nuked directly?

a) Unlike smuggling nukes across borders, there is no risk of getting caught
in foreign territory.  Once you do it, you can ask for ransom without any
possibility of the bomb being sniffed out and diffused.

b) ditto if you launch an ICBM directly; it will be tracked, its source
determined, and the perpetrators punished.

c) For the larger asteroids (100m+) the potential destruction is much
greater.  Entire continents could be wiped out, or even the whole planet,
depending on how crazy the terrorists are.

d) In the future, when we start asteroid mining, the temptation for mine
workers, disgruntled about wages, conditions, or whatever, will be very great.


>   Assume that we have a real space presence for this scenario. We'll have
>space telescopes much more capable than ground based ones available at
>present. A nuclear explosion anywhere in the line of sight of earth is
>likely to be seen

We don't need to assume any such thing, because an asteroid collision
can be arranged with _current technology_ (nuclear explosives, chemical
rockets, and unmanned probes), and right now we are still unsure of whether
South Africa did or did not detonate a nuclear bomb several years ago right
here on our own planet.  Much less are we be able to detect explosions out
beyond the Moon.  Furthermore, the explosion could occur on the other side of
the Sun and have the desired effect.

>   All right, I've been making sweeping statements on a topic about which I
>know very little.

Same here.  Same for 90% of the other stuff on the net.  We're the first
two to admit it.  :-)

I would be highly grateful for more rigorous calculations on this subject--
it is important, but I'm afraid my math is lacking.  :-(

--
--------------------------------------------
Nick Szabo
uunet!ibmsupt!szabonj
These opinions are not related to Big Blue's

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

Date: 22 Oct 89 13:55:00 GMT
From: mirror!frog![e-mail]  (John Woods)
Subject: Re: Jane's Books.

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (CUP/ASG, MLO5-2/G1 6A, 223-3283  17-Oct-1989 1336) writes:
>         Could someone please supply me with information on where I
>     can order the Jane's Series of books on spacecraft?  Thanks in
>     advance.

From the back of my Janes Spaceflight Directory 1986:

    Jane's Publishing Inc.
    4th Floor, 115 5th Avenue
    New York NY 10003

or
    Jane's Publishing Co. Ltd.
    238 City Road, London EC1V 2PU


--
John Woods, Charles River Data Systems, Framingham MA 508-626-1101
...!decvax!frog!john, [e-mail], ...!mit-eddie!jfw, [e-mail]

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

Date: 23 Oct 89 13:56:57 GMT
From: bfmny0![e-mail]  (Tom Neff)
Subject: Re: Cognitive Dissonance Over Fake Space Program

Note in passing: Opinions which might otherwise go unremarked can get
awfully annoying when delivered in eight- or ten-article batches.
Frequent newsreaders can usually tell when someone "catches up" with
a whole bunch of news and feels he has to follow up on lots and lots
of things at once.  The value of each posting is markedly lessened
when this happens.

[ excuse the meta-posting ]

--
 1955-1975: 36 Elvis movies.  |  Tom Neff
 1975-1989: nothing.          |  [e-mail]

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

End of SPACE Digest V10 #173
*******************