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Subject: SPACE Digest V10 #360

SPACE Digest                                     Volume 10 : Issue 360

Today's Topics:
                Is this true?
              Re: SPACE Digest V10 #356
         NASA Headline News for 12/18/89 (Forwarded)
                 Re: Motives
         Re: proposed "space-mail" incentive
             Re: Magellan Update 12/12/89
            Re: New years eve 1999
           Payload Summary for 12/18/89 (Forwarded)
     Re: Space industry projects: dismantling moons and asteroids
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 18 Dec 89 22:44:30 GMT
From: [e-mail]  (Richard Pavelle)
Subject: Is this true?


In the latest APS bulletin, Vol.35, No.1 (1990), Page 2, the VP is
credited with the following statements explaining why the U.S. should
undertake a manned Mars mission:

" Mars is essentially in the same orbit. Mars is somewhat the same
distance from the sun, which is very important. We have seen pictures
where there are canals, we believe, and water. If there is water,
there is oxygen. If oxygen, that means we can breathe". --
Richard Pavelle         UUCP: ...ll-xn!rp
                        ARPANET: [e-mail]

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

Date: 18 Dec 89 17:38:45 GMT
From: bfmny0![e-mail]  (Tom Neff)
Subject: Re: SPACE Digest V10 #356

In article <Added.AZX=[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> writes:
>As to the topic of "daydreams vs. reality".  Getting somethin to LEO is
>effectively getting halfway to anywhere in the solar system.  (It's delta-v
>that we're worried about, not actual physical distance.  If we can send
>a probe (either manned or unmanned) to Mars, we can send one out to anywhere
>in the Solar System.  (Or if you follow Dr. Robert Forward at all, even to
>nearby stars)

Halfway in terms of kinetic energy expenditure != halfway in terms of
overall technical difficulty.  Let us take a ham sandwich to Pluto, you
and I; toss it into the payload canister as a whiteroom joke, latch and
launch.  LEO is achieved within minutes -- the bread is still warm.  (I
like my ham sandwiches on light toast. :-) )  Now all you have to do to
get to Pluto is spend the other half of your kinetic energy and WAIT TEN
YEARS.  I hate a stale sandwich.  :-)

Seriously, the issues of long term survival, radiation shielding and
maneuverability at the destination make planetary missions lots more
than twice as hard as orbital missions.
--
'We have luck only with women -- not spacecraft!'     \\  Tom Neff
 -- R. Kremnev, builder of failed Soviet FOBOS probes //  [e-mail]

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

Date: 18 Dec 89 21:32:03 GMT
From: trident.arc.nasa.gov![e-mail]  (Peter E. Yee)
Subject: NASA Headline News for 12/18/89 (Forwarded)

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Monday, Dec. 18, 1989                        Audio:  202/755-1788
-----------------------------------------------------------------

This is NASA Headline News for Monday, December 18th......

Continuing problems at Pad 39A over the weekend have forced the
postponment of plans to launch the space shuttle Columbia on
Thursday, December 21st.  Shuttle managers are meeting this
morning to assess work on the launch pad and the orbiter, and are
expected to announce a new launch date later this afternoon.

The Martin Marietta Corporation is preparing to launch its first
Titan 3 rocket...carrying British and Japanese communications
satellites...tonight.  Liftoff from Launch Complex 40 at the Cape
Canaveral Air Force Station is scheduled for 7:20 P.M. Eastern
time.  Forecasters are predicting a 40 percent chance of rain and
thick clouds that could violate launch guidelines.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology yesterday released
photographs of Soviet equipment designed to land men on the moon.
Edward Crawley, an MIT professor who was one of the scientists
who saw and photographed the spacecrafts, said, "the existence of
this hardware is perhaps the most conclusive evidence to date
that there was, in fact, a race to the moon and that the Soviet
Union had a concrete plan to land cosmonauts there in the
1960's."  Crawley said the equipment--a lunar landing craft and
return-to-Earth module--were never used because the Soviets
failed to overcome problems with the N1 booster rockets needed to
place the spacecrafts in orbit.














                          ************










-----------------------------------------------------------------
Here's the broadcast schedule for public affairs events on NASA
Select television.  All times are Eastern.

Thursday, Dec. 21.....

     11:30 A.M.       NASA Update will be transmitted.

All events and times are subject to change without notice.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
These reports are filed daily, Monday through Friday, at 12 noon,
Eastern time.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
A service of the Internal Communications Branch (LPC) NASA
Headquarters, Washington, D.C.

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

Date: 16 Dec 89 21:51:27 GMT
From: ibmpa![e-mail]  (Nick Szabo)
Subject: Re: Motives

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:
>From article <[e-mail]>, by [e-mail] (Nick Szabo):

>>The
>> days of ten-billion dollar space projects are over.  The most productive
>> economy on our planet, Japan, engages in no such projects, and has no
>> intention to start.

>Bit of a sweeping statement isn`t it ?

No, it is a probable projection, concatenated to a factual statement,
concatenated to a probable projection.

>After all Japan is contributing
>one of the modules for Freedom.

Yes, they will contribute c. $2.5 billion, while the U.S. contributes
$30 billion, and the science results are shared equally.  This despite
the fact that Japan has a higher per capita income and many more engineers
per capita than the U.S., and much more capital available for R&D than the
U.S.   Even at $2.5 billion, it is a marginal proposition for Japan, which
should tell us something about how stupid it is for the U.S. to engage in.

> Not to mention their HOPE orbiter project

Which is much smaller than Shuttle, costs less than $10 billion, and
will probably be cancelled anyway.

>or their recent invitation to Western firms to join in their SST engine
>project. They are also devloping their own cryogenic engine, H II.

The SST project is for airliners, and the H II is for unmanned, commercial
space activities.  Both are properly scaled technologies that can provide
saleable products and services.   They could put Japan in the #1 position
in aerospace, while the U.S. throws its money away on fantasies.  The U.S.
has a big lead, but then again we had a huge lead in autos in the 1960's,
and threw it away in less than two decades.

>[Are there any Japanese reading sci.space?]
>Perhaps they are all too
>busy actually making things happen rather than discuss it on the net!

Could be!

>I for one would like to know what makes them tick.

Caveat: the following is way too simplistic and stereotypical; there
are many exceptions.  But it gives a good flavor, as the Japanese and
American viewpoints are in some cases radically different.

Freeman Dyson has a good essay on this in _Infinite In All Directions_,
and, having studied Japanese culture myself, and talked to folks in
the Japanese space program, I find myself agreeing with much of what he
says there.  The slogan of their space program echoes a popular slogan
in their industries, "quick is beautiful".  They won't even think about
anything five years out, much less the decades out "long term planning"
fantasies we see too often in sci.space and NASA, because there is nothing
you can do about anything that far in the future.  Many things will have
changed by then; it is too unpredictable.  So they try to avoid
decade-long R&D cycles, preferring 1 or 2 years instead.  Also they shy
away from space voyages like Voyager that would take too long to pay off.
Another current running through Japan is "small is beautiful".  Honshu
is a very crowded island, and you simply can't live on it and do all
that manufacturing unless you are willing to be very, very efficient
in how you use space and resources.  And careful about what you do with
your garbage.  Honshu is probably the closest thing we have to a space
colony on Earth.

The fishing industry is very powerful in Japan (and for good reason;
it is the only way Japan can produce protein.  Would you be comfortable
relying on a country that nuked your cities for your food supply?  Not I).
Space launch complexes take up large amounts of space, and it turns out
the only good one in Japan sits right near large fishing grounds.  Needless
to say, the space launch facility is not the highest priority, and Japan
will have to do what the French do, find some Third World equatorial
country to launch from.

The Japanese _love_ technology.  They have many more robots than the
U.S. (does somebody have the latest figures on this?)  Vending machines
are everywhere and serve everything (beer, sandwiches, shampoo, condoms,
you name it).  You don't see people running around screaming about how
robots are taking peoples jobs, robots aren't as intelligent as people,
ad nauseum.  They realize machines can do some things and humans others,
what machines can do and humans can do changes over time, and that who
does what should be based on hard engineering and economics, not
philosophy and fantasy.  They are, and I stress this is positive and
even something we might profit by emulating, _animistic_ about material
things and especially technology.  The weather speaks to them, it has
a personality.  The Shinto rituals involving new babies, akin to baptism
in Christianity, have been used when setting up robots in their factories.
There is no division between "natural" and "artificial"; Japanese gardens
are both natural and quite man-made, and quite a bit more beautiful than
much of the non-human landscape.

For all that, the Japanese are very Westernized as well.  Their children
study more Greek, Roman, and European history, listen to more Western
classical music, learn more mathematics and science, than children
in the U.S.  Bheetoven's 9th is a New Year's tradition.

I'd love to hear comments from Japanese or long-time students of
Japanese culture on these observations.


*********** These opinions are not related to Big Blue's ************

--
---------------------------
Nick Szabo
[e-mail]
uunet!ibmsupt!szabonj

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

Date: 18 Dec 89 23:55:18 GMT
From: clyde.concordia.ca!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!utzoo![e-mail]  (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: proposed "space-mail" incentive

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Steve Emmerson) writes:
>... the original question, viz. a description (preferably financial)
>of those currently existing demands for `space-mail' services which are
>analogous to the early-aviation demand for more rapid mail delivery.

Uh, Steve, I hate repeating myself, but:  *what* early-aviation demand
for more rapid mail delivery?  There wasn't any, not that you could
point to and measure in dollars and cents.  Why are you asking for
analogies to something that didn't exist?  (Indeed, the analogy is
very close, since cheap launch services have the same problem:  there's
little demand that can be quantified and sold to venture capitalists.)
If there had been solid, quantifiable demand, the Post Office wouldn't
have had to subsidize it.
--
1755 EST, Dec 14, 1972:  human |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
exploration of space terminates| uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry [e-mail]

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

Date: 18 Dec 89 19:17:32 GMT
From: zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!usc!henry.jpl.nasa.gov!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!jato!mars![e-mail]  (Ron Baalke)
Subject: Re: Magellan Update 12/12/89

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Tom Ohmer) writes:
>From article <[e-mail]>, by [e-mail] (Ron Baalke):
>
><      Thermally, Magellan is stable and temperatures aboard the spacecraft
>< are normal as it continues to move out towards the orbit of Earth. Magellan
>< is now 179 million miles from Venus which it will orbit next August and
>
>Ron, this is not a flame.  Help me understand this.  How is it headed for
>Venus and out towards the orbit of Earth at the same time?  Thanks
>--
Magellan is taking a circutous route to Venus in that it will loop around
the sun 1 1/2 times before encountering Venus. It has already passed by
its perihelion near Venus's orbit last October 7th, and will return to the
orbit of Earth where it was launched, and then intercept Venus in August.
Galileo, on the other hand, is headed directly for Venus and will arrive
there in February before Magellan does even thought Magellan had a 5 month
head start.

 Ron Baalke                       |    [e-mail]
 Jet Propulsion Lab  M/S 301-355  |    [e-mail]
 4800 Oak Grove Dr.               |
 Pasadena, CA 91109               |

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

Date: 17 Dec 89 19:18:13 GMT
From: nis!viper![e-mail]  (David Messer)
Subject: Re: New years eve 1999

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:
 >In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] writes:
 >>    When (western civilisation) enters the next millenium why not celebrate
 >                                                 ---------
 >>    with the BIGGEST fireworks ever. In the last hour of 1999 all MX:s,
 >
 >   According to what I have read, the coming of the next millenium should
 >   be celebrated towards the end of the year 2000, since there was no year
 >   0 according to our calendar ... Thus it would more appropriate
 >   to postpone the celebration until new year's eve 2000, but I wonder if
 >   anybody (except for chronology fans) have thought of it?

I vote we celebrate BOTH new years.  That way we don't have to
worry about it.
--
Remember Tiananmen Square.           | David Messer       [e-mail] -or-
                                     | Lynx Data Systems  ...!bungia!viper!dave

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

Date: 19 Dec 89 05:34:57 GMT
From: trident.arc.nasa.gov![e-mail]  (Peter E. Yee)
Subject: Payload Summary for 12/18/89 (Forwarded)


                                PAYLOAD STATUS REPORT
                         Prepared at 4:15 p.m. Dec.l8, l989
                                   Mission STS-32


          STS-32 -- SYNCOM, LDEF RETRIEVAL

               Today's announcement of a new target launch date for  STS-32
          of no earlier than Jan.  8, l990 is expected to have no impact on
          either SYNCOM deployment or the retrieval of  the  Long  Duration
          Exposure Facility (LDEF).

               SYNCOM  is  in Columbia's cargo bay at Launch Pad A.  There,
          the satellite is being trickle charged and maintained in a launch
          readiness condition.  The change of the launch date will not  af-
          fect the scenario planned for deployment of the satellite,  which
          will be known as LEASAT once on station.

               The scenario, known as Post Ejection Sequencer (PES),  calls
          for  a  series  of  manuevers  performed over a period of several
          days. Forty-five minutes after deployment, the solid perigee kick
          motor will be ignited.  Three manuevers will place the  satellite
          in a geosynchronous orbit at l77 degrees west.

               Retrieval of the LDEF, now a valuable scientific repository,
          will  not  be  impacted  by the revised launch date.  Current es-
          timates are that LDEF will be retrievable through  at  least  the
          third week of February.

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

Date: 17 Dec 89 23:47:09 GMT
From: portal!cup.portal.com![e-mail]  (H Keith Henson)
Subject: Re: Space industry projects: dismantling moons and asteroids

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Steve Nuchia) writes:

>Start feeding chunks of asteroid
>into the nice vacuum furnace at the focus.  Form the nice stainless
>steel (Ni & Fe, right?) Into structural shapes, and spit the slag

About 10 years ago Eric Drexler and I wrote a paper on furnaces to
process metals in space.  I would be interested if Steve has any new
ideas on how to get heat to the metal *without* curding up the mirrors
with various rock and metal vapors.  Keith Henson

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

End of SPACE Digest V10 #360
*******************