Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/mac/TEXT_ZIP/spacedig/V12_0/V12_072.ZIP/V12_072

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Subject: SPACE Digest V12 #72

SPACE Digest                                      Volume 12 : Issue 72

Today's Topics:
            Re: LLNL Space Station
             Re: Multiple probes
          Re: HST update by Jim Westphal (LOOOOONG)
        Re: Is an asteroid capture possible/feasible?
       Re: Ideas Needed for Manned Exploration of Moon and Mars
              Re: Nasa's budget
           Re: NSS protests Chinese launch pricing
    Re: Oppose manned Mars exploration -- support robotics
            Re: LLNL Space Station
        Re: Is an asteroid capture possible/feasible?
              Re: space weapons

Administrivia:

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

Date: 14 Jul 90 18:35:46 GMT
From: swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!usc!hacgate!aic![e-mail]  (Brian Yamauchi)
Subject: Re: LLNL Space Station

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Loren Petrich) writes:
>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (SIMMONS DONALD F) writes:
>>
>>     Where can I find full details about the LLNL Inflatable Space Station?
>>I don't mean the half-column blurb I have found in most magazines. I want
>>details: materials, construction time, power supply, deployment, the works.

>    As someone who has seen some of LLNL's plans, I think them a
>good thing to pursue.

Is there some sort of technical report available on the LLNL station
and/or on the Great Exploration proposal in general?  Like the
original poster, I would be interested in seeing the detailed
information (costs, specs, timetable, etc.).

How much funding has been currently been allocated to this project?
Has Congress been approached yet, and if so, what has been the
reaction?

______________________________________________________________________________

Brian Yamauchi                          Hughes Research Laboratories
[e-mail]                Artificial Intelligence Center
______________________________________________________________________________

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

Date: 15 Jul 90 00:56:33 GMT
From: mojo![e-mail]  (Doug Mohney)
Subject: Re: Multiple probes

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (John Roberts) writes:
>
>>Maybe it's time to start rethinking our whole policy of space exploration.
>>Back in the "Old Days" we would build two or three of everything just in
>>case. Now, we come up with one and if it fails...
>
>If Galileo fails, we concentrate on Venus, Mars, and Saturn. If Magellan
>fails, we concentrate on Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. The planets don't seem
>to be going away anytime soon.

Naw, we just throw away money on a failed attempt the first time 'round.
And would you like to be a planetary scientist who's put in 7-10 years
of your life riding on one probe which croaks on a faulty chip?

>While building a second probe for a specific
>mission may be cheaper than building the first one, you still may have
>decreasing marginal scientific returns for your dollar. Making duplicates
>on a fixed budget may force compromises in quality or ability of each probe.

Duplicates are NOT bad. Magellen is built out of leftovers, as I seem to
recall. If the probe dies or finds something VERY interesting, you send in
probe #2, with modified parameters to do a more detailed survey. Assuming
probe #2 is pretty flexable, you can drop in newer hardware and fix
flaws which might have botched up probe one.

>For missions that are not extremely time critical (Voyager was), if you
>can build sophisticated probes that have a fairly good chance of success,
>it may make the most economic sense to allocate only one for each mission.

You still miss the cost of being screwed if your single probe dies.

>Multiple probes for one mission might be defended as *political* insurance.
>Even this is risky, since design errors may affect all the probes. (Imagine
>2 or 3 blurry HSTs out there now, each one needing a shuttle visit for
>repairs...)

No, because A) We don't have the launch capability to put them up all at once
and B) You launch one and see what happens. Number #2 stays on the ground
and in a clean room until you see what happens with #1. If #1 is VERY success-
ful, you send #2 for the Smithsonian, or recycle the parts. If #1 has a
major malfunction, you use #2 to debug the problem of #1, or in worst case,
send up #2 .

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

Date: 14 Jul 90 18:13:58 GMT
From: zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!samsung!cs.utexas.edu!titan![e-mail]  (Donald Heskett)
Subject: Re: HST update by Jim Westphal (LOOOOONG)

Yeah, but what the heck did Junenal mean by that?

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

Date: 14 Jul 90 00:48:59 GMT
From: amethyst!organpipe!hindmost![e-mail]  (Michael Nolan)
Subject: Re: Is an asteroid capture possible/feasible?

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail]
(Andrew Orndoroff) writes:
>...have there ever been any
>studies or projections on the resources needed to do an asteroid capture?...

The Space Engineering Resources Center at the U of AZ is studying such
things.  Specifically they are looking at the availability of material
for building space stations and such.  One of the lowest-energy places
where material is available is in asteroids whose orbits cross that of
Earth.  It takes less energy to get to and from some of these than it
does to get to and from the Moon.

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

Date: 14 Jul 90 20:23:26 GMT
From: pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!samsung!rex!rouge![e-mail]  (Fraering Philip)
Subject: Re: Ideas Needed for Manned Exploration of Moon and Mars

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Nicholas J. Szabo) writes:

"  Here's the specific proposal.  Launch 1,000 Voyager-like probes: 5 for
   every planet and moon in the solar system, plus 500 to various asteroids
   comets.  Most of Voyager's capabilities, plus many advanced capabilities not
   possible with Voyager, can now fit on smaller spacecraft due to progress
   in miniaturization since 1975.  Each probe would be launched by a Delta
   class rocket.

   [stuff about bozlee's law deleted for brevity] = $22.1 million per
   Voyager-class probe.

   Add in $5.2 billion for ground facility upgrades (especially DSN) and
   we get a cost of $40 billion for the project, or 1/10 the cost NASA
   is proposing for a mission to only 2 of the thousands of interesting
   places in the solar system.  Note that costs drop even further if
   we tie the scale-up in with the similar LLNL Mission To Earth proposal.

   [more deleted]

   Nick Szabo
   uunet!ibmsupt!szabonj"

Okay, here's a better idea on what to do with that 40 billion dollars.
You give one and a half billion to the SSX people, one and a half to
Third Millenium for Space Van, a half billion to AMROC, and one and
a half to Pacific American for Phoenix.(Or whatever combination suits
you. Remember, you're just hoping _one_ of these vehicles works)

While doing this, fund 10 or so probes to nearby asteroids through SSI.
Since they plan a $ 20 million dollar probe to the moon, a probe with
three times the capability ought to be 50 or so million (due to assembly
line construction). A billion dollars ought to get 20 or so probes launched.
When one of the launchers matures, a billion dollars ought to put up
about (at about 500 dollars a pound) 2 million pounds of material. This
is for the first manned mission to an asteroid. It ought to cost 2 billion
including hardware and launch. The manned mission experiments with
building things out of asteroidal material at one of the more likely sites.

A second manned mission can go out to an asteroid, break it up into
pieces small enough to fly into earth orbit using a magnetohydromagnetic
brake of some sort (made of asteroidal iron and carbon), and send them back.

By now you've spent about 10 billion, and you've got pieces of
asteroid back here for analysis or sale. Depending on what you bring
back, you can make the effort self-funding and spend the other
30 billion dollars this way:

10 billion dollars: assuming a cost of $ 1000 each, about ten
million new refrigerators

20 billion dollars: assuming a cost of $ 10,000 each, about two million
workstation-class computers to be propogated through the elementary
and high schools of this nation for educational purposes. Heck, lets
even donate some to NASA employees so we can still have their give-
and take on the net without violating the Hatch Act.

I wasn't serious when I wrote this, so for those who still don't get
it,

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

P.S. How much does a new refrigerator cost these days? How many refrigerators
could we get out of Space Station Freedom? Perhaps, though, we should
be investing a couple billion (a billion here, a billion there, and
pretty soon you're talking about real money) in unorthodox ideas with
high potential payoff.

Phil

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

Date: 14 Jul 90 20:30:13 GMT
From: zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!samsung!rex!rouge![e-mail]  (Fraering Philip)
Subject: Re: Nasa's budget

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:

PS>For starters let's stop calling them "critters".  I don't care how low an
PS>opinion you may have of individual members of Conress, or of Conress as a
PS>whole, until our form of government changes we still have to deal with them.
PS>Continually calling them "critters" does not help our cause one iota.

If you were from the south, you'd realize that the word critter simply
means creature. The word congresscritter originated (I think) with
Jerry Pournelle while trying to come up with a more graceful word than
'congressperson.' ('congressman' is considered sexist).

Considering that creatures are divided into critters (neutral or benign)
and varmints (malign) Congresscritter isn't that bad a word. Some
people would probrably rather use the other one.

Phil

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

Date: 13 Jul 90 07:10:38 GMT
From: usc!samsung!emory!hubcap!ncrcae!ncrlnk!ncr-mpd![e-mail]  (Mike McManus)
Subject: Re: NSS protests Chinese launch pricing


In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Jim Kingdon) writes:
>   This
>   does *not* correct for things like rotating launch pads with hand
>   cranks rather than fancy motors or dispensing with clean rooms.  I
>   guess if one had a list of such innovations one could try to price
                                    ^^^^^^^^^^^
>   each of them, but this is all a matter of guesswork without actual
>   budgets of what is costing what.

Perhaps "unnovation" is a better choice of words? :-)

But on the serious side, while I can't say that it makes sense to replace
hydraulics with human power, maybe there is room for innovation in other areas,
by doing more with less.

I'm not in the launch business, so excuse my ignorance, but are there options
to using a clean room for assembly?  Our semiconductor fab here has just been
updated to use "SMIF" technology.  The theory is that instead of a class 10
clean room, you can have a class 1000 (or whatever, I'm not sure) room, but you
have individual hoods that are class 1-10 that are used for processing, and
special po0ds for transport between these areas.  My understanding is that this
is a much cheaper way to go, and gives good results.

I'm just wondering weather the Chinese way of doing things might not point out
some easier/cheaper ways for us, without comprimising quality.  Have we learned
any such lessons from the way the USSR does things?







--
Disclaimer: All spelling and/or grammar in this document are guaranteed to be
            correct; any exseptions is the is wurk uv intter-net deemuns,.

Mike McManus                        [e-mail], or
NCR Microelectronics                ncr-fc![e-mail], or
2001 Danfield Ct.                   uunet!ncrlnk!ncr-mpd!garage!mikemc
Ft. Collins,  Colorado
[phone]   Ext. 307

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

Date: 14 Jul 90 14:39:02 GMT
From: mentor.cc.purdue.edu!l.cc.purdue.edu![e-mail]  (Herman Rubin)
Subject: Re: Oppose manned Mars exploration -- support robotics

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (T. Joseph Lazio, Cornell University) writes:
> In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Herman Rubin) writes:
| > In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (T. Joseph Lazio, Cornell University) writes:
> >>    Robots do have the ability to react to the unexpected, thanks to
> >>    human controllers on the ground.  Further, I think that if you
> >>    examine the record, particularly of Voyager, you will see that most
> >>    things to which the probes had to react were equipment failures.
> >>    While it is easy to reroute instructions or shut down instruments,
> >>    it is a bit more difficult to shut down life support.
| >
| > This is where the time problem comes in.  The problems of Voyager were not
| > so urgent that a 5 hour interval between noticing the problem and correcting
| > it was of importance.  If Voyager had detected a rock which would hit it in
| > one hour and destroy it, well, that's all, folks.

            .................

>     Moreover, you assume that a manned craft would be able to
>     detect the rock in time to do something.  Since the biggest
>     danger is not from fist or car-sized rocks but from centimeter
>     and millimeter sized rocks, this assumption may not be justified.
>
In my earlier posting, I mentioned the 10-30 minute delay involved with
Mars.  The problems with Mars which have been recognized are boulders,
cliffs, ravines, shifting sands, etc.  These are precisely the situations
in which man has the great advantage.
--
Herman Rubin, Dept. of Statistics, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette IN47907
Phone: [phone]
[e-mail] (Internet, bitnet)    {purdue,pur-ee}!l.cc!cik(UUCP)

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

Date: 14 Jul 90 15:38:49 GMT
From: ox.com!itivax!vax3.iti.org![e-mail]  (Allen W. Sherzer)
Subject: Re: LLNL Space Station


Donald Simmons writes:
>     Where can I find full details about the LLNL Inflatable Space Station?

I would write to Dr. Wood at LLNL or ask your Represntative or one of
your Senators. If you like what you get, write back and ask why we
aren't doing this.

>I don't mean the half-column blurb I have found in most magazines. I want
>details: materials, construction time, power supply, deployment, the works.

You can't get a parts list but they do have detailed weight budgets
and schedules.

   Allen

|                          |      In War: Resolution                      |
| Allen W. Sherzer         |      In Defeat: Defiance                     |
|   [e-mail]            |      In Victory: Magnanimity                 |
|                          |      In Peace: Good Will                     |

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

Date: 14 Jul 90 23:56:16 GMT
From: usc!cs.utexas.edu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!utzoo![e-mail]  (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Is an asteroid capture possible/feasible?

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:
>    This may have been asked before, but have there ever been any
>studies or projections on the resources needed to do an asteroid capture? I
>have wondered what might be required to place a small asteroid in a stable
>Earth orbit...

The main problem is that even a small asteroid is an enormous mass by the
standards of current space propulsion.  Chemical fuels just can't do
this job at all.  You can do it with nuclear pulse propulsion -- that is,
using lots of large hydrogen bombs as your energy source -- or with a
solar-powered mass-driver mining the asteroid itself for fuel (and taking
a long time).  Neither of these propulsion systems is off-the-shelf
technology at the moment, although both could be made practical in fairly
short order if enough money was available.

>    Have there ever been proposals for projects based on the
>availability of an asteroid as source material?

In a word, yes. :-)  You can get started somewhat earlier by importing
relatively modest amounts of asteroidal material rather than having to
haul the whole rock into Earth orbit.  The problems are lack of solid
demand, lack of asteroid-mining technology, and the near-total lack of
knowledge about the detailed composition and mechanical properties
(e.g., can you just scoop up dust or do you have to drill into solid
rock?) of specific asteroids.
--
NFS:  all the nice semantics of MSDOS, | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
and its performance and security too.  |  [e-mail]   utzoo!henry

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

Date: 14 Jul 90 18:31:36 GMT
From: [e-mail]  (Kimble Charles Marshall)
Subject: Re: space weapons

>>There's a pretty good chance that conventional firearms >>would work in
>>space. Adjusting for gravitational gradients, you could >>hit targets many
>>miles away with full muzzle velocity.

>>To what extent are conventional lubricants usable in space?
>>       John Roberts
 >>      [e-mail]

yes, but what about the kick such a projectile system?  That is after
all what makes rockets go in the first place...

K.C. Marshall
[e-mail]

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

End of SPACE Digest V12 #72
*******************