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Date: Thu,  4 Apr 91 01:43:56 -0500 (EST)
Subject: SPACE Digest V13 #352

SPACE Digest                                     Volume 13 : Issue 352

Today's Topics:
             Re: Fred on the Moon
                  Mt. Venus
    Re: One Small Step for a Space Activist...  Vol 2 No 4
        NY Times Article: Go out and get now!
        Re: Seeing the Shuttle land at Edwards
                 Re: Mir miss
               Re: Launch protectionism
         NASA Headline News for 03/29/91 (Forwarded)

Administrivia:

    Submissions to the SPACE Digest/sci.space should be mailed to
  [e-mail].  Other mail, esp. [un]subscription requests,
  should be sent to [e-mail], or, if urgent, to
             [e-mail]

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

Date:         Wed, 03 Apr 91 12:33:23 EST
From: Tom McWilliams <[e-mail]>
Subject:      Re: Fred on the Moon

Re; Fred on the Moon.

I think it sounds like a great idea.  Other Advantages:

Radio telescopes; far side:  No interference from microwaves, tv, etc
Interferometry;   base line of 450000km possible (one on earth, one on moon)

Space Telescope;  All the advantages of atmospherelessness and no draw backs,
                  like frequent temp changes and oscillations.

Inter planetary launches;  even better speeds than the equator, not to mention
                           the lower energy to escape.

Skylab syndrome solved.  Can't deorbit, even with launch ability halted for
                         a decade by omni-ovo-mono-basketness

Tourism?  I'd like to go.  I'm sure someone that could afford it would, too.

BEST REASON:   We'd be on our way to building a Mining/Production/Energy-
               harvesting Space Infrastructure.

Anyone have any idea how this would be recieved by those making the decisions?

Tommy Mac              Why do people climb mountains?
                            Because they're there.
18084tm@msu            Isn't that why most people go around them?
Acknowledge-To: <18084TM@MSU>

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

Date: 3 Apr 91 18:35:09 GMT
From: happy.colorado.edu![e-mail]
Subject: Mt. Venus


Last night I watched a show about Venus that got me thinking.  Now as all of us
know the pressure on Venus is incredible (90 times that of earth) and the
temperature is nearly as bad (900F).  The show mentioned that Venus had a
mountain that was 30,000ft tall (1.5 times as tall as Mt. Everest).  Now at
this hight, both the temperature and pressure would be drastically reduced.  I
was wondering by how much.  Here are some simple calculations.

Now I know that Denver is roughly at 6,000ft and has 18% less O2 than sea
level.  Rounding this up to 20% to make the math easier.  Since Venus has
roughly the same gravitational force as Earth, I'll assume that it loses 20% of
its atmospheric pressure for every 6,000ft.  Here is a table of height and
atmosphere pressure.

Height in ft    Pressure
0        90
6,000        72
12,000      58
18,000      46
24,000      37
30,000      30

Since I have no idea how to make the temperature calculations I will assume that
since the pressure went down to 1/3 it original value, the temperature will do
the same.  One third of 900F is 300F.

So at the summit of this mountain still have a crushing pressure, 30 times that
of earth, but a more reasonable temperature, 300F.  Is this reasonable?

    -Gary

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

Date: Wed, 3 Apr 91 09:30:25 -0500
From: "Allen W. Sherzer" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: One Small Step for a Space Activist...  Vol 2 No 4
Newsgroups: sci.space
Cc:

In article <[e-mail]> Charles Radley writes:
>I am puzzled about complaints that nobody is proposing
>"real" hardware and schedules for SEI.

The Augustine Commission said that the Mission From Earth should
be the lowest priority for NASA. They recomended that it be on a
'go as you pay' basis which means no schedule or expected milestones.
This is a sure way to insure it doesn't happen. These complaints are
worth paying attention to. The Congresscritters making the complaints
want very much to see it happen and understand politics well enough to
know that it won't happen the way things are going.

>The following
>paragraph answers the question - everybody has been holding off
>waiting for the synthesis report.......

Not good enough. The Synthesis Group will not be recommending schedules.
The block put there by Augustine will remain the way things are going
now. Also, the Synthisis people need to be appearing on the hill to push
for their report and they aren't. We also need more activism at the
grassroots. If we don't convince Congress there is interest in this then
is just won't happen.

  Allen

--
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|Allen W. Sherzer | If you love something, let it go. If it doesn't come back |
|   [e-mail]   | to you, hunt it down and kill it.                         |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+

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

Date: 3 Apr 91 16:43:42 GMT
From: usc!wuarchive!rex!rouge!pc.usl.edu![e-mail]  (Phil Fraering)
Subject: NY Times Article: Go out and get now!

Run, don't walk, out to a newsstand and get a NY Times. It has
an article on a nuclear rocket supposedly being secretly developed
by the DoD for SDI. The article really didn't have any technical
details, just the usual 'statements' by the Federation of American
Scientists about how bad the program is(they broke the story), and
that DoD was allegedly going to transfer the program to NASA due
to the changes in SDI... (as everyone else seems to know, SDI hasn't
been planning a heavy-lift launcher for quite some time now; there
isn't a strong need right now to lift the thousands of tons of
exotic laser fuels, snce directed energy weapons seem to be on the
back burner. Besides, why not use a nuclear-pumped laser?)

Phil Fraering
[e-mail]

p.s. The article itself is a disappointment, it's all politics
and no technical details other than the reactor supposedly
operates at near melting temperature, and they had plans to test
the rocket in atmosphere over the ocean near Antartica, with a
very remote chance that an accident would release radiation over
New Zealand. :-(

Of course, you know my opinion, if they can't get chemical rockets
to work right, and cheaply, what guarantee is there that they can
get nuclear to work well and cheaply? - p.f.

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

Date: 3 Apr 91 23:07:28 GMT
From: usc!mizar.usc.edu![e-mail]  (Malcolm Sharp)
Subject: Re: Seeing the Shuttle land at Edwards

If the shuttle launches on 4/5, when is it scheduled to land?
(realizing that the schedule can/does change).
Thanks.

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

Date: Wed, 3 Apr 91 09:37:12 EST
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: Mir miss
X-Mailer: Mail User's Shell (6.4 2/14/89)

From: [e-mail]  (Adam R. Brody)
>
> Anybody hear anything about a Progress resupply ship almost colliding
> with Mir?  I hear this was only saved by manual override a few days
> ago with a report in Reuters.

This is forwarded from the RISKS Digest:

--- Forwarded mail from "James H. Paul" <[e-mail]>

>From [e-mail]  Fri Mar 29 21:11:00 1991
From: "James H. Paul" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Soviet Space Station [PGN Excerpting Service]

                 REUTERS  03-28-91 05:40 PET
   SOVIET SPACE STATION AVOIDS DOCKING DISASTER BY 40 FEET

   MOSCOW, Reuters - The Soviet space station Mir came within 40 feet of a
collision with a cargo module which would almost certainly have killed the two
cosmonauts on board, Soviet television reported Thursday.  Ground control staff
noticed only seconds before impact that computers which should have been
docking an unmanned Progress-7 cargo module onto Mir were in fact steering it
on a collision course. [...]
   The cargo module was only 65 feet from impact when an alert ground
controller watching television pictures of the docking had to make a snap
decision to override the computers and change Progress-7's course.  Rockets
deflected the module, which had already failed to dock once last week, so that
it passed within 40 feet of the space station and narrowly missed protruding
antennae and solar panels.  [...]
   The space station's next crew will have to make more extensive repairs to a
faulty antenna which was found to be the cause of the near miss.  [...]

--- End of forwarded message from "James H. Paul" <[e-mail]>

Gregg TeHennepe             | Academic Systems Coordinator
[e-mail]       | Connecticut College, New London, CT

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

Date: 3 Apr 91 17:39:06 GMT
From: usc!rpi!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!utzoo![e-mail]  (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Launch protectionism

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:
>I think a distinction needs to be made here.  The problem is not protectionism
>per se, but rather preventing the exportation of high technology to foreign
>governments, especially Russia, which is our leading competitor (right now).

Ha ha.  That's the standard excuse, even though the Soviets have offered to
let people stand guard on their payloads 24 hours a day to prevent snooping.
Basically, they're willing to bend over backwards and allow whatever
safeguards are felt to be appropriate.  The US position is that the idea
won't even be considered.  This *is* protectionism per se.
--
"The stories one hears about putting up | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
SunOS 4.1.1 are all true."  -D. Harrison|  [e-mail]  utzoo!henry

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

Date: 3 Apr 91 17:27:35 GMT
From: [e-mail]  (Peter E. Yee)
Subject: NASA Headline News for 03/29/91 (Forwarded)

[Deferred due to family business. -PEY]

             Headline News
Internal Communications Branch (P-2) NASA Headquarters

  Friday, March 29, 1991    Audio Service: 202 / 755-1788

This is NASA Headline News for Friday, March 29, 1991. . .

Jet Propulsion Laboratory flight controllers are working to return
Galileo to normal operations after the spacecraft unexpectedly went
into safing mode Tuesday morning.  Although controllers do not know
what caused the incident, they are not expecting any permanent
effect on Galileo.  In safing mode, the spacecraft turned off science
instruments and went into a configuration in which all parts of the
spacecraft spin.  Galileo previously had been in a dual-spin mode
where part of the spacecraft spins and other portions do not.  Galileo
also dropped the speed of its Earth data link to ten bits-per-second.

Analysis of Galileo data shows that the incident was caused when one
of the spacecraft's two redundant command-and-data subsystem
computers detected a problem with itself, prompting it to take
itself off-line.  The other computer continued to function properly and
carried out all intended operations.  The cause of the problem in the
computer is unknown, but has been identified as being a transient
signal of some kind.  There is no evidence of any permanent damage to
any hardware.  Project officials intend to reconfigure Galileo to
resume normal activities by April 25.  The spacecraft is now 36
million miles from Earth and 115 million miles from the Sun.

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

Activity at the Kennedy Space Center for next Friday's planned
launch of Atlantis on the STS-37 Gamma Ray Observatory mission is
proceeding handily with no problems.  Orbiter ordnance operations
have been completed and solid rocket booster closeout procedures are
underway.  Over the weekend, the liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen
tanks inside the main external tank will be purged in preparation for
cryogenic loading operations next week.

The countdown clock picks up the launch count on Tuesday,
April 2, at 5:30 am.  The flight crew, commander Steve Nagel, pilot
Kenneth Cameron, and mission specialists Jerry Ross, Jerome Apt and
Linda Godwin, will arrive at Kennedy from Houston, also on Tuesday,
at 3:30 pm.

On Thursday, April 4, NASA will hold a series of pre-launch
briefings beginning at 9:00 am.  These briefings, and a countdown
status on Wednesday, April 3, will be shown live on NASA Select TV.
The launch window for the STS-37 mission opens at 9:18 am on April 5
and closes at 1:56 pm.  The window grows progressively longer for each
successive day.

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

Venus may be venting interior heat through giant hot spots on
the surface of the planet.  Magellan geologist Dr. Ellen Stofan says
these hot spots, and other circular and oval-shaped features found on
Venus, are all associated with volcanism.  These features range in
size from 100 miles in diameter to over 650 miles across.

NASA also announced that it is releasing the first computer compact
disk containing Magellan radar mosaics of Venus.  The National
Space Science Data Center will distribute the CD versions of
the Magellan data to other investigators and to the public.
                   * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

The Public Broadcasting Service initiates a six-part series entitled
"The Shape of the World" Monday night, April 1, at 8:00 pm.  The
series focuses on the history of exploration and how mapping and
cartographic skills have evolved through the centuries, and how these
techniques will continue to evolve in the exploration of new worlds in
space.  Much of the technology which is highlighted was
developed and is being used by NASA.  The series is underwritten
by International Business Machines, Inc., with cooperative NASA
sponsorship.  Narrator for the six episodes will be familiar to explorers
of the next century -- Patrick Stewart, the English actor who plays
Jean-Luc Picard on Star Trek - The Next Generation.  Science resource
material and supporting video material is available to teachers.  The
series will also air on NASA Select TV following its run on PBS.  For
additional information, contact Internal Communications at 202/453-
8425.

Here's the broadcast schedule for Public Affairs events on NASA Select
TV.  All times are Eastern.  NASA Select TV is carried on GE Satcom
F2R, transponder 13, C-Band, 72 degrees W Long., Audio 6.8,
Frequency 3960 MHz.

Monday, 4/1/91
     7:00 am    Coverage of the rollout of Discovery from the Orbiter
            Processing Facility to Launch Pad 39-A, live from
            Kennedy Space Center.

Tuesday, 4/2/91
     1:00 pm    Support for educational video conference on Hubble
            Space Telescope.  Main distribution of the program
            will be on Westar IV, channel 19.

Wednesday, 4/3/91
     9:00 am    Countdown status of STS-37 mission, live from Kennedy
            Space Center.

     1:15 pm    Magellan-at-Venus status briefing, live from Jet
            Propulsion Laboratory.

All events and times may change without notice.  This report is filed
daily, Monday through Friday, by 12:00 pm, Eastern.  It is a service of
NASA Headquarters Office of Public Affairs.  Contact:  CREDMOND
on NASAmail or at 202/453-8425.

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

End of SPACE Digest V13 #352
*******************