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Subject: SPACE Digest V13 #357

SPACE Digest                                     Volume 13 : Issue 357

Today's Topics:
            Computational Science Workshop
             Re: nuclear rockets
              Re: How 'bout them Titans?

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: 3 Apr 91 23:53:58 GMT
From: [e-mail]  (Bonnie C Yantis)
Subject: Computational Science Workshop



                                 Summer 1991
                Los Alamos Workshop on Computational Science

                          May 28 - August 23, 1991

                       Los Alamos National Laboratory
                           Los Alamos, New Mexico

                  Deadline for Application: April 19, 1991
                               Cost: No charge

 Full-time immersion workshop, designed to provide advanced education for
 high performance computing use in computationally-intensive research, will
 address science, computing, and collaboration.  For:
 *    Scientists and engineers in computer-intensive research fields
 *    Computer scientists and computer engineers
 *    Educators in science, engineering, and computing
 *    Graduate students, recent graduates, and others embarking on careers
      in computer-intensive scientific research fields
 *    Graduate students, recent graduates, and others embarking on careers
      in computer science and computer engineering
 Seminars in computational science, plus work on computing aspects of their
 own research, for ten or fifteen scientists, engineers, and educators from
 Los Alamos, research laboratories, and academia, balancing research topics
 in sciences, engineering, and computer science to promote an
 interdisciplinary exchange.

 ___________________________________________________________________________
 Los Alamos National Laboratory                        Computational Science
 Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545                                Summer Workshop
                                                    May 28 - August 23, 1991
 ___________________________________________________________________________

 The Computing and Communications Division and the Advanced Computing
 Laboratory invite you to participate in the Summer 1991 Workshop on
 Computational Science.

 The full-time immersion workshop, designed to provide advanced education
 for high-performance computing use in computationally intensive research,
 will address science, computing, and collaboration.  Specific aims are to:

 *    Provide participating scientists and engineers in computer-intensive
      research fields with a multidisciplinary environment that will promote
      an exploration of advanced computational science methodology as it
      relates to their professional activities and will promote
      experimentation with intimate multidisciplinary science collaboration.

 *    Provide computer scientists and computer engineers with an
      interdisciplinary environment that will promote an exploration of
      computer science and computer engineering research topics as they
      relate to the problems and constraints of contemporary computationally
      intensive scientific research and will promote experimentation with
      intimate multidisciplinary science collaboration.

 *    Provide educators in science, engineering, and computing with an
      environment that will promote an exploration of high-performance
      computing methodologies and will enhance academic programs with
      computationally intensive research strategies and an understanding of
      scientific computing.

 *    Provide graduate students, recent graduates, and others embarking on
      careers in computer-intensive scientific research fields with hands-on
      exposure to high-performance computing methodologies of importance to
      their professional activities, and integrate this as much as possible
      with participants' regular research work.

 *    Provide graduate students, recent graduates, and others embarking on
      careers in computer science and computer engineering with an
      environment that will promote exploration of algorithmic and
      architecture concepts, related system issues, and the problems and
      constraints of the scientific disciplines that apply these concepts.

 ___________________________________________________________________________

 Structure

 This workshop provides an interdisciplinary environment for scientists,
 engineers, and educators.  It is centered on seminars on concepts and
 issues in computational science with discussions led by local and visiting
 lecturers.  Participants work on computing aspects of their own research
 and learn how to evaluate computational strategies in the context of their
 own discipline by exploring the effects of a variety of architectures on
 their own application codes.  Participants will be drawn from Los Alamos
 National Laboratory, research laboratories, and academia, balancing
 research topics in sciences, engineering, and computer science to promote
 an interdisciplinary exchange.

 Schedule

 The full-time workshop will be 12 weeks.  Seminars and discussions are
 scheduled about a third of the time.  The rest of the time is devoted to
 aspects of the participant's research.  Participants are expected to focus
 their efforts on the workshop without the distraction of other projects or
 activities outside of their own workshop research.

 Seminar Topics

 *    What is high-performance computing?
 *    Comparative computer architectures and operating systems
 *    Communications and networks
 *    Code analysis and optimizations
 *    Software design
 *    Scientific computing languages, including Fortran, C, C++, and
      Mathematica
 *    Scientific algorithms, numerical methods, data structures
 *    Vectorization and parallelization
 *    Scientific graphics and visualization
 *    Distributed workstation environments
 *    Large-scale scientific research and simulations
 *    Intimate multidisciplinary science collaboration

 Cost:  No charge.

 Deadline for Application:  April 19, 1991

 ___________________________________________________________________________

 Selection of Participants

 Ten or fifteen participants will be chosen using the following criteria:

 *    Working knowledge of Fortran or C and one operating system

 *    Computer-intensive research topic

 *    Balance of research topics in sciences, engineering, and computer
      science; and the possibility of interdisciplinary exchanges between
      participants.

 *    Willingness to serve as consultants or models for others interested in
      promoting the integration of high-performance computing technology
      into research.

 Computing Facilities

 Each participant will be provided with a workstation in a common office
 area, consulting, and computer accounts for a variety of systems:
 *    Connection Machine CM-2
 *    Cray Y-MP
 *    Convex C220
 *    IBM 3090 600E/VF
 *    Other advanced architecture machines

 Scientific workstations available to participants include Sun, Macintosh
 II, IBM RISC 6000, and NeXT.  High-performance graphics workstations, such
 as Ardent Titan, FPS, and SGI 4D/380 GTX, are also available.
 ___________________________________________________________________________
 For further information, contact:

    Ann Solem or Pat Malone

    Group C-2, MS B253
    Los Alamos National Laboratory
    Los Alamos, NM 87545  USA

    Telephone:  [phone]
    FAX:        [phone]

    Electronic mail: [e-mail]

 ___________________________________________________________________________

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

Date: 4 Apr 91 06:16:04 GMT
From: agate!stanford.edu!leland.Stanford.EDU![e-mail]  (Carl Gooch)
Subject: Re: nuclear rockets

In article <[e-mail]>
[e-mail] (Dave Rickel) writes:

>I saw an article in the local paper today about a nuclear booster the DoD was
>supposed to be developing for SDI.  From what i could gather, the working
>fluid was hydrogen, the Isp was on the order of 900 secs, and they were
>talking about testing in the atmosphere.  That would tend to imply a large
>thrust.  Ahh.  The paper said the project was code-named Timberwind, was
>secret, and that the source was talking on conditions of anonymity.

Looks like we all saw this article.

I don't know whether the project described in the NYTimes article is
the same as a project that the Air Force is working on, concerning
which I heard an (unclassified) presentation last year.

The Air Force's preliminary design used a particle-bed reactor.  That
is, the fissionable material was imbedded in small carbon (?) pellets.
The hydrogen coolant passed through this flock of particles and left
in a big hurry, Isp ~ 1000 sec.  Since the fissionable material and
fission products are never exposed to the coolant stream, the nastier
bits of radiation were neatly contained.

Their two main concerns at the time were (a) the thermal properties of
the pellets, which in small-scale tests showed a tendency to crack,
and (b) the obvious problem of, What if the thing goes down?  The
latter they were not too worried about, because the pellets are
structurally very strong.  Furthermore, if the crash causes the
reactor vessel to burst, the pellets are spread out enough to stop the
reaction.  Some clean-up would clearly be in order, and I don't know
how much radiation to expect to leak through any pellets that were
missed in the clean-up.

Again, I don't know that these projects are related; I'm only
reporting what I recall about the AFOSR project.

Carl

--
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Carl Gooch                       |        Why am I inside at a keyboard when
[e-mail]        |        I could be outside riding bike?
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

Date: 4 Apr 91 01:59:46 GMT
From: agate!bionet!uwm.edu!spool.mu.edu!cs.umn.edu!kksys!wd0gol!newave![e-mail]  (John A. Weeks III)
Subject: Re: How 'bout them Titans?

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Mary Shafer) writes:
> I'm a little embarrassed to admit this, but I thought the explosion was
> kind of pretty, in a pyromaniacal way.  Of course, knowing that the
> folks in the control room were OK helped.

Saw it on CNN--it was spectacular!  I liked how the explosion looked
like an expanding cylinder rather than the typical expanding hemishpere.
The sparklers caused by flying debris was a nice touch.

Nothing can quite compare to the submarine launched missile that failed
about a year back (you know, the one that did two or three spirals before
it was destroyed), so I give the Titan 4 booster a 9.2 on the excellent
explosion scale.  8-)

-john-

--
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
John A. Weeks III               [phone]             [e-mail]
NeWave Communications                       ...uunet!tcnet!wd0gol!newave!john

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

End of SPACE Digest V13 #357
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