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Subject: SPACE Digest V13 #387

SPACE Digest                                     Volume 13 : Issue 387

Today's Topics:
                   I-CON X
               Re: Increasing value/lb.
                Re: "Follies"
         Re: Dan Quayle on Mars (was: "Face" on Mars)
              Re: "Face" on Mars
     Re: Chemical rocket complexities (was Re: "Follies")
               Re: Increasing value/lb.
      Re: spacesuits (Was: Re: HST in-orbit Maintenance)

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

Date: 9 Apr 91 18:25:18 GMT
From: att!cbnewsj!cbnewsi![e-mail]  (The Resource, Poet-Magician of Quality)
Subject: I-CON X





           I  -  C  O  N     X

   The East Coast's Largest Convention of
        Science Fact,
            Fiction,
                and Fantasy

             April 19-21, 1991
State University, Stony Brook, Long Island, NY


      Guest of Honor: Dan Simmons
        Sci/Tech GOH: Robert L. Forward
          Artist GOH: Tom Canty
          Comics GOH: Stan Lee
          Gaming GOH: Ken Rolston
        Gallun Award: David Kyle

Major Special Guests: Majel Barrett (Star Trek)
                      Hal Clement (Author)
                      Robin Curtis (Star Trek)
                      Georgi Grechko (Cosmonaut)
                      E. Gary Gygax (D&D)
                      Tim Hildebrandt (Artist)
                      John Levene (Doctor Who)
                      Sylvester McCoy (Doctor Who)
                      Larry Niven (Author)
                      Deke Slayton (Astronaut)
                      Dean Stockwell (Quantum Leap)

(A complete guest list is available via email.)


    Films and Videos: Aliens, Angry Red Planet, Beast Master I, Beast
Master II, Bloodsucking Pharohs from, Blue Velvet, Brainstorm, Buckaroo
Banzai, Comedy of Terrors, Darkman, Flash Gordon, Fraken Horror,
Invaders from Mars, Last Man on Earth, Master of the World, Misery,
Pittsburgh, Prince of Darkness, Repoman, Swirlee, The Seventh Voyage of
Sinbad, The Terminator, They Live, Total Recall, Wings, 5000 Fingers of
Dr. T, Doctor Who episodes, Quantum Leap episodes, Star Trek episodes,
Star Trek: The Next Generation Episodes, The Outer Limits episodes, The
Twilight Zone episodes.

In addition to the personal appearances, panels and film program, I-CON
features an Art Show, Meet the Pros Parties, dealers' rooms, writers'
workshops, autograph party, no- minimum-bid auctions, gaming,
filksinging, japanimation, model rocketry, gaming tournaments, sneak
previews of upcoming films, videos, stargazing, ...

(An advance copy of the schedule is available via email.)


Ticket Information:

       $25 at the door (Children 5-11 years old, $10).
       Children under 12 must be accompanied by a ticketholding
       adult at all times.


(A hotel list available via email.)


For more information, send me email at [e-mail].

--
Brian Charles Kohn          AT&T Bell Laboratories Quality Process Center
Quality Management System   E-MAIL: att!hoqax!bicker  ([e-mail])
Consultant                  PHONE: [phone]        FAX: [phone]

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

Date: 9 Apr 91 17:41:22 GMT
From: agate!usenet.ins.cwru.edu!abvax!iccgcc![e-mail]
Subject: Re: Increasing value/lb.

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Fraering Philip) writes:
> In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Nick Szabo) writes:
>
>>sense that no nanotechnology, AI advances, etc. are needed.  The biggest
>>limiting factor: we aren't tracking the #@!$!$#@ comets yet!  We _do_ need
>>advances in astronomy to make this scheme work.  I hope to see such
>>advances in the next 5-15 years -- a combination of the new telescopes
>>coming on-line, and a new emphasis on comets as space resources by the
>>space community.  Small asteroids (silicon, metals) could be retrieved
>
>
> To summarize, though, you should be working on finding out more
> about these things instead of making a very general model for moving
> something.

Forgive me, Phil, but YOU should work on this, if you think it is
important.  Nick has already found something to work on.

dan herrick
[e-mail]

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

Date: 8 Apr 91 21:26:46 GMT
From: orca!bambam![e-mail]  (Bob Pendleton)
Subject: Re: "Follies"

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Nick Szabo) writes:
> I tend to think there is some room for paradigm improvment left, a task
> well suited to private enterprise.  Look at Pegasus, which
> recognizes there are many other important variables to a transportation
> system besides cost/lb.  OSC and Hercules chose to work on response
> time and entry-level costs, improving the former by over an
> order of magnitude and the latter by a factor of 5, while only raising
> cost/lb. to $8,000 (at current volumes).

Absolutely Right.

> Incidentally, they also
> introduced some untried launching technology, air launch and winged
> flight,

Not as much as you think.

The Pegasus is designed to be very close to the same size, weight, and
dimensions as the X15. A machine that was air launched many times.
They pushed the technology by going faster than the X15.  And doing it
with an all composite ablatively cooled wing. But after around mach 8
they drop the wings and become a nice wingless rocket again.

BTW, The Pegasus flight control system was an off the shelf system.
And the motors aren't all that different from the motors used in
Pershing II, another Hercules product.

Being a commercial project with a tight schedule and a tight budget
they did everything the could to NOT introduce untried technology.

The engineering cost of a rocket has little to do with the physical
size of the end product. The size of the product effects costs other
ways.

> and still spent only $50 million: clear evidence that it is
> scale, not new technology, that inflates the cost of a project.

They were able to do Pegasus on the cheap because they didn't have to
do congressionally imposed DOD paper work and follow congressionally
imposed DOD project management rules. And because they didn't have to
do a lot of new design. They reused stuff they already had.

According to a good friend of mine, who just happend to be a project
engineer on Pegasus, the same project done under DOD rules would have
taken 5 to 10 years and cost at least 10 times as much. She's talking
from experience, she's done similar projects under DOD rules.

She's also told me that the 2 Ps, Paper and Propellant, are the
dominant cost in the manufacture of a solid rocket motor.

Considering that your premises were totally wrong it isn't surprising
to see that your conclusion is totally wrong too.

Oh, yeah she says my cube/square posting is "basically" correct. She
spent 10 years building rockets and she is now doing research in
composite materials so I tend to believe her more than I believe Nick.

> This kind of paradigm improvement is not readily acheivable in the
> government monopoly, rule-by-popularity sphere (outside of defense,
> where getting killed in this war provides incentive to advance beyond
> fighting the last war).  Private enterprise still has room to greatly
> improve chemical rockets, but it is time for government R&D to move on
> to the next generation.

I agree with this statement.

--
              Bob Pendleton, speaking only for myself.
   [e-mail] or decwrl!esunix!bpendlet or utah-cs!esunix!bpendlet

                         Tools, not rules.

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

Date: 9 Apr 91 19:19:20 GMT
From: eru!hagbard!sunic!mcsun!inesc!unl!unl![e-mail]  (Jose Pina Coelho)
Subject: Re: Dan Quayle on Mars (was: "Face" on Mars)


In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail]
("Allen W. Sherzer") writes:

>    [...]

>   I know I'm going to regret this but...
I won't.

>   Like many other people, I thought Quale was pretty much a cement head when
>   he took office.
Good bet.

>        However, I must admit he has done a pretty good job running
>   the Space Council. For the first time in 20 years we are are seeing goals
>   for the space program and effective policy to back them up.

Probably someone else is making all the decisions and forcing him to
sign ?

>   Yes he did make the above quote but I think that has more to do with the
>   poor state of science education than Quale's ability.
So, it's the system again ? (Hey boys the 60's are back !)

>                 The last time I was
>   in DC I spoke with people who work with him. They say that he is a quick
>   learner and is a good administrator.

So  what you say is:
 - Dan Quayle is good at it.
 - When he opens his mouth he ain't in control, it's Bob that takes over
   (been seeing too much Twin Peaks lately).


Well as you say:
>   For the first time in 20 years we are are seeing goals
>   for the space program and effective policy to back them up.

let's hope it's not a coincidence.

--
Jose Pedro T. Pina Coelho   | BITNET/Internet: [e-mail]
Rua Jau N 1, 2 Dto          | UUCP: ...!mcsun!unl!jpc
1300 Lisboa, PORTUGAL       | Home phone: (+351) (1) 640767

- If all men were brothers, would you let one marry your sister ?

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

Date: 9 Apr 91 13:13:12 GMT
From: mips!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uwm.edu!csd4.csd.uwm.edu![e-mail]  (Mark William Hopkins)
Subject: Re: "Face" on Mars

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] writes:
>>Mars has never had a civilization.

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (will) writes:
>    Now do not laugh at this since some Japanese belive this too be true.
>
>    Ok, 4 years ago there was a show on JTV (of course), well, the show was
>about Atlantis, life on Mars, etc, etc..  Now the Objective of the show was to
>point out that the Japanese may have came to earth after they destroyed mars in
>a nuclear war...

Maybe so, but only if THEIR ancestors in turn came from Earth as colonists.
Because, after all, Japanese are human.

Then the faces on Mars is the remains of a monument from that far gone era
of space colonization, whose only remains we see today are the faces (:

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

Date: 8 Apr 91 13:27:48 GMT
From: usc!cs.utexas.edu!titan![e-mail]  (Donald Heskett)
Subject: Re: Chemical rocket complexities (was Re: "Follies")


In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Glenn A. Serre) writes:

>Government-sponsored development should concentrate on exotic technologies
>like gas-guns, EML, tethers, etc.  Anyone out there disagree?

Could you explain what you mean by "tethers"?

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

Date: 9 Apr 91 22:15:35 GMT
From: rex!rouge![e-mail]  (Fraering Philip)
Subject: Re: Increasing value/lb.


Nick Szabo wrote (among other things):

NS>sense that no nanotechnology, AI advances, etc. are needed.  The biggest
NS>limiting factor: we aren't tracking the #@!$!$#@ comets yet!  We _do_ need
NS>advances in astronomy to make this scheme work.  I hope to see such
NS>advances in the next 5-15 years -- a combination of the new telescopes
NS>coming on-line, and a new emphasis on comets as space resources by the
NS>space community.  Small asteroids (silicon, metals) could be retrieved

And among other things, I wrote:

PF> To summarize, though, you should be working on finding out more
PF> about these things instead of making a very general model for moving
PF> something.

and Dan Herrick wrote:

DH>Forgive me, Phil, but YOU should work on this, if you think it is
DH>important.  Nick has already found something to work on.

Not quite (although I have been thinking a _great deal_ about if it
is possible to launch a _cheap_ comet probe) what I meant; I meant to
say that there are simply too many unknowns about comets to do more than
'back-of-the-envelope' calculations about moving one. All we have are some
very fuzzy pictures of a very fast flyby of one comet. Noone is really
sure of what the _density_ of a comet is. Finally, since I had mailed
to Nick in e-mail a couple weeks before he posted a back-of-the-elvelope
drawing of how one might possibly move a comet, I guess one could say
that Nick didn't find something to work on, but that I found Nick something
to work on (except for the fact that Nick was working on this sort of thing
before I sent it; he wasn't plagarizing, I even think I saw someone else
I can't remember doing a similar back-of-the-envelope thing; maybe it's
from science fiction?)

Besides, if he sesigns whatever-it-is now, the most it will be good for
is recycled paper when the first comet rendezvous takes place (I think
the CRAF mission).

Since January Nick and I have exchanges some several thousand words in
E-mail; given the context of those messages, of which some were stored, some
not, and some lost by accident, the message Dan Herrick responded to
wasn't meant as critically as it sounded. The topics of those messages,
when it wasn't the Great Launcher War, was overwhelmingly about
cometary probes, 'cometary aerobraking,' and related topics.

I hope Nick can colloborate this; heck, what I said in that posting
isn't that far off from what Nick himself has posted over the past
year.




--
Phil Fraering
[e-mail]
"The geomagnetic storm has ended. Activity has returned to generally
unsettled conditions." - Cary Oler in a Geomagnetic Storm Update.

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

Date: 9 Apr 91 18:17:07 GMT
From: mcsun!ukc!edcastle![e-mail]  (J Gillespie)
Subject: Re: spacesuits (Was: Re: HST in-orbit Maintenance)

[e-mail] (Fraering Philip) writes:

>Better spacesuits would help your idea and many others as well.
>Any ideas?

At least one SF writer (Jerry Pournelle) has postulated spacesuits
made from thin, flexible, elastic material, rather like the neoprene
used in wetsuits.  Cooling would be by sweating through the suit
itself (would Gore-tex be of any use? :-).  From my very vague
knowledge of current spacesuits, most of the bulk is radiation and
micrometeorite shielding, and one of the main problems is the joints.

Hmmm.  That triggers a memory.  Some time ago (a couple of years?) I
saw a feature on a new type of diving suit on some TV science show
(Beyond 2000?  Tomorrow's World?).  It was a new type of atmosphere
suit, and the arms and legs were articulated with a series of
ingeniously arranged revolute joints, rather than the spherical type
which has caused so many problems in the past.  It was much lighter
and simpler than an equivalent JIM type suit, and I'm sure that some
mention was made of NASA being interested in the design.  Anyone else
got a better memory?

>Phil Fraering
--
  James Gillespie,     /~~~~~~~~\   Every American citizen has a chance of
 Edinburgh University /   @  @   \  becoming president.  But that's just a
   [e-mail]    /     <      \ risk they have to take.
____________________/  \________/  \__________________________________________

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

End of SPACE Digest V13 #387
*******************