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Subject: SPACE Digest V13 #398

SPACE Digest                                     Volume 13 : Issue 398

Today's Topics:
                  A $50 CCD?
           Re^2:Space Stations, Money, & Star Trek
      Re: At what time and date does the shuttle Atlantis land ?
              Re: Light pollution slowed
        Re: comsat cancellations and lawsuits
             Re: Space technology

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Date: 10 Apr 91 00:39:20 GMT
From: usc!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!thunder.mcrcim.mcgill.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!ccu.umanitoba.ca!bison!sys6626!draco!swrdpnt![e-mail]  (Ford Prefect)
Subject: A $50 CCD?


  Could you give us some details regarding this $50 CCD you mentioned?
I have been using the SBIG ST-4 CCD Camera, which is on the low end of
the market, and which runs for about $800 U.S.  Is this chip capable of
long (by long I mean greater than 1 second) exposures, or is it a video
camera chip?  I would be *very* skeptical of a CCD chip at that price if
you want to do anything serious with it (like make it work).
   If, however, it is legit, I'll take 40.
       Scott Young


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Date: Thu, 11 Apr 91 11:58:22 -0400
From: 9.80::hack (Edmund Hack)
To: "[e-mail]"@EAST.DNET.NASA.GOV
Subject: Re^2:Space Stations, Money, & Star Trek

In a message From: tahoe!jimi!herbert![e-mail]  (Doug Phillipson )

>    I can't believe that after Skylab and Mir we need MORE data! We built
There is a very good reason why WE (the countries other than the current
USSR) need more human medical data.  The USSR has not (to my knowledge) shared
data from past missions with anyone else except in limited cases.  For example,
a space medicine MD from the USSR would not answer specific questions about
the state of the year-long crews from Mir at a space medicine meeting (or in
private) citing patient-doctor confidentiality.  A few generalities have
come out, but the USSR has not been too specific.  It is probably a combination
of Soviet secrecy & paranoia and a "we paid a _lot_ for this data, why should
we help you for free" attitude.  (I can understand the latter - as an aside
one of the problems with the B-2 and A-12 is that the only military airframe
maufacturer that has fielded a composite military plane (Lockheed F-117) is
not on the project and not about to share data with its competitors.  It is
an important competitive advantage that was developed in house on company IRAD
money.)

The US has data from Shuttle and Skylab, but the information from the USSR
indicates that a lot of important changes take place at about 90 days.
Skylab crews were up for 84 days max.  However, the US and USSR signed a
deal to exchange future medical data in return for the US providing some
medical gear for Mir that was tested on Shuttle (including an echocardiograph).
The equipment is modified commercial, by the way, not total custom.  In
addition, a lot of new instruments and tests are now available for the medicos
to get much more subtle readings on the physiological state of humans in micro-
gravity.  There are still controversies and unknowns to resolve.  For example,
I have a team working on a real-time expert system to monitor crew exercise,
determine cardiovascular fitness, and prescribe future exercise regimens.  The
model used to assess fitness has undergone several revisions as more data
is developed here on earth.

>a space shuttle, for heavens sake, from previous data and extrapolation of
>learned data. The magnificent thing flew the first time with no unmanned
I would point out that the US had a long string of test vehicles for hypersonic
flight, data from the Mercury/Gemini/Apollo programs, X-15, and lots of
wind tunnel time.  In addition, billions and billions (to coin a phrase) of
CPU cycles were expended in modeling the systems.  Computational Fluid
Dynamics is tricky, non-linear and still in its infancy with a lot of major
questions still to be answered.  However, it is a simple problem compared
with human physiology.  Despite what PETA and other animal rights groups
say, computer models of the processes of the body are inadequate.  There is
no way to get the data on life sciences without going up there for a long
while with instruments and taking samples and data.

>trials.  Data isn't the problem.  Vision, imagination and motivation are
>the problem.  We don't have a clear national goal.  I wonder where we would
Well, NASA has a clear goal - Freedom, a lunar base and humans to Mars.
Unfortunately, we don't have the money for the latter yet or a consensus
in Congress.

>be now if Kennedy hadn't been killed.  We would probably at least have a manned
Or LBJ run out of office by Vietnam.

>Martian base by now.  We have some very smart professionals out there and
>Gigabytes of data they could be drawing on for a real station.  I heard that
Freedom is a real space station - it is not optimal for anyone right now,
but it could be a real boon to the microgravity people for a long time with
proper experiment design and planning, especially since it will be man-tended
for quite a while.

>we can't even recreate Apollo because the blueprints are missing. That's
>utterly criminal.
The blueprints exist as was recently disclosed - however the tooling, the
engineers and the companies that built lots of it are gone too.  As they are
for any number of military and commercial projects - could IBM build you an
1100 series computer today or Ford a 1964.5 Mustang?  They were around during
Apollo, too and I'll bet that blueprints exist.  Fat chance on getting a new
one built.

> Heads
>should roll just for that.  To think the American taxpayers spent 25 Billion
Heads rarely roll except in times of revolution.  You get ratholed or sent to
Siberia to count snowflakes.

>on a moon program, a quite successful one at that, and we can't recreate it or
>come close to doing it again after we have already done it once!
The SEI program doesn't want to recreate it, we want to do it better - more
science, better science, and back to stay.  Give us a big heavy lifter and some
money and we'll have a _base_ up in a reasonable time.

| Edmund Hack - Lockheed Engineering & Sciences Co. - Houston, TX
| Intelligent Systems Department   - [e-mail]
| Opinions and factoids presented here are mine and may or may not resemble
| those of NASA or LESC, depending on how you hold them up to the light...

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

Date: 8 Apr 91 21:45:26 GMT
From: skipper![e-mail]  (Mary Shafer)
Subject: Re: At what time and date does the shuttle Atlantis land ?

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Rene Schaad) writes:

   I know that the shuttle is supposed to land at Edwards AFB on wednesday.
   But when exactly? I would be glad if someone knowing the time could
   post it here.

Wednesday, 0733 PDT.

Probably on RWY 22, since there's some water on the lakebed.  I
haven't checked which lakebed runways are open but they don't like to
land heavy vehicles on them if they (the runways, not the vehicles)
might be a little soft.


--
Mary Shafer  [e-mail]  ames!skipper.dfrf.nasa.gov!shafer
           NASA Ames Dryden Flight Research Facility, Edwards, CA
                     Of course I don't speak for NASA
 "A MiG at your six is better than no MiG at all"--Unknown US fighter pilot

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

Date: 12 Apr 91 00:03:22 GMT
From: stanford.edu!neon.Stanford.EDU!Neon![e-mail]  (John McCarthy)
Subject: Re: Light pollution slowed

Here's a scheme for eliminating light pollution.  The astronomers
get 9/10 of the time for observing, and the rest of us get 1/10
of the time for street lights to be on and headlights to be on.

In fact the astronomers get 9 out of every 10 milliseconds,
and the lights are on ten times as intense for the remaining
millisecond.

Moral: Where there's a moral problem, look for the technological
fix.

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in article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Gary Coffman) writes:
> In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:
>>Re: E.T.'s

>>Another problem is;  What if the guys you find don't think of us as enemies, or
>>even potential slaves, but FOOD?  No thanks!
>>There is the argument, tho, that since we have now advertised our presence to
>>the surrounding 60 ly sphere in space (TV started in 1936), we should at least
>>find out if we are attracting unwanted attention that we should prepare for.
>
Recall who the star of the very first TV broadcast was? Adolph Hitler, opening
the 1936 Olympics.

Mike

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

Date: 10 Apr 91 05:00:41 GMT
From: skipper![e-mail]  (Mary Shafer)
Subject: Re: comsat cancellations and lawsuits


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

:In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Henry Spencer) writes:

:>>By the way, the suit is against NASA and not the government...
:>
:> A curious assertion.  NASA *is* the government, being a government agency.

:NASA, like the Smithsonian Institution are in a murky gray area.
:They are sort of connected with the government, but neither are of
:cabinet level.  Have you ever heard of the Secretary of NASA?  DoD
:ranks much higher in the government hierarchy and actually has a
:Secretary of Defense that meets regularly with the President.
:Admiral Truly as NASA Administrator is not a member of this inner
:circle known as the President's Cabinet.  NASA isn't really the
:government, certainly not to the extent that The Department of the
:Interior, the Department of Defense, Department of Transportation
:and the Department of Commerce are.  NASA is not in the same league
:with these departments and that is part of the problem.  They all
:meddle in NASA's affairs to some extent.

Boy are you confused.  Certainly we're not a Cabinet level agency, but
we're still a federal agency, part of the Executive Branch.  You may
recall that there are three branches of the federal government:
Congressional, Executive, and Judicial.  NASA belongs exclusively in
the Executive Branch.

The Smithsonian is not exclusively part of the Executive Branch, as
it's administered in part by Congress.  That was part of the deal when
Smithson gave it to the government.

I'll repeat this once, and then you're on your own.

NASA is the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, a U S
Government agency.  We are part of the Executive Branch.

You may think you can bully Henry about the US Gov't structure because
he's a Canadian, but you can't bully me, a member of the Executive
Branch of the US Gov't.

--
Mary Shafer  [e-mail]  ames!skipper.dfrf.nasa.gov!shafer
           NASA Ames Dryden Flight Research Facility, Edwards, CA
                     Of course I don't speak for NASA
 "A MiG at your six is better than no MiG at all"--Unknown US fighter pilot

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

Date: 12 Apr 91 04:59:52 GMT
From: [e-mail]  (Phil OKunewick)
Subject: Re: Space technology

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Robert W Murphree) writes:
>I like what Carl Sagan said, if you want to develop non-stick frying pans
>you're better off funding a program for developing non-stick frying pans
>99% of the time(rather than a program for sending box cars with men in them
>to space).  When James Webb, the chief NASA administrator invented the words
>SPINOFF I think he developed one of the all time great public relations gimmic
>of the 60's...

(Hey, this looks like a great flame war thread.)

Well, there yuh go again, trying to not give credit where credit is due.

   Many uses were not really dreamed of (i.e. the non-stick frying
pan) until something showed up that would make it practical.  I doubt
many people had non-stick frying pans in mind when they developed
teflon.

   Teflon probably wouldn't even have been invented if NASA hadn't
needed a slippery, heat-resistant, abrasion-resistant, non-conductive
material.  Matter of fact, the government spending millions of dollars
to develop a non-stick frying pan would most likely have been labeled
a huge waste of taxpayers money; thus the program would have probably
been killed after a few million had been spent, but before there were
any usable results.  But once the material was developed, it became
clear that the uses for this stuff were endless.

   Larry Niven keeps referring to a superconducting thread in his
science fiction books - very strong, very thin, and its temperature
is always uniform, i.e. freeze one end and the entire thread freezes.
This obviously has a lot of practical uses, but I don't see anybody
pressing for research to develop it.  Thirty years ago, teflon was
just as unlikely as this thread is today.

   One space spin-off was directly related to geology (and hey, this
_is_ cross-posted to that newsgroup): 4.5 million-year-old moon rocks.
These showed that the earth and moon formed at the same time, and thus
partly settled one of the greatest disputes in geoscience.  From this,
we were able to develop a better theory on how the solar system
formed.  Although at first this doesn't seem nearly as useful as a
non-stick frying pan, the amount it has helped us understand the world
around us (and thus help preserve it) is incalculable.

   But, as you can see, it's very easy to say "it would have been
invented anyway" or "the money should have been spent directly on
developing blah".  Trying to show these people just how many useful
side effects of the space program exist, is like trying to teach a pig
to sing.  It's a waste of your time, and it annoys the pig.

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End of SPACE Digest V13 #398
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