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Subject: SPACE Digest V13 #430

SPACE Digest                                     Volume 13 : Issue 430

Today's Topics:
              Re: Galileo status reports
          Re: Atlas Centaur bites the big one, 4/18
        Re: comsat cancellations and lawsuits
              Source of Einstein Quote?
  Launch Costs XXIV -- Wright Bros. Flyer to carry tanks to Kuwait!
            NERVA vs. other nukes
              Re: Galileo status reports
           Re: Advancing Launch Technology
           Re: Uploading to alpha Centauri
               Re: Saturn V blueprints
           Re: Advancing Launch Technology

Administrivia:

    Submissions to the SPACE Digest/sci.space should be mailed to
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----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 19 Apr 91 18:26:52 GMT
From: agate!bionet!uwm.edu!cs.utexas.edu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!watserv1!watdragon!watyew![e-mail]  (James Davis Nicoll)
Subject: Re: Galileo status reports

[e-mail] (Jeff Moersch) writes:

>So how come the Galileo status reports stop just as soon as the spacecraft
>starts having problems?  I would think this is a time people would be very
>interested in having up to date information on what's going on.  The people
>who paid for the mission deserve to know what's up!

    I doubt the folks who post NASA related news are paid to do so. Is
it possible that whatever problem Galileo is having falls within their area
of responsibility and they are now busy fixing the problem and will post when
they have time?

                                James Nicoll

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

Date: 19 Apr 91 14:57:57 GMT
From: rochester!sol![e-mail]  (Brian Yamauchi)
Subject: Re: Atlas Centaur bites the big one, 4/18

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Robert Gutierrez) writes:

>I wrote:
>> Aside from the usual news reports, does anybody have any better details
>> on the Atlas Centuar KSC self-destructed???
>>
>> I know the payload was a Japanese satellite, but I'd like to know
>> if anybody knows which one it was?

>I'll bet those Arainespace launchings are looking better and better
>every day to everybody else ...

According to CNN, this comsat was to take the place of one that was
destroyed when an Ariane IV exploded.

Multiply your $100 million dollar ouch by a factor of two...
--
_______________________________________________________________________________

Brian Yamauchi                University of Rochester
[e-mail]        Department of Computer Science
_______________________________________________________________________________

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

Date: 20 Apr 91 02:26:58 GMT
From: rex!rouge![e-mail]  (Fraering Philip)
Subject: Re: comsat cancellations and lawsuits

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (25362-roe mcburnett(H053)m000) writes:

>OK-- What in the world is R100 and or R101,  Can you give any references
>where one could read up on them.

>I don't wish to flame anyone here but suggesting that *WE* read something
>about something without the least reference as to what it is or where to
>even find references to it is, IMHO, impolite at the least.

 Then please accept my abject apologies. The R100 and R101, as I
thought everyone knew (but I was mistaken), were airships built in
Britian in the late 20's or early 30's (I think). Wait, here's a
totally inadequate reference from World Book encyclopedia, which
says:

''The British constructed two other large airships, the R-100 and the
R-101. The R-101 crashed against a hill in France in 1930, killing 47
persons. This ended active British interest in airships, and the R-100
was dismantled.``

Totally inadequate, because, the reasons for the crash of the R-101
were directly traceable to extremely bad design, mismanagement, and
negligence. There were two different consortiums building the craft. I
believe the R-100 was designed by the same person who designed the
Lancaster bonber (but I'm not sure).

After the R-101 crashed in France after being barely able to cross the
channel, the R-100 was ordered scrapped, "because of the unsafety of
airships, etc., etc., and if we the bureaucrats can't build one, then
noone else should be allowed to..." The order to scrap it was (I
think, but again, I'm not sure) was sent to Canada, where the R-100
had gone on its maiden flight, which pretty much took place without a
hitch.

I suppose any good book on the history of airships would have more and
more accurate details than myself. Henry might also want to interject
some cold hard facts that are probrably counter to my beliefs.

--
Phil Fraering
[e-mail]
"The reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extermes, in
which the fear of being contradicted leads the writer to strip himself
of almost all sense and meaning." - Winston Churchill, _The Birth of
Britian_
"X-rays are a hoax." - Lord Kelvin

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

Date: 19 Apr 91 14:51:58 GMT
From: agate!bionet!uwm.edu!rpi!masscomp![e-mail]  (Dave Davis)
Subject: Source of Einstein Quote?

[Followups to rec.arts.books, please.]

I'm trying to track down an exact citation for this quote,
which I have reason to think is by Albert Einstein:

    "Everything should be made as simple as possible,
     but not simpler."

If anyone could post a context & source for this, that would be
wonderful. BTW, I've been through most of the standard quotations
dictionaries, and all of the books by & about Einstein that I
could lay my hands on.

Thanks (and admiration) in advance.

Dave Davis    -These are my views, and not those of Concurrent.
{harvard,uunet,petsd}!masscomp!daved

QOTD:

Some say love, it is a hunger,
an endless aching need.
I say love, it is a flower,
and you its only seed.
            Lyrics from The_Rose

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

Date: 16 Apr 91 15:39:03 GMT
From: unisoft!fai!sequent!crg5![e-mail]  (Nick Szabo)
Subject: Launch Costs XXIV -- Wright Bros. Flyer to carry tanks to Kuwait!

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Fraering Philip) writes:

[Some proposals for lower chem launchers, and Wright Bros. w/C-5 payload]

I agree with the general gist of your comments, that going towards high
up-front cost, heavier lift vehicles is harmful, not helpful, to developing
new technology.  IMHO, if an organization can greatly lower development
costs (eg <$500 million for GEO satcom carrying launcher) _and_ cut
operation cost by a large factor, then it would be worthwhile to build.
If we want to cut costs we need to cut costs, not propose yet more $billions
in the name of cutting costs.  It is well nigh impossible that government
could do such a thing, much less want to do such a thing.  If industry wants
to spend their own money on such a project, I'm every bit in favor of that.
Meanwhile, government should concentrate on advancing the state of the
art, not developing and operating chemical rockets.


--
Nick Szabo            [e-mail]
"The biscuits and the syrup never come out even" -- Robert A. Heinlein
The above opinions are my own and not related to those of any
organization I may be affiliated with.

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

Date: Fri, 19 Apr 91 03:56 EST
From: "JOHN E. PERRY" <[e-mail]>
Subject: NERVA vs. other nukes
X-Envelope-To: [e-mail]


Someone last week really panned NERVA as a concept for nuclear
propulsion. Theree were, however, good reasons for the NERVA
configuration.

Above all, graphite is the only material that is strong and maintains
that strengh right up to its sublimation point (it doesn't melt).
All other "refractory " materials--tungsten, molybdemum, SiN,
BN, etc.--have the strength of mashed potatoes (and some have that
consistency) at just a couple of thousand C. The great advantage
of graphite is that if you can keep oxidizing gases away from
it, you don't have to worry about whether it gets too hot.

I don't doubt that there were problems to solve with NERVA, but
I really don't see how you can call an accident that scatters
a few million highly radioactiveparticles less worrisome than
one that scatters a few thousand hoghly fadioactive rods.

Please excuse the lack of editing; I haven't yet figures out how
to make our VAX recognize my CoCo's charactrs.
                   --John P.

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

Date: 19 Apr 91 17:02:26 GMT
From: rochester![e-mail]  (Paul Dietz)
Subject: Re: Galileo status reports

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Jeff W. Hyche) writes:

>    What kind of problems is the Galileo having?

The news reports said the main antenna did not fully deploy.
If true, the mission could be in big trouble.

    Paul F. Dietz
    [e-mail]

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

Date: 19 Apr 91 19:01:04 GMT
From: mojo![e-mail]  (Doug Mohney)
Subject: Re: Advancing Launch Technology

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Nick Szabo) writes:
>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Doug Mohney) writes:
>
>[I write -- launch cost curve doesn't give efficient space colonization
>until beyond 2500]
>
>>You are asserting this? 2500? Are you smoking something?

Funny, soon after I posted my message, someone else also wondered if you had
recently participated in drug testing.

>I am sorry it violates your wishes.  Now sit down, get the data for
>launch costs between 1957-1991, and fit the curve for yourself.
>You will find no more than a two order of magnitude drop by 2500,
>still well above the cost needed for affordable manned travel
>to GEO, L-5 and beyond (3-4 orders of magnitude, depending whose
>argument you use).
>
>The way we break out of the curve is by working towards more advanced
>launch and upper stage technology, not by wishful thinking and rehashing
>of the same old ideas and technologies.

Nick, if you are so blind as to use a concocted example to support your
arguements, I can't see why you just don't shoot everyone at NASA above the
level of technical manager and hope that they are randomly replaced with
brilliant people who are willing to espouse your ideas. I'm quite sure the data
is correct. However, it is laughable to try to project out the curve for 500
years (can I round off 1990 to 2000 for the sake of arguement?).

It is the same sort of GARBAGE which was used to by the Club of Rome clique in
the late '70s to say the world is going to hell in a handbasket in 20 years,
due to increases in population and limited resource allocation, with NO
ACCOUNTING WHATSOEVER for A) Incremental technological advances B) New
technological advances C) New Technologies applied to old problems and D)
Technological advances which we have no way of predicting, but which come
together due to circumstances.

You can smugly point at the "fitted curve" all you want. As others have pointed
out, there ARE efforts to look at laser launching, tethers, and other New And
Improved technologies aside from chemicals. They all have drawbacks. You want
to throw money at them to make them work NOW. TODAY.

In the Long View, our technological approaches of today are going to be
different from those in 2100. Fundmental advances in physics, chemistry,
computer science, materials, and biology (will we find a way to grow fuel? :-)
will make your "curve" irrelevant.

However, patience here is required. Evolution, not revolution, will get us
into orbit, and it is the things which we cannot see, or project, which will
provide the most radical revolutions in space exploration.



     Signature envy: quality of some people to put 24+ lines in their .sigs
  -- >                  [e-mail]                        < --

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

Date: 18 Apr 91 19:21:10 GMT
From: ssc-vax!bcsaic!hsvaic![e-mail]  (Dani Eder)
Subject: Re: Uploading to alpha Centauri

In reference to the time dilation effect making relativistic space travel
seem like faster then light...

The ultimate in apparent time dilation would occur if you travel to another
star at the speed of light.  Now, how does one do this?  Imagine an improved
scanning tunneling microscope that can tell you what atoms it is seeing.
Freeze the crew solid, and scan their entire bodies atom by atom.  Then
send a radio message reading "carbon,oxygen,hydrogen,hydrogen..." to a
receiving station at the destination.  There a set of drexler-style
nano-machines build a copy of the crew atom by atom.  Finally, you unfreeze
the crew.

The energy it takes to send the description of a human is about a million
times less than the energy to physically send that human.  The advantage
is greater if you use data compression (a lot of protein molecules are
repeated through the body, etc.).  Of course, you first have to deliver the
nanomachines to another star, but they could be a lot smaller than the
life support system to keep a crew alive for years, and the nano-machines
could use a propulsion system that was too violent for living people
(like a gigantic version of a particle accelerator).

I think of this process as 'uploading' people on an interstellar net.

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

Date: 18 Apr 91 19:09:52 GMT
From: ssc-vax!bcsaic!hsvaic![e-mail]  (Dani Eder)
Subject: Re: Saturn V blueprints

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Doug Phillipson ) writes:
>of data they could be drawing on for a real station.  I heard that we can't even
>recreate Apollo because the blueprints are missing. Thats utterly criminal. Heads
>should roll just for that.  To think the American taxpayers spent 25 Billion
>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!
>

I wish the rumor that the Apollo program blueprints are gone could be laid
to rest.  I have been in the room at the Marshall Space Flight Center where
they keep copies of all the drawings.  On aperture cards.  These are IBM
punch cards with a square of microfilm embedded in them.  There are about
2 million cards in this room.  They not only have the Saturn V, but everthing
ever done by MSFC (I was looking for External Tank drawings at the time).

The problem in re-creating the Saturn V is not finding the drawings, it is
finding vendors who can supply mid-1960's vintage hardware (like guidance
system components), and the fact that the launch pads and VAB have been
converted to Space Shuttle use, so you have no place to launch from.

By the time you redesign to accommodate available hardware and re-modify
the launch pads, you may as well have started from scratch with a clean
sheet design.

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

Date: 16 Apr 91 18:36:58 GMT
From: unisoft!fai!sequent!crg5![e-mail]  (Nick Szabo)
Subject: Re: Advancing Launch Technology

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Doug Mohney) writes:

[I write -- launch cost curve doesn't give efficient space colonization
until beyond 2500]

>You are asserting this? 2500? Are you smoking something?

I am sorry it violates your wishes.  Now sit down, get the data for
launch costs between 1957-1991, and fit the curve for yourself.
You will find no more than a two order of magnitude drop by 2500,
still well above the cost needed for affordable manned travel
to GEO, L-5 and beyond (3-4 orders of magnitude, depending whose
argument you use).

The way we break out of the curve is by working towards more advanced
launch and upper stage technology, not by wishful thinking and rehashing
of the same old ideas and technologies.



--
Nick Szabo            [e-mail]
"The biscuits and the syrup never come out even" -- Robert A. Heinlein
The above opinions are my own and not related to those of any
organization I may be affiliated with.

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

End of SPACE Digest V13 #430
*******************