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Subject: SPACE Digest V13 #450

SPACE Digest                                     Volume 13 : Issue 450

Today's Topics:
              Polar to Rectangular Math
             Saturn V and the ALS
          Re: Energia (was Re: Saturn V blueprints)
          Re: Atlas Centaur bites the big one, 4/18
             Geo-orbit information ??????
            Next Weather Satelite

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: Tue, 23 Apr 1991 18:29 CDT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Polar to Rectangular Math

>Could someone be kind enough to email me the formulas used to convert a stars
>polar coordinates to their rectangular coordinates?  I can do it on my
[...]
>I would like to be able to convert a stars RA, DEC and distance into a X Y and
>Z coordinate system with the sun at 0,0,0.  Can this be done?  Has it been
>done?  I want to know because I'd like to write a program that'll plot the
>stars from any 3d coordinate I care to choose.

Yeah, I'm sure a lot of us have done that program. If you need references,
dig up _Sky & Telescope_ magazine. Look in the 1974 or 1975 index for and
article called "The Sky from Capella". The math is there, along with an
explaination of how it works.

As for myself, I did my port of the proceedures about 1976 in VAX Fortran
then on the C64/C128 in BASIC and the Amiga in C. It can be quite an
exercise in programming, math and astronomy. And the maps you make are
pretty neat, too.

Robert Brown
[e-mail]

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

Date: 23 Apr 91 20:06:19 GMT
From: pasteur!agate!bionet!uwm.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!samsung!noose.ecn.purdue.edu!en.ecn.purdue.edu![e-mail]  (/dev/null)
Subject: Saturn V and the ALS



Okay, Saturn WAS a good rocket.  It MAY be as good as the proposed
ALS (though I seriously doubt it for numerous reasons).

What I was trying to say is that the only costs of the Saturn is not
the booster.  The overall economic impact of stepping back 20+ years
in technology because something might have had, at one time, a track
record, might be devaststing in aerospace and other industries.

(Also, much of the Saturn would have to be redesigned making it more
of a Saturn VI than a Saturn V)

We would lose the edge we have in Aerospace by making compromises of this sort.
The Saturn was an excellent rocket for its time.  We CAN do better.
I KNOW we can do it cheaper (if we do or not is another story ...).
The ALS is attempting to do this and I applaud.  To go running under the
banner of an older rocket is to be conservative to the point
of stodgyness :).  As I have said before, if ALS proves as great a
technological albatross as the shuttle, then scrap it and try something
else, but ALWAYS try to do better.  The minute we start saying "good
enough" (as it has been said of the Saturn V!) is when we die as an
aerospace leader!!


--
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Brent L. Irvine     |            These are MY opinions   |
| Malt Beverage Analyst     |            As if they counted...:) |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+

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

Date: 24 Apr 91 00:16:12 GMT
From: hub.ucsb.edu!ucsbuxa![e-mail]  (Charles Frank Radley)
Subject: Re: Energia (was Re: Saturn V blueprints)



Federal law prohibits The Us Government ( including NASA )
from purchasing launches on foreign launch vehicles.

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

Date: 23 Apr 91 15:32:52 GMT
From: mips!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!utzoo![e-mail]  (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Atlas Centaur bites the big one, 4/18

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Allen W. Sherzer) writes:
>Wasn't this the first failure of a Centaur upper stage? I have
>been looking around but can't find another one which didn't work.

Sounds like you didn't look back far enough. :-)  Centaur's development
was a memorable horror story, although it has been very reliable in
recent times.
--
And the bean-counter replied,           | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
"beans are more important".             |  [e-mail]  utzoo!henry

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

Date: 23 Apr 91 19:48:18 GMT
From: csus.edu!wuarchive!sdd.hp.com!spool.mu.edu!cs.umn.edu!uc!noc.MR.NET!gacvx2.gac.edu!vax1.mankato.msus.edu![e-mail]
Subject: Geo-orbit information ??????

Hello.  The name's Omne, any hardcore trek type person should recognize the
character, and I am looking for some information.
I'm doing a paper on geosynchronous satellites for a course here, and am
looking for relevant information on the topic.  Two main things I need to find
are 1) the number of objects in geosynchronous orbit, and 2) theories on how to
get a burned out satellite out of geo-orbit.
This isn't a joke; it's a term paper.
Hope to get some responses from you soon.

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

Date:        Tue, 23 Apr 91 12:08:30 ADT
From: [e-mail]
To: "Space Digest" <[e-mail]>
Subject:     Next Weather Satelite


Brian Dunbar
NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.                April 22, 1991
(Phone:  [phone])

Frank Lepore
NOAA National Environmental Satellite, Data & Information
Service, Suitland, Md.
(Phone:  [phone])

Bud Littin
NOAA National Weather Service, Silver Spring, Md.
(Phone:  [phone])

Jim Elliott
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
(Phone:  [phone])

RELEASE:  91-60

NASA TO LAUNCH NOAA-D METEOROLOGICAL SATELLITE

    NASA has scheduled the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration's NOAA-D meteorological satellite for launch no
earlier than May 14, officials from NOAA and NASA announced
today.

    Like other NOAA satellites, NOAA-D will collect
meteorological data and transmit the information free of charge
directly to users around the world to enhance local weather
analysis and forecasting.  The users include more than 100
national governments.

    In addition to assisting local weather forecasting, the
satellite data are used for agriculture, fishing, forest
management, flood control, fire detection, volcano emission
detection, vegetation mapping, oceanography and global climate
change research.

    Launch time for the 3,127-pound spacecraft is planned for
11:52 a.m. EDT.  The satellite will be launched from Vandenberg
Air Force Base, Calif.  To be known as NOAA-12 once it is in
orbit, the satellite will be launched on a U.S. Air Force Atlas-E
launch vehicle into a 450-nautical-mile circular, near polar,
sun-synchronous orbit with an inclination angle of 98.70 degrees
to the Equator.  Orbital period will be 101 minutes, with the
spacecraft crossing the Equator at 7:30 p.m. northbound and 7:30
a.m. southbound, local solar time.

    NOAA-D will carry five primary instruments:  the Advanced
Very High Resolution Radiometer, a radiation detection instrument
to determine cloud cover and surface temperature; the High
Resolution Infrared Radiation Sounder and the Microwave Sounding
Unit, which combine to detect and measure energy from the
troposphere to construct a temperature profile from the surface
to an altitude of about 6 miles.

    Also onboard the spacecraft is the Space Environment Monitor
to measure the population of the Earth's radiation belts and the
particle precipitation phenomena resulting from solar activity,
and the ARGOS/Data Collection System which receives signals from
approximately 2,000 platforms (buoys, balloons and remote weather
stations) and transmits the data to a central processing facility
on the ground.

    Operational ground facilities include Command and Data
Acquisition stations in Fairbanks, Alaska, and Wallops Island,
Va.; the Satellite Operations Control Center and Data Processing
Services Subsystem facilities in Suitland, Md.; and a data
receiving station in Lannion, France.

    The NOAA-D is a TIROS-N (Television Infrared Observation
Satellite) class spacecraft, built by the General Electric Astro
Space Division.  The world's first weather satellite was a TIROS,
launched April 1, 1960.

    The TIROS program is a cooperative effort of NOAA, NASA, the
United Kingdom, Canada and France for providing day and night
environmental and associated data on a daily basis.  NOAA is
responsible for establishing the observational requirements and
for operating the system, and NASA, through its Goddard Space
Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., is responsible for procuring and
developing the spacecraft and for conducting on-orbit checkout of
the satellite before turning the system over to NOAA for
operational control.  The U.S. Air Force provides launch support
with its Atlas-E launch vehicle, built by General Dynamics Space
Systems Division.

==============================================================================
 Richard B. Langley                          BITnet: [e-mail] or [e-mail]
 Geodetic Research Laboratory                Phone:  [phone]
 Dept. of Surveying Engineering              Telex:  014-46202
 University of New Brunswick                 FAX:    [phone]
 Fredericton, N.B., Canada  E3B 5A3
==============================================================================

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End of SPACE Digest V13 #450
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