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Subject: SPACE Digest V13 #481

SPACE Digest                                     Volume 13 : Issue 481

Today's Topics:
           Re: FACE on MARS -- Request for info...
               Re: Saturn V and the ALS
             Re: Saturn V vs. ALS
           Re: Uploading to alpha Centauri
              markets and risky ventures
          Re: Energia (was Re: Saturn V blueprints)

Administrivia:

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

Date: 30 Apr 91 00:09:54 GMT
From: rex!rouge![e-mail]  (Fraering Philip)
Subject: Re: FACE on MARS -- Request for info...

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Andy Rapo) writes:

>Don't look for answers in OMNI if you are interested in anything more
>than amusement.  I'd trust the national enquirer before puting any
>stock in the sensational science fiction that OMNI offers.

  Well, they have had occasional _good_ articles on the Space Studies
Institute, unlike some supposedly more reuptable magazines like
_Time_ and _Newspeak_...

--
Phil Fraering
[e-mail]
Joke going around: "How many country music singers does it take to
change a light bulb? Four. One to change the bulb, and three to sing
about the old one."

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

Date: 29 Apr 91 12:53:12 GMT
From: mnemosyne.cs.du.edu!isis![e-mail]  (Glenn A. Serre)
Subject: Re: Saturn V and the ALS

GIPP writes (sorry, no .sig):
>the Apollo days, they would now be somewhat improved, but we scrapped the
>tried and true Saturn for the complex, high-performance Shuttle and its
>SSMEs.
Ah, the wisdom of hindsight. It's about as useful as ifsight. Like, IF

Me:
Not hindsight, but learning from past mistakes.  The Shuttle has proven
to be a poor choice for drastically reducing launch costs (because of the way
it got funded, design philosophy, or whatever).  I propose that
we now try something closer to Big Dumb Boosters. If we want a truck, lets
make a truck, not a Porsche.

--
--Glenn Serre         |Soon-to-be former Payload Integration Engineer for
[e-mail] |Martin Marietta Astronautics Group, Space Launch Systems
                      |Company.
                      |Next job:  Script writer for Cayenne Systems, Inc.

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

Date: 29 Apr 91 13:01:22 GMT
From: mnemosyne.cs.du.edu!isis![e-mail]  (Glenn A. Serre)
Subject: Re: Saturn V vs. ALS

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Mike Wexler) writes:

   Why couldn't we just build a small heavy lift vehicle (SHLV) that can
   launch about the same as the shuttle (same payload fairings?). We could
   use engines from the Saturn (just not as many). We could use electronics
   from the Shuttle, etc. It would be a major project, but if we kept it
   on a relatively small scale. Use existing, reliable components and didn't
   try to push any technology we could probably get something pretty useful.
   --
   Mike Wexler ([e-mail])

You mean, something with about the size and payload capacity of a Titan IV?
:-)
--
--Glenn Serre         |Soon-to-be former Payload Integration Engineer for
[e-mail] |Martin Marietta Astronautics Group, Space Launch Systems
                      |Company.
                      |Next job:  Script writer for Cayenne Systems, Inc.

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

Date: 29 Apr 91 10:54:26 GMT
From: mcsun!ukc!newcastle.ac.uk!turing![e-mail]  (William Hey)
Subject: Re: Uploading to alpha Centauri

[e-mail] (Eric Carl Rosen) writes:

>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Dani Eder) writes:
>>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.

>In his book "The Emperor's New Mind", Robert Penrose (a famous math/physics
>type at Oxford) gives various arguments (which I don't pretend to understand
>completely) based on quantum theory that suggest that although this might
>be possible, you would necessarily destroy the crew in the process of "scanning"
>them. Also, if I read Penrose correctly, he's not convinced that what you
>reassemble would control the same "consciousness" as what you scanned.

>Anyway, it's a fascinating book.

I've got the book, but haven't made time to read it yet.

However, scanning the entire body would have to be completed in a shorter
time than it takes damaged protein molecules to denature.  Otherwise
all you'd end up doing would be transmitting damaged bio-material
information.  I read in nature recently that some protein molecules
can change shape in the region of nano-seconds.

Secondly, I think the scanning idea is too 'classical'.  For accurate
positioning of each particle, a high frequency radiation/something
would be required, which results in a massive uncertainty as to the
momentum of that particle (ie what the particle was 'doing'/'going'
at that instant).  This would be destructive testing.  Indeed also the
uncertainty of the time 'instant' may be significant.  Recall that particles
are not best described as particles but waves, described by probablility
wave functions; hence scanning and re-construction would be nothing like
building Lego.   (Excuse all the implicit assumptions above.)

Sorry it's all rather vague, but there are too many unknowns (the
nature of the scan...Laser/Mass Spectroscopy/etc..) and I'm
too ignorant.  However anyone can swot-up on the following :-

RE Heisenbergs Uncertainty Prinicple.
   DeBroglie wave expression,
   Bohrs Theory of the Atom,
   Schroedingers Wave Equations/Theory,
   Anything on proteins.

In short, Nature probably 'forbids' it.

I'll leave the question of 'conscience' to Neurologists and AI-Computer
Scientists , any questions of 'souls' to Poets,  and to the Philosophers
out there, my appologies.  ;-)

Any comments please mail direct, as this is leaving sci.space at a tangent.

Cheers,

Bill
-----------------------+-----------------------------+
|    William Hey          [e-mail]    |
|    Astrophysics : Newcastle University, England.   |
-----------------------+-----------------------------+

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

Date: 29 Apr 91 17:07:40 GMT
From: agate!bionet!uwm.edu!linac!pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!utzoo![e-mail]  (Henry Spencer)
Subject: markets and risky ventures

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Fraering Philip) writes:
>Space related: How about the decision by General Dynamics to go ahead
>with building the new Atlas-Centaur production line without enough
>orders in place already to pay for it?

Uh, what about it?  While this does represent a bit of financial risk, it's
hardly a big one, given an established position in the launch market and
a considerable number of customers obviously interested.  (Not to mention
at least one captive audience -- the government -- which isn't willing to
buy from the foreign competition when they want to launch an Atlas-sized
payload [i.e. too heavy for Delta, too small for Titan].)

>The proposed Iridium system?

Last I heard, nobody was proposing to invest big bucks in Iridium until the
paperwork is all in place, the demand is clear, and the customer consortium
is formed and ready to operate it.

Both of these qualify as about as risky as betting that when you drop a
pencil, it will hit the floor.

>Aerospace related: the decision by Northrup to develop the F-20?

Northrop, two Os.  That *was* a considerable gamble, although remember that
(a) the government was supposed to keep the market large by refusing to
export the high-end competition, and (b) the project was originally the
F-5G, a more-or-less routine addition to the highly successful F-5 series.
Every indication was that this would be a very successful product; it was
not a gamble on developing a radically new market.  Renaming it to F-20
was a disastrous mistake, and the icing on the cake was when the government
allowed customer after potential customer to buy F-16s and F-18s instead.

>777? The recent flight-test program for the 747-400, which (or so I
>gather) went above and beyond the call of duty in testing overloaded
>planes taking off and landing, among other things?

Overload tests are a routine part of airliner certification these days,
although Boeing may possibly have been more zealous than required.  And
the 777 didn't leave the preliminary-studies department until customers
had signed up for it.  A gamble, yes, but a relatively safe one, considering
Boeing's long track record, colossal order backlog, and enviable financial
position.
--
And the bean-counter replied,           | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
"beans are more important".             |  [e-mail]  utzoo!henry

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

Date: 30 Apr 91 01:44:43 GMT
From: lib![e-mail]  (Jay Maynard)
Subject: Re: Energia (was Re: Saturn V blueprints)

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Robert McGwier) writes:
>From article <[e-mail]>, by [e-mail] (Charles Frank Radley):
>> Federal law prohibits The Us Government ( including NASA )
                             -------------
>> from purchasing launches on foreign launch vehicles.
>You are incorrect.  There will be US built satellites launched on Long March's
                                   -------------------
>sometime in the near future and there are now DOZENS of launches on
>Arianes.  I have PERSONALLY built satellites in the US that were launched
>on Ariane.
>How's about checking your facts before making false flat statements.

How's about reading before lighting the flamethrower, Bob?

You're as far off base with this one as you were about the "convenient" EVA.

He said the US Government...that law doesn't apply to outfits like AMSAT,
as you (correctly) point out. The two statements are not incompatible.

--
Jay Maynard, EMT-P, K5ZC, PP-ASEL | Never ascribe to malice that which can
[e-mail]  | adequately be explained by stupidity.
  "X.400 is the mail system of the future, and I hope it stays that way."
                          -- Erik E. Fair

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End of SPACE Digest V13 #481
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