Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/mac/TEXT_ZIP/spacedig/V15_0/V15NO049.ZIP/V15NO049

Internet Message Format | 1993-07-13 | 37KB

Date: Thu, 30 Jul 92 05:00:04
From: Space Digest maintainer <[e-mail]>
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Subject: Space Digest V15 #049
To: Space Digest Readers
Precedence: bulk


Space Digest                Thu, 30 Jul 92       Volume 15 : Issue 049

Today's Topics:
                     Calendar and Zodiac (2 msgs)
                         Calendar and Zodiak
                   Clinton Space Position (3 msgs)
                        ETs and Radio (3 msgs)
                   first man on moon date and time
  Magellan successors? (was Re: Support Lunar Resource Mapper Too!)
                            Space position
                   Space Station assembly questions
               Space Station Freedom assembly questions
                            Whales (SETI)

    Welcome to the Space Digest!!  Please send your messages to
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    (THENET), or [e-mail] (Internet).
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 29 Jul 92 12:35:03 GMT
From: John Roberts <[e-mail]>
Subject: Calendar and Zodiac
Newsgroups: sci.space

-From: [e-mail] (Gary Coffman)
-Subject: Re: Calendar and Zodiak
-Date: 28 Jul 92 13:56:14 GMT
-Organization: Gannett Technologies Group

-There wasn't a March 2000 years ago. The calender we use is a modern
-invention of the 17th century. When the Gregorian calendar was rationalized,
-we lost a week, and renters rejoiced and landlords cried.

In the British Empire, the month of September, 1752 lost 11 days (the day
after September 2 was September 14). It was the renters who complained,
because they had to pay a full month's rent.

The months themselves have been around for thousands of years.

John Roberts
[e-mail]

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

Date: 29 Jul 92 12:05:09 GMT
From: John Roberts <[e-mail]>
Subject: Calendar and Zodiac
Newsgroups: sci.space

-From: [e-mail] (Steve Willner)
-Subject: Re: Calendar and Zodiak
-Date: 28 Jul 92 14:31:29 GMT
-Organization: Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, Cambridge, MA,  USA

-The short answer is that the calendar year is based on what is called
-the "tropical year," i.e. the time from equinox to equinox.  So by
-definition the equinox will always occur around March 21.

So I got that part wrong. It's the sun and Earth, not the distant stars,
that define the year.

-The start of spring is actually a different question.  The
-traditional start was on the "quarter day" in early February, but in
-modern times the start has moved to the equinox.  The earlier
-definition made June 21 "mid-summer day" (thus the title of one of
-Shakespeare's plays), not the beginning of summer as now.

That's probably a reasonable change, given the thermal lag of the seasons
in the temperate regions.

John Roberts
[e-mail]

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

Date: 28 Jul 92 18:13:24 GMT
From: Bruce Watson <[e-mail]>
Subject: Calendar and Zodiak
Newsgroups: sci.space

The original question was not answered. Where did the month go? We lost
12 days when we converted from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar in
1752 (cal sep 1752) and two century years 1800 and 1900 did not have
a leap day. That makes 14 or half a month.

--
 __________________________________________________________________________
|[e-mail]|    "Another Case of too many scientists and     |
|Bruce Watson            |     not enough hunchbacks." -- Gary Larson      |

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

Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1992 12:37:15 GMT
From: David Parkins <[e-mail]>
Subject: Clinton Space Position
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:
>
>Henry, your technical postings are probably the best things in sci.space.*.
>However, I would respectfully ask that those who neither pay the taxes
>nor vote in the elections kindly refrain from posting politcal analyses
>of political statements from the USAian election campaign.  If you have a
>technical reason why something a candidate proposes is a good or bad idea,
>fine.  However, a cross border political analysis is rude at best.  Thanks.
>
>--
>+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
>  Doug Davey        [e-mail]         bcr!iscp!ddavey
>


I disagree. You don't need to be a US citizen or resident to both have
and vocalize an opinion of US politics or anything else. Shutting someone
up for any reason is reprehensible. Are you saying this because you
feel Henry is uninformed or does he hold a view contrary to yours. If
we were all in a room carrying on a conversation about US politics
(imagine if this group were really just a few people) would you expect
Henry to keep his mouth shut because he is Canadian. And what about
our periodic non-technical discussions regarding other countries. Since
they are not always technical in nature should not discuss them.

go for it Henry. Spout off all you want.
dave parkins

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

Date: Wed, 29 Jul 92 14:42:55 BST
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Clinton Space Position

> Henry, your technical postings are probably the best things in
sci.space.*.
> However, I would respectfully ask that those who neither pay the
taxes
> nor vote in the elections kindly refrain from posting politcal
analyses
> of political statements from the USAian election campaign.  If you
have a
> technical reason why something a candidate proposes is a good or
bad idea,
> fine.  However, a cross border political analysis is rude at best.
Thanks.
> Stop Canadian Imperialism!  Yankee Go Home! :-)
>


Ah, but the ability to be correct does not respect borders. And
besides which, national borders are a hold over of the primitave
tribal instincts we should wish to leave behind.

Do Ohions complain about Pennsylvanians holding opinions about
gubernatorial elections?

                    Live Free or Die
                    Dale Amon

****  Vote for Andre Marrou *****
******* Legalize Freedom ********

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

Date: Wed, 29 Jul 92 16:26:46 BST
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Clinton Space Position

> Go for it Henry. It is nice to see an outside opinion sometimes.
The BBC

> world report had a wonderful report on how the democratic party
manipulates
> the U.S. news media by having congressional staffers "interview"
their bosses
> as if they were reporters asking real questions. Lots of other
chicanery
> was reported on that will never be shown here.

>


Agreed. If you:
    a) Are neither Republican or Democrat
    b) Live outside the US

You start to see patterns of political party manipulation of the news
that are so blatent as to be hard to believe.

For instance, I watched the media invent a domestica crisis after the
Gulf War because if the issues had stayed on international politics,
the Democrats were on very shaky grounds. Over a period of a year,
one could watch the issue being slowly moved to that area.
(Incidentally I despise Bush and wouldn't vote for a Republican if
they were the only one running. Of course the same is true of
Clinton)

There are also other sorts of media manipulation going on that I have
been quite surprised about.

Like the front page story in The European about the acquisition of
two Soviet tactical nuclear weapons from one of the middle eastern
republics. Lots of details about it, including the types and sizes
and yields of the weapons. Oh, and there is a third warhead missing,
and it's whereabout are NOT known.

Now, maybe the US media thinks this is unverified. But even so, even
the fact that there might be significant evidence that it is so
should have been front page news. And I suspect it is more than just
hype.

When I was back for the ISDC in DC I chatted with a number of very
well informed people, NONE of whom had heard of this. I gave out
several copies of the clipping...

So value those outside inputs. You just might find out where the wool
is that is being pulled over your eyes.

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

Date: Wed, 29 Jul 92 14:00:21 EST
From: [e-mail]
Subject: ETs and Radio

The following has been posted on the SKEPTIC list, and gives
interesting arguments against the improbability of the apparition
of life.
J. Pharabod
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date:         Wed, 13 May 1992 22:38:36 CDT
From:         Thomas Faller <[e-mail]>
Subject:      Re:  Evolution and abiogenesis, part 1
X-To:         [e-mail]
To:           Multiple recipients of <[e-mail]>


I mentioned that I was going to look for arguments against the "mathematically
impossible" probabilistic models, and rather than try and argue that my set of
initial circumstances is better than anyone else's set of circumstances, I'm
going to describe positive work which, to me, shows that work on abiogenic
origins has gone farther than most suspect, and that some of the statistical
arguments are now moot in the face of the results obtained already.

I don't mean to imply that we've already created life in a test tube, but the
background work is already at an advanced state. There are still arguments
over the meaning and significance of these results, but some of these
arguments have been answered in the references already, and I'm sure that
more work has been done since.

I'm going to break this up into two parts, because I'm reading from two very
different sources, and things could get long. I'd like to hear any feedback
on this from more current scientific literature; unfortunately, I'm stuck
out here in the hinterlands and rely on magazines and books for most of my
references these days.

The first part deals with an article in the May 1992 Scientific American, by
John Horgan on page 30. The article discusses the work of Julius Rebek, Jr.,
a chemist at MIT. Rebek has been developing molecules which self-replicate,
much the same way that DNA does. He uses a simple system which duplicates
some of the features of living systems. The system is so simple, that after
a few steps, it ceases to demonstrate new qualities, but it points the way
for developing evolutionary models based on non-living molecules, which
could point the way to a better understanding of living systems.

Here's how it works, in it's present version: three amines and an ester, all
synthetic, are mixed in a chloroform solution. Each amine combines with an
ester to produce an amide, each of the three different, which will self-
replicate. That is, the amide will serve as a template for other amines and
esters to cling to, and make another amide. Thermal jostling separates
the two, and each goes on to produce more amides.

The three slightly different amides replicate at roughly the same rate, but
when irradiated with UV light, one amide mutates into a variant which
reproduces much faster than the others.
In another recent experiment, two esters and two amines were mixed to create
four different amides. Two are duplicates of the earlier experiment, one is
an even better replicant than the mutant, and one is sterile, that is, it
cannot support replication at all.
Unusually, each amide replicator can also serve as a template for the other
amides, somewhat like the "hopeful monster" idea where new species would
occasionally spring full-blown into being. However, due to the simplicity of
the system, analogies to biological theory are still pretty weak.

What I want to point out here, is that even with the simplicity of the system,
we have some of the major features of biological evolution present in a
non-biological context. It illustrates self-replication, mutation and selection
in populations, hybridization, sterile products (mules), and the passing along,
or fixing of new traits in populations. This implies that evolution is a
possible byproduct of chemical systems in general and not just biological ones.

The next article discusses successes in finding molecules which display
other processes found in living systems.

Tom Faller
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date:         Thu, 14 May 1992 10:02:08 CDT
From:         Thomas Faller <[e-mail]>
Subject:      Re:  Evolution and abiogenesis, part 2
X-To:         [e-mail]
To:           Multiple recipients of <[e-mail]>


Okay, most of my information for this part comes from a chapter in Science
and Creationism, edited by Ashley Montagu, the article is _Creationism and
Evolutionary Protobiogenesis_, by Sidney W. Fox, at the U. of Miami. The
copyright date on the book is 1984, the article has nine pages of references
dating through 1982, but I'm sure there is more recent work out there.
I've seen some controversy about proteinoid microspheres, I've also seen
replies to that controversy on the net, but I don't have the text handy.
Please try to obtain objections from the most recent and most credible sources,
and I'll look around in the bookstores in The Big City next time I get there,
and see if I can scare up some more recent information.

It has been mentioned already that a strict definition of life is still
somewhat forthcoming, and that there is still a fuzzy border between the
living and the nonliving. Demonstrating that life-like structures can arise
under primitive-earth conditions and that they can exhibit behavior similar
to modern cells, to me, takes most of the wind out of the sails of those
who contend that abiogenesis is improbable to the point of being impossible.
We can demonstrate that structures can form which resemble fossil structures,
we can demonstrate that these structures can perform many of the duties
which modern cells need to perform, and we can demonstrate that many of the
natural processes which produce these structures will produce similar
structures under many conditions, meaning that although many types of processes
may initiate life, those which go the farthest may all produce roughly the
same product, leading towards a "molecular determinism" which standardized
the form of the first life on earth, however many times it arose, and in
however many places.

Although the author states that the experiment to produce proteinoid micro-
spheres is simple enough for high-school and college students to reproduce,
I've never done it myself, and, lacking references, don't know what conditions
are implied, although the author answers a creationist argument about the
amount of heat necessary (as low as 65 degrees C) with examples of several
likely geologic scenarios. It may be important to note that a reference to
the proceedures involved is dated 1958, implying that the experiment has had
plenty of time to gather objections, and the amount of work being done with
proteinoids implies that those objections were answered satisfactorally.

The term proteinoid was defined in 1967, and appears in Chemical Abstracts
as an indexing term then. It was coined to suggest a protein, made of amino
acids, which are not produced in the usual sense by organisms. Later usage
seems to justify the similarities between proteinoids and proteins by
classifying proteinoids under thermal proteins. Proteinoids are not the
exact equivalent of modern proteins, however. My chemistry isn't that sharp,
but some of the differences include linkages not found in modern proteins.
It is suggested that progressive replacement through intermediate stages could
have led to modern proteins, I don't have a reference for any work done on
this recently. One section of the article says that proteinoids are large
peptides made from amino acids by heat; proteins are large peptides made by
organisms from amino acids by energy from ATP. Sorry I can't get more specific
than that.

Proteinoid microspheres are near-proteins produced by polymerizing amino
acids. A main contribution is from something called trifunctional amino acids
which are found in such biologic-free samples as lunar rock, meteorites and
bacteria-free terrestrial lava. The amino acids have informational and
functional value. They order the formation of proteinoids and direct the
structure and functions of the proteinoids themselves. The ordering, or non-
randomness of the proteinoids is a function of the chemical structure of
the amino acids, and does not require external ordering, direction through
divine agencies, or extraterrestrial visitors. This has been demonstrated
in the laboratory, and is the best argument against the "probabilistic"
claims that life is a decendant of random processes.

Proteinoids form microspheres, about 10 or 20 micrometers in size. The spheres
are very uniform in size and properties. Several types of microspheres are
very resistant to conditions which would tend to dissolve them, that is, they
are not fragile, although some types are. The tougher types also exhibit
the behavior which is of biological interest. They have also been artificially
fossilized, resulting in structures very similar to naturally occurring micro-
fossils, discovered in abundance in PreCambrian rocks.

The interesting part is that proteinoid microspheres exhibit activity which is
the precursor to the activities of living cells. That is, they do many of
the actions necessary for life, but on a more limited scale than modern
living cells. This is a function of the microspheres' simplicity, but
should not detract from the fact that self-ordered proteinoids do have
biological utility.

I'm going to just mention some of the activity reported for proteinoids in
this article. I'm not going to bother referencing each experiment; that's done
rather exhaustively in the text, and I don't have the resources to check
each article. The biological activities included here have been cataloged
from different experiments; I don't know what type of proteinoids were used
for each experiment, but the overall framework seems to hang together in the
literature, by virtue of reviews of progress published every couple of years,
and subject to peer review. The article has had time to gather objections and
answer them, so I assume that there have been no irrevocable objections.

Reaction, Function or Substrate in Proteinoids

Hydrolosis
Decarboxylation
Amination    (Amine activity, not animation-motion)
Deamination
Oxidoreductions
Synthesis with ATP
   Internucleotide bonds formed
   Peptide bonds formed
Photo-activated decarboxylation
Hormonal activity

Also mentioned in the article were the following activities, I don't know to
what extent they overlap the above list.

Enzyme-like activity
Photocatalytic activity
Production of pigments
Strong indications that braided informational molecules (forerunners of DNA)
can be produced
Bioelectrical behavior, membrane potentials, spiking, oscillatory discharge
Growth by accretion
Selective permeability
Protometabolism - anabolism, catabolism
Motility - movement

and others.

This implies that we are much closer to understanding the steps to cellular
life than is commonly implied in popular accounts of abiogenic research, and
demonstrates that the probabilistic models are missing a few assumptions. The
main key here is that proteinoids should assemble themselves, and then
conduct "molecular evolution" of structure and function, until at some point,
they can be considered to be living cells. This has not been demonstrated yet,
to my knowledge, but the progress made so far shows an outline of where we
are going.
I'd be very interested to see any followups of this research in the 90's.

Tom Faller

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

Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1992 12:09:56 GMT
From: russell wallace <[e-mail]>
Subject: ETs and Radio
Newsgroups: sci.space

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

>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (russell wallace) writes:
>>Given that for evolution of life to start, a simple living organism must
>>come together from amino acids etc. by accident; and that for any
>>complex structure to fall together by accident is extremely improbable...

>Try applying the same argument to crystals, or even atoms.  These things
>may come together by accident, but they're found together because that's
>the more stable state for them to be in.  Sure, it's improbable for complex
>structures to come together all at once, but it doesn't happen that way --
>complex stable structures evolve from simpler ones.  A crystal doesn't
>form out of its component subatomic particles all at once.

Sure, a collection of amino acids could quite easily fall together by
accident, in the same way a crystal can.

However, one crystal is pretty much the same as another; none of them
actually do anything (in the absence of humans to make use of them).

The situation is completely different with self-replicating collections
of organic molecules, where only a tiny fraction of all the possible
collections of the organic molecules present on the primitive Earth
would be self-replicating; such a tiny fraction that if all the planets
in the visible universe were trying combinations for the age of the
universe, there is hardly any chance of even one of them stumbling on a
self-replicating system (though, as you point out, collections of
organic molecules that are not self-replicating will form many times).

>There are still fuzzy spots in our understanding of the evolution of life,
>but they're shrinking steadily.  Nothing that is *understood* about the
>way it happened looks particularly unlikely.  The biggest question mark
>at the moment is not the development of self-reproducing, evolving
>molecules, but the development of the cell (which drastically speeds
>up evolution, because then molecules not involved in producing better
>machinery don't benefit from it).

Not so. You actually need something like a cell to have
self-reproduction at all, where by "self-reproduction", I mean
non-trivial self-reproduction, not things like crystal growth. For
non-trivial self-reproduction to occur, the following must be present:

An information storage unit which stores information on how to build the
organism.

Some machinery to construct a new organism.

Reproduction works when the machinery builds a new set of machinery and
a new information storage unit according to the blueprint, and copies
the information from the old blueprint into the new one by regarding the
old blueprint as data rather than instructions (see William Poundstone's
"The Recursive Universe" for an excellent explanation of this).

In organic life forms, DNA is the blueprint, which is interpreted by the
transcription process, and copied by splitting the strands and adding
matching nucleotides to each. The enzymes are the machinery, and there
is a cell membrane around the whole thing (which is needed, otherwise
the enzymes will float away and be lost).

The point is that you do actually need all this for non-trivial
self-reproduction; and furthermore, you need it all to fall together by
accident, since evolution (which can produce complex organisms from
simpler ones) by definition cannot start to operate until you have
non-trivial self-reproduction. It doesn't matter that the accidental
falling together of the first life-form need not be all in one instant,
and that instead the enzyme molecules, cell membrane and DNA can form
separately and then come together; the point is that since there are
10^(many thousands, maybe millions) of different ways for that many
amino acids etc. to be arranged, that only one in 10^(probably several
thousand) of these is a self-replicator, and that there is no way for
natural processes to home in on the self-replicators, but must try
combinations at random until one fits; then the probability that life
will appear anywhere in the visible universe is one in 10^(thousands).

--
"To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem"
Russell Wallace, Trinity College, Dublin
[e-mail]

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

Date: Wed, 29 Jul 92 15:18:17 BST
From: [e-mail]
Subject: ETs and Radio

> Given that for evolution of life to start, a simple living organism
must
> come together from amino acids etc. by accident; and that for any
> complex structure to fall together by accident is extremely
improbable;
> then it looks pretty much like the odds against life appearing on
any
> one planet could easily be more than 10^1000 to 1 against, and the
> number of planets in the visible universe is only about 10^22.
>


I strongly disagree. Much of the literature I have been reading over
the last ten years seems to be leaning more towards a view that given
the chemical conditions, life is pretty likely. Just add a few
chemicals, stir for a few billion years and let sit without major
impacts for awhile :-)

There are suggestions that life on Earth actually evolved multiple
times. During the late stages of heavy bombardment, the time interval
between strikes that would evaporite water in the ocean deeps was
sufficient that such could have been the case.

I don't think chemistry is the problem. I think one has to think more
in terms of more major conditions, like the effect of lunar tides,
the stability of the solar constant, the size of the life zone, the
impact rates, the spectrum of energy, the energy sources, the
metallicity, etc...

The primary error in the above is the assumption that life requires a
massive number of things to come togetherat once. This may not at all
be true. There are some facts like the self-assembly of RNA that
indicate very much the contrary. Some of the lowest starting levels
of chemical evolution are not well understood, but I think it will be
found that they do not require any blind watchmaker, just a soup of
chemicals with energy input and a few hundred million years or less.

Given that, the probability of life is the probability of finding a
planet with an environment that is stable and satisfactory for a
sufficient length of time. I think the argument of number of stars in
the universe makes other life probable is quite a powerful.


The question of evolution of microbe life to an intelligence we could
understand seems a bit more difficult, so I won't.

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

Date: 28 Jul 92 19:19:32 GMT
From: Thomas Hagadorn <[e-mail]>
Subject: first man on moon date and time
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Phil G. Fraering) writes:
|[e-mail] writes:
|
|>Can someone E-mail me the following information.  I wouldlike to know
|>at what time the first man stepped on the moon and when it wass
|
|Everyone should know the date: July 20, 1969.
|
|Phil Fraering [e-mail] where the x is a number from 1-5.
|Phone: [phone]
|"There are still 201969 unread articles in 1278 groups" - nn message

and henry writes:
|2256 EDT 20 July 1969.  The TV coverage was live (well, subject to the
|speed-of-light lag...).

 Ok, I'll bite.  Is your .sig 201969 articles a reference to this, and
if so, what does the 1278 refer to, since henry's note implies that it
isn't the time?

--
Tom Hagadorn   [e-mail]

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

Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1992 13:21:10 GMT
From: Hartmut Frommert <[e-mail]>
Subject: Magellan successors? (was Re: Support Lunar Resource Mapper Too!)
Newsgroups: sci.space

[e-mail] (Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey) writes:

[..]

>Venus orbiters and landers have given a pretty good view of the
>planet.  I suppose having an orbiter in place to give long-term
>information about the atmosphere and magnetosphere would be a good
>idea-- Pioneer Venus Orbiter is about to die.

I would support the quest for such a permanent orbiter survey -- with
diverse measurement equipment, in the orbit around Venus as well as near
Mars, the Moon, and perhaps Mercury. The latter 2 resp. 3 should also be
equipped with optical cameras. It would be nice to have continous orbiter
survey also in the outer Solar System, but I can't say how to get the
funds needed.

[..]

>I'm really
>unhappy about the lack of priority given to studies of small bodies.
>CRAF is dead, Vesta doesn't look too healthy, and Rosetta seems
>awfully far away.  Maybe there is hope in the new smaller, faster,
>allegedly-cheaper probes like SDIO's Clementine or the one APL is
>supposed to be cooking up for NASA (LEAP, was it?).

I would also be more happy if the smaller bodies got more attention.

The problem on hand seems to be that there's a major lack of funding for
all scientific space research (manned as well as unmanned, at ESA or Russia
the same as at NASA). If we cannot overcome this permanent shortage I don't
see a bright light.
--
 Hartmut Frommert, Physics, Univ of Constance, | + Whale killing is murder. +
 P.O.Box 55 60, D-W-7750 Konstanz, Germany | + Eat whale killers, not whales.
 E-Mail: <[e-mail]> or <[e-mail]>
+    "Windows NoT" expands in German to "Windows Noch Teurer"
+                                                ^even   ^more expensive

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

Date: 29 Jul 92 12:26:00 GMT
From: John Roberts <[e-mail]>
Subject: Space position
Newsgroups: sci.space

-From: [e-mail] (Richard A. Schumacher)
-Subject: Re: Clinton Space Position
-Date: 29 Jul 92 01:06:50 GMT
-Organization: CONVEX Computer Corporation, Richardson, Tx., USA

-In <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Doug Davey) writes:
->However, I would respectfully ask that those who neither pay the taxes
->nor vote in the elections kindly refrain from posting politcal analyses
->of political statements from the USAian election campaign.  If you have a
->technical reason why something a candidate proposes is a good or bad idea,
->fine.  However, a cross border political analysis is rude at best.  Thanks.

-Typical of a United Statesian: ask the most intelligent participant in
-an enterprise to leave, merely because he's a foreigner.

-I respectfully request that we hear more from all persons of intelligence
-and less from all jingoes and dolts. Thanks.

Technical issues, and promoting specific programs are fine and welcome.
"Translating" stated campaign platforms is a little more into the realm of
internal US politics.

Actually, it's an ongoing problem for the US. As Japan comes to own more and
more of the US, it has an increasing ability to influence US politics and
policies. When National Geographic and other magazines published articles on
the 50th anniversary of Pearl Harbor, they took major financial hits, because
most or all of the Japanese advertisers pulled their ads - they just didn't
want the subject brought up. What publications will have the temerity to
even mention the 75th anniversary? Canada owns a much smaller percentage of the
US (I don't know the exact figure, but it's significant), so they're not
in quite the same situation yet.

The Administration turns around and does the same thing to other countries,
i.e. Israel and the loan guarantees, and other countries are influenced by
having guns waved at them. I suppose you could argue that it's justified
because it's being done, but there's a point of view that there's some
benefit to not being extensively involved in the politics of other countries.
:-)

[My opinions, as always.]

John Roberts
[e-mail]

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

Date: 29 Jul 92 11:38:11 GMT
From: Gerald Cecil <[e-mail]>
Subject: Space Station assembly questions
Newsgroups: sci.space

I'm trying to formulate a letter on the Space Station to my Congresspeople.
I have several questions on Space Station assembly issues that I'd appreciate some
input on.  Thanks in advance!

1. What is the current thinking on Shuttle accident probabilities and the impact
on Space Station assembly?  I recall reading of an Air Force assessment Post-
Challenger that compounded to near certainty of a disabling accident in 20 flights.
(Not necessarily an explosion, but at least removal of an Orbiter from the fleet.) If
this is generally accepted, but not discussed, maybe it needs some airing here(!)

2. What is the status of Shuttle-C?  Is it supposed to play any role in Station
assembly or for logistical support (= hauling water & hydrazine)?

3. The only NON-POLITICAL argument that I have heard as to why Space Station components
should NOT be launched on Energia is the comparatively northern latitude of the launch
site and consequent payload loss for cross-plane maneuvers.  The penalty in my estimation
doesn't look that bad, given the large intrinsic capability of Energia, so are there
obvious bona-fide TECHNICAL problems that someone might care to comment on?

4. Does the present baseline Station have any real prospects for expansion?  I'm
thinking of intrinsic power or dynamic (structural) compromises that would prohibit
additional modules.
--
Gerald Cecil 919-962-7169  Dept. Physics & Astronomy
U of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3255 USA
-- Intelligence is believing only half of what you read; brilliance is
   knowing which half. ** Be terse: each line on the Net costs $10 **

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

Date: 29 Jul 92 14:14:57 GMT
From: Gerald Cecil <[e-mail]>
Subject: Space Station Freedom assembly questions
Newsgroups: sci.space

(Reformatted to be more readable, sorry.)
I'm trying to formulate a letter on the Space Station to my Congresspeople.
I have several questions on Space Station assembly issues that I'd
appreciate some input on.  Thanks in advance!

1. What is the current thinking on Shuttle accident probabilities and the
impact on Space Station assembly?  I recall reading of an Air Force
assessment Post-Challenger that compounded to near certainty of a
disabling accident in 20 flights.  (Not necessarily an explosion, but at
least removal of an Orbiter from the fleet.) If this is generally accepted,
but not discussed, maybe it needs some airing here(!)

2. What is the status of Shuttle-C?  Is it supposed to play any role in
Station assembly or for logistical support (= hauling water & hydrazine)?

3. The only NON-POLITICAL argument that I have heard as to why Space
Station components should NOT be launched on Energia is the comparatively
northern latitude of the launch site and consequent payload loss for
cross-plane maneuvers.  The penalty in my estimation doesn't look that bad,
given the large intrinsic capability of Energia, so are there
obvious bona-fide TECHNICAL problems (e.g. no engine restart capability)
that someone might care to comment on?

4. Does the present baseline Station have any real prospects for expansion?
I'm thinking of intrinsic power or dynamic (structural) compromises that
would prohibit additional modules.
--
Gerald Cecil 919-962-7169  Dept. Physics & Astronomy
U of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3255 USA
-- Intelligence is believing only half of what you read; brilliance is
   knowing which half. ** Be terse: each line on the Net costs $10 **

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

Date: 29 Jul 92 12:24:14 GMT
From: David Parkins <[e-mail]>
Subject: Whales (SETI)
Newsgroups: sci.space

I couldn't help but add my 2 cents:

    The burden of proof is ALWAYS on the person/being making the claim.
That just the way it works. Because I can't prove a chair is not inteligent
does not make it inteligent, it only shows that I can't prove it at this
moment. Now if we want to talk about postulates instead of theories and
proofs then we have another animal, something very similiar to religion :) .

    If some unknowing person were to meet Stephan Hawking for the first
time and without and electronic aids (maybe even with them) they would
probably be tempted to think that he is uninteligent. They might even view
him as inferior to a dog. But many would claim this to be wrong, and those
that did would have the burden of proof placed upon them (and heresay or
common knowledge does not constitute a proof).

:)
dave parkins

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End of Space Digest Volume 15 : Issue 049
------------------------------