Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/mac/TEXT_ZIP/spacedig/V15_1/V15NO141.ZIP/V15NO141

Internet Message Format | 1993-07-13 | 33KB

Date: Tue, 25 Aug 92 05:03:54
From: Space Digest maintainer <[e-mail]>
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Subject: Space Digest V15 #141
To: Space Digest Readers
Precedence: bulk


Space Digest                Tue, 25 Aug 92       Volume 15 : Issue 141

Today's Topics:
            BuckyStalks (was Re: Beanstalks in Nevada Sky)
     Gates, Jobs, Wozniak of space? (Re: Private space ventures)
                   GOP space platform text (2 msgs)
Higgins's Fusion Bomb (was Re: What about Saturn?/Future not Past) (2 msgs)
                            Lunar Society
                        Private space ventures
                      Size,Mass,and velocity....
                           Space Economics
                             SPS & faith
                       What happened to Viking?
     With telepresence, who needs people in Earth orbit? (5 msgs)

    Welcome to the Space Digest!!  Please send your messages to
    "[e-mail]", and (un)subscription requests of the form
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    (THENET), or [e-mail] (Internet).
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Mon, 24 Aug 1992 23:38:44 GMT
From: Tom Nugent <[e-mail]>
Subject: BuckyStalks (was Re: Beanstalks in Nevada Sky)
Newsgroups: sci.space

[e-mail] writes:

>
>What is a Lofstrom loop?
>
If memory serves, a Lofstrom loop is also called a launch loop.  Imagine a
real big loop of rope stretched so that it looks like a really stretched out
race track. (rectangle with curved corners?)  Now by whatever means, you
electromagnetically accelerate this rope so that it circulates, staying in
its original form.  See below:
                        A
         --------------------------------
           /                                 \
       |                                 |
        \                               /
         -------------------------------
         B
You accelerate it at points 'A' and 'B'.  Now raise the 'nozzle' of the
'gun' you are using to accelerate this so that it points upward at a decent
angle, oh I don't know, 30 to 60 degrees.  Now the long stretches of the rope
describe approximately a parabola, hopefully landing right where it is
supposed to be.  In reality, this would be something like a huge steel ribbon,
or a series of magnetic pellets.  By properly enclosing this in a small shell
which is repulsed by the 'rope', you now have a stable, stationary platform
extending from Earth up to some useful height, and back down to Earth.
Using the energy supplied to these particles etc etc., you can ride this
up to orbit.  Neat, huh?

"I believe that there are moments in history when challenges occur of such
a compelling nature that to miss them is to miss the whole meaning of an
epoch.  Space is such a challenge."
        - James A. Michener
--
Tom Nugent    voice:[phone]    e-mail:[e-mail]
"To be average scares the hell out of me." -- Anonymous

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

Date: 24 Aug 92 21:45:36 GMT
From: Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey <[e-mail]>
Subject: Gates, Jobs, Wozniak of space? (Re: Private space ventures)
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Josh 'K' Hopkins) writes:
>     Unfortunately, analogies only go so far.  If space is an analogous
> field, we don't have a young Bill Gates that I can see.

Sure we do.  Josh Hopkins, Tom Nugent, George Herbert, Dennis Wingo,
Tommy Mac...

The Older Generation is counting on you, guys.

> [e-mail] writes:
>>In fact, there are others that might even be better candidates, like the
>>prince of that little island who has 29B and is the worlds richest man.
>
>     He's a sultan, the place is Brunei and it doesn't actually cover the
> whole island, but you still get extra credit.

As my dad used to say:

"Are you shah?"

"Sultanly!"

     O~~*           /_) ' / /   /_/ '  ,   ,  ' ,_  _           \|/
   - ~ -~~~~~~~~~~~/_) / / /   / / / (_) (_) / / / _\~~~~~~~~~~~zap!
 /       \                          (_) (_)                    / | \
 |       |     Bill Higgins   Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
 \       /     Bitnet:     [e-mail]
   -   -       Internet:  [e-mail]
     ~         SPAN/Hepnet:      43011::HIGGINS

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

Date: 24 Aug 92 23:19:03 GMT
From: Tom Nugent <[e-mail]>
Subject: GOP space platform text
Newsgroups: sci.space

Does anybody have the Democratic platform on space?

--
Tom Nugent    voice:[phone]    e-mail:[e-mail]
"To be average scares the hell out of me." -- Anonymous

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

Date: Tue, 25 Aug 1992 01:00:00 GMT
From: Henry Spencer <[e-mail]>
Subject: GOP space platform text
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Tom Nugent       ) writes:
>Does anybody have the Democratic platform on space?

Take the Republican space platform, water down some of the more ambitious
stuff, add a few paragraphs that basically amount to saying "the Republicans
are botching it all", and you have the Democrat space platform.
--
There is nothing wrong with making      | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
mistakes, but... make *new* ones. -D.Sim|  [e-mail]  utzoo!henry

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

Date: 24 Aug 92 23:10:23 GMT
From: Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey <[e-mail]>
Subject: Higgins's Fusion Bomb (was Re: What about Saturn?/Future not Past)
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Frederick A. Ringwald) writes:
[Fred, you've wiped out the attribution to Dani Eder's article.
I'll put it back in:]
> In article <[e-mail]>
> [e-mail] (Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey) writes:
> >In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Dani Eder) writes:
>> > This may seem futuristic to some, but no more so than cryogenic
>> > rocket engines would have seemed in the 40's, and they were
>> > actually built for the first time in the 50's.
>>
>> This may seem futuristic to some, but no more so than magnetic
>> confinment fusion devices would have seemed in the 40's, and they were
>> actually built for the first time in the 50's.
>
> Surely you're joking, Mr. Higgins.

Right the first time, Mr. Ringwald.

> Magnetic confinement fusion devices
> don't work so great, in the early '90s!

*Sigh* Pitfalls of using irony on the Net.

Dani describes a complicated fusion gadget.  Then he points out that
cryogenic rockets seemed equally exotic in the Forties, implying that
the fusion gadget might also succeed with a decade of hard engineering
work.

I express skepticism *explicitly*, in a part of my response you failed
to quote:

>>Sounds neat, but my physics intuition tells me that there may be lots
>>of subtle effects to make this harder than it looks.

Then after Dani's analogy to cryogenic rocket engines, I parrot his
analogy, changing a few words, comparing the new fusion gadget to
*another* class of devices which were conceived in the Forties and
constructed in the Fifties, but which failed to bear fruit and which
are still being tinkered with after forty years.

The exactly parallel wording of my sentence was intended to undermine
Dani's point in a gently humorous way.  To some readers, it misfired.

Does this mean that I'm going to stop trying to be funny, or surround
every humorous remark with smileys?

Heck, no!  When they blow up, you go back to the pad and launch
another one!  It's the only way to make progress.

What Fermi did under a stadium           Bill "Danger Is My Business" Higgins
Da deuteron, ron, ron, da deuteron ron   Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
She did with heavy water and palladium   Bitnet:     [e-mail]
Da deuteron, ron, ron, da deuteron ron   SPAN/Hepnet: 43011::HIGGINS
   --W. Skeffington Higgins,             Internet:  [e-mail]
     "Fusion Girl," 1989

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

Date: Mon, 24 Aug 1992 23:56:18 GMT
From: Tom Nugent <[e-mail]>
Subject: Higgins's Fusion Bomb (was Re: What about Saturn?/Future not Past)
Newsgroups: sci.space

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

>Heck, no!  When they blow up, you go back to the pad and launch
>another one!  It's the only way to make progress.

Or, get something that doesn't blow up, like the rubber rocket of AmRoc (it
just fizzles - it can't blow up), or something more advanced, like tethers
etc etc.  But the attitude is right!

"[The space program] can help counter the head-on collision with the
environmental chaos we now face; spearhead technological, competitive, and
political leadership; stimulate young minds to excellence; and forge cultural
bonds between nations for the benefit of all humanity."
                - Leonard David
--
Tom Nugent    voice:[phone]    e-mail:[e-mail]
"To be average scares the hell out of me." -- Anonymous

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

Date: 24 Aug 92 20:14:01 GMT
From: "Jean Y. Kim" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Lunar Society
Newsgroups: sci.space

Hi netters,
I am forwarding this for a friend.

*--------------------------------------------------------------------*

It's less than ten years to 2001...

... do you know where YOUR space program is?


THE LUNAR SOCIETY

  was founded because of a single profound and distrubing insight:
politicians, bureaucrats, and aerospace corporate managers are not
going to get US into space.

We can't afford the price of a ticket, let alone the space-equivalent
of the covered wagon.  The only way WE are going is if we build the
machines, vehicles, tools, habitats, factories, encampments and
homesteads -- OURSELVES.

Think about the early visions of von Braun and Ley, Clarke and
Heinlein, Goddard and Oberth and Tsiolkovski, and ask youself why we
haven't come farther in the last fifty years?  A big part of the
answer is -- the national space program doesn't exist to fulfill those
visions.  It does exist to create jobs in certain congressional
districts and to advance national prestige.  That approach won't open
the high frontier of space.

The Lunar Society was created because of the deeply held belief that
if real progres is to be made towards the goal of settling the high
frontier, private groups and individuals must lead the way.
Governments will not be the agents of progress, nor is it desirable
that centralized, monolithic, bureaucratic organizations dictate the
future of free people on the frontier of space.  TOO MUCH IS AT RISK
TO DENY OUR PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY TO ACT TO CREATE OUR OWN FUTURE.

_What are the Society's Goal?_

To provide the individuals the means to homestead the space frontier.
To fund the infrastructure that will permit human settlement of
near-Earth space and Earth's Moon.  To conduct research into advanced
technologies which will lower the cost of access to space.  And to
educate everyone about the challenges of the age of space, so that we
all have the opportunity to play a role in this great adventure.

In Herman Oberth's words: "This is the goal: to make available for
Life every place where life is possible; to make inhabitable all
worlds as yet uninhabitable and all Life purposeful."

_Why now?_

In the past decade there have been rapid advances in materials, small
computers, software, propulsion systems and life support.  These
technologies have enabled an assault on the barriers of access and
cost which blocked small, non-governmental space efforts in the past.
Taking inspiration from the experimental aviation community, and
employing the experiences of entrepreneurs and scientists, engineers
and enthusiasts, the time is right for a non-governmental program
which will create a space civilization.

_Why Another Organization?_

Because we have a unique role to play.
The Lunar Society will not lobby Congress for more money for the U.S.
space program, or publish glossy magazines for members.  Others can
play those parts.  The Society is raising money to fund needed
technology development which will make settling the high frontier
feasible as well as economical.  And then, we'll step aside and let
private businesses pick up the effort.  Let's not forget author Larry
Niven's words: "After all, we're capitalists, right?"

We're starting small, working on components such as engines, software,
space suits, and design studies, but we're advancing quickly to flying
vehicles, space platform design and planning lunar missions.  REAL
HARDWARE FOR REAL MISSIONS.  No other organization today has the
comprehensive space settlement program of the Lunar Society.

_Join Us!_

The Lunar Society is leading the way on the return to the Moon, and
the creation of the first human home on another world.  We need your
support in order to jump-start the future.  For if not you, then who?

"To accomplish this goal we have committed our lives, fortunes and
honor.  If you share this vision, join us."

Jerry Pournelle, Ph.D., Chairman
James Ransom, President



ENROLLMENT

The Lunar Society is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization founded in
1986 by Dr. Jerry Pournelle, present Chairman, along with Dr. Philip
Chapman (former Apollo astronaut) and Mr. James Ransom (Society
President).  The Society has established an Associates Program to
permit individuals to participate directly in the greatest adventure
ever undertaken by the human race.

Associates receive the Society quarterly newsletter _Cisluna_ plus
discounted admission to the annual Society conference.  Cost is
$100/year.  The Society is not a menbership organization, and the
contributions of the Associates are principally used to support
hardware development programs, not to provide menber services.
Contributions are tax-deductible.  Any amount of contribution is
welcome; any donor of $25/year or more will receive _Cisluna_.

Enroll by mailing a check to the Society at the address below, or by
calling our voicemail/fax system and using your VISA or MasterCard.


CISLUNA 93

Lunar Society Associates may attend the CISLUNA 93 conference and
exposition (January 15-17, 1993, San Francisco Bay Area) at a
discount.  Attendance is $35 per person for the Associate and one
guest before Nov. 30, 1992, or $50 after.
Non-Associates $50 before Nov. 30, 1992, $65 after.
Send a check to the Society at the address below, or call our
voicemail/fax system and use your VISA or MasterCard.

P.O. Box 2500,
Menlo Park, CA 94025

Voicemail/Fax : [phone]
Email : [e-mail]

"There is no way back into the past: the choice, as Wells once said,
is the Universe, or nothing"
                              - Arthur C. Clarke

"The Earth is too fragile a basket in which to keep all your eggs"

                              - Robert A. Heinlein

"Earth is the cradle of humanity, but one cannot live in the cradle
forever."
                              - Konstantin E. Tsiolkovski

"Is the surface of the Earth really the right place for an expanding
technological civilization?"
                              - Prof. Gerard K. O'Neill

"We desire to open the planetary worlds to mankind."

                              - Dr. Wernher von Braun

"The meek shall inherit the earth.  The rest of us are going to the
stars."
                              -Anon.

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

Date: 24 Aug 92 23:24:21 GMT
From: Tom Nugent <[e-mail]>
Subject: Private space ventures
Newsgroups: sci.space

[e-mail] (Josh 'K' Hopkins) writes:

[stuff deleted]

>    I think we're missing the point.  What space needs more than a rich
>investor is a temporarily poor one.  When we have the space equivalent of a
>Bill Gates or Ross Perot, who starts of small but makes a big fortune fairly
>quickly in a new field, then we'll have the space revolution we're looking for.
>Other people would jump on the bandwagon, competition develops and boom - you
>get your 486DX 33 booster for less than the price of a present day Apple II
>launch vehicle.
>    Unfortunately, analogies only go so far.  If space is an analogous
>field, we don't have a young Bill Gates that I can see.

Last week's Space News mentioned this a bit.  In a round table discussion
regarind commercial space, it was agreed that OSC (Orbital Science
Corporation, the makers of the Pegasus laucnh vehicle) is about as close as
you can come to the 'little guy goes big' in space, and they agreed that it
was at best a mediocre success, and definitely not a bonanza of money.

"The future is a race between education and catastrophe."
        - H.G. Wells
--
Tom Nugent    voice:[phone]    e-mail:[e-mail]
"To be average scares the hell out of me." -- Anonymous

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

Date: 24 Aug 92 23:47:47 GMT
From: Tom Nugent <[e-mail]>
Subject: Size,Mass,and velocity....
Newsgroups: sci.space

[e-mail] (Livy) writes:

>Hi.
>Can anybody please email me the Mass(in kg),the Size (r in meters),and
>the x and y velocity (m/s) of all the planets in the Solar System?
>Thank you very much,
>Livy

{Flame on!}

I don't mean to flame, but this seems to be a big waste of bandwidth.  You
can find things like this just about anywhere.  Surely in an encyclopedia,
if not a good dictionary.  Call up your local library (you don't even have
to leave home) and they may be willing to give it to you over the phone.
Otherwise, go to the library, and look it up along with ten zillion other
neat things about space you can find there.

{Flame off!}

"[The space program] can help counter the head-on collision with the
environmental chaos we now face; spearhead technological, competitive, and
political leadership; stimulate young minds to excellence; and forge cultural
bonds between nations for the benefit of all humanity."
                - Leonard David
--
Tom Nugent    voice:[phone]    e-mail:[e-mail]
"To be average scares the hell out of me." -- Anonymous

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

Date: Mon, 24 Aug 1992 23:43:26 GMT
From: Tom Nugent <[e-mail]>
Subject: Space Economics
Newsgroups: sci.space

[e-mail] (Gary Coffman) writes:

>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Mark Goodman) writes:

>Yes there is a market niche for microsats in store and forward
>communications and Earth resources sensing. Motorola's Iridum
>seems to have gained enough mass in development that Pegasus
>may no longer be a viable launcher for it. Iridum's market niche

Perhaps Some good news for private launch companies: I've heard that AmRoc
is planning on bidding for the launch of the Iridium satellites with their
(new) Aquila rocket, which seems to be going along very well in tests.

"A mind is a terrible thing to waste."
        - United Negro College Fund
"What a terrible thing to have lost one's mind, or not to have a mind at
  all.  How true that is."
        - Dan Quayle
"See what we mean?!?"
        - United Negro College Fund
--
Tom Nugent    voice:[phone]    e-mail:[e-mail]
"To be average scares the hell out of me." -- Anonymous

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

Date: Mon, 24 Aug 92 17:26:31 EDT
From: Tom <[e-mail]>
Subject: SPS & faith

[description of how SPS may come about after other space industries]

>[The argument] seems more along the lines of "SPS will never be worth it."

>My argument is that there are many other kinds of space industries that
>will be economical long before SPS, and they can provide us the money
>and industrial capability to build SPS and habitats in space.  SPS may or
>may not ever be competitive for Earthside power.  We should
>concentrate on those intermediate industries, and start by working to
>expand the industries we have now.

And a darn good one, too.  Even if SPS could be shown to be economical now,
I'd agree we should concentrate on the foundation industries, especially as
they would provide most of an SPS market.  Not to mention the ability to
answer the most pressing questions in the SPS equation.  The arguments I
referred to above were provided by others, and were a bit more fundamentalist
in their pessimism.

And, as an aside...

>Faith alone is poor basis for any scientific endeavor. If the answers
>come out differently from what how you want them to come out, you must
>have the integrity to admit it, or else it won't be science for long.
...
>I'm an
>experimental scientist: uncritical, unquestioning acceptance of ideas,
>no matter how appealing, is as bad for experimenting as it is for
>theory.

Ah, but there is an idea that you must accept on faith:  That there is a
reality outside of your senses that corresponds to your senses.

Seems like a nit, but it is this faith (as well as the faith in the
scientific method) that is an absolute necessity for science.  If you don't
have that faith, you aren't doing science.  And the link between your
senses and the outside world, though it may be supported by your ability
to survive and predict phenomena, will never be proven in any scientific
way, for the 'observer' is a non-objective thing, and can never be sensed!

Galileo had this faith, when Aristotle taught that the Universe was perfect
and unchanging, but Galileo saw that 'Still, it moves!'

See Pirsig's Art_of_Motorcycle_Maintainence for more details.

P.s. - The link between the two is the heart of 'Zen'.

-Tommy Mac                     .  "                  +
.------------------------  +                      *       +
|   Tom McWilliams; scrub       ,     .                        "        +
|  astronomy undergrad, at     *       +;.     .  '             There is
| Michigan State University   '                      .    "   no Gosh!
|   [e-mail]                        '      ,   *
|       [phone]       ;  +  '                                 *
'-----------------------

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

Date: 25 Aug 92 04:27:03 GMT
From: Ron Baalke <[e-mail]>
Subject: What happened to Viking?
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Lee Mellinger) writes...
>BTW, there is some hallway talk of trying to image the landers by the
>Mars Observer s/c, maybe we will see which direction the antenna is
>pointing ;-)

I also heard that there was a dust storm in the vicinity that may have
contributed to the demise of the Viking 1 lander.

The narrow-angle mode of the Mars Observer Camera can sample at
1.4 meters/pixel.  The Viking lander sites will be imaged at this
high resolution, though it will be a real challenge with the camera
pointing.
     ___    _____     ___
    /_ /|  /____/ \  /_ /|     Ron Baalke         | [e-mail]
    | | | |  __ \ /| | | |     Jet Propulsion Lab |
 ___| | | | |__) |/  | | |__   M/S 525-3684 Telos | Optimists live longer
/___| | | |  ___/    | |/__ /| Pasadena, CA 91109 | than pessimists.
|_____|/  |_|/       |_____|/                     |

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

Date: 24 Aug 92 22:26:51 GMT
From: Steve Jenkins <jenkins@fritz>
Subject: With telepresence, who needs people in Earth orbit?
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Gary Coffman) writes:
>Not the same thing at all. Except for the Viking landers, *none* of the
>spacecraft that ventured beyond the Moon have been able to manipulate
>their environment.

Why except Viking?  It *was* able to manipulate its environment.  I'd
argue that Voyager has no environment to manipulate.  What did you have
in mind?

>This is in contrast to teleoperated devices that require distant super-
>vision at the detail level in near real time.

Current planetary spacecraft are not operated that way.  The one-way
light time to Voyager 2 at Neptune encounter was on the order of four
hours.  That's stretching my notion of "near real time" a bit.  Even
nearby Magellan does its thing mostly on its own;  the routine
commanding is mostly housekeeping stuff of a noncritical nature.
Sometimes we give 'em the whole weekend off. :-)

>There have been no robots in space with the autonomy of a fruit fly or
>the manipulative ability of a mouse as yet. Nothing approaching the
>capability of a man has even been designed, let alone successfully
>tested, on Earth as yet. Earthlings have sent out glorified box brownies
>to snap pictures, but nothing designed to turn over a rock.

Except Surveyor 7, Luna 16, Luna 17, Luna 20, and Vikings 1 and 2,
depending on what counts as a rock.

No one claims that highly autonomous, highly intelligent robots have
been sent to explore space.  That doesn't make all exaggerated
statements to the contrary true.

--
Steve Jenkins                  [e-mail]
Caltech/Jet Propulsion Laboratory    [phone]

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

Date: 24 Aug 92 23:37:54 GMT
From: Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey <[e-mail]>
Subject: With telepresence, who needs people in Earth orbit?
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Ron Baalke) writes:
> In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Gary Coffman) writes...
>>Not the same thing at all. Except for the Viking landers, *none* of the
>>spacecraft that ventured beyond the Moon have been able to manipulate
>>their environment.
>
> One other exception is Venera 13 and 14.  They collected some soil samples
> on Venus and performed some onboard analysis.

Yeah, and what about the laser and/or particle-beam zappers aboard
Phobos 2, intended to vaporize soil so instruments could record its
spectra?

It's not clear what Gary means by "manipulate their environment."  The
Vega balloons were passive, but probably sampled Venus's atmosphere
(I'm not familiar with their instrument load). Phobos 2 and one of the
Soviet Mars landers carried tiny rovers, too.  Or do we only count
spacecraft that succeeded?

Moira Higgins on astronomy:       Bill Higgins
"I can always find Orion.         Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
Besides that the Moon             Internet: [e-mail]
is my only other specialty."      Bitnet:   [e-mail]

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

Date: 24 Aug 92 23:57:59 GMT
From: Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey <[e-mail]>
Subject: With telepresence, who needs people in Earth orbit?
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Matthew DeLuca) writes:
> In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Nick Szabo) writes:
>>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (George William Herbert) writes:
>
>>>We can't get away (now) with just using robots in space.
>
>>Funny.  All commercial space projects, the vast majority of military
>>space projects, and all exploration projects that have gone farther than
>>Moon, have gotten away with using fully automated spacecraft.
>
> And, if we want to remain at our current level of space capability, we can
> keep on using what we've got.  If we actually want to go places and do
> things, though, we're going to have to open things up for *real* robots
> (despite what you have claimed in the past, things like Voyager are *not*
> robots) and real manned space travel.

Cecil may want to hear a discussion of this, but I think I've heard it
often enough before.

I'd like to see Nick respond to Matthew's point.  I'd guess that he
too would like to develop the capabilities of "real" robots,
telepresence, and even Real Astronauts.  He simply is not willing to
pay the price of Space Station Fred to get this.  He's not even
willing to pay for Shuttle operations.  Meanwhile, there is lots and
lots of useful stuff we could accomplish (and are accomplishing) at
existing levels of technology.

Henry Spencer, I expect, would agree fully with Matthew's statement, but
insist that to engineer all this stuff, you've got to fly it, try it,
take it home and fix mistakes, then fly again-- as he recently
advocated during the Tethered Satellite System discussion.   Frequent
and simple access to orbit is the key.   What NASA has now is "We're
only gonna get one chance this decade to fly our gadget, and if it
doesn't work our careers are shot, so it must be super-reliable and
gold-plated."

How about it, guys?

During the first and second stage         Bill Higgins
flights of the vehicle, if a serious      Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
irretrievable fault should occur and      [e-mail]
the deviation of the flight attitude of   [e-mail]
the vehicle exceeds a predetermined       SPAN/Hepnet: 43011::HIGGINS
value, the attitude self-destruction
system will make the vehicle
self-destroyed.
     --Long March 3 User's Manual
     Ministry of Astronautics, People's Republic of China (1985)

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

Date: 25 Aug 92 00:11:07 GMT
From: Tom Nugent <[e-mail]>
Subject: With telepresence, who needs people in Earth orbit?
Newsgroups: sci.space

[e-mail] (Nick Szabo) writes:
[in answer to 'who needs people in Earth orbit?']
>Those in search of government pork.  They consider astronauts a good
>money-raising technique, much like Greenpeace & their whales.

>(But at least donations to Greenpeace are voluntary).

>Save the astronauts!  Write your Congressman & join NSS now!  :-)

I realize this isn't exactly an attack, but get real Nick.  (This is, I guess,
also a response to previous articles by Nick where he cuts down NSS and NASA.)

NSS may support SSF, but they see the big picture.  Yes, Freedom is probably
not the best possible space station we could build.  However, cancelling it
would be a tragedy, because don't think for a second that we would start
building another one. Congress just wouldn't go for it. And whether you believe
it or not, it is hard as hell to work in space.  The engineers of various
recent projects aren't (all) incompetent; they just don't know everything
about how space affects things.  To learn this, we _need_ a space station.

NASA is not some evil entity trying to keep humanity from developing space;
they're trying to help in their own way, but they have their own problems.
The world isn't a perfect place; in fact, it is very often a crappy place.
Without the promise of near-term profit, you won't get industry to do what's
necessary, so the government does things like SSF, and perhaps more
importantly,  SSTO and NASP.

Well, that's enough.  {Flame off.}  This may not be an extremely cogent,
well thought out defense of various organizations, but hopefully everyone
knows what I mean, and I at least got it out of my system.

"The future is a race between education and catastrophe."
        - H.G. Wells
--
Tom Nugent    voice:[phone]    e-mail:[e-mail]
"To be average scares the hell out of me." -- Anonymous

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

Date: Tue, 25 Aug 1992 01:08:26 GMT
From: Henry Spencer <[e-mail]>
Subject: With telepresence, who needs people in Earth orbit?
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey) writes:
>Henry Spencer, I expect, would agree fully with Matthew's statement, but
>insist that to engineer all this stuff, you've got to fly it, try it,
>take it home and fix mistakes, then fly again-- as he recently
>advocated during the Tethered Satellite System discussion.   Frequent
>and simple access to orbit is the key.   What NASA has now is "We're
>only gonna get one chance this decade to fly our gadget, and if it
>doesn't work our careers are shot, so it must be super-reliable and
>gold-plated."

Precisely.  Plus, of course, maximizing reliability runs up the cost
astronomically, so you can't start very many such projects, so they
don't get to fly very often, and the situation just gets worse and
worse...
--
There is nothing wrong with making      | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
mistakes, but... make *new* ones. -D.Sim|  [e-mail]  utzoo!henry

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Newsgroups: sci.space

Path: crabapple.srv.cs.cmu.edu!cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!rochester!news.bbn.com!usc!cs.utexas.edu!torn!newshost.uwo.ca!vaxr.sscl.uwo.ca!stooke
From: [e-mail]
Subject: re: what happened to Viking
Organization: Social Science Computing Laboratory
Date: Mon, 24 Aug 1992 19:35:25 GMT
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
Sender: USENET News System <[e-mail]>
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Source-Info:  Sender is really [e-mail]
Source-Info:  Sender is really [e-mail]

the 'bad command caused antenna to turn away from Earth' confusion may
be a fuzzy memory of what happened to Phobos 1.

Phil Stooke

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End of Space Digest Volume 15 : Issue 141
------------------------------