Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/mac/TEXT_ZIP/spacedig/V15_1/V15NO188.ZIP/V15NO188

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Date: Sat, 12 Sep 92 05:03:04
From: Space Digest maintainer <[e-mail]>
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Subject: Space Digest V15 #188
To: Space Digest Readers
Precedence: bulk


Space Digest                Sat, 12 Sep 92       Volume 15 : Issue 188

Today's Topics:
                         3 Booster Questions
                           Arstrong's Boots
                       How to build ion engine?
         Is NASA really planning to Terraform Mars? (5 msgs)
                             Mars Direct
          One Small Step for a Space Activist... Vol 3 No 9
                        Pluto Direct/ options
                   Pluto Direct Propulsion Options
              Pluto Fast Flyby mission goals... (2 msgs)
                                RL-10
                              spacesuits
               Terraforming needs to begin now (3 msgs)
                                 test

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

Date: 11 Sep 92 15:02:39 GMT
From: "Allen W. Sherzer" <[e-mail]>
Subject: 3 Booster Questions
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:

>It still costs less than an Altas to fly.
>A Rockwell engineer I spoke with at the WSC thought
>the baby Saturn might be as low as 55 million per launch.

The cost of an Atlas includes the half a billion $$ GD spent on the design.
How do you plan to amortize the development cost of baby Saturn?

  Allen

--
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Allen W. Sherzer | "If they can put a man on the Moon, why can't they     |
|  [e-mail]     |  put a man on the Moon?"                               |
+----------------------225 DAYS TO FIRST FLIGHT OF DCX----------------------+

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

Date: 11 Sep 92 15:25:54 GMT
From: Bob Montante <[e-mail]>
Subject: Arstrong's Boots
Newsgroups: sci.space

[e-mail] (Glen K Moore) <[e-mail]> :

| I was aked today a question by someone who hadn't even thought of all
| of the useful things I know about the moon.  A typical non scientist!
| He asked me "What material was used to make Neil Armstron's boots?" He
| needed the answer for a lecture on ??  and was serious in his request.

They were made of concrete.  That was the only way to make them heavy
enough to keep from drifting away.

:-)  :-)  :-)

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

Date: 11 Sep 92 15:48:19 GMT
From: "Phil G. Fraering" <[e-mail]>
Subject: How to build ion engine?
Newsgroups: sci.space

[e-mail] (Ron Peterson) writes:


>Could someone please describe to me how to build a practical ion rocket
>engine?

>I'd like to know if it would be possible to build a micro-sized
>platform that could lift itself in the air powered by a solar cell
>or very small battery.  I thought that perhaps a tiny ion motor
>with a solar cell painted on its exterior might be capable of
>lifting itself off the ground.
>[e-mail] or uunet!vicorp!ron

No.

Ion drives are low-thrust beasties that can't lift themselves against
gravity. They're useful for in-space use, when thrusting for a couple months
doesn't pose much of a problem...

Gee, now I have to come up with an extra-big .signature, because
my response is shorter than the question...

--
Phil Fraering [e-mail] where the x is a number from 1-5.
Phone: [phone] SnailMail: 2408 Blue Haven Dr., New Iberia, La. 70560
If seven maids with seven brooms swept for half a year,
do you think, the Walrus asked, that they could make it clear?
I doubt it, said the Carpenter, and shed a bitter tear.
---------
"NOAH!"                        \           \ Lewis Carrol
"Yes lord?"                     > Bill Cosby, The Story of Noah
"HOW LONG CAN YOU TREAD WATER?"/

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

Date: Fri, 11 Sep 92 17:26:13 BST
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Is NASA really planning to Terraform Mars?

> You are correct about global warming. We have no conclusive
evidence. On the
> other hand if it is truly happening, and we just cannot figure it
out, we're
> fucked.  Ozone loss, on the other hand, is quite real and quite
anthropogenic,
>


Current worst case warmup scenarios have fallen from the previous
maximum of +5F to (I believe) 2-3 degrees maximum over a 30-50 year
times span.

This hardly "fucked". It means some coastal areas recede at a rate
not much different from the rate at which property is written off.

It means that food production and wealth will redistribute somewhat,
but no one is really sure if the climate effects will be that severe
or not. In the worst case, Canadians get to export wheat and corn to
Kansas.

Bangladesh... Oh, well, they ARE fucked. The exception that proves
the rule...

To put it in perspective: the temperature change now foreseen in
worst case scenarios is less than natural average Earth temperature
shifts that have happened in the past. The Cretaceous, for example,
was a bit warmer than the expected worst case. And few expect the
worst case.

The impacts will primarily be economic and amortized over what is
essentially forever in economic terms.

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

Date: 11 Sep 92 15:28:10 GMT
From: "Phil G. Fraering" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Is NASA really planning to Terraform Mars?
Newsgroups: sci.space

[e-mail] (Doug Mohney) writes:

>In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (David Knapp) writes:

>>You do not know there is no life on Mars or anywhere else other than Earth.
>>I don't see the relevance of arguing over the label of 'back yard'.  I don't
>>think as a society, or even a planet, we have yet learned how to manage our
>>*own* planet, not even a *little*.  Because of this I don't think we are
>>qualified to begin applying our ignorance to anther planet.
>>
>>Luckily, this will not be an issue for many years.

>Naw, you'd better line up now to put Saturn's rings off-limits to Szabo's Ice
>Mining, Inc. And then prepare to go out there and enforce your law, hm?

>                 Support U.N. military force against Serbia

It's enough to make me go work for Nick just to get
people like that aggravated when we get the first
shipment of "ring ice" in. I've been thinking, might
there be a market in Japan for ice cubes of the stuff?

I mean, it's been ice a lot longer than the alaskan
glaciers, right? And besides, it's only rings...


--
Phil Fraering [e-mail] where the x is a number from 1-5.
Phone: [phone] SnailMail: 2408 Blue Haven Dr., New Iberia, La. 70560
If seven maids with seven brooms swept for half a year,
do you think, the Walrus asked, that they could make it clear?
I doubt it, said the Carpenter, and shed a bitter tear.
---------
"NOAH!"                        \           \ Lewis Carrol
"Yes lord?"                     > Bill Cosby, The Story of Noah
"HOW LONG CAN YOU TREAD WATER?"/

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

Date: 11 Sep 92 15:31:32 GMT
From: "Phil G. Fraering" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Is NASA really planning to Terraform Mars?
Newsgroups: sci.space

[e-mail] (Thomas H. Kunich) writes:

>It's always nice to see people write refreshing things like, "All you have to
>do is move Mars several thousand miles into a closer orbit." Or some such.
>Do you remember that lunatic that was interviewed on 60 Minutes about
>the Soviet antiballistic missle system -- the one where he said, "All
>you have to do is, first, contain a nuclear explosion. Then ---", I
>sort of turned off at that point.

Ever wonder what underground nuclear testing did?

Well...

--
Phil Fraering [e-mail] where the x is a number from 1-5.
Phone: [phone] SnailMail: 2408 Blue Haven Dr., New Iberia, La. 70560
If seven maids with seven brooms swept for half a year,
do you think, the Walrus asked, that they could make it clear?
I doubt it, said the Carpenter, and shed a bitter tear.
---------
"NOAH!"                        \           \ Lewis Carrol
"Yes lord?"                     > Bill Cosby, The Story of Noah
"HOW LONG CAN YOU TREAD WATER?"/

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

Date: 11 Sep 92 15:32:43 GMT
From: "Phil G. Fraering" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Is NASA really planning to Terraform Mars?
Newsgroups: sci.space

[e-mail] (David Knapp) writes:



>I'll be you knew alllll along that the evil empire wasn't so evil, didn't you.

That's not what the people in the former SU are saying. They're
saying it apparently _was_ what the right wing here said it
was.

[...]

>But the theory that dinosaurs were killed by a meteor impact is only a theory,
>right?

I'm sure a ten-mile-wide cube of rock hitting at cometary velocities
went relatively unnoticed, and had little to do with the death of the
dinosaurs.
--
Phil Fraering [e-mail] where the x is a number from 1-5.
Phone: [phone] SnailMail: 2408 Blue Haven Dr., New Iberia, La. 70560
If seven maids with seven brooms swept for half a year,
do you think, the Walrus asked, that they could make it clear?
I doubt it, said the Carpenter, and shed a bitter tear.
---------
"NOAH!"                        \           \ Lewis Carrol
"Yes lord?"                     > Bill Cosby, The Story of Noah
"HOW LONG CAN YOU TREAD WATER?"/

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

Date: 11 Sep 92 12:54:16 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Is NASA really planning to Terraform Mars?
Newsgroups: sci.space

In <[e-mail]> Andreas Michael Weder writes:
>Even if some of the results of on-going research on the topic of global warming
>were wrong, would you like to bet on that? Even if all the waste we're producing
>wouldn't damage the environment at all: it's toxic and we're killing life forms
>by simply dumping it in the oceans or whatever. And that's a fact. If you
>disagree, watch the news.

  And if you uncritically believe everything the media tell you, then
I have a bridge or two to sell you ...

 -----------------------------------------------------------------
               ** Of course I don't speak for IBM **
Greg Nicholls ... [e-mail] or [e-mail]
                  voice/fax: [phone]

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

Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1992 15:39:56 GMT
From: Frank Crary <[e-mail]>
Subject: Mars Direct
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Nick Szabo) writes:
>There is no "technical" reason why anything should cost anything; that
>is a judgement of economics, and in this case of politics, as well as
>of technology.  I have previously shown that Mars Direct, while being
>a considerable improvement, would still cost $150 billion for a single
>4-astronaut mission to Mars.

To get this figure, you altered the assumptions of Mars Direct. (E.g. not
to do detailed safety studies on a space station, etc...) The assumption
behind Mars Direct is to take some risks in this respect. The difference
is $150 billion for one mission (if you carefully test everything out in
advance) versus $50 billion for five missions (if you take a risk). While
I agree your analysis is more like NASA's usual way of doing business,
I think it also shows the problem with that approach.

                                                       Frank Crary
                                                       CU Boulder

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

Date: 11 Sep 92 14:58:36 GMT
From: "Allen W. Sherzer" <[e-mail]>
Subject: One Small Step for a Space Activist... Vol 3 No 9
Newsgroups: talk.politics.space,sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Nick Szabo) writes:

>Fred is still being funded one year at a time.  This year it
>took some significant hits. The probability of Fred being
>completed, while rising, is still only around 50%, so the
>market needs to be adjusted by that factor (to start with).

You need to read between the lines. With the support NASA, the
contractors, and Congress is giving it IS going to get built.
The Senate vote last Tuesday just confirms it.

It may shrink or change in some other way but in some form it
will be built. Traxler had a solid year to build up a constituency
against it. He carved it up and tossed chunks as all the special
interests (except, of course, science) and still lost.

>The probability of SSF being a significant milestone in space
>development remains very low;

Sure. But that's not the point. We are now past trying to kill it and
must now find ways to live with it.

>Shuttle should be phased out with launchers shared by the military
>and commerce, and eventually by SSTO.  Developing a unique capability
>for one program doesn't make sense, especially a program as inconsquential
>as SSF.

We aren't talking about a unique capability. What we are talking about
is a market driven solution to reduce costs. One advantage is that this
will not only give us a HLV but will reduce the cost of MLVs as well.

>I don't understand the 160,000 pounds.

That is the estimates I have for the amount of material which will
be lifted to Freedom every year.

>What in blazes does #3 mean?  We only need to circularize
>at 300 nm, normal launchers can do that.

Shuttle proponents argue that this capability is needed to eliminate
Shuttle. I agree it isn't immediately needed but it had to be costed
out so we could justify eliminating the Shuttle.

>I thought you said we need 160,000 pounds?  In any case, why
>can't we use Titan IV?

Two reasons:
1. It's cheaper.
2. A Titan IV couldn't carry the load plus the reusable logistics
module/re-entry vehicle.

>I agree with the commercial aquisition approach, but a launcher
>custom-made for a single NASA program is a very poor candidate for
>commercial aquisition.

It isn't custome made. The launchers in question have been proposed
for use in SDI experiments, Moon/Mars exploration, and Freedom resupply.
That hardly makes it a custom vehicle.

>This service has a politically risky future,
>both in terms of funding SSF and non-use of the Shuttle.

We can wait for Freedom (should the market require that andlthough since
we are talking about doubling the market it's worth a lot of risk). But
you are correct in that it will require NASA to say up front that they
will be open minded about it.

>MM already charges $280 million for Titan IV; how are they
>going to launch more than twice the payload with the same
>tech for less than $200 million?

First of all, they charge less than that for Titan IV (the figure I
have seen is $225 million. In addition, the Titan V doesn't use the
Centaur upper stage (which is included in the $225 million). Finally,
this is a commercial procurement of multiple launchers which will
cut lots of paperwork costs.

It would be better to compare it to a scaled up Titan III instead
of a scaled up Titan IV. Take a $120 million Titan III, add three
more main engines and three more solid boosters and you have a
Titan V. In quanity meeting a $200M price shouldn't be hard. BTW,
my estimate is that with a 50 unit buy the price will be $187M
each (which includes development costs). This estimate assumes
a .95 learning curve.

>It makes more sense to use the Shuttle phase-out to fund
>new technology, like AMROC and SSTO,

I myself would rather just have the government buy services and
let the market fund vehicle development.

>instead of stretching out the ancient missiles to even more bizzarre
>lengths.

If it works, no problem. All I am doing with this article is providing
an existance proof: we can get more capability for less money if we
let the market decide. My plan doesn't require that the feds buy Titan
V, only that they buy the cheaper service.

I have shown that for the cost of Shuttle they can easially fund
the vehicles I speak of with private money. If Martin selects Titan V
or Titan IV for their bid is up to them. I only use the Titan V because
it is cheaper.

   Allen

--
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Allen W. Sherzer | "If they can put a man on the Moon, why can't they     |
|  [e-mail]     |  put a man on the Moon?"                               |

+----------------------225 DAYS TO FIRST FLIGHT OF DCX----------------------+

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

Date: 11 Sep 92 09:44:03 GMT
From: Rui Sousa <[e-mail]>
Subject: Pluto Direct/ options
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:

   Not really relevant. In 248 years we'll have people living furthur out than
   that. The real reason is that if a probe doesn't get there by 2010 or so, the
   atmosphere will be condensing again. This IS our last chance for about 248
   years to study the atmospheres of Pluto/Charon.

---

Well, perhaps during the next 248 years there will be a cheap way of duplicating the Sun's marginally greater irradiance power near perihelium. I think a big radiator, perhaps powered by fusion energy, placed in a properly designed orbit around Pluto would be enough to make the difference. Talk about astronomy as a  purely observational science...

Rui
--
*** Infinity is at hand!                               Rui Sousa
*** If yours is big enough, grab it!                   [e-mail]

                All opinions expressed here are strictly my own

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

Date: 11 Sep 92 15:50:19 GMT
From: "Phil G. Fraering" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Pluto Direct Propulsion Options
Newsgroups: sci.space

[e-mail] (Ron Baalke) writes:

>In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] ("Phil G. Fraering") writes...
>>Henry Spencer, net.authority, pontificates:
>>/You really cannot do a Pluto
>>\orbiter in a reasonable amount of time with 1960s propulsion technology,
>>/which is what all currently-planned missions use.

>>Just out of curiosity, is there a way to convince them to use post-early-
>>1960's technology, like an ion drive of some sort?

>JPL is currently studying the stationary plasma thrusters that the
>Department of Defense recently obtained from the Soviets.  These plasma
>thrusters perform better than ion thrusters and are in a small package about
>10 times smaller, and they weigh only 4 kg.  The plan is to build scaled-up
>versions of the Soviet thrusters that would provide the primary propulsion for
>spacecraft for transfer to geosynchronous orbit.
>     ___    _____     ___
>    /_ /|  /____/ \  /_ /|     Ron Baalke         | [e-mail]
>    | | | |  __ \ /| | | |     Jet Propulsion Lab |
> ___| | | | |__) |/  | | |__   M/S 525-3684 Telos | Anything is impossible if
>/___| | | |  ___/    | |/__ /| Pasadena, CA 91109 | you don't attempt it.
>|_____|/  |_|/       |_____|/                     |

1. Where can I get more info on these beasties?

(BTW, how much better are they than our MPD stuff? If their
advantage only that they haven't been afraid to actually
run tests? )

(For those who don't know, Ron seems to be comparing them to ion
drives, which have a lot more volume and mass than plasma arcjets of
_any_ sort, for a lot of reasons. It would be more appropriate
to compare their MPD stuff to our MPD stuff...


--
Phil Fraering [e-mail] where the x is a number from 1-5.
Phone: [phone] SnailMail: 2408 Blue Haven Dr., New Iberia, La. 70560
If seven maids with seven brooms swept for half a year,
do you think, the Walrus asked, that they could make it clear?
I doubt it, said the Carpenter, and shed a bitter tear.
---------
"NOAH!"                        \           \ Lewis Carrol
"Yes lord?"                     > Bill Cosby, The Story of Noah
"HOW LONG CAN YOU TREAD WATER?"/

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

Date: 11 Sep 92 15:11:10 GMT
From: "Frederick A. Ringwald" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Pluto Fast Flyby mission goals...
Newsgroups: sci.space

Did Staehle's idea from c. 1984 for a small craft to fly through
Earth/Moon L4/L5, primarily instrumented with dust collectors, ever
take off?

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

Date: 11 Sep 92 15:55:17 GMT
From: "Phil G. Fraering" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Pluto Fast Flyby mission goals...
Newsgroups: sci.space

[e-mail] (Horowitz, Irwin Kenneth) writes:

>Folks,
>    Hearing all these wild ideas passed around on this Pluto flyby has
>led me to try to remind everyone of a few things concerning this mission.
>First, Staehle is trying to bring back the concept of "faster, better,
>cheaper" that Goldin is pushing, which was so successful in the '60s.

But ion drives are tested. JPL tested much worse ones than we
have now back in the '70's, as part of project SERT.

(or did someone else run the program? I thought it was JPL...)

So it's tested. Also, I'll bet SERT was pretty cheap. We know
the exhaust is faster.

So, ion drives are cheaper and faster than ordinary propulsion.
I don't know of a "better" criteria you can apply...

>As a result, the primary concern for this mission is COST.  After that,
>is a rapid schedule.  Finally, they'll address the performance aspects.
>    As a result, this mission WILL NOT use any exotic or unproven
>technology, just because they strike someone's fancy.  There are a lot more
>"down-to-Earth" missions that can be used as technology testbeds.  No ion
>thrusters.  No aerobrakes.

Then why use rockets at all? They're only 30 years old as launchers of
interplanetary vehicles...

BTW, it is precicely because of the reluctance to do advanced propulsion
that the mission will cost $ 400 million instead of $200 million.
If Goldin had capped the cost lower, you wouldn't have been able
to plan it using only solids, and maybe ion drives would have
been _neccesary_, so stop using the cost excuse.

Because of this "chinese firecracker" tech y'all insist on using,
guess what:

>They are also limiting the scientific payload to
>only those instruments that have been deemed most critical to a Pluto flyby.
>These include a CCD camera, a UV spectrometer, an IR mapping spectrometer, as
>well as the radio science that can be done using the main antenna.  This means
>no magnetometer.  No dust collectors.  Nothing else.

And it doesn't suprise me.

--
Phil Fraering [e-mail] where the x is a number from 1-5.
Phone: [phone] SnailMail: 2408 Blue Haven Dr., New Iberia, La. 70560
If seven maids with seven brooms swept for half a year,
do you think, the Walrus asked, that they could make it clear?
I doubt it, said the Carpenter, and shed a bitter tear.
---------
"NOAH!"                        \           \ Lewis Carrol
"Yes lord?"                     > Bill Cosby, The Story of Noah
"HOW LONG CAN YOU TREAD WATER?"/

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

Date: 11 Sep 92 13:20:48 GMT
From: John Roberts <[e-mail]>
Subject: RL-10
Newsgroups: sci.space

-From: [e-mail] (Henry Spencer)
-Subject: Re: 3 booster questions
-Date: 10 Sep 92 15:59:12 GMT

->[2].Atlas still goes *boom* a lot?  Is this inherent to the design of having
->two of the engines fall off and the difficulty in shutting off the fuel flow
->to these engines?

-Neither.  The recent failures have been Centaur problems.  They're a bit
-surprising, since the RL10 has been a very reliable engine.

RL-10 failures? What does that do to Allen's statistics for the reliability
of the engine to be used for DCX?

John Roberts
[e-mail]

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

Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1992 15:51:02 GMT
From: Frank Crary <[e-mail]>
Subject: spacesuits
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Amy L. Cooprider) writes:
>Does anyone know the latest figures for how much a spacesuit weighs??
>I`ve heard of figures between 150 and 300 pounds.  This is somewhat trivial...
>I only need the values to compute the payload of a vehicle for my senior
>design course.

That depends on which suit you mean: The current Shuttle suit masses
131 kg. The Apollo lunar suit massed 100 kg. The suit designs for
the space station would mass 189 to 250 kg (depending on which design
were used, and on the entire project having funding...) I was involved
in a study of space suits for use on Mars, and we set a target mass
of 44 kg (due to the martian gravity, this was to make a Mars suit
no heavier, on Mars, than the Apollo suits were on the Moon.) Meeting
the 44kg goal should be possible, but requires fairly radical departures
from the current suit design philosophy.

                                                      Frank Crary
                                                      CU Boulder

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

Date: 11 Sep 92 14:57:01 GMT
From: James Davis Nicoll <[e-mail]>
Subject: Terraforming needs to begin now
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Jeff Jackson) writes:

    On terraforming  the  unpleasant bits of Earth:

>I guess the hard part is getting fresh water to these regions.  Here's
>my wild, uneducated, naive silly idea for all ya'll to shoot holes in.
>There's tons of sand in these deserts.  You can use sand to make
>glass, so, use all this glass to make huge solar distillation systems.
>I'm envisioning long salt-water canals running from the Med. Sea, or
>Oceans running hundreds of miles inland.  Covering each canal is a
>greenhouse that heats the water up and makes it evaporate.  At the top
>of the greenhouse, the vapor is collected and cooled of, and the resulting
>distilled water is then pumped out into irrigation canals runing
>perpendicular to the salt-water canals.
>
>Yes, I'm an idiot, but tell me why.  Why won't it work?  What *would*
>work?

    I  think  the French have looked at digging a channel from  the
Med to the depression between Libya and Egypt (Nuclear demo charges
could do this quickly, but  I think they intended on using more mundane
tools). A problem with flooding this depression (whose name escapes me)
is if you feed a constant flow of  salt water into a basin and let evaporation
take its course, the salinity of the basin can rise.  The soil type in
that region is described as 'salt crust' in my atlas, implying that the
region once was connected to the Med, although I don't know  how long
ago that was.

    Even a highly saline sea might be useful, if only to increase
precipitation in the regions downwind. Also, it could be useful industrially
as a source for materials disolved in sea water.

    I suppose the Nile could be diverted to  fill the depression,
although Egypt would probably not like the idea...

                            James Nicoll

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

Date: 11 Sep 92 15:02:57 GMT
From: James Davis Nicoll <[e-mail]>
Subject: Terraforming needs to begin now
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (James Davis Nicoll) writes:
>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Jeff Jackson) writes:
>
>    On terraforming  the  unpleasant bits of Earth:
>
>>I guess the hard part is getting fresh water to these regions.  Here's
>>my wild, uneducated, naive silly idea for all ya'll to shoot holes in.
>>There's tons of sand in these deserts.  You can use sand to make
>>glass, so, use all this glass to make huge solar distillation systems.
>>I'm envisioning long salt-water canals running from the Med. Sea, or
>>Oceans running hundreds of miles inland.  Covering each canal is a
>>greenhouse that heats the water up and makes it evaporate.  At the top
>>of the greenhouse, the vapor is collected and cooled of, and the resulting
>>distilled water is then pumped out into irrigation canals runing
>>perpendicular to the salt-water canals.
>>
>>Yes, I'm an idiot, but tell me why.  Why won't it work?  What *would*
>>work?
>
    Duh. In my previous reply, I  managed to miss the bit about
distillation. Never mind...

    What will be done with the salts left over from distillation,
and anyone have an idea  how  much this might cost?

    Whose lifestyles get radically changed by a Libyan-Egyptian
border Sea?

                            James  Nicoll

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

Date: 11 Sep 92 12:53:11 GMT
From: Gary Coffman <ke4zv!gary>
Subject: Terraforming needs to begin now
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Jeff Jackson) writes:
>
>On the wall of a nearby office is this neat picture of a planet with
>large amounts of liquid water, but large portions of the land mass is
>brown -- dry, relatively lifeless desert.  How about some ideas on how
>to terraform good old earth?  Starting with the Sahara or Austrailia's
>outback.
>
[distilled saltwater irrigation plan deleted]
>
>Yes, I'm an idiot, but tell me why.  Why won't it work?  What *would*
>work?

While this might work, it's a major engineering challenge that isn't
needed. What's needed instead is to restore the Great Sahara Forest
treeline by treeline using the plentiful underground aquifier of
the region. Yes, the Sahara was not always desert, and yes, there
is plentiful water there down deep. 2,000 years ago, the Sahara
region was forested. That changed the weather patterns in the Med
and northern Africa. It used to rain there regularly. It would again
if the forests were restored. There is a UN sponsored project working
on the southern edge of the Sahara to do just that. They're underfunded,
and presently in a war zone, but the plan can work given time.

Gary

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

Date: 11 Sep 92 16:03:05 GMT
From: Mark Smilor <[e-mail]>
Subject: test
Newsgroups: sci.space

this is a test







!

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End of Space Digest Volume 15 : Issue 188
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