Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/mac/TEXT_ZIP/spacedig/V15_2/V15NO252.ZIP/V15NO252

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

Date: Sun, 27 Sep 92 05:01:10
From: Space Digest maintainer <[e-mail]>
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Subject: Space Digest V15 #252
To: Space Digest Readers
Precedence: bulk


Space Digest                Sun, 27 Sep 92       Volume 15 : Issue 252

Today's Topics:
                  Clinton and Space Funding (2 msgs)
                              govn't R&D
              Hypersonic test vehicle proposed (3 msgs)
                        Lunar landing in 2002
             Mars Observer Update - 09/25/92 (Launch Day)
       NEAR asteroid mission (but wait! There's more!) (2 msgs)
                       overpopulation (2 msgs)
                          Population decline
              PUTTING VENUS IN AN ORBIT SIMILAR TO THE
                     Robot Rovers: Big or Small?
         Wealth in Space (Was Re: Clinton and Space Funding)
         With telepresence, who needs people in Earth orbit?

    Welcome to the Space Digest!!  Please send your messages to
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Date: Sat, 26 Sep 1992 20:18:55 +0000
From: Anthony Frost <[e-mail]>
Subject: Clinton and Space Funding
Newsgroups: sci.space


  >> What we REALLY need to do is convince investors that
  >> starting a colony on the moon in our time is as good of an
  >> idea as starting a colony in the new world was back in the
  >> 17th century.

  > Let's see, ole Chris landed in the New World in 1492, the
  > first viable colony landed in 1620. Apollo landed on the
  > Moon in 1969. So we should expect private enterprise to land
  > a commercial colony on the Moon about 2097. Let's call it
  > New Plymouth. In the meantime, I guess we'll have

I think the Spanish would disagree with you there, they had viable
settlements in place by 1505 in the areas first reached by Colombus. A more
depressing time scale would be the gap between the viking settlements in
Vinland and the european settlements in that area during the 17th century.

          Anthony

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

Date: Sun, 27 Sep 1992 00:16:00 GMT
From: Nick Szabo <[e-mail]>
Subject: Clinton and Space Funding
Newsgroups: sci.space,sci.astro,talk.politics.space,alt.politics.bush,alt.politics.clinton

In article <[e-mail]> rn11195@sage (Robert Nehls) writes:

>Like it or not, the two main technology drivers for the
>last 5 decades have been first the military and then the space program.

Whether we like it or not, it's probably not true.  Most of the patents,
and most of the important inventions like transistors and genetic
engineering, have come outside the sphere of these programs.

>Billions of dollars have been cut from the defense budget.  Where has this
>money gone?  No one talks about that.

Most of it has gone into medical care subsidies.  Unfortuneately most
of that is for paperwork, not advancing medical technology.  There
have also been big increases at HUD, EPA, and Education.  These easily
dwarf the savings from defense, which is only a small fraction of
the budget these days.  Bush and the current Congress are the most
profligate spenders since World War II, and they're not doing anything
as important as fighting Nazis.

>[Japan's success came at end of Cold War].

Not true.  Japan has been growing faster than U.S. economically
since World War II, because the U.S. was taking more money out of
the private sector and spending it on the Cold War.  Japan spends
much more of its R&D funds in the private sector than the U.S., and
most of its public-sector projects have failed just like ours
have here (shuttle, Clinch River breeder reactor, fusion program,
synfuels, etc. all failed to produce as promised -- public R&D
has an incredibly dismal record!)   Since the end of the Cold War,
Japan's stock market has crashed, in anticipation of a flux of talent
and money into the U.S. private sector giving us a trade advantage.
If we put that money into commercially useless projects like space
stations and Apollo reruns, we will lose that advantage.  If we
put it into commercially important areas like comsats and the airline
industry, as well as judicious amounts into long-term exploration
and research, we are much more likely to gain competitiveness.



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

Date: Sun, 27 Sep 1992 00:21:46 GMT
From: Nick Szabo <[e-mail]>
Subject: govn't R&D
Newsgroups: sci.space,sci.astro,talk.politics.space,alt.politics.bush,alt.politics.clinton

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Jason D Corley ) writes:
>
>With the government,
>you can bet that every part of the program will be recorded.

This is a good point.  The big reason NASA can make their
"spinoff" argument is not because they do better R&D, but because
they publish it and make sure it gets in the engineering libraries.


>Unfortunately, by convincing [a corporation] of it's efficacy and removing
>legal restrictions to it's creation, we give up our right to
>access their information, data, and even the facilities themselves.

>    It all becomes this question: What are we looking for
>when we go into space?  How much are we willing to sacrifice for
>it?  And what will we do when we get there?

We're looking for stuff that is (a) useful, so people will pay for
it and (b) builds a market for industrial capabilities like launch
vehicles that help the entire space industry.  The answer to the
dilemna could well be this: NASA should conduct research,
build prototypes, and publish them; commercial industry should implement
and operate. NASA should not presume to predict the industries of the
future; it should follow the lead of commerce and do research in support
of it (esp. comsats, launch vehicle technology, and the airline industry
should be the biggest engineering programs under its charter).  It
should also engange in exploration for it's own sake; we're not so
poor that we can't afford to expand our horizons.


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

Date: 27 Sep 92 00:49:23 GMT
From: Josh 'K' Hopkins <[e-mail]>
Subject: Hypersonic test vehicle proposed
Newsgroups: sci.space

[e-mail] writes:

I wrote this first part:

>>The Hypersonic Air Launch Option (HALO) would be a piloted vehicle that would
>>be launched from an SR-71 at Mach 3 and 70,000 ft.  It would use a LH2/LOX
>>rocket to reach Mach 9, then test variations on a scramjet engine at speeds up
>>to Mach 10-12.  It would be designed to fly 50-100 flights over a period of
>>several years.
>>

[stuff deleted]

>>   Followers of "Black" programs should also note that the relative ease with
>>which this could be done says a few things about what may have already been
>>done.

>It has been done Josh. It was called the X-15. Just go pull one out of a
>museum and add scramjet.  The wing attachments are identical to the ones
>that are used for Pegasus or near enough I hear.

The X-15 didn't make Mach 12.  I think it was closer to Mach 7.  It also used
a plain ol' rocket engine, not a scram jet.  If the point was to drop fireworks
off a B-52 and make them go fast, both X-15 and Pegasus would qualify.  However,
the point is to learn about how various scramjet configurations perform.
With the possible exception of black programs, this hasn't been done with real
pilots or vehicles.  (At least, not that I know of).


Note:  I don't want to sound like I'm slamming Pegasus or X-15.  I like both.
--
Josh Hopkins                 Of course I'm a solipsist - Isn't everybody?
[e-mail]

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

Date: 27 Sep 92 02:01:05 GMT
From: Mary Shafer <[e-mail]>
Subject: Hypersonic test vehicle proposed
Newsgroups: sci.space

I just thought I'd mention that the engineer mentioned in the HALO
article, Ken Iliff, is my husband.

And to tie this to another thread, I've just been made HL-20 Chief
Engineer at Dryden.  Langley Research Center is the Lead Center for
HL-20, of course.

--
Mary Shafer  DoD #0362 KotFR NASA Dryden Flight Research Facility, Edwards, CA
[e-mail]                    Of course I don't speak for NASA
 "There's no kill like a guns kill." LCDR "Hoser" Satrapa, gunnery instructor
                       "A kill is a kill."  Anonymous

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

Date: 27 Sep 92 03:00:58 GMT
From: Henry Spencer <[e-mail]>
Subject: Hypersonic test vehicle proposed
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:
>>Apparently Ames has proposed a Mach 10 class manned research aircraft as a
>>more conservative approach to building NASP...
>
>It has been done Josh. It was called the X-15. Just go pull one out of a
>museum and add scramjet.  The wing attachments are identical to the ones
>that are used for Pegasus or near enough I hear.

The B-52 pylon used for launching Pegasus *is* the X-15 pylon.

However, the X-15 was not good for Mach 10, and "just add scramjet" is
much more easily said than done.  One of the X-15s flew once with a dummy
scramjet, at Mach 6.7... suffering enough damage that it never flew again.

The similarity is not accidental.  HALO is the X-15 *successor* that should
have been started twenty years ago.  But it will be a new vehicle, and
necessarily so.  Leave the X-15s in the museums, where they belong.
--
There is nothing wrong with making      | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
mistakes, but... make *new* ones. -D.Sim|  [e-mail]  utzoo!henry

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

Date: 26 Sep 92 23:51:29 GMT
From: Nick Szabo <[e-mail]>
Subject: Lunar landing in 2002
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Gary Coffman) writes:
>...US private industry won't fund
>a return to the Moon because the results won't show up in their bottom
>lines in the less than six months timeframe that institutional investors
>will allow them for venture investments.

This is silly socialist rhetoric.  Chevron, among others, is planning
their oil operations in Siberia out beyond 2030 -- forty years.  The
government rebudgets every year, with priority on pork that will get
the congresscritter reelected in two years. Which sector has
the longer term thinkers?


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

Date: Sat, 26 Sep 1992 23:34:38 GMT
From: Nick Szabo <[e-mail]>
Subject: Mars Observer Update - 09/25/92 (Launch Day)
Newsgroups: sci.space,sci.astro,alt.sci.planetary

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:
>...neither plane reported receiving any signal from TOS.
>....At +39:51, the TOS was to ignite its solid
>rocket boosters to send Mars Observer from an Earth parking orbit onto a
>trajectory to Mars.  The time came and went, and still no signal from TOS.
>We don't know if the burn occured or not, or if the spacecraft was still in
>Earth orbit.  At +51:03, DSS-46 (26 meter antenna at Canberra) was in position
>to acquire the TOS signal.  Still more silence from TOS...
>...At +53:31,
>the Mars Observer spacecraft was scheduled to separate from the TOS, but we
>could not confirm this without any feedback from TOS.  The TOS was then
>scheduled to perform a small delta burn at +57:31 to move itself away from
>the spacecraft.  Still no signal acquisition from TOS...

>...We've acquired the signal from the spacecraft!
>...Mars Observer was OK and on its way to Mars.

Talk about flying blind!  Kudos to everybody involved, except perhaps
the TOS comm people.  Bon voyage and godspeed to Mars Observer!


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

Date: Sun, 27 Sep 1992 00:42:12 GMT
From: Nick Szabo <[e-mail]>
Subject: NEAR asteroid mission (but wait! There's more!)
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey) writes:
>
>Let's talk about the New, Improved NASA, with Secret Ingredient FCB!
>Prime target is a 1998 launch to 4660 Nereus, an asteroid with an
>orbit similar to Earth's, requiring a delta-V of 1.165 km/sec.

Nice delta-v.  Significantly less than landing on the moon.  Does
anybody have the original designation of this asteroid (it was
renamed after _Asteroids II_ came out)?  Has it been given a
type (C,S,M, etc.)?  Anything else known about its composition?

>The Announcement of Opportunity is due about a year from now, but the
>strawman payload includes visible imager, gamma-ray spectrometer,
>imaging spectrograph (I presume seeing deep into the infrared),
>magnetometer, and laser altimeter.

Very nice.  Now, where is the upper stage going?  Any chance we
can ping the asteroid with the upper stage and get imaging and
spectroscopy on the resulting dust cloud and crater?

>The fixed 1.5 m X-band dish allows (at 1 AU from Earth) 20.8 kbits/sec
>using DSN's 34-meter ground stations, 83.8 kb/sec with the 70-m
>dishes.  Solid-state data recorder would  hold 5E5 bits. (Now that I
>look at my notes, that seems a bit small! Maybe I transcribed it
>incorrectly.  Think that 5 coulda been an 8?)

Indeed, they'd be pulling a Magellan. :-)  Unlike Magellan, they might
not have the clout to get tons of DSN time, and would lose the data
instead.  'Tis not a good thing to skimp on storage, especially in
an era of many small missions, all competing for DSN time.

>Dry mass would be 400 kg, experiments taking up 60 kg of that, and
>there would be 300 kg of propellants.  A bipropellant propulsion
>system has a big 450-N (100-pound) thruster and twelve 22-N thrusters.

Hmmm.  If this was a bigger payload and an electric rocket were available,
I'd want to use that.  Even for this small a delta-v.  (It's still
a bigger delta-v than comsats, which can also benefit from electric
for the GTO to GEO run).  I'd want to look at how much thrust is
needed for maneuvering around the asteroid, though.  After the Neried
rendesvous, it would greatly increase the flexibility of the rest of
the mission.  Not that Farquar is doing so bad himself!

>Now for the fun part.  You say you want to visit more than one
>asteroid? There's one on the way, 2019 Van Albada, and for an extra 16
>m/sec of delta-V NEAR can see it.  1.7 AU perihelion, 2.61 AU
>aphelion, inclined 4.0 degrees, 17 km diameter.

This one seems to be unclassified, as well. There's a small possibility
of ice in that kind of orbit, though it would be well-hidden beneath the
regolith.  My guess of the best search space for more accessible ice is
perihelion 1-2 AU, aphelion 3-4 AU, classification type C,P,D, or comet.

>...2003 sailing past Comet Encke!

The comet closest to the Sun: perihelion 0.33 AU (!), aphelion 4.09 AU.

>Or! Do three swingbys of Earth, an Encke flyby, then return for two
>Earth swingbys, and you can go on to the asteroid Eros on 18 August
>2005.

Naah, Eros is a boring silicate-dominated, like Gaspra.

>Instead of Eros, you could go to comet Tempel-1 or another I wrote
>down as S.W.3.

That would be P/Schwassman-Wachman 3, in the top ten of known accessible
Jupiter-family comets.  Quite nice!  P/Tempel-1 is almost as good.

>...major asteroid Vesta with three Earth swingbys!

Scientifically interesting, since it may match a unique set of meteoric
material.  Not a good prospecting prospect; it's basaltic and too
far out in the belt.

>This would
>give you a "small-body grand tour" for a total delta-V cost of 158
>meters per second beyond the Nereus-orbit budget.

Farquar is incredible.  Does he have some software we could borrow?


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

Date: Sun, 27 Sep 1992 02:49:03 GMT
From: Paul Dietz <[e-mail]>
Subject: NEAR asteroid mission (but wait! There's more!)
Newsgroups: sci.space

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

>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey) writes:
>>
>>Let's talk about the New, Improved NASA, with Secret Ingredient FCB!
>>Prime target is a 1998 launch to 4660 Nereus, an asteroid with an
>>orbit similar to Earth's, requiring a delta-V of 1.165 km/sec.
>
>Nice delta-v.  Significantly less than landing on the moon.  Does
>anybody have the original designation of this asteroid (it was
>renamed after _Asteroids II_ came out)?  Has it been given a
>type (C,S,M, etc.)?  Anything else known about its composition?


4660 Nereus is none other than our old friend 1982 DB.  The name,
while mythologically meaningful, was chosen because its orbits makes
the asteroid one of the ones that (velocity-wise) is "near us" (I am
not making this up).

    Paul F. Dietz
    [e-mail]

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

Date: 26 Sep 92 23:36:30 GMT
From: Bruce Scott <[e-mail]>
Subject: overpopulation
Newsgroups: sci.space

Dani Eder writes:
"If housing construction costs drop dramatically, then what cost children."

Ahem, it's not the cost of construction (well, maybe in blessed areas
like Texas :-). Here in Germany the cost of the land (read: Lebensraum)
dominates. If the population density became greater, personal space
would become Japanese-like. Germans wouldn't accept that any better than
Americans. By the way, remember that the almost visceral desire of

German immigrants to the US was land of their own, knowing they had no
chance to get it here (mostly land-poor peasants came).

Gruss,
Dr Bruce Scott                             The deadliest bullshit is
Max-Planck-Institut fuer Plasmaphysik       odorless and transparent
bds at spl6n1.aug.ipp-garching.mpg.de                 -- W Gibson

--
   The opinions expressed are not necessarily those of the University of
     North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the Campus Office for Information
        Technology, or the Experimental Bulletin Board Service.
           internet:  bbs.oit.unc.edu or 152.2.22.80

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

Date: Sun, 27 Sep 1992 00:51:30 GMT
From: Paul Dietz <[e-mail]>
Subject: overpopulation
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Bruce Scott) writes:

>[e-mail] (Nick Haines) writes:

>>Best guesses I've seen have been 8-10bn, actually. No serious
>>demographers are talking about 16bn any more. Read some demography (I
>>did, after the last time this went around here. I was a doomsayer
>>before).

>But this is just because the great die-off has started.


Actually, you are both wrong.  The UN agency that makes population
projections recently upped their mid-range estimate to as much as 14B
by the end of 2100.  However, most of this increase was because
life expectancies in lesser developed countries are increasing
much faster than they expected, because elderly people are living
longer.

"Great die off" is bullshit, of course.  The world population has
never been healthier, wealthier or longer lived, on average, and
the trends are positive in most of the world.

    Paul F. Dietz
    [e-mail]

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

Date: Sun, 27 Sep 1992 00:34:13 GMT
From: Nick Szabo <[e-mail]>
Subject: Population decline
Newsgroups: sci.space

>>[loss of cultural and genetic diversity from population decline]

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (David C Daye) writes:

>At what point does this kick in?  Wasn't world population 99% below present,
>some time after the Ice Age, and haven't we come along fairly nicely out of
>that small population?

Large, highly educated populations are required for modern societies.
Any given culture needs to be far larger than a hunter-gatherer tribe
in order to retain its traditions.  For example, cultural retention
is greatly strengthened in those cultures that have their own
native-language TV channels; only the largest cultures can
afford this.  Economies of scale are also far more important in
today's societies than in hunter-gatherer societies.  It kicks
in as soon as the population starts to decline.

Populations do not drop evenly.  Even now, with the average world
growth rate still above 1%/year, there are several cultures dropping
rapidly.  For example, the Ashkenazi Jew population has dropped over
50% since the 1930's, due in almost equal proportion to death camps
and voluntarily birth control.  This population produced many
of the leading Nobel Prize scientists of this century (including
Einstein); its capacity to create such talent has dropped with its
population.

As anybody who's used birth control knows, there's no such
thing as perfect birth control with the current art.  It's inconvenient
at best and has nasty side effects at worst; no methods are 100%
effective.  The conditions that "permitted" your family to have
many children is quite an exception, demographically; half of all
children are still "unplanned" or "accidents" with the birth rate
below replacement levels.   (In fact everybody comes from a
demographically above-normal family; nobody's parents are childless.
:-)

>> [arguments why space colony would have more children than
>> developed countries]
>>I ask why does not this apply to developed
>>countries, where couples have less than 2.0 children per lifetime,
>>and the resources are much greater than in Africa, with 7 children
>>per lifetime?
>
>A) Developed countries have pensions and social security; couples don't
>need to make enough babies to ensure that 3-4 are around to care for
>them in old age;

This theory has been greatly overstated; birth control availability
is more causative and correlated than such economic factors.
Even granting this theory, why wouldn't a space colony have pensions
and social security?  Given the chance people save for retirement, whether
or not social security is present, and given the chance they vote in
favor of social security.  The existence/absence of such benefits
would be a major (dis-) incentive to migrate to the space colony in the
first place.

>B) Developed populations are mostly non-agricultural,
>and don't need the extra hands to harvest next year's meals.

This is also true of space colonies, which will have to be
technologically more sophisticated than developed
countries, not less.  The children will require a longer
investment in education, and that correlates highly with
low fertility -- college-educated women in America average
1.4 children per lifetime, as opposed to the society average
of 2.0 children per lifetime.  (Presumably the numbers are
similar for college-educated men, who tend to marry their
peers, but it's easier to keep track of the women).


>[how to solve problem]
>Direct your creativity towards
>making childrearing less demanding and/or *lots* of fun in your space
>colony, and your concerns will be answered.

_May_ be answered.  This has so far not worked in countries that are
actively working to raise their birthrate, like Japan and Germany.
On the other hand, it could be argued that the pressures for
quality over quantity at all costs in these cultures overwhelms
the feeble government efforts.  It's an interesting idea, worth
persuing, but not garunteed.

>>                         Fertility, not physical resources, is
>>the main barrier to human expansion through the cosmos.
>
>I think this is pessimistic.  If you give me the same deal at a space
>colony that my old-country ancestors got in America (a cheap ride over,
>and greatly expanded opportunies upon arrival), I'll seriously consider
>going over and making you as many babies as I need and can support
>under the circumstances there.

But you can do that right here, right now, in the U.S.A.  There's
nothing stopping you that wouldn't stop you in a space colony.
Mike Freidman has noted that a man could easily raise and support
20 children at above-world-average standards in the U.S., but
our own cultural expectations and motivations, not our resources,
prevent us from doing so.

I also seriously question whether your ancestors, or anybody else
before The Pill, had birth control effective enough to make such
a big difference as it does today.  The unpredicted baby boom
to baby dearth trend in the 1960's corresponds almost exactly to
the introduction of the birth control pill; it has fundamentally
changed the demographic landscape.


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

Date: Sat, 26 Sep 1992 20:56:45 +0000
From: Anthony Frost <[e-mail]>
Subject: PUTTING VENUS IN AN ORBIT SIMILAR TO THE
Newsgroups: sci.space


  > In a previous message you said that mars' gravity was too
  > light to hang on the lighter gasses, thus the atmosphere is
  > thin.  Titan, a moon of Saturn is slightly smaller than mars
  > and has an atmospheric density twice earths at the surface.
  > How do you explain that? :)

Titan benefits from the gas torus effect I believe. It loses its atmosphere
at a respectable rate, but the escaping gas is unable to escape Saturn and
remains in orbit. A lot of the trapped gas gets reaquired by Titan, so the
net loss is very small. Anything escaping from the Martian atmosphere is
lost permanently.

         Anthony

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

Date: Sun, 27 Sep 1992 00:12:46 GMT
From: Nick Szabo <[e-mail]>
Subject: Robot Rovers: Big or Small?
Newsgroups: sci.space,sci.controls,comp.robotics

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Karl Altenburg) writes:
>I would like to know peoples ideas on which types of robots should be
>used in possible, future Lunar and Mars missions.
>
>Some support the traditional large rover.  An example would be Carnegie
>Mellon's Ambler, which has 6 legs legs (non-traditional), complex vision
>system, stands around 14 feet tall, and weighs a ton (I think?).
>It would be launched and work as a solitary rover.
>
>

I hate to say it, but I can't imagine this thing having any sort of
usefulness in space.  It would cost $hundreds of millions just to
launch it to the moon, and then its leg-balancing software wouldn't
work in 1/6 gravity (and couldn't be tested beforehand).  A subsumption
architecture that could adapt to the new gravity conditions would
have much to say for it, as would a much smaller more affordable
walker.

That said, I think the whole emphasis on robots and rovers is a bit
overdone.  For most bodies, including the moon, a hopper is competitive
or superior for sampling a wide variety of locations.  Sampling itself
is only one out of many tasks we profit from automating.  A much larger
if longer-term task is automatic processing of native materials, such as
propellant production from the Martian atmosphere or native ices.
These can radically reduce the cost of operating in space; the
technology has a future value in the $100's of billions.

These don't require robotics so much as they require very reliable
and robust control systems, self-cleaning, and deployment.  Claims that we
absolutely can or can't do these things are bogus; nobody's spent
any significant effort to try them.  Albeit, oil companies have
successfully automated similar tasks on a large scale, but with
quicker feedback and more room for trial-and-error.  These kinds
of space automation will be a very productive field for automation
researchers.


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

Date: Sun, 27 Sep 1992 02:40:00 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Wealth in Space (Was Re: Clinton and Space Funding)
Newsgroups: sci.space,sci.astro,talk.politics.space,alt.politics.bush,alt.politics.clinton

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Nick Szabo) writes...
>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Gary Coffman) writes:
>>
[stuff deleted]

>The reason commerce isn't colonizing the moon is quite simple really;
>there isn't anything there to make one wealthy.  It's an obstacle, like
>Death Valley was an obstacle to the 49ers -- the borax came later and
>didn't convince very many people to live in Death Valley.
>
>Meanwhile, it is useful to put comsats in GEO, and commerce has spent $10's
>of billions on that; it is useful to keep watchtowers in space and
>the military has spent $10's of billions on that.  Farther out beyond
>Death Valley, the relatively unexplored parts of the solar system, like
>asteroids and comets, could well provide the next big boost for commerce,
>and both the funding and technology for truly self-sufficient space
>colonies.
>
Nick, Nick, Nick, don't you ever read the reports about recently discovered
near Earth Asteroids?  There is one of the found in 1987 (I forgot the
designator) that is confirmed by albedo and spectral studies to be nickel
iron, as are about 10% of all meteorites found on earth.  The size of this
asteroid is about 1.7 miles by .8 miles.  It was estimated in the
article that I read, that based upon similar fractions found in metorites on
the earth of that type, that there was approximately 90 billion dollars worth
of gold and 1 trillion dollars worth of Platinum, give or take a few million.

What does that say about wealth in space?  Currently a new oil field cost
10 billion to develop (Alaska North Slope for example).  This is no more than
a mission to develop the asteriod would cost, with a far greater pay off. Even
if the cost were tripled it would be worth it.  What is lacking is vision,
a sense of purpose and a feel for what is possible, today, now. Not only does
this maliase effect the general population due to the gloom and doomers in the
media, it has effected the space development community as well. I keep seeing
on here that maybe in fifty years we will have colonies and space development
but till then we just have to muddle along.  Do you not realize that unless we
begin the work today and lay the necessary foundations, that this will not
happen in fifty or even a hundred years.  From the day of the first contract
to the moving out to Pad 39, it was only five years for the first Apollo.
We can do it IF we have the will.

Dennis, University of Alabama in Huntsville

(No Space=No Future for the Human Race)

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

Date: Sun, 27 Sep 1992 00:03:41 GMT
From: Nick Szabo <[e-mail]>
Subject: With telepresence, who needs people in Earth orbit?
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Allen W. Sherzer) writes:
>
>If and when we ever get it, come back and ask us again. For myself,
>I will juge it to be here when you allow a surgeon to do a heart bypass
>on you by teleoperation with a 1/10 second delay. If you live, we can
>talk about it.


How about brain surgery?  Robots, for example the Puma 260 robot arm,
have been doing stereotactic drilling, probe placement, and medicine
injection in the cranium since the mid-80's.  They are quite a bit more
precise than the neurosurgeon's hand.   The surgeon's reaction time
to halt the procedure is more than 1/10 sec.

Ref: _Robots In Service_, Joseph Engleberger, MIT Press 1989.


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End of Space Digest Volume 15 : Issue 252
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