Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/mac/TEXT_ZIP/spacedig/V15_6/V15NO634.ZIP/V15NO634

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Date: Tue,  5 Jan 93 05:19:34
From: Space Digest maintainer <[e-mail]>
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Subject: Space Digest V15 #634
To: Space Digest Readers
Precedence: bulk


Space Digest                Tue,  5 Jan 93       Volume 15 : Issue 634

Today's Topics:
            asteroids beyond Jupiter, capture by planets?
                        averting doom (2 msgs)
                         Biosphere and Pests
            Fabrication (was fast track failures) (2 msgs)
                        Fiber optic umbilical
                 Justification for the Space Program
                          Moon Dust For Sale
                 Nasa flight sim code/Simulator Game
           Overly "success" oriented program causes failure
  Shuttle a research tool (was: Re: Let's be more specific) (2 msgs)
        Stupid Shut Cost arguements (was Re: Terminal Velocity
                         The Perils of Dante
                      Toutatis Images Available
                       UN Space Agency (2 msgs)
         Who can launch antisats? (was Re: DoD launcher use)

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

Date: 4 Jan 93 18:51:23 GMT
From: "Robert F. Casey" <[e-mail]>
Subject: asteroids beyond Jupiter, capture by planets?
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (William J Jacobs) writes:
>>Now, could an asteriod which is perturbed out to the orbit of Neptune, be
>>captured by that planet? If so, what would cause the energy loss that would
>>be needed to put it into orbit? I doubt if atmospheric braking would do
>>the trick.
>>
>>Bill
>>
>There aren't many other options.  To lose energy, you need to knock into
>something.  You have the choice of lots of little things (the atmosphere) or
>one big thing  (Neptune itself).  But I'm really no expert on orbital mechanics,
>so I'll some physics jock give more details (should be plenty of folks who
>know here in sci.space).
>
Maybe if the planet has a more massive moon that the asteroid can shed
energy to, thus allowing it to slow down enough to get captured?  The
preexisting moon would get to orbit further out, using that newly acquired
energy?  I don't mean a collision, but just gravitational interactions.

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

Date: Wed, 30 Dec 1992 16:14:45 GMT
From: Richard Ottolini <[e-mail]>
Subject: averting doom
Newsgroups: sci.astro,sci.space,sci.physics,sci.environment

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:
>from a U.P. story
>
>         WASHINGTON (UPI) -- Life on Earth as we know it will
>     come to an end in 1,500 million years and the planet will
>     look more like its dusty, volcanic sister Venus in 2,500
>     million years, scientists said Wednesday.

If we can't model the weather more than 5 days in advance nor agree on
climate prediction in 50 years, who would have any confidence in this
speculation?

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

Date: 5 Jan 93 00:21:23 GMT
From: Len Evens <[e-mail]>
Subject: averting doom
Newsgroups: sci.astro,sci.space,sci.physics,sci.environment

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Richard Ottolini) writes:
> In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:
> >from a U.P. story
> >
> >         WASHINGTON (UPI) -- Life on Earth as we know it will
> >     come to an end in 1,500 million years and the planet will
> >     look more like its dusty, volcanic sister Venus in 2,500
> >     million years, scientists said Wednesday.
>
> If we can't model the weather more than 5 days in advance nor agree on
> climate prediction in 50 years, who would have any confidence in this
> speculation?

--
1>  This has nothing to do with modelling weather.   The difficulty
in weather prediction is that the kinds of dynamical systems being
modelled are too sensitive to small changes in initial conditions
for the models to be accurate over long periods of time.

2>  Climate models are in fact much more accurate than weather
models.   This is because they are concerned with average phenomena
and averages have much greater stability and predicitability.
Differences about climate models' prediction of global warming by
those who have studied such things are of the order of magnitude
of whether warming will be a bit over 1 degree C or two
or three times as high and whether it will take 50 years or 100
years.  There is a very substantial amount agreement.
This fact has been obscured by the intense ideological
disputes over the issue.

3>  The predictions of the ultimate history of the earth are based
on models of stars which are really fairly simple.  If the
sun warms up, it is probably not too far out to suggest possible
physical responses here on earth over long periods of time.  This
doesn't even require computer models.  Of course, none of this
can be certain, but remember that we are
talking about periods of hundreds of millions of years.   The
estimate of 1.5 billion is the largest I have seen.   The most
recent news article that I saw suggested that a previous estimate
of 100 million years was too low and that it might be more like
900 million years.  Clearly this analysis is all fairly new
and the arguments will be subject to intense scrutiny.  However,
I don't see why a consensus couldn't develop on the
matter among geophysicists.  This should be just a reliable and
scientific as beliefs now held about the early universe or other
events in deep space or deep time.

4>  Except as interesting speculation, why should anyone care?
Remember that  the real (plentiful) fossil record on earth is only about
500 million years old.   Surely no one should worry seriously about
what sort of actions humanity should take to deal with such a problem.
Unfortunately, this may confuse people about the issue of global
warming which is something which may radically affect human societies
in the next several generations and which we may be able to do
something about.

Leonard Evens      [e-mail]      708-491-5537
Dept. of Mathematics, Northwestern Univ., Evanston, IL 60208

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

Date: 4 Jan 93 22:57:39 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Biosphere and Pests
Newsgroups: sci.space

Reference Biosphere, email [e-mail] for info on
his one man biosphere..

For possible help with pests and such, might give my Step-Dad a call he and my
mom have a very good garden without pesticides and use lady-bugs and worms to
produce composte and to get rid of posts, and use other methods (natural)..

My Step Dad is Richard Green, Master Gardner:

Richard Green
4711 Kupreanof
Anchorage, Alaska 99501(?)
907-561-4938.....

After all if he can grow Kewis in Alaska, he can help anyone with anything..



Michael Adams
Alias: Morgoth/Ghost Wheel
[e-mail]
PS: tell him I sent ya.. He thinks Im a worthless bum..

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

Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1993 00:02:16 GMT
From: "Edward V. Wright" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Fabrication (was fast track failures)
Newsgroups: sci.space

In <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Thomas Clarke) writes:

>> In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Edward
>V. Wright) writes:
>> >
>> Most engineering *is* paperwork, or workstation work today. Otherwise
>> it's just tinkering on a wing and a prayer. You have to bend metal to
>> *test* your engineering, but bending metal *isn't* engineering. It's
>> fabrication done by tradesmen.

Wait a minute, I never wrote that! That was Gary Coffman!

>I think engineering must consider how something is to be made.  The
>most elegant design is useless if it can't be manufactured.
>Knowledge of what can be made is obtained by bending metal, or
>at least by interacting with those who do.

Indeed, G. Harry Stine has an article on this very subject in
the current Analog.

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

Date: 5 Jan 93 00:39:01 GMT
From: Henry Spencer <[e-mail]>
Subject: Fabrication (was fast track failures)
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Edward V. Wright) writes:
>>> Most engineering *is* paperwork, or workstation work today. Otherwise
>>> it's just tinkering on a wing and a prayer. You have to bend metal to
>>> *test* your engineering, but bending metal *isn't* engineering. It's
>>> fabrication done by tradesmen.
>
>Wait a minute, I never wrote that! That was Gary Coffman!

Not everyone is anal-retentive enough to waste bandwidth on keeping
every single one of those tedious attribution lines; some of us expect
people to have the sense to look at the ">" nesting depth too! :-)

>>I think engineering must consider how something is to be made.  The
>>most elegant design is useless if it can't be manufactured.
>>Knowledge of what can be made is obtained by bending metal, or
>>at least by interacting with those who do.
>
>Indeed, G. Harry Stine has an article on this very subject in
>the current Analog.

Moreover, there is a deeper issue here.  Yes, having the engineers out
of tune with metal-bending is a bad thing when the objective is to
manufacture something.  It's worse, though, when they're trying to
*develop* something.

Gary's comments (the >>> above) are squarely in the NASA mold:  if you
do it right on paper, it will work the first time (although of course
you test it just in case).  Unfortunately, the real world doesn't work
that way, as witness any number of NASA projects that *didn't* work
the first time.  Real-world development involves *finding out* what
works and what doesn't... and you cannot do that on paper.  You have
to test things *during* the engineering, not just afterward.

Note, you have to put reasonable efforts into trying to build the best
you can, or you're just wasting time with your tests.  (One of the
problems found in investigation of the early Ranger program was that
if you expect the first attempts to fail, nobody tries very hard to
make them succeed.)  But sensible engineers -- which includes Gary,
actually, based on his accomplishments rather than on how he claims
to have done them :-) -- know that the first prototype is most unlikely
to be identical with the successful final product.  Successful
engineering includes bending metal and watching it break. :-)

Whether the bending is done by the engineer himself or by a technician
is irrelevant (except insofar as the engineer needs to understand how
it's done); what matters is that the engineer is involved, because
getting that metal bent and seeing how well it works is part of his job.
--
"God willing... we shall return."       | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
       -Gene Cernan, the Moon, Dec 1972 |  [e-mail]  utzoo!henry

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

Date: 5 Jan 93 00:47:46 GMT
From: Dave Michelson <[e-mail]>
Subject: Fiber optic umbilical
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:
>Putting a fiber optic umbilical on a remote sensing platform designed to
>traverse rough terrain seems very odd to me.  Can someone explain to me why
>this was done?  A few things come to mind such as eliminating the weight
>required for a radio and associated power supply.  Also the fiber optic does
>allow for high reliability and high speed data transfer.
>
>I'm *not* throwing stones at the Dante folks.  I'm just doing some head
>scratching and hoping someone will explain this to me.
>

I don't know how Dante's umbilical is put together so I can't comment on that
but...

In the early 1980's, Northern Telecom pioneered the development of a helical
sheath that greatly reduces the stress placed on an optical fibre due to either
bending (bad!) or stretching (worse!).  The helical sheath was developed in
response to problems encountered when laying underground cables using
a machine called a "ditch witch".

I don't have any details handy but I'm sure someone else on the net can
provide them.

---
Dave Michelson
[e-mail]

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

From: Richard Ottolini <[e-mail]>
Subject: Justification for the Space Program
Newsgroups: sci.space,talk.politics.space

Organization: Unocal Corporation
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Distribution: usa, world
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 1992 18:18:13 GMT
Lines: 6
Source-Info:  Sender is really [e-mail]
Source-Info:  Sender is really [e-mail]

In a talk at Caltech earlier this month Carl Sagan that spin-off technology arguments
are bogus.  "If you want have better cooking pans, then do R&D on kitchen products."
(probably in reference to low friction materials coming out of the space program.)

Then too, any useful new technologies from NASA should be transfered to the commercial
sector.

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

Date: 4 Jan 93 23:47:51 GMT
From: Justin Sullivan <[e-mail]>
Subject: Moon Dust For Sale
Newsgroups: sci.space,sci.astro,alt.sci.planetary

[e-mail] (Wailer at the Gates of Dawn) writes:


>    I think this is a GREAT idea and that NASA should market MORE space items
>to help finance its budget.  Whats the approx cost per pound of moon rocks
>anyhow?

Well, if NASA lived up to more of its promises, moon rocks would be $1 a
pound by now. :) Sorry.. Some taxpayers get upset when the most advanced
nation in existence ruins very expensive orbiting instruments and loses
space shuttles and their expensive/irreplaceable cargo(s) .. These things
aren't supposed to happen! <grrr.. flame off>

Go figure.. A two-inch piece of tape with moondust is expected to sell for
~$100K, so a pound might go for $2 million or so (at that rate).

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

Date: 4 Jan 93 23:13:02 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Nasa flight sim code/Simulator Game
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Don Thompson) writes:
>
>     Would anyone happen to know where a body could get information
> on old flight simulation code written by NASA or any of the military
> branches? I am interested in obtaining any code that might be declassified
> and publicly availible. In addition, any data related to the flight models
> of old or new aircraft would be nice.
>
>                     Thanks
>
>
> --
> ________________________________________________________________________________
> Don "Syco" Thompson                 |   I may be opinionated, but at least
> Comshare Inc. [e-mail]  |   my opinions are my own.
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>     "There's no kill like a guns kill".  Lt Commander Joe "Hoser" Satrapa, USN
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>

Don't know of any old sim data and such, but it would be an interesting public
affairs ploy or way to make money.. Have NASA design space simulator games
based on old flight.. Have different levels. Beginner would be just to get the
feel of the fligth, but higher levels would give you the "pilot" and possible
crew more free-reign to actually fly the space shuttle simulation or other
crafts.. Gemini, MErcury, Apollo, X-Crafts. And such..
Either NASA design the game or have someone subcontract it...

Any takers??


Michael Adams
Alias: Morgoth/Ghost Wheel
[e-mail]

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

Date: 5 Jan 93 00:20:12 GMT
From: Henry Spencer <[e-mail]>
Subject: Overly "success" oriented program causes failure
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Edward V. Wright) writes:
>I've got news for you, Gary.  Those Pert charts that you are
>so fond of were invented for (boo, hiss!) success-oriented
>Polaris-missile program.  Good engineers always expect problems...

What they don't tell you in the textbooks is that although Pert charts
were indeed invented for Polaris, they *weren't* used to manage it --
they were used to intimidate assorted Washington kibitzers, keeping
them at arms length from the people who actually ran the project
(in the traditional way, using competence and judgement rather than
Pert charts).
--
"God willing... we shall return."       | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
       -Gene Cernan, the Moon, Dec 1972 |  [e-mail]  utzoo!henry

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

Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1993 02:57:55 GMT
From: Francois Yergeau <[e-mail]>
Subject: Shuttle a research tool (was: Re: Let's be more specific)
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Allen W. Sherzer) writes:
>In article <[e-mail]> I wrote:
>
>>The shuttle system itself may not be considered R&D anymore, but it's
>>the manifest that tells you whether it's doing research  or mere
>>"operations."
>
>No, the Shuttle is always doing operations unless it is Shuttle
>itself which is being experimented on. When Shuttle carries spacelab,
>it is engaged in operations *IN SUPPORT OF RESEARCH* but not research.

which neatly underscores my point.  When NASA flies a shuttle to
support research, I don't think it is operating outside of its
charter.

>When somebody flies a roll during re-entry to see what happens, that
>is research.

Indeed!


--
Francois Yergeau ([e-mail]) |  De gustibus et coloribus
Centre d'Optique, Photonique et Laser    |  non disputandum
Departement de Physique                  |          -proverbe scolastique
Universite Laval, Ste-Foy, QC, Canada    |

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

Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1993 03:14:31 GMT
From: Francois Yergeau <[e-mail]>
Subject: Shuttle a research tool (was: Re: Let's be more specific)
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Edward V. Wright) writes:
>In <[e-mail]> I wrote:
>
>>If I build a custom laser in my lab, and then operate it purely
>>as a tool to support my research program, I think I am still doing
>>research.  Likewise, when NASA is using the shuttle to fly Spacelab,
>>TSS, Hubble, etc, it's doing research.
>
>If you pay Air France to fly your laser to the research site,
>does that mean the Airbus is a research vehicle?

No, it's an aircraft _I_ am using to support my research activities.

>>Even a TDRS launch is part of the research effort, since the
>>constellation is used to support various birds doing research
>>missions.
>
>If you call someone in New York to discuss your research, the
>call goes via Intelsat or undersea cable.  Does that make the
>Intelsat or the cable a research venture?

Ditto, mutatis mutandis.  Likewise, when NASA flies Spacelab, TSS or a
TDRS on the shuttle, the latter is used to support NASA's research
activities, pursuant to its charter.  It is my understanding that this
thread originated when someone claimed that NASA was not respecting its
charter by operating the shuttle, which is admittedly not an
experimental craft anymore.  I disagree, as long as the shuttle
manifest contains only genuine R&D.



--
Francois Yergeau ([e-mail]) |  De gustibus et coloribus
Centre d'Optique, Photonique et Laser    |  non disputandum
Departement de Physique                  |          -proverbe scolastique
Universite Laval, Ste-Foy, QC, Canada    |

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

Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1993 00:33:25 GMT
From: "Allen W. Sherzer" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Stupid Shut Cost arguements (was Re: Terminal Velocity
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Brad Whitehurst) writes:

>    Come on, Allen, don't get even more retentive on us!

I suppose I was. I apologize.

>The realistic chance of significant U.S. manned presence in orbit in
>Russian hardware in the next few years is miniscule.

that's not the point. The point is not what we WILL be doing but
what we COULD be doing. The first step to change is realizing that
alternatives exist.

We could fly Soyuz on an Atlas or Titan. We could build a small
station with room and power equal to Shuttle. We could dock the two
and get far more work done for far less money. We could then use the
savings to fly more experiments and furthur open the space frontier.
That is what we can do with conservative engineering.

Alternatively, we can follow the Coffman school of engineering which
states that nothing which doesn't exist today can be built. Under this
plan, we support Shuttle (since no alternatives are possible) and
spend our lives siting on this rock.

>problems, scheduling, etc....  As a practical matter, I'd be willing
>to bet that even moderate effort on a reusable SSTO (DC or otherwise)
>could be available within a year or so of the time frame it would take
>to convert our manned space program from Shuttle to Soyuz.

Shuttle isn't getting us anywhere. Wrose, is sucks up all the money we
get preventing progress. DC can work but it may not work. We need alternatives.


>Would everything go to
>Russia for launch, and depend on an uncertain foreign infrastructure,
>or convert part of Canaveral to launch Russian rockets?

We don't use Russian rockets; we use Atlas or Titan. Both routinely rebuild
their launchers to conform to payload interface requirements and NASA's
evaluation of Soyuz as ACRV indicate that using Soyuz with US aerospace
standards isn't a problem.

As for stability, that isn't seen as a problem since NASA will be using
Soyuz for ACRV.

>Can you get enough power and life support from Soyuz/Mir for
>5-6 people + our experiments?

Send them to an industrial space facility. We have build space stations
before and replacing Shuttle's limited ability in orbit shouldn't be
hard. We already have Spacehab and Spacelab and it shouldn't be hard
to add power and facilities to them. Keeping the lab in orbit will allow
greater utilization and cut costs even more.

  Allen
--
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Allen W. Sherzer | "A great man is one who does nothing but leaves        |
|  [e-mail]     |  nothing undone"                                       |
+----------------------110 DAYS TO FIRST FLIGHT OF DCX----------------------+

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

Date: 4 Jan 93 23:32:28 GMT
From: Doug Mohney <[e-mail]>
Subject: The Perils of Dante
Newsgroups: sci.space

Lessons learned from Dante:

    A) NASA should never work with spools of wire or cable :-)

    B) The more moving parts, quadruple the chance of something breaking.

Hopefully they'll come back next summer and run it without someone spraying
lubricants all over the fiber optic cable, or other human intervention.

Further, I'd hope they'd eventually work out a package 5 years down the
road where they drop the Dante/Carrier combo out of a C-130 and run a TOTALLY
hands-off mission as a dry run to Mars. For that matter, they could/should
run practice runs on rovers down South. ....


                    I have talked to Ehud, and lived.
  -- >                  [e-mail]                        < --

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

Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1993 01:08:00 GMT
From: Ron Baalke <[e-mail]>
Subject: Toutatis Images Available
Newsgroups: sci.space,sci.astro,alt.sci.planetary

                          =======================
                            TOUTATIS GIF IMAGES
                              January 4, 1993
                          =======================

     Four radar images of Asteroid 4179 Toutatis have been released and are
available in GIF format (GIF89a).  The asteroid made a near Earth flyby
on December 8, 1992, at a distance of 2.2 million miles.  The antennas at
the Deep Space Network site in Goldstone, California, were used to bounce
radar off of the asteroid to obtain the images.  The four images are contained
in a single GIF file.  These images were scanned in from a photograph and are
not the raw data.  The caption file accompanying the images is attached below,
and the caption file is also embedded in the image.  Make sure you are in
binary mode when downloading the images, and in ascii mode when downloading
the caption files.  The Toutatis images are available using anonymous ftp to:

        ftp:    ames.arc.nasa.gov (128.102.18.3)
        user:   anonymous
        cd:     pub/SPACE/GIF
        files:
                toutatis.gif - Four views of asteroid 4179 Toutatis
                toutatis.txt - Caption file

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
toutatis.txt

PUBLIC INFORMATION OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIF. 91109. [phone]

PHOTO CAPTION                 (TOP)                       P-41525
                                                  January 4, 1993
                                            Toutatis Radar Images

These are radar images of asteroid 4179 Toutatis made during the
object's recent close approach to Earth.  The images reveal two
irregularly shaped, cratered objects about 4 and 2.5 kilometers
(2.5 and 1.6 miles) in average diameter which are probably in
contact with each other.  The four frames shown here (from left to
right) were obtained on Dec. 8, 9, 10 and 13 when Toutatis was
an average of about 4 million kilometers (2.5 million miles) from
Earth.  The time required to obtain each of these images was 55,
14, 37 and 85 minutes, respectively.  On each day, the asteroid
was in a different orientation with respect to Earth.  In these
images, the radar illumination comes from the top of the page, so
parts of each component facing toward the bottom are not seen.
The large crater shown in the Dec. 9 image (upper right)
is about 700 meters (2,300 feet) in diameter.  The radar
observations were carried out at the Goldstone Deep Space
Communications Complex in California's Mojave desert by a team
led by Dr. Steven Ostro of JPL.  For most of the work, a
400,000-watt coded radio transmission was beamed at Toutatis from
the Goldstone main 70-meter (230-foot) antenna.  The echoes,
which took as little as 24 seconds to travel to Toutatis and
back, were received by the new 34-meter (112-foot) antenna and
relayed back to the 70-meter station where they were decoded and
processed into images.  The radar observations were part of the
Planetary Astronomy Program of NASA's Office of Space Science and
Applications.

                              #####
     ___    _____     ___
    /_ /|  /____/ \  /_ /|     Ron Baalke         | [e-mail]
    | | | |  __ \ /| | | |     Jet Propulsion Lab |
 ___| | | | |__) |/  | | |__   M/S 525-3684 Telos | Choose a job you love, and
/___| | | |  ___/    | |/__ /| Pasadena, CA 91109 | you'll never have to work
|_____|/  |_|/       |_____|/                     | a day in your life.

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

Date: 4 Jan 93 23:08:27 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: UN Space Agency
Newsgroups: sci.space

I wonder if there is anything in the works for a United Nations Space Agency
and if there is, what all does it do??

Russian/American co-working is about time for it..

I wonder if the North American Free-Trade Agreement will lead to
US/Canadian/Mexican Space co-working??

==
==
Michael Adams alias Ghost Wheel/Morgoth [e-mail]

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

Date: 5 Jan 93 01:02:16 GMT
From: Henry Spencer <[e-mail]>
Subject: UN Space Agency
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:
>I wonder if there is anything in the works for a United Nations Space Agency

Not really.  The problem is the "elephant among the chickens" syndrome:
the US is logically a major participant in such an effort, but then it
wants to run the show, and the other nations involved -- especially the
ones which have demonstrated competence of their own -- don't want to
just pay the bills for projects they have no say in.  Past experience
with US involvement in "international" space projects generally has
not been happy for the US's "partners".

>I wonder if the North American Free-Trade Agreement will lead to
>US/Canadian/Mexican Space co-working??

Canada is already a (minor) partner in various aspects of the US space
program... but it's also an associate member of the European Space Agency.
(It would probably be a full member, were it not for the inconvenient rule
that full members must be located in Europe...)  Much depends on whether
"co-working" means a say in decisions, or just a share in the cost.
--
"God willing... we shall return."       | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
       -Gene Cernan, the Moon, Dec 1972 |  [e-mail]  utzoo!henry

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

Date: Mon, 4 Jan 1993 23:51:12 GMT
From: "Edward V. Wright" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Who can launch antisats? (was Re: DoD launcher use)
Newsgroups: sci.space

In <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Doug Mohney) writes:

>Not to mention the EMP problems you'd cause for commercial sats and (possibly)
>electronics on the ground.... It would be bad.

Not necessarily.  At least, not if you plan for it.

Consider this scenario.  You have a battle fleet somewhere in the
Pacific Ocean.  Your enemy has a battle fleet somewhere in the
Pacific Ocean.  Both fleets are looking for one another.  Your
enemy also has a satellite, which will pass overhead shortly,
telling him exactly where you are.

Shortly before the satellite gets within detection range of
your fleet, you launch an SLBM, taking out your enemy's nice,
new, expensive satellite.  Both fleets get hit by EMP, but you
are prepared because you know it's coming.  Your enemy isn't
expecting it.  Worse, he has all his planes sitting out, exposed,
on the flight deck, waiting to launch when the satellite gives
him targeting information.  If you're lucky, you've taken out
all his AEW.  This puts you in a very good position....




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End of Space Digest Volume 15 : Issue 634
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