Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/mac/TEXT_ZIP/spacedig/V16_0/V16NO027.ZIP/V16NO027

Internet Message Format | 1993-07-13 | 34KB

Date: Sat,  9 Jan 93 05:09:39
From: Space Digest maintainer <[e-mail]>
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Subject: Space Digest V16 #027
To: Space Digest Readers
Precedence: bulk


Space Digest                Sat,  9 Jan 93       Volume 16 : Issue 027

Today's Topics:
                  *** BUSSARD RAMSCOOP ***  (2 msgs)
                Fabrication (was fast track failures)
                      is the Lunar Society real?
                 Justification for the Space Program
                         killing the shuttle
      Let's be more specific (was: Stupid Shut Cost arguements)
                          Making Antimatter
                          Moon Dust For Sale
    Should NASA operate shuttles (was Re: Shuttle a research tool)
      Shuttle a research tool (was: Re: Let's be more specific)
              Subjective Safety Measure(Re: man-rating)
                 Supporting private space activities
         Who can launch antisats? (was Re: DoD launcher use)

    Welcome to the Space Digest!!  Please send your messages to
    "[e-mail]", and (un)subscription requests of the form
    "Subscribe Space <your name>" to one of these addresses: listserv@uga
    (BITNET), rice::boyle (SPAN/NSInet), utadnx::utspan::rice::boyle
    (THENET), or [e-mail] (Internet).
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1993 21:49:09 +0000
From: Chris Marriott <[e-mail]>
Subject: *** BUSSARD RAMSCOOP ***
Newsgroups: sci.space

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

>In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Henry Spencer)

>Does a Bussard ramjet work *at all* below seriously relativistic
>velocities?
>
>Seems to me below some large speed, which I recall as
>something much bigger than .5c, you don't gather enough interstellar
>hydrogen to keep things stoked.  Admittedly I remember details rather
>fuzzily, and don't know how to apply them to the "ram-augmented
>interstellar rocket" Henry is talking about.
>

I don't remember now *where* I read it, but I seem to recall that a
Bussard Ramjet starts working at speed around about 450km/sec.  Although
this is an order of magnitude beyond the speeds of current space vehicles,
it's certainly not unreachable eg, with ion drives.
--
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Chris Marriott                           | [e-mail]    |
| Warrington, UK                           | BIX: cmarriott              |
| (Still awaiting inspiration              | CIX: cmarriott              |
|  for a witty .sig .... )                 | CompuServe: 100113,1140     |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------


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

Date: 8 Jan 93 20:23:54 GMT
From: Paul Dietz <[e-mail]>
Subject: *** BUSSARD RAMSCOOP ***
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Richard Schroeppel) writes:

> Since fusing protons is so hard, why not use deuterons?
> They fuse at a lower temperature, and the reaction only
> requires regrouping the nucleons, rather than invoking the
> weak force to transmute p->n.  The Earth's d/p ratio is ~.0001.
> Perhaps the ramscoop collector could selectively enrich d,
> by selecting for atoms having a magnetic moment.


Or, better yet, why fuse anything at all?  One can do the following:
decelerate the incoming material a bit producing some power.  Now,
accelerate some on-board reaction mass using this power, so that the
two streams are now at the same speed.

Done properly, the thrust from the second part exceeds the drag from
the first part.  The decelerated interstellar material needn't even be
laterally compressed.

This scheme seems counterintuitive, but it violates conservation of
neither energy nor momentum.  The kinetic energy of the vehicle
does not increase with time, it only gets concentrated in less
and less mass.

All these schemes suffer because the local ISM is so damned thin.  The
solar system appears to lie inside a bubble of very thin, hot gas,
perhaps the result of some "recent" supernovae in our neighborhood.

    Paul F. Dietz
    [e-mail]

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

Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1993 19:12:56 GMT
From: Edmund Hack <arabia!hack>
Subject: Fabrication (was fast track failures)
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Edward V. Wright) writes:
[Stuff about Saturn V deleted]
>
>In fact, there were plenty of missions that could have justified
>its expense: the follow-on Apollo missions, additional Skylabs,
>Space Base, nuclear-powered space tugs, and the manned Mars mission,
>to name a few.  The Saturn was cancelled because Congress didn't
>want to do those missions and NASA didn't want anything to compete
>with Shuttle.
>

The Urban/Orbital Legend that Will Not Die!

BZZZT! 50% wrong. The Saturn V production line was closed down well
before the shuttle became anything other than one of a number of
competing ideas for later launchers (including SSTOs derived from the
Saturn Ib).  The S-V line was terminated in either CY or FY 68 as I
recall.  STS was seriously started a few years later.

Congress did make the decision to kill S-V and all the later projects
you mention, although several (such as manned Mars missions) were more
along the lines of wish lists and paper studies.

--
Edmund Hack - Lockheed Engineering & Sciences Co. - Houston, TX
[e-mail] - I speak only for myself, unless blah, blah..
"You know, I think we're all Bozos on this bus."
"Detail Dress Circuits" "Belt: Above A, Below B" "Close B ClothesMode"

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

Date: 8 Jan 93 18:30:58 GMT
From: "Edward V. Wright" <[e-mail]>
Subject: is the Lunar Society real?
Newsgroups: sci.space

In <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Richard Schroeppel) writes:

>Randall Tyers <tyersome@toxic> writes
>>   Subject: Question:How Long Until Privately Funded Space Colonization
>    In response to this question, a group called the Lunar Society appears
>    to be interested funding space colonization.  I would like to know
>    whether they are for real.  Does anyone know if this group is
>    legitimate and whether they have any chance of reaching their stated
>    goals?

Yes, the Lunar Society is real.  It was founded a few years ago
by Dr. Jerry Pournelle and others.  Its purpose is to establish
a colony on the Moon, financed by its members in much the same way
the National Geographic Society used to finance various expeditions
on Earth.  They've been operating in a low-profile mode lately,
because the things they're doing right now don't require much
visibility.

As to whether they have a chance of reaching their goals, yes --
a chance.  Beyond that, it's impossible to say.  However, they
have had some successes already.  For example, they were one of
the groups that persuaded Dan Quayle to launch the SSTO project.


>I sent them a $25 check in August (enough to get the newsletter), and
>haven't heard a peep from them.  They haven't cashed the check though.
>Perhaps they're just slow.

Perhaps.  They are deliberately operating on a very low (practically
nonexistant) overhead.  The opposite of the NASA/Gary Coffman approach.
Of course, it's also possible that your check was eaten by the US Snail.



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

Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1993 19:00:43 GMT
From: Paul Dietz <[e-mail]>
Subject: Justification for the Space Program
Newsgroups: sci.space,talk.politics.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (James L. Felder) writes:

> I see societal problems even bigger than those facing the space
> program in siting breeder reactors and the attendent fuel reprocessing
> facilities and waste disposal sites.  The Japanese government is
> already beginning to face severe pressure to slow or halt their
> breeder program.

Ultimately, the reason for this is that breeders are not now competitive.
This is also a significant reason why Britain and Germany are stopping
breeder development.  Fortunately, they aren't needed now.

The Japanese have chosen a breeder cycle that uses large amounts of
plutonium.  Alternate cycles (for example, denatured U-Th) would
produce 2 orders of magnitude less plutonium, and fuel shipments would
be of denatured U-233 with no plutonium, which cannot be used in bombs
without enrichment.  These cycles are more proliferation resistant,
and are compatible with reactors evolved from current commercial
designs, rather than an economy with mostly fast reactors.


> A further problem I
> see is that all the energy conversion to useable form (electricity) occurs
> within the biosphere.  I do not have a feel for how much thermal energy can
> be released into the biosphere before it contributes a significant amount
> directly to global warming (as opposed to CO2's indirect contribution
> through increased solar absorbtion).

I posted a number on that.  Today, direct thermal pollution is
globally insignificant, compared to insolation, or even to the heat
flux from increased greenhouse gases or that caused by human
modification of earth's albedo.  Primary energy use could be pushed up
a couple of orders of magnitude without it becoming unmanagable.


>> is very hard to replace with some substitute.  Fossil fuels are
>> an example -- there is no reason why we should not be able
>> to survive indefinitely without them, if some other source of
>> energy is available.

> And no matter what we will have to learn to do without them.  And will
> probably be cursed by future generations for burning such a useful
> commodity simply to heat our homes.

Just like we curse the shortage of whale oil?  Hardly -- they will
view fossil fuel use as a curious historical anomaly, and pity
us for being (so) relatively poor and ignorant that we could not
use cleaner alternatives.


>> In the short term, however, there is no reason why resource use
>> on earth cannot be increased.  There is no reason why we could
>> not supply several times the current population with several times
>> the current US per capita energy consumption indefinitely.

> Yes, but at what cost to the environment?

Nuclear or solar have much lower impacts on the environment than
current energy sources, so the cost would be lower than what we are
already paying.


> No, to unreliable.  Terrestrial solar energy has a problem because of
> intermittent illumination.  Either a large storage capacity must be
> included in the system, or another source must come on-line at night and
> during periods of cloud cover.  The large required land area makes solar
> problematic for large portion of the world.  Plus places like Cleveland
> goes days or weeks with hardly a glimpse of the sun.

Surely, means to move energy in both time and space would be needed.
There are serious economic limits on this today, but there is no
reason to think these limits cannot be extended.

As for land area: current world energy use is only 1/10,000 of the
sunlight hitting earth's surface.  Restricting ourselves to
continents, and assuming a 20% efficieny, we end up using a couple of
percent of the land area of the planet.


> It might be a misconception on my part based on media coverage, but it
> seems that nuclear plants have frequent shut downs for one reason or
> another, often times for days or weeks.  A system that relied on a majority
> of its energy from nuclear power would have to have a significant extra
> capacity included, or a more reliable source ready to come on line at a
> moments notice.

This is a misconception; nuclear plants are usually quite reliable,
and can be made more reliable (and will be more reliable, if we have
experience operating tens of thousands of them).  In a world with more
nuclear reactors, one could even tolerate less reliability, as long as
the failures are independent (and not polluting) and power can be
wheeled.


> Without a track record, though, nothing can be said for powersats, so this
> again probably isn't a compeling argument.  It at least doesn't share the
> intermittent illumination problem of land based solar, plus the power
> source never goes off-line :-).

Powersats as usually described can't hack it as the primary energy
source for earth, since there's not enough room in GEO.  They'd have
to be farther away.  That drives up cost.  I am also not convinced the
orbital debris problem would be managable -- there'd be tens of
thousands of square kilometers of collectors that would be out there
to be hit and breed more debris fragments.  Construction and
maintenance of the powersats would involve billions of tons of
material -- surely some would escape into orbit?


> The price of raw materials in the space program is trivial, but that isn't
> my point.  It is the price of raw materials and energy to the entire
> economy that is the problem. I think that an increasing drag on the ecomomy
> will be felt as these prices go up.

I still don't buy it.  Raw materials prices a small input to the
economy.  The biggest raw material input is energy, but I've argued
that's not going to get scarce.  The high dollar volume non-fuel
minerals will not get scarce either (iron and aluminum, for example),
or can be largely substituted for.  I don't see just what is going to
cause the drag.

    Paul F. Dietz
    [e-mail]

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

Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1993 18:47:17 GMT
From: "Edward V. Wright" <[e-mail]>
Subject: killing the shuttle
Newsgroups: sci.space

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

>You don't get rid of civil servants and politically-powerful contractors
>that easily.  If you wipe out the Imperial Deathstar, they'll only start
>building another one.

But you can transfer them to another program, which doesn't compete
with anything worthwhile.  (Such as Freedom or Mission to Planet Smurf.)

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

Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1993 18:12:40 GMT
From: "Edward V. Wright" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Let's be more specific (was: Stupid Shut Cost arguements)
Newsgroups: sci.space

In <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Gary Coffman) writes:

>I don't condemn DC for being a paper design. All new vehicles are paper
>designs at some point. What I do condemn is the idea of giving up an
>operational system in the *hope* that the paper vehicle will meet it's
>promise on schedule and on budget. That would be like telling Delta to
>quit flying all it's current aircraft today and laying off all it's
>personnel today because there's going to be a cheaper aircraft available
>in 5 or 10 years.

If Delta used the tactics NASA does to crush its competition,
the resulting anti-trust suit would force them to go out of
business.


>>    Shuttle could have lower costs then  NASA currently has,
>>    but it still needs a tremendous infrastructure.  The OPF,
>>    the VAB, Tilting bay,  the crawler/transporter.  Launch towers.

>Of course Shuttle *already* has this infrastructure, and it's paid
>for whether Shuttle continues to use it or not.

Not using that infrastructure for the Shuttle would allow you to use
it for a rebuilt Saturn V, Russian-built Soyuz or Energia boosters,
etc.  There are alternatives.


>Currently there aren't that many missions needing heavy lift, seven
>people on orbit, remote manipulation, long duration experiments, or
>payload return. Shuttle does it with less than 8 launches a year. DC
>may put Atlas, Delta, Titan, and Pegasus out of business, but it doesn't
>have the capacity to match Shuttle or a true HLV for the times they're
>needed.

Can you give an example of a mission that needs *all* of those
things, on a single vehicle?

Of course, the Shuttle does it with less than 8 missions a year,
because at Shuttle prices, that's all anyone can afford.


>Once we have Freedom in operation, even less need
>will be found for Shuttle, and it can be phased out. But there will still
>be missions where there's no viable substitute for heavy lift and only
>the Russians still have an operational very heavy lift vehicle. It may
>make sense just to contract with them,

Why does this have to wait for Freedom?  We could do that right now.
In fact, we'd save money launching Freedom on Energia instead of Shuttle.


>but I'd like to see the US
>develop a new generation VHLV designed from the ground up to achieve
>the lowest possible cost per pound. We've never tried to do that so
>we don't know how cheaply it can be done.

A new gneration VHLV designed to achieve the lowest possible cost
per pound would be an SSTO, which you support as research vehicles
only.

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

Date: 8 Jan 93 19:31:45 GMT
From: nathan wallace <[e-mail]>
Subject: Making Antimatter
Newsgroups: sci.space

There is yet another interesting book out there, called "Mirror Matter"
by Dr. Robert L. Forward, another far-thinker in this area. He has
worked with DOD and other interested parties on antimatter as a
*practical* energy source right now. He points out that while AM is
useless for bombs due to the fact that instead of "low" energy
gamma rays like fission and fusion, with AM you get "high" energy
gr which drop back into particles **very** fast and so are hard to
use to transmit energy, thermal shock, etc. This means designing
a practical AM reactor has some interesting problems besides
keeping the AM cool and moving it around.

More interestingly to me, he mentioned that DOD is in the process
of building an accelerator solely for the purpose of generating
AM for use in space projects, both as fuel and for research purposes.
Presumably the "cold" AP mentioned in the recent Sci Am article would
be part of such a system.

So perhaps the antimatter rocket is not as far away as some have
thought....

Reality Check:
We have never actually made antimatter. We have made anti-particles,
but as yet they have never been cold enough to try to get them to
link up into matter. Supposedly this experiment is intended in the
relatively near future; perhaps Bill Higgins could comment on this.

+----------------------------------------------+------------------------+
|                                              |              __        |
|                                              |             / /\       |
|  Nathan F. Wallace                           |      ______/ /_/___    |
|  email: [e-mail]  |     / ____  ______ \   |
+----------------------------------------------+    / /\__/ /\____|\/|  |
|                                              |   | |\/ / / /     \|/  |
|  Disclaimer: My opinions are my own, and are |   | || / /_/_____      |
|              not those of any other person,  |   | ||/_______  /\     |
|              organization, or supreme being. |   | ||\______/ / /     |
|                                              |   | ||      / / /      |
+----------------------------------------------+    \ \_____/ /_/__/\   |
|  "War is the art of deception."              |     \_____  _______/|  |
|                                 Sun Tzu      |      \___/ /\______|/  |
|                                              |          \_\/          |
|                                              |                        |
+----------------------------------------------+------------------------+

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

Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1993 18:34:13 GMT
From: "Doug S. Caprette Bldg. 28 W191 x3892" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Moon Dust For Sale
Newsgroups: sci.space,sci.astro,alt.sci.planetary

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (fred j mccall 575-3539) writes:
>In <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Bob Martino) writes:
>
>>     A truly simple calculation.
>
>>     (A)  Determine the mass of all moon rocks recovered.  (use a
>>          REAL unit like kilograms, please)
>>     (B)  Determine the total cost of the Apollo program.  (Probably
>>          should include the cost of Gemini also)
>>     (C)  Divide (A) into (B) to arrive at the figure.
>
>>     Any questions?      :-)
>
>Yes.  Proof the required assumption for the simple calculation given
>above; i.e., that the sum total and purpose of the Apollo program was
>ONLY to return those rocks, and that nothing else of value of any kind
>was gained for the money.  ;-)
>


I thought that the return of lunar samples was a side benefit as were
all of the scientific returns from Apollo.

Wasn't the stated goal of Apollo to "Send an American to the moon and
return him safely"  ?

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

Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1993 18:43:00 GMT
From: "Edward V. Wright" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Should NASA operate shuttles (was Re: Shuttle a research tool)
Newsgroups: sci.space

In <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Francois Yergeau) writes:

>Spin off shuttle to the private sector, and
>you're likely to get at most one provider, and one buyer (NASA).  Not
>my idea of a free, competitive market where cost savings could be
>realized.  By contrast, the commercial launch market has many buyers
>and a few more or less subsidized sellers, so there's competition,
>incentive to invest, etc.

When there's only one supplier in a market, that's usually
a pretty good incentive for other companies to invest.  How
many companies followed Federal Express into the day-next
delivery market?


>>>But didn't I read not long ago that MacDD would not operate DC?  Who would?
>>
>>I understand that American Airlines has indicated some interest. Why
>>not them?

If you read the same account I did, I believe it was Northwest Orient.

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

Date: 8 Jan 93 18:30:31 GMT
From: Gary Coffman <ke4zv!gary>
Subject: Shuttle a research tool (was: Re: Let's be more specific)
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Henry Spencer) writes:
>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Francois Yergeau) writes:
>>But the airlines do not contract out their operations.  They procure
>>planes, and fly them, just like NASA buys shuttles and operates them.
>
>Actually, it is not at all uncommon for airlines to lease planes complete
>with crews, or to contract with specialists for support services like
>maintenance.  Leasing services are among the airliner companies' biggest
>customers.

Let's see, NASA should sell Shuttle and it's support facilities at cost,
lease them back from the buyer at a profit to the leasing agency, and
then they'll save big bucks. What's wrong with this picture? Airlines
use lease back arrangements because of the *tax* advantages the arrangement
offers. The leasing company profit is less than the taxes saved so everybody
but the average taxpayer wins. NASA doesn't pay taxes, they spend them.

Ok, let's try it another way. NASA sells Shuttle and it's support facilities
at cost to Rockwell. NASA then buys a *ticket* when it needs a launch on
Rockwell Spacelines, about 8 times a year. Rockwell Spacelines sells them
the tickets at about 1.5 times current Shuttle flight costs, got to recoup
the investment and turn a profit. The poor taxpayer takes it in the neck.

One more time. NASA sells Shuttle and support facilities at scrap prices
and writes off development costs as a bad investment. This is what Allen
wants. Rockwell Spacelines buys the scrap and begins operating it. Sells
NASA, NASDA, Hughes, and anyone else who wants one a ticket. Using commercial
operating practices, Rockwell Spacelines makes money, NASA et al get reduced
launch costs, and everyone but the poor abused taxpayer wins. (he always
loses anyway)

Gary

--
Gary Coffman KE4ZV          |    You make it,     | gatech!wa4mei!ke4zv!gary
Destructive Testing Systems |    we break it.     | uunet!rsiatl!ke4zv!gary
534 Shannon Way             |    Guaranteed!      | emory!kd4nc!ke4zv!gary
Lawrenceville, GA 30244     |                     | emory!ke4zv![e-mail]

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

Date: 8 Jan 93 20:37:15 GMT
From: Thomas Clarke <[e-mail]>
Subject: Subjective Safety Measure(Re: man-rating)
Newsgroups: sci.space,sci.aeronautics

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Gary Coffman)
writes:
> In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Thomas
Clarke) writes:
> >In article <[e-mail]>
[e-mail]
> >(Dillon Pyron) writes:
> >> BTW, the STS [Space Transporation System/the Shuttle]
> >> is the safest transportation system we have, based on fatalities
> >> per passenger mile.  But who would pay $1 billion apiece for a 747?
(Please
> >> attach a smiley to the safety record).
> >
> >Does anyone have any idea how various means of transport rate
> >according to probability of exit.  Is the private car better than
> >a commerical airliner?  {Lots of safe little trips would up the
> >exit probability.}
>
>  So we have about 1 million exits per
> fatality on aircraft, probably quite a bit better. Using your measure,
> aircraft and autos are about equally safe, a non-intuitive result.
>
Good analysis!  So cars and planes are about equally exit-safe.
I was trying to get at something like this in my original comments.
Rationally, planes are the safest way to go from A to B, but
people are not rational or else there wouldn't be lotteries.
My guess is that the percieved safety on which people base
their behavior is something like exit-probability.

Corollary:  DC should strive for 1/million fatalties/entry.
Maybe since its space 1/ten-thousand would do :-)
Even 1/million is not good enough for some - like John
Madden and Issac Asimov who refuse to fly.
--
Thomas Clarke
Institute for Simulation and Training, University of Central FL
12424 Research Parkway, Suite 300, Orlando, FL 32826
[phone], FAX: [phone], [e-mail]

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

Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1993 22:53:34 GMT
From: David Pugh <[e-mail]>
Subject: Supporting private space activities
Newsgroups: sci.space

The federal government paid the early airlines to carry mail. In some (most?)
cases, these mail subsidies were the only thing that made the airlines profitable.
So ... it seems reasonable to wonder if a similar program could be done for the
private launcher market. What I'm proposing is that the government agree to pay
$1000/lbs to deliver 1 million pounds to LEO each year from 1995 to 2015. At
$1 billion/year, this would be a fairly small program (by government standards).

Some additional bells and whistles:
    +    Payment is on delivery. If your launcher blows up, etc., you don't get
    paid.

    +    In years where there's less than a million pounds of payload to orbit,
    we make up the difference by shipping water (since a water has a 1001
    uses in orbit). Would it be possible to store the water in a slightly
    modified shuttle external tank? In particular, paint the tank so that
    its ambient temperature is below freezing (that way, leaks aren't as
    much of a problem) and add the plumbing to let you add water even when
    the tank is partially full of ice.

What else needs to be added to make this proposal workable (I realize, of course,
that NASA would ever let it pass no matter what we did to it)?

--
... He was determined to discover the        David Pugh
underlying logic behind the universe.        ...!seismo!cmucs!dep
    Which was going to be hard, because
there wasn't one.    _Mort_,  Terry Pratchett

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

Date: Fri, 08 Jan 93 19:26:42 GMT
From: Doug Mohney <[e-mail]>
Subject: Who can launch antisats? (was Re: DoD launcher use)
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Edward V. Wright) writes:
>In <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Doug Mohney) writes:
>
>>You're being silly. If you're going to treat the nuke as "just another
>>weapon" you don't need the Clancyesque plot. Just nuke the friggin' carrier
>>and be done with it. It's only full-scale war, after all, right Ed?
>
>Well, Tom Clancy at least understands the technology and how it works.

Oh Ed, you're being snide. And I know any number of people in the military who
say Mr. Clancy writes a good read, but as for tactics and details...

>Just finding a carrier at sea, let alone hitting it, is not easy.
>Don't believe everything Dan Rather tells you.

Well, your assumption proof is that the carrier is already located, and
blinding the overhead sats are a prelude to attacking it.

>  It's a moving
>target, which will probably move out of the target area between
>the time you launch your ballistic missile and the time the warhead
>lands.

C'mon Ed. Let's talk SPECIFICS here. The assumption was a Third-World country,
not Russia. If you assume Russia in your scenario, they've already worked out
various schemes for maneuverable RVs. Plus have a wide variety of cruise
missiles and other goodies.

Let's pick on Libya. The carrier battle group is observed moving eastward in a
box something by something (having to stay within the box to effectively launch
aircraft against your country without refuelling tricks). Four MRBMs with 80KT
warheads are launched to bracket the box.

Even if you don't sink the carrier, you've got EMP which is playing hell with
the radars and radios of both carrier and escorts. So you just send in the
surplus Tu-22M Backfires and drop a couple of gravity bombs after you locate
the carrier visually. You'll lose some planes, sure, but the object of the game
is to kill the carrier.

>>It is not for nothing DARPA has a love with microsats and ways to get them
>>quickly into orbit. And what DARPA is doing is in the sunshine.
>
>Microsats are incapable of replacing photorecon satellites.  The
>laws of physics prevent it.  To get adequate resolution, you need
>a large mirror (or large radar).  Black programs use the same laws
>of physics as everybody else.

Hmm. So why does Bell Corporation have a recently declassified microsat design
with a telescope in it? You don't need to read the numbers of license plates (a
la the KH-11 series) in wartime, hence you don't need THAT large of a package
to get useful information.

>>Of course. So why did we get the UN to rubber stamp it first? C'mon Ed,
>>stop helping me out here. We really didn't NEED to get the UN's blessing,
>>did we?
>
>Of course we didn't.  The United States has gone to war numerous
>times in the past.  It has never needed permission of the United
>Nations before.  It was George Bush who set that (dangerous) precendent.

Ed, you're starting to foam at the mouth. Large-scale war is never a single
nation effort. You need diplomacy to get you forward bases, refuelling rights,
and various other goodies so you can effectively operate far away from home.

It's more difficult to get support for operations if everyone thinks you are an
Imperialist Warmonger Bent on World Conquest. :)

>>>Besides, your claim was that "international public opinion" would
>>>*prevent* nations like Iraq from making hostile acts.
>
>>Prevent a degree of hostile acts. Why didn't the Iraqis use chemical weapons
>>against allied forces in Desert Storm?
>
>Not because he was afraid someone would say something bad about
>him at a UN cocktail party.
>
>Hint: the people who planned the initial airstrikes were not
>complete idiots.

You assume everything was stockpiled nice and neatly. It wasn't. The SCUDs
which hit Israel and Saudi Arabia (and which continued to elude the best
efforts of Allied planners to find them until the end of the war) could have
just as easily have been armed with chemical warheads as high explosives.

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

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


Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
Received: from NASVM.BITNET by VTVM2.CC.VT.EDU (IBM VM SMTP V2R2)
   with BSMTP id 7512; Fri, 08 Jan 93 16:12:05 EST
Received: by NASVM (Mailer R2.03B) id 0899; Fri, 08 Jan 93 16:12:26 EST
Received: by NAS (PC Mail Gateway) id 4580; Fri, 08 Jan 93 16:12:25 EST
Date:         Fri, 08 Jan 93 15:46:00 EST
From: David Hambric <[e-mail]>
Subject:      Conservation of mass
To: [e-mail]

I must say that my knowledge of physics is not as thorough as I would like it
to be, and, perhaps, this topic has already been addressed in physics
lectures the world over.  Nevertheless, here it goes.

According to the law of conservation of mass/energy, all mass/energy that
exists has always existed and will always exist, no?  Well, I was thinking
about the open/closed universe argument and the theory of the Big Bang in
light of the law of conservation of mass/energy (CM/E).  If the Big Bang is a
fact, then according to the law of CM/E the universe has to be closed, and any
theory allowing for the concurrent existence of the Big Bang and an open
universe is incorrect, or the law of CM/E is incorrect, or at least missing
some components, as far as I understand it (which isn't saying much).

Are there any arguments/theories providing for the existence of a Big Bang and
an open universe?

Thank you for your indulgence.

David Hambric <[e-mail]>

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

End of Space Digest Volume 16 : Issue 027
------------------------------