Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/mac/TEXT_ZIP/spacedig/V16_1/V16NO138.ZIP/V16NO138

Internet Message Format | 1993-07-13 | 28KB

Date: Mon,  8 Feb 93 07:58:45
From: Space Digest maintainer <[e-mail]>
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Subject: Space Digest V16 #138
To: Space Digest Readers
Precedence: bulk


Space Digest                Mon,  8 Feb 93       Volume 16 : Issue 138

Today's Topics:
                             Atlantis...
                   Lurid Space Fantasy USPO stamps
                 So what's happened to Henry Spencer?
                  Toutatis Captured by Radar Images
                     Units and Star Trek [Part 2]
                    Using off-the-shelf-components
                                Well..

    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: Fri, 5 Feb 93 00:07:31 EST
From: John Roberts <[e-mail]>
Subject: Atlantis...

-From: [e-mail] (Jerry Han)
-Subject: Atlantis...
-Date: 29 Jan 93 19:42:11 GMT
-Organization: Communications Research Centre, Ottawa

-One question here-  Where is the shuttle Atlantis at the moment?  (Most of
-the schedules and such I've seen talk of Discovery, Columbia and Endeavour.)

-Is Atlantis in refit at the moment?

[Sorry if the answer has already been posted - our site has been getting
incoming mail delayed this week.]

To answer your question:

#From: [e-mail] (Jonathan McDowell)
#Subject: "Jonathan's Space Report, no. 141"
#Organization: Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, Cambridge, MA, USA
#Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1993 15:47:59 GMT

#Jonathan's Space Report

#No. 141        1993 Jan 26

#...Meanwhile, NASA orbiter OV-104 Atlantis is
#at the Rockwell plant in Palmdale, California being reconfigured to
#accept a docking module which would allow it to link up with the
#Kristall module port in 1995, as part of a mission of an American
#astronaut aboard the Mir station.

I don't know whether there are any plans to use Atlantis before that mission -
I would guess that there aren't. Last August, Atlantis was scheduled to
fly Dennis Wingo's payload and retrieve EURECA on STS-57, but by October,
Endeavour had been assigned to that flight. I believe that interval was
when the MIR rendezvous mission was added.

I think some of the other hardware is also being upgraded during this interval
(flight control computers, etc.).

John Roberts
[e-mail]

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

Date: 4 Feb 93 17:29:15 -0600
From: Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey <[e-mail]>
Subject: Lurid Space Fantasy USPO stamps
Newsgroups: sci.space,rec.arts.sf.fandom

X-Date: 4 Feb 93 17:25:00 -0600
X-Organization: Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
Lines: 34
X-NNTP-Posting-Host: fnalf.fnal.gov
X-Xref: fnnews.fnal.gov rec.arts.sf.misc:4322 rec.arts.sf.marketplace:846

Anybody seen the U.S. Post Office's new "Space Fantasy" stamps?
I just got mine.

They come in a book of 20 stamps for $5.80.  They are a block of five
29-centers making up one "mural."  Vivid comic-book space-opera
colors.  Left to right, they show:

--Green rocketships blasting, with Saturn's rings behind

--Two saucer-shaped vehicles zooming upward; look closely to see they
are really domed cities!

--Two people in green spacesuits and rocket belts against a white sun

--A flying-wing-type vehicle passing periliously close to the glowing
green exhaust of a really big spaceship that stretches across three
stamps

--A fleet of three red and yellow ships against a pair of blue cloudy
planets (these look more Art Deco-ish and cucumber-shaped than the
ones in the first stamp)

Does anybody know who the artist is?  Hmm, there's a philately list on
Bitnet, maybe I'll check there.

I think I'll go back and get myself a ten-year supply of these!
--
     O~~*           /_) ' / /   /_/ '  ,   ,  ' ,_  _           \|/
   - ~ -~~~~~~~~~~~/_) / / /   / / / (_) (_) / / / _\~~~~~~~~~~~zap!
 /       \                          (_) (_)                    / | \
 |       |     Bill Higgins   Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
 \       /     Bitnet:     [e-mail]
   -   -       Internet:  [e-mail]
     ~         SPAN/Hepnet:      43011::HIGGINS

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

Date: 4 Feb 1993 22:38:54 GMT
From: Doug Mohney <[e-mail]>
Subject: So what's happened to Henry Spencer?
Newsgroups: sci.space

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

>I should say, though, that Mary did one unkind thing:  she warned the
>Dryden tour guide (Mary seems to know everyone at Dryden) not to let me
>try to sneak off with one of the SR-71s.  Rats.  I was looking forward
>to making a run for the border at Mach 3...

Good for her!

Bad enough that the World Series was taken away from US *mutter*mutter*.




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

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

Date: Thu, 4 Feb 1993 23:55:25 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Toutatis Captured by Radar Images
Newsgroups: sci.space,sci.astro

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

> In article <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> writes:
>>Has anyone an idea to which class "Toutatis" belongs? Is it a S-type-
>>asteroid like "Gaspra"? ...
>
> Don't be too quick to declare Gaspra an S-type.  The latest word is that
> its magnetic field is too strong for it to be anything but nickel-iron
> inside, regardless of what the surface looks like.
> --
> C++ is the best example of second-system| Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
> effect since OS/360.                    |  [e-mail]  utzoo!henry

Here now!  Clark Chapman, David Morrison, and I introduced the C, S, M, etc.
classes in a paper in Icarus in 1975.  They are explicitly OPTICAL types, based
on reflection spectrum and albedo.  The taxonomy involves no decisions about
mineralogy, though it has long been thought that the S-types are mostly stony
irons.  Gaspra is a peculiar S type, and Toutatis is a very typical S.

Ben

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

Date: 4 Feb 1993 22:52:26 GMT
From: David Geiser <[e-mail]>
Subject: Units and Star Trek [Part 2]
Newsgroups: sci.space

momentum, their behavior apes that of neutrinos in that they do almost no
damage to the matter they pass thru.
    Lower power simply streches the molecular bonds without breaking them,
their rebounding motions translating into simple heat.  In this manner, a
hand phaser may be used to heat rocks for warmth, cook food, or even act as a
very precise cutting torch.  At the lowest useful power, the jolting of
molecules is too slight to really impact inanimate matter, but does tend to
produce neurological shock as large numbers of synapses have their firing
threshold randomly raised or lowered.  The vast number of additional versus
inhibited synaptic firings causes a biological equivalent of "systems crash"
leading to unconsciousness, as the nervous system becomes hopelessly confused
and overloaded by spurious signals.  As no actual tissue damage is sustained,
the nervous system "reboots" itself eventually.  Somewhat higher power can do
permanent, even lethal damage to the nervous system however, and can cause a
seizure-like muscular convulsion.  This minimally lethal effect is not unlike
electric shock.

    To residents of the 20th century, the transporter is perhaps a more
incredible application of Cochrane's Unified Field Theory than superluminal
travel, since the later affords no real Terrestrial gauge for appreciating
the effect, whereas the wonder of instantaneously materializing elsewhere has
been part and parcel of Earth's mythology/magic belief systems for millenia.
    Building on the ability of the "looped coil" to project gravitational
fields, experimenters eventually learned to handle gravity waves in ways that
parallel optical technology's capabilities with light waves.  Ultimately,
command of these techniques was sufficient to produce a gravitational wave
"hologram" in which the system literally captured the continuum profile of an
object down to the minutest detail of atomic constituents and molecular
bondings in the intersection between its stationary "reference beam" and the
rotating "scanning beam".  Sophisticated split beam techiniques permitted the
"projection" of a second "continuum profile image", which, depending on the
operational limits of the equipment, could be located at an arbitrarily
large distance and direction from the source.  These experiments were
originally conceived in pursuit of improved medical technology following the
progression of X-rays, ultrasound, nuclear magnetic resonance, and positron
emmision tomography, with the result enabling Dr. Crusher to obtain a clear
view of the parasite creature embedded in Admiral Quinn during the
"Conspiracy" period.
    The transporter breakthru grew out of experiments attempting to
manipulate matter via alterations of the continuum profile associated
with an object.  If a continuum profile projection were maintained long
enough, it began to fill itself in with atoms picked up from the
environment.  Eventually, it would recreate the original, though in the
meantime, if sufficient power was used to intensify the projection, this
profile construct could behave like the original, even appearing to be
solid matter, as long it remained within range of the projection radius.
At the same time, it was shown that changes in the profile of the
original were reflected in the original object as well in the
projection, establishing the real-time linkage between the two.  Early
attempts at matter manipulation were usually destructive, not until the
early 24th century would the raw computer power be available for such
things as the holodeck, where the projection could be based on computer
simulations rather than real life / real time models, but in these
pioneering efforts, the ability to project a profile back on its own
source object, while maintaining an independent second projection
elsewhere, was developed.
    Dr.  Janet Hester of the Deneva Research Station first conceived the idea
that if one reversed the "topological polarity" of the image projected back
upon the source, in effect FLATTENING the impression it made in space/time,
while simultaneously boosting the gravitational intensity, and thus the DEPTH
of the spatially projected image, one could create a situation in which the
probability of finding any given constituent of the source object at the
original location could be reduced to zero, even as the probability of
finding it at the projection's location went up to unity.  Every component of
an object, its atoms, the chemical bonds between them, even the ongoing
molecular processes, would cascade back and forth between the twin loci of
probable locations, finally coming to rest at the one brought to unity.  Of
all the marvels that have sprung from Zephram Cochrane's insights, none more
clearly demonstrate his success at unifying gravitational space/time
continuum phenomena with quantum mechanical probability functions.
    It would take another four decades of dedicated experiment and study
before Science Officer Winston of the USS Moscow became the first human to
transport across to the USS Tehran.  Still more work was required before the
ability of the tranporter to project a "virtual" yet functional copy of the
active components of the scanning and projection processes to envelope the
retrieval site would eliminate the need for physical hardware at both ends of
the transport linkage, and theb to learn to bend the projection around the
surfaces of planets using the natural gravitational field so that transport
could be free of line-of-sight restraints.  The depth of dense planetary
matter the transporter can penetrate is still limited, but the often
life-saving speed and conveinience of transport in general has proved well
worth the time, cost, and often sacrifice it took to perfect.

    The Secondary Warp field effect was originally achieved by winding a
second-stage "booster" coil around a specially designed Primary coil.  The
early versions of this system would energize the Primary coil first to
navigate at low percentages of threshold power.  Once clear of stellar and
planetary gravitational fields, they would engage the booster coil
reconfiguring their warp field into the 2nd order type.  When this was
accomplished, power would be steadily increased until the threshold level was
attained and transition to the warp continuum occured.  The Primary and the
booster together constitute the Secondary coil.  Should the booster fail
under operational stress, a fairly common occurence in the early days, the
Primary alone could be used and could operate above its threshold level to
take the ship to superluminal velocities.
    While later vessels retained the above system layout, experience proved
it far more efficient to energize the whole Secondary coil system as a single
circuit, and to navigate at very low power and speeds with an independent
miniature Primary system.  This became known as the Impulse Drive.  As it was
intended only for low speed operations, this system would not normally be
capable of handling the power load it would require to bring the vessel past
the threshold point.  However, engineers took advantage of this dual
propulsion system to split the vessel itself, letting each major sub-division
of the hull house one of the systems.  It became customary to place the major
living quarters in the hull with the smaller Impulse Drive, both to better
shield the crew from the higher radiation levels the more powerful Secondary
system created, and also with the idea of better accomodating the entire crew
should "coil burnout" force the abandonment of the other hull.
    The terminology of vessel design adopted the convention of referring to
the hull housing the Secondary coil system as the Secondary Hull, and
the other housing the Primary coil only Impulse Drive as the Primary Hull.
Tertiary drive systems simply wound yet another type of booster coil around
the Primary and Secondary stages nested inside it, but as there were still
only two drive systems and two main hull sections, the one with the large
engine system continued to be called the Secondary Hull.
    In the event of separation, the Primary Hull's Impulse Drive, freed of
the weight of the entire Secondary Hull and the even more massive main drive
engine nacelles, is usually large enough for superluminal propulsion.  This
has been shown quite clearly in ST:TNG during the initial encounter with Q,
when the Primary Hull found its way to Farpoint after the entire ship spent
some 10 minutes pushing itself to its operational limits while going in
exactly the opposite direction.  It is equally well implied by Geordi's
instructions to Engineer Logan to take the Primary Hull to a Starbase if
unable to re-establish contact with him after performing the saucer-sep
manuevar in the "Arsenal of Freedom" incident.
    The first three orders of warp field phenomena correspond to the first
three "generations" of warp drive technology in the "Spaceflight Chronology".
Logically, a "Fourth generation" designation should have waited for the
developement of Quarternary warp, the sum of X^4 + (X^5)/5 + (X^6)/30 etc.,
equivalent formula 24*((e^W)-((W^3)/6 + (W^2)/12 + W + 1)), but the impact of
Dilithium on power generation, and thus overall performance, was so great
that the "Fourth generation" label took hold for the Constitution class.  All
orders of warp field phenomena remain subject to the Warp 10 limit on
Delivered Power, but higher order warps produce greater velocity for the same
Delivered Power than lower orders.  (See Appendix for tables of Primary,
Secondary, and Quartenary Warp Factor Equivalent Velocities).
    The term "Fifth generation" is usually applied to the abortive attempt to
harness "Trans-Warp", a misbegotten application of the Interphase phenomena
first observed by the Enterprise NCC-1701 during the "Tholian Web" incident.
The abandonment of this dangerous system was made doubly disappointing by the
continued failure of Federation science to perfect a workable Quartenary warp
drive.  The seemingly insurmountable difficulties encountered in the early
attempts at Quarternary drive design were the prime reason for the costly
"Trans-Warp" interlude.
    However, in the intervening decades advanced theoretical studies have led
to vastly simpler, more reliable Tertiary drives which can be pushed, and
above all held, far closer to the Warp 10 limit of Delivered Power than the
original design multi-stage units.  These single stage "integrated" units
were first used in ship's of the NCC-1701-C's Ambassador class, and marked
the arrival of warp technology's "Sixth generation".  A highly refined and
advanced version of this type of drive serves as the main propulsion for
"Galaxy" class starships such as Enterprise NCC-1701-D.  Gone are the
inefficientcies of the nested, three coil approach, advances in Impulsor
Calculus theory and supercomputer simulation techniques having found a single
coil equivalent.
    As the early efforts at Quarternary warp floundered on the complexities
of a four level multi-stage approach, the success of the single stage
"integrated" approach for Tertiary warp has scientists of SF:TNG's era once
more confident of eventual success, and aggressively paced research programs
are again under way in the race for the Quartenary drive.  It should be noted
that the extra heavy warp nacelle mountings and overall structural strength
rating of the Galaxy class design should easily permit retrofitting of
Quarternary Warp engines when they become available.
    Montgomery Scott correctly predicted the crippling deficientcies of the
Trans-Warp system, but was unable to dissuade StarFleet from investing in it.
Rightly convinced that Quartenary warp would have to await improvements in
warp theory permitting "integrated" designs, he attempted to convince
StarFleet to allow him to challenge the Warp 10 Barrier itself.  Alas, Scott
was never able to secure StarFleet backing for his proposal, and only a
handful of ST:TNG era technical persons who've studied his original notes
even know what he had in mind.
    Realizing that the "SuperWarp" scheme was far too radical for his era,
Scott dedicated his leisure time engineering studies to the design of the
ship he felt StarFleet should build in place of more "Excelsior" class
vessels.  Yet this project also offered too many radical advances, as Scott
was allowing for upgrades to integrated Tertiary or even Quartenary main
drives in his huge dreamship.  But while the Galaxy class would ultimately be
larger and incorporate advances beyond his wildest imaginings, even a cursory
glance at Scott's old plans and drawings reveals the striking similarities
that mark the true lineage of these greatest of all StarShips.  NCC-1701-D's
operational status is the way Scott would most have wanted StarFleet
Engineering to acknowledge its continuing debt to its greatest practitioner.
    As for the mechanics of SuperWarp, the mathematically inclined are invited
to contemplate the significance of the other half of the hyperbola relating
Generated to Delivered power, which most Federation scientists dismiss as a
mere geometric curiousity.  Of course, scientists once thought that C itself
represented an impassable barrier, yet as Spock would say, "There are always
possibilities".
    Without giving too much away, I can offer the following clue, that the
Constitution class USS Enterprise NCC-1701 under James Kirk, once broke
through the Warp Barrier by accident, the result of her Captain's famous
propensity for taking desperate gambles in otherwise hopeless situations.
Students of warp physics correctly identifying the occassion are eligible to
win a scholarship to StarFleet academy, which, alas, may not be used until the
23rd century.

                                        -Leon Myerson; 72157,3432; 6/23/88


                         APPENDIX 1 - PRIMARY WARP


                    Generated     Delivered         Primary
                    Power             Power         Warp x C

                           1        1.00000            1.72
                           2        1.98354            6.27
                           3        2.96260           18.35
                           4        3.93509           50.17
                           5        4.89755          132.96
                           6        5.84370          344.05
                           7        6.76140          862.85
                           8        7.62571         2049.24
                           9        8.38615         4384.92
                          10        8.96633         7833.82


                    Theoretical Limit = 22025.47 x C

                    Threshold Velocity = 0.5814 x C

                    Time Dilation at threshold = 0.813205




                         APPENDIX 2 - SECONDARY WARP


                    Generated     Delivered       Secondary
                    Power             Power       Warp x C

                           1        1.00000            1.44
                           2        1.98354            8.57
                           3        2.96260           30.77
                           4        3.93509           92.46
                           5        4.89755          256.13
                           6        5.84370          676.42
                           7        6.76140         1712.18
                           8        7.62571         4083.24
                           9        8.38615         8753.06
                          10        8.96633        15649.70


                    Theoretical Limit = 44030.93 x C

                    Threshold Velocity = 0.6944 x C

                    Time Dilation at threshold = 0.717939




                         APPENDIX 3 - QUARTERNARY WARP



                    Delivered      Generated      Quarternary
                      Power          Power               Warp

                              1   1.0000000000           1.24
                              2   2.0167653720          25.34
                              3   3.0383208502         170.05
                              4   4.0670614879         742.36
                              5   5.1072983806        2617.92
                              6   6.1676537197        8218.29
                              7   7.2682459514       24167.20
                            7.5   7.8487197368       40826.52
                              8   8.4694304149       68510.99
                            8.2   8.7364919027       84149.66
                            8.4   9.0203187626      103286.47
                            8.6   9.3280961537      126697.69
                            8.8   9.6717993420      155331.49
                              9  10.0729838055      190346.01
                            9.1  10.3071067812      210676.62
                            9.2  10.5747605008      233155.87
                            9.3  10.8903152831      258009.95
                            9.4  11.2777216596      285488.88
                            9.5  11.7800905867      315868.94
                            9.6  12.4836439773      349455.49
                            9.7  13.5895662949      386586.00
                            9.8  15.7014109302      427633.43
                            9.9  21.8369448362      473009.97
                             10    INFINITE         523171.18



                    Theoretical Limit = 523171.18 x C

                    Threshold Velocity = 0.8065 x C

                    Time Dilation at threshold = 0.590200





    For comparison, here is a chart of Quarternary Warp Factor equivalent
velocities keyed on the older "Generated Power" scale.


                    Generated     Delivered     Quarternary
                    Power             Power      Warp x C

                           1        1.00000            1.24
                           2        1.98354           24.41
                           3        2.96260          159.92
                           4        3.93509          680.00
                           5        4.89755         2315.80
                           6        5.84370         6908.99
                           7        6.76140        18761.08
                           8        7.62571        46527.25
                           9        8.38615       101833.70
                          10        8.96633       183948.24
                          11        9.33067       266146.24
                          12        9.53548       327403.32
                          13        9.65322       368752.42
                          14        9.72615       396927.10
                          15        9.77477       416884.29
                          16        9.80915       431599.84
                          17        9.83463       442835.76
                          18        9.85421       451667.92
                          19        9.86971       458779.77
                          20        9.88225       464622.34
                          21        9.89262       469503.75
                          22        9.94445       494688.02
--
To know recursion, you must first know recursion.
--

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

Date: 4 Feb 93 23:47:08 GMT
From: Ata Etemadi <[e-mail]>
Subject: Using off-the-shelf-components
Newsgroups: sci.space

|> In the early 1960's the government established a series of Military
|> Standard (MIL-STD) specifications for components that were to go into
|> NASA and military vehicles/equipment.  These specifications require items
|> to be tested above and beyond the normal testing that manufacturers
|> usually do; this is the main reason why NASA/military-qualified parts
|> cost so much.

>This cuts both ways. Hasselblad and Rolex haven't done so bad out of the
>fact that their off-the-shelf products *are* space qualified. And because

I remember being told that ESA and NASA generally lease Hasselblads because
of the cost.

Ata <(|)>.

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

Date: Thu, 4 Feb 1993 23:26:00 GMT
From: Todd Pedlar <[e-mail]>
Subject: Well..
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] ("Stephen Scrimgeour (Jnr Hons)") writes...
>To travel 60 light years at Warp 1 would take 60 years to an observer on
>Earth but the actual Astronaut involved would only experience a 2 year, 8
>month journey due to Time Dilation. This is traveling at 0.999c not actually.
>I'm no physicist so perhaps someone can explain what is actually meant by
>Warp One - do you mean 'c' or a speed just pasth the threshold of the speed
>of light?
>

"Warp X" is hardly standard terminology.  It's asinine- not even spoken of
unless you are talking sci-fi StarTrek kind of stuff -  My impression is that
warp x is x times the speed of light, though I could very well be wrong -
you see, I'm hardly a trekkie, though I do hold a small claim on physics.

Todd
______________________________________________________________________________
Todd K. Pedlar                ! "I have little patience with scientists who
Graduate Student              !  take a board of wood, look for its thinnest
Department of Physics         !  part, and drill a great number of holes where
Northwestern University       !  drilling is easy."           Albert Einstein
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

End of Space Digest Volume 16 : Issue 138
------------------------------