Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/mac/TEXT_ZIP/spacedig/V16_5/V16NO535.ZIP/V16NO535

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Date: Thu,  6 May 93 05:12:40
From: Space Digest maintainer <[e-mail]>
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Subject: Space Digest V16 #535
To: Space Digest Readers
Precedence: bulk


Space Digest                Thu,  6 May 93       Volume 16 : Issue 535

Today's Topics:
           ASTRONAUTS---What does weightlessness feel like?
                            BBS in Space?
           Boeing TSTO (Was: Words from Chairman of Boeing)
                  Cape York is dead; Long Live PNG!
                       Commercials on the Moon
 Coriolis (was Re: ASTRONAUTS---What does weightlessness feel like?)
                         Drag-free satellites
  Gamma Ray Burster Mystery and Mind/Matter Enigma - Common Answer?
             Russia's OPERATIONAL Starwars Defense System
             Visas for astronauts after an abort (2 msgs)
                           Why go to Pluto

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

Date: Wed, 5 May 1993 23:58:21 GMT
From: Henry Spencer <[e-mail]>
Subject: ASTRONAUTS---What does weightlessness feel like?
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <Bob_Hearn-050593084014@192.35.50.165> [e-mail] (Robert Hearn) writes:
>> : Some people are more prone to it than others, like some people are more
>> : prone to get sick on a roller coaster ride than others.
>
>But are they the same set of people?  If I get queasy on a roller coaster,
>would I necessarily have a problem with zero G? ...

Nobody has yet found *any* test that can be done on the ground which predicts
spacesickness especially well.  There is a great deal of interest in being
able to predict who will get sick, since it hurts productivity on extremely
expensive missions, but so far no way to do it.  In particular, there is no
particularly strong correlation between susceptibility to more ordinary
forms of motion sickness and susceptibility to spacesickness.  At least,
not that the research people have been able to find -- I don't know if
they've tried roller coasters :-).
--
SVR4 resembles a high-speed collision   | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
between SVR3 and SunOS.    - Dick Dunn  |  [e-mail]  utzoo!henry

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

Date: Wed, 5 May 1993 23:54:13 GMT
From: Henry Spencer <[e-mail]>
Subject: BBS in Space?
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Ralph Buttigieg) writes:
>This is just an idea that has occurred to me. We can make telephone calls to
>international aircraft via the imarasat satellite system. Can such calls be
>made to an orbiting space craft? ...

There's no fundamental reason why similar equipment couldn't be carried,
but at present it's not.

>...what would be involved in setting up a BBS on Mir or an eventual
>international Space Station...

A good reason to do it, and a pile of money to pay the Inmarsat charges.
Inmarsat phone calls are *not* free.
--
SVR4 resembles a high-speed collision   | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
between SVR3 and SunOS.    - Dick Dunn  |  [e-mail]  utzoo!henry

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

Date: Thu, 6 May 1993 00:19:49 GMT
From: Henry Spencer <[e-mail]>
Subject: Boeing TSTO (Was: Words from Chairman of Boeing)
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <1s5vk3$[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Pat) writes:
>|... But if you are *already* in the
>|aerodynamics business, and plan to stay in it, that changes things a bit.
>
>Maybe,  boeing is in the business of getting launcher money to
>improve their  aerodynamics business.  like they may not care about
>the launcher,  but if they can get moeny to pay for developeing a
>large fast  mach 3  civil transport,  then they have something.

Maybe, although the first stage of such a launcher isn't going to look
much like a transport.

But my point was that it's not necessary to assume the worst about their
motives.  They are not trying to build the simplest launcher they can;
they are trying to optimize their future revenues, bearing in mind that
their main business is aerodynamics.  It may well make sense to build
a launcher that also gives them experience with large hypersonic aircraft.
It's not the optimum way to build a launcher, but the extra cost of doing
it that way is an investment:  they'd be learning how to build hypersonic
aircraft, and also establishing a very visible track record in that area.
This could be very valuable to an aerodynamics company even if the actual
hardware has no other direct application.  They may still be perfectly
serious about building a good launcher; remember that "good" and "optimum"
are not the same thing.

A non-trivial side issue, by the way, is that you can build experimental
aircraft with much less hassle than experimental rockets.  As Gary Hudson
put it (at Making Orbit):  "You can build an aircraft with less paperwork
than it takes to build a house."
--
SVR4 resembles a high-speed collision   | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
between SVR3 and SunOS.    - Dick Dunn  |  [e-mail]  utzoo!henry

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

Date: Thu, 6 May 1993 00:38:31 GMT
From: Adrian Lewis <[e-mail]>
Subject: Cape York is dead; Long Live PNG!
Newsgroups: sci.space

[e-mail] (Gregory N. Bond) writes:

>A story appeard on the (Australian) ABC radio news last night that is
>of interest.  It is also mentioned in "The Australian Financial
>Review" this morning (4/5/93), p14.  (Don't say I don't give
>references!)

>Space Transportation Systems is the company that was the preferred
>bidder for the Cape York space port, [...].  There was a
>one-last-time, firm-and-this-time-we-mean-it deadline for STS to line
>up funding for CY that expired without a whisper in December.

>Last night there was an announcement by the Prime Minister of Papua
>New Guinea [...].  STS has been given an in-principle
>go-ahead for the establishmnent of a commercial spaceport on an as-yet
>unchosen PNG equatorial island.  The project was predicted to cost
>about $USD 920m.  Talks with internation funding sources are
>continuing, and STS is "confident about their success."  A feasability
>study (a $mil or so) is about to begin and could be completed by the
>end of 1993.

>This pretty much implies that Cape York is dead, and the report said
>as much.  More details as they come to hand.

>Greg.

    Interesting isn't it?  I could well imagine that they choose Manus
Island in the Admiralty Islands (Bismarck Archipelego).  It is 2 deg S, and
has a large abandoned air and naval base from WWII.  However, any site in
PNG is going to suffer from the problem of political instability and law-
and-order troubles.  I know a number of people who have worked in PNG over
the last five years and nearly all of them consider it too risky to work
there these days.
    Also, PNG has a very high level of thunderstorm activity, which may
be a problem for the launch vehicles.

    adrian

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

Date: Thu, 6 May 1993 01:33:00 GMT
From: Francois Yergeau <[e-mail]>
Subject: Commercials on the Moon
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:
>Hans Erik Martino Hansen ([e-mail]) wrote:
>: I have often thought about, if its possible to have a powerfull laser
>: on earth, to light at the Moon, and show lasergraphics at the surface
>: so clearly that you can see it with your eyes when there is a new
>: moon.
>
>Nope.  The atmosphere distorts the outbound laser beam too much to
>provide a useful image.  But if you put a laser in LEO....
>
>Hey, any physicists out there wanna take a stab at the power
>requirements on that laser?

Ok, but would-be entrepreneurs are in for a disappointment.  First off,
let's see what spot size we can get at the moon.  Let's say we have
this nicely figured 10 meter mirror in orbit, and we half fill it with
a gaussian laser beam to avoid diffraction effects. Wavelength is half
a micron, distance 384000 km, so I get a spot size of about 25 m. Not
bad.

Now suppose we're trying to trace out a circle with an angular diameter
of 10 minutes of arc, one third the diameter of the moon; we don't want
to make it much smaller because the resolution of our eyes is about 1
min.  At the distance of the moon, the radius of this circle is about
550 km, so the total surface area we'll have to illuminate works out
to roughly 2.pi.r.w = 90 sq km.

How much _intensity_ do we need?  I could go into considerations of
the albedo, the sensitivity of the eye, etc, but it's much simpler
to use the sun as a standard candle.  The solar constant is about
1300 W/m^2, a good portion of which (1000, say?) is in the visible.
We'll need to get a good fraction of that, a tenth say, to get good
contrast against the sunlit moon.  So 100 W/m^2 over 90 km^2 gives
us 9 GW to be delivered at the moon.  We can perhaps gain an order
of magnitude or even two by restricting our advertising to dark
portions of the moon, but this is the ballpark we're playing in.

We haven't put laser efficiency in the equation yet.  If we assume
10% (very optimistic, unless gigawatt visible diode lasers are
developped soon), we need to generate 90 GW in orbit, and dissipate
90% of that as waste heat.  Anybody cares to compute the size of
those radiators?

>If you could put one up in LEO, say on a Pegasus launch, you could

I'm afraid Pegasus is not up to the task, unless a major upgrade
program is undertaken.

>program it remotely and sell advertising time.  Solar panels for power,

Assuming i) 100% efficient solar panels, ii) a 100% efficient laser
and iii) we want <laser intensity>=<sun intensity>, the surface area
of those panels needs to be equal to the area illuminated on the moon.
Accounting for the efficiencies of real panels and lasers, but
lowering our intensity requirements a bit, we still need many square
kilometers of panels.  Tough luck. Or is it a happy ending?

--
Franois Yergeau ([e-mail]) | Qui se fait brebis le loup
Centre d'Optique, Photonique et Laser    | le mange.
Dpartement de Physique                  |
Universit Laval, Ste-Foy, QC, Canada    |

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

Date: Thu, 6 May 1993 00:00:42 GMT
From: Henry Spencer <[e-mail]>
Subject: Coriolis (was Re: ASTRONAUTS---What does weightlessness feel like?)
Newsgroups: sci.space,sci.physics

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Craig "Powderkeg" DeForest) writes:
>   The Huntsville ride is definitely pretty good.  Anybody know offhand what
>   the peak acceleration is?
>
>3.mumble G's.  It's a simulated Shuttle lift-off.

Okay, if they're simulating the shuttle accurately, then max is 3G.
The shuttle goes to some lengths (e.g. throttling the main engines down
late in flight) to limit accelerations to 3G; it was a design goal.
--
SVR4 resembles a high-speed collision   | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
between SVR3 and SunOS.    - Dick Dunn  |  [e-mail]  utzoo!henry

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

Date: 6 May 1993 00:44:07 GMT
From: Isaac Kuo <[e-mail]>
Subject: Drag-free satellites
Newsgroups: sci.space

Hi,

To all:  Sorry for the flame-bait.  I spoke too hastily at first, and after a
while, the truth which I suspected but unfortunately did not air came out
(that the effect involved was due to longitutidinal differences in the Earth's
gravitational field).  So, here are my conclusions:

1.  There is significant longitudinal differences in the Earth's gravitational
    field.
2.  Those differences, and not the Earth's oblateness, are used to affect the
    orbits of certain satellites.
3.  Drag-free satellites are satellites which use a reference mass within a
    shell accelerated by air friction, solar radiation,etc.. which are
    compensated for with thrusters based on the reference mass.
4.  Drag-free satellites may be used to study tesseral harmonics, as well as
    LEO air resistance, but do not inherently use such harmonics in any
    way.
--
*Isaac Kuo -->[e-mail]<--       *       ___
*                            * _____/_o_\_____
*    Who am I?  Where am I?  What do        *(==(/_______\)==)
*    I do?  The address says it all.        * \==\/     \/==/

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

Date: Thu, 6 May 1993 02:00:46 GMT
From: Jack Sarfatti <[e-mail]>
Subject: Gamma Ray Burster Mystery and Mind/Matter Enigma - Common Answer?
Newsgroups: sci.space,sci.astro

>Article 45994  in sci.physics:
>From: [e-mail] (john baez)
Subject: Re: Consciousness - tackling the mystery (was: Roger Penrose)
(long)
Keywords: consciousness, dualism, materialism, multiple drafts
Date: 3 May 93 19:52:05 GMT

>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail]
>(RobertFirth) writes:
>>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail]
>>(Petri Pihko) writes:

>>>Libet has clearly demonstrated that a cortical stimulation lasting less
>>>than 500 ms is not perceived consciously. It seems it takes at least 500
ms
>>>for brains to produce consciousness - that is, we become aware of what
>>>happens with a roughly half a second delay.

>>I'm sorry, I simply don't believe this.  500 ms is twelve frames of a
>>standard movie, and there are many examples of perceptible movie effects
>>that last only for four to six frames.  Experiments on subliminal
>>perception show that, in some cases, even single frames can have an
effect,
>>though the observer can't describe what is seen.

>>Besides, if there was a half-second delay in our perception of a stimulus,
>>no arcade game in the world would work.

> First of all, I am pretty sure that a flash that lasts almost half a
second can be perceived >consciously.  Second of all, this is unrelated to
whether there is a half-second delay in conscious
>awareness of the flash.  Third, the whole point about reaction times is
>that one reacts BEFORE one is consciously aware of doing so, even though
>it SEEMS as if one is aware; the mind "back-edits" its story of what is
>going on, as has been shown by many experiments.  The famous example is
>how foot-racers will start running before they are consciously aware
>(sorry if this is redundant) of doing so, EVEN THOUGH their memory says
>otherwise.

Exactly, Baez did get it right. It's because of this that Penrose correctly
point's out that we are faced with two options:

1) Past cause/future effect (i.e. no teleological final cause) is true.
Therefore, consciousness is an effect of action and free will is an illusion
under the above conditions.

2) The mind is quantum mechanical in a non-standard way that allows
nonlinear and nonunitary operators and nonlocal dynamical interactions,
perhaps, in the sense of Brian Josephson's idea. There is strong delayed
choice which can be tested in the physics laboratory by monitoring the
recoil of a nanotech scale beam splitter in a delayed choice interferometer
experiment.  That is, free will demands that the choice to act is after the
act. The responsible morally culpable choice is a future cause whose past
effect is the behavior.  This is why, Penrose, in Emperor's New Mind,
writes:

"Suppose there is even something vaguely teleological about the effects of
consciousness, so that a future impression might affect a past action."

See also his pp 442, 444, 212, 445 for more details on this.  Fred Hoyle in
his book Intelligent Universe says of living systems "It seems to me that
biological systems are able in some way to utilize the opposite time -sense
in which radiation propagates from future to past. Bizzare as this may
appear, they must somehow be working backwards in time." p.213

There may be dramatic non-biological astrophysical evidence for advanced
real photons in the enigmatic data on gamma ray bursters now coming in. No
standard model can explain them. They are isotropic like the microwave
thermal retarded photons.They come in very short time pulses sometimes a
short as a frraction of a second with fluctuations of less than a
millisecond (10 km light transit time e.g., p. 117 May 1993 Scientific
American).

If these gamma photons are advanced from the future universe, rather than
retarded from the past universe, then , because of the expansion of the
universe, the advanced photons would be blue shifted and the pulses would be
shortened in time because they start from a future universe of weaker
curvature back to our universe of relatively stronger curvature - the
opposite of the cosmological redshift.

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

Date: 5 May 93 19:03:37 -0600
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Russia's OPERATIONAL Starwars Defense System
Newsgroups: sci.space



                 Russia's OPERATIONAL Starwars Defense System

               In February 1992, Russian President Boris Yeltsin
          proposed to the United States and the United Nations a global
          defense shield (with "Starwars"-type weapons) BASED ON
          RUSSIAN TECHNOLOGY.

               Some people might wonder what the "backward" Russians
          could possibly have that would be of value for the S.D.I.
          research and development program.

               The little-known TRUTH is that the Russians started
          deploying an OPERATIONAL "Starwars" defense system in
          September 1977, and it has greatly grown and improved since
          that time.  It is a SPACE TRIAD built around CHARGED-PARTICLE
          BEAM and NEUTRON-PARTICLE BEAM WEAPONS.

               In this article I will describe the Russian system as it
          developed from 1977 to 1983, and give several examples of how
          it was used during that period.  But first I will try to
          convince readers of the credibility of my main source of
          information about it.

               My main source is articles published in a weekly
          legislative newspaper, WISCONSIN REPORT (WR), of Brookfield,
          Wisconsin, (P.O. Box 45, zip 53005), written by the late Dr.
          Peter David Beter, a well-respected Washington, DC attorney,
          Doctor of Jurisprudence, and expert and consultant in
          international law, finance, and intelligence, who received
          much of his information from associates in the CIA and other
          intelligence groups of other countries who disapproved of
          many of the things happening or being planned behind the
          scenes.  They believed that at least limited public exposure
          might delay and ultimately prevent the worst of those things,
          such as NUCLEAR WAR and NATIONAL DICTATORSHIP, from taking
          place.

               Dr. Beter started appearing on local radio and TV talk
          shows, but soon found himself being BANNED from them, as a
          result of government THREATS to cancel broadcast licenses.
          So he started producing monthly one-hour cassette tapes and
          sending them to a growing list of subscribers.  From June 21,
          1975 until November 3, 1982 he recorded eighty (80) "Dr.
          Beter Audio-Letters" (AL), plus eight "Audio Books", and
          three special topic tapes.  On September 1, 1977, Wisconsin
          Report started publishing transcripts of those Audio-Letters.

               Based on information from his sources, Dr. Beter
          PREDICTED the bombing of the U.S. Marines in Beirut A FULL
          YEAR BEFORE IT HAPPENED, WARNING that the U.S. Pentagon and
          the Israeli Mossad were CONSPIRING TO DELIBERATELY ARRANGE IT
          in order to try to get Americans angry at the Arabs and
          generate public support for PLANNED military action against
          them, [AL #78, #79, and #80 (11-3-82).].  He reported the
          impending assassination of Anwar Saddat of Egypt SIX DAYS
          BEFORE IT HAPPENED, [AL #68 (9-30-81) and #69.].  And Dr.
          Beter predicted what he called the "retirement" of Leonid
          Brezhnev one week before Brezhnev officially "died", [Note
          that the word "retirement" was used for the TERMINATION OF
          REPLICANTS in the 1982 movie "Blade Runner".], and his quick
          replacement with Andropov which occurred only three days
          after the "death" of Brezhnev, to the surprise of all
          government and media analysts, [AL #80 (11-3-82).].  He could
          "predict" these events because we was INFORMED about the

          PLANS to carry them out.  Subscription application and
          renewal forms for Dr. Beter's tapes would usually say,
          "Subscribe to the Dr. Beter Audio-Letter and watch the news
          start making sense."



          RUSSIA'S SPACE TRIAD OF STAR WARS WEAPONS

               In September 1977 the Russians started launching MANNED
          killer satellites, called "COSMOS INTERCEPTORS", armed with
          CHARGED-PARTICLE BEAM weapons, into earth orbit, [12-15-77
          WR; and AL #27, Topic 1.].  By April 1978 there were about
          THREE DOZEN of them, and they had FINISHED DESTROYING all
          American spy and early warning satellites, [5-18-78 WR; and
          AL #33, Topic 2.].

               On September 27, 1977, in what Dr. Beter called "THE
          BATTLE OF THE HARVEST MOON", a Cosmos Interceptor in Earth
          orbit used a NEUTRON-PARTICLE BEAM to wipe out a secret
          American laser-beam base nearing operational status in
          Copernicus Crater on the Moon, [11-3-77 WR; and AL #26, Topic
          1.].  The Russians quickly deployed their own military bases
          on the Moon, the second leg of their space triad, starting on
          October 4, 1977, with seven EXTREMELY POWERFUL charged-
          particle beam weapons BASES on the near side of the Moon and
          three support bases on the far side, [2-9-78 WR; and AL #29,
          Topic 1.].

               The first test of the Moon base weapons occurred on
          November 19, 1977, ironically at about the same time as the
          release of the first "Star Wars" movie with its "death star"
          weapon.  The Russians were aiming at the eye of a cyclone
          near India.  But they miscalculated the deflection of the
          beam by the Earth's magnetic field, and the beam struck the
          ocean too close to the shore causing a TIDAL WAVE that killed
          many people, [2-9-78 WR; and AL #29, Topic 1.].  A blast of
          charged-particle beams from two or more of the Russian Moon
          bases fired in quick succession would create the DESTRUCTIVE
          EFFECT OF A HYDROGEN BOMB on its target.

               The third leg of Russia's triad of space weapons is the
          "COSMOSPHERES".  The first-generation Cosmospheres were
          weapons platforms that were ELECTRO-GRAVITIC (could hover
          against gravity), ATOMIC POWERED, horizontally positioned by
          rocket thrusters, somehow invisible to radar beyond about 40
          miles (perhaps from a radar-absorbing coating), armed with
          CHARGED-PARTICLE BEAM weapons (at least a hundred times less
          powerful than those in the Moon bases), equipped with
          "PSYCHO-ENERGETIC RANGE FINDING" (PRF) which tunes in to the
          actual ATOMIC SIGNATURE of a target or object and canNOT be
          jammed, and some of them were also armed with microwave
          BRAIN-SCRAMBLING equipment.

               In late 1977 and early 1978, there was a strange rash of
          giant AIR BOOMS along the east coast of the United States and
          elsewhere.  These air booms were NEVER satisfactorily
          explained, by either the government, the scientific
          establishment, or the news media.  They could NOT be
          positively identified with any particular Super Sonic
          Transport plane (SST) or other aircraft, and indeed they were
          MUCH LOUDER than aircraft sonic booms.  The giant airbooms
          were actually caused by Russian Cosmospheres firing CHARGED-
          PARTICLE BEAMS down into the atmosphere in a DEFOCUSED MODE
          (spread out) for the purpose of announcing their presence to
          the WAR-MONGERS in the United States Pentagon.  [2-9-78 WR;
          and AL #29, Topic 1.].


               The main purpose of any "Star Wars" defense system is to
          protect a country against nuclear attack.  During the weekend
          of January 20, 1980, Russian Cosmospheres accomplished such a
          mission.  A NUCLEAR FIRST STRIKE against Russia by the then
          BOLSHEVIK-CONTROLLED United States was being started with a
          total of 82 special secret aircraft that can sneak up to a
          country's shoreline under water, surface, change configura-
          tion, take off, and fly at treetop level to their targets.
          Dr. Beter describes part of the action in his Audio-Letter
          #53, recorded on January 21, 1980: "At that point the real
          action got under way, in the Caspian Sea and off northern
          Norway.  The Subcraft, with Israeli pilots, were on their
          way.  They were traveling under water on the first legs of
          their attack missions....

          "Late Saturday night, Washington time, a coded signal was
          flashed to the Subcraft to continue as planned.  By that
          time, the northern contingent of Subcraft were in the White
          Sea.  The southern contingent had reached the north end of
          the Caspian Sea.  It was already daylight, Sunday morning,
          the 20th, for the Subcraft contingents.  Their orders were to
          wait out the day under water, out of sight; then, after
          nightfall, they were to continue their steady approach to get
          close to their targets.  The Subcraft were maintaining strict
          radio silence.  They were also deep enough under water to be
          invisible from the air to either the eye or radar, yet they
          were also hugging the shoreline in water too shallow for
          Russian sonar to pick them up.  And their infrared signatures
          were negligible as the result of extensive development.  In
          short, by the standards of Western technology, they were
          undetectable.  But in AUDIO-LETTER No. 42 I revealed Russia's
          master secret weapon.  It is called "Psycho-energetic Range
          Finding" or PRF.  It is unlike sonar and similar techniques.
          PRF tunes in to the actual atomic signature of a target, and
          there is no method known by which PRF can be jammed.

               "By deploying their Navy to the Arabian Sea, the
          Russians are pretending to be fooled by the Bolshevik
          distraction with the aircraft carriers.  In this way they
          encouraged the Bolsheviks to launch the Subcraft toward their
          targets.  They waited until the Subcraft were far away from
          their bases and out of sight of the Bolsheviks, who are
          directing the American first-strike operation.  But the whole
          time they were being tracked by Cosmospheres overhead using
          PRF, and shortly after 1:00 A.M. yesterday morning Eastern
          Standard Time, the Cosmospheres began firing their Charged
          Particle Beam Weapons.  There were 10 Subcraft in the White
          Sea.  Each disappeared in a blinding blue white water spout
          of steam, smoke, and fire.  In the north end of the Caspian
          there were 19 Subcraft--they, too, met the same fate.".  [2-
          7-80 WR; and AL #53, Topic 3.].

               The 3rd-generation Russian JUMBO COSMOSPHERES were first
          deployed in April 1981, in parallel with the first U.S. Space
          Shuttle mission.  They significantly interfered with that
          MILITARY mission, in ways which were successfully covered up
          by NASA using techniques similar to those shown in the movie
          "Capricorn I".  [5-7-81, 5-14-81, and 5-21-81 WR; and AL #64,
          Topics 1-3.].

               Jumbo Cosmospheres are much larger than the 1st-
          generation models, and use ELECTROMAGNETIC PROPULSION instead
          of rocket thrusters to move around.

               For about two years after Dr. Beter stopped recording
          his Audio-Letters in November 1982 (because of heart
          trouble), his distributor, Audio Books, Inc., published some
          newsletters titled "NewsALERT", using information passed on
          to them by Dr. Beter or received directly from his sources.
          A special supplementary issue, dated March 26, 1984,
          describes how Russian Jumbo Cosmospheres captured two
          communication satellites right after launch from U.S. Space
          Shuttle Mission #10, found anti-satellite (ASAT) missiles
          mounted on one of them, and dumped both satellites into
          useless orbits.  NASA had fun TRYING to explain two-in-a-row
          failures of a highly reliable PAM-D satellite booster.

               Russia's offer to share their "Starwars" defense system
          with the rest of the world might also extend to SCIENTIFIC
          SPACE EXPLORATION.  For example, the United States is
          planning to send two unmanned flyby and sample-return space
          missions to a comet.  These missions would cost BILLIONS of
          dollars, take twenty years from now to complete, and could
          FAIL in DOZENS of ways.  A Russian Jumbo Cosmosphere could
          COMPLETE a MANNED version of such a mission in a matter of
          MONTHS (if they have not already done so), since these
          Cosmospheres can accelerate continuously.

               Note that the United States has announced a deal to
          purchase at least one SPACE REACTOR from Russia.  Now you
          know what the Russians originally developed and used them
          for.



          THE DR. BETER AUDIO-LETTERS

               ALL 80 Dr. Beter Audio-Letters (about 50 KB each) and an
          Overview (about 75 KB) have been digitized by Jon Volkoff at
          "[e-mail]" and are available from him and from some
          FTP sites where he sent them.


               Jon Volkoff states: "I know of two ftp sites (there are
          a few "gopher" servers too) as follows:

               uglymouse.css.itd.umich.edu (141.211.182.53),
                  under /pub/Politics/Beter.Audio.Letter

               ftp.uu.net (192.48.96.9),
                  under /doc/political/umich-poli/Beter.Audio.Letter ."


               I especially recommend Audio-Letters #64, 74, 40, 53,
          54, 55, 45, 46, 47, 48, 78, 79, and 80, and the Overview.
          ALL of these will fit on a SINGLE 3-1/2-inch disk formatted
          for 720 KB.

               Audio-Letter #64 is about the "STS-1 DISASTER/
          /COVERUP".  Audio-Letter #74 is about the "SECRET PURPOSE of
          the Falklands War", and includes IN-VISIBILITY Technology and
          a Russian NEUTRON BOMB.  Audio-Letter #40 is about the
          "MILITARY PURPOSE of Jonestown Mass-MURDER".



               For more information, answers to your questions, etc.,
          please consult my CITED SOURCES.



               UN-altered REPRODUCTION and DISSEMINATION of this
          IMPORTANT Information is ENCOURAGED.


                                   Robert E. McElwaine
                                   B.S., Physics and Astronomy, UW-EC


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

Date: Thu, 6 May 1993 00:30:04 GMT
From: Henry Spencer <[e-mail]>
Subject: Visas for astronauts after an abort
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Claudio Oliveira Egalon) writes:
>... What if after a launch, there is
>one of these nasty aborts and the Shuttle has
>to land in a foreign country (Spain or Morroco).
>Do the astronauts need a visa for staying there...

Technically, they do, but emergencies are special cases.  If there was
some reason why they had to stay on in the country of landing, the local
authorities typically would issue short-duration visas as necessary; if
they left immediately, they would probably be treated like passengers in
transit.  It would be much the same situation as an aircraft making an
emergency landing at an unintended location -- the paperwork for the
intended trip should be in order (e.g. the aircraft should have proper
documents), but the extras needed for the emergency (e.g. local visas)
would be arranged when it happens.

If it's a country where emergency-landing rights have been prearranged,
some of the formalities might well be bypassed entirely.  NASA does make
advance arrangements with the countries containing major abort sites.
--
SVR4 resembles a high-speed collision   | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
between SVR3 and SunOS.    - Dick Dunn  |  [e-mail]  utzoo!henry

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

Date: 6 May 1993 01:57:45 GMT
From: "Kevin W. Plaxco" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Visas for astronauts after an abort
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Claudio Oliveira Egalon) writes:

[Concerning transatlantic aborts to spain/north africa]

>Do the astronauts need a visa for staying there
>or NASA has some kind of special arrangement
>with the governments of these countries???

In '85 a Saudi Prince went up as a mission specialist.
At the '86 worlds fair, the Saudi Pavilion had his
prayer rug (the Immams, after arguing whether or not the
Kabba could be considered a pillar that rose infinately
into the sky, decided that in space, Mecca is everywhere,
so it didn't matter which direction he pointed during prayer:
still, actually kneeling on the rug must have been difficult in
micro gee) and his passport.  The latter was open to the page
featuring his Spanish visa, obtained beforehand for the "unlikely
event of an abort landing in Spain".

There are international treaties regarding the repatriation of
astronauts.

-Kevin

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

Date: Thu, 6 May 1993 00:40:24 GMT
From: Henry Spencer <[e-mail]>
Subject: Why go to Pluto
Newsgroups: sci.astro,alt.sci.planetary,sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Joe Cain) writes:
>    The lead time for going to Pluto is so long it should be done
>as soon as possible...

The main issue is not so much the lead time, as the fact that conditions
on Pluto are uniquely favorable for scientific observation *now*, and
this opportunity will be gone in a decade or two, not to recur for a
couple of centuries.  Right now, Pluto has an atmosphere, and nearly all
of the surface of both Pluto and Charon is sunlit in the course of one
rotation.  Neither of those desirable conditions will last.

>    A Pluto probe should not be done only to Pluto if there is
>some way to hook around Uranus or Neptune to get some more information
>about them, their moons and rings...

Neither Uranus nor Neptune is anywhere near a fast trajectory to Pluto.

>Maybe an asteroid flyby might also be programmed in...

Last I heard, the Pluto Fast Flyby folks had concluded that it wasn't
likely that this could be done.  This mission needs such a high cruise
velocity that there is *very* little flexibility in its trajectory.

>... There are many reasons to try to put a
>probe in an orbit around Pluto and/or Charon (hmm, now how does one
>do that?) Maybe there is a good Lagrangian position?

Orbiting Pluto or Charon would be easy enough with something like
nuclear-ion propulsion, which would take rather too long to develop.
With chemical fuels, forget it.  A fast flyby is the *only* mission
that NASA can realistically fly within the deadline.
--
SVR4 resembles a high-speed collision   | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
between SVR3 and SunOS.    - Dick Dunn  |  [e-mail]  utzoo!henry

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

End of Space Digest Volume 16 : Issue 535
------------------------------