Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/mac/TEXT_ZIP/spacedig/V16_5/V16NO588.ZIP/V16NO588

Internet Message Format | 1993-07-13 | 16KB

Date: Tue, 18 May 93 06:25:26
From: Space Digest maintainer <[e-mail]>
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Subject: Space Digest V16 #588
To: Space Digest Readers
Precedence: bulk


Space Digest                Tue, 18 May 93       Volume 16 : Issue 588

Today's Topics:
                   * lunar eclipse of june 4 1993 *
              Life on Earth (or elsewhere : -) (2 msgs)
                       murder in space (2 msgs)
                  REPOST: Space Resources Compendium
                 Satellite Capabilities-Patriot Games
                 Space Marketing would be wonderfull.
               Space Marketing would not be wonderful!

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

Date: Tue, 18 May 1993 09:21:25 GMT
From: Frank ROUSSEL <[e-mail]>
Subject: * lunar eclipse of june 4 1993 *
Newsgroups: sci.space

For someone who asked me if this eclipse will be observable at Santa Barbara (CA),
i answered him by this message:

I've computed the lunar eclipse of june 4 1993, and i can tell you
that you will see the first part of the phenomena.
At Santa Barbara (CA), the moon sets at 12h49 TU.
The penumbra starts at 10h16 TU -> Moon's height = 24 degrees at Santa Barbara (CA)
The umbra    starts at 11h15 TU -> Moon's height = 16 degrees at Santa Barbara (CA)
The totality starts at 12h15 TU -> Moon's height =  6 degrees at Santa Barbara (CA)
The maximum  starts at 13h03 TU -> Moon's height = -1 degrees at Santa Barbara (CA)

---> The best place in all USA is Santa Barbara (CA) and his surroundings ! <---
                       ^^^^^^^
You're lucky to live here !
And the best place in all the world is New Caledonia (Maximum at zenith)
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\ \______/|    | ||  \ \\     /__| |/_/|  | CityStateZip: 35510
 \_______|/    |_|/   \_\|    |_______|/  | Cityname: CESSON SEVIGNE
    Centre de Ressources Informatiques    | Country: FRANCE
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---------- Science without conscience is only soul's ruin (Rabelais) ------------
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- Signed: The responsible of ASTROGOF project at Rennes' University of France   -
- who contributes to the development of CRI-CICB Gopher's server (ASTRO images) -
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------------------------------

Date: 18 May 93 06:22:27 GMT
From: Dave Michelson <[e-mail]>
Subject: Life on Earth (or elsewhere : -)
Newsgroups: sci.space

I wrote:

> Hasn't some of the early work on the Burgess shale been
> discredited in recent years?

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] ("F.Baube[tm]")
replied:

>Yes.  Early researchers tried too hard to pigeonhole
>Burgess specimens into existing taxonomies.
>
> [...]
>
>It took many years and several ground-breaking papers
>to set the fossil record straight.

Well, I don't claim any particular expertise in this area, but an opposing
view is taken by Jeffrey Levinton writing in the Nov 92 issue of
Scientific American.  ("The Big Bang of Animal Evolution", pp. 84-91).

While Levinton agrees that "a Cambrian explosion in animal diversity did
occur,"  he points out that many of the claims that were popularized by
Gould in his book 'Wonderful Life' have been refuted in the past few years.

Examples:

  Wiwaxia     novel phylum   -->  relative of a modern scaleworm called a
                                  sea mouse

  Hallugenia  novel phylum   -->  a velvet worm of the phylum Onchophora


Levinton notes that "these stories point to serious problem with all arguments
about evolution that rely on taxonomic classification" of fragmentary fossils.
He goes on to state that he (and apparently others) believe that "Gould
and some other paleontologists have exagerated the diversity in the Cambrian".

The article is interesting reading and well worth a hunt through your
pile of back issues of Sci Am.

--
Dave Michelson  --  [e-mail]  --  University of British Columbia

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

Date: Tue, 18 May 93 07:06:46 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Life on Earth (or elsewhere : -)
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] ("F.Baube[tm]")
writes:
>From: Dave Michelson <[e-mail]>
>>
>> Hasn't some of the early work on the Burgess shale been
>> discredited in recent years?
>
>Yes.  Early researchers tried too hard to pigeonhole
>Burgess specimens into existing taxonomies.

Now it is coming round the full circle - many of the 'examples
of heretofore unknown geni' as described e.g. in "Wonderful Life"
have been recognized to belong into existing taxa, although
not necessarily the original ones.
The young liberalists tried too hard to turn everything
upside down.

Teemu Makinen
[e-mail]
Disclaimer: Private activities on the net

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

Date: Mon, 17 May 1993 13:27:14 GMT
From: Achurist <[e-mail]>
Subject: murder in space
Newsgroups: sci.space

If you murdered someone in space, whose juristiction is it. i.e who
will prosecute you for it? The boundaries of individual countries
stop in the upper atmosphere so what happens???


Akurist.

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

Date: Tue, 18 May 1993 09:43:50 GMT
From: Harri P J Tavaila <[e-mail]>
Subject: murder in space
Newsgroups: sci.space

Achurist ([e-mail]) wrote:
>
> If you murdered someone in space, whose juristiction is it. i.e who
> will prosecute you for it? The boundaries of individual countries
> stop in the upper atmosphere so what happens???
>
>
> Akurist.
>
Every space vehicle falls under juristiction of the country that
launched it.

The launcher country is defined as the nation that rules the land
area on which the launch took place.  If the launch was not from
ground (air and sea launches) the nationality is determined by the
nationality of the launch carriers (aeroplains or ships).

Mind you, I'm not sure what is the position concerning Antractica..

H Tavaila

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

Date: 17 May 93 12:11:39 EDT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: REPOST: Space Resources Compendium
Newsgroups: sci.edu,k12.chat.teacher,sci.space

TO:     Education Liasons, School Librarians, ITV Coordinators
FR:     PBS Elementary/Secondary Service
RE:     Space Compendium
DT:     January 15, 1993

INVESTIGATE AND CELEBRATE SPACE EXPLORATION!

The "1992 International Space Year" Compendium has been jointly
produced by PBS E/SS and the Student Space Foundation with
support from the National Science Teachers Association's
Space, Science & Technology Division to assist educators in
grades K-12 in their planning and celebration for the 1992
International Year of Space.  It is also designed to help
educators and students investigate and celebrate space
exploration for many years to come.  This comprehensive
compendium lists hundreds of classroom resources, including
videos, books, research reports, posters, computer software,
space societies, teacher training workshops, music, and more!
Parents may also find this useful in supporting budding
scientists/astronomers.  135 pgs.  To order copies of the
compendium, send a $10.00 check to: PBS E/SS; Space Compendium; Att: Tom;
1320 Braddock Place; Alexandria, VA 22314-1698.  SORRY,
NO PURCHASE ORDERS ACCEPTED.

END

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

Date: Tue, 18 May 93 07:52:03 GMT
From: Dean Adams <[e-mail]>
Subject: Satellite Capabilities-Patriot Games
Newsgroups: sci.space

[e-mail] (Thomas Clarke) writes:

 >>I expect Hollywood has exaggerated for dramatic effect.  X-ray
 >>vision from orbit is just not available.
 >I think the imagery was supposed to be in the infrared.

Yes... the main "exaggeration" I thought of is that they were showing
it as LIVE VIDEO.  I doubt very much if that is how the sats work.

 >I have seen films where soldiers can be seen through camoflage in infrared.

That was certainly possible.  Although there IS specially made
camouflage available that is opaque in the IR wavelengths.

 >Although I think to go through a tent it would have had to have
 >been far-infrared (FLIR) which is an order of magnitude longer
 >wavelength than visible.

Actually, FLIR stands for Forward Looking Infra-Red.  These are
the imagers used on various types of aircraft and helicopters
for night vision and targetting...

 >The resolution would thus have been a lot lower ~1 m rather than 10 cm.
 >Hollywood did get the degraded resolution wrong.
Probably.

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

Date: Tue, 18 May 1993 05:23:44 GMT
From: OPIRG <[e-mail]>
Subject: Space Marketing would be wonderfull.
Newsgroups: sci.astro,talk.environment,talk.politics.space,sci.space,rec.backcountry.

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Phil G. Fraering) writes:
>[e-mail] (OPIRG) writes:
>
>I didn't mean to say there was a connection between the Sky
>Billboard boycott and the tragedy in Bosnia. But there is a
>boycott on the arm trade there.

I still don't know what your point is. If you're trying to point out
that boycotting isn't always a good idea, then I agree.

>>But there is a connection here after all. Both issues turn on the
>>wisdom of assuming that it's okay to put everything up for sale. Maybe
>>if people hadn't assumed that it would be sane to treat the arms trade
>>as an industry like any other, various genocides wouldn't have been
>>possible in the first place.
>
>No, but if we had put an arms boycott on Europe during WWII
>Canada would be filled with whatever English and French had
>managed to escape the German "ethnic cleansing" of England
>and France to make room for more Nice Bright-Eyed Blond Aryans.

See above. Note that if various industrialists had not provided the
Nazis with supplies, they may not have gone to war. It's sort of like
with Iraq - why would you think a country supplying you with arms is
going to decide to fight against you? But this is getting way off topic.

>>Try living on a different *place* on Earth for a while. Somewhere
>>where not everyone places the freedom to advertise at the pinnacle of
>>their values.
>
>Advertising is just another form of speech;

But not necessarily constitutionally protected speech.

> and the judgement between what's "good," "bad," and "advertising" is
> so arbitrary as to be dangerous.

There may be fuzzy lines (eg., infomercials, kids shows about a toy
like G.I.Joe or My Little Pony), but this is unlikely to be a
situation where whether or not something is "advertising" is
controversial, given the promoter's statements. Maybe the line between
"good" and "bad" is 'arbitrary' (it's irrelevant here), but there is
no *a priori* reason why a principled distinction can't be drawn
between commercial and non-commercial speech.

> I've spoken with lots of people who have lived in places
>where that judgement has gone disasterously wrong, and cost people
>their lives.
>
>And I have _no_ desire to live in one of those countries. I want to
>try to keep the US from being one of those countries. Badly.

The FCC (like the CRTC in Canada) does it all the time. The allocation
(and regulation) of the use of airwaves is a good parallel to this
situation.

Many municipalities have bylaws limiting the size and location of
billboards, without leading to any disastrous consequence. Given a
choice between NYC's glut of advertising, and Ottawa's more subdued
(but still readily visible) billboards, I'll take Ottawa every time.
Similarly, cigarette advertising is much more restricted in Canada
than in the U.S.; we still have a constitutional right to free speech.


Reid Cooper

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

Date: Tue, 18 May 1993 04:14:27 GMT
From: Josh Hopkins <[e-mail]>
Subject: Space Marketing would not be wonderful!
Newsgroups: sci.environment,sci.astro,talk.environment,talk.politics.space,sci.space,rec.backcountry,misc.rural

[e-mail] (George F. Krumins) writes:

>>This object would not interfere with anyone's enjoyment of the night sky
>>(it would be invisible at night), nor would it have any significant
>>impact on astronomical observations.  I suspect there must be some kind
>>of underlying agenda coming to the surface when, in spite of this,
>>people are so quick to shrilly denounce and condemn something that would
>>so vividly demonstrate the strength of Western capitalism.

>This sounds reasonable *but* does anybody really know the intentions of
>the Space Merchants? (hey, isn't that the name of a sci-fi novel by
>Frederik Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth?)  Is it really their intention to
>put the billboard into this type of orbit?  Isn't a lot more expensive
>to put a satellite into a high inclination orbit?

Yes and no.  It is somewhat more expensive.  However, any inflated billboard
is going to a have a very short lifetime.  If you can increase the amount of
time the thing will be visible by a factor of, say, five that greatly offsets
the increase in launch costs.

>What worries me most is the bad precedent it would set.  If one goes
>up, what's to prevent 10, or even 100 or more from being up there all
>at once?

Simple economics.  The first one up will be the bees knees.
The second one will be a copycat.  The 100th will be a while elephant.
An orbiting inflated billboard has a smaller audience than you think, is
expensive and offers very little actual data space.  One frame of bad resolution
without audio.  The advertising value is in its novelty.

What body (if any) would govern this type of access to LEO?

There is no world body with the authority now.  That doesn't mean one can't be
created.  However, to paraphrase an economist "governments don't behave
rationally, so why bother trying to predict what they will do?"

Since you brought up science fiction, try reading Asimov's "Buy Jupiter."  That
will put things into perspective.
--
Josh Hopkins                                          [e-mail]
            "Find a way or make one."
                 -attributed to Hannibal

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

Newsgroups: sci.space

From: Dave Michelson <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Neil Armstrong's first words (the real ones)
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
Organization: University of BC, Electrical Engineering
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Date: Tue, 18 May 1993 03:04:03 GMT
Lines: 16
Sender: [e-mail]
Source-Info:  Sender is really [e-mail]

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Phil G. Fraering) writes:

>>I've always felt that sending jet jockeys on an expedition and passing
>>them off as scientists was a bad, even fraudulent, idea. That "joke" only
>>reinforced my feelings.
>
>As for the jet jockey comment, I'm sure Mary Shafer will try to
>be merciful. Hint: both Armstrong and Aldrin had PhD's in engineering...

Just a small correction, Phil...

Armstrong didn't complete his dissertation until *after* he left NASA.

--
Dave Michelson  --  [e-mail]  --  University of British Columbia

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

End of Space Digest Volume 16 : Issue 588
------------------------------