Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/pc/text/spacedig/v09_4/v9_433.txt

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Subject: SPACE Digest V9 #433

SPACE Digest                                      Volume 9 : Issue 433

Today's Topics:
            Re: Citizens in Space
              New Orbiter Name Announced
              Re: spaceplane propulsion
        Re: funding large scale space hardware
In-flight liquification of air (was Re: space news from April 3 AW&ST)
            Re: Citizens in Space
        Re: Does anyone know *why* the USAF did this?
      Re: manned vs. unmanned (was: Priorities at NASA?)
                Wyoming Bolide
         Re: UFOs and other weird stuff on this list.
          Kelso's NASA prediction Bulletins
          Re: space news from April 3 AW&ST
      Re: manned vs. unmanned (was: Priorities at NASA?)
          Re: space news from March 27 AW&ST
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 11 May 89 12:53:48 GMT
From: thorin!lhotse![e-mail]  (James Symon)
Subject: Re: Citizens in Space

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Mike Van Pelt) writes:
> In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (H Keith Henson) writes:
> > . . . the fact that NASA management over ruled engineers . . .
>
> Point of fact: The management in question, which overruled the
> engineers, was Moron Fireball management, not NASA.

Point of what?

        "MY GOD, THIOKOL, WHEN DO YOU WANT ME TO LAUNCH,
        NEXT APRIL?"    -- Larry Mulloy, NASA, Jan '86

Mulloy knew what was going on and pressured MT management. Both are
guilty and not just for "smelling" the rat.

I agree that the Challenger crew knew the risks. I don't think it
follows that if the crew had heard what the MT engineers had to say
the crew would have said "Let's go today."

jim
[e-mail]
{decvax uunet}!mcnc!unc!symon

(Thanks to Tom Neff for the quote which I was only going to
paraphrase)

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

Date: 11 May 89 23:26:31 GMT
From: unmvax!deimos.cis.ksu.edu!uxc!garcon!pequod.cso.uiuc.edu![e-mail]  (Andrew Higgins)
Subject: New Orbiter Name Announced

According to CNN, NASA has announced that the Challenger replacement orbiter
will be named Endeavour.  Note the English spelling with the "-our" (which is
fine with me, Anglophile that I am).  Since it is the English Endeavour, it
presumedly is named after Cook's ship which discovered New Zealand.

The space ship in _Rendezvous_with_Rama_ was also named Endeavour.  Maybe
their are some A. C. Clarke fans at NASA.
--
 Andrew J. Higgins              |     Illini Space Development Society
 [e-mail]     |     a chapter of the National Space Society
 phone: [phone]            |     at the University of Illinois
          P.O. Box 2255 - Station A, Champaign, IL  61825
"We are all tired of being stuck on this cosmical speck with its monotonous
 ocean, leaden sky and single moon that is half useless....so it seems to me
 that the future glory of the human race lies in the exploration of at least
 the solar system!"                          - John Jacob Astor, 1894

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

Date: 11 May 89 20:21:31 GMT
From: mailrus!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!utzoo![e-mail]  (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: spaceplane propulsion

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (James Symon) writes:
>...(Don't the Russkies use kerosene in liquid rocket motors?)

Yes, as does the US (Atlas and Delta, not to mention older hardware like
the Saturns).

>Can you get really cheap air launch by dropping from a B52 or 747 and
>diving this slippery little devil to reach ramjet ignition speeds?

Maybe.  There are limits to the speed that can be reached in a dive,
and also it will get you into thicker air quickly.  It may make more
sense to use, say, solid-fuel strap-ons to accelerate horizontally.
--
Mars in 1980s:  USSR, 2 tries, |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
2 failures; USA, 0 tries.      | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry [e-mail]

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

Date: 11 May 89 20:43:02 GMT
From: mailrus!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!utzoo![e-mail]  (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: funding large scale space hardware

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Doug Borsom) writes:
>>....  Remember
>>that they (with Hughes) offered to build the Jarvis heavylift booster out
>>of their own pockets, if NASA and the USAF would guarantee a market.
>
>How daring of them. This usage badly stretches the notion of a privately
>funded space program. Did Boeing demand a similar market guarantee from the
>airline companies when it developed the 7(456)7?

Well, as a matter of fact, to a considerable extent, yes.  Boeing will
*not* start full development of a new airliner purely on speculation; it
wants to see contractually-committed customers first.  Not necessarily
enough to guarantee a profit -- it took over a decade for the 747 program
to repay its original investment -- but enough to take the worst of the
bite out of the startup costs.

Remember that this "usage", as you put it, also applies to the privately
funded airlines, which were built originally on air-mail contracts.
(Nobody was going to invest the necessary amount of money on speculation
that the passenger market would prove adequate, although in fact it did...
eventually.)
--
Mars in 1980s:  USSR, 2 tries, |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
2 failures; USA, 0 tries.      | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry [e-mail]

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

Date: 12 May 89 01:02:48 GMT
From: silver![e-mail]  (Lucius Chiaraviglio)
Subject: In-flight liquification of air (was Re: space news from April 3 AW&ST)

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Henry
Spencer) writes:
>Japan investigates Liquid Air Cycle Engines (which liquify atmospheric
>oxygen on the way up rather than carrying it all with them) for both
>aerospace planes and conventional boosters.  [. . .]

    How is liquification of air to be done without the use of horrendously
heavy equipment and huge energy expenditure?  (It seems that both would be
needed to liquify air, especially at the rate that would be needed.)

    Also, since air is only 21% oxygen, storage of liquified air would be
quite wasteful of weight and space.  Am I correct in assuming that none of the
liquified air would be stored (all used right away), and that liquid oxygen
for use after leaving the atmosphere would have been loaded before launch?  Or
has somebody developed some light equipment for rapid separation of nitrogen
from oxygen as well as liquifying air?

--
|   Lucius Chiaraviglio    |    Internet:  [e-mail]
BITNET:  [e-mail] (IUBACS hoses From: fields; INCLUDE RET ADDR)
Internet-gatewayed BITNET:      [e-mail]
Alt Internet-gatewayed BITNET:  [e-mail]

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

Date: 11 May 89 19:13:20 GMT
From: mfci!hsi![e-mail]  (Derek Lee-Wo)
Subject: Re: Citizens in Space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Andrew D Williams) writes:
>                                        ... I am going to make a pledge to
>defend our constitution.  That pledge implies that I am willing to die for
>my country, in fact I expect that if there is a war I most likely going to
>die.  (Us pilot types have an annoying tendency to attract a hell of a lot af
>attention) The fact that the families of the officers, sworn to the country
>sued shows that there is no way that there is no way we should put (pardon
>me) normal citizens into space.  Not yet.

I dis-agree with you. To begin with, no one is forcing a normal citizen into
space. If the US government asked me to go on the shuttle, I'll go. I
know what the risks are. I know that there is a chance I may be killed, but
I'd still go.

I could understand not sending citizens into space due to the cost. All you
readers out there opposed to sending citizens into space, suppose the cost
was trivial, but the risk was still the same, would you still be against
sending ordinary people into space??

--
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|Derek Lee-Wo (Co-op),   Health Systems International, New Haven, CT 06511.   |
|E-mail address :- [e-mail]      ...!yale!hsi!derek                      |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+

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

Date: 11 May 89 14:42:15 GMT
From: cfa!cfa250![e-mail]  (Jonathan McDowell)
Subject: Re: Does anyone know *why* the USAF did this?

From article <[e-mail]>, by [e-mail] (Bill Chiarchiaro):
> communications at up to 20,000 bits/second were achieved.  By early
> 1966, essentially all of the dipoles had decayed.

Well, actually not the dipoles dispersed, and about a hundred clumps of
dipoles are still being tracked by NORAD. One decayed just a few weeks ago.


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

Date: 11 May 89 20:06:07 GMT
From: cwjcc!hal!nic.MR.NET!ns![e-mail]  (David Dyer-Bennet)
Subject: Re: manned vs. unmanned (was: Priorities at NASA?)

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

:In fact, not one person responded to my original posting with an
:argument in favor of the manned space program.
:
:Maybe the subject of my posting simply isn't of interest to
:subscribers to this news group.  But the appearance is that there
:are no good arguments for a very expensive manned space program.

I suspect that, to most of us, the question of "Why should there be a manned
space program?" is pretty much equivalent to the question "Why should Marco
Polo sail out off the edge of the world?"  It's so transparently obvious
that it's not worth discussing.

That doesn't, of course, answer the question of whether the best way
to serve my long-term goals is to favor manned or un-manned
expeditions at this precise instant in time; but my feeling is that
what we really need is more experience with *living* in space.

--
David Dyer-Bennet, [e-mail], or [e-mail]
or [e-mail], ...{amdahl,hpda}!bungia!viper!ddb
or ...!{rutgers!dayton | amdahl!ems | uunet!rosevax}!umn-cs!ns!ddb
or Fidonet 1:282/341.0, [phone] 9600hst/2400/1200/300

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

Date:         Thu, 11 May 89 12:04:47 EST
From: Morven Wilson <[e-mail]>
Subject:      Wyoming Bolide

     Several of you have expressed interest in photos of the bolide (or
bright meteor) seen over the Teton range in western Wyoming.  The event
took place on 1972-August-10, and one photograph can be found in the book
"Our Universe" by Roy Gallant, published by National Geographic.
     The photo appears on page 148 in the 1986 edition (and about the same
place in the 1980 edition).
     The object is estimated at 10 metres across, 1000 tons, 60 Km high,
and travelling at 60Km/hour.  The picture shows a long bright trail and
a very bright "head" over some impressive Teton scenery.
     The book is really a kid's book but it's worth a browse!

(Forgive me if you get this message twice - my first posting seems to have
vanished in the network bit-bucket).

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

Date: 11 May 89 19:21:37 GMT
From: mfci!hsi![e-mail]  (Derek Lee-Wo)
Subject: Re: UFOs and other weird stuff on this list.

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Mark Anderson) writes:
>     ... It is also clear, that in my lifetime, my children's lifetime,
>and their grandchildren's lifetimes that we will not be able to reach
>and network the stars using present day technology and knowledge.  We
>limit ourselves to the speed of ight.

I believe that there are UFOs out there. Whether or not some have visited
Earth is another story.

Sometimes I wish I were born a few hundreds years in the future. Could one
just imagine what it would be like to hop a space shuttle to another
planet as easily as we could now jump on a plane to London.

Now if only I could believe in re-incarnation :-)

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|Derek Lee-Wo (Co-op),   Health Systems International, New Haven, CT 06511.   |
|E-mail address :- [e-mail]      ...!yale!hsi!derek                      |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+

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

Date: Thu, 11 May 89 09:20:11 -0400 (EDT)
From: Ted Anderson <[e-mail]>
X-Andrew-Message-Size: 774+0
Content-Type: X-BE2; 12
If-Type-Unsupported: alter
Subject: Kelso's NASA prediction Bulletins
CC: [e-mail] (TS Kelso)

I've gotten a couple of complaints about the long postings containing satellite
orbital elements.  While I understand that these are very useful for folks that
observe satellites I wonder how many people really use this information.
Perhaps if the number is fairly small a specific list could be set up the handle
distribution of the information to interested parties and a period note could be
sent to the entire list, advising new users of the existence of the special
interest group.

To get an idea of the numbers involves I'd appreciate responses from people who
regularly use the bulletins appearing on this list.  In addition I'd like notes
from people who think they are useful for some other reason and from people who
really don't like to see them.
        Ted Anderson

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

Date: 11 May 89 16:01:04 GMT
From: asuvax!enuxha![e-mail]  (Norman C. Kluksdahl)
Subject: Re: space news from April 3 AW&ST


Before Henry gets a chance to post his summary of the last week's Av Leak,
let me get my one shot in.

The USSR has (in conjunction with their US marketing firm) proposed using
Energia to boost the US space station components to orbit.  The rationale
is that it would save development costs for Shuttle C, and cut down the
number of Shuttle flights necessary to assemble the station.

On another page, there was a photo of the mockup of Shuttle C.

Why the *(&) did we throw away Saturn V????


**********************************************************************
Norman Kluksdahl              Arizona State University
            ..ncar!noao!asuvax!enuxha!kluksdah
alternate:   [e-mail]

standard disclaimer implied

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

Date: 12 May 89 04:15:08 GMT
From: jumbo![e-mail]  (Jorge Stolfi)
Subject: Re: manned vs. unmanned (was: Priorities at NASA?)

>   I suspect that, to most of us, the question of "Why should
>   there be a manned space program?" is pretty much equivalent to
>   the question "Why should Marco Polo sail out off the edge of
>   the world?"

Yeah, why should he?  He did pretty well going the opposite way...

;-)

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

Date: 12 May 89 17:14:42 GMT
From: [e-mail]  (Chris G. Sylvain)
Subject: Re: space news from March 27 AW&ST

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Matthew DeLuca) writes:
>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Henry Spencer) writes:
]] [Enterprise is] overweight and well below normal orbiter specs
]
] The very fact that it *is* overweight would be a problem in new landing
] tests, since landing weight is very important when it comes to landing gear
] and braking.  My guess is that, yes, we could refit it and use it for landing
] tests, but the data would not be fully indicative of the performance of the
] flight shuttle.

Think a little about the situation, please. The Enterprise weighs more *empty*
than the other shuttles. The other shuttles may or may not land empty on a
hard runway. The flight shuttle's brakes should stand up to a hard runway
landing *with margin*.

Now then, how better to test the upper limit of the margin??
--
--==---==---==--
.. Came whiffling through the tulgey wood, ..
   ARPA: [e-mail]     BITNET: cgs%umd5@umd2
   UUCP: ..!uunet!umd5.umd.edu!cgs

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

End of SPACE Digest V9 #433
*******************