Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/pc/text/spacedig/v09_4/v9_442.txt

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Subject: SPACE Digest V9 #442

SPACE Digest                                      Volume 9 : Issue 442

Today's Topics:
         Re: Long Duration Exposure Facility
         Re: UFOs and other weird stuff on this list.
           Re: citizens in space -- risk silliness
            Re: New Orbiter Name Announced
            Re: New Orbiter Name Announced
          Space tethers and Arthur C. Clarke
         Re: citizens in space -- risk silli
            Re: Meme me up, Scotty
            Re: Meme me up, Scotty
                 Biosphere II
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 15 May 89 17:26:00 GMT
From: m.cs.uiuc.edu![e-mail]
Subject: Re: Long Duration Exposure Facility


[e-mail] (Charles Daffinger) writes:
<Just a silly question...  How much different is the orbit of LDEF to that
<which the shuttle took to launch Magellan?  Would it have been possible
<to retrieve LDEF on the shuttle after it launched Magellan?

No, the orbit of Magellan was constrained to significantly different
parameters.  Nevertheless, you needn't worry about `wasting' a Shuttle
mission on the LDEF retrieval; the STS-32 mission that retrieves LDEF-1
will be launching a Syncom IV communication satellite (#5 in the
series, if I'm not mistaken).

| /         o            Kevin Kenny                             [phone]
|<  /) |  | | |/\        Illini Space Development Society         o  ,    o  ,
| \ X_  \/  | | |        P.O. Box 2255                          40 07 N 88 13 W
[e-mail]        Station A
uunet!uiucdcs!kenny      Champaign, IL 61825                 AD ASTRA PER ARDUA
[e-mail]

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

Date: 15 May 89 20:05:05 GMT
From: oliveb!3comvax![e-mail]  (Michael McNeil)
Subject: Re: UFOs and other weird stuff on this list.

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Derek Lee-Wo) writes:
>I believe that there are UFOs out there. Whether or not some have visited
>Earth is another story.

They're not UFOs if they haven't visited Earth.  "Unidentified Flying
Objects," remember?  They have to be seen or detected to be UFOs.

>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.

Someone in 1700:  "Sometimes I wish I were born a few hundred years
in the future.  Could one just imagine what it would be like to hop an
airship to London as easily as we could now jump on a cart to town?"

Someone in 2300:  "I wish I were born a few hundred years in the future.
Could one just imagine what it would be like to hop an intergalactic
liner to Andromeda as easily as we could now jump a shuttle to Titan?"

Somehow, I don't think you'd feel differently a few centuries hence. ;-)

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

Ever heard the variant on "life's a bitch, and then you die" that
goes: "... unless reincarnation is true, in which case life's a
bitch, and then life's a bitch, and then life's a bitch...."  ;-)

>Derek Lee-Wo (Co-op)

--
Michael McNeil            [e-mail]
3Com Corporation        hplabs!oliveb!3comvax!michaelm
Mountain View, California    work telephone: [phone] x 208

    What a wonderful and amazing Scheme have we here of the
    magnificent Vastness of the Universe!  So many Suns, so
    many Earths ... !
        Christianus Huygens, *New Conjectures Concerning the
        Planetary Worlds, Their Inhabitants and Productions*,
        c. 1670

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

Date: 15 May 89 19:25:06 GMT
From: oliveb!3comvax![e-mail]  (Michael McNeil)
Subject: Re: citizens in space -- risk silliness

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (steve emmerson) writes:
>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (kevin w. holroyd) writes:
>>Or are you referring to the fact that certain program managers witheld some
>>information on risk factors from the crew, as grounds that no one on the
>>shuttle fully understood what risks they were taking?
>
>Something like that.  Do you know if she was told that one study
>(the Air Force's I believe) estimated that 25 flights was the mean
>time to catastrophic failure due to SRB malfunction?

I would think the proper interpretation of this statistic is that
there's a 4 percent risk per flight, rather than flight number 25
was bound to blow up.  Also, what did the other studies estimate?

>Steve Emmerson

--
Michael McNeil            [e-mail]
3Com Corporation        hplabs!oliveb!3comvax!michaelm
Mountain View, California    work telephone: [phone] x 208

    Life, even cellular life, may exist out yonder in the dark.
    But high or low in nature, it will not wear the shape of man.
    That shape is the evolutionary product of a strange, long
    wandering through the attics of the forest roof, and so
    great are the chances of failure, that nothing precisely
    and identically human is likely ever to come that way again.
        Loren Eiseley, *The Immense Journey*, 1957

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

Date: 15 May 89 21:51:27 GMT
From: concertina![e-mail]  (Steve Hix)
Subject: Re: New Orbiter Name Announced

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Marc Bonin) writes:
> It's interesting to note that every shuttle orbiter except Columbia has
> a fictional counterpart

Even it.  (Well, close.  Jules Verne named a space vehicle in one
of his stories "Columbiad", I think.)

> Enterprise :  Obvious !
> Discovery:   the ship from 20001
> Challenger:  remember the Adventures of Tom Swift??? He had a ship called
>              the Challenger
> Endeavour:   from 'Rendezvous with Rama'

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

Date: 16 May 89 05:35:21 GMT
From: unmvax!deimos.cis.ksu.edu!uxc!garcon!pequod.cso.uiuc.edu![e-mail]  (Jeffrey Schavland)
Subject: Re: New Orbiter Name Announced

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Steve Hix) writes:
>In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Marc Bonin) writes:
>> It's interesting to note that every shuttle orbiter except Columbia has
>> a fictional counterpart
>
>Even it.  (Well, close.  Jules Verne named a space vehicle in one
>of his stories "Columbiad", I think.)

The Columbiad was the gigantic Florida-based cannon in Jules Verne's "From the
Earth to the Moon."  The spacecraft fired from the cannon was not specifically
named, and was referred to only as the projectile or projectile-vehicle.
--
Jeffrey A. Schavland            |  Illini Space Development Society
P.O. Box 2308 - Station A       |  NSS chapter at the University of Illinois
Champaign, IL  61825-2308       |
[phone] (home)           |  "I reject that [the Sherlock Holmes
[phone] (work)           |  principle] entirely.  The impossible often
                                |  has a kind of integrity to it which the
[e-mail]    |  merely improbable lacks."
[e-mail]       |  - Dirk Gently

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

Date: 16 May 89 06:13:24 GMT
From: voder!berlioz![e-mail]  (Information @ Any Price )
Subject: Space tethers and Arthur C. Clarke

I read in NASA Technical Briefs that carbon fibre typically exhibits a
tensile modulus of 3.8e11 N/m^2. Although I don't know the density exactly,
the self-supporting vertical length is almost certainly in the 100's of
miles range.

I recall reading a posting in this group about "The Tethered Satellite Project"
or similar, and so am prompted to ask:
    - what is being done?
    - how is the high end of the rope maintained? with what?
    - how much delta force is incurred by high-speed winds?
    - what implications has geosynchrony for the design?

Humorous references to the Indian Rope Trick will be ignored :-)
--
Andrew Palfreyman         USENET: ...{this biomass}!nsc!logic!andrew
National Semiconductor M/S D3969, 2900 Semiconductor Dr., PO Box 58090,
Santa Clara, CA 95052-8090 ; 408-721-4788         there's many a slip
                            'twixt cup and lip

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

Date: 14 May 89 22:33:34 GMT
From: versatc!mips!prls!philabs!linus!alliant![e-mail]  (Dave Spain)
Subject: Re: citizens in space -- risk silli

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Henry Spencer) writes:
>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:
>>    Is there a single manager that was involved in over-riding the
>>engineers and pushing the launch suffering any penalty for their stupidity
>>and arrogance? My guess is that the engineers were sacked and the managers
>>promoted.
>
>Pretty much so.  A few of the managers retired a little early on fat
>pensions.  And NASA got billions to fix the problems, and passed on a
>fair bit of it to Morton Thiokol.  M-T also had its monopoly on shuttle
>boosters extended for several years.
>
>Killing astronauts is good for business.

I can't quite let this go by without a few comments:

1) ...and passed on a fair bit of it to Morton Thiokol.

Of course, who else would fix it?  The fact that M-T is currently a sole-source
supplier seems to me to be the crux of the matter.  Since it seems that only
the US government can afford "man-in-space", this leads to government
contracted business which in aero-space often leads to sole-source contracts.
Especially for space projects.  If there had been an SSME Crit 1 instead of a
solid we would be saying the same thing about Rocketdyne.  Does this make it
right?  No, but what alternatives do we have?  Shut down the program?

I'd LOVE to see multiple suppliers for Shuttle hardware. Unfortunately,
getting Congress to foot the excess up front $$ is a whole different matter.
Obviously, NASA is going to try to make do with whatever it gets, and the
contractors know this.

2) M-T also had its monopoly on shuttle boosters extended for several years.

I'm not so sure "extended" is the right word here. Probably "neglected"
is better. Congress seems in no rush to pay for having NASA go out and bid
replacements.

I believe Aerojet has been contracted to build the upgraded SRB, and when
we become dependent on it and it fails and if M-T is no-longer in the SRB
business, who do you think is going to get the $$ to fix it?

Even if the government put clauses into its contracts that would require
sole contractors to pay the entire cost of fixes, (and get them to agree to
it) its not clear it would work. If the fix were too costly the contractor
would just go belly-up and leave the whole mess back with Uncle Sam.
Bottom line, this is a seller's market...

As an aside: What about criminal sanctions against the managers?

Here come the lawyers. Contractors WILL prepare themselves for this.
Contracts will be adjusted to minimize any liability, which will have to be
rigorously defined, not to mention intent, etc. etc.  Those in government
service will now have more than just economic reasons to look elsewhere for
employment.  Face it, this approch would not have and will not work.
(Oh, it might, if ALL you want to get from your contractors are NO-LAUNCH
recommendations...) Sorry if I'm beating a dead horse on this issue...

3) Killing astronauts is good business.

I think a more accurate concluding statement would be:

     "Killing astronauts is irrelavent to business..."

Particularly when its business-as-usual...

Disclaimer: These are my personal opinions, which from an intellectual
        standpoint, are more like liabilities than property.

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

Date: 17 May 89 00:58:08 GMT
From: att!pegasus![e-mail]  (Paul S. R. Chisholm)
Subject: Re: Meme me up, Scotty

< This stuff is pretty old (and has nothing to do with space; sorry!) >

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (H Keith Henson) writes:
> Tried to send mail to Tom Neff, but for some reason, the Portal mailer
> will not recognize his address tonight.

I have that problem all the time.  (Tom, I put your letter into the
alumni newsletter; I hope the electronic address you gave me is still
good!)

> Meme and memetics are *not* new age chatter.  The concept is straight out
> of the work of the formost evolutionary biologist of our time, Richard
> Dawkins of Oxford, author of The Selfish Gene, and The Blind Watchmaker
> among others.

I don't think so.  I haven't read it, but I keep meaning to stop by the
library and read "As We May Think" by Vannevar Bush, which appeared in
the July 1945 (no kidding, nineteen forty-five!) issue of the ATLANTIC
MONTHLY.  Bush talks about a "memex" as the smallest kind of fact that
can exist without being decomposed into simpler facts (I may have this
all wrong), and essentially invents hypertext, except that the only
medium he had for it was microfilm.

Tell you what; I promise to read that article this weekend.  In the
meantime, if you want to chat about memes, memexes (memi?), and
memetics, send me mail with a suggestion about what group to put it in;
I'll summarize and post the responses some time next week.  Let's talk
about space!

Paul S. R. Chisholm, AT&T Bell Laboratories
att!pegasus!psrc, [e-mail], AT&T Mail !psrchisholm
I'm not speaking for the company, I'm just speaking my mind.

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

Date: 17 May 89 02:50:47 GMT
From: aramis.rutgers.edu!klaatu.rutgers.edu![e-mail]  (J Storrs Hall)
Subject: Re: Meme me up, Scotty

hkhenson.portal.com (H Keith Henson) writes:

 Meme and memetics are *not* new age chatter.  The concept is straight out
 of the work of the formost evolutionary biologist of our time, Richard
 Dawkins of Oxford, author of The Selfish Gene, and The Blind Watchmaker
 among others.

Paul S. R. Chisholm (att!pegasus!psrc) replies:

 I don't think so.  I haven't read it, but I keep meaning to stop by the
 library and read "As We May Think" by Vannevar Bush, which appeared in
 the July 1945 (no kidding, nineteen forty-five!) issue of the ATLANTIC
 MONTHLY.  Bush talks about a "memex" as the smallest kind of fact that
 can exist without being decomposed into simpler facts (I may have this
 all wrong), and essentially invents hypertext, except that the only
 medium he had for it was microfilm.

Mr. Chisholm is wrong on all counts.  "Memex" has nothing to do with
"meme" except that it is based on the same root (which goes all the
way back to the Sanskrit "smarati" ("he remembers")).  Memetics is not
hypertext; hypertext is not memetics.

Please read your sources BEFORE posting.  Dawkins is widely published
and available in better popular bookstores.  "As We May Think" was
posted in its entirety on the net within the past year (on alt.hypertext,
I think).

--JoSH

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

Date: 16 May 89 15:48:26 GMT
From: cfa!cfa250![e-mail]  (Steve Willner)
Subject: Biosphere II


Recently I visited the site of the "Biosphere II" project, which aims
to support humans in a closed environment for an extended period.
The current status is that construction of the large enclosure is
underway, with the exterior space frame support mostly up but little
if any of the glass installed.  Closure is now scheduled for
September 1990.  Sorry for the lack of further details, but the
conference I was attending took all my time, and I did not get a
decent tour.

(By the way, the conference center on the site is quite pleasant.  If
you are organizing a conference or workshop, you might want to
contact the manager: Sandy Parker, SunSpace Ranch Conference Center,
P.O. Box 689, Oracle, AZ 85623.  My guess is that they can accomodate
up to about 50 or 60 people.)
--
Steve Willner            Phone [phone]         Bitnet:   willner@cfa
60 Garden St.            FTS:      830-7123           UUCP:   willner@cfa
Cambridge, MA 02138 USA                 Internet: [e-mail]

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

End of SPACE Digest V9 #442
*******************