Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/pc/text/spacedig/v09_6/v9_615.txt

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Subject: SPACE Digest V9 #615

SPACE Digest                                      Volume 9 : Issue 615

Today's Topics:
              Re: Eggs & baskets
          RE: Golf ball flight (correction)
               Re: Contractors
             Re: PHONE TREE ALERT
    Re: Does this proposal make sense? (Was: Space Quest)
    Re: Does this proposal make sense? (Was: Space Quest)
              Re: Future probe to Pluto
          Re: Space telescope - why only 1200 hours?
          Re: Space telescope - why only 1200 hours?
        Re: What is the Solar Impact Mission?
 Re: space news from June 19 AW&ST, and Apollo-anniversary editorial
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 4 Aug 89 21:16:15 GMT
From: mailrus!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!utzoo![e-mail]  (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Eggs & baskets

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Paul Dietz) writes:
>Remember: space has dangerous radiation, no ozone layer, no running
>water, no breathable air.  Sure, you can shield & make your own
>consumables, but you can do that on Earth too, for a lot less money.

As Gerry O'Neill pointed out rather a long time ago -- how quickly we
forget! -- space is actually quite a benign environment in many ways.
It is not, by itself, as suited to us as the *average* conditions on
Earth's surface.  However, it is much more *controllable*; the difference
between average case and worst case is much less severe.

>I have a hard time imagining how a nuclear war or chemical pollution
>could render the Earth any less habitable than space already is.

There are areas of Earth which are already as uninhabitable as space,
for all practical purposes.  (The areas of Africa where onchocerciasis [sp?]
is really bad, for example.)  As I've pointed out in the past, an unprotected
human in a January blizzard in northern Saskatchewan -- where I grew up --
will be incapacitated and dying almost as quickly as he would be in space.
The difference is in degree, not in kind.

>Completely unbelievable.  The NASA space station is going to cost
>$30B+, and support (sort of) maybe a dozen people.  You propose
>something 1000 times larger for the same amount of money, and you want
>it to be completely self sufficient as well?  Not anytime soon, bucko.

Doesn't sound ridiculous to me.  Art Dula estimated something like $500M
for a NASA-comparable space station built and launched by the lowest
bidder (construction companies for the hardware, Glavkosmos for the
launches, no aerospace contractors need apply).  That's two orders of
magnitude already.  And sheer size costs nothing but mass -- it's the
sophistication that costs big money.  Yes, mass costs too, because it's
more expensive to launch... but budget one third of that $30G for an
aggressive attack on launch costs, and manage it right, and they will
plummet.  Self-sufficiency I am a bit less certain about, although large
size helps -- it is known that a large ecosystem can be self-sufficient
without major development costs.  (Proof by example -- look out your window.)
Doing it on a small scale is trickier, but there are encouraging signs
that it may not be that hard.  The Biosphere people should be able to
tell us within a few years.

Pushing it a bit, perhaps, yes.  But not ridiculous.  For anyone except
the government, $30G is one #@%^$ of a lot of money.
--
1961-1969: 8 years of Apollo.  |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
1969-1989: 20 years of nothing.| uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry [e-mail]

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

Date: 4 Aug 89 12:34:00 EDT
From: "DENVER BRAUGHLER" <[e-mail]>
Subject: RE: Golf ball flight (correction)
To: "space" <[e-mail]>

>
>15 m/s up and 15 m/s horizontal gives 21 m/s at a 45 degree angle.
>the horizontal and vertical components of 30 m/s in the same direction
>are (coincidently) 21 m/s.  this gives a flight time of 4.3 seconds
>and a distance of 92 meters.  still not a very good drive.
>
>gravitional acceleration on the surface of the moon is about 1.5 m/ss.
>for the same drive, this would give a 550 m drive which is
>respectable.  don't expect to be able to do this in a space suit.
>

    Ah.  I was thinking sin 45^=0.5.  It's sin 30^=0.5.  Sin 45^=2**0.5.

Y          V=30 m/s
|         /
|       /
|     /
|   /
|/__________ X

    X=21 m/s and Y=21 m/s.

Respectable drive?  550m is more than the 1/2 km I was guessing at!
I thought pro golfers get maybe a 250 yd *flight* on earth (on a flat driving
range).  I thought that 30 m/s was a modest swing.

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

Date: Fri, 4 Aug 1989 13:00-EDT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: Contractors

I agree that the contractors can't produce anything "really" cheap. But
nonetheless, an Atlas built for commercial flight costs something like
30% less than a milspec Atlas. The only significant difference is the
whether there is a red dot or a blue dot on the tail end. One means
there is a paper trail that outtweighs the rocket. The other means it
is produced with "normal" levels of record keeping.

Bill Ganoe might remember the exact price differential. I think he was
at the session in Chicago where this was discussed. I was half asleep
at the time...

I would not be surprised that a competitive, non-government procurement
environment could shape up even the "Ministry of Aerospace" into low
cost production. Of course one or two might go belly up in the process,
but we won't be needing as many fighters and such in the future anyway,
so it's no great loss. And a damn big gain for cheap space access.

                    Live Profitably or Die,
                        Dale Amon

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

Date: Fri, 4 Aug 89 16:43:24 PDT
From: mordor!rutgers!pnet01.cts.com![e-mail] (Jim Bowery)
To: hplabs!hp-sde!hp-sdd!crash![e-mail]
Subject: Re: PHONE TREE ALERT

Dale Skran writes:
>In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (William
Baxter) writes:
>>
>> Call Congressman Robert Roe (D-NJ) at 202/225-5751.  Ask him, as
>> chairman of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, to hold
>> hearings on HR2674, the Space Transportation Services Purchase Act of
>> 1989, as soon as possible.
>>
>>
>> William Baxter
>>
>
>I would like to remind people that although this is a good idea,
>it IS NOT an official NSS phonetree alert. In general, any posting
>from Baxter or Bowery should be regarded as representing only their
>opinions.
>
>Dale Skran

Dale is right, the UNofficial PHONE TREE ALERTs have not been approved by
NSS "space policy experts" educated by RAND Corporation, such as Mark
Hopkins and Scott Pace (contact most any local NSS chapter for the low-
down on these individuals) or those educated at George Washington University
under the guidance of such NSS "luminaries" as John Logsdon whose recent
Scientific American article on space policy briefly mentioned private launch
services only to dismiss them.  If you're a good NSS member, you wouldn't
DARE pick up your phone and contact your congressman about anything not
pre-approved by NSS (or the "National SS" as it has come to be known
by space activists subsequent to the rigging of recent Board elections).

My UNofficial PHONE TREE ALERTs are posted for the information of
those pro-space activists who want to open the space frontier as
soon as possible.  This is as opposed to the anti-space activist OFFICIAL
PHONE TREE ALERTs which have been blessed by the OFFICIAL NSS CHAIN OF
COMMAND, starting at the top with a board of directors which has been packed
with aerospace contractor scum through dirty politics.  The OFFICIAL PHONE
TREE ALERTs support NSS's de facto position of keeping the space frontier
closed as long as possible so they can continue to dangle the POTENTIAL of
space development before the eager eyes of space enthusiasts, enlisting
their support of until the current cadre of aerospace contractor scum is
safely in retirement.

The last thing NSS OFFICIALS want is for you to think and act independently
in a way that really changes our course from government controlled 50-year
plans to a dynamic, unpredictable explosion of space commercialization
that will put YOU into space and leave THEM all in a well-deserved oblivion.

This is particularly true now that the pro-space activists that originated
HR2674 have successfully fought off attempts by NSS OFFICIALS to "take credit"
for the bill so they can ammend it into meaninglessness.

REMEMBER: Don't you DARE visit your Congressman in support of HR2674, unless
you want business in space instead of aerospace contractor scum business-
as-usual.  The National SS officers might not LIKE you anymore.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jim Bowery    Phone: [phone]
PO Box 1981                  Join the Mark Hopkins Society!
La Jolla, CA 92038   (A member of the Mark Hopkins family of organizations.)

UUCP: {cbosgd, hplabs!hp-sdd, sdcsvax, nosc}!crash!pnet01!jim
ARPA: crash!pnet01![e-mail]
INET: [e-mail]

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

Date: 3 Aug 89 20:33:14 GMT
From: att!mcdchg!ddsw1!corpane![e-mail]  (John Sparks)
Subject: Re: Does this proposal make sense? (Was: Space Quest)

<[e-mail]>
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In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (John Sparks) writes:
>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Steve Rehrauer)
>writes:
>
> >    3.  Establish a national lottery.  Let it be known that the proceeds
>You know this isn't a bad idea. Sure, the spend the night on the moon is

On second thought, it wouldn't generate enough money to buy a B2, much less
sponsor the space program. :-)

The population of the US is about 200 million. If 30% participated in the
lottery, that would be 60 million. Let's say those 60 million each spent $20 a
month on lottery tickets. That's only 14.4 billion a year. A drop in the bucket
:-)

--
John Sparks   |  {rutgers|uunet}!ukma!corpane!sparks | D.I.S.K. 24hrs 1200bps
|||||||||||||||          [e-mail]         | 502/968-5401 thru -5406
As far as we know, our computer has never had an undetected error.

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

Date: 4 Aug 89 15:44:10 GMT
From: mailrus!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!utzoo![e-mail]  (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Does this proposal make sense? (Was: Space Quest)

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Steve Rehrauer) writes:
>    1.  Send an unmanned sampler probe to the moon, capable of returning
>        about 10,000 pounds of rocks.  Grind these into minute little
>        pebbles.  Paint smiles & stick adhesive googly-eyes to each.
>        Hawk them as "Pet Loonies" for $19.95 on The Home Shopper channel.
>        Emphasize that This Is a Limited-Time Offer.

Unfortunately, this is probably a violation of one of the outer-space
treaties the US is signatory to.  (Not the infamous Moon Treaty, but one
of the older and more general ones.)  There was at one time a proposal to
run one more Apollo mission as a self-financing private venture, given that
the hardware already existed but Congress wouldn't fund its use; the treaty
argument was one of the considerations that shot it down.

(Note, violating a Senate-ratified treaty is a criminal act in the US.)
--
1961-1969: 8 years of Apollo.  |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
1969-1989: 20 years of nothing.| uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry [e-mail]

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

Date: 4 Aug 89 15:50:55 GMT
From: mailrus!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!utzoo![e-mail]  (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Future probe to Pluto

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Michael L. Starr) writes:
>Unfortunately, with NASA's instance on using the Space Shuttle to launch
>everything, it'll never happen.  NASA needs to return back to the good
>old reliable (and it turns out cheaper) expendable rockets! ...

Um, please get the facts straight.  Titan, for example, was grounded at
almost the same time as the Shuttle, and for nearly as long.  And it's
not significantly cheaper, either.  (A Titan 4 launch costs something
like $120M.)  The Shuttle's big problem for planetary missions is that
it has more trouble meeting exact schedules, admittedly a non-trivial
problem.
--
1961-1969: 8 years of Apollo.  |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
1969-1989: 20 years of nothing.| uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry [e-mail]

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

Date: 4 Aug 89 16:43:46 GMT
From: bfmny0![e-mail]  (Tom Neff)
Subject: Re: Space telescope - why only 1200 hours?

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Henry Spencer) writes:
>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Tom Neff) writes:
>>HST is a very heavy payload designed to be serviced by the Shuttle, which
>>cannot visit orbits higher than about 300nm under any circumstances.  Hence
>>it lives in LEO.  Welcome to the joys of "manned presence in space."
>
>Name an unmanned system, except Energia, that could do better for a payload
>that big.

Talk about a rigged question!  That's like asking "Name a baseball team,
other than the Dodgers, that's won a World Series since 1987."  The USSR
is the one with a major *unmanned* presence in space, and now they've
capped the infrastructure with Energiya, which is not slated to launch
any meat for several years.  We have virtually nothing *but* a "manned
presence" at this point, with our fleet of pretty albatrosses taking us
up and down, so of course we have no options.

Speaking of HST, there was a very interesting squib in this month's
ASTRONOMY.  Seems a team has taken the Palomar 5-meter scope to the
*diffraction limit* using optical interferometry (a technique adapted
from radio astronomy), easily splitting two different double stars with
separations of a small fraction of an arcsecond.  The performance was
equivalent to what an *ideal* 5-meter would see.  Translation: what an
*orbiting* 5-meter would see if you had the bugs out.  Oops!  I goofed.
I have been muttering about HST for some time, saying that we'd have
sharper images from right down here in 10 years anyway.  It seemed like
a safe bet.  Looks like I was too conservative.
--
"We walked on the moon --    ((    Tom Neff
    you be polite"         ))     [e-mail]

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

Date: 4 Aug 89 22:04:32 GMT
From: visdc![e-mail]  (John E Van Deusen III)
Subject: Re: Space telescope - why only 1200 hours?

I wonder if someone might be able to make use of the data that could be
collected while the space telescope is repositioning at "the speed of a
minute hand".  Such data could consist of a series of short-exposure
data sets, shifted to compensate for movement, and then added.
--
John E Van Deusen III, PO Box 9283, Boise, ID  83707, [phone]

uunet!visdc!jiii

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

Date: 5 Aug 89 03:49:39 GMT
From: mailrus!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!utzoo![e-mail]  (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: What is the Solar Impact Mission?

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Paul Dietz) writes:
>>If you can use a Venus gravity assist to do a Mercury flyby, I bet you
>>could use it to do a Solar re-entry.
>
>I don't think so.  However, I have read of a proposal to use very high
>speed aeromaneuvering in the atmosphere of Venus to swing a spacecraft
>onto a sun-grazing trajectory...

This is for JPL's Starprobe idea (which I think has been renamed, but
I forget the new name).  The alternative is a Jupiter gravity assist.
But Starprobe isn't going *into* the Sun, just near it.  It's not
trivially obvious that the Starprobe ideas can be pushed far enough
to get solar impact.
--
1961-1969: 8 years of Apollo.  |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
1969-1989: 20 years of nothing.| uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry [e-mail]

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

Date: 5 Aug 89 03:56:29 GMT
From: jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!utzoo![e-mail]  (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: space news from June 19 AW&ST, and Apollo-anniversary editorial

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Tom Neff) writes:
>>  What upsets me most is that all these probes we are launching seem to be
>>completely unique.  Has no one considered the benefits of making a nice
>>standard space probe that can do Everything?  ...
>
>...The Mariner Mark II spacecraft is supposed to be a modular
>chassis onto which all sorts of mission specific hardware can be attached.
>NASA and JPL want to stop reinventing the wheel as much as anyone.

Unfortunately, Mariner Mk. 2 is not the first attempt to do this.  There
has been a depressingly long history of "multi-purpose", "modular"
spacecraft designs that get used for one or two missions and then
abandoned in favor of a different one.  I'm not sure precisely why this
is, although I can think of one obvious contributing factor, which also
operates in a lot of other government-funded areas:  standardization and
volume production means lower profits for contractors.  (And you had
better believe that contractor opinion helps sell or kill projects in
Congress.  It's not an accident that the B-1 and B-2 subcontractor
networks cover every single state in the US.)

The original concept of the Planetary Observer series was to use an
off-the-shelf commercial satellite for inner-solar-system planetary
missions, giving modest science payloads at quite low cost.  I'm not
up to date on Mars Observer's detailed configuration, but I don't
believe it has quite worked out that way...
--
1961-1969: 8 years of Apollo.  |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
1969-1989: 20 years of nothing.| uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry [e-mail]

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

End of SPACE Digest V9 #615
*******************