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Subject: SPACE Digest V10 #339

SPACE Digest                                     Volume 10 : Issue 339

Today's Topics:
             space news from Oct 23 AW&ST
     clarifications on: Re: V10 No.327 and inflammatory ephithets
                STOP SPACENET!
        Relative distances and sizes in the Universe.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 12 Dec 89 04:30:47 GMT
From: mnetor!utzoo![e-mail]  (Henry Spencer)
Subject: space news from Oct 23 AW&ST

News report saying that the main reasons for the Pegasus schedule slip
from summer to December were fuel leaks in the NASA B-52 and the need
to build a new adapter to connect Pegasus and the B-52's wing pylon.
The original welded-steel adapter had to be scrapped due to excessive
cracks, and the replacement composite adapter wasn't ready until August.

The West's voluntary restrictions on missile-technology exports do not
seem to be working.  A recent Brazilian launch-services RFP called for
export of liquid-fuel rocket engines as well, and the French -- party
to the voluntary restrictions -- offered them the Ariane engines.

Galileo's two Earth flybys will slow Earth's orbital velocity by
9.6e-18 mph, altering Earth's position 5.3in per billion years.  Christic
Institute expected to protest. [:-)]

"Sen. Jake Garn has risen successfully to the defense of what may be the
only group truly unrepresented in this town -- extraterrestrials."  (He
prevented funding cuts in NASA's SETI program.)

California earthquake does minor damage to space-related facilities.
USAF communications facilities in Sunnyvale take minor structural damage
and a burst water main, but are hastily tested and judged capable of
supporting the Galileo launch the next day.  Ford Aerospace satellite
plant takes structural damage, but satellites currently in works appear
unharmed.  NASA Ames reports minor water damage.  Lockheed facilities
in the Bay area are intact and operating, although its Santa Cruz test
facilities are without power and some damage is reported.  Lawrence
Livermore reports "superficial damage".

Boeing wins SDI contract to build large ground-based free-electron laser
for tests in mid-1990s.  [Space relevance is that those thingies are also
prime candidates to power a laser launcher.]

Galileo up Oct 18, with only minor problems experienced on the flight.  One
of Atlantis's three APUs unexpectedly switched into high-speed mode just
after SRB separation, which may have minor impact on reentry planning.
There has also been a minor problem with the shuttle's flash-evaporator
cooling system, possibly due to heavy loads placed on it by Galileo's
RTG heat.  New software and procedures permitted launch on schedule despite
a last-minute need to switch abort sites due to weather.

Crippen named director of space shuttle program in Washington; he has been
deputy director at KSC.  Brewster Shaw [another astronaut] will replace him
at the Cape.

House and Senate make deep cuts in Aerospace Plane, but trim space station
only lightly and actually boost funding for Shuttle-C.

First commercial Titan launch slips a few weeks due to electrical problems.

Ariane V34 slips from Oct 5 to Oct 27 due to relay problems; the payload
is the first Intelsat 6.  This will be followed by V35 on Dec 13, carrying
Japan's Superbird B and BS-2X.  That is a change from earlier manifests,
which showed Spot 2 (and its piggyback amateur-radio microsatellites)
on V35, due to a contractual commitment to get the Japanese payloads up
this year.  Spot 2 and friends are now scheduled for the next flight, Jan 19.

Another story on the Awesomely Lucrative Spacelauncher, er excuse me the
Advanced Launch System.  It's still being touted as providing, simultaneously,
very low cost to orbit, very fast turnaround between launches, and very high
reliability.  Various details of how Martin Marietta thinks this could be
done, some of which makes sense.  Vehicles would move to the pad only when
ready for launch, and would go up immediately.  The pads themselves would
be a return to the Saturn V concept:  a fairly simple fixed pad without
gantries and the like, and a mobile launcher moved on top for the launch.
(One reason cited for this is relatively quick repairs to the fixed pad
after a launch failure.)  Payload integration and mission analysis would
be highly automated, to permit short-notice changes in payloads and missions.
New technology for big cryogenic tanks would be useful, notably better
alloys and automated production and inspection processes (current welding
and X-ray inspection processes are very tedious).  Fault-tolerant avionics
would be better than the ICBM approach of making guidance systems fault-free
at great expense.  Possible problems should be simulated in advance, to
avoid "having to put a study team together when something fails and have
them spend a week figuring out what to do while the crew stands around
waiting".  [Methinks the US aerospace industry has forgotten that good
people with proper authority and experience can do this without massive
computerized simulation.  There was an incident during Saturn I development
when a launch was being scrubbed because some instrument reading went
outside launch limits.  Kurt Debus -- director of KSC, one of von Braun's
old bunch -- looked at the readings for a few seconds and ordered the
launch to go ahead anyway!  He'd decided that it was instrument error.
He was right.]  Unified information handling could greatly reduce the
mass of paperwork that has to move between different groups.  All of this,
of course, is going to require considerable adjustment by the customers
as well as the contractors.

[I would perhaps be a bit less cynical about these pronouncements from
MM if I didn't recognize so many of them from an OTA study on reducing
launch operations costs.  MM talks a good fight, once told what to say :-),
but whether they can put it into practice or not is a good question.]

Inmarsat shakes up management to get the Inmarsat 2 satellite program
back on track.  It is currently 18 months behind schedule.  The new
project head is Roy Gibson (ex-head of ESA, ex-head of the British Space
Agency).

Hipparcos being prepared for start of its astronomical mission.  The big
question is how long it will last:  less than 18 months would essentially
wreck the mission, two years or better would be good (although not as good
as the original plans).  Controllers are experimenting with things like
the attitude-determination system, which were originally intended for the
rather different environment of Clarke orbit.  So far, Hipparcos is behaving
very well.  ESA's tracking station in Perth and CNES's station in Kourou
are being added to the original single station at Odenwald (West Germany),
to reduce the gaps in communications coverage.  The big near-term worry is
the eclipse period early next year, which will involve eclipses much
longer than those experienced in Clarke orbit.

CNES [French space agency] begins definition of a radarsat to complement
the Spot optical satellites.  Construction might start in 1994 for a
first launch in 2000-2001.  Ground resolution would be from 2-50m, with
some ability to steer the beam to cover a wider ground track or linger
longer on a single target area.  The spacecraft bus would be the same
one in the works for Spot 4 and Helios.

Soviets plan modest upgrades to Soyuz and Progress spacecraft.  Soyuz will
add a new window to make manual docking easier.  (Nobody is yet sure whether
the Soyuz TM-8 episode -- in which the crew aborted the automatic docking
with Mir because the pitch angle looked off -- was a real misalignment or
just difficulty in seeing the real angle.  The current TV/periscope setup
is not very convenient.)  The new Progress M has a large payload than the
old Progress, plus an optional cargo-return capsule (set for first use
late next year).

NASP developers continue to debate whether orbital flights should make
powered or unpowered landings.  Everyone agrees on powered landings for
early atmospheric tests, but the ability to make a powered landing does
impose weight penalties for extra fuel and engine-restart systems.
There is also some question about what happens if you're depending on
being able to relight the engines and you can't.  No final decision has
been made, but the NASP office seems to favor unpowered landings.

NASP managers are seriously unhappy about the 2.5-year schedule slip
that seems to be increasingly a fait accompli.  Only about a year of
that seems justified by the technology, and there is concern that many
of the best people will be lost if the program spends 18 months marking
time.

Boeing produces a significant boost in efficiency of space-rated solar
cells, using a scheme which stacks two cells mechanically to make use
of a wider spectrum than a single cell can achieve.  People have been
trying for years to grow one type of cell in a thin layer on another,
with disappointing results.  Boeing used some clever mechanical design
to get the same effect.  NASA and aerospace contractors are very interested.
--
1755 EST, Dec 14, 1972:  human |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
exploration of space terminates| uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry [e-mail]

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

Date: 12 Dec 89 22:19:01 GMT
From: zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!caesar.cs.montana.edu!milton!maven![e-mail]  (Games Wizard)
Subject: clarifications on: Re: V10 No.327 and inflammatory ephithets

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Charles Balan) writes:
> In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] ("Lee S. Ridgway") writes:
>>Not all of us "liberals" are not anti-space.
>  ^^^                          ^^^ ^^^^
>  Um, could someone from sci.lang please help me out here.  What exactly is
>  being said?  All of us "l's" are anti-space?  No "l's" are anti-space?
>  I'm completely befuddled.
>
Well, this is a triple negation, hence it is a single negation.
Simplification at the poibnt of closest bonding yields
Not all of us "liberals" are pro-space.

(substitute not anti-space for pro-space)  However this is not strictly
accurate, as not anti-space could also mean neutral ( anti- or pro- are not
the only possibilities ) so it might be better to state it as
not all of us "liberals" are pro-space or neutral towards space.

It might be easier however to simplify the not all into the more appropriate
some  yielding

some liberals are not anti-space
or actually with all substitutions

some liberals are pro-space, and some liberals are neutral towards space.

Does this help any?  I thought not.  oh well.

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

Date:     Tue, 12 Dec 89 02:09 MDT
From: <[e-mail]>
Subject:  STOP SPACENET!

Hello, would somebody out there kindly remove me from the SPACENET mailing
list????!!!!!!!!!!!   I would surely appreciate it!!!!!

Jeff Kirkley
(JTKIRKLEY @ COLOSPGS)

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

Date: 12 Dec 89 17:30:11 GMT
From: wrksys.dec.com![e-mail]  (CUP/ASG, MLO5-2/G1 6A, 223-3283 12-Dec-1989 1233)
Subject: Relative distances and sizes in the Universe.


        Several weeks ago I posted a request for slide sets comparing the
    relative distances in the solar system and the other stars:  It would
    seem that slide sets of this scale system are rather hard to come by.
    I sent out a request to several other computer networks, along with
    calling a number of planetariums, museum stores, and searched through
    various scientific catalogues, all without significant result.

        I was able to use my resources and gather some information
    from several friends on various types of relative celestial scales,
    and have come up with some relevant information.

        The first selection depicts the solar system on a major league
    baseball field from E. C. Slipher's "Planet" section of THE WORLD BOOK
    ENCYCLOPEDIA P, VOLUME 15, Field Enterprises Educational Corporation,
    Chicago, Illinois, 1964.  If the Sun were the size of a United States
    half-dollar (fifty cents) on home plate, the planet Mercury would be
    120 centimeters (four feet) away, Venus would be 225 centimeters
    (7.5 feet) away, Earth would be 315 centimeters (10.5 feet) distant,
    Mars would be 480 centimeters (sixteen feet) away, Jupiter would be
    1,650 centimeters (55 feet) from the Sun (at the pitcher's mound),
    Saturn would be 3,030 centimeters (101 feet) away (near second base,
    and the last planet in the infield), Uranus would be 6,075 centimeters
    (202.5 feet) away, Neptune would be 9,540 centimeters (318 feet) away,
    and Pluto would be 12,615 centimeters (420.5 feet) distant from the
    Sun, deep in the outfield.

        To compare planetary diameters, if the Sun were the size of an
    average beachball, then Jupiter would be a golf ball, Saturn a Ping-
    Pong ball, Uranus and Neptune marbles, Mercury and Pluto pinheads,
    and Venus, Earth, and Mars would be about half the size of tackheads.

        The next comparison scale comes from the "Life on Other Worlds"
    section of Carl Sagan's PLANETS, LIFE Science Library, 1966.  This
    one depicts the solar system on a map of Europe and Africa, with the
    average distance between the Sun and Earth, 150 million kilometers
    (93 million miles) - also known as one Astronomical Unit (A.U.) -
    now equaling 240 kilometers (150 miles).  If the Sun were situated
    in Norway, Saturn would orbit just south of Italy, and Pluto would
    be 10,400 kilometers (6,500 miles) away along the Cape of Good Hope
    in South Africa.

        The next source on various celestial scales comes from THE
    STARFLIGHT HANDBOOK: A PIONEER'S GUIDE TO INTERSTELLAR TRAVEL, by
    Eugene F. Mallove and Gregory L. Matloff (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New
    York, 1989, ISBN 0-471-61912-4, hardcover), which gives the following
    description on page 5:  If the Sun were the size of a one-centimeter
    (0.4-inch) marble, then Earth would be 0.1 millimeters (0.004 inches)
    in diameter and one meter (39.37 inches) from the Sun.  The planet
    Pluto would orbit 42 meters (139 feet) from the Sun, and Proxima
    Centauri - the Sun's nearest stellar neighbor - would be 292
    kilometers (175 miles) away.

        The next two books listed are both authored by Neil McAleer.
    The first is THE COSMIC MIND-BOGGLING BOOK (Warner Books, Inc.,
    New York, 1982, ISBN 0-446-37932-8, paperback).  On the front cover
    of the book, the following comparison is made (one of my favorites,
    from an aesthetic point of view):  If the solar system out to the
    orbit of Pluto could fit in a coffee cup, the Milky Way Galaxy
    would be the size of the North American continent.

        On page xiii - If you had a specially-designed automobile
    which could handle the rigors of spaceflight, it would take you
    201 billion years to "drive" from the Sun to the center of the
    Milky Way Galaxy at 161 kilometers per hour (100 miles per hour).
    Also, if the solar system were 2.54 centimeters (one inch) across,
    the Milky Way Galaxy would be 161,000 kilometers (100,000 miles) wide.

        On pages 3-4 - If the Sun were the size of a sixty-centimeter
    (two-foot) beachball, Earth would be the size of a pea and 6,450
    centimeters (215 feet) away.  The planet Jupiter would be a large
    orange 31,680 centimeters (1,056 feet) distant from the Sun.

        On pages 12-13 - If the Sun were a 14-centimeter (5-inch) orange,
    Earth would be a sesame seed fifteen meters (49 feet) away.  Pluto
    would be the size of a grain of millet six hundred meters (3,400
    feet) away, and the star Alpha Centauri would be four thousand
    kilometers (2,500 miles) from the Sun.

        On page 83 - If you could fly a specially modified Boeing 747
    jetliner through space at 965 kilometers per hour (six hundred miles
    per hour), it would take you 1,903 years to fly from the orbit of
    the planet Uranus out to the orbit of Neptune.

        On page 128 - If the Sun were a basketball in New York City,
    then Alpha Centauri would be another basketball eight thousand
    kilometers (five thousand miles) away in Honolulu, Hawaii.

        On page 129 - If you traveled at the speed which the APOLLO
    spacecraft used in an average six-day round-trip journey to Earth's
    Moon (approximately 40,000 kilometers per hour/25,000 miles per hour),
    it would take you 850,000 years to reach Alpha Centauri.  By contrast,
    the faster PIONEER 10 and 11 and VOYAGER 1 and 2 Jovian probes will
    reach that distance (4.3 light years) in only eighty thousand years.

        On page 161 - If you used a starship traveling at one-tenth the
    speed of light (300,000 kilometers per second/186,000 miles per second)
    to reach the farthest star in the Milky Way Galaxy, the ship would
    take 800,000 years to reach it from the Sun.  If one Astronomical
    Unit (A.U.) - the distance between the Sun and Earth, which is
    roughly 150 million kilometers/93 million miles - were reduced to
    2.54 centimeters (one inch), then that farthest star would be
    127,000 kilometers (79,000 miles) away.

        The next selection is from the other Neil McAleer book, THE
    MIND-BOGGLING UNIVERSE (Doubleday & Co. Inc., Garden City, New
    York, 1987, ISBN 0-385-23039-7, paperback):

        On pages 10-11 - If the solar system out to Pluto were 2.54
    centimeters (one inch) in diameter, then the center of the Milky
    Way Galaxy would be 609 kilometers (379 miles) away.  Also, to
    walk one A.U. at five kilometers per hour (three miles per hour)
    would take 3,500 years.  To drive one light year at 88 kilometers
    per hour (55 miles per hour) would take 12.2 million years.

        On page 15 - The Milky Way Galaxy's longest spiral arm of gas,
    dust, and stars is 125,000 light years long.  It would take an
    automobile driving at 88 kilometers per hour (55 miles per hour)
    1.5 trillion years to cover that distance.

        On page 35 - An automobile driving at 88 kph (55 mph) would
    take 52 million years to reach Proxima Centauri from the Sun.

        The next selection comes from THE UNIVERSE...AND BEYOND by
    Terence Dickinson (Camden House Publishing, Ltd., Camden East,
    Ontario, Canada, 1986, ISBN 0-920656-48-X, paperback):

        On pages 16-19 - If the actual distance between the Milky Way
    Galaxy and the Andromeda Galaxy (two million light years) were shrunk
    to a typical book-reading distance, then the most remote galaxies
    known would be 1.6 kilometers (one mile) away.

        If the Sun were shrunk to the size of a 2.54-centimeter (one
    inch) Ping-Pong ball, Earth would become a dust speck 240 centimeters
    (eight feet) away, with the Moon being an even smaller speck just
    6.25 millimeters (0.25-inch) from Earth.  Jupiter would be a pea
    1,200 centimeters (forty feet) from the Sun, and Pluto is a dust
    speck nine thousand centimeters (three hundred feet) away.  The
    Oort Cloud of comets surrounding our solar system would be the
    size of atomic particles and reside several kilometers distant,
    with the comets themselves averaging several meters apart from
    each other.  The Alpha Centauri trinary star system would consist
    of two walnuts (Alpha and Beta) and a pea (Proxima) 640 kilometers
    (four hundred miles) from our solar system.

        If Earth's solar orbit were reduced to the size of a United
    States dime, the average distance between stars is now a little
    over one kilometer (1.6 miles).  The Milky Way Galaxy would be
    the actual size of Earth.  The distance to the Andromeda Galaxy
    would be over half the actual distance between Earth and the Moon.

        If you could hold the Milky Way Galaxy in your hand, the stars
    in it would be sub-atomic in size, and the Andromeda Galaxy would
    be 210 centimeters (seven feet) away.

        My final textbook selection comes from CYCLES OF FIRE, by
    William K. Hartmann and Ron Miller (Workman Publishing, New York,
    1987, ISBN 0-89480-502-9, paperback):

        On pages 14-15 - If Earth were the diameter of a microparticle
    of soot, then the Sun would be one hundred times larger, the size
    of a mote of dust, or one hundredth of a millimeter across.  The
    solar system would be the size of a saucer, and the Oort Cloud of
    comets would exist several house lots away.  Alpha Centauri would
    be another dust mote one to two city blocks from the Sun, and the
    Milky Way Galaxy would be the size of North America.  Some of the
    other nearby galaxies would be the varying sizes and distances of
    Earth's continents.  The known limits of the Universe would stretch
    halfway across the solar system.

        My friend and co-worker Drew LePage came up with some various
    calculations on the celestial distance scale:

        If the orbit of Pluto were the size of a U.S. dime, this would be
    the size of various distances in the Universe:

        Earth's orbit would have a diameter of about 0.5 millimeter (about
    half the thickness of a dime).

        One light year would be about 15.2 meters (49.9 feet).

        One parsec (3.26 light years) would be about 49.7 meters (163 feet).

        The closest star would be 65.4 meters (214 feet) away.

        The closest one hundred known stars would be inside a sphere about
    640 meters (2,100 feet) across.

        The Sun would be 456 kilometers (283 miles) from the center of the
    Milky Way Galaxy.

        The Milky Way Galaxy would be 1,520 kilometers (945 miles) across.

        To put intergalatic distances into perspective, if the Milky Way
    Galaxy were the size of a dime:

        The orbit of Pluto would be about the size of a hydrogen atom.

        The Andromeda Galaxy would be 41.8 centimeters (16.5 inches) away.

        One megaparsec would equal 61.9 centimeters (2.03 feet).

        The recently discovered "Wall" of Galaxies would be about 40 meters
    (125 feet) to 60 meters (190 feet) away, about 3 meters (10 feet) thick,
    and extend for at least 100 meters (300 feet).

        The most distant quasar known would be about 2.6 kilometers
    (1.7 miles) away.

        The size of the observable Universe would be about 5.7 kilometers
    (3.5 miles) across.

        If nothing else, these figures should give some idea as to just
     how incredibly vast the known Universe is.

        Larry Klaes  [e-mail]
             or - ...!decwrl!wrksys.dec.com!klaes
                 or - [e-mail]
                     or - [e-mail]
                     or - [e-mail]

             N = R*fgfpneflfifaL

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

End of SPACE Digest V10 #339
*******************