Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/pc/text/spacedig/v12_0/v12_071.txt

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Subject: SPACE Digest V12 #71

SPACE Digest                                      Volume 12 : Issue 71

Today's Topics:
              Re: Nasa's budget
           MicroSat Satellite Status Report
              Re: buying Soyuzes
        Wall Street Journal column (115 lines)
              Re: space weapons
                  Join space
    NASA as entertainment ( was - Re: Oppose manned Mars expl... )

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

Date: 13 Jul 90 15:33:00 GMT
From: cs.utexas.edu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!torsqnt!tmsoft!masnet!f906.n250.z1.fidonet.org![e-mail]  (maury markowitz)
Subject: Re: Nasa's budget


 a> There is nothing wrong with the Shuttle concept. Had they used
 a> available
 a> technology instead of pushing the envelope everywhere; had they
 a> designed
 a> from the beginning for reliability and low operational cost, it may
 a> well have worked. The shuttle was premature.

  Thank you, it's nice to see that there are other people out there that
agree with my summation of the Shuttle system.  If NASA hadn't been so
desperate to save their budget (which they had reason to be) and have been
willing to wait, OR they had simply done what Boeing told them to do and
created the Flyback F-1 which require NO new tech, the shuttle system
would probibly be just as effective as it's early supporters suggested.
  It should be pointed out that timing plays a major part in the shuttle
story.  The Air Force wanted xxx set of features, features that NASA had
no use for whatsoever, like a huge cross-range ability (which it doesn't
have after all) of the heavy lifting power (which it doesn't have after
all) etc.  After having proposal after proposal rejected because it didn't
meet the Air Force's design criterion, NASA was backpeddaling on what the
thing should look like.  At the time, two designs STILL to this day show
merit, the H-11 by Max Faget (sp?) which was small and cheep, and the
Flyback F-1 which would throw heavy loads using old Saturn V first stages
with wings strapped on (yes, I believe they were strapped, I don't have
any hard data though).  The H-11's payload was too small at 12,500 lbs, a
number that I think was chosen to match a DC-3, and it's cross range was
too small.  In retrospect, 12,500 is more than enough and cross range
means nothing (only 3 places that they can land here anyway).  This design
looks a LOT like the newly proposed "Advanced Manned Lifter", a completely
reusable small load shuttle that uses entirely off the shelf hardware.
  What NASA didn't seem to know was the the Air Force was warning the
govnt that they were rapidly running out of boosters, and that they
wouldn't have any spy satilites up in a while.  At that point, they would
have done anything that NASA said and were waiting.  In walks NASA with
the Rockwell design, and to their suprise, it was accepted.  Had they
simply been forcfull about any of the other systems, they more than likely
would have been accepted too.
  We learn from our mistakes.  A future shuttle would use completely off
the shelf equipment, who's weight and performance are completely known
(that's the problem with flybak boosters, if they're heaver than expected,
you have to do a complete re-design.  For expendables, you simply add more
fuel, to a point).
  If there are any (ex) Boeing people out there that worked on the FLyback
F-1, I'd like to here from you, out of curiosity.

                                                     Maury

p.s. Does anyone know if the USSR has retrofitted the capsules with the
standard docking adapter?

--- Maximus-CBCS v1.00
 * Origin: The Frisch Tank, Newmarket, Ontario, CANADA (1:250/906)

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

Date: 12 Jul 90 23:53:14 GMT
From: att!tsdiag!ka2qhd![e-mail]  (John Magliacane)
Subject: MicroSat Satellite Status Report




NK6K Provides MICROSAT Bulletin Board System (BBS) Status Report

Harold Price (NK6K) this week has provided the AMSAT News Service (ANS) with a
complete run down on the MICROSAT Bulletin Board System (BBS) software (S/W)
development effort.  Working in close collaboration with Harold is Jeff Ward
(K8KA) at the University of Surry (UoS) on the UO-14 BBS S/W.  The following
is a brief synopsis of the current progress.

It was decided early on to use UO-14 as a testbed for all MICROSAT BBS develop-
ment.  NK6K points out that there are several advantages to this.  First off,
all S/W devloped for UO-14 is completely portable to the MICROSATs due to a
device programmers call high-level Application Programming Interfaces (API).
The APIs hide the differences between the different computer architecture of
the MICROSATs and UO-14.  The APIs perform the "nitty-gritty" tasks that are
peculiar to the hardware of a particular computer system.  For example, one of
the most common task performed by all computer systems is Input/Ouput (I/O)
operations.  Thus, to the programmer it makes little difference if the BBS S/W
he is writing is for the MICROSATs or for the Packet Communication Experiment
(PCE) on UO-14, as long as he uses the APIs.

Another advantage for using UO-14 as a testbed is the 9600 baud
uplink/downlink that it uses.  NK6K says that he can load new S/W in two
passes as compared to eight passes for the MICROSATs.  The MICROSATs use the
much slower but more common 1200 baud.  Also, UO-14 has a completely separate
computer system for the PCE operations.  The UO-14 On-board Computer (OBC)
which controls the satellite is unaffected by what happens with the secondary
PCE computer.  So if the the BBS S/W crashes, UO-14 will continue to operate
normally.  If the BBS S/W causes a crash of the OBC on a MICROSAT, a great
deal of S/W needs to be reloaded.  Although an OBC crash doesn't put a
MICROSAT at great risk, it is inconvenient to the users.  Except for DOVE,
most S/W reloads of a MICROSAT OBC are not very difficult to accomplish.

Lets go down the list of MICROSATs and give the present status for each one:

AO-16

AO-16 is in good shape.  RAM memory tests will be done this week in
preparation for uploading the BBS S/W.  According to NK6K, at the present
time, the BBS S/W for AO-16 is targeted to be installed and operational by
August.  Until that time digipeating operation will be possible.

DO-17

DOVE is still transmitting on S-Band only.  Full recovery has been delayed due
to an unexplained anomaly in the S-Band transmitter.  N4HY has to rely on the
S-Band transmitter because the 2M transmitter blocks the 2M receiver on DOVE.
This anomaly has required N4HY to use his considerable programming skills to
write special Digital Signal Processing (DSP) S/W to work around this problem.
Another problem plauging the DOVE recovery is that N4HY's hastily assembled
S-band station is about 5 dB SNR lower than what is required for reliable
reception.  N4HY has, however, been able to use the high quality S-Band
station of K0RZ in Boulder, Colorado via phone patch during mutually visible
passes for software loading.  N4HY has given the DOVE recovery top priority.
At press time (Saturday July 7), DOVE had again crashed as evidenced by
MBL transmissions from the S-Band beacon.  Analysis was under way to determine
whether the crash was due to a problem in one of the tricky software upload
sessions or, less likely, another hardware problem.  Two meter transmissions
were not expected before Tuesday July 10.

WO-18

WO-18 is in good shape.  The third version of the imaging S/W was uploaded
last week.  The Weber State University (WSU) engineers haved added more
"tunning knobs" to the picture taking S/W in order to improve the contrast of
the earth images.  Addiditonal information has been added to the image header
giving the solar array currents and horizon sensor values when the picture was
snapped.  These added items will provide more information about where the lens
was pointed when the picture was taken.  The impact detector, which was
orginally designed to indicate when WO-18 was hit by micrometeorites, is being
used to verify that the CCD camera iris shutter has clicked.  When the shutter
is snapped, the impact detector instantaneously sees the vibration that the
shutter operations cause in the spacecraft structure.

Each day several images have been downloaded and those who have WeberWare 1.0
can turn the binary data into pictures on CRT screens.  Finally, the 1.2 GHz
Fast Scan TV receiver was tested and the horizontal sync was detected.  A full
image is expected to require more gain and/or much more accurate antenna
pointing.

One good quality picture of earth features has finally been taken and
will be transmitted every evening for the next several days so that WeberWare
1.0 users will be sure to have a chance to capture it.  Other testing will
continue during each day.

LO-19

LO-19 is in good shape.  The RF power output of LO-19 is though to have been
varying because of the simultaneous operation of the CW beacon.  Once the RAM
memory checking S/W has been finished and checked out on AO-16, the same RAM
memory check will be performed on LO-19.  Eventually the AMSAT-LU Group will
take over all the S/W development for LO-19 after the BBS S/W is installed.
At the present time all general housekeeping and monitoring tasks are
performed by the AMSAT-LU team.

--
AMPR : KD2BD @ NN2Z (Neptune, NJ)
UUCP : ucbvax!rutgers!petsd!tsdiag!ka2qhd!kd2bd
       "For every problem, there is one solution which is simple,
       neat and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken

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

Date: 14 Jul 90 21:07:58 GMT
From: [e-mail]  (Daniel Alexander Davis)
Subject: Re: buying Soyuzes

The Soviets might be happy to sell us spacecraft - they are hard
pressed for cash.  It would be one way for Gorbachev to transfer
funding from military to civilian quarters stealthily.  It might be
too public for that - and it might stay with the military as it does
here, but it would be good international publicity.

Dan Davis (is), the Repunzel of the Mathematics Department.
Carnegie Mellon student
Disclaimer - don't look at me, I'm also a music major,
I don't have to know what I'm doing.
[e-mail](arpanet).

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

Date: 14 Jul 90 17:38:00 PDT
From: "1st Lt. Henry S. Cobb" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Wall Street Journal column (115 lines)
To: "space+" <[e-mail]>

[The following is copied without permission from the Wall Street
Journal op-ed page, Friday, July 13, 1990.  My comments follow.]


NASA's Flyboys Have Grown Old and Fat

("Potomac Watch" column by Paul A. Gigot, WSJ, July 13, 1990)

   How many NASA engineers does it take to screw in a light bulb?
Answer:  No one knows, but we'll have to spend $400 billion and travel
to Mars to find out.
   If that's not funny, neither is much else around America's
once-great space agency these days.  The Hubble telescope's problems
and the space shuttle's recent ground have given everyone a chance to
fret about American technology and "decline."  Don't you believe it.
The real story is how an agency that once produced the right stuff
turned into a bureaucracy as hidebound as HUD.
   The last few days I've called around to experts who aren't part of
NASA's space-as-usual club.  They offer a critique that goes beyond
missed tests or faulty designs to NASA itself.  And the White House is
starting to listen.
   On their flight here from the Houston summit Wednesday, Vice
President Dan Quayle and White House chief of staff John Sununu
convened a caucus of space non-conformists.  They included Caltech
scientist Bruce Murray, chancellor of the University of Texas system
Hans Mark, NASA administrator during the Apollo years Tom Paine and
former astronaut Eugene Cernan.  My sources say they talked about "the
need for new thinking."  (Harbinger:  The last person to talk like
that was Mikhail Gorbachev.)
   No one denies that NASA has great technical people.  And just about
everyone, including White House sources, seems to respect current (and
relatively new) NASA Administrator Richard Truly.  The critics say the
system's the bum.
   "The 1960's were anomalous years," says John Logsdon, of George
Washington University's Space Policy Institute.  "NASA was not a
bureaucracy.  Now it is."  According to a study by the Marshall
Institute, the average NASA employee's age in 1963 was 30;  now most
of its senior and middle-managers will be eligible to retire in five
years.  NASA's funding has fallen by two-thirds since Apollo, but its
workforce by only one-third.
   The calcium of self-preservation has settled in the joints.  Mr.
Murray detects "a bureaucratic survival instinct."  The pre-eminent
example is the space shuttle, which NASA designed to have its own
space-launch monopoly.  Sold to Congress as a workhorse capable of 60
flights a year, the fragile bird hasn't ever flown more than nine.
Yet NASA won't even consider space-launch alternatives.  "NASA is less
willing to ask, 'Should we be doing this?'  It's not in their
charter," says Mr. Murray.  Robert Jastrow, the astronomer and founder
of NASA's Goddard Institute, has recommended that key policy decisions
be taken out of NASA's hands altogether and given to an independent
commission.
   Another bad habit is NASA's gold-plated giantism.  Take the Earth
Observing System, the climate-satellite network that budget director
Dick Darman privately calls "the $34 billion thermometer."  These are
the grand pianos of satellites, big, expensive ($3 billion per) and
easily knocked out of tune.  But Albert Wheelon (of the Challenger
Commission) thinks smaller satellites could do most of the same work
for less money.  NASA wants big and politically glamorous, even if
small and boring will more than suffice.
   That's especially true of NASA's space station, a $30 billion
marvel in search of a mission.  As a platform to go to Mars, the
station is the wrong design.  As a science laboratory, it may be
superfluous.  The Journal's Bob Davis now reports that even simple
maintenance will require thousands of hours of space walks a year,
though U.S. astronauts have walked only 400 hours in space ever.
Without rethinking, the station looks like a goner in Congress.
   All of this cries out for reform, but Congress can't see much
beyond the budget.  Al Gore, the Tenessee senator and quote-man of
choice since the Hubble news, is putty in NASA's hands.  His toughest
critique is that "NASA bit off more than it can chew," an excuse for
spending less but keeping the same system.
   For its part, the Bush administration faces a dilemma.  As the most
pro-space administration since Jack Kennedy's, it can now decide to
defend NASA, hoping that the next fiasco occurs on somebody else's
watch.  Or it can lead an effort to shake up or kill the plodding
behemoth that NASA has become.
   Reform is an especially good opportunity for Vice President Quayle,
who could use a substantive issue.  The Veep chairs the
administration's National Space Council, a duty that is actually
written in law.  Reforming NASA would prove he's a player.  The
Council, similar to the space group led by LBJ under Kennedy, is
already staffed with young space reformers.  NASA will argue that any
change could destroy the entire space program, but leaving the program
unchanged will destroy it for certain.
   Space exploration is a worthy government enterprise, in principle,
especially for a nation that has long defined itself by the frontier.
But arthritic bureaucracies don't tame new frontiers.  NASA is even
losing to those ultimate bureaucrats, the Soviets.  Just as housing is
too important to leave to HUD, space is too important to leave to
NASA.

[Context:  The Journal is one of the two or three most influential
newspapers in the U.S.A, and is mandatory reading in the financial
world.  Gigot's column appears every Friday on the op-ed page.  His
column is about as far from demure and decorous as the Journal ever
lets itself get.  He is often accusatory and sarcastic; this column is
comparatively restrained.  One occasionally gets the impression that
he writes things the Journal editors want said, but can't bring
themselves to publish as an official editorial.]

[Prediction:  Most people in positions of power (political and
financial) don't think about space very much.  Most of them _do_ read
the Journal.  This column could wind up becoming the consensus opinion
among people who are very influential but comparatively ignorant about
space.  If that happens, NASA might experience perestroika very
quickly indeed.]

[Please don't flame me for what Gigot said.  If you want to flame
somebody, write a letter to the Journal.  They might even print it.]

--Cheers!  Stu
[e-mail]
(Round up the usual disclaimers ...)

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

Date: 14 Jul 90 23:58:38 GMT
From: usc!cs.utexas.edu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!utzoo![e-mail]  (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: space weapons

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (John Roberts) writes:
>There's a pretty good chance that conventional firearms would work in
>space...
>To what extent are conventional lubricants usable in space?

Oil-based stuff mostly would have too high a vapor pressure and would
disappear, I'd guess.  Teflon-based lubricants should work fine.  Or
you could use low-vapor-pressure oils meant for use in vacuum systems.
--
NFS:  all the nice semantics of MSDOS, | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
and its performance and security too.  |  [e-mail]   utzoo!henry

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

Subject: Join space
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 90 16:44:07 MST
From: [e-mail]

I (Ben Crane) an not a BitNet user but would like to join your interest group.
Thank you.

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

Date: 14 Jul 90 19:57:33 GMT
From: zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uwm.edu!ogicse!unicorn![e-mail]  (Worth Henry A)
Subject: NASA as entertainment ( was - Re: Oppose manned Mars expl... )

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Nick Janow) writes:
>The crew will be selected for their appearance and acting abilities ...

>..., since there wouldn't be time for scientific experiments; (they
>have to prepare for the next sit-com and soap opera). ...
                              ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
   And, don't forget the midnight feed to the Playboy Channel! :-(

   Given the coach-potato mentality of this country, perhaps Bush should
reinstate the Roman Games. Then, NASA could promote the space program on
the basis of the entertainment value of the risks; "See the brave
astronauts crash and burn". And, send scapegoats to the arena; "See the
engineer, who botched Hubble, torn and rendered by a mob of outraged
Netters".

HW -- I'm trying to smile but I just can't quite manage. :-(
7/14/90

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

End of SPACE Digest V12 #71
*******************