Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/pc/text/spacedig/v12_4/v12_478.txt

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Subject: SPACE Digest V12 #478

SPACE Digest                                     Volume 12 : Issue 478

Today's Topics:
             Re: Homebuilt Manned Rockets
             Re: Homebuilt Manned Rockets
              RE: SPACE Digest V12 #468
                  Re: Names
        Re: Hubble Space Telescope (revisited)
             Re: Theories needed on life
              RE: SPACE Digest V12 #468
          Re: more talk about space stations
                  Re: Hubble
              Re: Mammoth Magellan Data
      Hybrid replacements for SRB's (was: Man-rated SRBs

Administrivia:

    Submissions to the SPACE Digest/sci.space should be mailed to
  [e-mail].  Other mail, esp. [un]subscription notices,
  should be sent to [e-mail], or, if urgent, to
             [e-mail]

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

Date: 18 Oct 90 19:04:14 GMT
From: usc!wuarchive!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!caen!math.lsa.umich.edu!sharkey!cfctech!teemc!fmeed1![e-mail]  (Russ Cage)
Subject: Re: Homebuilt Manned Rockets

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Patrick J Draper) writes:
>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Brian Yamauchi) writes:
>>Is there anything inherently more complex about building a manned
>>(suborbital) rocket than building a manned supersonic jet?
>
>I'm sure it would be MUCH more complex than building and operating a jet
>plane. Mercury and Gemini were hardly simple.

Mercury and Gemini had fewer parts than a modern airliner.  The major
differences that I can see are:

1.)    Pressurized life support system is required (no external
    makeup air is available), and

2.)    The main aerodynamic consideration is hypersonic re-entry,
    rather than stall to supersonic handling (fewer and simpler).

The problems for a Mercury seem simpler than for a supersonic airplane.
Remember also that the Germans had most if not all the technology to
put a man into orbit in the 1940's, if they had used it correctly.

>Rocket fuel is more explosive than jet fuel. In fact, a rocket fuel
>explosion can equal the force of a similar weight of TNT.

This is a red herring.  The explosion of nitrocellulose is nearly
as powerful as TNT, but nitro-based powders are used in extremely
simple and cheap machinery to propel bullets every day.  The
handling is well-known and quite safe.

Kerosene-based rocket fuel, RP-1, is almost identical to JP-4 jet fuel.

(I shouldn't be too hard on this guy, he's from Moo U.... ;-)
--
Russ Cage    Ford Powertrain Engineering Development Department
Work:  itivax.iti.org!cfctech!fmeed1!cage   (CHATTY MAIL NOT ANSWERED HERE)
Home:  [e-mail]  (All non-business mail)
Member:  HASA, "S" division.

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

Date: Sun, 21 Oct 90 21:37:32 -0400
From: "Allen W. Sherzer" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Homebuilt Manned Rockets
Newsgroups: sci.space
Cc:

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Patrick J Draper) writes:
>>Is there anything inherently more complex about building a manned
>>(suborbital) rocket than building a manned supersonic jet?

>I'm sure it would be MUCH more complex than building and operating a jet
>plane. Mercury and Gemini were hardly simple.

   "In the realization that manned space exploration has been a very
    high cost undertaking, NASA has conducted research to determine
    the reasons why, for example, the cost of a spacecraft should cost
    orders of magnitude more than simlilar devices, constructed from
    similar materials, employed in other industries. The research pointed
    to no single factor or group of factors (such as specification levels,
    materials, manufacturing methods, for example) which explained the
    differences. The primary cost influence found by the research is
    simply the organization which did the job. Thus, manned spacecraft
    programs had their own unique set of cost determinants, different from
    those of, for example, civilian aircraft, military aircraft, and even
    unmanned spacecraft. Development practices, while generically the same
    from one industry to another, where found to vary according to the
    culture of the organization performing the work"

--  H. Mandell "Barriers to America's future in space and some possible
    remedies" 1988


      Allen

--
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Allen W. Sherzer      |         What should man do but dare?            |
|   [e-mail]         |             - Sir Gawain                        |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+

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

Date: Sun, 21 Oct 90 14:00 CDT
From: Flint Deadbolt <[e-mail]>
Subject: RE: SPACE Digest V12 #468

c

c
/\__
\   \_                          2108 Hayes Street; # 415
 \     \                      Nashville, TN  37203
  \  SUMATRA & ENVIRONS, Ltd.
O  \_       \_
     \    Jon Ciliberto                         "Running at 300 Baud
      <        \                   from the heart of Medan."
       \        <_
    O  \_    CILIBERT@vuctrvax              615.320.1478
     o.   \       \
           >__/\___/

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

Date: 20 Oct 90 22:44:07 GMT
From: mnetor!utzoo![e-mail]  (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Names

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (John Roberts) writes:
>>... The text portion is only in russian
>>but a gazetteer at the end lives latin equivalents.
>
>That's another problem - the character set has changed over the milennia.
>The English alphabet has several significant differences. Cyrillic
>is completely different at least in appearance...

Actually, it takes about an hour to learn the Cyrillic alphabet well enough
to produce recognizable (if often slightly incorrect) pronunciation, the
more so because it is rather closer to being phonetic than ours is.  When
you do this, surprise surprise, an awful lot of the technical words become
recognizable, ignoring the slightly strange endings.
--
The type syntax for C is essentially   | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
unparsable.             --Rob Pike     |  [e-mail]   utzoo!henry

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

Date: 20 Oct 90 15:47:21 GMT
From: uc!cs.umn.edu!kksys!wd0gol!newave![e-mail]  (John A. Weeks III)
Subject: Re: Hubble Space Telescope (revisited)

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:
> Not long ago, our nation's National Aeronatics & Space Administration,
> launched a very interesting piece of equipment into an orbit about the
> planet upon which we live.  It was often said that the equipment would
> revolutionize the way we look at ourselves, our world, and the cosmos.

In a cynical manner, Hubble has already done this.  It has especially
revolutionized how journalists look at NASA.

> "It would allow us to see to the very edge of the universe," our great
> scientists told us.  "It might even unfold the mysteries of life!" one
> other scientist grasped.  It had cost us, the tax-paying people of the
> nation, the grand total sum of one billion dollars.  It was the Hubble
> Space Telescope.

A billion dollars is not all that much money for a space project.
Voyager cost nearly a billion dollars thought its life, and the program
was done on the cheap.  The grand tour proposals would have costed
far more.

The only way to learn how to build space equipment and run space missions
is to send stuff up.  No matter how careful one is, somethings are going
to go wrong.  The real problems that the American space program has is
that it suffers from short term funding problems and NASA seems to have
to learn too many lessons the hard way.

Hubble will yet accomplish its mission parameters.  The big difference
is that scientists will have to work much harder to get the data,
whereas a "perfect" Hubble might have handed the data back on a silver
platter.

-john-

--
===============================================================================
John A. Weeks III               [phone]               [e-mail]
NeWave Communications                ...uunet!rosevax!bungia!wd0gol!newave!john
===============================================================================

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

Date: 21 Oct 90 16:27:48 GMT
From: usc!bbn.com![e-mail]  (Steve Austin)
Subject: Re: Theories needed on life

[e-mail] (Duncan Murdoch) writes:
>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Mike Gobbi) writes:
>>
>>A planet 3 or 4 times the size of earth?  Do you mean 3xmass or 3xradius?
>>
>>In the latter case, we are talking about a 27-G planet!  i think that the
>>only conceivable life forms on this planet would certainly be aquatic.  That
>>way they are relatively immune to the effects of their mass.
>No, a planet with 3 times the Earth's radius, but the same density, would have
>just 3 times the gravitational force at the surface.  The mass would by 27
>times higher, but the inverse square law would reduce that because you'd be
>3 times further from the centre.

Agreed, but a good point made by Mike though. High gravity probably does not
mean massive skeleton/muscles if the organism lives in a high-density
fluid.  The original poster's question was vague, but I think most people
would agree that gravity at the surface would be a key question.

I would think that the progression would be:

High gravity:    The organism would best best off if surrounded in some
        high density fluid. This way it would be supported by
        bouyancy, not by leg muscles/skeletons.

        A key factor in the technological development would be the
        availability of an energy source. For different fluids,
        the mileage would vary - chemical reactions might be hard to
        produce in something like water, but if the fluid was
        chemically active, the high pressure around may help.

        I would not expect these things to be space explorers, due
        to the large amount of energy required to attain escape
        velocity.

Low gravity:    Organisms should have much less difficulty getting around
        and could afford to evolve more sophisticated thinking
        equipment and manipulative equipment.

        I would expect the low gravity people advance technologically
        much more quickly than [all other things being equal] their
        low gravity counterparts.

        Space exploration would be a good deal easier since the
        escape velocity of a planet is (I think) proprtional to
        sqrt(gR) [g = gravity at surface, R = radius of planet]

    Steve Austin

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

Date: Sun, 21 Oct 90 14:03 CDT
From: Flint Deadbolt <[e-mail]>
Subject: RE: SPACE Digest V12 #468

[e-mail] (Michael McNeil) writes:
>In article <[e-mail]>
>[e-mail] writes:
>
>> [ what would humanoid life on high-G planet be like? ]
>It's highly likely that humanoid life wouldn't exist even on a planet
>just like the Earth

It seems the definition of "humanoid" here is basically physiological.  Surely
all that is essentially "human" in human beings can reside in any biological
construct (i.e., Classically Cartesian, I don't think that our physical bodies
go very far to determining our "self." (Kant would beg to differ.))

/\__
\   \_                          2108 Hayes Street; # 415
 \     \                      Nashville, TN  37203
  \  SUMATRA & ENVIRONS, Ltd.
O  \_       \_
     \    Jon Ciliberto                         "Running at 300 Baud
      <        \                   from the heart of Medan."
       \        <_
    O  \_    CILIBERT@vuctrvax              615.320.1478
     o.   \       \
           >__/\___/

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

Date: 18 Oct 90 21:51:46 GMT
From: usc!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!caen!math.lsa.umich.edu!sharkey!cfctech!teemc!fmeed1![e-mail]  (Russ Cage)
Subject: Re: more talk about space stations

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:
> note for AWS: Allen, before you jump in with the amazing LLNL inflatable
>station for only .5 bil, save it, unless you have something new to add.
>please take no offense, but until LLNL gets reasonable on cost figures, no
>one is going to take them seriously. it will probably cost them .5 bil just
>for paperwork to get it going.

As I recall, LLNL explicitly stated they would waive FAR's for their
station, because they drove up the cost.

Calling LLNL's numbers unrealistic because they do not allow enough
money for the paperwork, when they propose doing without, is dishonest.
--
Russ Cage    Ford Powertrain Engineering Development Department
Work:  itivax.iti.org!cfctech!fmeed1!cage   (CHATTY MAIL NOT ANSWERED HERE)
Home:  [e-mail]  (All non-business mail)
Member:  HASA, "S" division.

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

Date: 20 Oct 90 04:32:12 GMT
From: olivea!orc!inews!hopi![e-mail]  (Stephen Strazdus)
Subject: Re: Hubble

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Lon Stowell) writes:
>It is unfortunate that NASA is totally unaware of the meaning of
>the words "Public Relations".   I have seen prints of Hubble
>photos and am fairly impressed.  If they ever fix the sucker
>will likely be overwhelmed.
>
>HOWEVER, I am extremely UNDERWHELMED that none of the photos
>have made it into mainstream media...specifically network TV.

I specifically recall seeing the following on network news programs:

- The picture of the double star discovered during focusing of the
  telescope (before the spherical aberration was announced)
- The picture taken by hubble of super nova 1987a.
- Magellan images of Venus on at least 2 seperate days.
- The picture of Saturn taken by Hubble.

In addition I have seen many HST and Magellan images in Newsweek and the
local papers.

>Is this because the networks refused to show the photo's or
>because no one thought to offer them?

moot question.
--
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Steve Strazdus  |  [e-mail]  |  Insert your favorite .sig here.

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

Date: 22 Oct 90 03:44:40 GMT
From: usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!jato!mars![e-mail]  (Ron Baalke)
Subject: Re: Mammoth Magellan Data

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:
>A graph on a nearby wall states that around March 1991, the
>data returned from Magellan will exceed that returned by all
>other planetary probes combined (pushing 1 trillion bits).
>
>Hmm, let's see, ftp'ing over a 56kbaud link...  :-)
>
The Magellan data will be stored on 60+ CD-ROMs.  One CD-ROM holds
680 megabytes of data.  This is only after 8 months of mapping.  Then when
you include the extended mission....
     ____    _____     ___
     /_ /|  /____/ \  /_ /|
     | | | |  __ \ /| | | |      Ron Baalke         | [e-mail]
  ___| | | | |__) |/  | | |___   Jet Propulsion Lab | [e-mail]
 /___| | | |  ___/    | |/__ /|  M/S 301-355        |
 |_____|/  |_|/       |_____|/   Pasadena, CA 91109 |

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

Date: 18 Oct 90 18:55:44 GMT
From: usc!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!caen!math.lsa.umich.edu!sharkey!cfctech!teemc!fmeed1![e-mail]  (Russ Cage)
Subject: Hybrid replacements for SRB's (was: Man-rated SRBs

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (S Schaper) writes:
>How to the throttleable solids developed by a private US company using LOX for
>the oxidizer measure up in this evaluation?

-    Hybrids still have the entire fuel tank as a combustion chamber.
-    Hybrids would still probably require field joints in the casing.

+    Hybrids are throttleable in real time.
+    Hybrids can be made in-flight restartable.
+    Hybrids are not subject to runaway combustion due to fuel defects.
+    Hybrids can be shut down on command w/o undue hazard.
+    Hybrids are safer to transport, assemble and stack (as in "no danger").
--
Russ Cage    Ford Powertrain Engineering Development Department
Work:  itivax.iti.org!cfctech!fmeed1!cage   (CHATTY MAIL NOT ANSWERED HERE)
Home:  [e-mail]  (All non-business mail)
Member:  HASA, "S" division.

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

End of SPACE Digest V12 #478
*******************