Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/pc/text/spacedig/v15_0/v15no026.txt

Text File | 1993-07-13 | 29KB | 757 lines

Date: Thu, 23 Jul 92 05:01:31
From: Space Digest maintainer <[e-mail]>
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Subject: Space Digest V15 #026
To: Space Digest Readers
Precedence: bulk


Space Digest                Thu, 23 Jul 92       Volume 15 : Issue 026

Today's Topics:
                              Antimatter
            Antimatter (was propulsion questions) (2 msgs)
                      Antiproton-boosted fission
        Astronomy Lab for MS Windows 3.X - BETA TESTERS NEEDED
                          Astronomy Program
                          E-mail newsletters
                              ESA Future
                   first man on moon date and time
                      Galileo Update - 07/21/92
                        If the sun went out...
                    Launch of Sojus TM-15 delayed
  Magellan successors? (was Re: Support Lunar Resource Mapper Too!)
           Nachos (Ted Molczan elements) mirror/backup site
                    Propulsion questions (3 msgs)
     Star Trek and public perception of space/science/engineering
                        Terraforming (2 msgs)
                 UFO-pic from Phobos2-probe posted !
                         Whales and dolphins

    Welcome to the Space Digest!!  Please send your messages to
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----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 23 Jul 92 00:57:59 GMT
From: John Roberts <[e-mail]>
Subject: Antimatter
Newsgroups: sci.space

-From: [e-mail]
-Subject: Re: Antimatter (was propulsion questions)
-Date: 21 Jul 92 07:24:09 GMT

-In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Henry Spencer) writes:
-|> Antimatter isn't a very efficient explosive.  If you dropped an anti-iron
-|> cannonball, it would just sit there and sizzle.  (The radiation would make
-|> the immediate neighborhood very unhealthy, mind you.)

-No.  Dropping an anti-iron cannonball -- or, indeed, exposing it to air
--- would vaporize it in short order.  The antiiron vapor would then quickly
-mix with very hot air, and most of the antimatter would annihilate in
-short order.

OK, guys, so which is it?

And what about a chunk of anti-(ablative heat shield) material?

John Roberts
[e-mail]

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

Date: 22 Jul 92 20:06:49 GMT
From: Bob Martin <[e-mail]>
Subject: Antimatter (was propulsion questions)
Newsgroups: sci.space

[e-mail] (Phil G. Fraering) writes:

|[e-mail] (SCOTT I CHASE) writes:

|>In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Henry Spencer) writes...
|>>
|>>Antimatter isn't a very efficient explosive.  If you dropped an anti-iron
|>>cannonball, it would just sit there and sizzle.  (The radiation would make

|>This doesn't sound right.  What makes you think that the energy release would
|>be so slow?  The outer surface would be continuously annihilating with
|>air and whatever surface you drop it on.  It's not at all clear that
|>things would be so nice as you describe.


|It's called the Leidenfrost effect. The idea is, the outer layer blows
|off and creates a thin vacuum-density layer of plasma insulating the
|antimatter from the surrounding atmosphere...

|BTW, Antimatter should also be rather stable at low temperatures.
|Some of the positrons should boil off and be annihilated, leaving the
|rest of the antimatter with a net negative charge. This should keep
|electrons away, while keeping enough positrons bound to the set of
|molecules to "screen" away protons and other positive nuclei...

I'm beginning to think that this stuff is so stable that you could use
it as a food additive.  Plop, plop, fizz, fizz, where is the kaboom it
gives.

Is antimatter too stable to be used as a propellent?  Would we have to
work hard just to get sufficient annihilations to do useful work?


--
+---Robert C. Martin---+-RRR---CCC-M-----M-| R.C.M. Consulting         |
| [e-mail] |-R--R-C----M-M-M-M-| C++/C/Unix Engineering    |
|     (Uncle Bob.)     |-RRR--C----M--M--M-| OOA/OOD/OOP Training      |
+----------------------+-R--R--CCC-M-----M-| Product Design & Devel.   |

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

Date: 22 Jul 92 20:00:37 GMT
From: Bob Martin <[e-mail]>
Subject: Antimatter (was propulsion questions)
Newsgroups: sci.space

[e-mail] (SCOTT I CHASE) writes:

|In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Henry Spencer) writes...
|>
|>Antimatter isn't a very efficient explosive.  If you dropped an anti-iron
|>cannonball, it would just sit there and sizzle.  (The radiation would make
|>the immediate neighborhood very unhealthy, mind you.)  The security needed
|>to prevent *accidentally* dropping stuff that is worth billions of dollars
|>a gram should mostly suffice as protection against simple forms of malice.
|>It is, in any case, not something you can put in your pocket, because it's
|>stable only inside a substantial piece of equipment.

|This doesn't sound right.  What makes you think that the energy release would
|be so slow?  The outer surface would be continuously annihilating with
|air and whatever surface you drop it on.  It's not at all clear that
|things would be so nice as you describe.

I expect that the heat generated from the initial annihilations would
melt and then vaporize the cannonball fairly rapidly.  I think the
exposed surface area would rize at a geometric rate.  So, perhaps the
boom would be relatively quick.



--
+---Robert C. Martin---+-RRR---CCC-M-----M-| R.C.M. Consulting         |
| [e-mail] |-R--R-C----M-M-M-M-| C++/C/Unix Engineering    |
|     (Uncle Bob.)     |-RRR--C----M--M--M-| OOA/OOD/OOP Training      |
+----------------------+-R--R--CCC-M-----M-| Product Design & Devel.   |

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

Date: 23 Jul 92 01:12:26 GMT
From: John Roberts <[e-mail]>
Subject: Antiproton-boosted fission
Newsgroups: sci.space

-From: [e-mail] (Blake Philip Wood)
-Subject: Antiproton-Boosted Microfission (was: Antimatter ...)
-Date: 22 Jul 92 13:05:55 GMT

-All the postings so far have missed the most realistic application of
-antimatter to space propulsion:  antiproton-boosted microfission.
-This is being investigated by a number of folks at Penn State, in
-collaboration with some people at Phillips Lab in Albuquerque.
-The Penn State lead is R.A. Lewis.  The reference I happen to have
-on hand is from Nuclear Science and Engineering, (109) p.411 (1991).
-The basic idea is that hitting a U235 or Plutonium nucleus with an
-antiproton makes it so unstable that you get an average of 16 neutrons
-out of the resulting fission, as opposed to the usual 2-3.  This means
-that the critical mass which can be completely fissioned is very
-small.
-The article above quotes
-results from another paper which suggests that fissioning one
-70mg Plutonium pellet per second in this fashion, each event requiring
-only 2e8 antiprotons, could yield 5GW of power in a complete propulsion
-system with a specific mass of only 0.07 kg/kW.

Great! Now we can build hand-held tactical nuclear machine guns. (One shot
destroys a building several miles away.)  :-(  (Another E.E. Smith idea,
this time from the Skylark series.)

Maybe they ought to be careful of who gets hold of the technology.

John Roberts
[e-mail]

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

Date: 22 Jul 92 12:40:55 GMT
From: FRANK NEY <tnc!m0102>
Subject: Astronomy Lab for MS Windows 3.X - BETA TESTERS NEEDED
Newsgroups: sci.space

Add me as well, please:

Francis A. Ney, Jr.         Computer: Clone 386-33 with copr
101 S Harrison Road                   8 meg
Sterling, VA  22170-2421              DOS 5 and OS/2 2.0
[phone]                        VGA 512k
                                   Drives:  43M and 105M
--
The Next Challenge - Public Access Unix in Northern Va. - Washington D.C.
703-803-0391 To log in for trial and account info.

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

Date: Wed, 22 Jul 92 11:38:35 PDT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Astronomy Program

Hi Everybody,

  I joined the list after a friend told me about it.
Anyway, I missed to info about the Astronomy Program
for Windows.  Can someone email it to me privately,
unless there is enough people still interested to
post it here again...

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

Date: Wed, 22 Jul 92 17:10:21 GMT
From: Eric Wininger <[e-mail]>
Subject: E-mail newsletters
Newsgroups: sci.space

Are there any newsletters that are disseminated through e-mail relating
to the topics of astronomy/space science/NASA Headline News. If these
newsletters do exist, could someone please tell me how I could
subscribe to them. Please respond via e-mail, and I will summarize
all of the replies to the net.

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

Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1992 20:57:56 GMT
From: Tom Baltzer <[e-mail]>
Subject: ESA Future
Newsgroups: sci.space

I heard today that ESA's ERS-1 Satellite has been down since July 16th
or so.   Anyone else hear this?   Anyone know the scoop?  It appears that
they are being fairly tight lipped about it, (given this thread it's not
too surprising).  Any info would be appreciated.


Tom.

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

Date: 22 Jul 92 19:52:30 GMT
From: Marc Sarrel <[e-mail]>
Subject: first man on moon date and time
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Henry Spencer) writes:

   2256 EDT 20 July 1969.  The TV coverage was live (well, subject to the
   speed-of-light lag...).

Hey, Neil just made it in Prime Time coast to coast. :-)
--
Marc Sarrel            "Strange as it seems,
Jet Propulsion Laboratory     There's been a run of crazy dreams,
[e-mail]         And a man who can interpret could go far --
                 Could become a star."

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

Date: 22 Jul 92 18:11:12 GMT
From: Jack Hudler <[e-mail]>
Subject: Galileo Update - 07/21/92
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:
>Forwarded from Bill O'Neil, Galileo Project Manager
>
>     Today, July 21, 1992, the turn to the warming attitude in preparation for
>the Dual Drive Actuator (DDA) pulse is scheduled to begin at approximately
>10:57 PDT.  The first of the two Dual Drive Actuator pulse turn ons is
>scheduled at 12:46 PDT for approximately a 2-second duration.

This pulsing method, is its frequency fixed or are they going to vary it.
I understand that this method is solely for driving the motor in a PWM
mode in order to get more power to the actuator, correct?
Seems to me that varying the pulse freq. would cause the antenna array
to vibrate through its natural resonance. This assumes the motor could
have such effects.
This might be safer than trying to shake the spacecraft.

--
Jack Hudler - Computer Support Corporation - Dallas,Texas - [e-mail]

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

Date: 23 Jul 92 01:27:26 GMT
From: John Roberts <[e-mail]>
Subject: If the sun went out...
Newsgroups: sci.space

-From: [e-mail] (Sherwood Botsford)
-Subject: Re: If the sun went out-how long life survive?
-Date: 20 Jul 92 19:31:16 GMT
-Organization: University Of Alberta, Edmonton Canada

-A first approximation could be to look at the cooling rate when the sun is
-turned off each night.  If the air is clear, this is typically 10-15 C.  With
-heavy overcast it's 5 C.  If 0 happens to be in the range, you can deduct about
-4-6 degrees from that range due to latent heat effects.

-Using those two as bounds, it would take 3-5 weeks before atmospheric gasses
-started to liquify.  However, most of the civilized world would stop in a week.
Radiative heat loss is roughly a function of the fourth power of absolute
temperature. So as the temperature went down, the rate of cooling would
also decrease.

Also, the oceans contain a tremendous amount of heat, which would take a long
time to dissipate (even before freezing).

If the cooling leads to a change in the albedo, this would also affect heat
loss (the higher the albedo, the slower the loss).

John Roberts
[e-mail]

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

Date: 22 Jul 92 22:27:55 GMT
From: Rainer Kracht <[e-mail]>
Subject: Launch of Sojus TM-15 delayed
Newsgroups: sci.space

 Launch of Sojus TM-15 delayed
 -----------------------------

 According to Radio Moscow, the launch of Sojus TM-15/Antares will
 be on July 27 at 06h08m UTC (one day later than previously announced).

 Rainer Kracht
 [e-mail]

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

Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1992 17:37:47 GMT
From: "Phil G. Fraering" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Magellan successors? (was Re: Support Lunar Resource Mapper Too!)
Newsgroups: sci.space

[e-mail] (Doug Mohney) writes:

>In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey) writes:

>>Flying a Magellan-type mission to Mars or the Moon would be neat, too,
>>but synthetic-aperture radar demands a heavy committment of
>>tracking-network resources.

>Why?

Because there is the possibility that subsurface features could be
resolved?

--
Phil Fraering [e-mail] where the x is a number from 1-5.
Phone: [phone]
"There are still 201969 unread articles in 1278 groups" - nn message
"57 channels and nothing on" - Bruce Springsteen

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

Date: 22 Jul 92 21:41:14 GMT
From: Cliff Yamamoto <[e-mail]>
Subject: Nachos (Ted Molczan elements) mirror/backup site
Newsgroups: sci.astro,sci.space

Please add this to the FAQ.

A mirror/backup site has been created for nachos.ssesco.com which typically
carries Ted Molczan's orbital elements from his BBS.  The anonymous FTP
site is as follows:

Name:     kilroy.jpl.nasa.gov
Address:  128.149.1.165
Aliases:  jpl-fmc-gw.jpl.nasa.gov

The nasa elements will be located in:

~ftp/pub/space/elements/nasa

Ted Molczan's elements will be located in:

~ftp/pub/space/elements/molczan

This site is NOT temporary.  Once nachos is repaired, kilroy will be a mirror
site to reduce loading on nachos and to perhaps archive the elements sets for
a longer period (there are no foreseen disk usage problems on kilroy).

Chris Elmquist will be fowarding the elements to kilroy which are automagically
placed into the appropriate FTP directory.

If you have any questions/comments/complaints about this mirror site, please
email me.

Regards,
Cliff Yamamoto
---------------------------------------+---------------------------------------
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          [e-mail]|         1 [phone] - fax
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Packet:   KA6JRG@W6VIO.#SOCA.CA.USA.NA
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
USnail:   Clifford K. Yamamoto - KA6JRG      Jet Propelled La-bore-atore-ee
          4800 Oak Grove Drive               M/S 238-737, Section 333
          Pasadena, Calif.  91109

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

Date: 22 Jul 92 19:55:55 GMT
From: Bob Martin <[e-mail]>
Subject: Propulsion questions
Newsgroups: sci.space

[e-mail] (Nick Haines) writes:

>In article <rmartin.711737055@yosemite> [e-mail] (Bob Martin) writes:

>   [about a black-hole drive]

>   Can anybody tell us the efficiency of this with respect to a fusion
>   drive?

>I can guarantee that the answer to that question is "no". I mean, it
>might be a neat idea, but we're not going to have a decent figure for
>the efficiency of it until we've actually got a small black hole to
>play with.

Allright then, does anybody have a theoretical model that might shed
some miniscule light on this subject?   (Sheesh!)


--
+---Robert C. Martin---+-RRR---CCC-M-----M-| R.C.M. Consulting         |
| [e-mail] |-R--R-C----M-M-M-M-| C++/C/Unix Engineering    |
|     (Uncle Bob.)     |-RRR--C----M--M--M-| OOA/OOD/OOP Training      |
+----------------------+-R--R--CCC-M-----M-| Product Design & Devel.   |

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

Date: 22 Jul 92 22:35:23 GMT
From: Steinn Sigurdsson <[e-mail]>
Subject: Propulsion questions
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <rmartin.711834955@thor> [e-mail] (Bob Martin) writes:


   [e-mail] (Nick Haines) writes:

   >In article <rmartin.711737055@yosemite> [e-mail] (Bob Martin) writes:

   >   [about a black-hole drive]

   >   Can anybody tell us the efficiency of this with respect to a fusion
   >   drive?

   >I can guarantee that the answer to that question is "no". I mean, it
   >might be a neat idea, but we're not going to have a decent figure for
   >the efficiency of it until we've actually got a small black hole to
   >play with.

   Allright then, does anybody have a theoretical model that might shed
   some miniscule light on this subject?   (Sheesh!)


Penrose mechanism. Can't remember actual number but you recover
about 30% of rest mass energy. Main problem is that minimum stable
mass is uncomfortably heavy - particularly if you want a primordial
black hole that's been around a Hubble time - that's if Hawking's
right.
    Of course if he is, and you can _create_ a  m < m_HubbleBH
black hole you recover almost 100% of the rest mass as it evaporates
;-)

|  Steinn Sigurdsson    |I saw two shooting stars last night        |
|  Lick Observatory    |I wished on them but they were only satellites    |
|[e-mail]|Is it wrong to wish on space hardware?        |
| "standard disclaimer"    |I wish, I wish, I wish you'd care - B.B. 1983    |

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

Date: 23 Jul 92 01:32:11 GMT
From: John Roberts <[e-mail]>
Subject: Propulsion questions
Newsgroups: sci.space

-From: [e-mail] (Sherwood Botsford)
-Subject: Re: Propulsion questions
-Date: 20 Jul 92 19:39:55 GMT
-Organization: University Of Alberta, Edmonton Canada

-> (if you have only a microgram of protons in your one-metre bottle, the
-> potential energy is as high as the mass energy).
->
-> Nick Haines [e-mail]

-Is this then a means of storing energy at higher densities than merely having
-it as mass?  (Anti protons, heck, we'll just stuff a pound of electrons into a
-soda straw.  Point it away from the direction you want to go, and snip off the
-end...)

The mass of the bottle + contents goes up by the mass-equivalent of the
energy it took to force the contents into the bottle.

John Roberts
[e-mail]

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

Date: 22 Jul 92 19:58:55 GMT
From: SCOTT I CHASE <[e-mail]>
Subject: Star Trek and public perception of space/science/engineering
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Phil G. Fraering) writes...
>
>>No need.  I'll stand up and ask it.  It is such a ridiculous question?
>
>Yes. If we are going to live in fear of constantly wiping out
>totally unrecognizable life forms we might as well all give up
>and mass suicide now. True, we don't know whether or not Mars

I think you're overreacting just a little.  All I suggested is that we
use some care before contaminating or sterilizing some planet which might
harbor life that we don't immediately recognize as such.  I'm sorry
if that interrupts your plan for the new interplanetary highway offramps,
but I don't think the locals want you to raze their neighborhoods just
so that you can stay on schedule.

Besides, taking the time to make sure we understand the consequences of
our actions might yield tremendous scientific gains and make it easier
for use to deal with similar situations in the future.  If there is
abundant life in our neighborhood of the galaxy, it pays to start out
our exploration of nearby planets with some respect for the life we
might find there.  It might generate some reciprocal respect which we
might well be in need of in the future.

No one suggested but you suggested that we should never move for fear
of obliterating some society of bacteria.  And I fail to see the objection to
recognizing the limitations of our knowledge and the harm we might cause
to ourselves and others by acting precipitously.

-Scott

--------------------
Scott I. Chase            "The question seems to be of such a character
[e-mail]        that if I should come to life after my death
                and some mathematician were to tell me that it
                had been definitely settled, I think I would
                immediately drop dead again."      - Vandiver

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

Date: Wed, 22 Jul 92 17:02:20 BST
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Terraforming

Dr. Zubrin pointed out some interesting facts in his luncheon talk at
the 1992 ISDC.

If you raise the temperature of Mars by ~ 5C, it will go into a
runaway greenhouse that will not stop until all the CO2 is gaseous.

This will leave you with ~ 5psi CO2 atmosphere at ~50F with most
water in the liquid state. It will take less than 10 years to occur.

He had some very interesting graphs that showed how very close Mars
is to a lower of two unstable points. I pointed out to him that
because of the orbital changes in Mars over time, this could well
happen naturally during the peak of the next "warm" cycle.

He stated that a nuclear power plant in the GW range synthesizing and
releasing NH4 would be sufficient to raise the temp by the requisite
5C in a short time.

He suggested a faster method would be to use 4 Nerva class engines to
move a large comet to impact. The extra gases would be enough to
raise the temparture past the unstable point.

Once the runaway occurs, the system is stable in the new
configuration. Ie, Mars is metastable, it is in the lower
"uninhabitable" state and it is very close to the pushover to fall
into the the "habitable" state.

An O2 atmosphere would take generations however. But with free water
and lots of CO2 and mild temperatures, plants will get on just fine
and will do the job with no further intervention.

Humans could walk freely with nothing more than a scuba mask.

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

Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1992 19:38:31 GMT
From: Bill Seward <[e-mail]>
Subject: Terraforming
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] writes:
>Dr. Zubrin pointed out some interesting facts in his luncheon talk at
>the 1992 ISDC.
>
>If you raise the temperature of Mars by ~ 5C, it will go into a
>runaway greenhouse that will not stop until all the CO2 is gaseous.
[ technical details tossed]

OK, let's grant that we could perform these actions with current technology,
given sufficient political will/$$.  Since Mars has less gravity (no flames,
I know that isn't the right way to put it), how long could we expect this
new atmosphere to last?  Generations, centuries, what?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Bill Seward               |                                                 |
| [e-mail] | Pithy saying wanted.  Inquire within.           |
| [e-mail]     |                                                 |
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

Date: Wed, 22 Jul 92 23:40:14 GMT
From: Colby Kraybill <[e-mail]>
Subject: UFO-pic from Phobos2-probe posted !
Newsgroups: alt.alien.visitors,sci.space,alt.paranormal,sci.skeptic

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Stefan Hartmann) writes:
>
>The UFO is approximately 15 and 1/2 miles long !
>

I am also curious as to how the size of the object was determined.

After some more poking around,

Phobos has the shape of an ellipsoid, whose major axis are 27.9 km, and
19km.  That is 16 miles by 11 miles.  If the measurements of the object are
correct, this could *easily* be Phobos.

Deimos is only only 15 km along it's major axes.


--
Colby Kraybill
Space and Planetary Image Facility
University of New Mexico

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

Date: 23 Jul 92 00:53:17 GMT
From: John Roberts <[e-mail]>
Subject: Whales and dolphins
Newsgroups: sci.space

-From: [e-mail]
-Subject: Re: Whales and dolphins
-Date: 22 Jul 92 18:33:49 GMT

-The social structure of dolphins is among the most complex on Earth,
-right up there with Homo Sapiens and Pan.
                                      ---
Chimpanzees? They also have a very complex (and violent) social structure.

-Dolphins form small cooperative groups that will sometimes form
-coalitions with other cooperative groups. What is interesting is that
-they may be the only other species that understands the double-cross
-in the Machiavellian sense.

-They will work with a group until it becomes in their interest to
-work with yet another group against the first group.

I don't doubt you're right, but other less intelligent animals will sometimes
do this too, particularly the "bachelor groups" as you describe. I've heard of
groups of male lions attacking a dominant male to get territory or mates,
then fighting among themselves. There are extensive studies of possible
evolutionary incentives to form specific behavior patterns.

-So much for the peaceful, lovable porpoises... But they definitely
-are far, far up the scale of social evolution.

At least they tend to be well-disposed toward humans.

Speaking of behavior patterns and cultures, E.E. Smith did a really interesting
job of them in the Lensman series. Dozens of possible ET cultures, vividly
described but in an unobtrusive way, and most of them fairly believable.
In fact in "Masters of the Vortex", a novel placed in the setting of the
Lensman universe, he describes two cultures, both intelligent and sympathetic,
yet each acting in ways that are very harmful to the other, because the
physical makeup of the two cultures is so different that neither is aware that
the other exists. Heinlein apparently learned a lot from Smith (he wrote at
least one article praising Smith as a pioneer in SF), and this theme is
reflected in some of his novels, as well as the general theme of
misunderstandings between cultures. This is a case where the speculations of
science fiction have had a strong influence on the approach toward scientific
research (SETI).

John Roberts
[e-mail]

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

Date: 
P
From: 
P

Date: Wed, 22 Jul 92 16:51:51 BST
From: [e-mail]
Received: by NeXT Mailer (1.63)
To: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: "Inertial" propulsion
Status: RO

About two years ago an Japanese physicist published a paper in which
he seemed to show a measurable change in weight of a spinning
gyroscope. The paper was good enough to survive peer review in a
major journal (Physics A or B I think)

It has not been replicated to my knowledge, and may even have been
proved to be artifact by now. Otherwise there would be a hell of a
lot more being heard about it.

That is the only "scientific" mention of the rotational to linear
motion idea in recent years.


There are, of course, the drill-bit-on-a-balance types, of which
there is one practitioner who seems to show up in the pseudo science
literature a great deal. They are heard from a great deal more.

But as to any hardcore experimental evidence? .... Nope.

As to theoretical backing? Don't even ASK a theoritician. They'll
bite your kneecaps off.

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

End of Space Digest Volume 15 : Issue 026
------------------------------