Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/pc/text/spacedig/v15_0/v15no094.txt

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Date: Tue, 11 Aug 92 05:04:25
From: Space Digest maintainer <[e-mail]>
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Subject: Space Digest V15 #094
To: Space Digest Readers
Precedence: bulk


Space Digest                Tue, 11 Aug 92       Volume 15 : Issue 094

Today's Topics:
                             [e-mail]
                   Capsule location list (at last!)
           Energiya's role in Space Station assem (6 msgs)
                 FINAL CALL FOR PAPERS - OPTICAL SETI
                          Home made rockets
   HST management, Earth pointing (was Re: Hubble used for spying?)
       Oxygen pills for EVA (was Re: Medicine for space walks)
                          What is the ASRM??

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

Date: Mon, 10 Aug 92 15:04:00 BST
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [e-mail]

> OK we will do it. How much will it cost? A billion? Two? Five? It's
> still worth it.
>


Ah.. Allan... There is an old saying,

    "A billion dollars here, a billion dollars there and pretty
     soon it adds up to real money."

I agree with your basic scenario. and have a gut feel that you are
right... but I think you should build a spread sheet and start
plugging the numbers into it. The complexity of the systems being
discussed is far too great for reliance on a single column of figures
unless they are distalled column totals from a real model. If you
have access to Lotus Improv on the NeXT I'd recommend it for model
building. It's *WONDERFUL*.


I would recommend three cases per model (what I've always done when
assisting in preparation of such things for vulture capitalists):
best-case, worst case and expected case. ie, most things go right,
things go to hell or things go pretty much according to what good
engineering and financial judgement would dictate.

Because of the speculative nature of this, you may need to try
several families of such estimates. There have been so many potential
models discussed that I am hardly sure what ANYONE is talking about
on this thread anymore.

You then need to do a bit of sensitivity analysis on the results. For
example, if the price of the booster changes by 10%, what is the
bottom line impact? It could be nil or it could destroy the model.
(Not that I expect this particular item would have that effect.)

Your worst case should include all the billion dollar extras you've
mentioned in the last couple weeks.

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

Date: 10 Aug 92 15:35:30 GMT
From: Aero Student Account <[e-mail]>
Subject: Capsule location list (at last!)
Newsgroups: sci.space

     A long time ago, someone asked about the present locations of
some capsules; I said I had a list and would post it in a few days.
Well, after a month, I finally found the list.

     My main source is an article titled "Where Have All the
Spacecraft Gone?" from the October, 1985 issue of _Space_World_.
I hope I'm not breaking copyright laws by publishing the list.
There's some good copy in the article, too; it's probably worth
digging up if you can find it at your local library.

     If anyone has any more up to date information on any of these,
I'd like to know.

     Full citations are only given for the first capsule in the
list at a particular location.  Later listings are abbreviated.

Abbreviations:

ASRC  - Alabama Space & Rocket Center, Huntsville, AL
JSC   - Johnson Space Center, Houston, TX
KSC   - Kennedy Space Center, Cape Canaveral, FL
LM    - Lunar Module
LTA   - Lunar Training Article
MA    - Mercury - Atlas
MR    - Mercury - Redstone
NASM  - National Air and Space Museum, Washington, D.C.
USAFM - United States Air Force Museum, Wright-Patterson AFB, OH


Spacecraft                         Location

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

Mercury #1                         Goddard Museum, Roswell, NM

Mercury MA-1                       Recovered in 1981.  In storage
                                    in Kissimee, FL.  Owner
                                    undetermined.

Mercury "Adios M.F."               Oklahoma Aviation & Space Hall
                                    of Fame, Oklahoma City, OK (*)

Mercury MR-2                       KSC

Mercury MR-3 "Freedom 7"           NASM

Mercury #9                         North Carolina Museum of Life
                                    and Science, Durham, NC

Mercury MA-6 "Frienship 7"         NASM

Mercury MA-7 "Faith 7"             Hong Kong Space Museum, Hong
                                    Kong

Mercury MA-8 "Sigma 7"             ASRC

Mercury MA-9 "Aurora 7"            JSC

Mercury #10                        Kansas Cosmosphere and Discovery
                                    Center, Hutchinson, KS

Mercury #17 (?)                    Hall of Science, Queens, NY

Mercury #12B                       National Luchtvaart Museum,
                                    Schipol, Netherlands

Mercury #14                        NASA Langley Research Center,
                                    Hampton, VA

Mercury #15B                       NASA Ames Research Center,
                                    Mountain View, CA

Mercury #19                        Swiss Museum of Transport,
                                    Lucerne, Switzerland

Gemini 1A (?)                      Hall of Science, Queens, NY

Gemini 1B "El Kabong"              Michigan Space Center,
                                    Jackson, MI

Gemini 2                           USAF Space Museum, Cape
                                    Canaveral, FL

Gemini MSHO #1890                  ASRC

Gemini 2A                          Kansas Cosmosphere & Discovery
                                    Center

Gemini (unknown #)                 USAFM

Gemini 3 "Molly Brown"             Grissom Memorial Museum,
                                    Mitchell, IN

Gemini (unknown #)                 Florence Air & Missile Museum,
                                    Florence, SC

Gemini 4                           NASM

Gemini 5                           JSC

Gemini 6A                          McDonnell Planetarium,
                                    St. Louis, MO

Gemini 7                           NASM

Gemini 8                           Neil Armstrong Museum,
                                    Wapakoneta, OH

Gemini 9A                          KSC

Gemini 10                          Swiss Museum of Transport

Gemini 11                          NASA Ames

Gemini 12                          NASA Goddard Space Flight
                                    Center, Greenbelt, MD

Gemini Paraglider                  Manchester Air & Space Museum,
                                    Manchester, England

Apollo 1                           (Article lists Langley; I
                                    believe it was placed in the
                                    Titan silo with Challenger's
                                    debris)

Apollo 2                           Kansas Cosmosphere

Apollo 4                           NC Museum of Life and Science

Apollo 6                           Fernbank Science Center,
                                    Atlanta, GA (**)

Apollo 7                           National Museum of Science &
                                    Technology, Ottowa, Canada

Apollo 8                           Chicago Museum of Science &
                                    Technology, Chicago, IL

Apollo 9                           Michigan Space Center

Apollo 10                          Science Museum, London, England

Apollo 11                          NASM

Apollo 12                          NASA Langley

Apollo 13                          Musee de l'Air, Paris, France

Apollo 14                          (Article lists Rockwell, to be
                                    transferred to LA County Museum
                                    later in '85; did it make it?)

Apollo 15                          USAFM

Apollo 16                          ASRC

Apollo 17                          JSC

LTA-1                              Cradle of Aviation Museum,
                                    Garden City, NY

TM-3                               Junkyard near KSC

LM-2                               NASM


LTA-3                              ASRC

LTA-8                              JSC

LM-9                               KSC

LM-13 (for Apollo 18)              Cradle of Aviation Museum

LM-14 (for Apollo 19)              Franklin Institute,
                                    Philadelphia, PA

Skylab 1B                          NASM

Skylab (unknown #)                 Junkyard near KSC

Skylab 2                           Naval Aviation Museum,
                                    Pensacola, FL

Skylab 3                           NASA Ames

Skylab 4                           NASM

Apollo-Soyuz                       KSC

Apollo-Soyuz 1B                    NASM


Footnotes:
----------

(*)  I'm including this note since OKC is my home town.  "Adios,
      M.F." is a boilerplate Mercury, painted in a checkerboard
      pattern of dayglow orange and white.  Apparently, it was
      dropped about 100 times from aircraft to test the parachute
      system.  If you're in the city, go to the museum.  The
      capsule isn't worth the trip by itself, but we also have
      full-scale mockups of Mercury, Gemini, Apollo CSM and Apollo
      LM vehicles.  An Apollo CM simulator (used most recently for
      ASTP) is also there.  The museum has an extensive collection
      of Tom Stafford's memorabilia.

(**) About 15 years ago, there was an Apollo CM at the Omniplex in
      Oklahoma City (in the same building as the museum mentioned
      above).  The only number I ever saw associated with it was
      Apollo 6.  Can someone tell me if the capsule that the was on
      loan here was in fact Apollo 6?


     I hope this list is useful to you netters.  Again, I apologize
for posting it so late.

--------
Jonathan A. Bishop
[e-mail]

(No, that's not the address this was mailed from, but that's where
replies should be directed.)

"Yippee!  That may have been a small one for Neil,
 but it was a big one for me."
                            --Pete Conrad

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

Date: 10 Aug 92 17:44:21 GMT
From: "Allen W. Sherzer" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Energiya's role in Space Station assem
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Matthew DeLuca) writes:

>I agree, the deficit needs to be reduced, and soon.

Only not by reducing NASA pork.

>However, one of the
>selling points for Allen's plan is that savings from using his tricks and
>gimmicks will be spent on other space hardware, such as a lunar base and
>further planetary exploration.

Since these will open the space frontier and produce far more tax income,
it seems a good idea.

>My point was that if an Energia blows up
>and takes half the station hardware with it, the space station is going to
>be scrapped and the money is going to get yanked over to housing or veteran's
>medical benefits.

Not if this assumption is build in from day one. They aren't idiots, if you
put a plan together and show they can save money even if some payloads
blow up, they will go for it.

Now it you tell them that everything will be perfect and then it blows up,
they start to wonder.

>Another way to look at the original discussion is this: we (hopefully) learned
>from Challenger that putting all of our eggs in one basket is a bad idea.

And yet you so strongly oppose efforts to free our infrastructure from
Shuttle.

>Unfortunately, Allen is wanting to repeat the same mistake by (a) piling
>everything onto an Energia, and

As opposed to piling everything on Shuttle.

>(b) having his entire space capability
>revolve around Freedom.

Your proposal has the entire space capability revolve around Shuttle.

>If an Energia with Freedom on it blows, we can forget
>about the space station.

Not true.

>If the station does get assembled and for whatever
>reason is unusable, such as structural failure, meteor strike, or a horribly
>screwed-up docking attempt, our entire meaningful space capability will have
>gone down the toilet.

If Freedom goes down the toilet, my approach will leave us two to three
HLV's, cheaper MLV's, launch costs cut by 90% (compared to the Shuttle),
and (presumably) access to Mir while we build the next station.

If Shuttle goes down the toilet, we got nothing. We can't even get to
Freedom since only the Shuttle was deemed acceptable for transport.

Since the first option above has backups for everything and doesn't
depend on any one vehicle, I think it is best.

>I like to think that we have learned from the past and
>know to keep our space capability distributed.

But only so long as it is distributed with Shuttle and only Shuttle?

   Allen
--
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Allen W. Sherzer | "If they can put a man on the Moon, why can't they     |
|  [e-mail]     |  put a man on the Moon?"                               |
+----------------------256 DAYS TO FIRST FLIGHT OF DCX----------------------+

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

Date: 10 Aug 92 17:12:45 GMT
From: Matthew DeLuca <[e-mail]>
Subject: Energiya's role in Space Station assem
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:
>In <[e-mail]> Matthew DeLuca writes:
>>Allen, why won't you understand that there is more involved than simple
>>finance here?  You can 'save' $3 billion, but you better be happy spending
>>that $3 billion on social welfare programs, because it sure as hell won't be
>>spent in space.

> Without wishing to buy into US politics, I will merely point out
>that you are being pretty free with other people's money here. There is
>no requirement that any savings be spent elsewhere, as I understand that
>the US has a significant budget deficit which could do with a bit of
>help.

I agree, the deficit needs to be reduced, and soon.  However, one of the
selling points for Allen's plan is that savings from using his tricks and
gimmicks will be spent on other space hardware, such as a lunar base and
further planetary exploration.  My point was that if an Energia blows up
and takes half the station hardware with it, the space station is going to
be scrapped and the money is going to get yanked over to housing or veteran's
medical benefits.

Another way to look at the original discussion is this: we (hopefully) learned
from Challenger that putting all of our eggs in one basket is a bad idea.
Unfortunately, Allen is wanting to repeat the same mistake by (a) piling
everything onto an Energia, and (b) having his entire space capability
revolve around Freedom.  If an Energia with Freedom on it blows, we can forget
about the space station.  If the station does get assembled and for whatever
reason is unusable, such as structural failure, meteor strike, or a horribly
screwed-up docking attempt, our entire meaningful space capability will have
gone down the toilet.  I like to think that we have learned from the past and
know to keep our space capability distributed.
--
Matthew DeLuca                      "I'd hire the Dorsai, if I knew their
Georgia Institute of Technology      P.O. box."
Office of Information Technology                - Zebediah Carter,
Internet: [e-mail]              _The Number of the Beast_

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

Date: 10 Aug 92 17:50:15 GMT
From: Matthew DeLuca <[e-mail]>
Subject: Energiya's role in Space Station assem
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Allen W. Sherzer) writes:
>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Matthew DeLuca) writes:

>>Scenario A, of course, since a failure in Scenario B results in the loss of
>>a third or a half of the station hardware, resulting in a multi-year delay
>>of the station, if not the complete abandonment of the project.

>Come now Mr. DeLuca, your grasping as straws. When fabrication begins
>it won't take long to build another. As to killing the project, not
>likely give the huge and lasing political support it has received.

And after we build the other, do we put it on an Energia again?  I dunno about
that.

Huge and lasting political support?  Come now...they keep trying to pull money
from it, and it barely survives.  Remember when they nearly zeroed the
allocation?

>If it bothers you that much, let's build spares along with the original.
>We will still save billions.

One reason why I distrust your scheme is your willingness to toss around
money building useless backups or fixing inadequacies.  How is this form
of waste any different from the waste that currently exists in NASA?

And no, we aren't really saving money, because every time someone points
out yet another flaw in your reasoning you toss another couple hundred
million dollars at the problem.  You've already allocated your savings well
into the next century.

>>Allen, why won't you understand that there is more involved than simple
>>finance here?

>Sure there are engineering concerns as well. So far nobody has posted
>anything more than vague worries about pogo but nothing specific.

There are also political concerns and capability concerns.  You've refused
to acknowledge any political stumbling blocks and you ignore the fact that
our capability *will* be reduced in space.

>>You can 'save' $3 billion, but you better be happy spending
>>that $3 billion on social welfare programs, because it sure as hell won't be
>>spent in space.

>First of all, even if I agreed with that, so what?

Wasn't it just last week that you were allocating your savings to lunar bases
and planetary probes?  One of your selling points was all the new space
projects we can get started.  Without that, we're spending a little less money
on less capability in space, and sacrificing budgetary flexibility.  Looks
like a bad deal to me.

>Second of all, given that nobody at NASA seems to think wasing billions
>is a problem, just why should they get more?

We haven't determined that they're wasting that much money, to start with.
You quote nice numbers, sure, but everyone quotes nice numbers for their
pet projects, and we know how those tend to go up with time.
--
Matthew DeLuca                      "I'd hire the Dorsai, if I knew their
Georgia Institute of Technology      P.O. box."
Office of Information Technology                - Zebediah Carter,
Internet: [e-mail]              _The Number of the Beast_

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

Date: 10 Aug 92 17:30:39 GMT
From: "Allen W. Sherzer" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Energiya's role in Space Station assem
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Matthew DeLuca) writes:

>>So now we have a Scenario A which costs $15 billion (assuming no failures)
>>and a Scenario B which costs $12 billion (assuming half the flights fail).

>>Which would you prefer?

>Scenario A, of course, since a failure in Scenario B results in the loss of
>a third or a half of the station hardware, resulting in a multi-year delay
>of the station, if not the complete abandonment of the project.

Come now Mr. DeLuca, your grasping as straws. When fabrication begins
it won't take long to build another. As to killing the project, not
likely give the huge and lasing political support it has received.

If it bothers you that much, let's build spares along with the original.
We will still save billions.

>Allen, why won't you understand that there is more involved than simple
>finance here?

Sure there are engineering concerns as well. So far nobody has posted
anything more than vague worries about pogo but nothing specific.

>You can 'save' $3 billion, but you better be happy spending
>that $3 billion on social welfare programs, because it sure as hell won't be
>spent in space.

First of all, even if I agreed with that, so what? Just because somebody
else will waste money doesn't give us any right to waste. As a taxpayer,
I am rather pissed that NASA wastes so much; I'm also pissed about all the
other waste. All this attitude does is help keep space expensive and prevent
private efforts from taking off.

Second of all, given that nobody at NASA seems to think wasing billions
is a problem, just why should they get more?

Finally, I don't think this would happen. NASA's allocation is set by
primarilly political power and not needs. Spending is wisely will not
cause a reduction in the allocation.

   Allen
--
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Allen W. Sherzer | "If they can put a man on the Moon, why can't they     |
|  [e-mail]     |  put a man on the Moon?"                               |
+----------------------256 DAYS TO FIRST FLIGHT OF DCX----------------------+

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

Date: 10 Aug 92 16:50:58 GMT
From: Hartmut Frommert <[e-mail]>
Subject: Energiya's role in Space Station assem
Newsgroups: sci.space

[e-mail] (Hugh D.R. Evans) writes:

>[e-mail] (Gerald Cecil) says:
>>
>>So, my question: why is the Space Station being assembled in a 28.5 deg.
>>orbit?

>One reason I can think of that FRED isn't going into a 40+ degree
>inclination is the trapped proton fluxes that it would encounter going through
>the South Atlantic Anomaly ( maximum fluxes at ~ -40 deg west,
>-35 deg south).

Did one also fix the inclination to the *ecliptic*, which would be important
for possible interplanetary launches from the SSF ? (This could also be a
reason for taking the inclination as close as possible to 23.5 deg, i.e.
28.5 if launched from KSC).
--
 Hartmut Frommert, Physics, Univ of Constance, | + Whale killing is murder. +
 P.O.Box 55 60, D-W-7750 Konstanz, Germany | + Eat whale killers, not whales.
 E-Mail: <[e-mail]> or <[e-mail]>
+    "Windows NoT" expands in German to "Windows Noch Teurer"
+                                                ^even   ^more expensive

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

Date: 10 Aug 92 18:08:58 GMT
From: Matthew DeLuca <[e-mail]>
Subject: Energiya's role in Space Station assem
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Allen W. Sherzer) writes:
>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Matthew DeLuca) writes:

>>My point was that if an Energia blows up
>>and takes half the station hardware with it, the space station is going to
>>be scrapped and the money is going to get yanked over to housing or veteran's
>>medical benefits.

>Not if this assumption is build in from day one. They aren't idiots, if you
>put a plan together and show they can save money even if some payloads
>blow up, they will go for it.

If you can assure multi-year funding for NASA, I would agree with you.
However, it's the nature of our political process that things you say to
Congress that they agree to one year will be forgotten the next year with
whatever budgetary crisis or political crisis comes up.

>>Another way to look at the original discussion is this: we (hopefully) learned
>>from Challenger that putting all of our eggs in one basket is a bad idea.

>And yet you so strongly oppose efforts to free our infrastructure from
>Shuttle.

Of course not.  I oppose scrapping the Shuttle to go back to man-in-a-can,
true.  I support NASP and SSRT to augment the shuttle.

>>Unfortunately, Allen is wanting to repeat the same mistake by (a) piling
>>everything onto an Energia, and

>As opposed to piling everything on Shuttle.

You lose far less with a shuttle accident (as far as station hardware goes)
than you do with an Energia accident.

The ramifications of losing a shuttle are a lot greater than with an
expendable, true, but I suspect an exploding Energia would be just as bad,
due to political considerations with using foreign hardware to launch the
station.

>>(b) having his entire space capability revolve around Freedom.

>Your proposal has the entire space capability revolve around Shuttle.

No, it revolves around the Shuttle and Freedom, with NASP and SSRT tossed
in.

>>If an Energia with Freedom on it blows, we can forget
 >>about the space station.

>Not true.

I disagree with you on this.  (Imagine that. :)

[We're fubared with Allen's plan if the station is lost]

>If Freedom goes down the toilet, my approach will leave us two to three
>HLV's, cheaper MLV's, launch costs cut by 90% (compared to the Shuttle),
>and (presumably) access to Mir while we build the next station.

Of course, none of that hardware will have any place to go, since the
station is gone, and we won't have the independent science capability
of the Shuttle to fall back on.  We'll be about where we were in 1975.

As to access to Mir for building the next station, why on earth do you think
that will come about?  It's in the wrong orbit, to start with.  It's old,
and will probably have to be replaced by the time we get around to launching
Freedom II.  Finally, has anyone *asked* the Russians if they want a couple
(not enough room for any bigger of a construction crew, hope we can do it
on two) of Americans traipsing in and out every day building a station?

On a different note, I've heard a couple of times on here that the Mir core
is approaching it's service life and will need to be replaced in the near
future.  Have the Russians said how they plan to do this?  It seems like
an extremely ugly operation.

>If Shuttle goes down the toilet, we got nothing. We can't even get to
>Freedom since only the Shuttle was deemed acceptable for transport.

No, I never said that the Shuttle should be our sole means of transport.
I do say that it's fairly vital for the near term, and we shouldn't consider
scrapping it yet.  It has enough unique capabilities that it should be
considered a national asset, and shouldn't be scrapped like the Saturn V.
We certainly wish we had a few Saturns ready to go now...
--
Matthew DeLuca                      "I'd hire the Dorsai, if I knew their
Georgia Institute of Technology      P.O. box."
Office of Information Technology                - Zebediah Carter,
Internet: [e-mail]              _The Number of the Beast_

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

Date: 10 Aug 92 16:26:13 GMT
From: Stuart A Kingsley <[e-mail]>
Subject: FINAL CALL FOR PAPERS - OPTICAL SETI
Newsgroups: sci.astro,sci.space

                                    URGENT


                FIRST INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON OPTICAL SETI

                            FINAL CALL FOR PAPERS

                      Abstract Due Date: August 15, 1992

A few weeks ago I invited your participation in the SPIE (Society of
Photographic & Instrumentation Engineers) Free-Space Laser Communications
Symposium V that will include a special session devoted to THE SEARCH FOR
EXTRATERRESTRIAL INTELLIGENCE (SETI) IN THE OPTICAL SPECTRUM, otherwise
known as OPTICAL SETI.  This is the FINAL CALL FOR PAPERS.


                                 OE/LASE '93

                      FREE-SPACE LASER COMMUNICATIONS V

SPIE's International Symposium on Lasers, Sensors, and Applications.

Date:
16-23 January 1993.

Location:
Los Angeles Airport Hilton and Airport Marriott Hotels, Los Angeles,
California, USA.

Conference Chairs:
G. Stephen Mecherle (TRW Inc.), Michael A. Krainak (NASA/Goddard Space
Flight Ctr.).

So far, about seven presentations have been arranged, including opening
remarks by Arthur C. Clarke.  Please fax, email or mail your intent to
participate, title of paper and abstract by this Saturday.  It will not be
possible to include your paper in this conference if I do not receive
notification of author(s) and title by this weekend, as the conference
chairs must allocate time and dates for this historical session.  The
symposium program announcement shortly goes to press.

Since the idea for this Optical SETI symposium was floated rather late in
the summer after the usual abstract deadline, August 15 is the absolute cut-
off date, after which it will not be possible to accept papers.


Dr. Stuart A. Kingsley
FIBERDYNE OPTOELECTRONICS
545 Northview Drive
Columbus, Ohio 43209
United States

Tel/Fax: [phone]
Fax Line-Manager Tone Access Code: 33

Bulletin Board System (BBS): [phone],
300/1200/2400/4800/9600 Baud, MNP, 8N1.
Internet: [e-mail]
CompuServe: 72376,3545

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

Date: Mon, 10 Aug 1992 15:54:30 GMT
From: Richard Martin <[e-mail]>
Subject: Home made rockets
Newsgroups: sci.space

Here's a very simple, safe, easy and challenging part of model
rocketry.  With a little common sense, nobody can get hurt...
and it's cheap, too.

Take a match, preferably one out of a match book with a blue head.
Wrap the head tightly in aluminium foil, leaving an exhaust port.
Deform a paper clip to about a 30 degree angle, and place the
match `rocket' on top.  It is probably a good idea to do this on
some cardboard that you don't care about, on an asphalt surface.
Make sure that nobody is standing in front of the rocket!
Using a candle, or some other good heat source (*not* a blowtorch),
heat the end of the rocket from underneath until the head ignites
and the rocket launches.  After a lot of trial and error, the `art'
will probably become apparent, and it's a pleasantly mindless way
to while away a long summer afternoon.

Richard.

P.S.:    The record distance that I know is 20 m.  Beat that!

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

Date: 10 Aug 92 16:33:19 GMT
From: Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey <[e-mail]>
Subject: HST management, Earth pointing (was Re: Hubble used for spying?)
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (John Roberts) writes:
 [Responding to [e-mail] (Hoyt A. Stearns jr.)on whether Hubble
  is a cousin to spy satellites]
> The *mirrors* are related. Hughes Danbury also makes spy satellite mirrors,
> and the HST primary mirror was made at the spy telescope mirror facility,
> though to different specifications than the spy telescope mirrors.
>
> This was a contributing factor to the mirror aberration - DoD essentially
> told NASA to keep their noses out of the fabrication process, because they
> were uncomfortable about having civilians knowing about the classified
> portions of the process. As a result, NASA didn't have enough supervisory
> presence to catch the errors Hughes Danbury made.

There is not the only reason.  NASA was also trying to keep project
management costs to a minimum, so they tried to keep the HST staff
small and give the contractors lots of freedom.  This approach
receives lots of praise from critics when it works!

> I'm not sure, but when HST is pointed at the Earth for half of each orbit,
> I think the door in front of the telescope aperture is kept closed until
> Earth is out of the way. There must be a reaction wheel routine programmed
> to compensate for the opening and closing of this door.

This sounds wrong to me.  I thought they just avoided pointing at
Earth.  But I don't really know.  Perhaps someone more familiar with
HST operations can comment.

During the first and second stage         Bill Higgins
flights of the vehicle, if a serious      Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
irretrievable fault should occur and      [e-mail]
the deviation of the flight attitude of   [e-mail]
the vehicle exceeds a predetermined       SPAN/Hepnet: 43011::HIGGINS
value, the attitude self-destruction
system will make the vehicle
self-destroyed.
     --Long March 3 User's Manual
     Ministry of Astronautics, People's Republic of China (1985)

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

Date: Mon, 10 Aug 1992 16:53:12 GMT
From: Edmund Hack <arabia!hack>
Subject: Oxygen pills for EVA (was Re: Medicine for space walks)
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey) writes:
>In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (SCOTT I CHASE) writes:
>> to prepare for [EVA]
>> contingency, the appropriate crew members had been instructed to take
>> some medication necessary for space walks.
>>
>> What was he talking about?  What does it do?
>
>Don't know about NASA, but on *Fireball XL5* (once my favorite TV
>show),  whenever the crew needed to leave the ship they took "oxygen
>pills" first. Then they strapped on rocket thruster packs and floated
>out the hatch.

A great and underappreciated foray into TV SF.  XL-5 was the best of the
SuperMarionation shows.
>
>This system eliminated the need for space suits.  A good thing, too,
>because the XL5 was crewed by marionettes, who find it difficult to
>don spacesuits.  It's hard to get a good seal around the strings.
>
>(How marionettes even survived in a weightless environment, without
>getting tangled, is something I never quite figured out.)

They wore heavy boots! =:-)

Of course, when NASA gets to Mars the ship crashes, but the survivor
will be able to get oxygen pills from the slave he frees.  (See
"Robinson Crusoe on Mars" for PROOF!).  He also will learn to never
cook the hotdog/cattail plants before eating, or he'll be haunted by
Batman (TV version).

You know the US Government, they just take longer to do the simple
things!

--
| Edmund Hack - Lockheed Engineering & Sciences Co. - Houston, TX
| [e-mail]    SpokesPersonp(Me,or(NASA,LESC)) = NIL
| "No the game never ends when your whole
|       world depends on the turn of a friendly card"

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

Date: Mon, 10 Aug 1992 16:57:14 GMT
From: Hartmut Frommert <[e-mail]>
Subject: What is the ASRM??
Newsgroups: sci.space,sci.space.shuttle

[e-mail] (Armando Fortuna) writes:

>>[e-mail] (James B. Pettengill) writes:
[..]
>>>fred can't get off the ground without asrm.

>>Unless they use Energia.
[..]
>Or unless they use a Saturn V rocket.

Or a Shuttle-C.
--
 Hartmut Frommert, Physics, Univ of Constance, | + Whale killing is murder. +
 P.O.Box 55 60, D-W-7750 Konstanz, Germany | + Eat whale killers, not whales.
 E-Mail: <[e-mail]> or <[e-mail]>
+    "Windows NoT" expands in German to "Windows Noch Teurer"
+                                                ^even   ^more expensive

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

End of Space Digest Volume 15 : Issue 094
------------------------------