Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/pc/text/spacedig/v15_2/v15no266.txt

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Date: Thu,  1 Oct 92 05:03:44
From: Space Digest maintainer <[e-mail]>
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Subject: Space Digest V15 #266
To: Space Digest Readers
Precedence: bulk


Space Digest                Thu,  1 Oct 92       Volume 15 : Issue 266

Today's Topics:
                       another sad anniversary
                  Clinto and Space Funding (2 msgs)
              Controversy over V-2 anniversary (3 msgs)
                    Cruise phase orbital elements?
                           Easter (3 msgs)
                            Monetary Magic
             Russia's OPERATIONAL Starwars Defense System
                   Space and Presidential Politics
        Space platforms (political, not physical : -) (2 msgs)
     Wealth in Space (Was Re: Clinton and Space Funding) (2 msgs)
                            What is this ?

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Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1992 15:55:31 GMT
From: Henry Spencer <[e-mail]>
Subject: another sad anniversary
Newsgroups: sci.space

Fifteen years ago today, for the first time, NASA deliberately switched off
instruments on another planet that were still returning good data and gave
every prospect of continuing to do so for years.  It was done to save money.

On 30 Sept 1977, the surviving Apollo lunar surface instruments -- left by
Apollos 12, 15, 16, and 17 -- were turned off by ground command, because
money could no longer be found to receive and record their data.
--
There is nothing wrong with making      | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
mistakes, but... make *new* ones. -D.Sim|  [e-mail]  utzoo!henry

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

Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1992 15:27:39 GMT
From: "Phil G. Fraering" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Clinto and Space Funding
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:

\If your government is not accountable in the sense that you can't find where
/all your tax money goes, then there is something really wrong and someone (I
\would suggest the person at the top, Georgie boy) deserves the chop!

I think you misunderstand how the US government works. The legislative
branch has substantially more budget authority than the executive
branch.

The British system is apparently more unified, with your "administration"
consisting of legislators who over here would be Committee and Subcommittee
chairmen...

I had made some interesting comments about the rest of the article, but
I think I'll deal with it later. I had accidentally deleted the reply
the first time, and I don't feel like repeating myself...

--
Phil Fraering [e-mail] where the x is a number from 1-5.
Phone: [phone] SnailMail: 2408 Blue Haven Dr., New Iberia, La. 70560
"NOAH!"
"Yes Lord?"                          - Bill Cosby
"HOW LONG CAN YOU TREAD WATER?"

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

Date: Wed, 30 Sep 92 19:23:15 BST
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Clinto and Space Funding

> I would suggest one area that need serious consideration are lung cancer
> subsidies (ie. the money given to the tobacco producers which goes to subsidise
> lung cancer all over the world)
>

I agree. The government should at the same time stop all subsidies to anti
smoking organizations. Smokers should pay very large (market and risked based)
insurance premiums for their health insurance, commensurate with the extra risk
they have chosen.

(I wonder... will there have to be smoking and non-smoking space settlements? :-)

> and other agricultural subsidies. At least
> Europe ios making some moves on the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), I have
> seen no sign of similar moves in the US (though I may have missed them).


Strange, I was under the impression that GATT broke down because there was a
refusal to end subsidies on the part of the EC. I agree that US could hardly do
better for itself than to totally end ALL farm subsidies for all purposes. There'd
be cheaper and more food for the third world. Not to mention the knock on effects
because the government:
    a) subsidizes farms, keeping them below market efficiency
    b) pays to keep food prices up and production down
    c) pays the poor so they can afford food at the prices caused by a and b
    d) and the taxpayer gets to pay for a - c PLUS paying more for groceries

If we could build O'Neill cylinders the size of continents for farming I expect we
would see the government paying to build them and claiming that it was to end
hunger on Earth. After building them the farmers would be paid to not grow food
so that "the vital resource of family farms" could be protected. You would hear
both from the mouth of the same politician.

> a great deal of wasted GNP can be sorted out by changing your ridiculous legal
> system (70% of lawers in the world are in the US, and all earning lots of
> money that could go to real commercial use elsewhere),
>

Again, totally agreed. The tort system abandoned the ideas of simply "making an
injured party whole" where "whole" was commenserate with damages and
responsibility was assigned to the one at fault rather than by search for

a patsy to pay the bill. This soft hearted nonsense started in the early 60's and
has grown into a monster. This is a problem for aerospace as well. It is the
reason why small cheap aircraft for general aviation are nearly gone from the US
market. A Cessna manufacturer is responsible for the aircraft for its entire
service life. I once owned part of a 30 year old Cessna. We sold it. It is STILL
flying. And Cessna's insurance still has to cover liability to their "deep
pockets" if some idiot figures out a way to put Jet A into the fuel tank.
(Personally I'd like to think of it as evolution in action)

> and getting your medical
> system sorted. You can lambast the UK and other Eropean countries for having
> doctrinally unsound socialised (gasp!) medical systems, but the fact is *our
> health services are ****cheaper***** in terms of GNP than yours.

Having experienced both, I prefer the US one. In three years here I have yet to
recieve a call from my doctor. Wellness programs are unheard of. And if you need
certain classes of operations, you are best off flying to the US and paying for it
because you might be dead before your turn in the queue comes up. There ARE NO
QUEUES in the US. When a government controls the allocation of resources, they are
either under or over supplied.

Oh, and my blue cross/blue shield were job benefits at CMU. And even if taken as a
cost on my paycheck there versus here, they cost less (for far better and more
aggressive service) than the amount taken out for National Health Service (NHS) in
the UK. As long as you don't get too sick and just do things like have babies, NHS
APPEARS to work quite nicely. [In the US babies could be delivered by midwives or
home birth at much lower cost and equal safety if the AMA wasn't battling so hard
to put them out of business by manipulating state legislatures.]

> The legal and
> medical issues are in some sense linked too because fo the degree of litigation
> in US medicine.
>


Very, very true. This in conjunction with the effects of Medicare and the strength
of the American Medical Association (to control the supply of doctors and to
manipulate regulation to their own financial interest) have made medical bills
climb to astronomical hieghts. I'm barely old enough to remember a time as a child
in the US when a small town doctor came by your house, charged small fees, did
large amounts of the work for no payment and was no better off than most of his
(they were all male) patients. Those who couldn't pay simply never recieved a bill
or only recieved a token one. No one in our town lacked for medical care and it
was the best available at the time. There was NO government assistance on medical
expenses whatever, and it seemed to work quite nicely. Oh, and I might add that in
much later years I discovered that according to postpriori published numbers my
family had been "below the poverty line" at that time. What a joke...

Oh, and catastrophic coverage was handled by blue cross or in worst case, by
charity. Hospitals and doctors NEVER turned anyone away.

If you want more detailed information on this sort of issue, contact
    Russell Earl Whitaker
    [e-mail]

He can tell you what publications are available from the Libertarian Alliance in
London.

Unmucking the legal system and placing responsibility where it belongs and to the
degree with which it belongs are important issues. A society that tries for Total
Safety and which reimburses people for an accident, no matter what level of
stupidity was required for said accident, is not going to be a society that
pioneers the way to the stars.

It may, however, create a fair number of individuals who are ready to run
screaming from said society upon the first opportunity to leave the planet.

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

Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1992 15:01:52 GMT
From: Hartmut Frommert <[e-mail]>
Subject: Controversy over V-2 anniversary
Newsgroups: sci.space

[e-mail] (Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey) writes:

>Remember a week or so ago, when somebody on this newsgroup reminded us
>that the first flight of a V-2 (A-4, if you prefer) into "space" had
>taken place fifty years ago, in October 1942?

[..]

>Has anybody heard more detail?  Has the story appeared in print?

[..]

The story was in the news here in Germany over the last few days.
According to that, the celebration was sponsored by aerospace industry
and chaired by one of the ministers. Multiple protest caused a cancellation
of the celebration yesterday. It was replaced by a minor commemorative
meeting with technical lectures, but also presentations of the negative
aspects of the V-2 as weapon in WWII.
--
 Hartmut Frommert                 <[e-mail]>
 Dept of Physics, Univ of Constance, P.O.Box 55 60, D-W-7750 Konstanz, Germany
                                           -- Eat whale killers, not whales --

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

Date: 30 Sep 92 16:23:31 GMT
From: Matthew DeLuca <[e-mail]>
Subject: Controversy over V-2 anniversary
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:

>Well, one of the main purposes of the Rome Treaty was to make European
>countries economies so inter-related to make war in Europe impossible.

A fallacy, unfortunately.  Intertwined economics have never stopped a war,
and indeed, economics have *caused* many wars.
--
Matthew DeLuca             "We should grant power over our affairs only to
Georgia Tech                those who are reluctant to hold it and then only
Information Technology      under conditions that increase the reluctance."
[e-mail]              - Coda of the Bene Gesserit

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

Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1992 15:21:52 GMT
From: Massimo Campostrini <[e-mail]>
Subject: Controversy over V-2 anniversary
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <urf.717789437@sw2001>, [e-mail] (Urban F) writes:
|> [e-mail] (Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey) writes:
|>
|> >Monday I heard a news account that ceremonies to celebrate this
|> >event have become a matter of controversy.
|>
|> Yes, and so much that the German aerospace industry has cancelled
|> its plans on any celebrations on Oct 3:rd.
|>
|> >In this country, the Confederate Air Force is allowed to tell us what
|> >a great plane the B-17 was without visible interference...
|>
|> Well, you aren't currently trying to enter a union with those who
|> got bombed by it, are you? And didn't the CAF get some interference
|> when they wanted to celebrate by dropping a simulated A-bomb from
|> a B-29?
|> --
|>  Urban Fredriksson   [e-mail]  ([e-mail])
|>  "In order to make someone a nervous wreck, apologize while they still
|>   haven't used their best arguments." -- Runer Jonsson

Well, one of the main purposes of the Rome Treaty was to make European
countries economies so inter-related to make war in Europe impossible.
A union will be even better (remember that Virginia and Mariland were
very close to war in the colonial period...)

--
        Massimo Campostrini,
Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Sezione di Pisa,
Piazza Torricelli 2, I-56126 Pisa, Italy  ||  Phone: [phone]
Internet: [e-mail]    ||  Fax:   [phone]

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

Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1992 15:58:00 GMT
From: "E. V. Bell, II - NSSDC/HSTX/GSFC/NASA - (301" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Cruise phase orbital elements?
Newsgroups: sci.space

    I've captured from a number of sources the cruise phase
    orbital elements for several spacecraft for our data base at
    NSSDC, but I'm still lacking in the information for some. I
    can actually generate some of them with some programs, but I'm
    feeling kind of lazy. Therefore.....

    First, I'd like to second the motion for the elements of the
    current Mars Observer cruise mode elements. I can find in the
    general literature what the nominal orbital characteristics
    will be once it reaches Mars, but not the characteristics of
    the transfer orbit are. Can someone post these?

    Second, I've a similar situation for Magellan and, even though
    it didn't obtain any science data en route to Venus, I'd still
    like to capture the cruise phase orbital elements for *that*
    spacecraft, too.

    Third, although I can obtain the encounter trajectory
    information for both Voyager 1 and 2 from the literature, and
    even though a number of accessible programs can generate the
    needed elements during their (multiple) cruise phases, has
    anyone already done this so I don't have to go to the effort
    (I know, I'm being lazy here!).

    I've really found it useful that the Galileo elements (past
    and planned) have been posted. It's really made that aspect of
    my job easier. Thanks for any help/info which can be given.

+------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|  Dr. Edwin V. Bell, II    |  E-mail:                       |
|  Mail Code 633.9        |    (SPAN) NCF::Bell               |
|  National Space Science    |    or   NSSDC::Bell               |
|    Data Center        |    or  NSSDCA::Bell               |
|  NASA                |    or  NSSDCB::Bell               |
|  Goddard Space Flight Center    |   (Internet) [e-mail]       |
|  Greenbelt, MD   20771    |                           |
|  [phone]        |                           |
+------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

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

Date: 30 Sep 92 12:40:04 GMT
From: Alan Carter <[e-mail]>
Subject: Easter
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c,comp.unix.progammer,sci.space

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Edward F Eaglehouse) writes:
|> I don't have any actual code to calculate Easter, but if I remember
|> correctly Easter falls on the first Sunday following the first full moon
|> after the Vernal Equinox.
|>
|> An astronomical programmer should be able to provide this one.  Somebody in
|> sci.space probably can give us a formula.

It's in Knuth Vol. 1 (what isn't?). Algorithm E, Exercise 14, Section 1.3.2.
He comments "Easter is supposedly the 'first Sunday following the first full
moon which occurs on or after March 21st.' Actually perturbations in the
moon's orbit do not make this strictly true, but we are concerned here
with the 'calendar moon' rather than the actual moon. The Nth of March is
a calendar full moon."

Odd that Easter Sunday is what it is based on. I thought Christians put
more emphasis on the Crucifiction and Resurrection than on Easter
Sunday, which was a day that not much happened on.

   Alan

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
   Maidenhead itself is too snobby to be pleasant. It is the haunt of the
   river swell and his overdressed female companion. It is the town of showy
   hotels, patronized chiefly by dudes and ballet girls.

   Three Men In A Boat, Jerome K. Jerome, 1889
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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

Date: 30 Sep 92 16:22:00 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Easter
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c,comp.unix.progammer,sci.space

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Alan Carter) writes...
>In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Edward F Eaglehouse) writes:
>|> I don't have any actual code to calculate Easter, but if I remember
>|> correctly Easter falls on the first Sunday following the first full moon
>|> after the Vernal Equinox.
>|>
>|> An astronomical programmer should be able to provide this one.  Somebody in
>|> sci.space probably can give us a formula.
>
>It's in Knuth Vol. 1 (what isn't?). Algorithm E, Exercise 14, Section 1.3.2.
>He comments "Easter is supposedly the 'first Sunday following the first full
>moon which occurs on or after March 21st.' Actually perturbations in the
>moon's orbit do not make this strictly true, but we are concerned here
>with the 'calendar moon' rather than the actual moon. The Nth of March is
>a calendar full moon."
>
>Odd that Easter Sunday is what it is based on. I thought Christians put
>more emphasis on the Crucifiction and Resurrection than on Easter
>Sunday, which was a day that not much happened on.
>
>   Alan
>
This is totally tangental to sci.space but the reason for the date corresponding
to a lunar system is to stay in sync with Passover. There is a complex
relationship between the the day of Christ's death and resurrection so that
it was guaranteed to to happen on a certain date tied to the feast days of
the Jewish people.

For those who believe none of this ignore it.  The history is facinating in
and of itself.  The Jews had a lunar calender and a year of 360 days. Also
the time of day that the day started was at sunset and not at midnight as is
the modern norm.

The only reason that I post this response back to sci.space is to point out
that astronomy even professional astronomy is an ancient science with
Chinese records of sunspots dating back three thousand years and supernova
records in the near east going back four thousand years.  An interesting
study for those interested in long term trends.  The sunspot records have
been an especially fruitful field in the last few years for solar
researchers.

Dennis, University of Alabama in Huntsville

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

Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1992 16:20:04 GMT
From: rfries <@ub.ub.com:rfries@fries_Robert (Robert Fries)>
Subject: Easter
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c,comp.unix.progammer,sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Alan Carter) writes:

>Odd that Easter Sunday is what it is based on. I thought Christians put
>more emphasis on the Crucifiction and Resurrection than on Easter
>Sunday, which was a day that not much happened on.

Mmmm, if my memory serves, Easter Sunday WAS the Resurrection.
But, it's been a while since my catechism lessons.

Robert

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

Date: 30 Sep 92 17:22:56 GMT
From: Henry Spencer <[e-mail]>
Subject: Monetary Magic
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Thomas Clarke) writes:
>> The way to handle this is to think capitalist, not socialist.  Sell the
>> Pershings at a competitive market price for sounding rockets of that size.
>> Use the revenues to fund a one-time-only launch-grant program...
>
>Run that by a little slower.
>A sells to B.  A gives money to C.  C buys from B.
>B has net near zero (buys and sells).
>C has net near zero (receives and buys).
>A has net near zero (gives and sells).

A's (the government's) net is probably negative, because a market price
won't pay back all the money spent on development, even if you *don't*
then give the money away.  However, that development was done for other
reasons, and presumably the hardware satisfied them well enough that you
can write that off.  The assumption in all proposals here, in fact, is
that the original cost of this hardware has long since been written off.
The government is ahead on the deal because it has done one of its jobs --
encouraging useful R&D -- at little cost to itself and without forcing
its solutions down everyone's throats.

B (launch company) makes a profit, in the time-honored manner of free
enterprise, by adding a markup.  His net is "near zero" compared to his
total cash flow, but that's normal.  Profit margins are seldom huge in
a competitive business.  Almost all businesses operate by skimming a
comparatively small profit margin off a much larger cash flow.  Assuming
a healthy business -- inventory moving from receiving to shipping in a
timely fashion, rather than piling up unsold -- the size of the cash
flow is *irrelevant* (to a first approximation); what you care about is
not how net compares to cash flow, but how net compares to things like
depreciation and overhead costs.  Given good management, the company
is ahead on the deal.

C (launch customer) makes no financial profit, but gets his payloads
launched.  That's what he wanted.  He's ahead on the deal.

Everybody wins.  Nobody loses, *including* those companies who prefer
to offer solutions other than surplus rockets.
--
There is nothing wrong with making      | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
mistakes, but... make *new* ones. -D.Sim|  [e-mail]  utzoo!henry

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

Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1992 16:16:40 GMT
From: Nick Haines <[e-mail]>
Subject: Russia's OPERATIONAL Starwars Defense System
Newsgroups: sci.space

Lines: 3
Source-Info:  Sender is really [e-mail]

I love this guy. Best laugh of the morning.

Nick

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

Date: Wed, 30 Sep 92 18:14:30 BST
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Space and Presidential Politics

> The problem with this is that I've met some space enthusiasts
> over the years who would vote for Adolf Hitler if they thought
> he would support a strong space program.  Almost ANY issue has
> to be put in perspective, and balanced off against others. A
> candidates view of space explorations is ONE issue by which I

> judge the candidate.  You can argue about whether it should be

> one of the most important ones or one of the minor ones, but it
> certainly should not be the ONLY one.
>


This should not be a problem for you. Under this scenario, Adolph can
only get elected if:

    a) A majority of the population consider this to be the
       primary  issue, in which case, by any definition of
       "public interest" it then IS. Neither you nor I can
       make something the prime issue just because our
       personal opinion says it is.

    b) Adolph has enough support due to his stands on other
       issues to garner a majority via the sum of the the
       different public interests.

    c) He doesn't make the mistake of saying he's going to
       execute or drive out of the country many of the leading
       scientists and engineers required for that space program.

The later is partially tongue in cheek, but there is a serious point
to it. Those of us pushing for space are indeed pushing an entire set
of values and a vision of the future that is built around space.


You cannot castigate us because we do not happen to share YOUR
particularly set of values and priorities.

The truth is, I am personally not voting on a single issue. I have an
entire social/economic/technological agenda. (In case you haven't
noticed :-) But I am NOT going to knock someone who does.

If you want to argue about ethics and values, I'll refer you to Tommy
:-)

-------------------------------------------
Spacekind of the Earth Unite!
You have nothing to lose but your gravity!

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

Date: Wed, 30 Sep 92 17:12:46 BST
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Space platforms (political, not physical :-)

> Intersting.  Our society is now freer than at any time in our
> history.  Books that could not have been published 50 years ago
> are published.  People can say or do things in public that would
>


Can you spell... W a r  O n  D r u g s?

How about the simple freedom to live on one's own property and do as
one pleases. (ie, let the grass grow wild if you want, outlawed in
some communities; water it on Sunday, outlawed in some parts of
Germany I believe...)

How about the freedom of contract between consenting adults?

You can indeed make a case that freedom has had a rocky road in the
USA as well as anywhere else. At different times, different parts of
the Bill of Rights were more violated (with legal blind eye turned)
than others.

I do not idolize the past. But I do see a trend that was downwards
for a century or more (with the exception of some improvements in
equality that you have mentioned) and in the post cold war world may
be slowly turning around. With no cause celebre to rally support on
"important issues", people are going to turn their attention back to
the really important issues: their friends, their families, their
homes, their neighborhoods and their home towns.

Politicians live by inventing grand causes and making them a critical
issue. This works particularly well when a population is
demographically young, which the US and most developed countries no
longer are. Having lived through a number of such terrible (invented)
crises', I can only look at the campaign rhetoric of Bush and Clinton
and say.... <YAWN>....


I see some brilliant ideas of Paine, Jefferson and Franklin that were
quickly co-opted by Madison and others with more Statist leanings.
And not to mention that the seeds of conflict were sown from the
first day by failing to apply that Bill of Rights equally to all,
regardless of sex or race. If not for that mistake the USA might very
well still be something close to laissez faire.

With many of those problems of equality solved de juris if not de
facto, the US will probably drift back towards its' philosophical
roots.

Those roots in individualism and self responsibility will make
americans settlers a large part of the population on the new frontier
regardless of whether they get their on US, Japanese or Russian
spaceships.

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

Date: 30 Sep 92 15:07:21 GMT
From: Jim Mann <[e-mail]>
Subject: Space platforms (political, not physical : -)
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]>
[e-mail] (Charles J. Divine) writes:
> Now, would you care to defend the FBI described in Alien Ink?
> That's a clear example of a 20th century government innovation
> that has been nothing but a vile assault on a free society.
>
What is Alien Ink?

--
Jim Mann
Stratus Computer   [e-mail]

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

Date: 30 Sep 92 14:19:05 GMT
From: Paul Dietz <[e-mail]>
Subject: Wealth in Space (Was Re: Clinton and Space Funding)
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Gary Coffman) writes:

> Actually, catalysts aren't consumables by definition. There doesn't really
> look like a viable demand for a tenfold increase in catalyst use in the
> chemical industry even with a tenfold price decrease.

In practice, catalysts do degrade.  Everything is slightly soluble in
everything, especially at higher temperature.  When you are running
thousands of tons of reactants a day past a catalysts bed, you will
lose some of the materials.

An example is selective oxidation of ammonia to make nitric acid.
This is done on platinum-group element catalysts.  The plants are
designed with devices to recover metals eroded from the catalysts.
The recycling rate is very good, but not perfect.

Anyway, there *are* applications of PGEs today that are not feasible
because of the expense of the metals.  One important one is acid fuel
cells.  We can build fuel cells that run directly on methanol, without
reforming.  The problem is that they require too much platinum to be
practical, at today's platinum prices, for many potential applications
(like electric vehicles).  A drop in price by a factor of (say) 10
would be a huge help.

All this begs the question of how you recover the platinum at <<
today's market prices.  Never mind how one could economically mine
asteroidal *iron*.

    Paul F. Dietz
    [e-mail]

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

Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1992 16:32:32 GMT
From: Tom Horsley <[e-mail]>
Subject: Wealth in Space (Was Re: Clinton and Space Funding)
Newsgroups: sci.space,sci.astro,talk.politics.space,alt.politics.bush,alt.politics.clinton

>>>>> Regarding Re: Wealth in Space (Was Re: Clinton and Space Funding); [e-mail] (Gary Coffman) adds:

gary> Show us a way to *deliver* the materials of the asteroid to the
gary> Earth's surface in *ready to use* form for less than 109 billion
gary> dollars. Those gold and platinum *estimates* aren't in nice pure
gary> lumps. They're spread throughout that couple of trillion tons of
gary> stainless steel ore. Now we're talking $20 a ton material that will
gary> need hundreds of dollars an ounce worth of processing to get at that
gary> platinum and gold. Makes a big difference.  Don't pull another
gary> dinosaur killer in the process.

Shucks, this is the easy part. You're in outer space, you got your vacuum,
you got your limitless solar power, you got your zero-G environment.  All
you gotta do a setup a few solar mirrors, vaporize the sucker, and run the
vapor through a free floating mega-industrial scale mass spectrometer (you
can get improved mass spectrometer designs from Saddam Hussein).  This gets
the valuable stuff separated out in a pure form, you use the leftover slag
to make ablative heat shields, and just drop precious metal ingots directly
into the parking lots of factories.

You can bootstrap the process by launching virtually any quantity of factory
equipment you might need on an Orion class nuclear pulse propulsion ship,
which can conveniently be powered by all those nasty old left-over atomic
weapons the US and Russia have laying around.

See, I have proven it is possible. Now there are just a few little piddling
details to work out :-).
--
======================================================================
domain: [e-mail]       USMail: Tom Horsley
  uucp: ...!uunet!hcx1!tahorsley               511 Kingbird Circle
                                               Delray Beach, FL  33444
+==== Censorship is the only form of Obscenity ======================+
|     (Wait, I forgot government tobacco subsidies...)               |
+====================================================================+

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

Date: Wed, 30 Sep 92 17:47:26 BST
From: [e-mail]
Subject: What is this ?

>       21            290                       990       1000
>       22            300                       990       0000
>       22.5          300                       980       0000  Break
lock
>


I'd bet Mary Shafer would have a good guess at it. I'd say it looks
like test data for a fire and forget air to ground missile. There are
some interesting features features. I assume altitudes in MSL rather
than AGL and airspeed rather than ground speed.

a) The vehicle climbs from initial lock at 7000 MSL to an altitude of
11000 MSL at which point it initiates a dive in which it goes
supersonic.

b) During the climb it initially goes up at 250fpm, then 500fpm,
peaks at 2000fpm and drops off to two seconds at 1000fpm before going
into the steep dive.

c) During that time the speed (air or ground is not specified) is
changing. It seems to have two peaks with a period of coasting
deceleration in between. This could indicate staging or throttling.
The speed peaks on the way down and then falls off, which suggests a
powered dive and poweroff or burnout or an effect of increasing drag
at lower density altitudes with a fixed thrust. That gets out of my
depth. (Or heights as this case may be :-)

The low initial speed and altitude makes me think of some sort of
helicopter launched anti-tank or antiradiation weapon. (I just don't
see an F15 gallumphing along at 150kn at FL70 to launch any sort of
ordinance...) Whether 7000 is low really depends on whether it is MSL
or AGL, and if MSL then on the ground level MSL altitude. Antitank
choppers would not usually attack at that altitude unless they were
long range stand off weapons.

I do not believe it is an RPV unless it was either one whose wings
fell off at 11000 MSL or an unusual new government method of
ploughing furrows in a field. (Not all that less efficient than
agricultural subsidies... :-)

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End of Space Digest Volume 15 : Issue 266
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