Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/pc/text/spacedig/v16_4/v16no433.txt

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Date: Thu,  8 Apr 93 05:10:31
From: Space Digest maintainer <[e-mail]>
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Subject: Space Digest V16 #433
To: Space Digest Readers
Precedence: bulk


Space Digest                Thu,  8 Apr 93       Volume 16 : Issue 433

Today's Topics:
      ANL IPNS and transmutation article (was Re: nuclear waste)
                     Another Kuiper Object Found?
              Blow up space station, easy way to do it.
          Comet in Temporary Orbit Around Jupiter? (4 msgs)
                    Mining Deuterium(sp) on Venus?
                             NASA "Wraps"
                            nuclear waste
                  Portable Small Ground Station?dir
            Sky Surfing Safety. What if you bite the wave!
                          space food sticks
        What if the USSR had reached the Moon first? (2 msgs)
       What Minerals are Cheaper on Mars? than earth? (2 msgs)

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

Date: 7 Apr 93 11:09:45 -0600
From: Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey <[e-mail]>
Subject: ANL IPNS and transmutation article (was Re: nuclear waste)
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <1pkjge$[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Pat) writes:
[re using accelerators to transmute long-lived reactor wastes into
short-lived wastes]
> ABill,
>
>     Is the IPNS still running at Argonne?

This can be settled with a quick phone call.  So I did.  They are
still running the Intense Pulsed Neutron Source at Argonne National
Laboratory (the *other* Chicago-area DoE lab).  I'm sure your dad will
be glad to hear his old toy is still being used.  I don't believe IPNS
is useful for the kind of work we're talking about, but I'm pretty
ignorant about it.

For a non-technical review of waste transmutation, see *Bulletin of
the Atomic Scientists*, July/August 1991, p. 12-17.

[Does anybody actually scurry to the library and *read* things when I
post pointers like this, or am I shouting into a vacuum?]

     O~~*           /_) ' / /   /_/ '  ,   ,  ' ,_  _           \|/
   - ~ -~~~~~~~~~~~/_) / / /   / / / (_) (_) / / / _\~~~~~~~~~~~zap!
 /       \                          (_) (_)                    / | \
 |       |     Bill Higgins   Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
 \       /     Bitnet:     [e-mail]
   -   -       Internet:  [e-mail]
     ~         SPAN/Hepnet:      43011::HIGGINS

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

Date: Wed, 7 Apr 1993 16:55:14 GMT
From: Anita Cochran <[e-mail]>
Subject: Another Kuiper Object Found?
Newsgroups: sci.astro,sci.space

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (SCOTT I CHASE) writes:
> In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Anita L. Cochran) writes...
> >The orbit for 1992QB1 is being improved and indeed seems to be a Kuiper
> >object.  The discovery orbit for 1993FW is still too preliminary to know for
> >sure.
>
> Thanks, Anita, for that lucid explanation, most of which I have deleted
> to save bandwidth.  My question is a subjective one - I am interested in
> your opinion, as a worker in this field.  How many objects with
> "Kuiper Belt compatible" orbits actually make a "Kuiper Belt"?  I guess
> I mean this in two senses: (1) How many would have to be clearly identified
> before you and other experts would move the Kuiper Belt from "speculative"
> to "verified", and (2) in the long run, how many objects would you expect
> at detectable magnitude, if the Kuiper Belt is the sole source of all
> of comets for which it was hypothesized to be the origin?

Well, you will get different answers for that question depending on
who you ask.  I spent Monday at SouthWest Research Institute (San Antonio)
and had a 2 hour discussion with Martin Duncan and Hal Levison about
this topic.  Martin was lead author on the first paper discussing
the Kuiper disk and Hal has worked on the problem and they are now
working on refining the statistics.  At 1 object, the discovery could
be a real fluke.  2 objects is more suggestive.  But, people would
be much happier with a swarm of objects.  Especially since these 2
objects are on opposite sides of the sky.  We know there are random
small bodies out there.  Look at Chiron or Pholus.  So are these
two discoveries the proof of the Kuiper disk?  I would say, not quite
yet.  And really, we want to find the objects which are Halley
sized not these big objects but that is tough.  As to your second
question, that depends on what is detectable magnitude.  Let's assume
the disk is confined to a thickness of 10 degrees around the ecliptic.
Then it would cover 3600 square degrees.  The current models say that
there should be ~10**9 objects in the disk.  That would be ~80/arcmin**2
(if I didn't slip any digits).  But we don't know what the mass function
is.  If those are primarily small bodies, then very few would be
observable.  If they are primarily Chiron or QB1 sized objects than
all are observable.  Well, we know the later is NOT true since only
2 objects have been found and the collective searches to m=24 or
fainter are more than a square degree.  My basic answer therefore is
until we search VERY deep or we search to current magnitudes over
a VERY LARGE amount of sky, we just don't really know.

--
 Anita Cochran  uucp:  !utastro!anita
                arpa:  [e-mail]
                snail: Astronomy Dept., The Univ. of Texas, Austin, TX, 78712
                at&t:  [phone]

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

Date: Wed, 7 Apr 1993 14:44:26 GMT
From: Gary Coffman <ke4zv!gary>
Subject: Blow up space station, easy way to do it.
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:
>This might a real wierd idea or maybe not..
>I have seen where people have blown up ballons then sprayed material into them
>that then drys and makes hard walls...
>Why not do the same thing for a space station..
>Fly up the docking rings and baloon materials and such, blow up the baloons,
>spin then around (I know a problem in micro gravity) let them dry/cure/harden?
>and cut a hole for the docking/attaching ring and bingo a space station..
>Of course the ballons would have to be foil covered or someother radiation
>protective covering/heat shield(?) and the material used to make the wals would
>have to meet the out gasing and other specs or atleast the paint/covering of
>the inner wall would have to be human safe.. Maybe a special congrete or maybe
>the same material as makes caplets but with some changes (saw where someone
>instea dof water put beer in the caplet mixture, got a mix that was just as
>strong as congret but easier to carry around and such..)
>
>Why musta  space station be so difficult?? why must we have girders? why be
>confined to earth based ideas, lets think new ideas, after all space is not
>earth, why be limited by earth based ideas??

Your proposal is somewhat similar to the LLNL balloon station concept.
It is a cheap way to get large pressurized volumes. But most uses of
a space station require more than just a large pressurized volume.
Generally there will be requirements to host experimental equipment
and supply power for that equipment. You need structure for equipment
mountings, and structure for power systems. You need wiring channels.
You need storage lockers, etc. Also you need structure to allow reboost
burns against orbital decay. With a large pressurized volume comes a
large drag area that requires frequent reboosts. Without structures
to hold massive equipment and supplies in place, reboost becomes
difficult and dangerous. An open truss design gives lots of mounting
points without large drag generating surfaces. Most of the things a
space station is good for don't require large pressurized volumes.
Most space experiments want exposure to space conditions.

Gary

--
Gary Coffman KE4ZV          |    You make it,     | gatech!wa4mei!ke4zv!gary
Destructive Testing Systems |    we break it.     | uunet!rsiatl!ke4zv!gary
534 Shannon Way             |    Guaranteed!      | emory!kd4nc!ke4zv!gary
Lawrenceville, GA 30244     |                     |

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

Date: 7 Apr 1993 15:49:26 GMT
From: Jan Vorbrueggen <[e-mail]>
Subject: Comet in Temporary Orbit Around Jupiter?
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <1psfan$[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Pat)
writes:

> But when they were
> imaging toutatis????

Gaspra, you mean...

> didn't someone have to get lucky on a guess to
> find the first images?


Only a little luck was involved (or so I understood). The navigation
team was confident it could predict which of the 81 (9 by 9?) frames
taken by the SSI the Gaspra image would be in, and even approx. where.
So they told Galileo to send a few (10?) lines of that frame. Indeed,
it did contain Gaspra's image, and they told Galileo to send the rest
of the frame. (Or did you optimize it even further, Ron, and send only
those parts containing something interesting?)

BTW, I always wondered why they did that. Of course, it's much nicer to
see some results _now_ instead of having to wait another 6 or so months,
and it sure makes good publicity, but were there any technical reasons?
After so many years waiting for Galileo to launch and it taking such a
circuitous route to its destination, surely the team had turned resilient
to short-term excitement :-)

    Jan

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

Date: 7 Apr 1993 17:12 UT
From: Ron Baalke <[e-mail]>
Subject: Comet in Temporary Orbit Around Jupiter?
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <1put66$[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Jan Vorbrueggen) writes...
>In article <1psfan$[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Pat)
>writes:
>
>> But when they were
>> imaging toutatis????
>
>Gaspra, you mean...
>
>> didn't someone have to get lucky on a guess to
>> find the first images?
>
>Only a little luck was involved (or so I understood). The navigation
>team was confident it could predict which of the 81 (9 by 9?) frames
>taken by the SSI the Gaspra image would be in, and even approx. where.
>So they told Galileo to send a few (10?) lines of that frame. Indeed,
>it did contain Gaspra's image, and they told Galileo to send the rest
>of the frame. (Or did you optimize it even further, Ron, and send only
>those parts containing something interesting?)

Some months prior to Galileo's encounter with Gaspra, the project called
upon the astronomy community to help provide the best position of the
asteroid with Earth-based observations.  This information was used to take
the optical navigations
images.  In the optical navigation images, Gaspra was just a point of light
against a background of stars.  The images were long exposures and the camera
was slewed during the exposure resulting in the image with streaks of
squiggly lines for Gaspra and the stars.  About 3 or 4 nav images were taken
before the encounter, and Gaspra's position was improved to an uncertainty
of  300km.  During the ecounter, enough images were taken around the area where
Gaspra was supposed to be to ensure a 99% confidence level that Gaspra
would show up in some of the images.  The first playback of
the data sent only 12 lines from the "center" image, and part of Gaspra
showed up in the 12 lines - the aiming was perfect.
     ___    _____     ___
    /_ /|  /____/ \  /_ /|     Ron Baalke         | [e-mail]
    | | | |  __ \ /| | | |     Jet Propulsion Lab |
 ___| | | | |__) |/  | | |__   M/S 525-3684 Telos | Being cynical never helps
/___| | | |  ___/    | |/__ /| Pasadena, CA 91109 | to correct the situation
|_____|/  |_|/       |_____|/                     | and causes more aggravation
                                                  | instead.

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

Date: Wed, 7 Apr 1993 17:34:25 GMT
From: James Davis Nicoll <[e-mail]>
Subject: Comet in Temporary Orbit Around Jupiter?
Newsgroups: sci.space

    How  bound is this comet to Jupiter? If one wanted to alter
its orbit  to cross Earth's,how much delta-vee would we be  talking?

                            James Nicoll


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

Date: 7 Apr 1993 13:33:14 -0400
From: Pat <[e-mail]>
Subject: Comet in Temporary Orbit Around Jupiter?
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Ron Baalke) writes:
|
|Some months prior to Galileo's encounter with Gaspra, the project called
|upon the astronomy community to help provide the best position of the
|asteroid with Earth-based observations.  This information was used to take
|the optical navigations

For SHoemaker - levy,  will galileo follow a similiar activity?
HST  and ground scopes providing best position data,  then a couple
of long range navigating images,  then a group of closeup images,
or do they just  change the zoom on the telescopes?


|images.  In the optical navigation images, Gaspra was just a point of light
|against a background of stars.  The images were long exposures and the camera
|was slewed during the exposure resulting in the image with streaks of
|squiggly lines for Gaspra and the stars.  About 3 or 4 nav images were taken

Was the slewing deliberate, or an unavoidable artifact of the
long exposures?

If the slewing was deliberate , why?

|before the encounter, and Gaspra's position was improved to an uncertainty
|of  300km.  During the ecounter, enough images were taken around the area where
|Gaspra was supposed to be to ensure a 99% confidence level that Gaspra
|would show up in some of the images.  The first playback of

How many images were wasted?  Or at least weren't of gaspra?
In gaspra's case,  My understanding is the main difficulty was
they had to send it down through the LGA.  Tape recorder space
wasn't a problem.   When S-L 1993e  is imaged,  will there be more
of a squeeze  on tape recorder  storage?   Of course, if you guys
hit it dead on,  then that's not such a problem.

What prioritzation will  S-L  get on the science mission?
I imagine the probe deploy is highest,  continous fields and waves
studies,  then what?   imaging jupiter?  or will S-L  come higher?



|the data sent only 12 lines from the "center" image, and part of Gaspra
|showed up in the 12 lines - the aiming was perfect.
                        ^^^^^^^

Of course,  you folks do have that reputation.

pat

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

Date: Wed, 7 Apr 1993 15:39:28 GMT
From: Henry Spencer <[e-mail]>
Subject: Mining Deuterium(sp) on Venus?
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:
>If Venus has alot of Deuterium(sp) (isetope of Hydrogen) is it worth our while
>and energy to go there to "mine" it??

No.  There is lots of deuterium in Earth's oceans, slightly harder to purify
but a whole lot easier to get to.
--
All work is one man's work.             | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
                    - Kipling           |  [e-mail]  utzoo!henry

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

Date: 7 Apr 1993 17:37:29 GMT
From: Dave McKissock <[e-mail]>
Subject: NASA "Wraps"
Newsgroups: sci.space

In a previous article, [e-mail] (Allen W. Sherzer) says:

>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (David B. Mckissock) writes:
>>Allen Sherzer & Tim Kyger write:
>>  "Another problem is what are called 'wraps' (or sometimes
>>   the 'center tax'). When work for a large program like
>>   Freedom or Shuttle is performed at a NASA center, the
>>   center skims off a portion which goes into what amounts
>>   to a slush fund...
>
>>My dear friends, your mixing fact and fiction here.
>
>Not according to the sources we spoke with at the Reston Program Office.
>They claim that the current design can be built for less than $2B a year
>and operated for less than $1 billion per year (including the cost of
>the WP 2 bailout). You might also read the anonymous editorial in the
>March 22 issue of Space News. BTW, this is the first anonymous editorial
>they have ever published.

I have read the Space News editorial. I don't believe that simply
reorganizing the management structure so the project managers
at the centers report to the Reston program manager and
eliminating a layer or two of the requirements documents will
somehow magically save hundreds of millions of dollars. Sure,
the changes would tighten up the management chain, and
eliminating documentation would save $, but not anywhere near
the scale that is needed to fit within the 5/7/9 $Billion
options recently dictated.


>>First off, yes, the concept of 'center tax', or 'wrap' does
>>exist. If I recall the numbers correctly, the total 'tax'
>>for the SSF program for this fiscal year is around $40 Million.
>
>I'm sure that is what it says on paper. Reality however, is another
>matter. For example, The Engineering Directorate has about 8,000 NASA
>people and contracotrs working for it. Their only approved project at
>the moment is Freedom. Yet only a third of those people actually work
>on Freedom. Who is paying for those people and why aren't they working
>on what they are chartered to work on?

A
As I understand it, there is a specific line item in the NASA
budget to pay the salaries for all NASA civil servants. So, when
people quote a figure like $8 B, or $30 B for SSF, I do not
believe those numbers include civil servant salaries.

I wasn't aware that the Engineering Directorate at JSC has only
one project they are chartered to work on. Let's peek into their
organization, by looking at their organization published in
the JSC phone book. The Engineering Directorate has 8 divisions:
Crew and Thermal Systems, Tracking and Communications,
Navigation Control & Aeronautics, Flight Data Systems, Propulsion
and Power, Automation and Robotics, Structures and Mechanics, and
Systems Engineering. Wouldn't you figure that folks in many
of these divisions heavily support the Space Shuttle (JSC does
have some small role in Shuttle Operations, don't they :) ], and
maybe the folks in "Tracking & Communications" work alot on
TDRSS?

I don't see why it's such a big deal that only 30% of the
folks in the JSC Engineering Directorate directly support SSF.


>Any cursory examination will show that NASA is wasting billions on
>Freedom while center managers use it as a cover to fund their pet
>projects.

I guess you didn't get my point. In FY93, only $40 Million is
"wasted" in taxes, and I'm not ready to give up the point
that of the $40 Million, not all of it goes into the center
discretionary fund.
(So, it's not "billions", and it's not "wasted".)

>
>>I should note that your estimate of the tax rate at 1/3 could
>>be close to the actual rate. The tax is only charged on funds
>>that are spent at the center
>
>Then where is the money coming from? You mean all those JCS engineers
>are working for free?

In essence, yes, they are "free", since the whole civil
servant salary comes out of one NASA line item.
>
>>At WP-4, we call these funds we spend in-house supporting
>>development funds (as they are supporting the development
>>work done by Rocketdyne).
>
>Looks like your center manager supports Freedom. At other centers
>it's a different story. At JSC for example, Shuttle is bigger so
>funds are used to support it.

I don't get the point. If JSC center management decides they
need "X" amount of folks to support shuttle, and "Y" to
support SSF, on what basis are you criticizing their management?
Yeah, they just had a big cost overrun, but I haven't read
anywhere that to keep it from happening in the future more
folks from the Engineering Directorate should be supporting
SSF.
>
>>Most of the tax, however, goes to fund the 'general'
>>services at the Center, like the library, the
>>central computer services division, the Contractor
>>who removes the snow, etc.
>
>Sorry, that is the overhead charge, not the center tax. I have
>no problems with reasonable overhead and we specifically didn't
>include it. Nither does Reston.

I stand behind my statement. I was told, by the guy who
does cost analyses in support of Kohrs, the Program manager
in Washington, that the "tax" was roughly $40 M this
fiscal year, and there is no additional "overhead" charge.
Also, as I said above, these funds (at least at Lewis)
are used to support "general" center services.

--
<< You shall know the truth, and it shall set you free >>
Quote engraved in the marble wall @ CIA Headquarters
[e-mail]

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

Date: Wed, 7 Apr 1993 16:05:10 GMT
From: Gary Coffman <ke4zv!gary>
Subject: nuclear waste
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (William Reiken) writes:
>In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Matthew DeLuca) writes:
>>
>> Greedy little oil companies?  Don't blame them; oil companies just supply the
>> demand created by you, me, and just about everyone else on the planet.  If we
>> run out, its all our faults.
>
>    Ok, so how about the creation of oil producing bacteria?  I figure
>that if you can make them to eat it up then you can make them to shit it.
>Any comments?

Such bacteria exist, after a fashion, it's just that it's much more
efficient to do the synthesis in a chemical plant. Synthetic oil is
an established technology tracing it's mass use back to WWII Germany.
The Fischer Topish process can make synthetic gasoline at prices
competitive with natural oil at $40 a barrel. That's about double today's
price, and similar to the price surge during the 1970s embargo. There
are other processes available today as well. They mostly fall in the
$40-$70 a barrel range. When oil prices rise to those levels, the
synthetics will move in to compete. The raw starter materials for
synthetic oils range from coal, tar sands, and shale, to biomass and
municipal wastes. The available amount of these raw materials is
staggering, many thousands of times the amount of crude oil
available. There's no resource limitation that would stop synthetic
oil products from being available at current consumption levels and
at $2-$3 a gallon prices for many thousands of years to come. A
doubling of oil prices would only add about $300-$600 to the annual
operating expense of a motorist. That's less than insurance, tag
fees, and the like.

The only concern about oil products is the pollution produced by
their use. Availability at reasonable prices is assured far beyond
any reasonable projected timescale. The whole idea of importing
hundreds of megatons of material a year from outer space is somewhat
ridiculous. Eventually, there's no place left to put it.

Gary
--
Gary Coffman KE4ZV          |    You make it,     | gatech!wa4mei!ke4zv!gary
Destructive Testing Systems |    we break it.     | uunet!rsiatl!ke4zv!gary
534 Shannon Way             |    Guaranteed!      | emory!kd4nc!ke4zv!gary
Lawrenceville, GA 30244     |                     |

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

Date: Wed, 7 Apr 1993 15:00:58 GMT
From: Gary Coffman <ke4zv!gary>
Subject: Portable Small Ground Station?dir
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:
>In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Henry Spencer) writes:
>> In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:
>>>How difficult would it be to set up your own ground station?
>>
>> Ground station for *what*?  At one extreme, some of the amateur-radio
>> satellites have sometimes been reachable with hand-held radios.  At the
>> other, nothing you can do in your back yard will let you listen in on
>> Galileo.  Please be more specific.
>
>SPECIFIC:
>Basically to be able to do the things the big dadies can do.. Monitor, and
>control if need be the Shuttle...
>
>Such as the one in Australia and such....

The Shuttle isn't controlled from the ground, and it's communications
with the ground is mainly through the TDRS system. It doesn't take
a huge antenna to gather the signals relayed by TDRS, but it does
take complex and expensive equipment to demultiplex the data streams.
Everything is transmitted as a multiplexed multimegabaud digital data
stream. The high speed demultiplexers are beyond ordinary amateur
reach at this time, though prices are falling rapidly. More importantly,
NASA doesn't release specs on what the channels are, so you still
probably couldn't make sense of what you receive.

Ordinary Shuttle suit communications takes place on UHF, and when
conditions are just right you can monitor that directly with rather
simple equipment, similar to what amateurs use in the SAREX experiments.
Shuttle also has ordinary flight radios for use during landings, but you
have to be line of sight to receive those.

The DSN stations are different, and aren't used to monitor Shuttle.
These stations use huge antennas to gather in the very faint signals
from distant probes. They use advanced LNAs, low noise amplifiers,
and computer enhancement to pick up signals that are so faint that
a flea scratching himself at 2000 km would have more power. You have
no hope of duplicating them on an amateur budget.

Gary
--
Gary Coffman KE4ZV          |    You make it,     | gatech!wa4mei!ke4zv!gary
Destructive Testing Systems |    we break it.     | uunet!rsiatl!ke4zv!gary
534 Shannon Way             |    Guaranteed!      | emory!kd4nc!ke4zv!gary
Lawrenceville, GA 30244     |                     |

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

Date: Wed, 7 Apr 1993 14:41:58 GMT
From: Marvin Batty <[e-mail]>
Subject: Sky Surfing Safety. What if you bite the wave!
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:
>Wierd question, I seem to be good at them..
>
>Okay if a person is skysurfing and bites the wave, what is there to get them
>safely to ground?? Basically what if they fall of the board and they go nose
>first into the atmosphere??? What safety measures are there? available? design
>ideas?
>
>Of course going nose first into the atmosphere is a spectacular way to bite the
>ground, but.. I would like to know I might actually live thru the experiance...
>
>
>Surf the atmosphere NOW!!!!!!
>
>Catch the gravity wave for a earthy experiance.
>==
>Michael Adams, [e-mail] -- I'm not high, just jacked
>
As I recall reading in a fiction book called "Orbital Decay", one method
is a thermal shield, which may be linked to current NASA research on
surviving damage to space stations. The astro is jetted away from
the launch sight and a thermal shield (like an umbrella) fans out when
hitting atmosphere. At a certain height (after cooling) the shield is
discarded and the astro parachutes the rest of the way down.
Hope this helps.
Marvin Batty

--
****************************************************************************
                  Marvin Batty - [e-mail]
"And they shall not find those things, with a sort of rafia like base,
that their fathers put there just the night before. At about 8 O'clock!"

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

Date: 7 Apr 93 02:02:07 EDT
From: Ethan Dicks <[e-mail]>
Subject: space food sticks
Newsgroups: sci.space

John Elson ([e-mail]) wrote:
: Has anyone ever heard of a food product called "Space Food Sticks?" This
: was apparently created/marketed around the time of the lunar expeditions, along
: with "Tang" and other dehydrated foods. I have spoken with several people
: who have eaten these before, and they described them as a dehydrated candy.
: Any information would be greatly appreciated.

I also remember eating (and loving) these during the early '70s.  I tried to
track them down a few years ago and was informed that they have probably
not been manufactured for at least 20 years and that the ones I ate were
undoubtably several years old at the time.

If you ever find them, I would love to know.

-ethan

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

Date: 7 Apr 1993 16:16:16 GMT
From: Baylor <[e-mail]>
Subject: What if the USSR had reached the Moon first?
Newsgroups: alt.history.what-if,sci.space

>What military value is this? All I can think of is a reduction in
>the cost of building an orbital facility, which might have an SDI
>system on it.

    I know nothing about the space race and I'm too young
to remember the good old days, but wasn't the big fuss about
Russian space technology just the realization of ICBMs?
    I think that we still had some time after the russians
got nuclear weaponry until they could use it as they didn't
have any air technology capable of delivering their bombs (
supposedly their bombers were fairly bad). But if they could
orbit a dog around the world then they could surely drop
a couple of megatons on america.

                        - baylor

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

Date: Wed, 7 Apr 1993 17:47:11 GMT
From: "John E. Curtis" <[e-mail]>
Subject: What if the USSR had reached the Moon first?
Newsgroups: alt.history.what-if,sci.space

   The value of a lunar military base over a satellite station are many
   the most obvious are

      1 not vulnerable to simple tactics like scattering gravel in front
    of the station.

      2 can mine moon for raw materials unlike station which is dependant
    on resupply

      3 can only be shot at from one side



                john

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

Date: Wed, 7 Apr 1993 15:37:58 GMT
From: Henry Spencer <[e-mail]>
Subject: What Minerals are Cheaper on Mars? than earth?
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:
>... What minerals are there on MArs that would make it cheaper to go
>to Mars to get them, versus mining/smelting and processing them here??

Unless you can bring down transport costs *a lot*, there are none.

If you could transmute lead to gold in low Earth orbit, it wouldn't pay
to do it at current Western launch prices.  Mars is rather harder to get to.

In general, unless you assume really radical drops in transport cost, the
only cost-effective use for extraterrestrial materials is in space, where
terrestrial materials are very expensive too.  And the problem with that
is the lack of any well-established market.
--
All work is one man's work.             | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
                    - Kipling           |  [e-mail]  utzoo!henry

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

Date: Wed, 7 Apr 1993 17:38:57 GMT
From: Bernhardt Saini-eidukat <[e-mail]>
Subject: What Minerals are Cheaper on Mars? than earth?
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:
>Idea or thought..
>
>What materials would a commerical company need or want to get from Mars?
>
[stuff deleted]
>
>Michael Adams
>NSMCA@ACAD@.ALASKA.EDU
>I'm not high, just jacked

According to R.G. Burns and D.S. Fisher (Journal of Geophysical Research,
vol. B95, p. 14,169-14,193, 1990) "ultramafic Fe-Ni sulfides and perhaps
iron-rich sediments (gossans and abiotic banded iron formations) derived
from chemical weathering of the basaltic crust, as well as cumulate chromites,
are likely to be the only ore deposits present on Mars."
--
   The opinions expressed are not necessarily those of the University of
     North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the Campus Office for Information
        Technology, or the Experimental Bulletin Board Service.
           internet:  laUNChpad.unc.edu or 152.2.22.80

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End of Space Digest Volume 16 : Issue 433
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