NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #18/NN_1992_18.iso/spool/sci/physics/12850

Internet Message Format | 1992-08-14 | 3.7 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!gatech!mailer.cc.fsu.edu!sun13!ds8.scri.fsu.edu!jac
From: [e-mail] (Jim Carr)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: "What's New" July-24-1992
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 14 Aug 92 14:38:01 GMT
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Sender: [e-mail]
Reply-To: [e-mail] (Jim Carr)
Organization: SCRI, Florida State University
Lines: 55

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Thomas J. Nugent) writes:
>[e-mail] (Jim Carr) writes:
>
>>All of which seems to ignore the one design that we actually launched!
>>Skylab was designed, two of them built, one launched and used for
>>quite some time.  It is presumably man-rated and that design could be
>>built again.  Of course one might wish to update it, but Mir has shown
>>that a simple and conservative design is the best way to get up there
>>early and stay there for an extended period of time.
>
>Perhaps.  But I would also consider what you are able to do up there besides
>sit (float?) on your hands.  Simply put, Freedom can do alot more than Mir.
>There was an excellent post recently, perhaps in sci.space, regarding the
>differences between Freedom and Mir.  Freedom has more power, more space, etc.

I was talking about Skylab, not Mir, for exactly the reason that all of
the discussion seems to ignore our own experience with a space station and
talk as if Freedom would be our first one.  And they did much more than
just float on their hands in Skylab.

My concern is that Freedom has none of the features you describe because
it does not exist.  We have spent more than the original proposed cost
and have only a design to show for it.  The original-original idea was
great, and cost-effective if we had a heavy-lift vehicle to get it up
there in one shot, but Freedom has been committee-designed to the point
where it is not clear what makes it special ... what identifiable goal
it will achieve that is worth the tradeoffs in other space explorations.

I think a space station is a good idea.  I am not sure Freedom is that idea.

>>The one thing I really do not understand in all of the discussion of the
>>need for long-term study of human biology in orbit and the recent story
>>about problems in zero-g adaptation is why none of this was studied back
>>in the days of Skylab.
>
>They were busy studying other things?  I imagine that there was some study
>of the effects of zero-g on the astronauts.  But two(?) missions, each less
>than 84 days, is definitely not enough to complete the book (probably not
>even the first chapter) on the effects of zero-g on humans.

I was referring to the recent report from the results of studies on the
next-to-last shuttle mission: that zero-g effects on the CV system set
in very quickly.  When I wrote this originally, the fact that this was
missed in all of the other work surprised me.  Upon some reflection, it
no longer does.  They missed it for the same reason other things get
missed in science -- no one looked.  Facilities on the earlier short
duration flights were not suitable (unlike the great facilities on the
shuttle) and when we had good facilities, they were on long-duration
flights looking for effects on a 60-day time scale.

--
J. A. Carr                                    |  "The New Frontier of which I
[e-mail]                           |  speak is not a set of promises
Florida State University  B-186               |  -- it is a set of challenges."
Supercomputer Computations Research Institute |   John F. Kennedy (15 July 60)