Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/mac/TEXT/SPACEDIG/V09_3/V9_340.TXT

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Date: Wed,  5 Apr 89 05:17:57 -0500 (EST)
Subject: SPACE Digest V9 #340

SPACE Digest                                      Volume 9 : Issue 340

Today's Topics:
 Re: Soviet Phobos II probe fails just before final approach to moon
         Re: Solid State Fusion for Launchers
        Re: Success with cold fusion reported
              Re: alien contact
          want E. St. Louis contacts (LONG)
              Re: alien contact
             Deuterium extraction
    Re: Soviet Launch Sites (was Re: space news from Jan 16 AW&ST)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 2 Apr 89 00:54:09 GMT
From: jumbo![e-mail]  (Jorge Stolfi)
Subject: Re: Soviet Phobos II probe fails just before final approach to moon

First of all, I wish to thank Glenn Chapman for his *very* valuable
postings.  They alone are reason enough to subscribe to this
newsgroup.

Still, I can't resist replying to his editorial:
>
>   One comment here, the researchers at the Soviet IKI institute,
>   which were in charge of the probe, have been pushing the line
>   that unmanned systems are cheaper and more reliable than manned
>   ones.  They have been strongly suggesting that robots would be
>   better to explore Mars rather than a manned mission.
>   After this high profile mission failure they could find their
>   case substantially harder to present in the USSR.

Well, it is certainly true that all manned Mars missions to date were
100% successful and cost practically nothing.  I am even willing to
believe that this will remain true for many, many years to come.

Unfortunately, those missions haven't return much useful data, have
they...

                ;-) Jorge Stolfi

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
      ``I mean it is not enough to launch a projectile and give it no
    further thought.  We must follow it throughout its course, until
    the moment it hits the target.''
      ``Well!'' exclamed the general and the major, a bit taken aback by
    the idea.
      ``Absolutely,'' Barbicane spoke with self-assurance. ``Absolutely.
    Otherwise the experiment would be pointless.''
        --Verne, _From the Earth to the Moon_ (1865)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
DISCLAIMER: The above opinions are just opinions.

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

Date: 1 Apr 89 22:49:16 GMT
From: mailrus!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!utzoo![e-mail]  (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Solid State Fusion for Launchers

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Paul Dietz) writes:
>The second possibility is to use a smaller fusion reactor to preheat
>fuel and/or oxidizer before injection into a conventional chemical
>engine.  This would increase the Isp beyond that possible with
>chemical fuels alone.

I doubt the practicality of this.  Existing oxyhydrogen rockets already
run fuel-rich partly to *cool* the exhaust a bit (and thus reduce thermal
dissociation of water into oxygen and hydrogen).  It might help the less
energetic fuels like hydrazine, but why bother?  If the power densities
stay low, the big use will probably be as a power source for electrical
propulsion in space.
--
Welcome to Mars!  Your         |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
passport and visa, comrade?    | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry [e-mail]

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

Date: 1 Apr 89 15:29:13 GMT
From: pilchuck!ssc!fylz![e-mail]  (Phil Hughes)
Subject: Re: Success with cold fusion reported

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Chris Phoenix) writes:
| In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (John Abt) writes:
| >>[quotation deleted]
| >With unlimited cheap and pollution-free energy available, we won't be
| >talking about the greenhouse effect, it will be the furnace effect.

| Not necessarily.
| Imagine how cheap it would be, with unlimited power, to turn large areas of
| land into mirrors.  Just find any sandy area such as a desert, then melt it
| smooth, then sputter on some shiny metal.
| I don't know the statistics on the amount of energy in sunlight falling on
| the earth, but it's some amazing number of times greater than the amount
| of energy we use.  In other words, we could compensate for all the energy
| we use by covering a relatively small part of the earth's surface with
| mirrors to reflect all the heat back out into space.

The way I read this, you said we should build cheap fusion reactors to
supply our energy needs and they build mirrors to reflect an equal amount
of energy back into space to keep the earth from heating up.  Richt?

Might I suggest that it would be easier and cost less if you just built
the mirrors to reflect the energy into a collection system and used that
energy.  Or is this too low tech?

--
Phil Hughes  -- FYL -- 8315 Lk City Wy NE -- Suite 207 -- Seattle, WA 98115

{uw-beaver!tikal,uunet!pilchuck}!ssc!fylz!fyl

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

Date: 2 Apr 89 04:05:41 GMT
From: mailrus!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!utzoo![e-mail]  (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: alien contact

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Matthew T. DeLuca) writes:
>>Of course, if they consider spaceflight a major sign of civilization, then
>>there's absolutely no doubt about where they will go:  Baikonur...
>You fail to realize, I feel, that by the standards of a civilization that can
>send ships to the stars, neither we nor the Russians have any claim to being
>a space-faring civilization...

True.  However, the Soviets are clearly much the closer.

>Besides, I doubt that self-respecting aliens
>would have as their sole criterion of civilization the number of cheap
>chemical rockets that could be sent up.  Quality versus quantity, I'd choose
>quality every time.

Yup, clearly the people who can fly an entirely unmanned shuttle mission
with a crosswind landing and a launch in freezing weather, perfectly,
the first time, are ahead on quality.  Same conclusion -- they'll go to
Baikonur.

I think our hypothetical visitors would be more impressed by a pair of
small, shabby space stations in orbit than by a pair of gleaming marvels
of technology, one strewn in pieces over Australia and the other still on
paper after nearly a decade of studies.

Or by a pair of ambitious, failed Mars probes against a complete absence
of planetary missions for a decade.

Or by people who can build launchers that can go up on schedule twice a
week, year after year, against people who can't seem to launch anything
on schedule.

Or, in general, by results in cheap black ink on newsprint, against
glossy airbrushed four-color brochures full of broken promises.
--
Welcome to Mars!  Your         |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
passport and visa, comrade?    | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry [e-mail]

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

Date: 2 Apr 89 00:29:12 GMT
From: [e-mail]  (Stainless Steel Gerbil [Joe Beckenbach])
Subject: want E. St. Louis contacts (LONG)


    sci.space purists might want to hit 'n'....
Flames to me welcomed as long as it's e-mail.
NO FLAMES TO THE NEWSGROUPS PLEASE!

    Rationale behind posting to:
sci.space-- wide audience, possible space anti-funding hooks pointed out
misc.misc-- most appropriate group
comp.society.futures-- philosophy behind the posting


    In Saturday's LA Times, Section I, page 26, I read an article entitled
"Long Crippled by Financial, Social Woes, / East St. Louis is Now Fearing
the Worst".  It seems that the housing project of Villa Griffin acquired a
two-to-five acre sewage 'lake' last December when a sewer collapsed.  Nor is
this reportedly an isolated case in this town.  Illinois Governor Jim Thompson
(in the words of the article, not direct quote) "said that the state will
not help bail the city out as long as Mayor Carl E. Officer remains in power."
The article goes on to chronicle some of the other woes threatening the
stability of the town, including health menace due to the overflowing and
broken sewers.  An Associate Circuit Judge has ordered that the sewage problem
be solved by the first of June.  And a state task force questions whether the
city can provide '"the basic municipal services required to to ensure public
safety and the welfare of its citizenry."'
the federal government".


    Ocean Arks International, founded by two of the New Alchemy Institute's
original founders, designed and helped install the Harwich, Massachusetts, septage
purification setup.  This twenty-five-tank, one-trough layout runs the septage
through half the tanks, then the trough, and the rest of the tanks, with floating
plants in the tanks and marsh plants in the trough.  The results?  I quote from
New Alchemy Quarterly, [Winter 1988, #34] page 15:

    "... the Harwich plant has proven an unqualified success. It is removing
     99% of the ammonia and 99% of the phosphorus from the septage wastes.
     The nitrate levels being discharged are one-tenth of those considered
     safe for well water and the effluent has officially been pronounced
     as very high-quality water.  In just a few months, the Harwich
     experiment has made a significant breakthrough in cost-effective,
     environmentally safe, waste water treatment."

The New Alchemy Institute has a long history of incorporating the cycles and
mechanisms of nature into solutions to many and varied problems.  Some of the
NAI people supposedly joke about being 'in the world-saving business'.


    Wink wink nudge nudge say no more.  Any Washington University students,
or anyone else in the St. Louis metropolitan area, please help me get word of
this successful solution to the people who can use the help.  In particular,
several names were mentioned in the newspaper article:

1- St. Clair County State's Attorney John Baricevic, who has launched a grand
    jury investigation into the city's finances, and also was one of the
    lawyers involved in the effort to force a 1 June solution deadline.
2- [State?] Associate Circuit Judge Sheila O'Brien, the judge who ordered the
    1 June solution deadline.
3- Sister Julia Huiskamp. a nun who runs a Catholic Urban Charities program
    at Villa Griffin, who was quoted as saying the conditions were Third-World.
4- Joseph T. Kurre, "director of an East Side Health District clinic, who is
    fearful that the sewage problems throughout the city could cause
    outbreaks of serious diseases, such as diphtheria, tetanus, and cholera."
5- Katherine Ashford, a resident of Villa Griffin, who was mentioned in passing
    in the article.


    The connection to space efforts?  One, that solutions to most of the
life-sciences problems in closed-ecosystem efforts seem partially addressed
and even implemented under the guise of 'ecologically sound practices' such
as the above, which are economically viable even without the underlying
philosophical basis which motivated the 'radical' solution.  Two, that when the
environmental push was less intense, and the infrastructure of cities were less
loaded by people and the ravages of time, the anti-space lobbies were justifying
removal of money to spend on earth-bound social projects.  If the space efforts
do not provide spin-offs to solve immediate and pressing problems, such as for
East St. Louis' sewage crisis, then it will be easier for politicians to draw
money from "unproductive" space efforts in order to help keep ground-dwellers
alive.  Ecological insights could be one such spin-off.

    AGAIN, flame me if you wish, but by e-mail.  Flaming in a newsgroup
when e-mail is available tends to make me lose respect for the flamer.


    Material taken from LA Times, Saturday 1 April 1989, and New Alchemy
Quarterly, Winter 1988 [#34].  LA Times copy quoted without explicit permission;
New Alchemy copy quoted with explicit permission for "nonprofit educational
purposes provided that credit is given to the _New_Alchemy_Quarterly_".
--
Joe Beckenbach               |    How can we dream of the stars
[e-mail]       |    if the table is bare
Caltech 256-80, Pasadena CA 91125  |    and the water is opaque and brown?

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

Date: 2 Apr 89 15:33:53 GMT
From: [e-mail]  (Matthew T. DeLuca)
Subject: Re: alien contact

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Henry Spencer) writes:
>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Matthew T. DeLuca) writes:
>>Besides, I doubt that self-respecting aliens
>>would have as their sole criterion of civilization the number of cheap
>>chemical rockets that could be sent up.  Quality versus quantity, I'd choose
>>quality every time.
>
>Yup, clearly the people who can fly an entirely unmanned shuttle mission
>with a crosswind landing and a launch in freezing weather, perfectly,
>the first time, are ahead on quality.  Same conclusion -- they'll go to
>Baikonur.
>
An unmanned shuttle landing...does this impress you, Henry?  I'm not
particularly impressed.  Sure, it's a neat trick, but we (and the Russians)
have had microwave landing systems for aircraft for years, and adapting it to
a shuttle is no big deal.  The U.S. is fully capable of the same thing, but
why bother?  There's absolutely no use for an unmanned shuttle mission that
I can think of.  Incidentally, the U.S. shuttle is fully capable of landing
automatically; all the pilot has to do is lower the wheels and step on the
brakes.  As for the launch, the Russian shuttle did not go up the first time,
nor the second, as far as I know.  And like it's American counterpart, it
was delayed numerous times throughout development, with both technical
problems and political ones.  And it's not particularly superior in technology,
either.  I heard recently that the tiles are expectd to have to be replaced
every ten flights or so.  Like I said, I'm really not overly impressed.
I will grant, however, that the Soviets have no real problem with cold weather
launches.  Working from Florida, we never had to develop this capability, and
we paid dearly for it.  I just hope we learned a lesson.

>I think our hypothetical visitors would be more impressed by a pair of
>small, shabby space stations in orbit than by a pair of gleaming marvels
>of technology, one strewn in pieces over Australia and the other still on
>paper after nearly a decade of studies.
>
You might be right, here.  Of course, in five or six years, assuming no
development problems and no erosion of political will, the tables will be
turned.  Let's just hope the aliens wait that long.  :-)

>Or by a pair of ambitious, failed Mars probes against a complete absence
>of planetary missions for a decade.

Sure, they'll be impressed here.  Not only were these two probes failures,
every other probe they've sent there has failed.  I'll put our planetary
exploration program up against the Russians any day.  Who has sent the only
successful probes to Mars?  Who has sent the only probes *period* to
Mercury?  Jupiter?  Saturn?  Uranus?  And coming this August, Neptune?  For
that matter, who has sent the only manned missions to another celestial
body?  I will admit, we should have followed up the Apollo missions, but
let's face it, the Soviet planetary science program is nothing compared to
the U.S.  Assuming nothing goes wrong (fingers crossed), we'll be sending
new probes out to Venus, to get the highest quality maps of that planet ever,
and a followup mission to Jupiter, which will not only do extensive studies of
the moons, but will make the first penetration of the atmosphere of a gaseous
planet.  And these aren't just paper dreams; Magellan is ready to go, within
the month, and Galileo is just waiting for the launch window.

>
>Or by people who can build launchers that can go up on schedule twice a
>week, year after year, against people who can't seem to launch anything
>on schedule.
>
There's a difference between sending unmanned missions up on schedule and
sending manned missions up.  There's a lot more to the manned mission.  We
launch our unmanned missions on schedule just fine.  The only delays here are
those caused by not enough boosters, which is the direct result of poor
policy-making with regard to expendable boosters in the Seventies.  And our
manned flights don't run that far behind, either.

>Or, in general, by results in cheap black ink on newsprint, against
>glossy airbrushed four-color brochures full of broken promises.
>--
>Welcome to Mars!  Your         |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
>passport and visa, comrade?    | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry [e-mail]
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
How are they going to ask for passports and visas?  They can't even get the
customs station to work properly!

Georgia Institute of Technology     : Remember, wherever you go, there you are.
ARPA: [e-mail]        :

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

Date:     Fri, 31 Mar 89 11:39 EDT
From: <[e-mail]>
Subject:    Deuterium extraction


    I asked how to extract Deuterium in a previous posting, and got a
response from a person at Perdue.  They wanted me to pass it on the net:

        Apparently, all you have to do is electrolysis.  The heavy water stays
longer, so you stop when you have 1/1000 your initial volume (the concentration
of Deuterium in seawater). Assume you first have to distill all the salt,
biomass and pollution out first, if you can.   They then electrolyze the heavy
water to collect the pure ionized Deuterium gas, add electrons and finis.

        Seems reasonably simple, so that cold fusion is probably a false start,
because the fuel is easy to produce, the method is somewhat easy to use, and
it seems too good to be true.  Time (and trial and error) will tell.

                                Korac MacArthur

=============================================================================
                   generic disclaimer
=============================================================================

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

Date: 1 Apr 89 07:02:50 GMT
From: ndsuvm1!ndsuvax![e-mail]  (Glen Overby)
Subject: Re: Soviet Launch Sites (was Re: space news from Jan 16 AW&ST)


In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Henry Spencer) writes:
>Cover:  photo of the systems-test prototype of the Soviet shuttle,
>in its bay at Baikonur.
                ^^^^^^^

If I recall correctly what was said in James Oberg's _Red Star in Orbit_,
the city of Baikonur doesn't even exist!  It was a cover-up (that they're
still using) to keep the US (and others) from knowing their exact launch
site (then Tyrantrum[sp]).

Now my question: where is the true place that the Soviet shuttle (and other
space shots) is launched from?  I seem to recall hearing one time about two
locations.  Latitude and Longitude would be nice to know, too.
--
                Glen Overby     <[e-mail]>
        uunet!ndsuvax!ncoverby (UUCP)   ncoverby@ndsuvax (Bitnet)

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

End of SPACE Digest V9 #340
*******************