Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/mac/TEXT/SPACEDIG/V09_4/V9_466.TXT

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Subject: SPACE Digest V9 #466

SPACE Digest                                      Volume 9 : Issue 466

Today's Topics:
             Re: Private Space Companies
          Meteorite impact in Soviet Union in 1947.
             Re: Private Space Companies
           Re: Oort cloud is not `mythical'
            Re: How Hubble will get there
           Payload Status for 05/26/89 (Forwarded)
            Re: New Orbiter Name Announced
        Re: Proposed improvements for Arecibo
         Re: Sun's invisible partner NEMESIS
         Re: UFOs and other weird stuff on this list.
     Payload Status for 05/26/89 [Corrected] (Forwarded)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 26 May 89 05:56:25 GMT
From: amdahl![e-mail]  (T.S. Reddy)
Subject: Re: Private Space Companies

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Henry Spencer) writes:
> In article <Added.MYSjRKu00UkTQ=[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Lutz Massonne, [phone]) writes:
...
>
> Boeing -- which is not currently in the space-launch business, although
> it has a long-standing interest in the notion -- is probably the only
> big aerospace company in the world that can afford to go its own way
> and make its own decisions.
>
     I doubt that Boeing can develop a new space vehicle given that it
cannot even build a new airliner from scratch without collaborating with
another company or without government aid.

--
T.S.Reddy

Arpa: [e-mail]
uucp:...!{ames,decwrl,uunet,pyramid,sun}!amdahl!reddy

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

Date: 26 May 89 13:14:03 GMT
From: renoir.dec.com![e-mail]  (CUP/ASG, MLO5-2/G1 8A, 223-3283)
Subject: Meteorite impact in Soviet Union in 1947.


        According to the May 1989 issue of the Boston L5/NSS SPACE NEWS
    newsletter on page 2, a relatively large meteorite struck the Soviet
    Union on February 12, 1947 only 400 kilometers (250 miles) from the
    city of Valivostok with the force of an atomic bomb.

        This event was unknown to me until this article.  Does anyone
    have any further information on this meteorite strike?  Thanks.

        Larry Klaes

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

Date: 26 May 89 15:40:00 GMT
From: skipper![e-mail]
Subject: Re: Private Space Companies

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

   In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (T.S. Reddy) writes:
   >>
   >     I doubt that Boeing can develop a new space vehicle given that it
   >cannot even build a new airliner from scratch without collaborating with
   >another company or without government aid.

        Er, what planes, what company, and what government?  I don't know about
   all of their planes, but I don't recall the government subsidizing the
   development of the 757 and 767, and I don't know what you mean by
   collaboration; Boeing is 'borrowing' workers from Lockheed, here in Atlanta,
   and they do contract some of their work out ,butI don't think that qualifies
   as collaboration.  I have to agree with Henry (I think it was Henry...);
   Boeing is probably the only company that can develop it's own launch system.

--

The 707 was originally the KC-135.  Actually, Boeing proposed this
aircraft originally as being both military and civilian.  It was
bought by the Air Force and, some time after it entered military
service, Boeing asked the AF for permission to build and sell a
civilian version.  The AF agreed, probably partly on the basis that
economies of scale would keep costs down.

The 747 was initially proposed as an entry in the competition that the
C-5 won.  (That's why it has a through deck.)  I don't think that the
E-3 and SCA contributed to any economy of scale, however.  But, in
terms of subsidization, the 747-400 has winglets that were conceived
by a NASA aerodynamicist (Whitcomb or Jones, I don't remember) and
flown in a technology-demonstration program funded jointly by NASA and
the Air Force.

This latter makes a really good point.  Essentially all aerospace is
subsidized _somehow_ by military and government entities.  DARPA
subsidized superplastic forming.  NASA works on aircraft fuel economy
(e.g. supercritical wings and laminar flow).  Jet engine developement
by the Luftwaffe and RAE.  Practical rocketry from Germany.
Composites, fly-by-wire, telemetry, advanced instrumentation, hot
section materials, radar and other avionics, structures, on-board
computers, tooling, and so on.

Even Pegasus, which is touted as private enterprise at its best, is
subsidized by NASA providing the B-52 and the test range at a
ridiculously low cost.

I, incidentally, think that this is appropriate behavior on the part
of the government entities.  It's an important part of NASA's charter.
But it is a subsidy.
--

M F Shafer
NASA Ames-Dryden Flight Research Facility
[e-mail] or [e-mail]

NASA management doesn't know what I'm doing and I don't know what they're
doing, and everybody's happy this way.

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

Date: 25 May 89 17:29:13 GMT
From: visdc![e-mail]  (John E Van Deusen III)
Subject: Re: Oort cloud is not `mythical'

In article <[e-mail]>
[e-mail] writes:
>
> ... I agree that the location of the Oort cloud is in dispute, and
> that its existence is circumstantial.  ...

The evidence for the existence of the oort cloud seems to me to be
reasonably direct.  I think it is fairly well accepted that the solar
nebula cooled to form a broad band of planetesimals.  When the major
planets began to accrete, the orbits of the planetesimals were
perturbed.  In an episode of intense bombardment, perhaps 5 to 10
percent of the planetesimals were captured by the sun and major planets,
and the rest were flung out of the solar system.  The evidence to this
point is quite direct, including photographs that date the period of
bombardment.  To the extent that the solar nebula extended appreciably
beyond the orbit of Neptune, one would expect to find a band of
planetesimals, unperturbed by the major planets.
--
John E Van Deusen III, PO Box 9283, Boise, ID  83707, [phone]

uunet!visdc!jiii

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

Date: 26 May 89 12:59:43 GMT
From: stsci![e-mail]  (Jim Sims)
Subject: Re: How Hubble will get there

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (William LeFebvre) writes:
> [ Excuse the cross-posting, please. ]
>
> Here's something I found out yesterday.  Currently, the Hubble Space
> Telescope is being stored in California.  Everyone knows that it is going
> to be launched (some day) on a shuttle from the Cape (Florida east coast).
> But apparently, the only safe way to transport it is by boat.  Which means
> it will almost certainly have to go thru the Panama canal.........Let's
> hope things improve down that way in the next year.    Sigh.
>


For the (hopefully) last time, guys -

 HST will arrive in Florida shortly before launch, transport is via modified
C-5A, courtesy U.S. Air Force (wonder why they need a C-5A to transport HST
sized/shaped cargo ;-) )


 yes, HST will occasionally look at the Earth, Moon, Sun (through the
"back-door" for UV Flood on the WFPC). No, the sensors won't burn out.
No, it won't focus that 'close' either (but the defocus/deblurring
algorithms are known :-) ).

'nuff said?
--
    Jim Sims      Space Telescope Science Institute      Baltimore, MD
             UUCP:  {arizona,decvax,hao,ihnp4}!noao!stsci!sims
    ARPA:  [e-mail]                           SPAM:  SCIVAX::SIMS

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

Date: 26 May 89 17:16:19 GMT
From: trident.arc.nasa.gov![e-mail]  (Peter E. Yee)
Subject: Payload Status for 05/26/89 (Forwarded)


                                   Payload Status Report
                                   Kennedy Space Center
                                   May 26, 1989

          George H. Diller


          Galileo/IUS-19  (Atlantis)

               The Galileo spacecraft left the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in
          Pasadena, California on May 12 and arrived at KSC's SAEF-2
          planetary spacecraft checkout facility at 7:30 p.m. on May 16.
          Galileo and its support equipment were entered through the
          airlock and unloaded on May 17 and 18.  On May 19 Galileo was
          hoisted into a test stand and access platforms were moved into
          position around the spacecraft.  The Galileo probe arrived at KSC
          over a month ago on April 17, and has been in an adjacent SAEF-2
          test cell undergoing final assembly and checkout.  On May 23, it
          was moved into the SAEF-2 high bay with the Galileo orbiter to
          prepare it for integration scheduled for late next week.  This
          will be followed by the final buildup of the spacecraft during
          early June.

          Atlas Centaur AC-68/FltSatCom

               The AC-68 launch vehicle arrived at the Skid Strip on Cape
          Canaveral Air Force Station at 7:00 a.m. Wednesday, May 24.  It
          was offloaded and taken to Hangar J for receiving inspections.
          On or about Tuesday, May 30 the Atlas will be taken to Pad B at
          Launch Complex 36 for erection.  It will be followed by the
          erection of the Centaur stage approximately two days later.  The
          FltSatCom spacecraft is expected to arrive in mid-June.  The
          launch is expected to occur shortly after Labor Day.

          Delta/COBE

               The necessary refurbishment of Space Launch Complex 2-West
          at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California is complete.  Assembly
          and checkout of the spacecraft continues at NASA's Goddard
          Spaceflight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.  The launch of
          Delta/COBE is not expected to occur until at least the end of
          October.  The erection of the booster will begin when a launch
          time frame is determined.

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

Date: 25 May 89 16:54:09 GMT
From: att!mcdchg!ddsw1!corpane![e-mail]  (John Sparks)
Subject: Re: New Orbiter Name Announced

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Steve Hix)
writes:
>In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Marc Bonin) writes:
>> It's interesting to note that every shuttle orbiter except Columbia has
                                  ^^^^?
>> a fictional counterpart

Er, what about 'Atlantis'? Sure it's a mythical contenent, but what fictional
ship was it named after?

--
John Sparks   |  {rutgers|uunet}!ukma!corpane!sparks | D.I.S.K. 24hrs 1200bps
[not for RHF] |          [e-mail]         | 502/968-5401 thru -5406
Mixed Emotions: When you see your mother-in-law back over a cliff in your
new Mercedes Benz.

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

Date: 26 May 89 18:23:35 GMT
From: mfci![e-mail]  (Paul Rodman)
Subject: Re: Proposed improvements for Arecibo

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (John Roberts) writes:
>
>(From the May 1989 issue of Sky & Telescope)
>
>The 1000-foot radio telescope at Arecibo Observatory has a spherical rather
>than parabolic nonmoving dish, so the telescope can be "pointed" in different
>directions by moving the pickup point. Unfortunately, this induces spherical
>aberration (the received energy does not all focus on a single point), so
>a 96-foot line of receivers must be used as the pickup.
           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Hmmm. They meant to say a "linear feed antenna". The receivers are in a building,
far from the feed antenna!

My dad designed the antennas used at the Five College Radio Astronomy
Observatory in Mass. The array consisted of 4 120' spherical dishes, phased
together and used at meter-wavelengths to observe pulsars. The feed was
a funny looking pyramid-shaped log-periodic linear feed that he designed to
work at 150 and 450 Mhz. Like Arecibo the feed antenna moves to steer the
beam, rather than the whole antenna.

He always told me that it was no sweat building linear feeds. As a matter
of fact he said they were easier in some ways that dealing with a single
focus point.

I assume Arecibo's desire to dump the linear feed is because they are
doing much more centimeter stuff these days and at those frequencies
it IS hard to build an efficient linear feed (line losses for one thing!).

The Arecibo facility is quite incredible.


    Paul K. Rodman
    [e-mail]
    __... ...__    _.. .   _._ ._ .____ __.. ._

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

Date: 26 May 89 23:44:53 GMT
From: usc!csun!solaria![e-mail]  (Stephen Walton)
Subject: Re: Sun's invisible partner NEMESIS

Whatever the merits of the Nemesis hypothesis, the KT event doesn't
fit it.  The clay abundances, such as the iridium anomaly and the
isotope ratios, point to the culprit as a nickel-iron asteroid.
Comets are ice plus carbonaceous chondrite stuff, and it would take
implausibly many of them to deposit significant heavy elements on the
Earth.
--
Stephen Walton, Dept. of Physics & Astronomy, Cal State Univ. Northridge
[e-mail]       [e-mail]
[e-mail]    ...!csun!afws.csun.edu!ecphssrw

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

Date: 26 May 89 12:06:34 GMT
From: usc!merlin.usc.edu!nunki.usc.edu![e-mail]  (Mark Anderson)
Subject: Re: UFOs and other weird stuff on this list.

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Mark Robert Thorson) writes:
>
>How do you like them apples?  ET's and space habitats lumped together.
>Think about that the next time you look for a consultant.  Maybe that would
>be a good screening question, "Do you believe Earth is being visited by ET's?"

If it was a question, most people, who believed or have experienced
something, would lie anyway.  The current perception is that believing in
ET visitations means that you have some sort of paranoic psychological
problem and belong in an institution.  This has caused many sightings
and personal experiences to go underground or unreported altogether.  Many
pilots, especially, are threatened by this fear.  It is kind of funny that
people would actually get upset at this.  It seems to rock some people's
total outlook on the way they view the world, therefore these people
pose a threat.  The popular view is that if ETs were here, we would know
about it for sure because we scientists are so smart.  Or why haven't
they made obvious contact, using our logic to justify theirs.

Anyway, I have evidence of ETs in my basement.  It is a 4'X10'X2" charred
piece of metal like material that floats in water.  I found it in the
desert a few miles outside of Las Vegas.  It has these funny little
symbols on it.  With all of this UFO paranoia going around, I think
I'll just hold on to it so as to not stir up any controversy.  Hope
the government doesn't monitor this net.

So much for that consulting contract.  (Oh well)

Mark
[e-mail]

PS.  I tried to get into a psyche ward but it was full.  So I got a
    job instead.

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

Date: 26 May 89 22:25:56 GMT
From: trident.arc.nasa.gov![e-mail]  (Peter E. Yee)
Subject: Payload Status for 05/26/89 [Corrected] (Forwarded)


                                   Payload Status Report
                                   Kennedy Space Center
                                   May 26, 1989

          George H. Diller


          Galileo/IUS-19  (Atlantis)

               The Galileo spacecraft left the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in
          Pasadena, California on May 12 and arrived at KSC's SAEF-2
          planetary spacecraft checkout facility at 7:30 p.m. on May 16.
          Galileo and its support equipment were entered through the
          airlock and unloaded on May 17 and 18.  On May 19 Galileo was
          hoisted into a test stand and access platforms were moved into
          position around the spacecraft.  The Galileo probe arrived at KSC
          over a month ago on April 17, and has been in an adjacent SAEF-2
          test cell undergoing final assembly and checkout.  On May 23, it
          was moved into the SAEF-2 high bay with the Galileo orbiter to
          prepare it for integration scheduled for late next week.  This
          will be followed by the final buildup of the spacecraft during
          early June.



          Atlas Centaur AC-68/FltSatCom

               The AC-68 launch vehicle arrived at the Skid Strip on Cape
          Canaveral Air Force Station at 7:00 a.m. Wednesday, May 24.  It
          was offloaded and taken to Hangar J for receiving inspections.
          On or about Monday, June 5, the Atlas will be taken to Pad B at
          Launch Complex 36 for erection.  It will be followed by the
          erection of the Centaur stage approximately two days later.  The
          FltSatCom spacecraft is expected to arrive in mid-June.  The
          launch is expected to occur shortly after Labor Day.



          Delta/COBE

               The necessary refurbishment of Space Launch Complex 2-West
          at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California is complete.  Assembly
          and checkout of the spacecraft continues at NASA's Goddard
          Spaceflight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.  The launch of
          Delta/COBE is not expected to occur until at least the end of
          October.  The erection of the booster will begin when a launch
          time frame is determined.

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

End of SPACE Digest V9 #466
*******************