Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/mac/TEXT/SPACEDIG/V09_6/V9_600.TXT

Internet Message Format | 1991-07-08 | 20KB

Return-path: <[e-mail]>
X-Andrew-Authenticated-as: 7997;andrew.cmu.edu;Ted Anderson
Received: from corsica.andrew.cmu.edu via trymail for +dist+/afs/andrew.cmu.edu/usr1/ota/space/[e-mail] (->+dist+/afs/andrew.cmu.edu/usr1/ota/space/space.dl) (->ota+space.digests)
          ID </afs/andrew.cmu.edu/usr1/ota/Mailbox/IYtwE2y00UkVQ1v05:>;
          Tue, 15 Aug 89 03:19:31 -0400 (EDT)
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Reply-To: [e-mail]
From: [e-mail]
To: [e-mail]
Date: Tue, 15 Aug 89 03:19:21 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: SPACE Digest V9 #600

SPACE Digest                                      Volume 9 : Issue 600

Today's Topics:
            space news from July 10 AW&ST
           NASA Prediction Bulletin Format
             Re: Henry's (not Weinhards)
         Re: Request for more info on ozone depletion
 Public Interest in Space (was Re: re does this proposal make sense)
    Re: Does this proposal make sense? (Was: Space Quest)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 14 Aug 89 03:57:35 GMT
From: jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!utzoo![e-mail]  (Henry Spencer)
Subject: space news from July 10 AW&ST

[Aviation Week & Space Technology subscription address is 1221 Ave. of
the Americas, New York NY 10020 USA.  Rates depend on whether you're
"qualified" or not, which basically means whether you look at the ads
for cruise missiles out of curiosity, or out of genuine commercial or
military interest.  Best write for a "qualification card" and try to get
the cheap rate.  US rate is $64 qualified, higher for unqualified.
It's weekly, it's thicker than Time or Newsweek, and most of it has nothing
to do with space, so consider whether the price is worth it to you.]

ESA plans to open competition for new European astronauts next year,
for Hermes and Columbus.

Voyager starts search for rings and undiscovered moons around Neptune.
[I will be relatively terse with Voyager news, given that much of it
will probably appear in more timely channels.  In case anyone is
wondering, by the way, why I'm always at least a month behind the
cover date, it's a combination of things.  AW&ST doesn't get to my
PO box too promptly, thanks to the Canadian Post Offal.  I only visit
the box about every 10 days.  When I get the thing, I have to read
it.  And then I have to find time to type in a summary.  It's hard
to push the total delay down to much less than a month.]

Arianespace signs deal with Orbital Sciences and Hercules to market Pegasus
launch services in Europe.  [Looks like that announcement a few weeks ago
saying "we're only talking, no specific deal is being negotiated" was a
bit of disinformation to avoid premature publicity...]

European multinational spaceplane project is forming around West Germany's
Sanger concept.  Sanger -- a large hypersonic transport plus a rocket-
powered winged upper stage released at Mach 6.8 at 30 km -- presents
fewer technological difficulties than NASP because it doesn't require
air-breathing propulsion at extreme speeds.  Experimental hydrogen-
fuelled turboramjet engines are being fired in Germany, and wind-tunnel
tests of both stages have been done, with tunnel tests of configurations
seen during stage separation scheduled this summer.  The current Sanger
effort is aimed at a European X-plane, essentially a subscale first
stage, flying in about 2000.  The upper stage would use an Ariane 5
engine, and might be a somewhat enlarged Hermes.

National Space Council recommends slipping NASP [Aerospace Plane] schedule
2.5 years but doubling technology funding.  NSC came out strongly in favor
of NASP, but says that the current program is pushing too hard for early
flight hardware and is suffering from "operational creep", in which the
X-30, supposedly a research aircraft, is being asked to meet increasingly
many requirements more appropriate to a production spaceplane.  NSC's
recommendation is to prolong the NASP technology effort 2.5 years and
double its funding, delaying final decision on whether to build a pair of
X-30s to 1993 and first flight to 1997.

Editorial criticizing decision to stretch NASP, saying that programs which
get delayed that much are prime candidates for cancellation, and this will
back the US down off its lead in hypersonic technology.  Says contractors
are mostly to blame for trying to make the X-30 as "operational" as possible,
i.e. as close as possible to a lucrative follow-on production contract.

Soviets agree in principle to a new cooperative agreement with France,
which will (among other things) provide a new Mir flight opportunity for
a French cosmonaut in 1992, at a price significantly below what Glavkosmos
wanted to charge France for a commercial flight.  (France has been saying
that while the Glavkosmos prices are not unreasonable, more consideration
should be given to the cooperative nature of the Soviet-French flights.)
West Germany would like a similar deal but hasn't been able to get it yet.

Soviet announce commercial bookings of microgravity flights for Intospace
[a European materials group] and CNES [the French space agency].  Intospace
in particular has booked several flights in the next few years, saying that
there simply aren't any comparable flight opportunities available in the
West.  "The Soviets are ready to do business on a commercial basis, and
we have no real choice but to go east."

ESA considers barter arrangements with US to obtain the right to install
scientific payloads on the exterior of the US space station.  The 27
external payloads recently selected by NASA included no European ones.
European observers were more or less expecting this, since access for
such payloads was not included in the original NASA-ESA station agreement.
Ideas under study include giving NASA access to Dornier's instrument
pointing system [developed for Spacelab] in return for external payloads.
NASA is interested in principle, and in particular might like access to
the Columbus free-flying lab.  [Sigh... after concluding that it had no
use for the home-built equivalent, CDSF...  ESA better watch its step.]

Senate Commerce Committee votes to ban export of US satellites to countries
that would launch them on Soviet boosters.

NASA awards early study contracts for a high-performance "transfer vehicle",
as a shuttle and expendable upper stage in the early 21st century.

Arianespace slips flight V32 to July 11 after June 30 launch is scrubbed
at T-4s when ground-equipment problems cause hydrogen umbilical arm to
fail to release.

Rollout of Columbia imminent, following preliminary finding that the SSME
test failure will not affect the mission.  Investigating board says the
problem was a bearing failure in an experimental modified oxidizer turbopump.

The centerspread is an unusually quiet ad from an outfit called Fiberite
that I've never heard of.  Moonscape, Earth in background, with just the
company's name in the lower right and the caption "One small step..." in
the upper left.  On close inspection, one of the small craters is actually
an Apollo-boot footprint.

Several airlines start ordering operational satellite-communication systems
for 747s.  Passenger use of satellite-based air-ground telephone service
experimentally installed aboard one British Airways 747 greatly exceeded
expectations.  The airlines are moving cautiously, however; several of the
systems currently on order are data-only systems aimed at automatic
position reporting rather than voice.  USAF Military Airlift Command is
also interested, after tests of a Geostar package aboard a USAF experimental
aircraft were highly successful.
--
V7 /bin/mail source: 554 lines.|     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
1989 X.400 specs: 2200+ pages. | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry [e-mail]

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

Date: 29 Jul 89 22:56:56 GMT
From: agate!helios.ee.lbl.gov!ncis.tis.llnl.gov!blackbird![e-mail]  (TS Kelso)
Subject: NASA Prediction Bulletin Format


As a service to the satellite user community, the following description
of the NASA Prediction Bulletin's two-line orbital element set format is
uploaded to sci.space on a monthly basis.  The most current orbital elements
from the NASA Prediction Bulletins are carried on the Celestial RCP/M, (513)
427-0674, and are updated several times weekly.  Documentation and tracking
software are also available on this system.  The Celestial RCP/M may be
accessed 24 hours/day at 300, 1200, or 2400 baud using 8 data bits, 1 stop
bit, no parity.

==============================================================================

Data for each satellite consists of three lines in the following format:

AAAAAAAAAAA
1 NNNNNU NNNNNAAA NNNNN.NNNNNNNN +.NNNNNNNN +NNNNN-N +NNNNN-N N NNNNN
2 NNNNN NNN.NNNN NNN.NNNN NNNNNNN NNN.NNNN NNN.NNNN NN.NNNNNNNNNNNNNN

Line 1 is a eleven-character name.

Lines 2 and 3 are the standard Two-Line Orbital Element Set Format identical
to that used by NASA and NORAD.  The format description is:

Line 2
Column     Description
 01-01     Line Number of Element Data
 03-07     Satellite Number
 10-11     International Designator (Last two digits of launch year)
 12-14     International Designator (Launch number of the year)
 15-17     International Designator (Piece of launch)
 19-20     Epoch Year (Last two digits of year)
 21-32     Epoch (Julian Day and fractional portion of the day)
 34-43     First Time Derivative of the Mean Motion
        or Ballistic Coefficient (Depending on ephemeris type)
 45-52     Second Time Derivative of Mean Motion (decimal point assumed;
           blank if N/A)
 54-61     BSTAR drag term if GP4 general perturbation theory was used.
           Otherwise, radiation pressure coefficient.  (Decimal point assumed)
 63-63     Ephemeris type
 65-68     Element number
 69-69     Check Sum (Modulo 10)
           (Letters, blanks, periods = 0; minus sign = 1; plus sign = 2)

Line 3
Column     Description
 01-01     Line Number of Element Data
 03-07     Satellite Number
 09-16     Inclination [Degrees]
 18-25     Right Ascension of the Ascending Node [Degrees]
 27-33     Eccentricity (decimal point assumed)
 35-42     Argument of Perigee [Degrees]
 44-51     Mean Anomaly [Degrees]
 53-63     Mean Motion [Revs per day]
 64-68     Revolution number at epoch [Revs]
 69-69     Check Sum (Modulo 10)

All other columns are blank or fixed.

Example:

NOAA 6
1 11416U          86 50.28438588 0.00000140           67960-4 0  5293
2 11416  98.5105  69.3305 0012788  63.2828 296.9658 14.24899292346978

Note that the International Designator fields are usually blank, as issued in
the NASA Prediction Bulletins.

--
Dr TS Kelso                           Asst Professor of Space Operations
[e-mail]          Air Force Institute of Technology

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

Date: 29 Jul 89 21:27:30 GMT
From: voder!berlioz![e-mail]  (Lord Snooty @ The Giant Poisoned Electric Head )
Subject: Re: Henry's (not Weinhards)

<[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Peter Nelson) writes:
>    We are an extraordinarily diverse society.  We have an amazing
>    range of beliefs, values, priorities, needs, expectations, and
>    backgrounds.   For the last several decades we have been utterly
>    plagued by an inability to reach consensus on important national
>    Typically, when confronted with this problem we either:
>    1.   Make no decision at all.  ("let's study it some more")
>    2.   Make a decision that is so watered-down by compromise
>         as to be ineffective.
>    3.   Make an ad-hoc political deal with a coalition which
>         breaks down after the next election, before it can
>         actually accomplish anything.
>    Personally, I don't see any solution to this.

You are staring democracy right in the face.

Perhaps it's time for a benevolent dictatorship?
That would certainly throw the emergent American-copying nations for a loop.
At least we'd get things done.

Incidentally, (and more seriously), what's wrong with the odd referendum
now and then? I think space has broad support in the body of the people -
or am I deluding myself?
--
...........................................................................
Andrew Palfreyman    There's a good time coming, be it ever so far away,
nsc!berlioz!andrew    That's what I says to myself, says I,
time sucks                       jolly good luck, hooray!

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

Date: 29 Jul 89 22:50:00 GMT
From: sgi!daisy![e-mail]  (Mike Wooding)
Subject: Re: Request for more info on ozone depletion

From article <[e-mail]<, by [e-mail] (Irving Chidsey ):
< In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (John E Van Deusen III) writes:
< <I read today in my home-town paper that "scientists" had presented
< <"evidence" that the antarctic ozone hole might be "related to" increased
< <incidence of skin cancer in southern Australia and New Zealand.  Does
< <anyone know anything about this "study"?  It defies logic for a number
< <of reasons and is apparently the "first" study to make such a claim.

< There are several plausible reasons why the Antarctic Ozone Hole might have
< an effect in Southern Australia or Souther New Zealand.

< The hole is not a neat hole with straight vertical sides like you might make
< with a drill; it has messy sloping sides like a hole in dry sand after it has
< been walked through a few times.

< Horizontal winds can move the ozone depleted air for quite a distance before
< it gets to a location where the solar UV flux is strong enough to replenish
< the ozone.

< The ozone density is the result of a dynamic balance between production and
< depletion.  The full equilibrium density as approached asymptoticaly, and
< extra solar UV gets through until full density is reached.

< Note also that they said might.  This is still a conjecture supported by
< plausible armwaving arguments, and refuted by other plausible armwaving
< arguments.  It sounds like it would be a good learning project for a Phd
< candidate ( or perhaps a small group of graduate students ).

 I understand that the northern and southern hemispheres are more or
 less "isolated" as far as atmospheric circulation is concerned. If
 this is indeed so, then how do the people, who are alarmed at the "hole"
 at the SouthPole, relate same to chemical pollutants in the northern
 hemisphere? And why not the NorthPole? Or do I err, assuming that the
 bulk of these chemicals are made/used/released north of the Equator?

 m wooding

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

Date: 30 Jul 89 19:40:38 GMT
From: rochester![e-mail]  (Brian Yamauchi)
Subject: Public Interest in Space (was Re: re does this proposal make sense)

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Peter Nelson) writes:
>  Guess what?  There is no such enthusiasm.  The average American doesn't
>  give a farthing about space, or science, or anything else having to do
>  with the future.

I don't think this is quite right.  If the average American has no
enthusiasm for space at all, how can you explain all of the mass media
Apollo 11 Anniversary Specials?  The media doesn't do such things
unless they expect a lot of people to watch.

I think the real problem is that the emotions which space exploration
stimulates (wonder, excitement, and exhilaration) are not considered
valid emotions for adult behavior in general and public policy in
particular.  The socially acceptable emotional motivations for public
policy are primarily fear (of the Soviets, nuclear war, the greenhouse
effect, the budget deficit, the trade deficit, and crime), guilt
(about the homeless, the poor, and the third world), and
self-righteousness (in regard to money, sex, illegal drugs, insider
trading, political ethics, and flag burning).

True, there are some people who don't care at all about space, but
I would guess that there are probably more people who care to some
degree about space, than about, say, acid rain or the B-2.

_______________________________________________________________________________

Brian Yamauchi                University of Rochester
[e-mail]        Computer Science Department
_______________________________________________________________________________

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

Date: 31 Jul 89 01:10:18 GMT
From: [e-mail]  (Dan Pezely)
Subject: Re: Does this proposal make sense? (Was: Space Quest)

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Peter Nelson) writes:
>  This reminds me of some of those people I used to flame here a year ago
>  who were saying things like "*I'M* going into space one way or the other."
>  It's good to be enthusiastic but you have to maintain your grip on reality
>  also.  The fact is that there are many small companies with various indep-
>  endent space projects going as we speak.  One of them performed a
>  successful suborbital launch only a few months ago.  And wealthy enthus-
>  iasts have not exactly been beating down their doors to invest.

Sure, there are many small space companies around and people are not
coming forward to invest, but I think that is because one company ALONE
is not nearly enough to sufficiently advance the space program.  Investors
feel the same way.

With my proposal, ALL of the space contractors (and small space companies)
will be working together as ONE BODY.  This should work to some extent --
enough to run an efficient space program.

Once there is such a space program which individual investors could put
their money into, then, and only then, will we see the wealthy
enthusiasts beating down doors to invest.

The common stock would most likely be purchased by the space contractors
themselves, but I guess that the investors could buy common stock also.
(A very minor detail.)

>  Now the conspiracy fans among us will say that this is due to all the
>  restrictive laws that NASA and the rest of the government have placed
>  in the way.  But if there really is so much enthusiasm out there for
>  a commercial space program then surely there are millions of voters who
>  are hopping mad about those laws and who will happily vote-in congress-
>  critters who will change those laws.

The laws can be problems, but we're a bit too far away to worry about
those things.  There's more important stuff to do such as defining more
clearly what needs to be done.  If we worry too much about all of the
possible pitfalls, then we'll never get off the ground.  (Pun intended)

I think that people know that our government is just too bureaucratic to
control the type of space program which is needed now.  Even if we did
have space enthuiasts controlling congress, that wouldn't be enough.  The
major space contractors have lobbyists to persuade congress anyway, so
that point really doesn't matter.

>  Guess what?  There is no such enthusiasm.  The average American doesn't
>  give a farthing about space, or science, or anything else having to do
>  with the future.  Daniel says 'nothing' will discourage him.  Clearly
>  he has never heard of 'economics' or 'politics'.

I don't know about you, but I don't consider myself 'average'.  Maybe
you are right in that there is no such enthusiasm, but we will most
certainly find out once we, Space Quest, start achieving our goals.

- Daniel

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

End of SPACE Digest V9 #600
*******************