Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/mac/TEXT/SPACEDIG/V10_3/V10_370.TXT

Internet Message Format | 1991-07-08 | 21KB

Return-path: <[e-mail]>
X-Andrew-Authenticated-as: 32766
Received: from beak.andrew.cmu.edu via trymail for +dist+/afs/andrew.cmu.edu/usr11/tm2b/space/[e-mail] (->+dist+/afs/andrew.cmu.edu/usr11/tm2b/space/space.dl) (->ota+space.digests)
          ID </afs/andrew.cmu.edu/usr1/ota/Mailbox/4ZeWxka00VcJ80rk5n>;
          Tue,  9 Jan 90 13:37:37 -0500 (EST)
Received: from beak.andrew.cmu.edu via qmail
          ID </usr/spool/ViceMsgQueue/QF.oZd3sX:00VcJQ36k9J>;
          Fri,  5 Jan 90 01:26:43 -0500 (EST)
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Reply-To: [e-mail]
From: [e-mail]
To: [e-mail]
Date: Fri,  5 Jan 90 01:22:44 -0500 (EST)
Subject: SPACE Digest V10 #370

SPACE Digest                                     Volume 10 : Issue 370

Today's Topics:
           Re: Launching AUSSAT on Chinese rockets
            Re: New years eve 1999
            Re: Cargo: costs and standards
             Re: who's out there?
            Re: voyager GIF files
              Re: Techno-welfare
     Re: Space industry projects: dismantling moons and asteroids
            Re: Big Bang:  Did it happen?
     Re: Space industry projects: dismantling moons and asteroids
              Re: Techno-welfare
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 2 Jan 90 15:12:26 GMT
From: ecsvax.uncecs.edu![e-mail]  (Gary Grady)
Subject: Re: Launching AUSSAT on Chinese rockets

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Henry Spencer) writes:
>...  Encouraging though the fresh air in
>Eastern Europe is, and disgusting though the graveyard stench in China is,
>both are very recent developments.

This is one of the few occasions I've ever disagreed with you, Henry,
but I find your comments here disturbing, even from a realpolitik
standpoint, let alone an ethical one.  The issue to me is not one of
abstract punishment or reward, but one of practical influence.  The
powers that be in Central and Eastern Europe are moving in the
direction of civilization and should be encouraged; those currently
running China are engaged quite otherwise and should be discouraged.

If I were doing business with ex-convicts and wanted to encourage them
to be good citizens, I would prefer to deal with those who were least
actively engaged in a life of crime right now, irrespective of their
previous records.
--
D Gary Grady
[phone]
USENET:  ...!mcnc!ecsvax!dgary
BITNET:  [e-mail]

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

Date: 20 Dec 89 04:22:10 GMT
From: [e-mail]  (Samuel Antonio Minter)
Subject: Re: New years eve 1999

1988:11:19:03:07 SFT

     The real problem, as several have mentioned before is that we are
confusing two different ways of counting when we say that it is 1989.  The
original usage would be that this is the one thousand nine hundred eighty-ninth
year Anno Domini (sp?) not that 1,989 years have elapsed since we started
counting.  When we say it is 1:17 we mean that 17 minutes have elapsed since
the beginning of the hour.  Similarly almost all of our modern measuring
systems start at 0.  A stick is a meter and a half long, we do not refer to
the end being at the end of end of the 50th centimeter in the second meter.
Time keeping seems to be one of the few areas where this is not the convention
thus the confusion.  If you are not using 24 hour time the way we represent
hours is *very* strange: AM or PM indicates which half of the day you are
currently in, not what has been completed.  Also 2 minutes after noon is
conventionally considered to be PM, meaning that the first hour of PM is not
labeled 0 or 1, but 12!!!  Then the rest of the hours refer to how many
hours have passed since it changed from AM to PM.  Not to mention the
continuing contriversy of which of noon and midnight is 12 AM and which 12 PM.
Twenty four hour notation solves these problems and puts hours on the same
0 starting system as minutes, seconds, and practically every other measuring
system.  Moving on to larger time units:  We start our months with the 1st
day of the month and we refer to it as such on occation but for the most part
we ignore that when writing dates.  Its Jan 1, not the first day of January.
Once again we are opening the doors to confuse the two systems.  Similarly
when we number dates the 1st month is January the 2nd Febuary, etc.  But
yet once again we just write 1, 2, 3 ...  This along with the fact that
we also number years this way means we get dates like 1989-12-20 (or
12-20-1989 or 20-12-1989 for those who prefer those orders)  These
type of numerically written dates lead us to the false conclution that
we can read and interpret dates the same way we can read and interpret times
on our digital watches.  That is 3:32 means 3 hours and 32 minutes have
passed since the begining of the day (assumming AM or 24 hour) so 12-20-1989
must mean that 1989 years 12 months and 20 days have passed since whenever
the counting was started.  Most of us (hopefully) have enough everyday
experiance with the passing of days and months to know that if the date is
1-1-1990, one day and one month have not already passed, but the case
becomes ambiguous when we refer to the year.  This type of confusion is
entirely due to the conflict of the two systems of measuring things.  The
first is the older one, dealing with discreete units of time that are
seperated and counted as one would count apples.  Years, months, and days
are counted as 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc. instead of measured (xxxx years have
elapsed) because that is how we incounter them in daily life.  We treat each
day as a seperate identity, independant of the days around it.  We want a
way to identify IT as an entity as seperate from those around it.  Very few
of us care how many days have elapsed since the begining of the month, we
only need to know what day our appointment with Mr. Jones is.  Hours and
smaller units of time are not encountered as discreetely as days and longer
units are.  Since these time periods are so short they seem to slide right
into each other.  There is nothing like a period of sleep to psycologically
seperate hours from each other.  Because of this all these smaller units are
psycologically ameniable (sp?) to being treated in the same way as we measure
things...amount elapsed since the start.
     So we have two seperate systems for indicating time.  Each adapted to
its use.  The new century and millenium do begin at the midnight between
Dec. 31, 2000 and Jan 1, 2001, but as many people have pointed out it won't
matter one bit.  The distinction between the two systems has been blurred
since before we started abbriveiating "the one thousand nine hundred eighty-
ninth year of our lord as 1989 AD.  (This also leads to the mistaken assumption
that AD and BC are like positive and negitive with a zero in between.)  The
significant event to the masses is that good 'ol 2 rolling over.  The actual
passing of the millenia is something that those of us who care can remember,
or perhaps a comment during the the New Year's Celebration Telecasts from
times square in either 2000 or 2001, but is really not something which will
have too much significance.  The year is simply not psycologically identified
with a measure of how many years, decades, or whatever have passed  ... it
is simply a label to identify when you are talking about.  And on Jan 1, 2000
*EVERYONE* (and I think I can say that truthfully) will have to do something
they have never done before.  Not put 19 at the beginning of years on forms,
letters, etc.  That is the event which will be celebrated.
     It is important to *KNOW* though that those agonizing that the millenia
starts at 2001 and not 2000 are RIGHT.  The statement that the year 2000
will be in the 21st century because the 1st century only had 999 years is
simply wrong.  No one forgot a year or anything of that sort.  There
is simply a discrepency between how we write years and dates (1989) and
the origin of that number (the one thousand .....th year AD.) and how
different people interpret dates.  Many of us math/science people tend to
like everything to be like a measurement, a system we are very familiar with.
Too bad.  The way society writes the date is simply not that way.
     I, being the revisionist that I am, write the time and date like
yyyy:mm:dd:hh:mm, subtracting 1 from year, month, and day to make those
more like measurements.  Of course very few people understand what I mean
when I say it is 1988:11:19:04:14 SFT.  I only regret it is too inconvienient
to put everything in base 10 using only seconds.  Imagine talking about
86.4 ks (kilo-seconds) instead of a day!!  We could base our "daily" routine
on a 100 ks cycle and get that 27 hour day we all need to get things done!!
Oh well, I guess if I cand get anyone to celebrate on Jan 1 2001 I'll never
succeed in getting people to measure time in seconds past some standard.
Darn!!!  I guess I'll stick with SFT for myself.  Bye.

1988:11:19:04:20 SFT

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~ |\     You have just read a message from Abulsme Noibatno Itramne! ~
~ | \                                                                ~
~ | /\   E-Mail@CMU: [e-mail]    <Fixed Width Fonts!>    ~
~ |/  \  S-Mail@CMU: Sam Minter                First the person      ~
~ |\  /|             4730 Centre Ave., #102          next            ~
~ | \/ |             Pittsburgh, PA 15213       the function!!       ~
~ | /  |                                                             ~
~ |/   |  <-----An approximation of the Abulsme symbol               ~
~                                                                    ~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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

Date: 21 Dec 89 04:42:31 GMT
From: cs.utexas.edu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!ists!yunexus!utzoo![e-mail]  (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Cargo: costs and standards

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Nick Szabo) writes:
>Hopefully, we will soon have a set of standards for space cargo...

Actually, we already have this in small ways.  Commercial Titan payload
fairings are the same as Ariane 4 payload fairings (MM buys them from
the same outfit -- I think it's Contraves in Switzerland -- that builds
them for Ariane).

However, the real problem is that there is no standardization *within*
a single launcher's payloads, never mind across launchers.  Every launch
is a custom job at present.  If you read the user's manual for a launcher
(I've seen the ones for Ariane and Titan), you find not a standard set of
services and facilities, but a list of constraints on exactly what custom
facilities can be provided.

I suspect that this situation is likely to continue as long as launch
volumes are low.  The ALS people have talked about various schemes for
both standardizing interfaces and minimizing them (requiring payloads
to be more independent of the launcher), but ALS is most unlikely to
ever become real, precisely because there isn't enough volume of business
to justify it.

>... Also, implementers of new technologies like
>EML or laser-launch would be well-advised to scale the machines to
>existing payloads.

I think we can be fairly sure that that *won't* happen.  Many of the
non-rocket schemes really want to work with much smaller payloads; the
costs scale non-linearly with payload size.  For example, existing
CO2 laser technology would probably suffice for a laser launcher... if
the payload is measured in tens of kilograms, not thousands.  Such
systems have enormous capacities, but they get them by launching lots
of small payloads, not a handful of big ones.

What's more, such systems will be justified in terms of launching new
kinds of payloads, not existing ones.
--
1972: Saturn V #15 flight-ready|     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
1989: birds nesting in engines | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry [e-mail]

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

Date: 20 Dec 89 20:53:18 GMT
From: portal!cup.portal.com![e-mail]  (H Keith Henson)
Subject: Re: who's out there?

Why not?  Long time SF/space fan, heavy influence by Heinlein.  '74-"75
infected with the space colony meme of Dr. O'Neill, co-founder of L5 Society,
first president.  Co author of articles on space agriculture, vapor phase
fabrication of large objects, and use of gas entrained solids for heat
transfer.  Chairman of the fundraising effort for the fight against the
Moon Treaty in '79-80.  Since then less active in space, more active in
cryonics (membership # under 100 in Alcor).  Several patents, BS electrical
engineering from University of Arizona, many other publications, one of the
few people writing on the topic of memes (replicating information patterns)

H. Keith Henson

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

Date: 25 Dec 89 18:24:03 GMT
From: zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!crdgw1!sixhub![e-mail]  (Wm E. Davidsen Jr)
Subject: Re: voyager GIF files

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Joel Lessenberry) writes:
|
|     Does anyone know of a FTP site or Mail server where
|     GIF or otherwise voyager images are kept.  I am looking
|     for some.

  If I can get some I will be glad to make them available on sixhub for
BBS, uucp, and possibly mail server access. I would have to make the
images "type B" low priority, to avoid overwhelming my neighbors and
phone bill. Currently service is limited to 3MB/day, although this can
be increased.
--
    bill davidsen - sysop *IX BBS and Public Access UNIX
[e-mail]        ...!uunet!crdgw1!sixhub!davidsen

"Getting old is bad, but it beats the hell out of the alternative" -anon

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

Date: 29 Dec 89 21:29:56 GMT
From: cs.utexas.edu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!utzoo![e-mail]  (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Techno-welfare

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Steve Willner, OIR) writes:
>In practice, though, many pension funds choose to minimize risk by
>sticking to short-term investments.  This may prevent annoying
>litigation, but it is not what the law requires.

It may not be what a literal reading of the law requires, but in the
litigation-crazed US, any manager who does anything else is mad.  The
next time the fund's financial performance drops half a percentage
point, he'll have fifteen years of lawsuits on his hands.  The law
*does* demand it in practice, if not in theory.
--
1972: Saturn V #15 flight-ready|     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
1989: birds nesting in engines | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry [e-mail]

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

Date: Tue, 19 Dec 89 09:58:18 CST
From: [e-mail] (Lou Adornato)
Subject: Re: Space industry projects: dismantling moons and asteroids

zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!crdgw1!crdos1![e-mail]  (Wm E Davidsen Jr) writes:

>| About 10 years ago Eric Drexler and I wrote a paper on furnaces to
>| process metals in space.  I would be interested if Steve has any new
>| ideas on how to get heat to the metal *without* curding up the mirrors
>| with various rock and metal vapors.  Keith Henson
 > I had assumed that if there were a problem in this area it would be
>transporting the furnace. If the material to be melted were placed in a
>cylinder of, say, ceramic, heating the cylinder would cause the
>outgassing to come from the ends with some reasonable velocity. If the
>mirror were on the side of the cylinder it would be at right angles to
>the outgassing as should get minimal depositing.
>
>  This is so simple and obvious that I must be missing something. What
>is it, please?

Ummm...ok

1)The original idea was to dismantle an asteroid by positioning a mondo
  mirror and melting it down.  Now you need to dismantle the asteroid, put the
  pieces into a ceramic cylinder (composition unknown), and _then_ melt it.  Why
  bother with the melting if you've already powdered it enough to put it in a
  can?

2)There is also a problem of a localized hot spot on the cylinder (pretty
  similar to one of the SDI concepts), partially solveable by putting a spin
  on the cylinder, better solved if you sweep the focus along the cylinder's
  axis of spin (kind of like a fishing reel).

3)The heat transfer mechanism (from cylinder wall to material inside) is going
  to be pretty strange, with no predictable convection and conduction more or
  less proportional to how finely you've pulverized the sample.  Not only that,
  but any outgassing at "sufficient velocity" will probably throw out large
  amounts of the melt.  Again, a spin would help, allowing the melt to cling to
  the cylinder walls (and be drawn off into some kind of baffle arrangement),
  and for the gasses to head for the spin axis.  Problem is, any imbalance in
  the outgassing is going to cause the spinning, hot cylinder to precess, and
  I can't imagine an active attitude control system operating at those
  temperatures for long.

One big advantage of the spinning cauldron is that you could separate metals
by density, and, just like on Earth (and in corporate life), all the scum will
rise to the top.  But the precession problem might be more trouble to fix than
it's worth.

I think a better solution would be to use a larger mirror farther out, and
possibly place a grid next to the path between the mirror and the rock.
Charge both the mirror and the rock positively in respect to the grid, and
hope that the crud heads for the grid and not the mirror.

Lou Adornato    |  Statements herein do not represent the opinions or attitudes
Cray Research   |  of Cray Research, Inc. or its subsidiaries.
[e-mail]    |       (...yet)

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

Date: 19 Dec 89 17:19:54 GMT
From: astroatc![e-mail]  (Dennis J. Kosterman)
Subject: Re: Big Bang:  Did it happen?

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (James P. Galasyn) writes:
>
>I just heard from a fairly reliable source that CalTech has demonstrated
>the Big Bang never happened.

     I haven't heard anything else about this, but on the surface it
sounds suspicious.  Scientists don't usually make assertions this dog-
matic.  I don't see how it's possible to say absolutely that the Big
Bang did or did not occur.  We can only talk about probabilities.

                                     Dennis J. Kosterman
                                     uwvax!astroatc!stubbs

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

Date: 19 Dec 89 21:20:31 GMT
From: fox!portal!cup.portal.com![e-mail]  (H Keith Henson)
Subject: Re: Space industry projects: dismantling moons and asteroids

[e-mail] (Wm E Davidsen Jr) in responding to a question
I posted, suggested a design for a melting furnace cylinder which would keep
metal/rock vapor from messing up the mirrors.  The original posting was
about using heat from solar colectors directly to melt astroid metal, no
containers were implied.  Keith Henson

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

Date: 20 Dec 89 15:05:03 GMT
From: rochester![e-mail]  (Paul Dietz)
Subject: Re: Techno-welfare

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Lou Adornato) writes:

> In fact, I don't see why space R&D wouldn't be >more< productive than
> civilian.  By law, NASA research is available to the public (with the
> _major_ exception of that which is determined to be sensitive to
> National Security).

Industry has a strong incentive to do R&D in areas that will lead to
valuable products and services that can be sold for a profit.  NASA
does not.

> The point I was trying to make is that the value of a national
> research and development project goes beyond the contract
> deliverables.  The basic research, (albiet in limited areas), the
> engineering, and the new technologies all contribute to the economy.

There is no denying this.  But how big is the contribution?  One cannot
just simply assume that all R&D is created equal.

>My major beef with the "technowelfare" slander was that welfare doesn't return
>ANYTHING to the economy except new generations of recipients.

This thread started when it was suggested that the space program
should be funded to soak up unemployment that would derive from
curtailing of military expenditures.  Spending to that purpose *would*
be welfare.

By the way, "slander" is the utterance of false charges or
misrepresentations directed at a person.  You can't slander a
government program or an idea.

> I humbly submit that, unless your host system uses vacuum tubes,
> disparaging the value of space research on this network is self
> defeating.

Transistors were invented in 1948.  ICs were invented in the late
1950's.  Early IC development was nurtured by military and NASA
spending, but it isn't clear to me that without NASA ICs wouldn't have
come along anyway at about the same rate -- especially if the
engineering talent that went into NASA had gone into other fields.

    Paul F. Dietz
    [e-mail]

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

End of SPACE Digest V10 #370
*******************