Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/mac/TEXT/SPACEDIG/V13_3/V13_334.TXT

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Subject: SPACE Digest V13 #334

SPACE Digest                                     Volume 13 : Issue 334

Today's Topics:
              Re: More cost/lb. follies
      MAJOR SOLAR FLARE ALERT - 29 MARCH - PROTON FLARE
    Request for old lunar ephemeris data (40's and 50's).
              Re: JPL spacecraft
              Re: More cost/lb. follies
        Re: PASCOS Meeting, summary requested
          Searching for book on Galileo space probe
            Re: Linear launchers on Earth
              Re: More cost/lb. follies

Administrivia:

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

Date: 28 Mar 91 22:59:19 GMT
From: zephyr.ens.tek.com!tektronix!sequent!crg5![e-mail]  (Nick Szabo)
Subject: Re: More cost/lb. follies

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] ("Allen W. Sherzer") writes
>In article <[e-mail]> Nick Szabo writes:

>>If we plot cost/lb. vs. rocket size it has a minimum in the midrange: both
>>low-end (Pegasus) and high-end (Shuttle, Titan IV) have higher cost/lb. than
>>Delta and Atlas.

>Not true. I don't have figures for Titan IV but a commercial Titan with the
>new solids will put up almost four times what a Delta will put up for about
>20% less per pound.

First, this configuration has not flown yet.  Comparing projected
with actual costs is not valid for comparing the prices of different
sizes, especially given some of the wild projections floating around the
rocket community.

Second, due to lack of demand, MM is losing a lot of money on Commercial
Titan, so the offered price may be significantly lower than
the amortized sunk cost of tooling.  For this reason, I believe MM was
planning to scrap Commercial Titan (any updates on this?).


>If you will comit to buying the launches either company
>will sell you a heavy lift version lifting 100K to 150K pounds for a factor
>of three below the Delta costs [1].

However, because of the extreme scale, nobody will commit to buying such
a large number of launches.   Nobody but the DoD is going to fork over
$billions for launches (and they are already using Titan IV, which is
not cheaper/lb.)  There is simply no space industry that will pay for
this.

Note that the largest single commercial space proposal to date,
Iridium, is not willing to pay more than $1 billion to launch 77
satellites.  The largest satcoms pay on the order of $100 million
per launch (plus insurance).


>Another alternative: if you will buy a lot of 58 engines Rocketdyne (sources
>say) will sell you F-1 engines rated at 1.8 million pounds of thrust for
>$12.7M each. Say we buy five for ~$65M and figure another $85M for the rest
>of a rocket (payload fairing, tanks, and avionics).

That's a rather incredible "if".  A better estimate than  $85 million
is the cost of building a Saturn V in today's $$$, about $600 million,
plus another $1,000 million for new tooling, and $1,000 million to
redo a launch pad for the monster.  This gives us a cost of $10,400/lb,
which is well above the cost of mid-sized rockets.

A better idea might be to build 58 mid-sized rockets, with one F-1
each, to launch on existing pads, and use existing tooling and payload
fairing for the upper stages (say, Delta).   New tooling would then
be cut in half to $500 million or $9 million per launch.  Throw in $9
million for parts and operations, and we get $30 million per launch, about
a 25% cost/lb. savings (not whopping, but good for the rocket industry).
Because we use an existing payload fairing, we get an existing customer
base.  That and $30 million cost/launch would give us a fighting chance
at generating demand for 58 launches.  You would be lucky to sell even 1
Saturn V launch even at $4,000/lb.


--
Nick Szabo            [e-mail]
"If you want oil, drill lots of wells" -- J. Paul Getty
The above opinions are my own and not related to those of any
organization I may be affiliated with.

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

Date: Fri, 29 Mar 91 11:57:41 MST
From: [e-mail] (CARY OLER)
Subject: MAJOR SOLAR FLARE ALERT - 29 MARCH - PROTON FLARE
X-St-Vmsmail-To: st%"[e-mail]"

                        --  MAJOR SOLAR FLARE ALERT  --

                                MARCH 29, 1991

                              Flare Event Summary
                          Potential Impact Assessment


                                    --------



MAJOR ENERGETIC EVENT SUMMARY

     Region 6555 has managed to spawn another large major flare, located at
S28W60.  The flare was rated a class X2.4/3B which began at 06:41 UT, peaked
at 06:51 UT and ended at 07:09 UT on 29 March.  This flare was associated
with a strong Type II sweep.  No Type IV was observed.  A slight proton
enhancement began several hours after the flare, but has since decayed to
below event thresholds.

     Region 6555 is continuing to decay slowly.  The penumbral extent of the
region has diminished, although the region has a significant amount of
magnetic complexity.  By about April 1, this region will rotate behind the
west limb. This region probably won't return to the east limb in a
threatening configuration.


POTENTIAL TERRESTRIAL IMPACT ASSESSMENT

     This most recent flare could produce some active geomagnetic activity
over the middle latitudes, although storming is not expected.  The activity,
if it occurs, will likely not materialize until sometime on March 31 or
01 April.  The majority of activity should take place on 01 April.  High
latitudes might experience some periods of minor storming, although the
intensity of the storming (if it occurs) should be low.

The following alerts have been CANCELLED:

  - SATELLITE PROTON EVENT ALERT
  - POLAR CAP ABSORPTION EVENT ALERT
  - POLAR AND HIGH LATITUDE RADIO SIGNAL BLACKOUT ALERT

All alerts are now inactive.  The following warnings are IN PROGRESS:

  - POTENTIAL MAJOR SOLAR FLARE WARNING
  - POTENTIAL PROTON FLARE WARNING
  - POTENTIAL POLAR CAP ABSORPTION EVENT WARNING
  - POTENTIAL POLAR LATITUDE RADIO SIGNAL BLACKOUT WARNING


**  End of Alert  **

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

Date: 29 Mar 91 17:27:32 GMT
From: tardis.computer-science.edinburgh.ac.uk![e-mail]
Subject: Request for old lunar ephemeris data (40's and 50's).

Hokey Dokey, I'm working on my final year project, getting pretty close to the
deadline (4pm May 3rd) and I have a problem. My project involves calculating
the depth of craters on the moon from the shadows cast by the walls, and I
cannot for the life of me find anything giving lunar ephemeris data for the
period the photos were taken. (I was supposed to take some myself, but what
with bad weather, broken dome, broken mounting, broken camera and now a broken
digitiser I'm using the photographic atlas of the moon our dept. possess. :-( )

    I have managed to obtain data on the libration of the moon for the
period in question, but not for the _solar_ colatitude and colongitude in a
selinocentric coordinate system (or in any other system for that matter).
I have tried mailing the NASA Data centre who said that they did not have that
data in machine readable format for this period. <sigh>.

    So, I throw myself on the 'nets tender mercies and beg of you;
can anyone tell me the data I need for the following days ????
                <pretty please!>



     UTC        Day     Month        Year
    -----        ---    --------    ----

    04:02        03    June        1938

    04:01        09    August        1940

    17:45        30    December    1943

    00:43        14    April        1959


    They don't even have to be in machine readable format, just
    as long as it's in human readable format then I'm fine....

Thanks in advance.
Chris

P.S. To all those folks who responded to my earlier request about the Yale
     bright star catalogue I have now managed to obtain a copy, thanks !


------------------+------------------------------------------------------------
Christopher Samuel| [e-mail]    [e-mail]    *!mcsun!ukc!aber!ccs7
c/o Physics Dept.,| ccs7%uk.ac.aber@ukacrl         ccs7%uk.ac.aber@nsfnet-relay
UCW Aberystwyth,  | [e-mail]    jd%uk.ac.ed.cs.tardis%nsfnet-relay
Aberystwyth,      +------------------------------------------------------------
Dyfed,            | Disclaimer:   I mean nothing I say, and say nothing I mean.
WALES             | Comment   : The future's so dark I gotta wear Mirrorshades.
------------------+------------------------------------------------------------
N.B. Mail to me at tardis gets forwarded to Aber (tardis is  s l o w  for mail!)

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

Date: 28 Mar 91 22:00:41 GMT
From: zephyr.ens.tek.com!tektronix!sequent!crg5![e-mail]  (Nick Szabo)
Subject: Re: JPL spacecraft

>I hate to disagree with you on this one, but Pioneer 10 made it to
>Jupiter first, and Pioneer 11 was first at Saturn, paving the way for
>Voyager 1 and 2.

Augghhh!  I blew it.  Thanks for the correction.


--
Nick Szabo            [e-mail]
"If you want oil, drill lots of wells" -- J. Paul Getty
The above opinions are my own and not related to those of any
organization I may be affiliated with.

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

Date: 29 Mar 91 01:28:13 GMT
From: vsi1!ubvax!pyramid!ctnews!unix386![e-mail]  (Ward Griffiths)
Subject: Re: More cost/lb. follies

[e-mail] (Steve Hix) writes:

>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Nick Szabo) writes:
>>
>>Unfortuneately, the cube/square law refers to volume/surface area,
>>not mass (fuel, structure, and payload).  Scaling a rocket up or down
>>does not signficantly change the fuel/payload or fuel/structure ratios,
>>upon which my argument is based.  There is little, if any, economy of
>>scale based on size.

>Huh?

>This is like saying that there is no advantage to building larger dirigibles
>because scaling them up doesn't change the lifting volume/structural mass
>ratios.

>Either I missed your point, or (liquid fuel) rockets and zeps follow
>different physical laws.

Actually, they do follow different physical laws.  While Nick
is not totally correct, there is not a geometric progression
when upscaling a rocket as there is in upscaling an airship or
other LTA system.  Remember, the idea behind airships is
buoyancy, not Newton's Third Law.  You double the linear scale
of a zeppelin, you (roughly) quadruple the the tare weight, as
the structural weight is more or less in proportion to area,
but you (less roughly) octuple the lift and therefore payload
in proportion to the volume.  Rockets don't work that way, and
airships don't leave the atmosphere either.  Although there
have been studies on using large LTA systems as launching
platforms above the lowest, thickest part of the atmosphere.  I
also think they'd make a much more stable way to get shuttles
from Edwards to Canaveral than that silly airplane piggyback,
which has never looked overly safe to me.  Then again, to me,
"Heavier than air" means "Gravity does not forgive mistakes".

--
          Ward Griffiths, Unisys NCG aka Convergent Technologies                The people that make Unisys' official opinions get paid more.  A LOT more.
===========================================================================          To Hell with "Only One Earth"!  Try "At Least One Solar System"!

"... the device every conqueror, yes every altruistic liberator should be    required to wear on his shield ... is a little girl and her kitten, at        ground    zero."                Captain Sir Dominic Flandry

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

Date: 29 Mar 91 22:55:00 GMT
From: agate!bionet!uwm.edu!caen!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!samsung!umich!sharkey!bnlux1.bnl.gov![e-mail]  (kenton yee)
Subject: Re: PASCOS Meeting, summary requested


can someone who attended this week's PASCOS meeting in
boston give an account of this meeting, including of
all the nonscheduled events?
thansk.

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

Date:     Thu, 28 Mar 1991 17:07 CDT
From: Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey <[e-mail]>
Subject:  Searching for book on Galileo space probe
Original_To:  SPACE

There's a book on the Galileo probe I'd like to own.  Maybe there's a copy
lurking in your local used bookstore.  Have you seen it?

Galileo: Exploration of Jupiter's System
by C.M. Yeates and a bunch of others
NASA publication SP-479
1985

It's been out of print for quite a while, and I can't get it from NASA or the
U.S. Government Printing Office.  (A lot of the information in it became
obsolete once *Challenger* disintegrated.)

Just let me know where to find a copy.  Once I know that, I'll figure out how
to get my hands on it.   Please reply by e-mail.

     O~~*           /_) ' / /   /_/ '  ,   ,  ' ,_  _           \|/
   - ~ -~~~~~~~~~~~/_) / / /   / / / (_) (_) / / / _\~~~~~~~~~~~zap!
 /       \                          (_) (_)                    / | \
 |       |     Bill Higgins   Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
 \       /     Bitnet:     [e-mail]
   -   -       Internet:  [e-mail]
     ~         SPAN/Hepnet:      43011::HIGGINS

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

Date: 28 Mar 91 22:50:54 GMT
From: snorkelwacker.mit.edu!usc!rpi!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!riverdale.toronto.edu![e-mail]  (Mark Gabriele )
Subject: Re: Linear launchers on Earth

[e-mail] (Henry Spencer) writes:

>...Depends on the size of the payload; the lethal-radius numbers I've heard
>have been rather smaller.  But yes, 8km/s near sea level is noisy. :-)

...for good reason.  That's a very close approximation to the detonation
velocity of TNT.  You're going to get one hell of shock wave, all right.
And every bit of that shock wave is going to consist of energy that you
put in to get the projectile moving that fast.  Not efficient, but it
sure does *sound* impressive.

=Mark ([e-mail])

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

Date: Fri, 29 Mar 91 13:18:23 -0500
From: "Allen W. Sherzer" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: More cost/lb. follies
Newsgroups: sci.space
Cc:


In article <[e-mail]> Nick Szabo writes:

>>>...(Shuttle, Titan IV) have higher cost/lb. than Delta and Atlas.

>>Not true. I don't have figures for Titan IV but a commercial Titan with the
>>new solids will put up almost four times what a Delta will put up for about
>>20% less per pound.

>First, this configuration has not flown yet.

Come now Mr. Szabo, this is a conservative use of a well understood
technology. Using those numbers is perfectly valid.

But it doesn't matter, on a cost per pound basis a Titan III is
still a bit cheaper even if you use the most expensive Titan and the
cheapest Delta. Either way, your assertion is incorrect: Titan does not
have a higher cost/lb than Delta.

>Comparing projected with actual costs is not valid for comparing the prices
>of different sizes,

Mr. Szabo, you have been predicting factor of ten reductions by using
technologies far riskier than the new Titan SRM. It follows from your
above statement that we should not consider your projections valid.

>Second, due to lack of demand, MM is losing a lot of money on Commercial
>Titan,

MM claims they can make money on one launch per year (Avation Week Jan 90).
My cost figures come from a time when they claimed they where making money.

>>If you will comit to buying the launches either company
>>will sell you a heavy lift version lifting 100K to 150K pounds for a factor
>>of three below the Delta costs [1].

>However, because of the extreme scale, nobody will commit to buying such
>a large number of launches.

Don't change the subject Mr. Szabo. We where talking about the limits of
chemical launch technology. You claimed that the larger launchers cost
more per pound and that they where at their limit. The figures given
above demonstrate that both claims are wrong.

BTW, the large number of launches you refer to is three (source: The
congressional Record). Each would lift more and be cheaper than a Shuttle
flight.

>Nobody but the DoD is going to fork over $billions for launches

Actually, the cost for the three launches would be under $1 billion
not '$billions'.

  Allen

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

End of SPACE Digest V13 #334
*******************