Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/mac/TEXT/SPACEDIG/V13_4/V13_406.TXT

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Subject: SPACE Digest V13 #406

SPACE Digest                                     Volume 13 : Issue 406

Today's Topics:
         Re: Space Stations, Money, Startrek
                  Re: flares
         Re: Space Stations, Money, Startrek
      Re: spacesuits (Was: Re: HST in-orbit Maintenance)
         Department of Commerce Laboratories
  Re: Magellan achieves primary mission objective early (Forwarded)

Administrivia:

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

Date: 13 Apr 91 21:30:24 GMT
From: prism![e-mail]  (Matthew DeLuca)
Subject: Re: Space Stations, Money, Startrek

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

>    It is not the Idea of copying data, its the principle of working
>    together, so we don't need to copy data.  The Soviets have
>    valuable data, they have been building Space Stations now for what, 20
>    years, NASA has yet to figure out how to get 1 Space Station in orbit,
>    without droping it in/on someone elses back yard(country), he he he.

You must have missed where the Soviets dumped their last station in the
back yards of the people in Argentina, then...

Working together is an excellent idea...but until we get a station of
our own up there, there's not much we can do.  You are agreeing with
this, right?

--
Matthew DeLuca
Georgia Institute of Technology      "I'd hire the Dorsai, if I knew their
Office of Information Technology      P.O. box."  - Zebadiah Carter,
Internet: [e-mail]    _The Number of the Beast_

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

Date: 14 Apr 91 00:38:09 GMT
From: usc!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!utzoo![e-mail]  (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: flares

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Paul Blase) writes:
> HS> Soviet cosmonauts have been aloft during all the major flares
> HS> of the last few years, and at least one shuttle mission
> HS> happened to be up at the time of one too...
>
>Don't forget that they all were below the Van Allen belts.  A Mars mission
>would obviously be outside of them.

Very true, but quite irrelevant to the original question, which wasn't
about interplanetary missions.

>BTW does any one know of any
>research that has been done on magnetically shielding space probes, a
>sort of synthetic Van Allen belt?

A little bit of work was done on this for space colonies.  It's not
totally impractical, but it's difficult.  I'd expect it to be hopeless
for anything small.
--
And the bean-counter replied,           | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
"beans are more important".             |  [e-mail]  utzoo!henry

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

Date: 13 Apr 91 17:18:59 GMT
From: sun-barr!ccut!wnoc-tyo-news!astemgw!kuis!rins![e-mail]  (will)
Subject: Re: Space Stations, Money, Startrek

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Matthew DeLuca) writes:
>Okay, I should be a little more accurate here.  You will make no contributions
>to knowledge if all you do is copy from your neighbor.  If all we want is
>other people's data, we can just sit at home, watch TV, and pay out the wazoo
>for the knowledge of others.  Of course, after twenty or thirty years of this,
>we'll be too poor, relative to others, to keep this up, but that's another
>story.

    It is not the Idea of copying data, its the principle of working
    together, so we don't need to copy data.  The Soviets have
    valuable data, they have been building Space Stations now for what, 20
    years, NASA has yet to figure out how to get 1 Space Station in orbit,
    without droping it in/on someone elses back yard(country), he he he.

                                        William Dee Rieken
                                        Researcher, Computer Visualization
                                        Faculty of Science and Technology
                                        Ryukoku University
                                        Seta, Otsu 520-21,
                                        Japan

                                        Tel: [phone](direct)
                                        Fax: [phone]
                                        [e-mail]

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

Date: 13 Apr 91 20:48:20 GMT
From: van-bc!ubc-cs!alberta!herald.usask.ca!ccu.umanitoba.ca![e-mail]
Subject: Re: spacesuits (Was: Re: HST in-orbit Maintenance)

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Henry Spencer) writes:
>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (George William Herbert) writes:
>>>At least one SF writer (Jerry Pournelle) has postulated spacesuits
>>>made from thin, flexible, elastic material, rather like the neoprene
>>>used in wetsuits.  Cooling would be by sweating through the suit
>>>itself ...
>>Such suits are being developed.  Major known problems include:
>>    Wierd joint bending characteristics in skin-tight membranes
>>    Problems with solar heating
>>Gore-Tex won't work, it doesn't retain pressure...
>
>The sort of suit Pournelle was alluding to -- the "Space Activity Suit" --
>doesn't retain pressure at all.  The suit provides mechanical support only;
... most of message deleted
>overgarment.  (In fact, it is important that it not be airtight, since
>SAS cooling is by sweating into vacuum.)
>--
>And the bean-counter replied,           | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
>"beans are more important".             |  [e-mail]  utzoo!henry

I don't know what kind of testing these suits have undergone, of for what
lengths of time, but I would think that dehydration would be a serious
problem if cooling is by evaporation into the vacume, as has been
suggested. When I lived out West, I found that it was necessary to make a
point to drink fluids whenever I was out hiking in the open sun. Even in
the desert, there's moisture in the air, but in the vacume, one would
expect a much higher rate of evaporation. I question whether suits like
this are practical for anything other than short (<1hr.) EVA.

===============================================================================
Brian Fristensky                |
Department of Plant Science     | Can you say
University of Manitoba          |
Winnipeg, MB R3T 2N2  CANADA    |     CHICKEN UBIQUITIN, CHICKEN UBIQUITIN
[e-mail]          |     CHICKEN UBIQUITIN, CHICKEN UBIQUITIN,
Office phone:   [phone]    |     CHICKEN UBIQUITIN, CHICKEN UBIQUITIN
FAX:            204-275-5128    |     CHICKEN UBIQUITIN, CHICKEN UBIQUITIN...?
===============================================================================

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

Date: 11 Apr 91 05:25:59 GMT
From: unisoft!fai!sequent!crg5![e-mail]  (Nick Szabo)
Subject: Department of Commerce Laboratories

[I write: government R&D is inefficient because it doesn't understand
the market needs for technology]

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Paul Blase) writes:
>How many commercial markets were there <initially>
>for rockets, aircraft, or radar?

First, let's define terms -- _market_ how the end product/service is used,
not the method used to produce the product/service.  For example there is
a precision ball bearing market; this might be met by manufacturing on Earth
or in microgravity.  If microgravity manufacturing would bring improvements
in quality or other factors deemded important by private industry, government
R&D to produce better ball bearings for the current market is desirable.
Government attempts to invent 200 ton ball bearings and try to find a market
for them would be an extremely inefficient use of R&D funds, since the
market experts, private industry, have not asked for such capability.
The statistics show that government R&D has produced too many 200 ton
ball bearings and not enough of what private industry needs.  If
government were to understand, through listening to private industry, what
the markets are and what improvements are most needed, government R&D
labs could justifiably say that they help the economy through spinoffs.
But right now, that is unfortuneately the exception rather than the rule.

Rocketry was always military or scientific until satcoms, but clearly mail,
passenger transport, civilian airplane tracking, and speeding law
enforcement are commercial markets.  If the government technology works
to the same scale as these markets, things work out fine, but when
government builds the technology in a way unsuitable for the market, or
worse competes with exisinting commercial R&D, it ends up a waste of money.
Where government R&D focused on private industry as the customer in need of
new technology, rather than a competitor, it seems to work, but all too
often government R&D serves only to be redundant with and discourage private
R&D by working on current technology or grossly misdesigning a new
technology at a scale inappropriate to private market needs.  The proper
role of government, aside from R&D needed for defense and exploration,
is encouraging, through basic research and prototyping, well-scaled
technology to meet existing markets (eg air mail) that can be turned over
to industry once it operations become profitable.  The marketing
information has to come from private industry which knows the business.
Once government starts dreaming up markets and trying to force them on
industry, we get into trouble.

One suggestion I have is to take several labs -- Ames, Sandia, LLNL,
and Lincolon Lab come to mind, but we could also create new ones --
and place them under control of the Department of Commerce.  There
would be no side agenda; the sole purpose of these labs would be
creating new technology for industry.  This effort would show the world
that America is just as serious about producing quality products as
we are about quality military.   These labs would have a strict charter
to work on basic science and _new_ technology.  They cannot work
on old technology already being used in private industry, and they
cannot operate any process in competition with industry.  Their role
would be to provide new knowledge and new technology for use by their
customer, industry.  This kind of effort will move us into leadership in
the post-Cold-War environment of economic competition in which we find
ourselves.



--
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: 14 Apr 91 03:52:58 GMT
From: usc!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!utzoo![e-mail]  (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Magellan achieves primary mission objective early (Forwarded)

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Nick Szabo) writes:
>>... a previously untried process
>>called aerobraking.
>
>... The Magellan aerobraking
>is quite interesting, doing (very slow, I hope!) aerobraking at the
>top whisp of the atmosphere with a machine not even close to being
>designed for it.
>
>Magellan would be proud.

No, Francis Drake (the second captain to circumnavigate the world) would
be proud.  Very-slow-aerobraking-with-machine-not-designed-for-it has
already been done, NASA PR notwithstanding.  Magellan would be proud of
Hiten and the team at ISAS.

(Okay, he would be proud of the JPL Magellan group for their mapping work,
but not for aerobraking.)
--
And the bean-counter replied,           | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
"beans are more important".             |  [e-mail]  utzoo!henry

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

End of SPACE Digest V13 #406
*******************