Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/mac/TEXT/SPACEDIG/V15_3/V15NO303.TXT

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Date: Sat, 10 Oct 92 05:01:46
From: Space Digest maintainer <[e-mail]>
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Subject: Space Digest V15 #303
To: Space Digest Readers
Precedence: bulk


Space Digest                Sat, 10 Oct 92       Volume 15 : Issue 303

Today's Topics:
                 ASTRONOMY CAMPS FOR TEENS AND ADULTS
               Bootstrap hardware for LunaBase (2 msgs)
                   Drop nuc waste into sun (3 msgs)
                  ENV SATELLITE SHUTDOWN IN DEC 1992
                      IR detector discussion ???
                   Mars Observer Update - 10/09/92
                            SETI positive?
             Soviet and U.S. Space Missions After LUNA 3
                     Transportation on the Moon.

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

Date: 9 Oct 92 18:52:58 GMT
From: Jeff Regester <[e-mail]>
Subject: ASTRONOMY CAMPS FOR TEENS AND ADULTS
Newsgroups: sci.space,sci.astro,alt.sci.planetary

The Steward Observatory Astronomy Camps for Adults and Teens for the
coming winter, spring and summer have been scheduled. The dates are:
   Advanced Adult Camp   Feb 18-21
   Beginning Adult Camp  Apr 23-25
   Beginning Teen Camp   Jun 7-14
   Advanced Teen Camp    Jun 18-25

The Astronomy Camps are run by Steward Observatory (Univ. of Arizona)
as a non-profit educational outreach project. Attendees use the 40",
60", and 61" research telescopes of the Mt Lemmon and Mt Bigelow
Observatories (north of Tucson) operated by NASA and Steward. A 16"
Schmidt camera and numerous portable telescopes are also available.

The Adult Camps are during weekends and consist of observing (using
eyepieces, astrophotography with film and CCDs, and photometry,
according to participant interest) and lectures, demonstrations, and
discussions. Tours of research and engineering facilities, such as the
spin-casting facilities of the Steward Observatory Mirror Lab, are
also conducted.

The Teen Camps (for ages 13 to 17) each last a week, four nights of which
are spent observing. Activities include those of the Adult Camps plus tours
of Kitt Peak facilities, science demonstrations, lectures (space program,
archaeoastronomy, space art with Kim Poor, etc.) and other activities
(model rockets, volleyball, orienteering in the mountains, etc.)

For both Teens and Adults, the Advanced camps are for those who have
previously attended a Beginning Camp or who have prior amateur astronomy
experience. The Camps are run by Dr Donald McCarthy of Steward Observatory.
Other Steward faculty and graduate students, as well as personnel of Flandrau
Planetarium, participate as guest speakers and camp counselors.

To receive more info about the Camps, contact either

 Don McCarthy  voice: [phone]
               email: [e-mail]
               usps:  Steward Observatory, U of A, Tucson AZ, 85721
    or

 Jeff Regester voice: [phone]
               email: [e-mail]
               usps:  Steward Observatory, U of A, Tucson AZ, 85721


     Jeff Regester
     counselor, U of A Astronomy Camps

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

Date: 9 Oct 92 16:43:35 GMT
From: Doug Mohney <[e-mail]>
Subject: Bootstrap hardware for LunaBase
Newsgroups: sci.space

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

>  GTO is the halfway-point
>for commercial payloads to Clarke orbit.  Also polar earth orbit,
>Mars orbit and the lunar surface,assuming somebody can find the
>$100's of billions for FLO,

Nobody is claiming hundreds of billions for FLO. Your basic bigotry on the
subject is showing.

>>A lunar colony needs to have PROFITABLE EXPORTS and a minimium of heavy
>>imports. The only profitable export of the near-term is going to be power.
>
>You were talking about a lunar "base" with a few astronauts living
>in Winnebago-sized modules, not a lunar colony with potentially
>self-sufficient families.  Let's not start misusing the word "colony"
>for PR, lest the very goal of space colonization be lost in the process.

Nick, if you're going to be a semantics snob, then call it the Lunar Bay
Trading Company.


>Power export is  not near-term, because the up-front investment required is
>probably 1,000 times what commerce will spend on any new venture, even after
>NASA gets done with FLO.

Probably? Your typical response to any idea other than your own is
"Multiply by 1000."

> Furthermore, the amortization of that investment alone
>is far more expensive than building natural-gas and nuclear reactors earthside.

>The limiting factor on electricity costs, BTW, is capital cost of plants
>not energy supplies.  We don't win on capital costs by using $10 million
>an hour construction labor on the moon.  :-)

Another mythical number, which is not representative of a downturn in costs
which would occur upon project startup.

>>Once you land the initial hardware, LunaOne should be able to use native
>>materials to generate its own oxygen and extract metals to produce more
>>machines.
>
>No it cannot do this, because large volumes of volatiles are critical
>to such processes and do not exist on the moon.  Study your industrial
>processes, please.

Forgive me. I was quoting some stuff out of Zubin's article in "Ad Astria."
Now you're saying he's wrong in his description of a scaled-down "Lunar
Direct."

>>Where d'ya get $40 mil/ton, laddy? Is that NASA costs?
>
>No, it's an extrapolation of commercial costs by the extra delta-v
>needed to land on the moon.  If NASA will be building its typical
>astronaut-safety structures, I care not to imagine how expensive
>it will be.

Who said NASA will be in charge? I realize NASA is, in your eyes, the Great
Satan, but nobody said they're going to build.

>>I'm going to subcontract
>>to the Russians.
>
>Not if NASA is helping, you won't, except for minor pieces of
>tech here and there.

You're funny. Go pick up an Aviation Week sometime. Germany and ESA are looking
to extensively cooperate with the Russians. The

>><<buzzer>> WRONG! All my R&D has been done thanks to the folks at Freed
>
>R&D is only a small fraction of SSF costs.

I'll let someone else take a crack at this one.

>  The cost of launching and
>maintaining astronauts dominates even for LEO, and will be even much
>more dominating a factor foor the moon.  Besides, FLO is redesigning
>everything -- new suits, modules, etc.  It turns out that astronaut
>equipment is designed for special-purpose use; what works in LEO
>probably doesn't on the moon.  Besides, the whole purpose of NASA
>studying this is to design their next pork barrel project, and
>that won't work if they can't get the R&D boys in on it.

NASA is changing. I realize this is difficult for you to swallow, but they are
changing.

>>If I don't like the costs here at home, I'll go talk to the Italians, who are
>>building smaller modules to be installed on Freedom.
>
>Even smaller than a Winnebago?   Are we now stuffing astronauts
>into Honda Civics for 90 days?

A scale-up of their current work. They already have the tooling and are
demonstrating they CAN build the hardware needed, and are gaining the
institutional experience necessary.

Could you please take a cold shower? I know you're really hot to shoot this
down, but I think the hormones are overwhelming your brain here.

>>Or the Russians, who have
>>lots of leftovers, and hungry families.
>
>May not be a coincidence.

They're still going to build Mir 2. Despite their problems. Even if they need
to get money from the Germans to do it.

I wouldn't be surprised if they set up a public stock company at one point.
It'd be a pretty interesting investment.

>The inflexibility of astronauts for fixing the myriad Shuttle problems,
>even those that could have been fixed in a shirtsleeve environment,
>demonstrates that this stuff can't be fiexed.

Exqueeze me? Why do you think they pack duct tape and Swiss army knives? If the
astronauts WEREN'T there, how many experiments would have been unsalvagable?

None. Zero.

> We have to have stuff
>that works autonomously, whether astronauts are there or not.

Sure. Can you build a machine which will pick up a hammer and slam itself on
the side? Or use duct tape? Realllly.

>  Mining and extraction of specific elements
>from soils takes hundreds to thousands of specialized craftsmen and
>millions of tons of tools and equipment to do in shirtsleeves,
>air-filled environments on earth.

Which you seem to think can be done by Mr. Roboto.

> We have to start bootstrapping
>with the simple processes, and unfortuneately that means leaving
>the tough stuff like breaking apart silicate regolith until later.

Metals processing is a necessary and vital process infrastructure. You need
metal to construct storage tanks, and to build things, like ships.

>Alas, this lunar scheme doesn't just fail the basics of
>business economics; it also fails frosh chemistry.

Thank you Mr. Cheap Shot. However, O2 is a vital component. It doesn't make it
the ONLY thing which is needed.

>>[solar cell beaming, I'm castigated for "ignoring it"]
>
>I didn't mention it because the budget was already above $500 billion even
>before we started to try to pay for things like mass drivers, big
>solar cell plants, etc.

*yawn* by your calculations. Once you build the initial infrastructure, you
have a declining amount of external inputs necessary, because you have building
materials on sight.

>  The prereqs were sufficient to demonstrate the
>absurdity of the project. A solar cell plant alone would more than
>double that budget -- we are talking huge amounts of chemical
>plant to purify the silicon, for starters.

No, it doesn't. Suggest you look up some of the research which has been done in
using native moon soil to make solar cells.

>  Furthermore, just
>passing the safety hurdles and building the rectennas will take
>up most of the typical powerplant budget, if the ecofascists will
>even allow it at all.
>
>>I'm going to skip this, because there's no "market."
>
>Well then who is shelling out the $500 billion, and why?  Congress
>won't even pay four orders of magnitude less than that for SEI, last
>I heard.

A) It's not $500 billion. B) I'm marrying Ross Perot's daughter, and C) The
Japanese would put out for it.

>I never denied government as market. The military is our primary user of s
>pace; both its current and future operations would benfit greatly from
>cheap propellant.

You're dreaming. Current operations do not consume large amounts of propellant.
As for future operations... it's all pipe smoke.

> Moon
>base would benefit tremendously, as well, but it's not likely to
>be an initial market, since it just doesn't make any economic
>or political sense until the cost of large-scale space operations
>has been radically lowered, primarily with a cheap supply of
>volatiles.

Volatiles don't build space structures. They don't build tanks to store
volatiles. Szabo Astroid Mining Ships won't be built out of ice.

>BTW how is the need to protect against $trillions in damage and
>millions of lives lost from a small nuclear war "inflated"?

Suggest you take a look at the ABM treaty and how it relates to SDIO. Also
suggest you review current support in the Senate for deploying space-based
systems. (HINT: NON-EXISTANT. There's NO money).

>There are many large commercial markets as well. Comet organics can
>be turned into a wide-variety of materials, including urea-formaldehyde
>resin and carbon fiber, for building very large comsats.

Russians nee Soviets looked at this. Basically as something to use Energia for.
No demand for very large comsats. Now, this was for an assembled huge-sat
assembeled on orbit.

Of course, processing comet organics and turing them into products requires
some sort of infrastructure somewhere. How do you build the chemical factories?
Do you assemble in zero-g? Hmmmmmmmm.

Got some metal and glass I'll sell you, real cheap. Finished products require a
little more effort.

>Volatile extraction would greatly lower the cost of doing this
>lunar base.  If you want to help make it a reality for that reason,
>that's great.  Let's work together to fund Spacewatch, an asteroid
>and comet composition survey, NEAR, and a comet sample return.

I see. So after you spit on me, you want my help?

>All that put together is less than 1% the cost of FLO; you
>wouldn't even notice the funds.  I'll even help work for
>Artemis and Lunar Scout as a return favor.

Actually, they should all be funded.

                 Play in the intelluctual sandbox of Usenet

  -- >                  [e-mail]                        < --

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

Date: 9 Oct 92 14:41:57 GMT
From: Gary Coffman <ke4zv!gary>
Subject: Bootstrap hardware for LunaBase
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Nick Szabo) writes:
>2. We should develop these ideas to reduce launch costs, instead of
>assuming them. The markets -- commercial, military, and NASA if
>they procure commercially -- exist today, and would expand more
>rapidly than launch costs decreased.  At one order of magnitude
>drop, it would make economic sense to move practically every radio
>and TV broadcast tower to Clarke orbit, for example.

A typical VHF transmission facility runs around $15 million dollars,
including site costs, except maybe in NYC. We recently did a major
upgrade to our facility for $1.2 million dollars including new transmitter,
new antenna, and new auxillary power system. Operating costs run about
$12,000 a month for power, $18,000 a year for tubes, and around $50,000
a year for supervision and maintenance personnel costs. Remembering
that we have to put a 50 microvolt/meter signal over our grade A contour
for those rabbit ear users, we have to transmit 316,000 watts. Now
show me how $500 a pound launch costs are going to make it cheaper to
put this system in orbit. Mass less tower, that's all you are replacing,
is about 150 tons.

>3. Reduced launch costs benefit competing proposals, such as asteroid
>and comet mining, equally.  The factor of 50 relative disadvantage of
>lunar regolith extraction outlined in my post remains.

But is it 50 times cheaper if the end product is to be used on the Moon?
In fact is it even cheaper *at all* since your proposals require robotic
capabilities that don't exist and have no reasonable expectation of existing
in the next 30 years?

>>SSF to construction only runs $30 billion. A second set for a lunar base
>>would run far far less.
>
>It is ridiculous to count only construction costs.  We must also include
>launch and life-cycle costs.  That brings us to $150 billion.

$30 billion is not the construction cost. It is the construction cost
*plus* the development engineering cost, by far the largest part of
the cost. A second set incurs only bent metal cost, much cheaper.
Probably no more than $8 billion even with the modifications required
for surface use.

Your life cycle costs appear based mainly on estimates of consumable
resupply and crew rotation via Shuttle to an orbiting station. The
situation for a moonbase is much different. Shuttle is useless for
moonbase resupply, and consumables are supposed to be mostly from
your favorite subject, *native materials*, obtained on the Moon.

However, launch costs still dominate because of initial base
establishment and crew rotation. Operational launch costs, assuming
a revived Saturn V for crew rotation and a new Saturn VIII EHLV for
establishing the base should be on the order of $100 billion over
the thirty year period, or about the same annual operating cost
as Shuttle.

>Furthermore, we need to develop Apollo-style launch hardware, but larger
>and from scratch, so we add on the $120 billion Apollo costs, bringing
>us to $270 billion.  Of course you wish it cost less; so do I.  I was
>told, and wishfully believed, that SSF was only going to cost $8 billion
>when I helped L-5/NSS lobby for it years ago.

We don't have to develop Apollo-style hardware from scratch, we have
to *restart* actual Apollo hardware production. The avionics will need
to be mostly redesigned, and the VIII configuration tested, but that
shouldn't be much over $70-$100 billion in development. The problem with
the $8 billion space station is that they used the costing methods that
you apply to your asteroid missions instead of the ones you apply to
other people's missions. Both are wrong.

My model still costs $178 billion over 30 years, or almost $6 billion
a year. That's unlikely to allow a profit for lunar colonists during
the thirty year life of the program, make that very damn unlikely, but
it is within the range of the possible under NASA's budget. If it can
be assumed that such a colony would eventually be profitable once the
initial program costs are written off by the government, then the effort
gets us a permanent presence on the Moon. Otherwise, it's a lot of money
for a limited life base.

Gary

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

Date: Fri, 9 Oct 92 19:42:48 BST
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Drop nuc waste into sun

> Earth plunging into the Sun its orbital velocity.  uh-huh.  And
if we placed a
> satellite in an identical orbit as the earth, but at a slower
orbital velocity
> (by firing it off in an opposite direction to that way which the
earth is
> going) what will happen.  Will its orbit decay until it falls
into the sun, or
> will its orbit merely change to a different one.  Either way we
have an
> advantage.  If it falls into the Sun (or indeed hit Venus,
Mercury or some
> other body) the problem is gone forever.  And if it settles into
a different
>


I'm virtually certain there must be an FAQ on this. Everyone has
been repeating it anyway. You are orbiting the Sun at 93M miles.
You must kill virtually all of that orbital velocity (kinetic
energy) to fall into the Sun close enough to "aerobrake" and "hit"
the sun, although you'd probably melt long before that. If you
miss, the object will return to Earth orbit, since in the process
of falling towards the Sun it has picked up the kinetic energy of a
93M mile free fall. Since space is frictionless (ignoring a bit of
dust, and such) you will go around the Sun and reach a ApoSol about
where you started.

You ask about the orbit "decaying". Why should it decay? Do you
think the Earth's orbit is decaying? The truth is, that it is...
but by the release of gravity waves. We should get down to the Sun
in a few billions of billions of years, if not lots longer...
(Assuming of course that gravity waves actually do exist, a
reasonable certainty at this time.) But I don't think that has
anything to do with what was being asked, and besides which the
loss of energy by gravity wave is even less significant to a few
hundred kilos of satellite than it is to the planet Earth. There is
the Poynting-Robertson effect, but that will not have much effect
on an object as large as a satellite.

From Space Digest v10N74:
    ... A particle 1 mm in diameter that originates in the
region of the
    asteroid belt spirals into the Sun in only 10 million
years. Even
    a particle 10 cm across at the Earth will spiral in given
10^8 years.


So just think pure Newtonian physics. An object in motion tends to
stay in motion. A satellite will stay in the orbit it was placed in
unless acted on by a third body or its own thrusters. Launching it
away from Earth opposite the Earth's orbital motion subtracts from
the kinetic energy at ApoSol. The object falls to a new PeriSol,
trading potential energy for kinetic energy all the way down. And
then goes back up, trading kinetic energy to potential energy...
and so on until interfered with.

Of course the orbit can get randomized by near passes to Earth,
Venus and Mercury. If you have enough of these objects in play in
this Solar Pin ball game, eventually one of them will come right
back and hit us. Just like asteroids. As a recent post noted, we
can expect a hit from a 50-100m object once a century. If we make a
habit out of tossing nuclear waste towards the Sun, we'd run the
same risk. Maybe not very high, but high enough to eventually drop
one on the heads of our distant descendants.

Now of course we could do a circularization burn, but if we're
doing that, it hardly matters whether we park it between
Earth-Venus or Mars-Earth or anywhere else.

If the nucleopaths on Earth won't agree to the best solution, which
is the hole in the ground on Earth, then the next best solution
might be a lunar hole in the ground. Lots of them are ready made
anyway. No tectonics, no leaching, not much more chance of impact
damage (after trading off gravitational focusing for the impacts of
smaller bodies) and less problem even if one happens...

And after all, by the time they actually BUILD a repositary, the
construction plus environmental impact statements will probably
have cost MORE than Apollo did. :-(

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

Date: 9 Oct 92 16:43:55 GMT
From: Henry Spencer <[e-mail]>
Subject: Drop nuc waste into sun
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> ssi![e-mail] ("Louis F. Adornato") writes:
>1 - The initial change in orbital veliocity (wrt the sun) only needs to be
>    large enough to drop apahelion to the orbit of Venus (about .5 au,
>    if I recall correctly).  From there a gravity assist maneuver can
>    be used to provide the remaining delta-v.

I don't think you can actually get into the Sun with a Venus gravity assist,
although you can get as far as Mercury.  With Venus aeroassist, you should
be able to do it.  It's got the same problem as doing a Jupiter gravity
assist, though:  now each waste container has to be a maneuverable
interplanetary spacecraft capable of precision navigation, rather than
just a tin can full of waste.

Actually, as Larry Niven pointed out, if you can get the stuff as far as
Venus, you might as well just fly it *into* Venus.  It's not as if Venus
is good for anything else.  (Although one would want to do rather more
thorough studies of Venus before starting to use it as a dump...)
--
MS-DOS is the OS/360 of the 1980s.      | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
              -Hal W. Hardenbergh (1985)|  [e-mail]  utzoo!henry

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

Date: 9 Oct 92 19:09:19 GMT
From: "thomas.vandoren" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Drop nuc waste into sun
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Henry Spencer) writes:
>Actually, as Larry Niven pointed out, if you can get the stuff as far as
>Venus, you might as well just fly it *into* Venus.  It's not as if Venus
>is good for anything else.  (Although one would want to do rather more
>thorough studies of Venus before starting to use it as a dump...)


  I was thinking the same thing myself.  "Use it as a dump.." haha, that's
funny.  But, hey, maybe that IS the best use for Venus!  With all that
pressure, heat, and sulfuric acid, it would burn up in a relatively short
period of time.
  Every planet/moon should have its purpose, and that just seems to fit
Venus well.

Lee

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

Date: 9 Oct 92 18:05:33 GMT
From: "Michael W. Rowland" <[e-mail]>
Subject: ENV SATELLITE SHUTDOWN IN DEC 1992
Newsgroups: sci.space

This is a repost of 6 Oct. posting (revised)...

We at Langley Research Center received news on Thursday, October 2,
1992 that NASA intends to shutdown the following satellites in
December to save about $15M:

     NUMBUS-7

     ERBS

     NOAA-9 (partial?)

     NOAA-10 (partial?)

     UARS (SPRING 1993)

Some of the following experiments that will terminate when
their satellites are shutdown are:

     Stratospheric Aerosol Measurement II  (SAM II)

     Earth Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBS) (3)

     Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment II (SAGE II)

     Total Ozone Measurement System (TOMS)

     Halogen Occultation Experiment (HALOE)

     Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS)

No plans have been stated to restart the satellites.

Budget cuts are specified in House Conference Report 102-902
that is attached to HR 5679, Sept. 24, 1992.

Mike Rowland

Mike Rowland, Aerosol Research Branch, MS 475
NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton VA 23681
internet: [e-mail]

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

Date: 9 Oct 92 17:13:40 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: IR detector discussion ???
Newsgroups: sci.optics,sci.astro,sci.space

X-Xref: stsci sci.materials:760 sci.chem:4161 sci.physics:17415
Lines: 16
X-Sender: [e-mail]
X-Organization: Space Telescope Science Institute
Distribution: na
X-Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1992 19:58:03 GMT

From Bill Gawne at the Space Telescope Science Institute
[e-mail]

Hi all.  Is there anyone out there in netland interested in
discussing IR detector materials?  I was thinking of InSb
Pt:Si, and HgCdTe in particular; but any lead chalcogenide
folks would be welcome too.

I'm interested in fundamental physics, crystallography,
and chemistry of the materials.  Also engineering involved
in producing detector arrays for both astronomical and
terrestrial applications.

Please e-mail or post replies to sci.materials.  Thanks,


-Bill

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

Date: Sat, 10 Oct 1992 02:40:34 GMT
From: Ron Baalke <[e-mail]>
Subject: Mars Observer Update - 10/09/92
Newsgroups: sci.space,sci.astro,alt.sci.planetary

Forwarded from:
PUBLIC INFORMATION OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIF. 91109. TELEPHONE [phone]

                  MARS OBSERVER MISSION STATUS
                         October 9, 1992

     The Mars Observer spacecraft is scheduled to fire two of its
four main rocket thrusters tomorrow in the first trajectory
correction maneuver to occur since the spacecraft was launched on
Sept. 25, 1992.

     The trajectory correction maneuver (TCM-1), considered one
of the more crucial cruise maneuvers, will involve firing two of
the spacecraft's large (490-Newton) thrusters.  TCM-1 will
provide a velocity change of 50 meters per second (164 feet per
second) to the spacecraft's trajectory, thereby adjusting
slightly its path to Mars.  TCM-1 will occur at 3 p.m. Pacific
Daylight Time and will take about two minutes.  During this first
TCM, the spacecraft will be close enough to Earth to send 2-
kilobyte (2,000 bytes per second) engineering data in near real
time.  Currently one-way light time from Earth to the spacecraft
is about 15 seconds.

     The next TCM is scheduled for Jan. 8, 1993.

     Flight controllers tried for the third time on Oct. 7 to
play back tape-recorded data of the Transfer Orbit Stage (TOS)
burn shortly after launch and were successful in receiving TOS
data.  TOS flight operations staff will analyze the data to
evaluate TOS performance during the launch phase.

     All spacecraft systems are operating as expected and teams
are working to optimize spacecraft and ground systems for
Saturday's events.

     Today Mars Observer is about 4.5 million kilometers (2.6
million miles) from Earth, traveling at a speed of about 10,800
kilometers (7,600 miles per hour) with respect to Earth.  The
spacecraft is traveling at a heliocentric velocity of about
119,000 kilometers per hour (74,000 miles per hour).

                             #####
     ___    _____     ___
    /_ /|  /____/ \  /_ /|     Ron Baalke         | [e-mail]
    | | | |  __ \ /| | | |     Jet Propulsion Lab |
 ___| | | | |__) |/  | | |__   M/S 525-3684 Telos | Einstein's brain is stored
/___| | | |  ___/    | |/__ /| Pasadena, CA 91109 | in a mason jar in a lab
|_____|/  |_|/       |_____|/                     | in Wichita, Kansas.

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

Date: 9 Oct 92 19:28:10 GMT
From: Daniel A Ashlock <[e-mail]>
Subject: SETI positive?
Newsgroups: sci.space,sci.astro

   First of all, thanks for the firm "no" in answer to my original question,
guys.  I tracked down the local source of the rumor and gave him whatfor...

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Nick
Haines) writes:
> In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail]
(thomas.vandoren) writes:
>
>    [about SETI range]
>
>       I assume what you were saying is that random radio or TV emissions
could
>    be detected within a 100 light year range?  Thats not too bad, how many
>    systems are there in that range?  Maybe 20 ?
>
> Stars within 100ly? Several thousand (I used to have this kind of
> figure to hand). Of which several hundred are reasonable targets for
> SETI (single yellow stars).

   Curiosity: why yellow?  Don't main sequence orange and red stars last longer
than yellow ones?  Is there some reson to think cooler stars than the sun won't
develop technological civilizations?

   For that matter, wouldn't _any_ star system be a candidate for an
automated communications relay left by a self reproducing probe?  A
paranoid might think another civilization would attempt to contact us
only through an offset communications device :).

> Nick

Dan
[e-mail]

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

Date: 9 Oct 92 17:40:11 GMT
From: Larry Klaes <[e-mail]>
Subject: Soviet and U.S. Space Missions After LUNA 3
Newsgroups: sci.space,sci.astro,alt.sci.planetary

    In Article 49956, [e-mail] (robert.f.casey) writes:

    > I seem to remember that there were no follow-ups to that mission,
    > like to map the missing area on the far side (of the Moon, not the
    > cartoons), and/or to get better resolution pictures.  Did they try
    > and fail, or just didn't have budget or hardware to do it, or maybe
    > they figured they already got enough bragging rights out of the
    > first one? :-)

        There were two possible follow-on Soviet space missions to LUNA 3
    after its success in October of 1959.  The first was launched on April
    12, 1960 aboard a VOSTOK rocket but failed to reach Luna.  The second,
    launched on April 18, met the same fate.  These unnamed probes may have
    been improved versions of the LUNA 3 craft, designed to take better
    images of the lunar farside.

        Around this time the United States was also attempting to place
    a number of PIONEER probes in lunar orbit to obtain their own images
    of the hidden hemisphere.  None were completely successful.  The
    series ended in late 1960.

        The Soviets did not launch another known probe to Earth's moon
    until January of 1963.  By then they were concentrating on surface
    landers, a goal they would eventually achieve with LUNA 9 in 1966.

        In July of 1965, the Soviets sent ZOND 3 on a flyby mission of
    Luna on its way to the orbit of Mars.  The probe became the first
    vehicle to photograph the lunar farside since LUNA 3.  The images
    were a vast improvement over the 1959 pictures.  ZOND 3 also imaged
    the remaining parts of the farside missed by LUNA 3.  The United
    States would not have its own farside images until the following
    year with the LUNAR ORBITER series.

        For more information on these missions, please read the following
    articles written by Andrew J. LePage from the Electronic Journal of the
    Astronomical Society of the Atlantic (EJASA), available from anonymous
    FTP at chara.gsu.edu (131.96.5.29).

        "The Great Moon Race: In the Beginning..." - May 1992
     "The Great Moon Race: The Commitment" - August 1992
        "The Great Moon Race: The Long Road to Success" - September 1992

        References -

    Barabashov, N. P., A. A. Mikhailov, and Yu. N. Lipsky, AN ATLAS
    OF THE MOON'S FARSIDE, 1961

    Brockman, M. H., H. R. Buchanan, R. L. Choate, and L. R. Malling,
    "Extraterrestrial Radio Tracking and Communication", PROCEEDINGS OF
    THE I.R.E., April, 1960

    Burrows, William E., EXPLORING SPACE: VOYAGES IN THE SOLAR SYSTEM
    AND BEYOND, 1990

    Gatland, Kenneth, THE ILLUSTRATED ENCYCLOPEDIA OF SPACE TECHNOLOGY,
    1988

    Gatland, Kenneth, ROBOT EXPLORERS, 1972

    Johnson, Nicholas, HANDBOOK OF SOVIET LUNAR AND PLANETARY
    EXPLORATION, 1979

    Lipsky, Yuri N., "ZOND 3 Photographs of the Moon's Far Side", SKY &
    TELESCOPE, December 1965

        Schurmeier, H. M., "Lunar Exploration", LUNAR MISSIONS AND EXPLORATION,
    1964

    Von Braun, Wernher, and Fredrick I. Ordway III, HISTORY OF ROCKETRY
    AND SPACE TRAVEL, 1966

    Wilson, Andrew, (JANE'S) SOLAR SYSTEM LOG, 1987

        Larry Klaes  [e-mail]
             or - ...!decwrl!verga.enet.dec.com!klaes
                 or - [e-mail]
                     or - [e-mail]

             "All the Universe, or nothing!" - H. G. Wells

        EJASA Editor, Astronomical Society of the Atlantic

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

Date: Fri, 9 Oct 1992 17:42:25 GMT
From: Rajesh Batra <[e-mail]>
Subject: Transportation on the Moon.
Newsgroups: sci.space

Hi,

    I'm an undergraduate in Aerospace Engineering at the University of
Cincinnati. We have been given a Senior Design Project based on a fictious
premise that ice has been found at the North Pole of the Moon.  Our moon base
(it's the year 2016, by the way) is located at the equator. Our Mission is
to bring back this ice from the North Pole to our production facility plants
(located at the equator as well) for extraction of Hydrogen and Oxygen.
The extraction facility will be handled by the Chemical/Civil Engineers.

    We are looking for any feasible transportation ideas that could
accomplish this task. We have come up with several ideas including Pipelines,
Rockets, and Rail Guns. We are delivering about 2 tons of rock (containing ice)
a day.

If anyone can direct me to abstracts that have been written concerning
Rail Guns please do not hesitate to email me.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated!

                        Thank you for your time,

                        Rajesh Batra
                        [e-mail]

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End of Space Digest Volume 15 : Issue 303
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