Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/mac/TEXT/SPACEDIG/V16_1/V16NO108.TXT

Internet Message Format | 1993-07-13 | 34KB

Date: Tue,  2 Feb 93 05:03:26
From: Space Digest maintainer <[e-mail]>
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Subject: Space Digest V16 #108
To: Space Digest Readers
Precedence: bulk


Space Digest                Tue,  2 Feb 93       Volume 16 : Issue 108

Today's Topics:
                             Atlantis...
      CIS Soyuz TM-15 successfully lands from Mir space station
           DC-1 eventual construction question... (2 msgs)
            Goals for year 2000. I have a dream. (2 msgs)
     How the media portrays scientists? RE: Was bumbling geek...
                            ISECCo's goals
                    Mir/SSF(Fred) Combo Mission..
       Non-Profit Space Exp: What would you do with $125M/year?
               Rent Mir/Commerical SS Fred not build it
         Russian solar sail flight possibly set for Feb. 4th
                    Saving an overweight SSTO....
                            Science Geeks
                      Solar Sail/Parachute/Brake
                Today in 1986-Remember the Challenger
                         Words of Wisdom :-)

    Welcome to the Space Digest!!  Please send your messages to
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----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 1 Feb 93 17:45:02 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Atlantis...
Newsgroups: sci.space,sci.space.shuttle

Jerry Han ([e-mail]) wrote:
: [...] Where is the shuttle Atlantis at the moment?  [...]

It's in Palmdale until September or so.  As you guessed, it's in
"refit."

-- Ken Jenks, NASA/JSC/GM2, Space Shuttle Program Office
      [e-mail]  [phone]

     "...Development of the space station is as inevitable as
      the rising of the sun." -- Wernher von Braun

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

Date: 1 Feb 93 18:53:49 GMT
From: Glenn Chapman <[e-mail]>
Subject: CIS Soyuz TM-15 successfully lands from Mir space station
Newsgroups: sci.space

     The Soyuz TM-15 flight to the Commonwealth of Independent States Mir
complex successfully landed today (Feb 1st) in south central Asia.  On board
were Anatoli Solovyov and Sergei Avdeyev who have just spent 187 days, in
orbit since arriving with a French visitor on July 30.  They have been
replaced by the new crew, Gennadiy Manakov and Aleksandr Polishchuk, which
were launched from the in Soyuz TM-16 on Jan. 24th.   One interesting point
is that Radio Moscow stated they would be up for 179 days on Mir, which makes
their landing date July 24th.  In most previous flights the landing date has
not been so clearly specified.  The replacement crew at that time will
include a French visitor, which is now training for the flight.
     On of the new things Manakov and Polishchuk will be working on is the
February test of a 20 metre (65 foot) solar sail. It will be attached to the
Progress TM-15 tanker currently at the Mir station, which will be undocked
and moved from the station before the sail is deployed.  The 3 day mission
will permit the solar sail to act like a reflector, generating very a bright
light in the sky for a short period of time (1 minute) as seen from the
ground, as well as move the Progress tanker with light pressure.  Reports say
this will be the brightest object in the sky at the times of the tests.
(Radio Mosow, SpaceNews Jan. 11, CBC)
     In other news Russia has announced that a third lander on their 1994
Mars probe has been dropped due to funding problems.  The irony is that the
third lander was to contain mostly U.S. equipment, and delays in U.S.
payments supporting this probe were a significant factor in the cancellation.
However the remaining two probes and the rest of the mission is proceeding on
schedule.  (SpaceNews Jan. 4, 11) NASA/CIS teams have found pleasing results
in initial studies on using a modified Soyuz capsule as the Freedom space
station's emergency assured crew return vehicles.  Over the next year more
detailed investigations of the changes needed and launch costs will be done.
The U.S. Lockheed Corporation has agreed to market the Proton booster for
Russia's Khrunichev Enterprise under the joint Lockheed-Khrunichev
International corp.  The Proton, a 20 Tonne to orbit booster, is currently
produced by Khrunichev at a yearly production rate of 9, which could rise to
18 if needed.  Lockheed will market the booster, especially pushing it as a
launcher of the Soyuz as Freedom's assured crew return vehicles.  Lockheed
will also inject $5 million into Khrunichev to maintain the plant.  However,
while the U.S. State Department gave quick approval to the project, battles
broke out with other agencies which wished to stop the project.  (AW&ST Jan.
4)  The Strategic Defense Initiative Organization is planning to purchase
four more Russian Topaz space nuclear reactors, in addition to the two
already delivered to the U.S.  There is worry though that radiation from the
reactors in space will hurt measurements on the Compton Gamma Ray
Observatory. (SpaceNews Jan. 11)


                                                        Glenn Chapman
                                                        School Eng. Science
                                                        Simon Fraser U.
                                                        Burnaby, B.C., Canada
                                                        [e-mail]

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

Date: 1 Feb 93 17:54:50 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: DC-1 eventual construction question...
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Edward V. Wright) writes:
>
>
> You won't have a satellite launch every other flight.  Maybe every
> hundred flights.
>

I think there has been a mild misunderstanding.  I meant every other flight
WHILE the current launch backlog is flown off.  So, this only counts as part
of the increased revenue during the first startup year or so.  After the
backlog is gone, then the demand will go down, but until then, a premium can
still be charged.

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

Date: Mon, 1 Feb 1993 18:43:51 GMT
From: "Edward V. Wright" <[e-mail]>
Subject: DC-1 eventual construction question...
Newsgroups: sci.space

In <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:

>I think there has been a mild misunderstanding.  I meant every other flight
>WHILE the current launch backlog is flown off.  So, this only counts as part
>of the increased revenue during the first startup year or so.

A small fleet of SSTOs could fly off the curent backlog in a week or two.
Any projected increase in demand, including ambitious programs such as
Iridium, would add only a few weeks more.  Satellites are a drop in the
bucket.

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

Date: Mon, 1 Feb 1993 16:08:03 GMT
From: Gary Coffman <ke4zv!gary>
Subject: Goals for year 2000. I have a dream.
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:
>How about this for a Goal. SSTO, SSF, Mars Mission to Mars and Solar Sail
>Race to the Moon or ?  By the year 2000, its not that far off..
>
>So far what I have seen of NASA and the discussions here, no one has a combined
>plan of what is going on and what our goal is.. I think we need to maybe have
>the dream of Kennedy to have all the above and maybe more by the end of the
>millenia...

What we don't have is the funding a Cold War space race could command.
There's no way Clinton/Gore are going to get Congress to fund those
ambitious goals in a climate of deficits and debt where *social* programs
are being neglected (in the liberal view). For that matter, the *voters*
aren't going to stand for it. Aside from us fanatics, the average voter
thinks we're "throwing away" money in space that should be kept down here
on Earth to meet more pressing problems. (They don't grasp that we don't
ship money into space, it stays right here in worker's pockets.)

Gary
--
Gary Coffman KE4ZV          |    You make it,     | gatech!wa4mei!ke4zv!gary
Destructive Testing Systems |    we break it.     | uunet!rsiatl!ke4zv!gary
534 Shannon Way             |    Guaranteed!      | emory!kd4nc!ke4zv!gary
Lawrenceville, GA 30244     |                     |

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

Date: 1 Feb 1993 18:19:44 GMT
From: Jon Leech <[e-mail]>
Subject: Goals for year 2000. I have a dream.
Newsgroups: sci.space,talk.politics.space

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Gary Coffman) writes:
|> Aside from us fanatics, the average voter
|> thinks we're "throwing away" money in space that should be kept down here
|> on Earth to meet more pressing problems. (They don't grasp that we don't
|> ship money into space, it stays right here in worker's pockets.)

    They grasp perfectly well that the money isn't being spent on
projects of direct benefit to themselves. The same applies to any
government expenditure they consider wasted. If you want to make some
digs at how benighted "average voters" are, at least find plausible
reasons.

    Note followups.

    Jon
    __@/

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

Date: 1 Feb 93 19:53:00 GMT
From: "Robert S. Hill" <[e-mail]>
Subject: How the media portrays scientists? RE: Was bumbling geek...
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] writes...
>According to _Lorenzo's Oil_, scientists are cold-hearted, self-serving
>bureaucrats who like to torture little children for their studies.
>Didn't see any geeks.

For a heroic portrayal, see George Pal's movie 'War of the Worlds' from
the 1950's.

Robert S. Hill
[e-mail]

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

Date: Mon, 01 Feb 93 20:07:46 EST
From: Tom <[e-mail]>
Subject: ISECCo's goals

>>                       SPACE COLONIZATION
>>     Are  you keen?  Do you want to go?  Are you frustrated  with
>>the slow pace?  If so ISECCo was created with you in mind!

[details of ISECCo's goals deleted:  synopsis:  build a closed ecology]

Herman Rubin sez:
>If this is the way you are starting, I do not see it as even necessarily
>being in the right direction.  The effects of low or no gravity are
>likely to be more important than the losses from a biosphere.  And
>these losses are going to be of a totally different nature, and require
>totally different technology, out in space than on earth with the
>presence of a dense and biologically active surrounding.

>I submit that the necessary experimentation needs to be done out there,
>and that little we do in the biosphere direction on earth is likely to
>be worth much.

The problems you refer to will definitely need to be addressed.  But
so will the problems of making and supporting a thriving ecosphere.

The experimentation will need to be continued 'out there'.  But right
now, it can only be done 'in here'.  So that's where they are doing it.

Engineering problems are often broken down into manageable parts...

-Tommy Mac
------------------------------===========================================
Tom McWilliams               |Is Faith a short '  `      '   *.;     +%
[e-mail]       |cut for attaining    +    .      '
[phone] -or- 353-2986 |  . knowledge? ;"'       ,'    .   '     .
a scrub Astronomy undergrad  |      *     ,    or is it just  .       .
at Michigan State University |   ';   '        * a short-circuit?   ,
------------------------------===========================================

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

Date: 1 Feb 93 15:58:41 GMT
From: Gary Coffman <ke4zv!gary>
Subject: Mir/SSF(Fred) Combo Mission..
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:
>I think one good reason for Space to go commerical is the Congression mind
>changing, party politics and special interest groups.. We the US are pricing
>and legeslating ourselves not only out of the "space race" but also the
>economic race, we are alreadt becomeing a "second world" power... Japana and
>the EC are the new superpowers, were just being crazy.. Senility can be fun..

If space is taken commercial at this juncture, no one would build a
space station. The return would be too long term for a business
enterprise. Some here would say that's a good reason not to build
a station, but others realize that the basic research done there,
and the engineering experience gained there, will be valuable to
long term space exploration and development.

That's not to say that NASA couldn't have tried a commercial procurement
for Freedom. They could have put out for bids a requirement for X amount
of habitable space with Y amount of power and Z number of experiment
racks and let some commercial company sign a fixed price contract to
deliver such a facility. But the way NASA funding works, they couldn't
sign such a contract with the penalty clauses for cancellation or
modification that a commercial vendor would require. So NASA has had
to act as their own prime contractor with all the jerrymandering and
pork that entails in order to maintain Congressional funding from
year to year. Congress refuses to commit future Congresses to spending
fixed amounts of money in long term contracts. Government contracts
normally have a cancellation at the convienence of the government
clause. That clause means private lenders won't finance a commercial
venture to meet such contracts. Congress *could* make an exception
to this, and sometimes does de facto for certain defense procurements,
such as aircraft carriers, but they haven't.

>I think that the shuttle should be flown to Mir, dock with it and then unload
>its cargo and begin to build SSF next door to Mir... Teh Astronauts must have
>someplace to live, why not "Mir" or maybe build a combined space station..

Mir's orbital inclination means that Shuttle can't reach it with much
cargo. It's an expensive orbit to reach from the Cape's latitude.
Freedom's modules aren't designed to require large amounts of assembly
on orbit so the crew cabin of a Shuttle is fine for the amount of time

necessary to get a module deployed and attached to the truss. So the
living quarters of Mir offer no benefit to the Freedom construction
schedule. Note too that Mir is setup to handle *2* long term occupants
with occasional visits by *3* man relief crews. It gets real crowded
real fast with 5 people aboard. Shuttle can easily accomodate *7*
people for the week or so needed on orbit to deploy a station module.
Mir is a poor construction shack, at the wrong place, and of the
wrong capacity for the job.

>Why must the US have its own pet progect space station.. Why not have a
>combined one, maybe under a loose UN aspicies... United Fed here we come..

The reason the US wants it's own space station, and it's own space program
for that matter, is so the US aerospace industry will develop and maintain
a space capability. This is important for defense reasons as well as
industrial competitiveness reasons. Without our own program, we become
merely tenants of a foreign power whose politics are none too stable.
Most of the *science* planned for Freedom could be done in conjunction
with Mir, but that's only half the reason for Freedom. The other half,
gaining engineering experience in space with large permanent structures,
and developing and maintaining a domestic expertise in space operations
and construction, is perhaps even more important to the nation than any
possible science returns a station may offer.

>Why not schedule Soyuz and Shuttle mission so that both US and Russian and
>other Astronauts go up on different birds. Maybe have a revolving crew?

That's being planned. Crew exchanges, and Shuttle dockings at Mir are
being negotiated as you read this.

>How dificult would it be to just build onto Mir or dsign a new center and
>connect Mir to it.. Do some mining of waste space debris.. After all ther emust
>be alot of junk in space that is just there for the taking and using..
>Why must we spend more money to send materials into space when the materials
>have already been sent into space..

Most of the "junk" is in orbits far different from Mir or Freedom. It
costs a lot of energy to do orbital translations and matching with
stuff in other orbits. Most of it is too small to be useful, some is
too big to handle easily with the arm, and on orbit demolition in
suits is way too difficult. Besides, if you did go to the expense
to gather the junk, all you'd have would *be* junk and not the
specialized parts you need to assemble a station. So you'd wind
up having to disassemble the junk, sort it into various materials,
melt it down and *remanufacture* it into something usable. Learning
how to do space manufacturing is one of the things the *completed*
Freedom is going to try to do. We don't know *how* to do it now,
and we don't have the equipment needed to do it in orbit. So using
it to *build* Freedom is seriously putting the cart before the horse.

One of the experiments on a recent Shuttle mission, the Drop Physics
Module, was intended to give us some of the basic knowledge necessary
to do containerless processing in microgravity. *If* we can work out
the engineering problems, this will make space processing of materials
much easier. That's something else Freedom will be doing when it's
completed. There are lots of things we can do *in theory* in space,
but the practical problems of actually engineering systems to do
those jobs is going to take a lot of on orbit trial and error. Freedom
is the intended place for those trials and errors to be conducted.

Gary

--
Gary Coffman KE4ZV          |    You make it,     | gatech!wa4mei!ke4zv!gary
Destructive Testing Systems |    we break it.     | uunet!rsiatl!ke4zv!gary
534 Shannon Way             |    Guaranteed!      | emory!kd4nc!ke4zv!gary
Lawrenceville, GA 30244     |                     |

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

Date: 1 Feb 1993 18:13:27 GMT
From: Jon Leech <[e-mail]>
Subject: Non-Profit Space Exp: What would you do with $125M/year?
Newsgroups: sci.space,talk.politics.space

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Brian Yamauchi) writes:
|> Suppose
|> that 1 out of every 200 Americans is sufficiently interested in space
|> exploration to be willing to donate $100/year to a non-profit space
|> exploration organization -- 0.5% x 250 million x $100 = $125 million.

    Not to come down too hard, but obviously such numbers of people do
not exist. Readers of this group undoubtedly have a disproportionate
percentage of contributors relative to the population as a whole, and
I haven't seen any evidence over a decade of reading that as much as
.5% of the sci.space readership contributes anything signficant to
any non-profit. SSI has perhaps a few thousand senior associates, and
it probably has a greater funding base than any similar group.

    It would be great if your scenario were more than fantasy, and
people will doubtless spin their own fantasies for using the money -
but it's not happening. Not because of government interference or any
external factor of that nature, but because people mostly don't think
it's a worthwhile use of their own money.

    Jon
    __@/

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

Date: Mon, 1 Feb 1993 17:32:40 GMT
From: fred j mccall 575-3539 <[e-mail]>
Subject: Rent Mir/Commerical SS Fred not build it
Newsgroups: sci.space

In <[e-mail]> [e-mail] ("F.Baube x554") writes:

>Matthew DeLuca <[e-mail]>
>> Sure, we can do as some people have suggested and rent Mir and buy
>> Soyuzes and use Energia and save lots of money, but the end result
>> would be the complete stasis of the space arm of the U.S. aerospace
>> industry, coupled with Russian dominance of space down the line.

>Did you ever hear about the benefits of free trade ?

I suggest you look in a good text on international economics under
"optimum tariff" for a lesson on "the benefits of free trade".  This
is a buzz-phrase that is most often used to hand-wave away better
formulated arguments.

>I thought re-entry capsules and disposable multi-stage
>boosters were supposed to be the means, not the end.

>A big Russian buy could be a short-to-medium term expedient
>to get our payloads and experiments off the damned ground
>and into space, while Delta Clipper and other excellent
>ideas might get some more (increasingly!) scarce resources.
>We'd be buying commodity goods while working on better.

Except, of course, we wouldn't be.  We'd be buying Russian hardware
INSTEAD OF spending the money to develop our own.

>[Besides, any domestic development that drags on from year
> to year is vulnerable to the whims of the Congressional
> budget process; Russian hardware paid for with cash F.O.B.
> Kazakhstan need not be.]

>If we were talking about Long March, I'd say let the repressive
>SOBs *keep* their hardware.  But the Russians are good guys now,
>and could use our business to keep their skills alive and their
>workers out of the employment of Saddam and other Stalin wannabes.
>We don't have all the answers and all the gadgetry; they can help
>us get to Mars and elsewhere.

If you are a firm believer in "the benefits of free trade" and
honestly think that the only concern is with the goal and we shouldn't
worry about all the interrim things, why discirminate against the
Chinese?  Also, what about keeping OUR skills alive?  Or doesn't that
matter to you?

>.. or is this naive ?

In the extreme, and in several different directions.

--
"Insisting on perfect safety is for people who don't have the balls to live
 in the real world."   -- Mary Shafer, NASA Ames Dryden
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[e-mail] - I don't speak for others and they don't speak for me.

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

Date: Mon, 1 Feb 1993 19:03:59 -0800
From: Glenn Chapman <[e-mail]>
Subject: Russian solar sail flight possibly set for Feb. 4th

Subject: Russian solar sail flight possibly set for Feb. 4th
Newsgroups: sci.space
Keywords: Russian, Space


     There has been some questions asked about the Russian solar sail
experiment.  Here is the best current information that I have.  This in
this test, called the Znamya experiment, the progress TM-15 tanker with
the 20 metre mirror solar sail folded, will be detached from the Mir
space station on Thurs. Feb. 4th according to one CBC report.  After moving
a few hundred metres from Mir it will deploy the sail and orientate itself
to have the sun in line with the sail.  The experiment will continue for
three days (till Feb. 6th).  However take all this with a grain
of salt.  This experiment was originally to take place in December, and was
delayed from the previous Mir crew to the current one, which just arrived
on Jan. 26th.  There has been no announcement that I have heard on
Radio Moscow of the time of separation or the date only the month.   Further
only a small change in the orbit of Mir, will significantly alter any
viewing time numbers.  Such changes usually are made a few days
before the Progress tanker leaves by firing the Progress's engine to raise
Mir's orbit.
    Best viewing will probably occur near sunrise, when the
mirror, which is pointed towards the sun, is reflecting light while towards
the earth's edge just before it enters the terminator for the earth's shadow.
Exact times will depend on the orbital elements and your location
     Hope this helps those that are looking for it.  I will provide better
information as I get it.


                                                        Yours truly
                            Glenn Chapman
                            Simon Fraser U.
                            [e-mail]

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

Date: Mon, 1 Feb 1993 17:51:58 GMT
From: fred j mccall 575-3539 <[e-mail]>
Subject: Saving an overweight SSTO....
Newsgroups: sci.space

In <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Edward V. Wright) writes:

>In <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (fred j mccall 575-3539) writes:

>>That would only apply to U.S. payloads, I would think, and perhaps not
>>even then.  After all, people contract to launch on Ariane out of
>>French Guinea (sp?).

>To get a launch on Ariane, you have to contract years in advance.
>That gives you plenty of time to get the paperwork through the
>Federal bureaucracy.

>To get a launch on SSTO, you'll pick up the phone and say, "I'd
>like a charter flight next Wednesday."

If they continue to be that stupid, we'll simply see the same effect
we see in encryption technology.  Assembly will move offshore, so that
it's none of the U.S. government's business where it goes to.  Right
now this doesn't pay, but at the launch rates we're talking about it
would probably make sense.

>>For S.F. to Tokyo you wouldn't have a problem.  But we seem to be
>>talking about two different sets of circumstances.  My post was in
>>response to the question of what you do if the thing is too heavy to
>>make orbit.  Well, that's what you do.

>Hm.  You'd probably be better off building Robert Heinlein's rocket
>sled up the side of a mountain.  You'd still be restricting the number
>of launch sites, but at least you'd be operating out of the United States
>instead of South America.

And then you've added the additional cost of a huge civil engineering
project, plus maintenance costs on same.  Bad idea.  Think about how
much this proposed rocket sled would cost, vice the cost of simply
stuffing things into a cargo airplane and flying them to the parking
lot where SSTO happens to be sitting today.




--
"Insisting on perfect safety is for people who don't have the balls to live
 in the real world."   -- Mary Shafer, NASA Ames Dryden
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[e-mail] - I don't speak for others and they don't speak for me.

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

Date: Mon, 01 Feb 93 20:17:07 EST
From: Tom <[e-mail]>
Subject: Science Geeks

> Im not talking violence, Im talking about who is cool and who is not..
> Scientists many times are not cool, they are egghead, nerds, geeks and such..
> Bumbling social idiots.. (I might be wrong)..

Yeah, I saw this dude Kyle (from high school) where I work recently.  He
wore glasses, didn't go out with girls much, talked funny (big words).

I used to call him 'geek'.  Sometimes 'nerd' or 'bonehead'.

Now I call him "boss".   :-)

-Tommy Mac
------------------------------===========================================
Tom McWilliams               |Is Faith a short '  `      '   *.;     +%
[e-mail]       |cut for attaining    +    .      '
[phone] -or- 353-2986 |  . knowledge? ;"'       ,'    .   '     .
a scrub Astronomy undergrad  |      *     ,    or is it just  .       .
at Michigan State University |   ';   '        * a short-circuit?   ,
------------------------------===========================================

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

Date: 1 Feb 93 17:24:05 GMT
From: "D.S.C. Yap" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Solar Sail/Parachute/Brake
Newsgroups: sci.space

[e-mail] (Rob Douglas) writes:
>Turning around the solar sail won't matter at all anyway, as both sides will
>be able to reflect (and therefore absorb momentum from) photons.

>Its the old "Which side of the aluminum foil is it better to have facing out"
>argument.  Doesn't matter.  If a photon passes through one way, it passes
>through the other.

Yes, it can matter.  In our sail design we count on the reflective
surface as a thermal shield.

Davin
--
          .oO tuohtiw esoht fo noitanigami eht ot gnihton evael Oo.
      Davin Yap, University Engineering Department, Cambridge, England
                       -->  [e-mail]  <--

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

Date: Mon, 1 Feb 1993 16:47:17 GMT
From: fred j mccall 575-3539 <[e-mail]>
Subject: Today in 1986-Remember the Challenger
Newsgroups: sci.space,sci.space.shuttle

In <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Henry Spencer) writes:

>This is why Jerry Pournelle is so fond of saying that the DC-Y should
>be flown by test pilots, not astronauts.  If a test pilot dies, you
>sigh, hold a memorial service, name a street after him at Edwards,
>and then figure out what happened, fix it, and carry on flying.  If
>an astronaut dies, the entire program comes to a screeching halt for
>two or three years, and no sacrifice of schedules, usefulness, or
>customers is too great to ensure it doesn't happen again.  Except
>that it will anyway, no matter how badly you cripple the program
>in the name of safety, unless you ground the thing permanently.

The funny thing is that a lot of the (military) astronauts are (or
used to be -- not sure if it's still true) prior test pilots.  I would
think that THEY couldn't agree with grounding something indefinitely
while every little bolt in it is analyzed, just to be 'on the safe
side'.  And I agree with the sentiment that there ARE going to be
accidents, no matter how hard you try to be 'safe' -- a discussion
along those lines some years ago was the source of the quotation from
Mary that I (probably over-) use in my .sig.  No matter how hard you
analyze and how safe you work, at some point somebody has to strap the
sucker on and fly it.

>If we are ever to have routine spaceflight -- the sort that might
>get you or me up there -- this absolutely requires tolerance for the
>occasional crash, especially during a new vehicle's early test
>period... that is, its first (say) 100 flights.  If your response
>to thinking about Challenger is "never again!", you are part of the
>problem, not part of the solution.

I have no idea of what the current figure is (Mary could probably
say), but back in the beginning of jets and rockets, I think they used
to lose something like 14 test pilots a year (all told, including
manufacturers testing, etc.).  Everyone, including the pilots, has
surely figured out by now that progress is not risk-free.  But then,
neither is life -- at least not in the real world.

--
"Insisting on perfect safety is for people who don't have the balls to live
 in the real world."   -- Mary Shafer, NASA Ames Dryden
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[e-mail] - I don't speak for others and they don't speak for me.

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

Date: Mon, 1 Feb 93 16:47:56 GMT
From: Ata Etemadi <[e-mail]>
Subject: Words of Wisdom :-)
Newsgroups: sci.space

In the article of <[e-mail]> [e-mail]
(Gary Coffman) writes:

>You might want to consult with your colleagues at the University of
>Surrey who fly payloads called UoSats that include consumer video cameras
[some lines deleted]

I happened to work at Surrey for 2 years. If you read my original
posting you'd notice it ended with:

>> Maybe the UOSAT folks will be willing to give them go...

> Or you might contact AMSAT-NA who have flown 22 satellite payloads on
> Arianne without benefit of serialized parts or production lines.
[some lines deleted]
> Special canisters on Shuttle. Or you might want to talk live to an Astronaut
> or Cosmonaut who is using a commercial off the shelf handheld radio from
> Motorola or Yaesu on the Shuttle and MIR. Or just listen to Dennis.

I'll just pick up the phone and call this Astronaut or Cosmonaut. Do you
have his or her number handy :-) Next time read the posting before jumping
to conclusions. Reading Aviation Weekly or Space News doesn't make you an
expert. I'll spell it out for you:

| I am looking to compile a list of off-the-shelf components which I    |
| can use when building an instrument. Components and/or systems which  |
| are already space qualified. Get it ?                                 |

I am aware of the launchers available. If I wanted to spend time and money
testing components I wouldn't post to this newsgroup asking for a list.
Total waste of time it seems.

> Safety critical systems on the *launchers* are held to strict standards,
> but payloads are not held to these standards. Thermal/vacuum and vibration
> table testing, shake and bake, is required of payloads to assure that the
> payload offers no risk to the launcher or other payloads, but this is a
> fairly inexpensive procedure available from any number of testing labs.
> EMC testing is required for payload systems that will be *active* before
> separation from the launcher, but screen rooms are commonly available
> and inexpensive to rent.
[advert for AMSAT deleted]

Just use a microwave for the shake and bake right :-) The procedure is NOT
"fairly inexpensive", if it was then everyone would have space qualified
their systems. Unless yours is the only instrument then you would have
to pass EMC tests. EMC = ElectroMagnetic Compatibility. Get it ? If you
have a wave experiment onboard you don't want to just be listening to your
neighbour's noise. When you have a budget of 10K for the instrument the
10K required for testing is OTT.

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End of Space Digest Volume 16 : Issue 108
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