From: kentm@aix.rpi.edu (Michael V. Kent)
Subject: Re: STS-1 Disaster -- follow-up #3
Organization: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY
Date: Tue, 22 Dec 1992 06:14:56 GMT

I might as well jump into the fray...

In article <1h6839INNb09@news.cerf.net> eidetics@nic.cerf.net (Eidetics Int'l) writes:
>Posted by Jon Volkoff, eidetics@cerf.net

>I can tell you that cosmospheres (floating platforms) were mentioned in Design
>for Survival by General Thomas Power, former head of the Strategic Air Command,
>published in 1965 by Coward McCann, New York.  On pages 243 and 244 he refers
>to them as follows:
>
>"An aggressor would make the fullest use of the element of
>surprise.  This would apply to the timing of the attack as well
>as to the employment of some radically new weapon or technique
>for which we are not prepared...It is quite possible that the
>Soviet surprise weapon would be an offensive space system, but
>beyond this assumption we can only speculate.  For instance, it is
>conceivable that we may wake up one morning and find a number of
>Soviet satellites floating in stationary orbits over every part of
>the United States...We certainly must anticipate such a contingency
>which is by no means farfetched or far in the future, and make sure
>that we have operational defensive systems or measures to cope with
>it."

Mr. McCann is describing space-based weapons platforms in geosynchronis orbit.
Notice the words "stationary orbits."  For an object to be in orbit, its 
centripetal acceleration due to its motion about the earth must equal the
acceleration to due gravity.  In other words, its centrifugal force must equal
its weight.  Each altitude has one and only one orbital speed at which this
equality holds, and it can be determined by Newton's laws of gravitation and
motion.  A hovering craft is not in orbit.

There is an altitude at which the time an object takes to complete the orbit
is equal to exactly one day.  If this orbit is over the equator, the satellite
will appear from the earth to hover over a point on the equator.  An object
in such an orbit (22,000 miles high for Earth) requires no power to maintain
it -- a rock will do it as easily as a manned spaceship.

It is obvious to me that Mr. McCann is concerned about Soviet geostationary
satellites and is calling for development of an American Anti-Satellite weapons
system (ASAT) to deal with it.  No electrogravitic cosmospheres is implied in
the above paragraph -- just geostationary satellites.

I'm sorry if you already understand orbital mechanics -- but objects "floating
in stationary orbits" require no power source and have no need of "electro-
gravitic devices."

OK.  I have a question for you.  If Columbia and the three other Shuttles were
destroyed on STS-1,2,3,4,  where did all of the Shuttles come from?  There
have been 52 Shuttle launches so far, and orbiters cost $1.5 billion a piece.
Do you think NASA can hide THAT kind of money?  How could it hide the produc-
tion?

Mike

-- 
Michael Kent                        These views are solely those of the author.
Flight Test Engineer                <Looking for Internet access in St. Louis.>
McDonnell Douglas, St. Louis
kentm@pro-applejacks.cts.com        Tute-Screwed Aero       Apple II Forever !!
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