HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: future space travel
Date: Sun, 10 Jan 1993 02:32:25 GMT
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology

In article <rabjab.7.726624045@golem.ucsd.edu> rabjab@golem.ucsd.edu (rabjab) writes:
>If they don't find water on the moon, I have a hard time believing that
>there will ever be large colonies there...
>Mars will be the only real place for a large colony, but then again,
>if there isn't anything there that's very interesting (like life or
>fossils) I can't see large colonies being placed up there...
>Maybe in the next 100-200 years biology will advance to the point
>where Venus could be altered with microbes...

Why do you assume a colony must be on a *planet*?  As the late Gerard
O'Neill pointed out a number of years ago, this is an error.  Open space
is a *better* place to colonize, given availability of resources from
the Moon or the asteroids.

Also, why do you assume that colonies are motivated by research?  Not so.
Bases, yes, but not colonies.  Colonies are motivated by either money or
freedom, broadly and loosely speaking:  either there's a buck to be made
and permanent residents are cheaper than migratory workers, or else the
residents find life at home intolerable enough to spend a lot of money
going somewhere where they can run their lives their own way.

>Seems like the future will see expanding development of robotic systems
>that will be used to explore every planet and moon, at a vastly 
>reduced cost over sending humans.  

It is yet to be established that this can be done effectively, except
perhaps on the Moon where speed-of-light lags are short.  Just flying
around and taking pictures is the easy part.  Interacting with a complex
planetary surface, without minute-by-minute human attention, is vastly
more problematic.  None of the currently-proposed Mars robots, for
example, is going to have anywhere near the fossil-hunting efficiency
of even an amateur paleontologist.  Unless robotics improves greatly,
in-depth investigation of planetary surfaces will still require humans.

Note, also, that human space exploration need not be impossibly costly.
See, for example, Zubrin's "Mars Direct" proposal for a way of doing
*human* exploration of Mars, in depth, relatively soon, on a budget
that would barely buy you good robots at NASA prices.
-- 
"God willing... we shall return."       | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
       -Gene Cernan, the Moon, Dec 1972 |  henry@zoo.toronto.edu  utzoo!henry
Newsgroups: sci.space
From: chris@chrism.demon.co.uk (Chris Marriott)
Subject: Re: ** BUSSARD RAMSCOOP ** 
Distribution: world
Organization: None
Reply-To: chris@chrism.demon.co.uk
X-Mailer: Simple NEWS 1.90 (ka9q DIS 1.19)
Date: Sat, 9 Jan 1993 22:42:18 +0000

In article <7Pc3wB2w165w@tradent.wimsey.bc.ca> lord@tradent.wimsey.bc.ca writes:

>(if necessary) it might pipe protons out of the stream.  Thirdly, if we 
>were to STORE the antimatter, how would it be stored?  I have seen methods
>for plasma, but can't seem to find antimatter storage.  
>
>Any response welcome...
>
>                                                Jason Cooper
>

Storing antimatter should (in principle at least) be quite straightforward.
Assuming it's charged, you can both store it and move it using
magnetic fields.

Chris
-- 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Chris Marriott                           | chris@chrism.demon.co.uk    |
| Warrington, UK                           | BIX: cmarriott              |
| (Still awaiting inspiration              | CIX: cmarriott              |
|  for a witty .sig .... )                 | CompuServe: 100113,1140     |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
Xref: sparky sci.space:18739 talk.politics.space:1673
From: lafave@ial4.jsc.nasa.gov (Dr. Norman J. LaFave)
Newsgroups: sci.space,talk.politics.space
Subject: Re: Justification for the Space Program
Date: 5 Jan 93 15:45:57 GMT
Organization: Lockheed Engineering & Sciences Company
X-Xxdate: Tue, 5 Jan 93 09:42:12 GMT
X-Useragent: Nuntius v1.1.1d12

In article <1992Dec29.181813.11510@unocal.com> Richard Ottolini,
stgprao@st.unocal.COM writes:
>In a talk at Caltech earlier this month Carl Sagan that spin-off
technology arguments
>are bogus.  "If you want have better cooking pans, then do R&D on
kitchen products."
>(probably in reference to low friction materials coming out of the space
program.)
>
>Then too, any useful new technologies from NASA should be transfered to
the commercial
>sector.

Although I believe spin-off arguements to be secondary, I disagree with
Sagan's
logic. The most unexpected things come when you push the envelope and if
they are beneficial the program discovering them should get credit.

Norman

Dr. Norman J. LaFave
Senior Engineer
Lockheed Engineering and Sciences Company




When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro
                               Hunter Thompson
From: mike@starburst.umd.edu (Michael F. Santangelo)
Newsgroups: sci.space
Subject: Re: DC-1 and the $23M NASA Toilet
Date: 7 Jan 1993 22:37:08 GMT
Organization: University of Maryland, Chesapeake Biological Laboratory
NNTP-Posting-Host: starburst.umd.edu

matthew@phantom.gatech.edu (Matthew DeLuca) writes:

>In article <schumach.726431013@convex.convex.com> schumach@convex.com (Richard A. Schumacher) writes:

>>Uhhh... why didn't NASA just reuse the Skylab toilet on Shuttle?

>Probably because nobody wanted to go to Australia and pick up all the pieces.

>:-)

Oh, that was cruel. :-)

But, let me ask (since I don't know the specifics): how well did the
Skylab toilet work and what does the new $23M Shuttle toilet do that
the Skylab didn't do?

There is also a reference to the Gemini program in this thread, what did
they do?

Thanks.
--
-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Michael F. Santangelo                 + Internet: mike@cbl.umd.edu      [work]
Computer & Network Systems Head       +           mike@kavishar.umd.edu [home]
Univ MD: CEES / CBL (Solomons Island) + BITNET:   MIKE@UMUC  [fwd to mike@cbl]
From: lord@tradent.wimsey.bc.ca (Jason Cooper)
Newsgroups: sci.space
Subject: Re: *** BUSSARD RAMSCOOP ***
Date: Tue, 05 Jan 93 17:24:28 PST
Organization: TradeNET International Trade Corp.

> Good grief, guys.  Since we're speculating all over the place here about
> science-yet-to-come, why not build a quark-catalyzed ramscoop.  All the
> advantages of muon-catalyzed fusion except that the Quark doesn't decay.
> All you have to do is crack open a hadron!  If you want more details,
> please let me know and I'll post them.  (I'm only half joking, by the way.
> Quark-catalyzed fusion is a "serious" possibility if quarks can be unbound.
> Emphasis on the if.)
>  
> --
> Dave Michelson
> davem@ee.ubc.ca

Well, I wouldn't say it's TOTAL science-yet-to-come.  Small parts are, 
but a large part of it is quite possible.  Sure, and I'll bite on that 
quark-catalyzed thing too.

                                        Jason Cooper
From: pgf@srl03.cacs.usl.edu ("Phil G. Fraering")
Newsgroups: sci.space
Subject: Re: future space travel
Date: 11 Jan 93 04:55:12 GMT
Article-I.D.: cs.C0oB0x.Cu1.1
Distribution: sci
Organization: [via International Space University]
X-Added: Forwarded by Space Digest
Original-Sender: isu@VACATION.VENARI.CS.CMU.EDU


\Mars will be the only real place for a large colony, but then again,
/if there isn't anything there that's very interesting (like life or
\fossils) I can't see large colonies being placed up there.  

You overlook the asteroids. A very big mistake.

\Seems like the future will see expanding development of robotic systems
/that will be used to explore every planet and moon, at a vastly 
\reduced cost over sending humans.  

But human costs could be lowered greatly too... in which case someone
might go just for the heck of it. Britian would probably be willing to
pay to send the current set of royals, one way...

\Maybe in the next 100-200 years biology will advance to the point
/where Venus could be altered with microbes.  Change the atmosphere
\so SOMETHING could live there.  It would be interesting to see what
/could live there if the temperature was reduced.

Actually, as has been pointed out before on this forum, energy concerns
make attempts to alter Venus untenable. _But_ that does not mean:

\I think science fiction has given people a false sense of the possible.

Not really. If anything, people have a too narrow sense of the possible.

\The space travel fiction of over 100 years ago neglected things like
/radio and computer electronics, and required a travelling human.
\TEchnology has superseded the human, and the information can be 
/returned much more efficiently. 

Information... that's not quite what we're after. I can read travel
book after travel book about New Orleans, none of which are likely
to convey the experience of living there. 

\The urge to colonize the universe seems to come from an urge for 
/terretorial conquest that has been with us for a long time.  It is
\interesting how old themes are constantly repeated in the present.
/It's too bad we can't interest some of our race (Serbians, Saddam, etc.) 
\in coveting lunar instead of earthly real estate.  

1. I can visit New Orleans and enjoy it without wanting to conquer
it. Exploration and colonization are not equivalent to conquest per
se: the europeans had been in the northern part of the New World 
for at least a hundred years (and maybe more, depending on how far
back before Columbus you're willing to go: The Basque are shifty and
conniving in this matter) without any serious conflict with the
natives.

2. The Serbians, and Saddam, don't really want land. They want power.
If they can't kill or maim people in the process of taking said land,
or otherwise strengthen their power, they aren't interested. They could
do so in space exploration, but the rest of us are slightly hostile to
the idea.

Phil "No Fly Zone, No boost zone" Fraering


-- 
Phil Fraering         |"...Who in the valley shed the poison tear
318/365-5418          |no one knows...
pgf@srl02.cacs.usl.edu|An old myth of a mythical hero..."
From: flb@flb.optiplan.fi ("F.Baube x554")
Newsgroups: sci.space
Subject: Re: Post-StarWars Detritus
Date: 6 Jan 93 13:55:18 GMT
Article-I.D.: cs.C0FqqL.ECr.1
Distribution: sci
Organization: [via International Space University]
X-Added: Forwarded by Space Digest
Original-Sender: isu@VACATION.VENARI.CS.CMU.EDU

Dave Jones <dj@ekcolor.ssd.kodak.com> writes:
> F.Baube x554 (flb@flb.optiplan.fi) wrote:
> > 
> > There could also be megabits of nugget-sized space 
> > junk to ventilate any later space vehicles.  But also, 
> 
> Nope.  The warhead wouldn't be in orbit and its doubtful if any fragments
> would attain orbital velocity of any kind during the explosion.

I'm thinking of some 80's studies that forecast lots of space junk.
Perhaps they were describing shooting matches between orbiting platforms.

> > if plutonium warheads are "destroyed" by Smart Pebbles 
> > (or whatever they're being called now), couldn't the 
> > atmosphere be filled with enough plutonium dust to 
> > give every person on the planet bone cancer ?
> 
> A lot of interception technology is based on giving the target enough of
> a shock to disable the high-tech firing mechanisms and/or guidance systems.
> Nuclear warheads don't explode when intercepted.  They just don't go off 
> when they get to the target, if they get there at all.  You just wind up
> with a lot of small, very dangerous impact craters on the ground.

But aren't (or, weren't) some interceptor proposals based on 
physical collision with a warhead ?  This could blow one to 
plutonium-rich dust.  Or is the idea some sort of proximity fuse ?

-- 
* Fred Baube         * when you think your Toys  you hear Laughter
* Optiplan O.Y.           * have gone Berserk    cracking through the Walls
* baube@optiplan.fi       * it's an illUsion     you're sent Spinning
* #include <disclaimer.h> * you Cannot Shirk     you Have No Choice
Newsgroups: sci.space
From: aws@iti.org (Allen W. Sherzer)
Subject: Re: DC-Y funding
Organization: Evil Geniuses for a Better Tomorrow
Distribution: sci
Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1993 02:48:15 GMT

In article <C0Fq3r.Dyu.1@cs.cmu.edu> roberts@cmr.ncsl.nist.gov (John Roberts) writes:

>The Shuttle only launches about eight times a year, and represents relatively
>few subsidized GAS cans, mid-deck experiments, etc. Is the market really
>*that* small?

In testimony before the House Space Subcommittee, Dennis Dunbar, VP of
the Space Systems Division at GD said that if Government bought launch
services in a commercial and competative manner then costs would be
roughly cut in half.

Yes the market is that small and government policies and systems (like
Shuttle) are sending prices up and not down.

>(And if these incidental payloads were not subsidized, the market
>might be even smaller.)

Not so. If NASA implements the voucher system authorized in last years
authorization bill they could launch more payloads for less cost. There
is a difference between providing subsidies for a hugely expensive system
like Shuttle and giving somebody enough money to launch their own payload.
The latter encourages greater reliance on lower cost systems.


  Allen

-- 
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Allen W. Sherzer | "A great man is one who does nothing but leaves        |
|  aws@iti.org     |  nothing undone"                                       |
+----------------------108 DAYS TO FIRST FLIGHT OF DCX----------------------+
Newsgroups: sci.space
From: kirby@xerox.com (Mike Kirby)
Subject: Re: Justification for the Space Program
Reply-To: kirby@xerox.com
Organization: Xerox Corporation, Webster NY
Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1993 20:13:51 GMT

In article 24897@cs.rochester.edu, dietz@cs.rochester.edu (Paul Dietz) writes:
>In article <jfelder-080193105134@latvia.lerc.nasa.gov> jfelder@lerc.nasa.gov (James L. Felder) writes:
>
>
>
>
>> No, to unreliable.  Terrestrial solar energy has a problem because of
>> intermittent illumination.  Either a large storage capacity must be
>> included in the system, or another source must come on-line at night and
>> during periods of cloud cover.  The large required land area makes solar
>> problematic for large portion of the world.  Plus places like Cleveland
>> goes days or weeks with hardly a glimpse of the sun.
>
>Surely, means to move energy in both time and space would be needed.
>There are serious economic limits on this today, but there is no
>reason to think these limits cannot be extended.
>
>As for land area: current world energy use is only 1/10,000 of the
>sunlight hitting earth's surface.  Restricting ourselves to
>continents, and assuming a 20% efficieny, we end up using a couple of
>percent of the land area of the planet.
>
>

Of course, what is the ecological effect of covering 1% of the earth's
land mass?  Unless it is a distributed grid (i.e. everyong has their
own solar panel on their roof) I would assume that solar collection would
be located centrally.  This would require large tracks of land and would
effectively kill anything on the land.  Bright sunny areas like deserts would
be ideal for such facilities, of course these deserst also support ecologies that
depend very heavily on the sun.

Nuclear is a much better solution as long as the political ramifications are
handled effectively. I am not encouraged though.

>
>	Paul F. Dietz
>	dietz@cs.rochester.edu





Newsgroups: sci.space
From: wallacen@ColoState.EDU (nathan wallace)
Subject: Re: *** BUSSARD RAMSCOOP ***
Summary: The book is "The Starflight Handbook", by Mallove & Matloff
Date: Tue, 05 Jan 1993 20:12:25 GMT
Reply-To: wallacen@ColoState.EDU
Organization: Colorado State University -=- Computer Science Dept.
Keywords: Bussard, Ramscoop, Starflight

i lied.

well, sorta. The *correct* name of the book from my earlier posting is 
"The Starflight Handbook", by Eugene Mallove and Gregory Matloff.
Its ISBN number is 0-471-61912-4. *sigh* memory is the first to go...

Chapter 7 is the one which deals with the Bussard Ramjet. It details not
only the Bussard design, but two variants which are more feasable using
current technology and theory. The difficulties with p-p fusion as noted
in the net discussion are mentioned; one of the variants addresses this
problem. The net analysis by the authors is that ramscoops are probably
limited to .2 c and not the most cost effective way to get around the
near stars. They add the caveat that this is in terms of *current* 
technology; a breakthrough in any of a half-dozen fields might change
the picture enormously. 

The book also considers several other interstellar flight systems. It
has very good coverage of the Daedalus probe designed by the British
Interplanetary Society back in the 70's and project Orion.

Happy 1993!

+----------------------------------------------+------------------------+
|                                              |              __        |
|                                              |             / /\       |
|  Nathan F. Wallace                           |      ______/ /_/___    |
|  email: wallacen@beethoven.cs.colostate.edu  |     / ____  ______ \   |
+----------------------------------------------+    / /\__/ /\____|\/|  |
|                                              |   | |\/ / / /     \|/  |
|  Disclaimer: My opinions are my own, and are |   | || / /_/_____      |
|              not those of any other person,  |   | ||/_______  /\     |
|              organization, or supreme being. |   | ||\______/ / /     |
|                                              |   | ||      / / /      |
+----------------------------------------------+    \ \_____/ /_/__/\   |
|  "War is the art of deception."              |     \_____  _______/|  |
|                                 Sun Tzu      |      \___/ /\______|/  |
|                                              |          \_\/          |
|                                              |                        |
+----------------------------------------------+------------------------+
From: davem@ee.ubc.ca (Dave Michelson)
Newsgroups: sci.space
Subject: Re: *** BUSSARD RAMSCOOP ***
Date: 8 Jan 93 00:24:58 GMT
Organization: University of BC, Electrical Engineering

In article <C0IB07.BBL@zoo.toronto.edu> henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes:
>
>Reality check right back at you:  plot human antimatter production capacity
>versus time.  Interesting graph, no?  Sure, it's limited right now... but
>it's growing fast.

This was talked about in a recent issue of Scientific American.  Really
neat stuff.

>
>If we mounted a major effort, we could probably be test-firing antimatter
>rocket engines within ten years.  There are *NO* fundamental barriers that
>anyone has been able to find.  It's purely a matter of scaling up and
>optimizing the hardware -- the existing accelerators are optimized for
>production of Nobel prizes, not bulk antimatter -- and solving assorted
>straightforward engineering problems of handling and storage.  The idea
>has been investigated in depth; no show-stoppers have appeared.
>
>A production setup the size of the Hanford works could make enough
>antimatter to open up the solar system.  Interstellar propulsion is
>harder.  Kilogram quantities are probably going to have to be made in
>space, not so much for handling reasons (although those aren't trivial)
>as because of the sheer amounts of *energy* needed.  It would be a huge
>project, but there's no fundamental problem; we could start designing
>hardware tomorrow if it were urgent enough.

Sounds good to me!

--
Dave Michelson
davem@ee.ubc.ca
Newsgroups: sci.space
From: aws@iti.org (Allen W. Sherzer)
Subject: Re: Stupid Shut Cost arguements (was Re: Terminal Velocity
Organization: Evil Geniuses for a Better Tomorrow
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1993 00:33:25 GMT

In article <1993Jan4.201501.18537@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> rbw3q@rayleigh.mech.Virginia.EDU (Brad Whitehurst) writes:

>	Come on, Allen, don't get even more retentive on us!

I suppose I was. I apologize.

>The realistic chance of significant U.S. manned presence in orbit in
>Russian hardware in the next few years is miniscule.  

that's not the point. The point is not what we WILL be doing but
what we COULD be doing. The first step to change is realizing that
alternatives exist.

We could fly Soyuz on an Atlas or Titan. We could build a small
station with room and power equal to Shuttle. We could dock the two
and get far more work done for far less money. We could then use the
savings to fly more experiments and furthur open the space frontier.
That is what we can do with conservative engineering.

Alternatively, we can follow the Coffman school of engineering which
states that nothing which doesn't exist today can be built. Under this
plan, we support Shuttle (since no alternatives are possible) and
spend our lives siting on this rock.

>problems, scheduling, etc....  As a practical matter, I'd be willing
>to bet that even moderate effort on a reusable SSTO (DC or otherwise)
>could be available within a year or so of the time frame it would take
>to convert our manned space program from Shuttle to Soyuz.  

Shuttle isn't getting us anywhere. Wrose, is sucks up all the money we
get preventing progress. DC can work but it may not work. We need alternatives.


>Would everything go to
>Russia for launch, and depend on an uncertain foreign infrastructure,
>or convert part of Canaveral to launch Russian rockets?  

We don't use Russian rockets; we use Atlas or Titan. Both routinely rebuild
their launchers to conform to payload interface requirements and NASA's
evaluation of Soyuz as ACRV indicate that using Soyuz with US aerospace
standards isn't a problem.

As for stability, that isn't seen as a problem since NASA will be using
Soyuz for ACRV.

>Can you get enough power and life support from Soyuz/Mir for
>5-6 people + our experiments?

Send them to an industrial space facility. We have build space stations
before and replacing Shuttle's limited ability in orbit shouldn't be
hard. We already have Spacehab and Spacelab and it shouldn't be hard
to add power and facilities to them. Keeping the lab in orbit will allow
greater utilization and cut costs even more.

  Allen
-- 
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Allen W. Sherzer | "A great man is one who does nothing but leaves        |
|  aws@iti.org     |  nothing undone"                                       |
+----------------------110 DAYS TO FIRST FLIGHT OF DCX----------------------+
From: nsmca@acad3.alaska.edu
Newsgroups: sci.space
Subject: Re: Nasa flight sim code/Simulator Game
Date: 4 Jan 93 23:13:02 GMT
Article-I.D.: acad3.1993Jan4.151302.1
Distribution: na
Organization: University of Alaska Fairbanks

In article <4989@execu.execu.com>, dont@execu.execu.com (Don Thompson) writes:
> 
> 	Would anyone happen to know where a body could get information
> on old flight simulation code written by NASA or any of the military
> branches? I am interested in obtaining any code that might be declassified
> and publicly availible. In addition, any data related to the flight models
> of old or new aircraft would be nice.
> 
> 					Thanks
> 
> 					
> -- 
> ________________________________________________________________________________
> Don "Syco" Thompson                 |   I may be opinionated, but at least
> Comshare Inc. dont@execu.execu.com  |   my opinions are my own.
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>     "There's no kill like a guns kill".  Lt Commander Joe "Hoser" Satrapa, USN
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 

Don't know of any old sim data and such, but it would be an interesting public
affairs ploy or way to make money.. Have NASA design space simulator games
based on old flight.. Have different levels. Beginner would be just to get the
feel of the fligth, but higher levels would give you the "pilot" and possible
crew more free-reign to actually fly the space shuttle simulation or other
crafts.. Gemini, MErcury, Apollo, X-Crafts. And such..
Either NASA design the game or have someone subcontract it...

Any takers??


Michael Adams
Alias: Morgoth/Ghost Wheel 
nsmca@acad3.alaska.edu