HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: rbw3q@rayleigh.mech.Virginia.EDU (Brad Whitehurst)
Subject: Re: FREE-ENERGY TECHNOLOGY For Spacecraft
Organization: University of Virginia
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1992 14:52:48 GMT

In article <1992Nov17.164440.2394@cnsvax.uwec.edu> mcelwre@cnsvax.uwec.edu writes:

>     The technology described in the article copied below could be used to
>power spacecraft, space colonies, etc.:
>          
>            
>                            FREE-ENERGY TECHNOLOGY
>                       by Robert E. McElwaine, Physicist
...
>          energy" ("2nd law of thermodynamics").  The physicists do not 
>          know how to do certain things, so they ARROGANTLY declare 
>          that those things cannot be done.  Such PRINCIPLES OF 
>          IMPOTENCE are COMMON in orthodox modern "science" and help to 
>          cover up INCONSISTENCIES and CONTRADICTIONS in orthodox 
>          modern theories. 
>          
>               Free Energy Inventions are devices which can tap a 
>          seemingly UNLIMITED supply of energy from the universe, with-
>          OUT burning any kind of fuel, making them the PERFECT 
>          SOLUTION to the world-wide energy crisis and its associated 
>          pollution, degradation, and depletion of the environment. 
>          
...
	I think we just found the REAL "Mr. Ozone"!  Is there anyone
at U. of W. Eau Claire who can verify if this is a real person?  Does
he do anything but post these articles?
-- 

Brad Whitehurst    |   Aerospace Research Lab
rbw3q@Virginia.EDU |   We like it hot...and fast.
Newsgroups: sci.space
From: roberts@cmr.ncsl.nist.gov (John Roberts)
Subject: Re: Space suit research?
X-Added: Forwarded by Space Digest
Organization: National Institute of Standards and Technology formerly National Bureau of Standards
Original-Sender: isu@VACATION.VENARI.CS.CMU.EDU
Distribution: sci
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1992 04:10:27 GMT


-From: brody@eos.arc.nasa.gov (Adam R. Brody )
-Subject: Re: Space suit research?
-Date: 16 Nov 92 18:01:02 GMT
-Organization: NASA Ames Research Center

-Actually, the latest I have heard is that cold plates will be used
-for cooling 

What are cold plates? Does that mean a heat pump driven by running power
into a thermocouple?

-and the sole reason for high pressure is health.  The fact
-that people live in high elevations like Denver and Mexico City, where
-the atmospheric pressure is lower than sea level does not hold much weight.

Read the recent Scientific American article on altitude sickness. (Of course
on Earth, reduced partial pressure of oxygen is the primary concern.)

John Roberts
roberts@cmr.ncsl.nist.gov

Newsgroups: sci.space
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Shuttle replacement
Date: Sun, 22 Nov 1992 21:22:36 GMT
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology

In article <1992Nov22.191524.6478@iti.org> aws@iti.org (Allen W. Sherzer) writes:
>>the idea of a powered descent and vertical
>>landing gives me the willies... 
>
>Much safer than airplanes for most people. A DC crash will only affect the
>Spaceport. When aircraft crash they tend to kill people on the ground.

And as any Harrier pilot will tell you, a vertical powered landing is
safer than a horizontal powered landing.  And either one is *much* safer
than a Shuttle-style horizontal landing *without* power.
-- 
MS-DOS is the OS/360 of the 1980s.      | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
              -Hal W. Hardenbergh (1985)|  henry@zoo.toronto.edu  utzoo!henry
Newsgroups: sci.space
From: bbbehr@sunspot.noao.edu (Bradford B. Behr)
Subject: Re: ROTATION OF THE MOON
Organization: National Solar Observatory/SP, Sunspot NM, USA
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 92 16:38:04 GMT

>	I was being a tad facetious (?sp), but it got me thinking about the 
>	rotational speed of the moon. I know it has a rotation time
>	that matches the orbit time but I was wondering why this is ?
>	Is the match exact ? I assume it is extremely close since there are
>	no records of it being any different from how we see it now, or
>	at least I don't know of any.  What is the governing factor, or
>	is it just a wild coincidence ?

Tidal effects (of the earth on the moon, opposite the tides we usually
refer to) have "locked" the moon's rotation and revolution periods,
such that the same face always faces earthwards (with a little bit of
wobble). I'm not clear on all the details of the astrodynamics, but I
think it's valid to think of it this way: 

Just as the moon's gravity makes "bulges" on the earth (manifested in
the fluid oceans as  high tides), the much more massive earth raises
tides in the solid moon, deforming it elliptically. If the moon were
rotating (as it once was), the constantly moving deformation would
twist and squeeze the moon, heating it, and dissapating the energy.
The energy lost as heat would have to come from the moon's rotation,
so over billions of years, all the rotational energy (from the earth's
point of view) would be lost, and the moon would stop rotating
relative to the earth.

The same thing is happening, much more slowly, to the earth --
friction with the tides and within the "solid" earth is slowing the
rotation rate by something on the order of 1 sec every century. We can
actually measure it (the slowdown) nowadays. Love those atomic clocks!

Brad


-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------------
  Bradford B. Behr                   bbbehr@sunspot.sunspot.noao.edu
     Sacramento Peak National Solar Observatory, Sunspot NM 88349
----------------------------------------------------------------------
From: keithley@apple.com (Craig Keithley)
Newsgroups: sci.space
Subject: Re: What kind of computers are in the shuttle?
Date: 19 Nov 92 19:24:15 GMT
Followup-To: sci.space
Organization: Apple Computer, Inc.

In article <BxqDD5.Arw@zoo.toronto.edu>, henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry
Spencer) wrote:
> 
>...The new ones use rad-hard SRAM memory.
>

With a few (16? 24?) extra bits per 32 bit word for error correction.  I'm
not aware of any commercial portables that have error correcting memory
(parity checking doesn't count!).

Craig Keithley
Apple Computer, Inc.
keithley@apple.com
"I've got a bad feeling about this..." 
Newsgroups: sci.space
From: srctran@world.std.com (Gregory Aharonian)
Subject: NASA Town Meetings Schedule
Organization: The World
Distribution: sci.space
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1992 15:24:22 GMT

    Here's a list of the remaining NASA Town Meetings around the country.
I missed the New England because I found out too late (was this stuff ever
posted to the NET?).

		December 3, 2:00-6:30 pm, Ramo Auditorium, CALTECH, Pasadena

		December 11, 2:00-6:30 pm, Theater 1, Univ. of South Florida
					   Tampa

		December 15, 2:0-6:30 pm, Student Union, Univ.of Washington

					  Upper Campus, Seattle, WA

For more information, call 202-453-3006


For anyone who goes, how about pestering the NASA officials to make more
NASA information available over the nets.

Greg Aharonian
-- 
**************************************************************************
Greg Aharonian
Source Translation & Optimiztion
P.O. Box 404, Belmont, MA 02178
Newsgroups: sci.space
From: pgf@srl01.cacs.usl.edu ("Phil G. Fraering")
Subject: golden oldie: nasa budget
X-Added: Forwarded by Space Digest
Organization: [via International Space University]
Original-Sender: isu@VACATION.VENARI.CS.CMU.EDU
Distribution: sci
Date: Mon, 23 Nov 1992 22:37:38 GMT

Here's something from Jerry Pournelle on 7 Feb 1982:

There are other developments; and some private work on Big Dumb
Boosters, and the like.  But Single Stage to Orbit technology is
indeed very important, and somewhat overlooked.  It may,
nowever, get funding directly from DOD.


---------------------
-- 
Phil Fraering
"...drag them, kicking and screaming, into the Century of the Fruitbat."
<<- Terry Pratchett, _Reaper Man_
Newsgroups: sci.space,alt.sci.planetary
From: gary@ke4zv.uucp (Gary Coffman)
Subject: Re: Lunar "colony" reality check
Reply-To: gary@ke4zv.UUCP (Gary Coffman)
Organization: Gannett Technologies Group
Date: Fri, 13 Nov 1992 18:33:54 GMT

In article <1992Nov12.161158.1725@eng.umd.edu> sysmgr@king.eng.umd.edu writes:
>In article <1992Nov12.045803.1096@ke4zv.uucp>, gary@ke4zv.uucp (Gary Coffman) writes:
>
>>The inverse square law is a hard master. A microwave array on the Moon
>>needs a gain 1,000,000 times that of an array at LEO to produce the same
>>beam on Earth's surface. A Lunar array needs to be 100 times larger than
>>an array at GEO and is available only 12 hours a day to any given site on
>>Earth, and receives solar power only 2 weeks a month.
>
>Wellllll, yes and no. 
>
>You build more than one array. Build a bunch of them, since some are going to
>get wiped out by incoming garbage at some point in time :) Real estate is
>cheap.

Real estate may be cheap, I've got some swamp land..., but the labor and
site preparation are not.

>There's also some tricks you can do with the beam which you can't do with an
>SPS, but I don't have the references or the SEI guy here to remember exactly
>what you can do.

You can get *ground gain* from mounting the antenna closely over the Lunar
surface. But at best that only buys you 3 db. The array still needs to be
50 times as large as one at GEO.

>> It would take decades
>>of concentrated work to build a Lunar array after permanent manned presence
>>is established on the Moon, if the array is to be constructed from native
>>materials.
>
>Decades? You've been sipping from Szabo's cup, I see. :) The metals for
>rectennas (?) are easy enough to cook up and stamp/mold/whatever. 

But first you have to mine them, build the processing plants, build the
machine shops, do site preparation, and actually install the equipment.
A Lunar base is unlikely to have more than a dozen workers at first, and
they will have other tasks, like staying alive, that will consume much
of their time. The infrastructure needed to do large scale mining, refining,
fabrication, and civil engineering needed to build a power system from 
scratch is rather staggering. Let me drop you and a dozen of your friends
in the vastly more friendly environment of the Sahara desert and see how
long it takes you to build a multi-gigawatt power array and then transport
yourselves to the Gobi desert and build another and interconnect them.
I don't think Bechtel, with all their resources, could do it here in
less than decades.

Gary

Newsgroups: sci.space
From: roberts@cmr.ncsl.nist.gov (John Roberts)
Subject: Re: Shuttle computers
X-Added: Forwarded by Space Digest
Organization: National Institute of Standards and Technology formerly National Bureau of Standards
Original-Sender: isu@VACATION.VENARI.CS.CMU.EDU
Distribution: sci
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1992 13:12:52 GMT


-From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
-Subject: Re: Shuttle computers
-Date: 17 Nov 92 21:44:07 GMT

-In article <BxsMA3.D2o.1@cs.cmu.edu> roberts@cmr.ncsl.nist.gov (John Roberts) writes:
->Do you recall how tight the lockstep is? I don't believe I've seen anything
->written on that since before STS-1.

-It's not a cycle-by-cycle lockstep like some redundant systems.  Every
-couple of milliseconds, the four computers in the main redundant set
-compare notes; if one disagrees with the others twice in a row, the
-others declare it to have failed.  The fifth computer runs completely
-different software, programmed by a different group using different
-methods, as a final backup against disastrous failure; I think switchover
-to it is entirely manual.

Hm - that sounds like a more software-oriented approach than
Pat Nolastname's post would indicate....

I presume there's a way for the astronauts to tell the system to switch
a GPC back in (recalling that they once replaced a GPC in-orbit).

Is it at all possible to reprogram the GPCs from the ground, or does it
have to be done from onboard?

John Roberts
roberts@cmr.ncsl.nist.gov

Newsgroups: sci.space
From: sheppamj@sun.soe.clarkson.edu (Matthew Sheppard)
Subject: Re: ROTATION OF THE MOON
Organization: Clarkson University
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1992 21:01:19 GMT

wats@scicom.AlphaCDC.COM (Bruce Watson) writes:

>In article <10160@ncrwat.Waterloo.NCR.COM| tjgerman@53iss6.Waterloo.NCR.COM (Trevor German) writes:
>|	Re: sending a message to the future.
>|
>|		I have a much better idea. Take a dead satelite. A big one,
>|	like say the moon. Then blast its surface with  enough nukes to
>|	make an easily recognisable pattern that would be only partly
>|	erased by comet and meteoride collisions. Then just for good measure,
>|	adjust the rotational velocity of the moon so that the message
>|	always faces the earth. The message could be something like
>|	a big face......................
>|

>And put it at a distance so that it subtends the same angular diameter
>as the sun.

Question:
	Why is the moon orbiting the earth at the same rate it rotates?  It
can't be pure luck that the same side of the moon is always facing us.

Perhaps someone already tried to send us a message and we just haven't
read it yet.




--
| Matthew Sheppard  CLARKSON UNIVERSITY  sheppamj@sun.soe.clarkson.edu |
| I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.ANoN |
| I don't want a pickle. DoD#477 TEP#477 RIDE FREE (8^]..etcetera..    |
From: martin@space.ualberta.ca (Martin Connors)
Subject: Re: Moon Capture Theory
Reply-To: martin@space.ualberta.ca (Martin Connors)
Organization: University Of Alberta, Edmonton Canada
Distribution: sci
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1992 17:31:46 GMT

In article <BxzJA1.412.1@cs.cmu.edu> 18084TM@msu.edu (Tom) writes:
> 
> >I seem to remember some theory a while back that the moon was actually
> >*captured* by Earth at some stage (I think it was about 800 million
> >years ago), which also has corollaries in some of the very early
> >human legends.--

There were major developments in thinking on the origin of the Moon in the  
1980's. Basically the three time-honored theories of which the above is  
one (minus the part about human legends), the other two being co-accretion  
and Darwin (Jr)'s tidal ripping out, have found a synthesis in the  
possibility that a giant impact in the early solar system ripped part of  
Earth's mantle out into an orbit debris ring which then coalesced to form  
our Moon, with subsequent tidally-induced orbital evolution eventually  
taking it to a larger orbit. This accounts for some of the composition  
aspects of the Earth/Moon system (Earth has all the iron) if the Earth's  
core had already formed at the time of the impact.

Check this out in Hartmann, W.K., Phillips, R. J., and G. J. Taylor
"Origin of the Moon" published by Lunar and Planetary Inst, Houston in  
1986 as the conference proceedings from the Kona meeting where these ideas  
came together. Some of the articles are technical - others not too bad in  
that respect.

Any very recent edition of a good into textbook (Snow for example) also  
will have more details. In short many of the objections you raise in your  
original post are very valid and that theory is no longer accepted in its  
original form - the 'most accepted' (different from being 'right') theory  
at the moment combines it with the other two as described above. In that  
way the severe bad points of each are diminished (by synergy!), but there  
are still a few things to be ironed out...

Martin Connors         |
Space Research         | martin@space.ualberta.ca  (403) 492-2526
University of Alberta  |
Newsgroups: sci.space
From: jbh55289@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Josh 'K' Hopkins)
Subject: Re: Minority Kids into Techies (was Re: Free Middle/High School Broadcasts)
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1992 06:15:31 GMT

det@phlan.sw.stratus.com (David Toland) writes:

>Why would ANYONE want to REDUCE the number of students (white or otherwise)
>studying to enter science and technology fields???  We have few enough
>students graduating with even minimal competence in mathematics and
>the physical sciences.

Yes and no.  It's downright scary how little science some people know.  On the
other hand, our economy is currently not interested in hiring scientists and
technologists regardless of race or creed.  The number of highly educated white
collar workers fired in the last two years would fill a few good sized cities.

>I don't really think minority status should ever enter into it.

Again, yes and no.  I'm mildly opposed to special educational treatment for
minorities and women, mainly because I'm one of the people who doesn't get any.
I think the best approach is to start from the ground up and be sure you
encourage kids equally.  That said, it's a good idea to make sure you think 
about minorities and women when you do this.  For example, showing a tape of 
a flight commanded by Charlie Bolden or narrated by Kathy Sullivan is much more
effective than unintentionally perpetuating the idea that only middle aged 
white guys have anything to do with space.
-- 
Josh Hopkins                                          jbh55289@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu

	"Why put off 'til tomorrow what you're never going to do anyway?"
Newsgroups: sci.space
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: OS in the shuttle (was Re: What kind of computers are in the shuttle?)
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1992 21:55:03 GMT
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology

In article <1992Nov16.233628.29854@r-node.gts.org> marc@r-node.gts.org (Marc Fournier - Admin) writes:
>>... the specs are stringent for a reason.  MSDOS doesn't qualify. :-)
>
>	Speaking of MSDOS...NAWT!...what do they use?  An in-house
>developed OS?  Some derived from existing OS's?

It's a custom-cooked system that was (I think) done from scratch.  It may
well have borrowed bits and pieces from earlier avionics systems using
the same processors.
-- 
MS-DOS is the OS/360 of the 1980s.      | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
              -Hal W. Hardenbergh (1985)|  henry@zoo.toronto.edu  utzoo!henry
From: roberts@cmr.ncsl.nist.gov (John Roberts)
Newsgroups: sci.space
Subject: Re: Putting telescopes on the moon
Date: 15 Nov 92 22:15:40 GMT
Article-I.D.: cs.Bxs37M.M81.1
Distribution: sci
Organization: National Institute of Standards and Technology formerly National Bureau of Standards
X-Added: Forwarded by Space Digest
Original-Sender: isu@VACATION.VENARI.CS.CMU.EDU


-From: arnold@clipper.ingr.com (Roger Arnold)
-Subject: Re: Putting air on the moon
-Date: 13 Nov 92 17:16:46 GMT
-Organization: Intergraph Advanced Processor Division - Palo Alto, CA

-In article <BxF0E2.7Ks.1@cs.cmu.edu> roberts@cmr.ncsl.nist.gov (John Roberts) writes:
->If that's correct, then a 1000 km array on the moon could potentially give
->a resolution at 10 light years of about 50 km. (Imagine mapping the continents
->on the planets of nearby star systems!) [..]

-Sorry, won't work.  Not unless the individual telescopes in your array 
-are pretty spectacular instruments in their own right.  

-You need around 10 meters of unobscured aperture, with a mirror 
-perfectly figured and smooth to .01 lamda, to keep the light from the 
-planet from being lost in the statistical noise of light diffracted 
-from the primary.  And even that's only adequate for the dozen or so
-nearest stars.  

Well, one good sign: the precision of the HST optical system (primary plus
secondary) is on that order. (Note that I didn't say *accuracy*. :-)
Of course the HST primary isn't that big.

-The problem is that, for a terrestrial planet at optical wavelengths,
-the light any telescope receives from the planet will be ten orders
-of magnitude below (one ten-billionth) the light from the primary.  If 
-planet and primary were of equal brightness, a one meter space tele-
-scope could resolve them.  But as it is, it would take nearly perfect 
-diffraction-limited optics of ten times that aperture to concentrate 
-the planet's light enough to detect it above the far-field light haze
-from the primary.

-But, you ask, so what?  Won't mixing the signals from the combined
-telescopes in the array isolate the light from the planet?  Well, yes 
-and no.  You can boost the signal-to-noise ratio by an amount that's
-proportional to the number of telescopes in the array.  That might
-allow you to detect the presence of the planet, where you couldn't
-otherwise.  But unless you start with a pretty clean signal in the 
-first place, there will be far too much noise to allow anything like 
-imaging of continents.

Would speckle interferometry, or integration of the incoming signals over
very long periods of time (hours to weeks) help with reception? (Other than
the fact that planets move over such time intervals.)

I think you've made your point that the resolution formula can't be extended
out to infinity. I'd be interested in how far it *can* be extended with, say,
100 high-precision 10-meter optical telescopes.

John Roberts
roberts@cmr.ncsl.nist.gov
Newsgroups: sci.space
From: knapp@spot.Colorado.EDU (David Knapp)
Subject: Re: Galileo HGA: Hypothesis
Organization: University of Colorado, Boulder
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1992 23:22:55 GMT

In article <246900037@peg.pegasus.oz.au> wlmss@peg.pegasus.oz.au writes:
>
> 
> 
>        Another naive query about Galileo's HGA problem.
> 
>        Can it send data at a high rate but with little power?
> 
>        If so, what if a relay craft were sent after it to gather and
>        send information back at the intended rate?
> 
>        Would this work?
> 
> 
>      o < < < < < < < < < < < <  )-x  . . . . )-G
> 
>      earth                     relay       Galileo
> 
> 

It's not a naive query at all since it was already considered by NASA.
The problem is getting the major funding this would require, and
getting things designed, built and launched in time.  There might
Not even be a window left for a rendezvous.
-- 
David Knapp                                      University of Colorado, Boulder
Perpetual Student                                   knapp@spot.colorado.edu
From: roberts@cmr.ncsl.nist.gov (John Roberts)
Newsgroups: sci.space
Subject: Re: Town Meeting
Date: 16 Nov 92 05:39:50 GMT
Article-I.D.: cs.Bxsnro.EE0.1
Distribution: sci
Organization: National Institute of Standards and Technology formerly National Bureau of Standards
X-Added: Forwarded by Space Digest
Original-Sender: isu@VACATION.VENARI.CS.CMU.EDU


-From: aws@iti.org (Allen W. Sherzer)
-Subject: Re: SUMMARY of 1st NASA TOWN MEETING -- Raleigh NC (long)
-Date: 14 Nov 92 23:17:44 GMT

-In article <1992Nov13.160320.16902@samba.oit.unc.edu> cecil@physics.unc.edu writes:
->    What about SSTO?  -- too many launch vehicle programs in the works.  Some
->    	must be cancelled.  

-Did Goldin say this? If so, I'm disapointed.

Question: does this reflect a *change* in NASA policy toward DCX?

-Surely it's worth the cost of a couple of Shuttle flights to see if
-the concept works?

Well, *I* think so, but then I'm not part of the budget decision process.

As far as manned moon/Mars expeditions are concerned, Goldin doesn't seem 
to have given up on those permanently - he seems to feel that if the
prerequisites can be taken care of (demonstrating realistic cost estimates,
the small quick unmanned probes, reduction of launch costs), then the
government may again be willing to look in that direction. (My own opinion
is that at least small amounts of funding should be maintained so that
planning and cooking of new ideas can be continued, both for manned
interplanetary activity and for all of the launcher programs. This could
be justified as technology development. One thing that could be very useful
is to kill the name "SEI" entirely - once it was viewed as a magic word that
could be used to secure huge amounts of funding, but now attaching the
name SEI to a project proposal is like trying to sell "Rat Poison" brand
baby formula.)

By the way, this past week George Stephanopoulos told the press that
his team is still accepting suggestions and requests, in the form of
30000 letters a day. :-)

John Roberts
roberts@cmr.ncsl.nist.gov
Newsgroups: sci.space