HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: baalke@kelvin.jpl.nasa.gov (Ron Baalke)
Subject: TOPEX Update - 09/14/92
Followup-To: sci.space
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.3-4   
Keywords:  TOPEX, JPL, CNES
Reply-To: baalke@kelvin.jpl.nasa.gov
Organization: Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Date: Wed, 16 Sep 1992 04:32:49 GMT

Forwarded from:
PUBLIC INFORMATION OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIF. 91109. (818) 354-5011

                  TOPEX/POSEIDON STATUS REPORT
                       September 14, 1992

          The TOPEX/Poseidon satellite is performing nominally
and is healthy.  Attitude control, solar array, batteries,
telecommunications, and the on-board computer are all functioning
normally.

          In-Plane Maneuver #3 was performed successfully today.
This was the first burn performed using the four, small 1 Newton
thrusters.  The next TRIM Maneuver is scheduled for Monday, Sept.
21.

          The NASA altimeter remain in idle mode while the SSALT
is in track mode.  The SSALT will be turned off today and the
NASA altimeter will be commanded to track.  Over the weekend, the
SSALT had near overflights of both the NASA and CNES verification
sites.  Also, the SSALT overflew hurricane Iniki on several obit
passes over the Pacific Ocean.  Before it was put into idle mode,
the NASA altimeter recorded 24-foot waves in the Pacific,
presumably due to the hurricane.

          Project engineers are analyzing why the Global
Positioning System Data Recorder failed to come out of idle mode
today when it was commanded to track.  Over the weekend the GPSDR
memory was reloaded, readout, and a checksum was verified.

          The satellite is now sharing TDRSS resources with the
shuttle.  TDRSS support continues to be excellent with no
significant impact to our mission.

                             ######
     ___    _____     ___
    /_ /|  /____/ \  /_ /|     Ron Baalke         | baalke@kelvin.jpl.nasa.gov
    | | | |  __ \ /| | | |     Jet Propulsion Lab |
 ___| | | | |__) |/  | | |__   M/S 525-3684 Telos | Quiet people aren't the
/___| | | |  ___/    | |/__ /| Pasadena, CA 91109 | only ones who don't say
|_____|/  |_|/       |_____|/                     | much.

Newsgroups: sci.space.news
From: yee@trident.arc.nasa.gov (Peter E. Yee)
Subject: Mission Control Status Report for 09/12/92 [#3, 2330 CDT] (Forwarded)
Apparently-To: sci-space-news@ames.arc.nasa.gov
Followup-To: sci.space
Organization: NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA
Date: Mon, 14 Sep 1992 18:04:11 GMT


MISSION CONTROL CENTER
STS-47 Status Report #3
 
Saturday, September 12, 1992, 11:30 p.m. CDT
 
Endeavour's Blue Team began its first full work shift in orbit about 7:30
p.m. CDT as Mission Specialists Jay Apt, Jan Davis and Mae Jemison
continued to activate the Spacelab-J experiments.
 
The orbiter continues to function well on this, the 50th flight of the Space
Shuttle Program, with only minor difficulties being reported on spacecraft
systems.
 
Apt reported that the Get Away Special canisters in the payload bay had
been activated. Endeavour is carrying nine canisters that will perform
experiments ranging from an analysis of biochemistry structures in
microgravity sponsored by the University of Kansas Space Program to a study
of the behavior of bread yeast sponsored by Spar Aerospace Ltd of Canada.
 
Flight controllers in Mission Control continued to cooperate with Payload
Operations Control Center engineers in trying to track down a water leak in
Spacelab rack 10. The leak was discovered shortly after Payload Commander
Mark Lee entered the Space lab module to begin activation. Lee cleaned up
the water and sent camcorder video to help troubleshooters in Houston and
at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.
 
Endeavour is circling the Earth every 90 minutes at 164 nautical miles
and an inclination of 57 degrees from the equator. The crew reported a good
Earth observations photography pass paralleling the western coast of the
United States, including clear shots of San Francisco Bay.
 
The Red Team, made up of Commander Hoot Gibson, Pilot Curt Brown, Mark Lee
and Japanese Payload Specialist Mamoru Mohri, is scheduled to awaken about
4:15 a.m. CDT. The Blue Team will begin its sleep shift about 9:30 a.m.
Newsgroups: sci.space.news
From: yee@trident.arc.nasa.gov (Peter E. Yee)
Subject: Mission Control Status Report for 09/15/92 [#11, 1630 CDT] (Forwarded)
Apparently-To: sci-space-news@ames.arc.nasa.gov
Followup-To: sci.space
Organization: NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1992 23:45:22 GMT

MISSION CONTROL CENTER
STS-47 Status Report #11

Tuesday, September 15, 1992, 4:30 p.m. CDT

The Space Shuttle Endeavour today passed the mid-way point in its
mission carrying the Spacelab-J on-orbit laboratory.

The Red Team--Hoot Gibson, Curt Brown, Mark Lee and Mamoru Mohri--will
complete their fourth working day in space with a hand over to the Blue
Team--Jay Apt, Jan Davis and Mae Jemison--about 6 p.m. CDT.  Blue Team
members wake up about 5 p.m. CDT.

Gibson and Brown have made scheduled observations and photography of
the mid-deck experiment called ISAIAH, the Israeli Space Agency
Investigation About Hornets.  The ISAIAH experiment studies the effects
of weightlessness on combs built by oriental hornets.  From information
gathered so far, investigators report the hornets are in good health
and moving around in the nest-building material, but are not conducting
their typical organized nest-building activity.

Experimenters have noted some condensation building up in the lower
hornet compartment.  In an attempt to remove the excess moisture, at
about 5 p.m. CDT, Gibson and Brown will hook up a fan from one of the
crew launch/entry partial pressure suits to the air inlet at the front
of the ISAIAH enclosure.  Engineers believe this procedure will
increase the air volume going through the hornet enclosure.  The
oriental hornets are accustomed to a warm, dry environment and
excessive humidity can be harmful to their health.  If this plan works
as expected, Gibson and Brown may need to repeat the procedure at
two-day intervals for the remainder of the mission.

Endeavour remains in good health, with no significant problems being
tracked by the flight control team.  Inside Endeavour's crew cabin and
laboratory, the STS-47 crew circles Earth every 90 minutes in an orbit
of 163 x 166 nautical miles.
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: QUERY Re: Pluto Direct/ options
Date: Sat, 12 Sep 1992 23:10:55 GMT
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology

In article <1992Sep11.154301@cs.man.ac.uk> mario@cs.man.ac.uk (Mario Wolczko) writes:
>Given that there are two bodies (Pluto and Charon), would it be
>possible to lose enough energy by sling-shotting around them
>repeatedly...  Or are they too small to have enough of a
>gravitational effect?

They're basically too small.  You really have to get into some kind of
orbit around them on the first pass; otherwise you end up in a solar orbit
(at best; at worst, you're beyond solar escape velocity) that will bring
you back to Pluto's orbit decades -- more likely centuries -- later.
They are small bodies and orbital velocity around them will be low, so
you have to kill essentially all your interplanetary velocity.  This just
isn't feasible with such weak gravitational fields to work with.
-- 
There is nothing wrong with making      | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
mistakes, but... make *new* ones. -D.Sim|  henry@zoo.toronto.edu  utzoo!henry
From: jbh55289@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Josh 'K' Hopkins)
Newsgroups: sci.space
Subject: Re: Is NASA really planning to Terraform Mars?
Date: 11 Sep 92 21:19:44 GMT
Distribution: sci
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana

amon@elegabalus.cs.qub.ac.uk writes:

>> Even if you ignore all the globe-threatening issues, *population* growth,
>> which you can *count on*, will still be one of our greatest challenges. 

>Read some demographics books. Population has been shifting from high birth  
>rate/high mortality to low birth rate/low mortality for over a century.  
>Population growth follows and S curve because there is a social lag between  
>the mortality decline and the change in desired family size. 
> Much of the "Third World"  
>got modern medicine almost as a step function and also started from higher  
>population bases and lower education/technology bases.

>Nonetheless, country by country they are going through the transition to  
>stability. The exception so far has been africa, which seems to have very  
>stable social structures making large families desirable. Not to fear. It  
>will change. Whether by conscious decision or by the four horsemen is their  
>own decision to make.

Now wait a minute.  I'm glad to see that you can discuss this issue without
laughing it off or predicting armageddon.  However, I missed whatever facts
you're using to suggest that Africans prefer having 7 children a piece. (That
is in fact the average or below average in several countries).  The major 
reasons for high birth rates, as I understand it, are that birth control simply
is not available and that women don't get a say in how many children the 
family has.   I don't think we can just sit back and ignore this and wait for
Africa to pull itself into the first world.
-- 
Josh Hopkins           "If you are sitting in an exit row and you cannot read
                       this card or cannot see well enough to follow these
		       instructions, please tell a crew member."
j-hopkins@uiuc.edu                       -United Airlines safety instructions
Newsgroups: sci.space
From: jbh55289@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Josh 'K' Hopkins)
Subject: Re: 3 booster questions
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Distribution: na
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1992 22:08:51 GMT

brettvs@hardy.u.washington.edu (Brett Vansteenwyk) writes:

>[2].Atlas still goes *boom* a lot?  Is this inherent to the design of having
>two of the engines fall off and the difficulty in shutting off the fuel flow
>to these engines?

Actually, the most recent problem has been the upper stage.  Another recent 
failure was due to a lightning strike.  Going through my data, it looks like
the booster stage has been a significant cause of failures in the last 20 years
bt it's hard to tell if it's caused more problems that first stages  of other
systems.

>[3].It seems, like it or not, that the Shuttle will be flying for at least 10
>more years.  Perhaps developing an LRB for the Shuttle will not be justified
>on its own.  Perhaps developing an HLV will not be justified on its own.
>However, if you have an HLV whose first stage will also serve as an LRB
>you could amortise development costs pretty fast.  Is there something wrong
>with this idea?
>    For example, a single engine "Baby Saturn" based on the F1A may qualify.
>If modifying the External Tank design for 3 boosters instead of 2 is not
>difficult, and if there is no particular reason that you cannot ride the
>Shuttle on "top" of the stack instead of the the bottom (angle of attack
>considerations would force this change), then you would have a ready use
>for 25-30 of these vehicles per year.  Why not?

Changing the layout that drastically would require redoing the VAB, the crawler
and the two launch complexes among other things.  A single engine booster also
wouldn't be suitable for the first stage of an HLV as you suggest.  Plus, 
putting the orbiter on top of the ET means you're sending exhaust straight at a
tank of LH2/LOX, which is not a great safety feature.


>			--Brett Van Steenwyk

-- 
Josh Hopkins           "If you are sitting in an exit row and you cannot read
                       this card or cannot see well enough to follow these
		       instructions, please tell a crew member."
j-hopkins@uiuc.edu                       -United Airlines safety instructions
Newsgroups: sci.space
From: aws@iti.org (Allen W. Sherzer)
Subject: Re: One Small Modest Proposal
Organization: Evil Geniuses for a Better Tomorrow
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1992 13:29:09 GMT

In article <9209101131.AA09174@cmr.ncsl.nist.gov> roberts@CMR.NCSL.NIST.GOV (John Roberts) writes:

>-Subject: One Small Step for a Space Activist... Vol 3 No 9
>-Date: 9 Sep 92 19:31:28 GMT

>I trust you're not trying to win political support for this proposal.

I am simply making two points:

1. Our current approach of worring about everything EXCEPT the cost is
   getting us nowhere.
2. Better, cheaper, faster solutions are out there. We need only allow them
   to work.

>You'll probably get a more favorable response if you wait until we have
>a new dog before proposing to shoot the old dog. 

No problem. All that is needed is for NASA to:

1. Announce that they will move to cheaper station resupply should the
   private sector make it available.
2. Fairly price Shuttle flights and announce that no special consideration
   will be given it when considering alternatives.

>Concentrating on the need
>for a new dog as an end in itself would probably speed the process.

That's part of it. As I said, Freedom life cycle and Shuttle costs will
make it impossible to do anything more for the next 30 or so years. But
not only do we need a new dog, we need to insure it isn't built the old
way.

Think about it, Station resupply will more than double the current launch
market measured in pounds to LEO. That size market and constancy of
demand will make totally privately developed spaceships practical. Protecting
half that market by making it use the more expensive Shuttle wastes money
better spent elsewhere and denies us an important chance to make space
cheaper and self sustaining.

Why is space exploration the only place where wasting money is seen as
a virtue?

   Allen

-- 
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Allen W. Sherzer | "If they can put a man on the Moon, why can't they     |
|  aws@iti.org     |  put a man on the Moon?"                               |
+----------------------226 DAYS TO FIRST FLIGHT OF DCX----------------------+
From: ewright@convex.com (Edward V. Wright)
Newsgroups: sci.space
Subject: Re: RL-10
Date: 15 Sep 92 16:43:18 GMT
Organization: Engineering, CONVEX Computer Corp., Richardson, Tx., USA
X-Disclaimer: This message was written by a user at CONVEX Computer
              Corp. The opinions expressed are those of the user and
              not necessarily those of CONVEX.

In <1992Sep14.161020.6273@eng.umd.edu> sysmgr@king.eng.umd.edu (Doug Mohney) writes:

>>Because "astronauts are national treasures", and if you kill one, your
>>program grinds to a halt for a couple of years.  If you kill a test pilot,
>>you name a street after him at Edwards, and carry on flying.

>Probably more astronauts now than test pilots, if you include the mission
>specialists. 

>Of course, "national treasure" is a strange way to put it.

Oh?  You think so?  Do you remember the test pilot who was killed
returning from space in his X-15 back in the 1960's?  I bet not.
Compare him to the Challenger astronauts or Grissom, White, and
Chaffee.
From: jbh55289@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Josh 'K' Hopkins)
Subject: Re: Nasa's Apollo rerun vs. Zubrin
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Distribution: sci
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1992 00:51:29 GMT

pgf@srl03.cacs.usl.edu ("Phil G. Fraering") writes:

>>These guys couldn't even return to the moon if you gave them a
>>full-size, fully operational moon rocket. They'd complain about
>>how it was too small for the job.

I recently saw a NASA promo on how robotics experts at Marshall helped develop
vastly improved artificial appendages for people who've lost hands.  One victim
works at his own lumber mill, so the Aero engineer happily built him what he 
calls a "heavy lift" attachment. Must have gotten a real kick out it.       

>Doug Mohney writes:

>\They're also putting a LOT more mass up there too. Four people, lots
>/of instruments, groceries for 15-30-45 days. Pilot projects. We're
>\talking serious camping and roaming around.

>I know, but they are deliberately setting up things so that
>the pilot projects won't reduce weight, which is the opposite
>of Zubrin's scheme. Please take a look at it.

Granted, but before you can launch a Zubrin mission, which _requires_ native
propellants, we have to know that they work.  I'd rather not wait till we've
built Zubrin's hardware to find that out, but I also don't want to wait 15 
years and find out by having an astronaut standing next to it.  The bright 
side of this is that Shimizu (sp?) in partnership with an American firm is 
planning to fly some test equipment on a lunar lander some time in the 
mid-term.  Anyone know where we could get enough cash to build a test plant of
our own?  :)

>/If you want to do serious exploration, you have to bring something
>\more than duct tape, a screwdriver, and a copy of "The moon on $5 a
>/day" by Shezer & Szabo.

You have to have cardboard too.  You can skip the screwdriver if you have a
swiss army knife.  

-- 
Josh Hopkins              "I believe that there are moments in history when 
                           challenges occur of such a compelling nature that to 
j-hopkins@uiuc.edu         miss them is to miss the whole meaning of an epoch.
jbh55289@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu  Space is such a challenge"       - James A. Michener   
Newsgroups: sci.space,sci.astro,talk.politics.space,alt.politics.bush,alt.politics.clinton
From: andy@SAIL.Stanford.EDU (Andy Freeman)
Subject: Re: Clinton and Space Funding
Followup-To: alt.politics.bush,alt.politics.clinton
Organization: Computer Science Department,  Stanford University.
Date: Mon, 14 Sep 1992 20:45:21 GMT

In article <1992Sep14.163026.20300@umbc3.umbc.edu> alex@engr3.umbc.edu (alex) writes:
>In any case, his whole economic plan is based on investment in hte
>infrastructure, which includes space and computer technology.

Note that most of the proposed infrastructure spending is on projects
that localities don't find profitable.

I hear about bad bridges in Boston, but the good Bostonians don't feel
that it is profitable to fix those bridges.  Since they get most of
the benefits from those bridges, it sure doesn't make any sense for ME
to pay to fix them.

The "infrastructure spending" is going to communities that can't pay
their own way; big cities just don't work in the US.  We didn't
subsidize the buggy whip industry; why should we subsidize the big
cities?

-andy
--
UUCP:    {arpa gateways, sun, decwrl, uunet, rutgers}!cs.stanford.edu!andy
ARPA:    andy@cs.stanford.edu
From: gary@ke4zv.uucp (Gary Coffman)
Newsgroups: sci.space
Subject: Re: Is NASA really planning to Terraform Mars?
Date: 9 Sep 92 19:26:43 GMT
Reply-To: gary@ke4zv.UUCP (Gary Coffman)
Organization: Gannett Technologies Group

In article <samw.715971213@bucket> samw@bucket.rain.com (Sam Warden) writes:
>Were Venus ever to cool off, I would expect ferocious amounts of
>oxidation/carbonation weathering to occur, for example.

Remember that chemical reactions like oxidation proceed at a rate 
proportional to temperature. For most reactions, the rate doubles
for every 10 degree temperature rise. On hot Venus, the reactions
*are* going on at a furious rate. If it cooled the reactions would
slow dramatically.

The Venusian atmosphere is apparently mostly CO2 and H2SO4 now. Way
too much oxygen, carbon, and sulfur, not enough nitrogen or hydrogen. 
The hydrogen is the critical part since you want to lock most of the 
oxygen up as water to reduce atmospheric pressure and establish a 
hydrological temperature control. Most of the primeval hydrogen
has been driven off into space by the hot atmosphere pushing the
light molecules to escape velocity.

The problem of terraforming the atmosphere requires separating out 
the sulfur, reducing the CO2, and combining the resulting free oxygen 
with the non-existant hydrogen. And even if you could do that, you
still have a 100 times too much atmosphere. The surface chemistry must 
be a hell of battery acid and acidic complexes. Nearly every member of 
the metal group is bound to be fully oxidized. Venus is a natural
toxic waste dump.

Gary
Gary
Newsgroups: sci.space
From: tomk@netcom.com (Thomas H. Kunich)
Subject: Re: Population
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 92 17:06:01 GMT
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services (408 241-9760 guest)

In article <BuLIuE.J55@news.cso.uiuc.edu> jbh55289@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Josh 'K' Hopkins) writes:
>
>First, I'd like to point out that I'm not the same person who wrote the follow
>up to my post, nor do we agree on all things.

Josh, you also got my quotes incorrectly :-). I agree that this has been getting
more and more involved with three, four and more quotes all in the
same message.

I see that population is a serious problem. Without a concentrated effort
on everyone's part it _can_ become an incredably sad (even sadder than now)
problem in the future.

I have pointed out that there are options, but that it is necessary
to start exercising these options while there is still cheap
and available energy resources.

Unfortunately I do not see this happening. I am not talking about a Manhattan
Project, but some serious planning to control population, cultivate in
some serious manner those third world countries that can sustain
themselves with modern agricultural varieties (it turns out to be incredably
difficult to get subsistance farmers to convert to newer crops because
their experience tells them that they have to do things _exactly_ one
way if they are to survive -- they need lots of support during the
conversion period.)

And we need to work out some arrangement for those areas of the world
that are presently overcrowded beyond the capacity to support.

 Without these accomodations we will have brushfire wars running out of
control forever and threatening the erst of us continuously.

The various solar technologies offer energy at reduced costs and sustainable
rates, but hoping that the market will support the conversion is asking
too much. It is likely that oil, when it runs out will do so at a very
accelerated rate -- much faster than it was developed -- because of
the growing world wide demand for petroleum and all of it's modern by
products. Falling back on coal and natural gas may sustain us for awhile
but in a world energy shortage these will grow scarce too.

Remeber, the Donner parties were separate and while many starved to death 
in grusome manners (complete with cannibalism) there were others that
survived the winter with surplus food. So unless food is abundant and
very cheap there will always be starvation pressures to cause wars.

If we can put these sorts of controls in place then we _can_ look forward
to expanding space explorations, even some sorts of colonization. But
unless we get our own house in order there will never be enough surplus
energy or political will to do much.

Newsgroups: sci.space
From: martin@space.ualberta.ca (Martin Connors)
Subject: Re: Magellan Science Results Published
Reply-To: martin@space.ualberta.ca (Martin Connors)
Organization: University Of Alberta, Edmonton Canada
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1992 16:57:50 GMT

In article <1992Sep11.065330.781@elroy.jpl.nasa.gov>  
baalke@kelvin.jpl.nasa.gov (Ron Baalke) writes:
> The "Journal of Geophysical Research - Planets" has dedicated two issues
> of their journal to the science results of the Magellan mission.  I
> have just received Part 1 today in the mail (Volume 97, Number E8, dated
> August 25, 1992).  This hefty issue consists of 27 articles and over
> 600 pages.  
For those who like me may have attempted to obtain the so-called  
"Six-Month Report", this appears to be it. Great reading and let's hope  
the next issue rolls off the presses soon.
Martin Connors - U. Alberta