HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: Frederick.A.Ringwald@dartmouth.edu (Frederick A. Ringwald)
Newsgroups: sci.space
Subject: New lunar spacecraft (WAS: With telepresence, who needs people 
 in Earth orbit?)
Date: 6 Sep 92 01:36:07 GMT
 <66655@hydra.gatech.EDU> <1992Aug24.175759.1@fnalf.fnal.gov> 
 <1992Sep3.142820.19532@techbook.com>  
 <1992Sep5.132410.17048@ke4zv.uucp>
Organization: Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH
X-Posted-From: InterNews1.0a4@newshost.dartmouth.edu

In article <1992Sep5.132410.17048@ke4zv.uucp>
gary@ke4zv.uucp (Gary Coffman) writes:

> As a side note, most of the data from lunar probes, and some probes of
> other bodies, lies rusting away on reels of magnetic tape that no current
> machine can read in some musty warehouse. 

How well is this documented? Where are the tapes, exactly, and what
data formats are involved? I don't know about planetary science, but a
great deal of excellent work is being done from defunct astrophysics
satellites under the NASA Astrophysics Data Program (ADP). This is an
inexpensive and highly cost-effective program, mainly to do science,
although much of it is specifically for archiving in modern formats
(e.g., the entire Einstein satellite data set, all the original 5000+
tapes of it, is now available on several CD-ROMs). Nearly ten years
after the IRAS mission, the IPAC at Caltech is still cranking out
results unabated. I've used the International Ultraviolet Explorer
archive at NASA Goddard, myself, although I never left my office,
preferring to work via e-mail, telnet, and ftp; I hasten to add also
that IUE is still operating! Vela results are still being published,
and a data set to watch in the next few years is from Solar Max, as
it's relevant to the NIXT rockets and Yokoh satellite. Surely there
must be some similar program for planetary science?

> The most cost effective way to
> do lunar scientific research would be to mine that warehouse first before
> launching more probes.

While old data sets often contain overlooked gems, for some questions,
they will not help at all. The Lunar Orbiters did optical imaging from
roughly equatorial orbits about the Moon; if you wanted to look for
lunar water, you'd need a polar-orbiting spacecraft with infrared
imaging and better, also spectroscopic instrumentation - not unlike
what's going on the Mars Observer.

While we're on this subject, would someone please post or e-mail me a
description of the various plans for new lunar spacecraft, of any
nationality?

Fred Ringwald
Department of Physics & Astronomy
Dartmouth College
Hanover, NH 03755-3528 U.S.A.
From: jsbell@acs.ucalgary.ca (Joshua Bell)
Newsgroups: sci.space
Subject: Re: QUERY Re: Pluto Direct/ options
Date: 10 Sep 92 23:38:37 GMT
Organization: The University of Calgary, Alberta

In article <15008@mindlink.bc.ca> Nick_Janow@mindlink.bc.ca (Nick Janow) writes:
>henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes:
>
>> In article <1992Sep10.135754.1491@eng.umd.edu> sysmgr@king.eng.umd.edu
>> writes:
>> In what? :-)  Pluto does have an atmosphere of sorts at the moment, but I'd
>> guess it's too thin to do much aerobraking in, even if we knew
>> its properties well enough to plan an aerobraking mission, which we don't.
>
>Would it be possible to aerobrake at Uranus or Neptune, perhaps also using the
>atmosphere to change trajectory significantly?  This would provide a fast
>flight for much of the journey and have the remaining part at a speed slow
>enough for aerobraking in Pluto's atmosphere, or at least a much slower pass by
>Pluto.  It would also allow a mission at Uranus or Neptune.
>
>I can see lots of problems with this, but sometimes wild ideas are workable.

Looking at my National Geographic map from Aug 1990, Uranus is
getting rather far from an eyeballed route to Pluto. It'd mean
sending the probe out away (maybe 120 degrees or so on the
ecliptic) from Pluto, and having it whip around. If the intent is
slowing the probe down, you will probably end up with an even
slower mission. Neptune is only 50 degrees 'off course'. I can
imagine a slingshot (ignoring the fact that you're going against
the orbit - can you slingshot that way?), but I'll leave it to
the experts to judge on the breaking maneuver.

Question for the real experts:

A few years back I remember seeing tentative 'maps' of Pluto,
based on observing the spectrum of the Pluto-Charon system during
the eclipse cycle. The maps were rather simple - large white ice
caps, a redish-brown surface, a large black/brown spot on one
side, and a smaller white spot on the other. Is there any
planning of the probe's to take advantage of what little we know
about Pluto and 'aiming' for these spots, as the probe will
likely shoot past, not wait around 6 days (?) for Pluto to
revolve?

Joshua
| Tremble only if you build false accounts and stand pridefully upon them    |
|                                       - Lord Leto II, God Emperor of Dune  |
|                                                                            |
| jsbell@acs.ucalgary.ca  Academic Computing Services, University of Calgary |
Newsgroups: sci.space
From: pgf@srl02.cacs.usl.edu (Phil G. Fraering)
Subject: Re: Asteroid explorer
Organization: Univ. of Southwestern Louisiana
Distribution: usa
Date: Sun, 13 Sep 1992 23:49:59 GMT

steinly@topaz.ucsc.edu (Steinn Sigurdsson) writes:

>As per the AO you get $17million (1992) for hardware, R&D,
>staff etc, same again for launch; mission ops and data analysis
>are extra. So, put together a CCD camera, a (IR?) spectrometer,
>a low(medium?) gain antenna, redundant tape recorders, the best CPU
>and memory that's flight qualified (is the intel chip qualified yet?)
>and a couple of ion thrusters with as much fuel as possible - then
>go cruise asteroids, first an Earth crosser, then follow it out
>to the belt and peek around, keep going till you run out of fuel
>or something dies; main problem would be a power supply and weight
>constraints... Nick, Phil? you wanna put your time where your mouth
>is?

I've been kind of busy and am only now getting the time to spend
on crazy ideas and research projects again... 

I've been thinking, though... what we really want from these
asteroids is structural data. How could we get that?

[Following idea Patent Pending Phil's Crazy Ideas Inc. ...] ;-)

As Marvin Minsky pointed out a short while ago, small fuel tanks
and large fuel tanks have the same mass to fuel mass ratio. So
for an ion-drive powered probe you could with little mass overhead
have lots of small tanks instead of one large tank for your
fuel. Suppose for example you use six tanks.

Every once in a while in the mission you need to "stage" and
drop an empty fuel tank. Well, instead you use it: you keep
it around until you're about to do a flyby of an asteroid.
A small dogleg/jettision manuever, and you've slammed a fuel tank
into the asteroid, giving your seismometer network lots of data.

Oh, you don't have a seismometer network on the asteroid? 
Hmmm... what about using a laser rangefinder of some sort,
to observe the "ringing" in the rock? Would this only be 
feasible for low probe flyby speeds?

(which would cause problems: you would like the fuel tank to
slam in at high speed...)

Well?

--
Phil Fraering pgf@srl0x.cacs.usl.edu where the x is a number from 1-5.
Phone: 318/365-5418 SnailMail: 2408 Blue Haven Dr., New Iberia, La. 70560

           --> Support UN military force against Doug Mohney <--
From: Frederick.A.Ringwald@dartmouth.edu (Frederick A. Ringwald)
Newsgroups: sci.space
Subject: Re: New lunar spacecraft (& old data formats)
Date: 15 Sep 92 02:30:31 GMT
 <2AB50B7F.17D1@deneva.sdd.trw.com>
Organization: Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH
X-Posted-From: InterNews1.0a5@newshost.dartmouth.edu

In article <2AB50B7F.17D1@deneva.sdd.trw.com>
hangfore@spf.trw.com (John Stevenson) writes:

> from the same reference:
> pg A-6: ".. however an excellent source turned out to be the National  
> Space Science Data Center. Their purpose is to collect and archive  
> existing space science data, and the data are kept there with some care."

Thanks for the name of the center, but what's the name of the program?
In other words, who allocates the funding for planetary science data
archives, or don't they do it in an organized manner, as ADP does? (ADP
uses NSSDC resources all the time; I've telnetted McCook & Sion's white
dwarf catalog from them, myself.) I'll go get this reference, too.

> So it appears that the information is not yet lost, but the will (or 
> dollars) to recover it may be.

Sounds like an excellent topic for an NRC postdoc proposal. Maybe I've
just answered my own question, then, but you'd think planetary science
would have its own dedicated program for archival research.
Astrophysics does, in ADP.
Xref: sparky sci.space:12794 alt.sci.planetary:19
From: willner@head-cfa.harvard.edu (Steve Willner)
Newsgroups: sci.space,alt.sci.planetary
Subject: Re: Pluto Direct/ options
Date: 12 Sep 92 18:48:48 GMT
Organization: Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, Cambridge, MA,  USA

From article <BuFLyL.Iv6@zoo.toronto.edu>, by henry@zoo.toronto.edu
(Henry Spencer): 
> Of course, as it turned out, Titan was a disappointment... but there was
> no way to be sure of that in advance.

A matter of taste, I suppose.  There were no pretty pictures, but the
atmospheric composition, pressure, and temperature structure were
fascinating.  I'll take "disappointments" like that any day.
-- 
Steve Willner            Phone 617-495-7123         Bitnet:   willner@cfa
Cambridge, MA 02138 USA                 Internet: willner@cfa.harvard.edu
  member, League for Programming Freedom; contact league@prep.ai.mit.edu
Newsgroups: sci.space
From: afwendy@lims02.lerc.nasa.gov (WENDY WARTNICK)
Subject: Re: Is NASA really planning to Terraform Mars?
Summary: Econut hysteria.
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    
Organization: NASA Lewis Research Center
Distribution: sci
Date:  9 Sep 1992 11:39 EST  

In article <1992Sep4.160621.3048@aio.jsc.nasa.gov>, hack@arabia.uucp (Edmund Hack) writes...
>In article <BARRY.92Sep3204008@chezmoto.ai.mit.edu> barry@chezmoto.ai.mit.edu (Barry Kort) writes:
> 
>The probable origin of this rumor is a book by a contractor at
>JSC (Jim Oberg) on how to terraform Mars. There have also been a few
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^


Jim Oberg...now there's an interesting guy!  When I was but a lowly coop at 
JSC I heard a talk by a guy (I believe it was Jim Oberg) about the Soviet 
Space program and, specifically, about all the sneaky things the Soviets 
did to hush up/erase/deny things they didn't want us or even their own 
people to know about.  Apparently Soviet Space program was a bit of a hobby 
for him...he would do research to find out about cosmonauts who suddenly 
didn't exist anymore.  He has some great before and after slides--slides 
where guys were literally erased from the photo and a shrub painted in (a 
badly painted shrub, I might add).  To make the picture all the more 
laughable, the one fellow standing next to the erased guy originally had 
his arm draped across the guy's shoulder--his arm now just sort of ends at 
the shrub.  

Anyway, I think Jim Oberg was the guy who dug up all this stuff and gave 
lectures on it.

				WEndy


Newsgroups: sci.space
From: szabo@techbook.com (Nick Szabo)
Subject: Re: Is NASA really planning to Terraform Mars?
Organization: TECHbooks --- Public Access UNIX --- (503) 220-0636
Date: Wed, 9 Sep 1992 15:12:36 GMT

In article <samw.715971213@bucket> samw@bucket.rain.com (Sam Warden) writes:

>As for the morality of this sort of thing, I don't share the
>comfortable expectation that we as a civilization _have_
>future centuries at our disposal for a conservative planetary
>exploration.  The spread of terrestrial life to other 
>now lifeless environments seems _very_ moral to me, even a
>moral imperative, given a possibly limited window of ability
>to do so.  My opinion; others of course are free to differ.  ;-)

Even while perhaps disagreeing about the size of that window, I wholeheartedly
agree that this is a moral imperative, not "pollution" or "ruining the planet" 
as the politically correct would have us believe.  


-- 
szabo@techbook.COM  Public Access User --- Not affiliated with TECHbooks
Public Access UNIX and Internet at (503) 644-8135 (1200/2400, N81) 
Newsgroups: sci.space
From: fils@iastate.edu (Douglas R Fils)
Subject: Re: PUTTING VENUS IN AN ORBIT SIMILAR TO THE ORBIT OF THE EARTH
Organization: Iowa State University, Ames, IA
Date: Wed, 16 Sep 1992 01:51:27 GMT

In article <schumach.716605514@convex.convex.com> schumach@convex.com (Richard A. Schumacher) writes:
>This is the same guy who wanted to blow up the Moon to improve 
>Earth's climate, right?
>
Yup, that's him......

Continue the proud Iowa State tradition...I would if this on will make it in
to the Journal of Science we all love..the Weekly World News



-- 
Newsgroups: sci.space
From: vincent@reg.triumf.ca (pete)
Subject: Re: Terraforming needs to begin now
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    
Organization: dept. of theophysics and cosmogyny
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1992 09:38:00 GMT

In article <JGJ.92Sep9190252@rcx1.ssd.csd.harris.com>, 
jgj@ssd.csd.harris.com (Jeff Jackson) writes...
> 
>On the wall of a nearby office is this neat picture of a planet with
>large amounts of liquid water, but large portions of the land mass is
>brown -- dry, relatively lifeless desert.  How about some ideas on how
>to terraform good old earth?  Starting with the Sahara or Austrailia's
>outback.
> 
>I guess the hard part is getting fresh water to these regions.  Here's
>my wild, uneducated, naive silly idea for all ya'll to shoot holes in.
>There's tons of sand in these deserts.  You can use sand to make
>glass, so, use all this glass to make huge solar distillation systems.
>I'm envisioning long salt-water canals running from the Med. Sea, or
>Oceans running hundreds of miles inland.  Covering each canal is a
>greenhouse that heats the water up and makes it evaporate.  At the top
>of the greenhouse, the vapor is collected and cooled of, and the resulting
>distilled water is then pumped out into irrigation canals runing
>perpendicular to the salt-water canals.
> 
>Yes, I'm an idiot, but tell me why.  Why won't it work?  What *would*
>work?
> 

Jeez that's bizarre. I had that exact idea some 10 years ago, in
detail. Plus a few more twists: use the glass to form solar mirrors
to fire the glass factories, and use the fresh water to grow crops
on the ground sheltered from direct sunlight beneath the evaporation 
panels. The vapour is condensed by cool sea water flowing into the
system along the tops of the evaporators.
     I see 2 major problems with this scheme, besides labour:
1) glass requires lime, to lower its melting point, and yield
a strong product. Also sand must be very white to yield transparent 
glass. 
2) how do you pump the seawater cheaply? 

===========================================================================
Hey, Sahara Sandblast Inc.,                                 Pete Vincent
yeah that's the ticket.    

Newsgroups: sci.space,sci.astro
From: se_taylo@rcvie.co.at (Ian Taylor)
Subject: Re: Pluto Direct Propulsion Options
Organization: Alcatel Austria - Elin Research Center, Vienna
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1992 09:50:05 GMT

In article <BuFMuq.J9A@zoo.toronto.edu> henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes:
>This particular
>mission is time-critical because of the impending freezeout of Pluto's
>atmosphere, so the fewer unknowns the better.
>
I am curious as to where all this knowledge about Pluto's atmosphere freezing 
out around 2015 came from? Perhaps someone can enlighten me with a reference?

My understanding is that our current knowledge about Pluto is minimal, is it
established that Pluto even has an atmosphere?

BTW I fully support such a mission, although I'm not sure about the timing given
the current world "recession".

+-- I -------- fax +43 1 391452 --------------------- voice +43 1 391621 169 --+
| T a y l o r  Alcatel-ELIN Research, 1-7 Ruthnergasse, Vienna A-1210 Austria  |
+-- n ---- ian@rcvie.co.at --- PSI%023226191002::SE_TAYLOR --- 20731::ian -----+

 	Current signature under review for ISO 9000 compliance.

Newsgroups: sci.space
From: pgf@srl02.cacs.usl.edu (Phil G. Fraering)
Subject: Re: Is NASA really planning to Terraform Mars?
Organization: Univ. of Southwestern Louisiana
Distribution: sci
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1992 17:05:56 GMT

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

>It is obvious this person will not be the one doing the terraforming.
>Now, at the moment this is all moot argument. But in about 50-100
>years, my return question would be different and to the point:

>	"And just HOW do you propose to stop me?"

>Oh, by the way .... I expect to be quite well armed....

More to the point: you wake up forty years from now and
overnight, without warning, someone's gone ahead and dumped
about a megaton or so of halon into the Martian atmosphere,
and there seem to be all these lakes and oceans forming
all over the place.

Question: who owns the land?


--
Phil Fraering pgf@srl0x.cacs.usl.edu where the x is a number from 1-5.
Phone: 318/365-5418 SnailMail: 2408 Blue Haven Dr., New Iberia, La. 70560
If seven maids with seven brooms swept for half a year,
do you think, the Walrus asked, that they could make it clear?
I doubt it, said the Carpenter, and shed a bitter tear.
---------
"NOAH!"                        \           \ Lewis Carrol
"Yes lord?"                     > Bill Cosby, The Story of Noah
"HOW LONG CAN YOU TREAD WATER?"/




Newsgroups: sci.space
From: tholen@hale.ifa.hawaii.edu (Dave Tholen)
Subject: Re: QUERY Re: Pluto Direct/ options
Organization: University of Hawaii
Date: Sat, 12 Sep 1992 20:07:51 GMT

Nick Janow writes:

> Would it be possible to aerobrake at Uranus or Neptune, perhaps also using the
> atmosphere to change trajectory significantly?  This would provide a fast
> flight for much of the journey and have the remaining part at a speed slow
> enough for aerobraking in Pluto's atmosphere, or at least a much slower pass
> by Pluto.  It would also allow a mission at Uranus or Neptune.
> 
> I can see lots of problems with this, but sometimes wild ideas are workable.

One big problem is that Pluto isn't lined up with either Uranus or Neptune.
It would take less time to fly direct to Pluto than to wait for the next
orbital alignment that would permit a Uranus or Neptune flyby (well in excess
of a hundred years).  You don't save much by going to Neptune first now.
The current Pluto-Neptune elongation is about 50 degrees.  If it were 60
degrees, we'd have something close to an equilateral triangle, which means
Pluto would be just about as far from Neptune as it is from Earth!
Newsgroups: sci.space
From: tomk@netcom.com (Thomas H. Kunich)
Subject: Re: Is NASA really planning to Terraform Mars?
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 92 19:24:44 GMT
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services (408 241-9760 guest)

In article <136017@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV> roberts@phoenix.ocf.llnl.gov (Don Roberts) writes:
>
>Haven't we had about enough of this [Malthusianism--ed.]in the last 200
>years?? Ever since Malthus first came up with the idea, we've been in
>Imminent Peril of choking the planet with people. Fortunately, there have
>been enough people (!) cleverer than ol' Tom that we've managed well enough.
>Try telling the people in Singapore, Japan, or Taiwan that high population
>densities guarantee abject poverty and starvation. Ever stop to think there
>might be more to it than that?
>
Let's see: China and India are hovering on the raged edge of subsistance
right now. Most of Africa is one meal away from starvation. -- Why that means
that more than half of the world is bearly producing enough food to exist
and no more.

Argentina, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States are producing
significant surpluses of food, yet not enough to supply the rest of the
world in a single bad harvest year.

Direct extropolation of the world's population shows a doubling in the
next 50 years.

With, presently, only some 25% of the world's population having good and
sufficient food it leaves me wondering how wrong Malthus was.
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Newsgroups: sci.space
Subject: Re: How to build ion engine?
Date: 11 Sep 92 16:28:04 GMT
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology

In article <1992Sep10.160445.1938@vicorp.com> ron@vicorp.com (Ron Peterson) writes:
>I'd like to know if it would be possible to build a micro-sized
>platform that could lift itself in the air powered by a solar cell
>or very small battery.  I thought that perhaps a tiny ion motor...

In a word, no.  Ion thrusters have miniscule thrust, and furthermore
they operate properly only in vacuum.

In any case, this is the wrong way to go about it.  Jet power (ignoring
losses) is thrust*exhaust_velocity/2; for a minimum-power system --
and anything powered by batteries or solar cells really has to be
minimum-power, those are lousy power sources -- you want the lowest
possible exhaust velocity.  An ion rocket specializes in very high
exhaust velocity.  You're at the wrong end of the spectrum; you want
to think "helicopter", not "rocket".
-- 
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
Newsgroups: sci.space,sci.space.shuttle
From: ray@gyro (Ray Soo)
Subject: mission badges for Apollo and STS
Reply-To: ray@exicom.OZ.AU (ray)
Organization: Exicom (Aust) Pty Ltd
Date: Mon, 7 Sep 1992 03:10:23 GMT


can one buy replicas of mission badges for the Apollo and
Shuttle missions? If so , where?


email replies to ray@exicom.oz.au

thanks in advance,

ray

Newsgroups: sci.space
From: knapp@spot.Colorado.EDU (David Knapp)
Subject: Re: farthest Laser signal
Organization: University of Colorado, Boulder
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1992 15:02:01 GMT


Ron, would you be interested in posting some of your planetary probe inormation
to alt.sci.planetary? 


-- 
David Knapp                                      University of Colorado, Boulder
Perpetual Student                                   knapp@spot.colorado.edu