HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
Newsgroups: sci.space,sci.astro,talk.politics.space,alt.politics.bush,alt.politics.clinton
Subject: Re: govn't R&D
From: wingo%cspara.decnet@Fedex.Msfc.Nasa.Gov
Date: Sun, 27 Sep 1992 02:52:00 GMT
 <1992Sep24.181713.18060@organpipe.uug.arizona.edu> <1992Sep27.002146.22800@techbook.com>
Organization: University of Houston
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    

In article <1992Sep27.002146.22800@techbook.com>, szabo@techbook.com (Nick Szabo) writes...
>In article <1992Sep24.181713.18060@organpipe.uug.arizona.edu> corleyj@helium.gas.uug.arizona.edu (Jason D Corley ) writes:
>>

>We're looking for stuff that is (a) useful, so people will pay for
>it and (b) builds a market for industrial capabilities like launch 
>vehicles that help the entire space industry.  The answer to the
>dilemna could well be this: NASA should conduct research,
>build prototypes, and publish them; commercial industry should implement
>and operate. NASA should not presume to predict the industries of the 
>future; it should follow the lead of commerce and do research in support 
>of it (esp. comsats, launch vehicle technology, and the airline industry 
>should be the biggest engineering programs under its charter).  It
>should also engange in exploration for it's own sake; we're not so
>poor that we can't afford to expand our horizons.
> 
> 
This is exactly what NASA USED to do.  The first Saturn I and Saturn V were
built at Marshall under the direction of the Von Braun team.  With the
Saturn I the production was then turned over to Chrysler.  With the Saturn V
the production was then turned over to Boeing and Rockwell.  This only 
is true for the main stages, the CSM and LM were done at Rockwell Downey and
Grumman Bethpage respectively.

NASA in the seventies and eighties largely lost this capability, especially
at Marshall.  In the last few years some of this has been rebuilt with
the reactiviation of the Saturn test stands and the Solid booster work done
here.  NASA has tried to bring some of the development work for SSF back in
house as well.  They hired a whole floor of Teledyne Brown people to work
at the same job but for NASA on station.  The corporations scream bloody
murder everytime NASA tries to go further however.  

Dennis, University of Alabama in Huntsville
From: mcelwre@cnsvax.uwec.edu
Newsgroups: sci.space
Subject: UFO EVIDENCE VS. Carl Sagan
Date: 6 Oct 92 17:07:15 -0600
Organization: University of Wisconsin Eau Claire

          
          
                           UFO EVIDENCE VS. Carl Sagan

               I watched all of Dr. Carl Sagan's updated "Cosmos" 
          programs on PBS during summer 1991.  In one of them, he STILL 
          maintains that there is no physical evidence for UFO 
          Spacecraft, "just stories". 
    
               I should think that by now he would have heard about the 
          Roswell Incident in which UFO WRECKAGE and ALIEN BODIES were 
          found on a ranch (in New Mexico, I think), gathered up by the 
          U.S. military, and hidden away in an Air Force hanger 
          somewhere.  The wreckage included materials NOT KNOWN on 
          Earth, and some of it even had ALIEN SYMBOLS written on it.  
          All of this was witnessed by many People, both civilian and 
          military.  A couple of years ago, the TV program "Unsolved 
          Mysteries" showed an excellent segment about the incident. 
    
               The Roswell Incident illustrates a serious problem here.  
          Whenever there IS physical evidence of a UFO Spacecraft, the 
          military always confiscates it, using "national security" as 
          an excuse, and then ACTS LIKE THE MAFIA toward the finders 
          and other witnesses by THREATENING them if they don't keep 
          silent!  (They did it to the rancher in the Roswell 
          Incident.) 
    
               I wonder if Carl Sagan has been pressured by the 
          government into continuing to make negative public statements 
          about UFO's.  It's too bad that so many people accept his 
          pronouncements without question.  He may very well be another 
          case of THE BLIND LEADING THE BLIND. 
       
               This is supposed to be a FREE country.  FREEDOM OF 
          SPEECH is guaranteed by the highest law of the land.  The 
          government (and its military) is supposed to be of, by, and 
          for The People, NOT the other way around.  People need to 
          know THE TRUTH about EVERYTHING in order to intelligently 
          participate in the democratic process.  It is an ORGANIZED 
          CRIME for the government to withhold or suppress information 
          and physical evidence of UFO's from us. 
    

               UN-altered REPRODUCTION and DISSEMINATION of this 
          IMPORTANT Information is ENCOURAGED. 


                                   Robert E. McElwaine
                                   B.S., Physics and Astronomy, UW-EC

                                                            
Newsgroups: sci.space
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Monetary Magic
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1992 17:22:56 GMT
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology

In article <1992Sep30.124342.18446@cs.ucf.edu> clarke@acme.ucf.edu (Thomas Clarke) writes:
>> The way to handle this is to think capitalist, not socialist.  Sell the
>> Pershings at a competitive market price for sounding rockets of that size.
>> Use the revenues to fund a one-time-only launch-grant program...
>
>Run that by a little slower. 
>A sells to B.  A gives money to C.  C buys from B.
>B has net near zero (buys and sells).
>C has net near zero (receives and buys).
>A has net near zero (gives and sells).

A's (the government's) net is probably negative, because a market price
won't pay back all the money spent on development, even if you *don't*
then give the money away.  However, that development was done for other
reasons, and presumably the hardware satisfied them well enough that you
can write that off.  The assumption in all proposals here, in fact, is
that the original cost of this hardware has long since been written off.
The government is ahead on the deal because it has done one of its jobs --
encouraging useful R&D -- at little cost to itself and without forcing
its solutions down everyone's throats.

B (launch company) makes a profit, in the time-honored manner of free
enterprise, by adding a markup.  His net is "near zero" compared to his
total cash flow, but that's normal.  Profit margins are seldom huge in
a competitive business.  Almost all businesses operate by skimming a
comparatively small profit margin off a much larger cash flow.  Assuming
a healthy business -- inventory moving from receiving to shipping in a
timely fashion, rather than piling up unsold -- the size of the cash
flow is *irrelevant* (to a first approximation); what you care about is
not how net compares to cash flow, but how net compares to things like
depreciation and overhead costs.  Given good management, the company
is ahead on the deal.

C (launch customer) makes no financial profit, but gets his payloads
launched.  That's what he wanted.  He's ahead on the deal.

Everybody wins.  Nobody loses, *including* those companies who prefer
to offer solutions other than surplus rockets.
-- 
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
From: PHARABOD@FRCPN11.IN2P3.FR
Subject: PLANETLIKE OBJECT SPOTTED BEYOND PLUTO
X-Added: Forwarded by Space Digest
Organization: [via International Space University]
Original-Sender: isu@VACATION.VENARI.CS.CMU.EDU
Distribution: sci
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1992 09:39:26 GMT

From "New Scientist", 26 September 1992:
ICY OBJECT FOUND ORBITING BEYOND PLUTO
  A long search for objects on the outer fringes of the Solar System
has finally yielded results. American astronomers have found an object
about 200 kilometres across beyond the most distant part of Pluto's
orbit. It is the best evidence yet that many small, icy bodies may
orbit in the farthest bounds of the Solar System. The discovery may
help astronomers understand the evolution and origins of the planetary
system, says Brian Marsden of the Harvard-Smithsonian Astrophysical
Observatory.
  Astronomers have long thought that comets come from the outer reaches
of the Solar System. Recent models suggest that short-period comets,
including Comet Halley, come from a zone called the Kuiper Belt, just
beyond the orbit of Pluto. However no one had found anything there
until David Jewitt of the University of Hawaii and Jane Luu of the
University of California at Berkeley looked at images taken by the
University of Hawaii's 2.2-metre telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii on
the nights of 30 and 31 August and 1 September. They found a slow-
moving, extremely faint object and calculated its distance and size
from its motion and brightness.
  Jewitt and Luu began searching for faint bodies in the outer Solar
System in 1987. "The fact that they found one fairly easily suggests
that there are a lot of these things," says Marsden. Jewitt believes
the objects may be half ice. Pluto and its moon Charon may be larger
objects of the same type; comets may be smaller members of the family.
  Astronomers have discovered two other objects of similar size to the
new body, but which come closer to the sun. Chiron, a comet-like body
between Saturn and Uranus, was found in 1977. In January of this year,
an object now called Pholus was discovered to orbit between Saturn and
Neptun.
  The new object is still in a semistable orbit in the Kuiper belt
where it formed. Gravitational interactions, probably with Neptune,
perturbed Chiron inwards, towards the Sun, a few million years ago.
Pholus, with an orbit that goes farther from the Sun, apparently was
perturbated inwards more recently. "Presumably Chiron and Pholus are
the largest members of a class of objects diffusing inwards from the
Kuiper Belt," says Jewitt.
                                                    Jeff Hecht, Boston
From: amon@elegabalus.cs.qub.ac.uk
Newsgroups: sci.space
Subject: Re: My final word on Ion to Pluto (long)
Date: 5 Oct 92 20:21:26 GMT
Article-I.D.: cs.Bvo1w0.L3w.1
Distribution: sci
Organization: [via International Space University]
X-Added: Forwarded by Space Digest
Original-Sender: isu@VACATION.VENARI.CS.CMU.EDU

> from sensitive instrumentation, the Pluto spacecraft is quite  
small, with
> RTGs body mounted.  Depending on the type of instrumentation, more  
shielding
> 


I presume this means that an isotope source is once again available?  
Which plant is on line? Will production be threatened by the nuclear  
weapons cut backs? (I believe the RTG material was made in the same  
breeder reactors that were used by the DOE for weapon fissionables.
Newsgroups: sci.space
From: davem@ee.ubc.ca (david michelson)
Subject: Re: another sad anniversary
Organization: University of BC, Electrical Engineering
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 1992 02:06:30 GMT


In article <1OCT199219492037@judy.uh.edu>, Dennis writes: 

[stuff about path loss and EME]

> So the answer is that no one was really interested in
> doing that at the time and there were no space advocacy groups with any
> power around at that time to publicize the fact and scream about it on this
> net (which did not exist at that time either).

> Dennis, University of Alabama in Huntsville


Thanks, Dennis, but that's not what I was asking.  

I wanted the gritty detail (EIRP, frequency, modulation type, and data
rate).  Path loss alone does not a link budget make!   If anyone has
access to one of the Apollo Science Reports from A14--A17, perhaps they
could take a look for us...

I suspect that the main problem back in 1977 would have been finding
a way to store the data as it was received.  PC's were rather primitive
back then and even small mini's were rather expensive.  The other 
problems, such as automatically pointing the antennas, providing sufficiently
sensitive receivers, etc., could have been solved with relative ease.

--
 
Dave Michelson
davem@ee.ubc.ca 
 
 
 
Newsgroups: sci.space
From: Cohena@mdc.com (Andy Cohen)
Subject: Re: what use is Fred?
Date: Mon, 05 Oct 92 22:58:53 GMT
Organization: MDSSC-Space Station
Followup-To: sci.space
Distribution: sci

In article <BvnwEu.FGo.1@cs.cmu.edu>, amon@elegabalus.cs.qub.ac.uk wrote:
> 
> > the area in skylab where the crew exercise equipment was.....  With  
> all the
> > hatches open, within the US areas alone, the crew will be able to  
> have
> > great frisbee games or races....if they had the time.....
> > 
> 
> 
> If any of them went to CMU when I did, they are great hall frisbee  
> "football" players. You'd be amazed at the ricochet's you can get. I  
> hope the switches and screens are cut out for it :-)
> 
> > More importantly, as I alluded to in my prior post, a complete SSF  
> provides
> > a HUGE structure.  This structure is almost 300 feet long.....Thats  
> a
> > football field..... It also has power panels and radiators which  
> stick
> > 
> 
> 
> You mean it's SO big that it would have fit into the stadium of the  
> Coraopolis High School!! ;-)

I said it wrong the first time and lost the attempt at humor...let me try
again...

Space Station is big, really big... 
You just won't believe how vastly hugely mind boggingly big it is....
I mean you may think that Skylab and Mir were big, but they're just peanuts
to SSF....
listen....

my attempt to plagerize from Douglas Adams made me sound like one heck of a
zeolot!  Sorry...it's really JUST a job..!
Newsgroups: sci.space
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Atlas E and F questions ( Actually Pershing missile)
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1992 04:11:26 GMT
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology

In article <1992Sep27.165908.24199@access.digex.com> prb@access.digex.com (Pat) writes:
>I realize the pershings were a little small for use as orbital payloads, but how
>about as sounding rockets?  they have to be more useful then the scouts
>or other light rockets...

First, a correction:  Scout is *not* a light rocket, it's an orbital
launcher at the extreme upper end of the sounding-rocket category.
It can be used as a super-heavy sounding rocket -- the user's manual
includes some information on this -- but it seldom is.

The Pershings would probably make okay sounding rockets, if the treaty
language was suitable.  (There are problems here, which is why the treaty
called for destruction and set time limits.  A sounding rocket sitting in
a warehouse awaiting launch needs only a warhead and a launch truck to
become a weapon again.)  But why bother?  Sounding rockets are not that
hard to come by and it's a reasonably competitive market, I believe.

Oh, if you let the Pershings go as government surplus at fire-sale prices,
they'd be cheaper than commercial sounding rockets.  Of course, this has
a good chance of bankrupting some of the sounding-rocket companies by
flooding the market with government-subsidized competition.  What happens
when you run out of Pershings and there's nobody left to provide ongoing
sounding-rocket service?  You can devise safeguards against this, but it
gets tricky, and the existing companies will fight you tooth and nail in
Congress and in the courts.  Is it worth the trouble?
-- 
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.astro,talk.politics.space,alt.politics.bush,alt.politics.clinton
From: sysmgr@king.eng.umd.edu (Doug Mohney)
Subject: Re: Wealth in Space (Was Re: Clinton and Space Funding)
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 92 17:50:27 GMT
Organization: Computer Aided Design Lab, U. of Maryland College Park
Reply-To: sysmgr@king.eng.umd.edu

In article <26SEP199221403772@judy.uh.edu>, wingo%cspara.decnet@Fedex.Msfc.Nasa.Gov writes:

>Nick, Nick, Nick, don't you ever read the reports about recently discovered
>near Earth Asteroids?  There is one of the found in 1987 (I forgot the 
>designator) that is confirmed by albedo and spectral studies to be nickel 
>iron, as are about 10% of all meteorites found on earth.  The size of this
>asteroid is about 1.7 miles by .8 miles.  It was estimated in the
>article that I read, that based upon similar fractions found in metorites on
>the earth of that type, that there was approximately 90 billion dollars worth
>of gold and 1 trillion dollars worth of Platinum, give or take a few million.

That's before you bring it home. Actual price of gold and platinum on earth
would drop, ASSUMING you can bring home the metals for a price less than or
equal to the price of extracting them using current and near-term methods.

Basic laws of supply and demand. More goods, prices drop. 

I dunno, maybe everyone could have gold-plated fixtures in their bathrooms? :)

> From the day of the first contract
>to the moving out to Pad 39, it was only five years for the first Apollo.
>We can do it IF we have the will.

If it is deemed necessary, sure. So far, it hasn't. Same reason why we haven't
built powersats or space colonies or anything else up in the sky. No need.


                 Play in the intelluctual sandbox of Usenet 

  -- >                  SYSMGR@CADLAB.ENG.UMD.EDU                        < --
Newsgroups: sci.space
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: another sad anniversary
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 1992 15:40:37 GMT
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology

In article <halz2kh@rpi.edu> kentm@aix.rpi.edu (Michael V. Kent) writes:
>Why on earth did they turn them off?  Maybe stop listening for a while, but
>why turn them off?  What if they had wanted to listen again sometime in the
>future?

The normal rule is to switch them off while you still can.  They would die
eventually, and if the receiver dies first, then the transmitter stays in
whatever state it was left in (probably).  There is concern about spectrum
pollution from transmitters that can't be shut off.
-- 
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: rabjab@golem.ucsd.edu (Jeff Bytof)
Newsgroups: sci.space
Subject: Re: UFO EVIDENCE VS. Carl Sagan
Date: Wed, 7 Oct 1992 00:56:19 GMT
Organization: ucsd
NNTP-Posting-Host: lutherlab.ucsd.edu

Robert E. McElwaine, Esq., states:

>          It's too bad that so many people accept his [Dr. Carl Sagan's] 
>          pronouncements without question.  

I agree with Bob, but only on this one, *small*,  point.

Jeff Bytof
rabjab@golem.ucsd.edu

(I am of course referring to Dr. Sagan's hobby interests - "ethical
 macaques" and the thesis that Patrick Buchanan is a "baboon" -
 not to his well-founded and exciting work modeling the chemistry of 
 Saturn's moon, Titan!)
From: wats@scicom.AlphaCDC.COM (Bruce Watson)
Newsgroups: sci.space
Subject: Disney's Man in Space
Date: 28 Sep 92 20:54:55 GMT
Organization: Alpha Science Computer Network, Denver, Co.


Paraphrased from: Blueprint for Space: Science Fiction to Science Fact,
Edited by Frederic I. Ordway III and Randy Liebermann, Smithsonian
Institution Press, Washington and London, 1992. IBSN 1-56098-072-9,
pp. 144-146.

In the spring of 1954, Disney started to organize programming for his
"Disneyland" television to premier the following fall on the American
Broadcasting Company--a sort of '50's "info-mercial". Each show was to
feature the four themes of the park. All but "Tomorrowland" had existing
films to draw from. Ward Kimball, a key animator who worked for the 
company since 1934, was given uncharacteristic free rein to produce 
a television film dealing with the subject of space travel.

Kimball enlisted the efforts of Willy Ley, Heinz Haber, and Werhner
Von Braun. Sometime in the Spring of 1954, as ideas developed, it was 
decided to produce three films whose final titles were: _Man in Space_, 
_Man and the Moon_, and _Mars and Beyond_.

_Man in Space_ [Shown on the Disney cable channel last Sunday, September
27, 1992 at 2:00 pm MDT] begins with the history of rocketry and explores 
how humans might react in space. It ends with brilliant animation of a 
manned orbital mission using a derivitive of Von Brauns multi-staged 
rocket. The film aired on 9 March 1955 [a Wednesday evening--my Boy Scout
troop meeting night--I caught hell from my father for not attending.]
and viewed by nearly 100 million. Among the viewers was President
Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was so impressed that he called
Disney and asked to borrow a copy which he showed to officals at
the Pentagon over the next couple of weeks. On 29 July 1955,
Ike announced that as part of the upcoming International Geophysical
Year (IGY, 1957-58), the US would launch an earth satellite.

-- 
Bruce Watson (wats@scicom)  Tumbra, Zorkovick; Sparkula zoom krackadomando.  
Newsgroups: sci.space
From: baalke@kelvin.jpl.nasa.gov (Ron Baalke)
Subject: Re: Magellan
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.3-4   
Keywords: Magellan, JPL
Reply-To: baalke@kelvin.jpl.nasa.gov
Organization: Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 1992 15:17:41 GMT

In article <1992Oct1.224613.29180@unocal.com>, stgprao@st.unocal.COM (Richard Ottolini) writes...
>How does Magellan move its radar attena to transmit results to earth?
>Is it an electric motor powered by solar power or thrusters?
>Is this the ultimate limitation on Magellan's lifetime then, barring
>breakdowns?

The entire spacecraft is turned towards Earth twice on each orbit 
to transmit the radar mapping data back to Earth.  The turns are done by 
using three spinning reactions wheels (one for each axis of rotation).
The wheels are spun at different speeds to turn the spacecraft using the
transfer of momentum principle, and this is all done without using any 
propellant.  The reaction wheels do pick up excessive speed from the solar 
wind and the gravity of Venus, so this excessive speed is bled off by firing 
the thrusters briefly twice a day (referred to as desats in the Magellan
status reports).  

Magellan has been a busy little beaver in sending back its data to Earth.
On a typical mapping orbit, the antenna is pointed towards Venus and
bounces the radar off the planet and records it onto the tape recorders.  
It then turns towards Earth using the
reaction wheels and transmits half the data back to Earth for about an hour.
Magellan then turns away from Earth to lock on two reference stars with its
star scanner to see if its attitude position has drifted any, and if so, 
then makes a minor attitude adjustment with the reaction wheels.  This is 
called a star calibration.  It then turns back to Earth and sends the 
remaining data from the tape recorder.  The spacecraft has now completed 
one orbit and turns back to Venus to start the next mapping pass.

This pirouette around the planet is repeated every 3.26 hours, and is done
day in and day out, 24 hours a day, for most of the 2+ years that Magellan 
has been orbiting Venus.  It is an amazing engineering feat that has mostly
gone unnoticed, and a lot of credit goes to the spacecraft designers who
made it work so well.  
     ___    _____     ___
    /_ /|  /____/ \  /_ /|     Ron Baalke         | baalke@kelvin.jpl.nasa.gov
    | | | |  __ \ /| | | |     Jet Propulsion Lab |
 ___| | | | |__) |/  | | |__   M/S 525-3684 Telos | Einstein's brain is stored
/___| | | |  ___/    | |/__ /| Pasadena, CA 91109 | in a mason jar in a lab
|_____|/  |_|/       |_____|/                     | in Wichita, Kansas.