HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: billn@hpcvaac.cv.hp.com (bill nelson)
Subject: Re: Wealth in Space (Was Re: Clinton and Space Funding)
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Company, Corvallis, Oregon USA
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 1992 22:50:03 GMT

tom@ssd.csd.harris.com (Tom Horsley) writes:

: gary> Show us a way to *deliver* the materials of the asteroid to the
: gary> Earth's surface in *ready to use* form for less than 109 billion
: gary> dollars. Those gold and platinum *estimates* aren't in nice pure
: gary> lumps. They're spread throughout that couple of trillion tons of
: gary> stainless steel ore. Now we're talking $20 a ton material that will
: gary> need hundreds of dollars an ounce worth of processing to get at that
: gary> platinum and gold. Makes a big difference.  Don't pull another
: gary> dinosaur killer in the process.
: 
: Shucks, this is the easy part. You're in outer space, you got your vacuum,
: you got your limitless solar power, you got your zero-G environment.  All
: you gotta do a setup a few solar mirrors, vaporize the sucker, and run the
: vapor through a free floating mega-industrial scale mass spectrometer (you
: can get improved mass spectrometer designs from Saddam Hussein).  This gets
: the valuable stuff separated out in a pure form, you use the leftover slag
: to make ablative heat shields, and just drop precious metal ingots directly
: into the parking lots of factories.

Will a mass spectrometer work in the absence of a strong gravitational field?
I guess you could rotate the spectrometer fast enough to make use of the
centripital/centrifical forces.

Bill
From: wingo%cspara.decnet@Fedex.Msfc.Nasa.Gov
Newsgroups: sci.space
Subject: Re: Controversy over V-2 anniversary
Date: 6 Oct 92 16:42:00 GMT
Article-I.D.: judy.6OCT199211420001
Organization: University of Houston
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41

In article <SHAFER.92Oct6081653@rigel.dfrf.nasa.gov>, shafer@rigel.dfrf.nasa.gov (Mary Shafer) writes...
>On 6 Oct 92 04:54:52 GMT, roberts@CMR.NCSL.NIST.GOV (John Roberts) said:
> 
>[Lots of really good comment deleted, but this is _sci_.space and I
>can't stay on my high moral horse and complain about the signal to
>noise ratio when I'm part of the (non-sci) noise.]
> 

>Just a bit more on the V-2 commemoration: I was reading the stack of
>papers that accumulated in my absence and found the story about this
>controversy.  The article stated that over 60,000 slave laborers were
>involved and that at least 30,000 did not survive.  A German
>person/group proposed that a memorial to these people be erected at
>Peenemunde.  I inferred (but it was not explicitly stated) that were
>this to be done, many German or European objections would vanish.
> 
>--
>Mary Shafer  DoD #0362 KotFR NASA Dryden Flight Research Facility, Edwards, CA
>shafer@rigel.dfrf.nasa.gov                    Of course I don't speak for NASA
> "There's no kill like a guns kill." LCDR "Hoser" Satrapa, gunnery instructor
>                       "A kill is a kill."  Anonymous

Mary that is wrong and you know it. There were never any slave laborers at 
Peenumde. As I said before, there were some Russian prisoners of war but it
was never identified as to what they did. To connect the mass production 
center for the weapons with Peenumde is flat wrong and you know it. Give a
source for your article stating that it was at Peenumde and we will see. Better
yet type it in for all of us to see and comment on. The moral aspects of 
space exploration and development are relevant here on sci.space.

Dennis
Newsgroups: sci.space
From: hack@arabia.uucp (Edmund Hack)
Subject: Re: Who pays for SEI studies? (was Re: Lunar landing in 2002)
Organization: Lockheed ESC, Houston
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1992 19:48:48 GMT

In article <1992Sep29.123542.1@fnalf.fnal.gov> higgins@fnalf.fnal.gov (Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey) writes:
>In article <1654@hsvaic.boeing.com>, eder@hsvaic.boeing.com (Dani Eder) writes:
>> 
>> NASA has maintained an office for the past several years at the
>> Johnson Space Center in Houston, TX dedicated to planning the
>> Lunar and Mars exploration programs.  [...]
>>
>> Most of the work on these plans has been done in-house by NASA people.
>> My company (and I assume other aerospace companies) maintain groups
>> doing parallel work on company funds.  This is speculative on our part,
>> in the hope that a real program will develop at some point.
>> 
>> For the past couple of years NASA has requested funding to start to
>> pay contractors to work on these projects.  The US Congress has seen 
>> fit to deny these requests except at the most minimal levels
>> ($1 million per year).
>
>Dani, I have wondered how all this work gets paid for, since Congress
>has voted essentially nothing for the Space Exploration Initiative. 
>You give part of the answer:  some of the work is company-funded.
>But, judging from the papers and conferences I see, there are really
>quite a lot of people working on SEI-type stuff.  How does NASA pay
>for in-house work?  Is there a non-SEI source of funds for this? 

Yes.  The work I have done on FLO and other mission studies has been
paid out of discretionary funds.  Each center and the sub-organizations
within a center (here at JSC they are the Directorates and the
Divisions) has a certain amount of discetionary funds that can be
allocated to "think tank" studies.  There are also explicit funds for
advanced mission studies.
>
>I also feel that such companies as Eagle Engineering and SAIC seem to
>do a lot of this work for their size.  Can it all be internally
>funded, or is there a source of NASA money for it, or are they getting
>contracts from Boeing, Martin Marrietta, etc.?

These companies are often sub-contractors to primes such as Rockwell
(Shuttle at JSC), MacDac (prime for SSF) and Lockheed Engineering &
Sciences (my employer - support to JSC's Engineering Directorate).  They
are useful for short term work that you don't want to hire and fire
someone for, for specialized expertise you don't want to maintain
in-house and since several of these are small or small disadvantaged
businesses (use of SB and SDBs are required as part of our contracts.)
-- 
    Edmund Hack - Lockheed Engineering & Sciences Co. - Houston, TX
  hack@aio.jsc.nasa.gov - I speak only for myself, unless blah, blah..
   Papoon for President - You Know He's Not Insane! - Endorsed by the
  American Friends of the Martian Space Party, League of Winged Voters
Newsgroups: sci.space
From: fcrary@ucsu.Colorado.EDU (Frank Crary)
Subject: Re: NASA Daily News for 09/30/92 (Forwarded)
Organization: University of Colorado, Boulder
Date: Sat, 3 Oct 1992 04:10:48 GMT

In article <BvG881.5EJ@zoo.toronto.edu> henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes:
>>... the second shuttle mission for a CSA astronaut -
>>the first having been STS-41G in October 1984 with payload specialist
>>Marc Garneau...
>If I were Roberta Bondar, I'd be annoyed about being omitted...

I seem to have missed something: The only "CSA" I'm familiar with
is the Confederate States of America, but they haven't existed for
a good 127 years... They do still seem to have an air force despite
this, but I hadn't heard of a space program...

                                                 Frank Crary
                                                 CU Boulder
From: higgins@fnalc.fnal.gov (Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey)
Newsgroups: sci.space
Subject: Henry's hypersonic summary (was Re: Hypersonic test vehicle proposed)
Date: 28 Sep 92 23:58:26 GMT
Organization: Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory

In article <BvArHx.ADL@zoo.toronto.edu>, henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes:
> In article <BvAA50.HJL.1@cs.cmu.edu> PHARABOD@FRCPN11.IN2P3.FR writes:
>>         Aurora
>>         TSTO/XB-70 like aircraft (AW&ST, August 24, 1992)
>>         X-30                     (AW&ST, September 14, 1992)
>>         HALO                     (AW&ST, September 14, 1992)
>>         HL-20
>>         SSTO/DCX/DCY
>>         others ?
>>
>>Could somebody on this list explain the differences between these
>>projects ?

Hmm, possible fodder for the FAQ list...

> 
> Okay, here's a quick rundown.
[good summaries deleted, except for:]
> The X-30 is/was a project to build a high-hypersonic aircraft ultimately
> capable of reaching orbit.  It is dying because the pricetag for flight
> vehicles is too high.  The project has done some useful work on things
> like high-temperature materials, which other projects may use.

In a definitive summary, Henry, you should have mentioned that the
X-30 is the product of the NASP (National Aerospace Plane) program,
and that it will be an experimental aircraft, and *not* a direct
replacement for the Shuttle or an operational launcher with useful
payload.  

In the "others?" category, I would name Hermes, HOTOL, Saenger, Buran,
and HOPE.  I can't summarize them in this message, but maybe soon...

Bill Higgins, Beam Jockey              | Here Lies Bill Higgins:
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory  | He Never Ever Learned 
Bitnet:           HIGGINS@FNAL.BITNET  | To Play Guitar So Well
Internet:       HIGGINS@FNAL.FNAL.GOV  | But He Could Read and Write
SPAN/Hepnet:           43011::HIGGINS  | Just Like Ringing A Bell


Xref: sparky sci.space:14020 sci.skeptic:17490
From: draper@odin.mda.uth.tmc.edu (E.J. Draper)
Newsgroups: sci.space,sci.skeptic
Subject: Re: Russia's OPERATIONAL Starwars Defense System
Date: 5 Oct 1992 17:03:55 GMT
Followup-To: sci.space
Organization: U.T.M.D. Anderson Cancer Center
X-UserAgent: Nuntius v1.1.1d12
X-XXMessage-ID: <A6F5DF8FD802019A@mdarpi1.mda.uth.tmc.edu>
X-XXDate: Mon, 5 Oct 92 12:03:27 GMT



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

What does the acronym 

I think this McElwaine character is a more of a jokester than a crank. 

Let`s do some research, eh?


      |E|J-  ED DRAPER
 rEpar|D|<-  Radiologic/Pathologic Institute
             The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center
             draper@odin.mda.uth.tmc.edu
From: roberts@CMR.NCSL.NIST.GOV (John Roberts)
Newsgroups: sci.space
Subject: Re: Population
Date: 6 Oct 92 11:53:47 GMT
Organization: National Institute of Standards and Technology
	formerly National Bureau of Standards

-From: ewright@convex.com (Edward V. Wright)
-Subject: Re: Population
-Date: 21 Sep 92 15:21:20 GMT
-Organization: Engineering, CONVEX Computer Corp., Richardson, Tx., USA

-In <1992Sep21.064536.19465@ucsu.Colorado.EDU> knapp@spot.Colorado.EDU (David Knapp) writes:
->>  Not the only person. A common theme that runs through all environmental
->>debate is that every other species is more important than Man.
->Perhaps you've been reading literature the rest of us haven't. I've never
->seen such a thing.

-Oh?  You haven't even read about the spotted owl?  The environmentalist
-position there is that the species must be saved regardless of how many
-jobs are lost.  Now, there are certainly cases where a specific type of
-environmental protection may be worth some job loss, and this may be one
-of them, but that is not the environmentalist position.  Whenever 
-someone starts talking about cost/benefit analyses, the environmentalists
-do not contest the costs and benefits involved -- they just yell bloody
-murder. 

I've never thought the coverage of this controversy in the popular news
media provided enough details for anyone to form a reasonable opinion.
One item that was peripherally mentioned was that the proposed logging
of the area would be at much faster than replacement rate, so that after
a certain number of years (perhaps 10-20 - I don't know for sure), those 
jobs would be gone anyway. Also, I haven't seen too much mention of the
events leading to the current situation. Was the forest land in question
always protected, or is the protection a recent change in policy? If the
former, then I assume the people who want the jobs cutting the trees didn't
all graduate from lumberjack college this year - they must have been 
cutting somewhere else before this. If that is the case, then why did they
keep the industry going full blast until this was the only land left
available to them (if that's also the case)? Were they confident that they
would be able to get the protection removed? If, on the other hand, the 
protection was abruptly added, I can see how they might feel they have a
legitimate complaint.

Does anybody have more information on the events leading to the current
situation? It seems to me that the fact that the timber industry wants to
cut the trees in the area at much more than the replacement rate weakens
their argument - they basically want to destroy a renewable resource in
order to enjoy a few more years of prosperity. I'm also not entirely clear
on why these particular trees have to be cut - are they all the old-growth
timber that's left?

John Roberts
roberts@cmr.ncsl.nist.gov
From: roberts@CMR.NCSL.NIST.GOV (John Roberts)
Newsgroups: sci.space
Subject: Re: New Planet
Date: 1 Oct 92 11:06:30 GMT
Organization: National Institute of Standards and Technology
	formerly National Bureau of Standards


-From: LABBEY@GTRI01.GATECH.EDU
-Subject: New Planet?
-Date: 15 Sep 92 19:21:46 GMT
-Organization: Georgia Tech Research Institute

-Fm: SKY  TELESCOPE 70007,2762

-There is some REALLY BIG NEWS just now breaking in the astronomical world.  The
-IAU Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams has just issued IAU Circular 5611
-to report the discovery of a faint object that seems to be outside the orbit of
-Pluto!  Brian Marsden has given it the preliminary designation of an asteroid:
-1992 QB1. But its true nature will be the subject of intense observations in
-the next few months.

-Dan Green of the CBAT says they really don't want people to start calling this
-thing "Planet X" or the 10th planet or anything like that.  

How about "Bronson Alpha"? :-)  :-)

John Roberts
roberts@cmr.ncsl.nist.gov
From: tomas@u30005.rsv.svskt.se (Tomas Ruden)
Newsgroups: sci.space
Subject: Re: V-2 anniversary
Date: 6 Oct 92 09:59:36 GMT
Organization: Swedish Tax Administration

In article <28165@scicom.AlphaCDC.COM> wats@scicom.AlphaCDC.COM
(Bruce Watson) writes:
>Trivia question: Which city was targeted and hit by the most number
>of V-2s?
>
>-- 
>Bruce Watson (wats@scicom)  Tumbra, Zorkovick; Sparkula zoom krackadomando.  

And how many was built in total?
-- 
Tomas Ruden, tomas@rsv.svskt.se     !  "Saliga {ro de korkade, ty de skola 
Opinions expressed above are my own !  icke skjunka se djupt" - A. Caringer
and are not necessarily shared by   !
the Swedish Tax Administration      !  For a nice date: call strftime(3C)
Newsgroups: sci.space
From: gene@wucs1.wustl.edu (_Floor_)
Subject: Re: another sad anniversary
Organization: The K-Zoo Crew
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1992 23:57:05 GMT

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
      ^^^^^^^^
Ummm...'them' were on the moon.

  _____    "But you can't really call that a dance. It's a walk." - Tony Banks
 /  ___\  ___  __ ___   ___      _____________   gene@cs.wustl.edu
 | / __  / _ \ | /   \ / _ \     |  physics  |   gene@lechter.wustl.edu
 | \_\ \ | __/ |  /\ | | __/     |racquetball|   gev1@cec2.wustl.edu
 \_____/ \___/ |_| |_| \___/     |volleyball |   gene@camps.phy.vanderbilt.edu
 Gene Van Buren, Kzoo Crew(Floor), Washington U. in St. Lou - #1 in Volleyball
Newsgroups: sci.space
From: fcrary@ucsu.Colorado.EDU (Frank Crary)
Subject: Re: PUTTING VENUS IN AN ORBIT SIMILAR TO THE ORBIT OF THE EA
Keywords: Mars ocean water world terraforming
Organization: University of Colorado, Boulder
Distribution: na
Date: Sat, 3 Oct 1992 03:21:25 GMT

In article <cc8XRB1w164w@arghouse.UUCP> kfree@arghouse.UUCP (Kenneth Freeman) writes:
>> I think the accepted theory starts with the loss of carbon dioxide to 
>> geological processes: This gas disolves into oceans (Mars of 3.7 billion
>> years ago had such oceans), and reacts with disolved calcium to form
>> calcium carbonate rock. On Earth, there is a balance, because plate 
>> techtonics result in the subduction of ocean floors, the melting of 
>> calcium carbonate rock and the subsequent venting of carbon dioxide out
>> of volcanoes. On Mars, which lacking such an active geology, the carbon
>> dioxide is simply removed from the atmosphere and sits on the bottom of
>> the oceans (while they last). By pulling a major greenhouse gas out
>> of the atmosphere causes a major drop in temperature and other 
>> atmospheric components (such as water and more carbon dioxide during the
>> winter) freeze out. The result is an trend a colder and thiner 
>> atmosphere. (Of course, this mechanism works only as long as there are
>> oceans. After a point, the atmosphere is too cold and thin to sustain
>> them, and other loss mechanisms must have taken over.)

>Just as a thought experiment, how much water would have to
>be poured onto Mars for the resultant oceans (or ocean, if
>that's what it takes) for the water to stay there by virtue
>of its own mass?

I'm not quite sure what you mean by "stay there by virtue of its own
mass." Presumably, most of the water is still there (though no longer
as a liquid, but as polar caps, permafrost and _possibly_ a subsurface
water table.) If (somehow) the planet were to become warmed, this
water would be liberated and form oceans again (is enough is left,
only one ocean: The northern hemisphere is, on average, lower than the
southern, and there is evidence that the entire northern hemisphere
was once a single ocean.) Of course, this would be an unstable
situation, and the planet would cool and dry again, over the course of
millions of years. From a human perspective, however, a million years
and "forever" are not too different...

                                                  Frank Crary
                                                  CU Boulder

Newsgroups: sci.space
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: another sad anniversary
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 1992 15:32:41 GMT
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology

In article <1992Sep30.211128.20362@unocal.com> stgprao@st.unocal.COM (Richard Ottolini) writes:
>>Why on earth did they turn them off?  ...
>
>Same reason they turned off the Magellan radar- to save money.

You're a little ahead of yourself; Magellan is still functioning, although
officially it's still slated to be turned off next spring.

Magellan is not doing radar mapping just now, but *that* was planned from
the start -- it's doing a cycle of gravity mapping which doesn't involve
using the radar.  This is an important secondary mission.
-- 
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: Mark Goodman <mwgoodman@igc.apc.org>
Newsgroups: sci.space
Date: 01 Oct 92 17:34 PDT
Subject: Alleged Benefits of Military $
Nf-ID: #N:cdp:1469100017:000:767
Nf-From: cdp.UUCP!mwgoodman    Oct  1 17:34:00 1992


Reply-To: mwgoodman@igc.org

Gary writes:

> Military and aerospace dollars have a particularly
>high multiplier, 7x, because the jobs pay well and allow the workers
>more discresionary income that can be spent in the civilian economy.
>Direct public assistance funds have a much smaller multiplier, around
>2x, because the recipients don't have large discressionary funds for
>major capital purchases, they mostly pay rent and buy food.

I wonder where these numbers come from.  They seem implausible
to me, and would in any case be very hard to measure.  Everything
I have read suggests precisely the opposite, that money spent on
the military and other unproductive high-technology efforts (read
NASA) is particularly unbeneficial to the economy.

Mark W. Goodman

Newsgroups: sci.space
From: prb@access.digex.com (Pat)
Subject: Re: Atlas E and F questions ( Actually Pershing missile)
Organization: UDSI
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1992 16:34:29 GMT

In article <Bv9sz4.Lq1@zoo.toronto.edu> henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes:
>
>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.
>

Okay,  i knew the scouts were orbitals, i didn't know light implied unable to
reach orbit,  i was just referring to it's rather small payloads to leo.

>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?
>-- 

Well, given that everyone is always bitching about the costs of flight/lb
and given that this once in a blue moon chance came by i figured
everyone would snap at the chance.  i think the russians burned a bunch
of ss-20's as sounding shots, so why not us.   basically i figured
we could take a bunch of electronics and other packages that people
wanted to build and shoot them and get one big set of hardware
launch qualified.  if it works on top of a ss-20, it'll probably
survive shuttle launch conditions, if it doesn't find out why not
and not have to debug as much on rare and expensive shuttle missions..

is it worth the trouble?  that's a management issue, but i would have
thought some of the space groups would have proposed it.
as for the sounding rocket companies.  pay them to run the launches.
then they get the profits from launch.  set it up so that universities
and non-profit get first crack and real good rates,  everyone wins.
From: m0102@tnc.UUCP (FRANK NEY)
Newsgroups: sci.space
Subject: Editorial Cartoon
Date: 2 Oct 92 13:35:56 GMT
Reply-To: m0102@tnc.UUCP (FRANK NEY)
Distribution: usa
Organization: The Next Challenge, Fairfax, Va.


Who else saw the Endeavor cartoon in the 22 Sep issue of Newsweek?

It was good for a laugh if nought else.
-- 
The Next Challenge - Public Access Unix in Northern Va. - Washington D.C.
703-803-0391 To log in for trial and account info.