HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
Subject: Astronomy Lab for MS Windows 3.X - BETA TESTERS NEEDE 
Distribution: world
Organization: Where's the beach ?
Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1992 07:00:09 +0000


In article <1992Jul26.085936.2785@wybbs.mi.org> @wybbs.mi.org writes:

>
>
>I also tried to write to become a beta tester,
>and had mail bounce...
> 
This seems to be happening consistantly, I had a similar problem, it looks
like there is a broken mailer somewhere as the author seems to think he
exists !

B-)

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Paul J. Gravestock                  | email: paulg@griffin.demon.co.uk
Hertfordshire                       |        pgravestock@cix.compulink.co.uk
England                             |
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: stgprao@xing.unocal.com (Richard Ottolini)
Newsgroups: sci.space
Subject: Re: Calendar and Zodiak
Date: 28 Jul 92 04:33:46 GMT
Organization: Unocal Corporation
Originator: stgprao@xing

In article <1992Jul28.011553.19947@vdoe386.vak12ed.edu> ghasting@vdoe386.vak12ed.edu (George Hastings) writes:
>To make up the VERY small difference due to precession, as well
>as to adjust for the slowing of the Earth's rotation due to
>tidal drag of the oceans (caused by the moon's gravitation),
>from time to time they declare "leap-seconds" there was one
>this year.
>-- 


Incorrect.  Precession advances the year appoximately 20 minutes per year.
(24*60*365.2422)/26000.  There are other influences- quakes, solar activity,
weather- that may cause the length of the year to vary one or two seconds
per year.  Since we can measure the length of year to an accuracy of about
a microsecond (one part in 10E14), a second is a noticable effect.
Universal time based is based on atomic vibrations and independent of
astronomical irregularity.
Newsgroups: sci.space
From: cbeale@vela.acs.oakland.edu (Christopher Beale)
Subject: Re: Propulsion questions
Organization: Oakland University, Rochester MI.
Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1992 22:31:58 GMT

rdouglas@cs.wpi.edu (Rob Douglas) writes:

>We were sitting around discussing this and not getting any where, so I decided
>to ask the experts.

Well, I'm far from an expert and actually consider myself in the dark about
life in general but...

>1) If a space ship used a fusion reactor for propulsion, how would that work?
>Doesn't there have to be something sent out the back of the ship, so
>that the ship has to conserve momentum and move forward?  If so, then the
>amount of forward acceleration is limited by the weight carried by the ship 
>at the start, and there is no way to have a very long term propulsion source.

I think there is some research going on somewhere with inertial propulsion.
As it turns out, the old right-hand-rule with spinning disks appears to
exert a minute force without the classical mass expulsion conservation of
momentum deal.  Granted acceleration would be slow but theoretically it
could be sustained even in deep space.  This may end up right there with
cold-fusion, the unicorn, and OSF1 so don't quote me.  Heck, I may have
even imagined it during a recent airplane food-induced hallucination.

 -chris   


 --
 Christopher A. Beale                          |  beale@grumpy.ksc.nasa.gov
 Engineer, McDonnell Douglas Space Systems     |  cbeale@vela.acs.oakland.edu
 I don't want anybody else, when I think of UNIX I touch myself.
 --
-- 
Christopher A. Beale (non-prophet)         |   cbeale@vela.acs.oakland.edu
Engineer, McDonnell Douglas Space Systems  |   beale@grumpy.ksc.nasa.gov
"It's not the years honey, it's the milage."
From: amon@elegabalus.cs.qub.ac.uk
Newsgroups: sci.space
Subject: RE: Whales and Dolphins
Date: 27 Jul 92 12:16:07 GMT
Article-I.D.: cs.1992Jul27.121701.201111
Distribution: sci
Organization: [via International Space University]
X-Added: Forwarded by Space Digest
Original-Sender: isu@VACATION.VENARI.CS.CMU.EDU

> Whales clearly lack some of the intellectual capabilities of humans  
(for
> instance, humans don't appear to be prone to mass beachings). It  
would be
> 


But to be fair, this may be due to disease or to perceptual problems  
with their echo-system in shallow waters. It might be a whalish  
equivalent of being stuck in a room with built in optical illusions.

This could bring up some interesting questions. Human perception can  
be fooled by certain illusions because of the way we have evolved our
perceptual systems. One might wonder what sorts of illusions  
evolution on other worlds might toss up. Note that even given the  
same sort of environment, there is a certain sensitivity to WHEN  
certain capabilities evolve. There are illusions that occur not at  
the low level, but at higher levels of perception and across visual  
perception subsystems. (ie color vision is actually an entirely  
seperate visual subsystem from that which maps motion, since it  
relatively new in evolutionary terms.)
Newsgroups: sci.space
From: roberts@CMR.NCSL.NIST.GOV (John Roberts)
Newsgroups: sci.space
Subject: Re: Antiproton-boosted fission
Date: 23 Jul 92 01:12:26 GMT
Organization: National Institute of Standards and Technology
	formerly National Bureau of Standards


-From: bwood@diva.Berkeley.EDU (Blake Philip Wood)
-Subject: Antiproton-Boosted Microfission (was: Antimatter ...)
-Date: 22 Jul 92 13:05:55 GMT

-All the postings so far have missed the most realistic application of
-antimatter to space propulsion:  antiproton-boosted microfission.
-This is being investigated by a number of folks at Penn State, in
-collaboration with some people at Phillips Lab in Albuquerque.
-The Penn State lead is R.A. Lewis.  The reference I happen to have 
-on hand is from Nuclear Science and Engineering, (109) p.411 (1991).
-The basic idea is that hitting a U235 or Plutonium nucleus with an
-antiproton makes it so unstable that you get an average of 16 neutrons
-out of the resulting fission, as opposed to the usual 2-3.  This means
-that the critical mass which can be completely fissioned is very
-small.  
-The article above quotes
-results from another paper which suggests that fissioning one
-70mg Plutonium pellet per second in this fashion, each event requiring
-only 2e8 antiprotons, could yield 5GW of power in a complete propulsion
-system with a specific mass of only 0.07 kg/kW.

Great! Now we can build hand-held tactical nuclear machine guns. (One shot
destroys a building several miles away.)  :-(  (Another E.E. Smith idea,
this time from the Skylark series.)

Maybe they ought to be careful of who gets hold of the technology.

John Roberts
roberts@cmr.ncsl.nist.gov
From: sysmgr@king.eng.umd.edu (Doug Mohney)
Subject: Re: Magellan successors? (was Re: Support Lunar Resource Mapper Too!)
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 92 14:55:44 GMT
Organization: Computer Aided Design Lab, U. of Maryland College Park
Reply-To: sysmgr@king.eng.umd.edu

In article <1992Jul22.041320.1@fnala.fnal.gov>, higgins@fnala.fnal.gov (Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey) writes:

>Flying a Magellan-type mission to Mars or the Moon would be neat, too,
>but synthetic-aperture radar demands a heavy committment of
>tracking-network resources.  

Why? 

If you say "due to the large amounts of data sent back from the mission," I
got a great come-back for you :-)

   Previous signature chastized by Canadian Grad Student who flayed the United
   States as a bully from his bastion of free speech in Pittsburgh, PA. 
                    Yes, fact IS stranger that fiction.     
  -- >                  SYSMGR@CADLAB.ENG.UMD.EDU                        < --
From: amon@elegabalus.cs.qub.ac.uk
Newsgroups: sci.space
Subject: Space Station Freedom assembly questions
Date: 30 Jul 92 11:16:48 GMT
Article-I.D.: cs.1992Jul30.111750.65951
Distribution: sci
Organization: [via International Space University]
X-Added: Forwarded by Space Digest
Original-Sender: isu@VACATION.VENARI.CS.CMU.EDU

> still somewhat suspect.  On one launch, the second stage failed.   
Not
> good. There have been only a couple launches, so there is little  
basis
> to predict reliability.  There could be problems with things like
> 


On the FIRST launch. Not all that unusual to have problems with a  
first flight.

True, it has not had much flight history. Neither has Pegasus.  
Neither has SSTO. By that logic we will still be flying Delta's and  
the shuttle a century from now. 
Organization: Masters student, Mechanical Engineering, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA
Newsgroups: sci.space
Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1992 21:15:29 -0400 
From: David O Hunt <dh4j+@andrew.cmu.edu>
Subject: Odds of Life

IF (big if) one assumes that the probablilty of life arising on earth is
so small that it couldn't happen, then there are only 2 possiblities
for our existance:

1)  That life arrived from another place (accidentally or purposefully)

2)  That "God" created us

About 1) - this only delays talk, as SOMEwhere down the line life had to
arise spontaneously...kinda like the "turtles all the way down [to what?]"
argument.
About 2) - If we assume that the odds are impossibly small for life to
have arisen anywhere, then this proves "God's" existence.

But wait!  We've proven something that can't be proven.  And so God
vanishes in a puff of logic (with apologies to D. Adams).

Ergo, we aren't alive at all!  :P



David Hunt - Graduate Slave | My mind is my own.          | Towards both a
Mechanical Engineering      | So are my ideas & opinions. | Palestinian and
Carnegie Mellon University  | <<<Use Golden Rule v2.0>>>  | Jewish homeland!
============================================================================
Email:  dh4j@cmu.edu            Working towards my "Piled Higher and Deeper"

Cthulhu for President!  Stop voting for the lesser evil!
Newsgroups: sci.space
From: alexho@microsoft.com (Alex Howerton)
Subject: Re: ETs and Radio
Date: 30 Jul 92 20:42:30 GMT
Organization: Microsoft Corporation

In article <rwallace.712328556@unix1.tcd.ie> rwallace@unix1.tcd.ie (russell wallace) writes:
>Given that for evolution of life to start, a simple living organism must
>come together from amino acids etc. by accident; and that for any
>complex structure to fall together by accident is extremely improbable;
I don't agree with this argument. An "accident" is something unforeseen,
outside our sphere of knowledge.  Evolution and other natural processes
only happen "randomly" and "by accident" insofar as we are not suffic-
iently developed enough in our ability to perceive the workings of the
cosmos to discover the cause. An "accident" has a specific and discreet
series of events that lead up to it. To assert otherwise is to deny the 
whole body of work on Chaos theory.  As Albert said, "God does not play
dice with the universe."
From: gary@ke4zv.uucp (Gary Coffman)
Newsgroups: sci.space
Subject: Re: Propulsion questions
Date: 24 Jul 92 02:35:11 GMT
Reply-To: gary@ke4zv.UUCP (Gary Coffman)
Organization: Gannett Technologies Group

In article <Brst3K.Dps@zoo.toronto.edu> henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes:
>In article <cbeale.711757918@vela> cbeale@vela.acs.oakland.edu (Christopher Beale) writes:
>>I think there is some research going on somewhere with inertial propulsion.
>>As it turns out, the old right-hand-rule with spinning disks appears to
>>exert a minute force without the classical mass expulsion conservation of
>>momentum deal...
>
>I'd be very surprised to see any reputable research being done on such
>subjects.  The slightest hint of a violation of conservation of momentum
>would be screaming front-page news in physics, and there's been no such
>news as far as I know.

This sounds like a rehash of the old Dean Drive first popularized in
Analog Magazine. It's been throughly discredited. It appeared to produce
some thrust, but less than enough to counter it's own weight. The problem
was that the measurement was done with a spring scale and the shaking
caused by the unbalanced masses caused resonance in the spring giving
erroneous readings.

Gary
From: dietz@cs.rochester.edu
Newsgroups: sci.space
Subject: Re: Antimatter (was propulsion questions)
Date: 21 Jul 92 07:24:09 GMT

In article <Brp9H4.3GM@zoo.toronto.edu>, henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes:

|> >Also, security has to be pretty damn tight to keep  people
|> >away from this stuff, I suppose, because releasing it makes it go BOOM,
|> >right??
|> 
|> Antimatter isn't a very efficient explosive.  If you dropped an anti-iron
|> cannonball, it would just sit there and sizzle.  (The radiation would make
|> the immediate neighborhood very unhealthy, mind you.)

No.  Dropping an anti-iron cannonball -- or, indeed, exposing it to air
-- would vaporize it in short order.  The antiiron vapor would then quickly
mix with very hot air, and most of the antimatter would annihilate in
short order.

	Paul F. Dietz
	dietz@cs.rochester.edu
Newsgroups: sci.space
From: pgf@srl03.cacs.usl.edu (Phil G. Fraering)
Subject: Re: first man on moon date and time
Organization: Univ. of Southwestern Louisiana
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1992 03:02:46 GMT

meyers@mcclb0.med.nyu.edu writes:

>Can someone E-mail me the following information.  I wouldlike to know
>at what time the first man stepped on the moon and when it wass
>televised. Direct ansewrs to : Meyers@mcclb0.med.nyu.edu
>Thank you
>OAM

Everyone should know the date: July 20, 1969.

I think I remember seeing it late at night. This would count as
one of my first memories, if not my first. I was ~ 2.

Possibly not...

--
Phil Fraering pgf@srl0x.cacs.usl.edu where the x is a number from 1-5.
Phone: 318/365-5418
"There are still 201969 unread articles in 1278 groups" - nn message
"57 channels and nothing on" - Bruce Springsteen
From: khanna@rvgs.vak12ed.edu (Kevin Hanna)
Newsgroups: sci.space
Subject: Re: Star Trek Realism
Date: 30 Jul 92 05:02:24 GMT
Distribution: sci
Organization: Virginia's Public Education Network (Roanoke)

18084TM@msu.edu  writes:
> As long as we're on the Star-Trek vs. reality thread, here's a question
> that used to come up before my housemate Doug said "Shut up and just watch
> the show!":   When the ship is streaming through space, stars moving past
> at several per second, how is it that the ship is steadily lit from one
> side?  What is the source for this light? 

The light comes from the Enterprise's running lights reflecting
off the hull of the observer's  ship.  Geez!  :-)

kevin 
khanna@rvgs.vak12ed.edu
-- 
Kevin Hanna              | "After a time, you may find that having is not so 
khanna@rvgs.vak12ed.edu  |  pleasing a thing after all as wanting.  It is not 
                            logical, but it is often true."  Spock to Stonn  
Xref: sparky sci.space:11034 sci.astro:8527
From: phfrom@nyx.uni-konstanz.de (Hartmut Frommert)
Newsgroups: sci.space,sci.astro
Subject: Re: Answers to PLANES of the ecliptic question
Summary: A new question
Keywords: Precession, ecliptic
Date: 31 Jul 92 12:41:00 GMT
Organization: Dept. of Physics, University of Constance

slb@slced1.nswses.navy.mil (Shari L Brooks) writes:

>I am aware that the sun orbits the galactic center, and also oscillates
>about the center of the galactic plane.  This has made me think, though,
>does the plane of the ecliptic precess?  We have, on a planetary scale,
>the Earth rotational axis precessing every 26K years; does the plane
>of the solar system do thie also?  

Yes, it does, but on a very long timescale (order of billion years, I 
suppose).

In principle, each orbital perturbation of the Earth which is not spherically
symmetric and centered on the Sun causes a precession of the orbital plane.
So the Solar quadrupole moment causes a node precession against the 
equatorial plane of the Sun (besides a perihelion shift of same order of 
magnitude) -- I recently posted a question if that was measured. 

I wonder if anybody has appropriate data of the precession of the planetary
orbit planes ? Perihelion precession was determined from Earth based 
observations to a rather high accuracy of .1 .. .5 arcsecs per century,
but on node, i.e. orbital plane precession, there seem to be no data 
available.

>What would we measure this precession against, in order to distinguish it
>from the revolution about the galactic center, and oscillation about the 
>galactic plane?

I would say against the "cosmological background", i.e. the frame defined by
the cosmological background (3K) radiation (that in which the radiation
seems to be most isotropic). This should co-incide with that defined by the
directioins to distant galaxies.
--
 Hartmut Frommert, Physics, Univ of Constance, | + Whale killing is murder. +
 P.O.Box 55 60, D-W-7750 Konstanz, Germany | + Eat whale killers, not whales.
 E-Mail: <phfrom@dknkurz1.bitnet> or <phfrom@nyx.uni-konstanz.de>
+    "Windows NoT" expands in German to "Windows Noch Teurer"
+                                                ^even   ^more expensive
Newsgroups: sci.space
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Clinton Space Position
Date: Fri, 24 Jul 1992 16:45:15 GMT
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology

In article <1992Jul22.210517.4603@access.digex.com> rbunge@access.digex.com (Robert Bunge) writes:
>administrations have failed to establish priorities, and because
>they have not matched program needs with available resources, NASA
>has been saddled with more missions than it can successfully
>accomplish.

Translation:  we're going to kill some of the NASA programs, although
of course we're not going to tell you which ones.

>The Reagan and Bush Administrations spent more on defense space
>initiatives than on civilian space projects. Restore the historical
>funding equilibrium between NASA and the Defense Department's space
>program.

Translation:  we're going to cut the military space efforts too.

>...develop a National Launch System to maximize efficiency
>with scientific and commercial payloads.

Translation:  the launch industry will once again face major government-run
competition.

>Aim to establish a permanent human presence on the Moon and to send
>humans to Mars. Although we cannot yet commit major resources to
>these goals, they should be among the considerations that guide our
>science and engineering...

Translation:  we're not going to spend any money on them or start
any serious efforts toward them.

>... the costs should
>be borne by other nations as well as by the United States.

Translation:  our excuse will be that nobody else wants to either.
-- 
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: m0102@tnc.UUCP (FRANK NEY)
Newsgroups: sci.space
Subject: Re: Astronomy Lab for MS Windows 3.X - BETA TESTERS NEEDED
Date: 22 Jul 92 12:40:55 GMT
Reply-To: m0102@tnc.UUCP (FRANK NEY)
Organization: The Next Challenge, Fairfax, Va.


Add me as well, please:

Francis A. Ney, Jr.         Computer: Clone 386-33 with copr
101 S Harrison Road                   8 meg
Sterling, VA  22170-2421              DOS 5 and OS/2 2.0
(703) 709-5324                        VGA 512k
                                   Drives:  43M and 105M
-- 
The Next Challenge - Public Access Unix in Northern Va. - Washington D.C.
703-803-0391 To log in for trial and account info.
From: rwallace@unix1.tcd.ie (russell wallace)
Newsgroups: sci.space
Subject: Re: ET's, life in space
Date: 30 Jul 92 08:20:02 GMT
Distribution: sci
Organization: Trinity College, Dublin

In <1992Jul29.225958.20821@cs.cmu.edu> 18084TM@msu.edu (Tom) writes:

>>>Given that for evolution of life to start, a simple living organism must
>>>come together from amino acids etc. by accident; and that for any

>Not accident.  Think in statistics.  Given umpteen billion gallons
>of warm, super gunky sea, what are the possibilities that any one
>group of amino acids could form self-replicating protiens...

I *am* thinking in statistics. If the smallest possible self-replicator
is 1000 amino acids in size, and there is only one self-replicator of
that size, and supposing there are 20 possible amino acids, then the
odds against any 1000-amino acid chain being a self-replicator are
20^1000 to 1. Against this statistic, the total number of molecules that
can have been formed in the visible universe since the beginning of
time is insignificant.

(Note: I know RNA is probably more significant than protein in forming
the first life form, this is just an example: the argument holds with
slightly greater force regarding RNA, since nucleic acids are rarer than
amino acids (harder to form in the test tube). Also, I am using
"self-replicator" to mean *non-trivial* self reproduction.)

>They wouldn't even have to self-replicate, just affect each other.
>If one set of reactions happened to get into some kind of positive
>feedback....

Why would they not have to self-replicate? If positive feedback was
sufficient, then a hydrogen flame should be the first life form. (And
remember, we not only need self-replication, we need non-trivial
self-replication.)

>Check out 'protien spheres' in some biology book, BTW.  It's not
>that unusual for non-life to mimic life.

So what? We need actual life, not something that just mimics it. And
mimic is exactly all that those protein spheres do, given that they
don't have any equivalent of genetic information.

>Also, remember that
>protiens are building blocks, information, and catalysts in the
>cell.  And yet the basis for protiens (amino acids) are really
>easy to form, as the Miller experiment back in the 50's showed.

Yes, I've been *assuming* that huge quantities of amino acids are
present, and showing that even so, assembling those amino acids into a
life form is no mean task. (BTW: nucleic acids, which are at least as
important as amino acids, are a lot harder to form.)

--
"To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem"
Russell Wallace, Trinity College, Dublin
rwallace@unix1.tcd.ie
Newsgroups: sci.space
From: jdnicoll@watyew.uwaterloo.ca (James Davis Nicoll)
Subject: Re: ETs and Radio
Organization: University of Waterloo
Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1992 14:46:50 GMT

In article <1992Jul30.220544.9067@ke4zv.uucp> gary@ke4zv.UUCP (Gary Coffman) writes:
>
>>>subtract out all systems that don't have a planet in the liquid water zone,
>>
>>This is where we get into real guesswork.  Note, though, that the liquid-
>>water zone is wider than we once thought -- Mars would have liquid water
>>if it was bigger.  (The idea that the "habitable zone" is very narrow and
>>Earth has just happened to stay in it has been discredited.)
>
>The potential liquid water zone of a G star like ours is roughly from
>near Venus orbit to somewhat beyond Mars orbit given specially designed
>planets in the various places. Now on the solar system scale, that's a
>small range of distances.

	What about worlds like Europa, where the surface is frozen ice(s),
but a liquid ocean exists under the crust? You get radiation shielding 
without a magnetic field that way, too.

							James Nicoll
Newsgroups: sci.space