Al Globus Wrote:
> These 'short-sighted congresscritters' have been funding the space
> program at about $14 billion per year. By comparison, NSF -- which does
> most of the non-medical-defense-space science funding in the US -- get's
> about $4.8 billion. Thus, congress thinks space development is about
> three times more important than all basic science (except medical).
> Seems like the aerospace lobby is doing just fine .

I was under the impression that universities did most basic science.

panamabob Wrote:
> proof is that wealthy individuals have opted to fly the old work horse soyuz.

Could have a little bit to do with it being the only one they're allowed to fly
on.

Al Globus Wrote:
> No. It was a military funded project. The Universities did much of the
> work under grants from DOD.

The idea for the ARPAnet also came from the pentagon. WWW of course came from
CERN.

panamabob Wrote:
> hehe but suppose you slow down a bit from orbital speed in the relatively air

> free high altitude?

Either you do it high enough for friction to slow you down and have to deal
with the stresses or you do it with engines above the atmosphere where friction
can't tear the craft apart. Either way you'll either lose the craft or have to
carry so much fuel it can't make it to orbit in the first place.

panamabob Wrote:
> defacto safety or perhaps the markets perception of safety is already shown
by
> the purchase of ruskie space seats....

Not really. Safety is only shown by how many blow up and that's what the
market will react to over the long term.

Just because people climb Everest doesn't mean that people think it's safe.
The same will be true for space tourism until it's an almost everyday thing.

gardener1_98 Wrote:
> if we can string telephone cables across 3,000 miles of ocean, then surely,
> surely we can string one from here to LEO.

I can see a slight problem with that in that you wouldn't get any orbital
velocity from the cables. Besides it'll just fall down unless you can get it
in tension or make it very rigid (both unlikely if it only goes to LEO).

Brett Sargeant Wrote:
> I was thinking along the lines of having the whole module where the tourists
> sit eject, You wouldn't necessarily have to have the cargo doors, as you
could
> build the module to sit in the bay and take their shape, but is just an idea
:)

Probably not such a good idea as they also have the radiators on the inside of
the cargo bay doors. If you don't bring the radiators with you the shuttle
will only last about 8 hours in orbit before it overheats. This is why they
always have the cargo bay doors open when they're in space.

As for building the radiator into the tourist module and getting rid of the
doors I wouldn't recommend it because the radiators would probably not survive
a launch given that they're quite flimsly and also having a system to allow
them to be extended from the tourist module is likely to be rather complicated
if it can be done at all.

The escape system you mention for the crew is the one I've heard of. It's not
even close to good enough. In reality they should have an F-111 like ejection
capsule.

panamabob Wrote:
> Again i give you the NASA space pen vs. the Ruskies space pencil :-)

The space pen story is an urban legend with no basis in fact.

I suggest you don't use it. Also have a look at
http://www.snopes2.com/business/genius/spacepen.htm

> We're making plans for a space pad anyways with the island project...so I'll
> be more than happy to host the launches. Where we are we have no hurricanes,
> so that will help a bit :-) and we are around 8' above equator which will
> help get up to speed for equitorial track.

Island project? Anywhere I can get information on what you're doing?

As for 8' do you mean 8 degrees or 8 minutes of degree? Either one would be
good.

Doh! forgot about the radiators, suppose you could try to add something
to blow the doors away from the shuttle before the capsule though. ie
eject the doors explosively then a couple of seconds later separate the
capsule.

Ryan Healey wrote:

That might be possible although the doors are pretty big. But then again if
the shuttle is inverted (as it always is after the roll) gravity could pull the
doors down, you'd just need to seperate the doors from the craft which is
easier then having to throw them clear. Same thing could be done with the
radiators and also with the module (just seperate it and let it fall although
you'd need a way to turn it up the right way for the parachutes to come out).

--- Brett Sargeant wrote:

Location is in Panama waters ; we're going to be located about 8 degrees
north of equator at aroung 80 degrees west Grenwich.

www.SouthernLatitudes.org

About NASA space pen; come on?! That snope site is administered by who? God?
he-he It's usually just * their * opions on many things. Show me the
Rusian pen version :-) Besides it's the point that I was trying to make ,
not the actual fact, and the space pen is the easiest and simplist anecdotal
type of example to use :-)

Even snopes acknowledges the essense of the anecdote (regardless if accurate
or not :-) Their quote is : "The lesson of this anecdote is a valid one,
that we sometimes expend a great deal of time, effort, and money to create a
"high-tech" solution to a problem, when a perfectly good, cheap, and simple
solution is right before our eyes"

Is USA technology better than Ruskies because of ability to create exotic
specialty alloys, components, etc.? If it was my butt in the seat, your damn
sure I would want the best of the best possible... but is the other methods
used serviceable? That's the $64 question. That's the question HMO's deal
with every day as well.

Many times it would appear it's an Al Rubestein contraption with greater
potentials for "oops" .... sometimes we over engineer things because we
think we can. Certain english cars had that within them and were a nitemare
to operate. The v12 engine required a mechanic on retainer :-)

Why not have an eject capsual in regular airliners as well to get the safety
even higher? Because its generally considered that accidents that go "boom"
would also take out the capsual as well, unless it was so armoured to
protect, and then the weight factor would be a problem (Airlines consider
the livery paint weight in their operation figures, can you imagine an
armoured capsual :-) The idea is that a live pilot with experience will be
able to "fly-out" of savable situations. Redundant power plants, hydrolic /
electrical systems, navigation etc. help overcome many problems just shy of
the "boom" ones. Once you get into catastropic scenarios, which the bean
counters and FAA certifiers / investigators feel are far and in between ,
there's not too much to mitigate the outcome. Generally not time enough to
do anything :-( Airbags where developed to act in micro seconds but even
they can't mitigate many scenarios. When an airliner has a sudden stop, its
all pretty much over.

However looking at the shuttle as a transport bed, and then attaching a
"container" much akin to sikorsky sky crane set up, may not be a bad idea.
The Ruskies have essentially done that by separating the "engines" from the
Buran shuttle itself. In essence, the whole shuttle component could be
seperated from the fuel and engines in case of impending catastrope. If in
the case of the USA shuttle "boom" a ruskie type of system may have been
able to sense the problem and "blow away" the whole orbiter from the highly
volatile problem.

Question is during the powered section of flight, would the shuttle gained
sufficient speed to be able to manuveur a dead stick landing at or near the
launch point? Kinda depends if its within the first few seconds or several
minutes into the burn sequence. Still, something is better than nada?
Perhaps a bevy of heavy parachutes could deploy for the low altitude
situations?

Regarding orbital velocity with sky hook or elevator cable... sure you would
have the velocity! At ground level your already going at around 1000 mph
(circumference of earth revolving in 24 hours) As you go up the cable
elevator, as you go higher the velocity increases as well. The cable is
perpendicular to the earth so at ground its moving (like the rest of us at
1000 mph) but at the high end it has to be moving multitude of times faster
to maintain its perpendicularity. Like Geo stationary orbits being 20,000 +
miles out they actually in relation to earth are going many times faster
than 17000 escape velocity because of the greater distance they cover ....Am
Iwording that clearly :-)

So actually the strength of the cable not only is to sustain the weight of
itself and the payload over its length against gravitational push from the
surrounding ether but also to pull around and increase velocity of the
elevator itself and its mass as it goes higher and higher and increase the
necessary velocity to keep up with the greater 'circumference" it needs to
travel.

Now thats a lot of stress :-) Of course if you put the elevator at a higer
latitude, the circumference it travels in would be less. Heck you put it at
the poles (overlooking the small wobble) it would have barely any velocity
stress to deal with, but then would the cable stayup there? hmmm.

.

This is true, and University research is funded, primarily, by grants
from the federal government. Recently, commercial companies are begun
funding research but there have been significant problems. For example,
in several cases the research didn't come out the way the company wanted
(e.g., their drug was dangerous or didn't work) and the company tried,
sometimes successfully, to prevented publication. Some major journals
will no longer accept papers if sponsors have veto or excessive
influence over publication of the research.

On Friday, June 7, 2002, at 04:17 AM, Ryan Healey wrote:

> I was under the impression that universities did most basic science.
The International Space Station (ISS) most important legacy may be
jump-starting space tourism. Consider: the first space tourist, Dennis
Tito, was supposed to go to the Soviet era Mir space station. Under
pressure from NASA, Russia de-orbited the Mir which resulted in Mr. Tito
going to the ISS instead. Now the Mir was old, smelly, crowded and
probably not all that nice. The ISS was brand new, shinny, much more
roomy, etc. Mr. Tito came back to Earth with glowing accounts of how
great space is. Would his experience have been as good on Mir?

Al Globus
CSC at NASA Ames Research Center
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/~globus/home.html

--- panamabob wrote:
> Location is in Panama waters ; we're going to be located about 8 degrees
> north of equator at aroung 80 degrees west Grenwich.

Sounds like a pretty site for a launch.

> www.SouthernLatitudes.org

> About NASA space pen; come on?! That snope site is administered by who? God?
> he-he It's usually just * their * opions on many things.

Which are pretty much almost always true. If they say something's false then
it probably is.

> Show me the Rusian pen version :-) Besides it's the point that I was trying
> to make , not the actual fact, and the space pen is the easiest and simplist
> anecdotal type of example to use :-)

If it's false then it doesn't work. Besides the low tech solution (using a
pencil) is not good.

> Even snopes acknowledges the essense of the anecdote (regardless if accurate
> or not :-) Their quote is : "The lesson of this anecdote is a valid one,
> that we sometimes expend a great deal of time, effort, and money to create a
> "high-tech" solution to a problem, when a perfectly good, cheap, and simple
> solution is right before our eyes"

But NASA used the low tech solution on Mercury and Gemini flights so they did
see it. Just that a better one came along which actually was good (unlike the
pencil). Of course a PDA would have been even better.

> Is USA technology better than Ruskies because of ability to create exotic
> specialty alloys, components, etc.? If it was my butt in the seat, your damn
> sure I would want the best of the best possible... but is the other methods
> used serviceable? That's the $64 question. That's the question HMO's deal
> with every day as well.

Yes in fact. Better materials and better manifacturing processes do make the
technology superior. Of course even the most advanced technology can't save a
completely stuffed up design.

> Many times it would appear it's an Al Rubestein contraption with greater
> potentials for "oops" .... sometimes we over engineer things because we
> think we can. Certain english cars had that within them and were a nitemare
> to operate. The v12 engine required a mechanic on retainer :-)

I'm thinking that might also be another urban legend. Do you have a source for
it?

> However looking at the shuttle as a transport bed, and then attaching a
> "container" much akin to sikorsky sky crane set up, may not be a bad idea.
> The Ruskies have essentially done that by separating the "engines" from the
> Buran shuttle itself. In essence, the whole shuttle component could be
> seperated from the fuel and engines in case of impending catastrope. If in
> the case of the USA shuttle "boom" a ruskie type of system may have been
> able to sense the problem and "blow away" the whole orbiter from the highly
> volatile problem.

That's could be seen to be like what used to be done with the Mercury and
Apollo missions. They had the capsule right on the top with an escape tower
equiped with solid rocket motors above it. If something went wrong the escape
tower motors would fire sending the crew clear of the rocket.

> Question is during the powered section of flight, would the shuttle gained
> sufficient speed to be able to manuveur a dead stick landing at or near the
> launch point? Kinda depends if its within the first few seconds or several
> minutes into the burn sequence. Still, something is better than nada?
> Perhaps a bevy of heavy parachutes could deploy for the low altitude
> situations?

In reality we want to have as complete an abort as we can get. If possible we
should be able to abort at all points from the take-off run to the landing run.
This is one reason why VTOHL isn't a good idea.

> Regarding orbital velocity with sky hook or elevator cable... sure you would
> have the velocity!

You would have velocity but it wouldn't be anything close to orbital unless
you're bringing the cable up near GEO (to GEO would be oribital at that
location).

> At ground level your already going at around 1000 mph (circumference of earth
> revolving in 24 hours) As you go up the cable elevator, as you go higher the
> velocity increases as well.

Your velocity will go up but it won't meet orbital velocity until you reach
GEO. Also realise that the orbital velocity down at 400 km is lot higher then
it is at GEO.

> The cable is perpendicular to the earth so at ground its moving (like the
rest
> of us at 1000 mph) but at the high end it has to be moving multitude of times
> faster to maintain its perpendicularity.

That assumes it's rigid enough to do so. Unless you bring it to GEO and well
beyond to provide some tension it will have to be very rigid otherwise it's
just going to flop around and fall over. I don't really think you can get the
rigidity to do this from current materials.

As for the velocity, sure it will be higher but the difference between here and
400 km isn't all that much in terms of velocity required to cover the distance
in 24 hours. It's not really going to be provide much of a boost since most of
the energy is in getting the speed. Maglev boosting would be much more
effective at helping a craft into orbit and also a lot easier to do.

> Like Geo stationary orbits being 20,000 + miles out they actually in relation
> to earth are going many times faster than 17000 escape velocity because of
the
> greater distance they cover ....Am Iwording that clearly :-)

If your cable goes past GEO it will be going faster then orbital velocity.
You'd have to go even further out to get to 11 km s^-1.

> Now thats a lot of stress :-) Of course if you put the elevator at a higer
> latitude, the circumference it travels in would be less. Heck you put it at
> the poles (overlooking the small wobble) it would have barely any velocity
> stress to deal with, but then would the cable stayup there? hmmm.

Don't worry about the precesion. It's really too slow to matter.

Would the cable stay up at the poles? It depends on how strong it is, I'd say
it probably wouldn't. Although if you did build anything like that it wouldn't
be a cable, but a building. Make the CN Tower look short.

Ryan Healey wrote:

> That might be possible although the doors are pretty big. But then again if
> the shuttle is inverted (as it always is after the roll) gravity could pull the
> doors down, you'd just need to seperate the doors from the craft which is
> easier then having to throw them clear.

;-)

Once the shuttle has left the ground it's in freefall
apart from engines and aerodynamics. The doors don't fall open.
The whole vehicle is falling at the same rate.

> --- Brett Sargeant wrote:

--
- Ian Woollard (ian.woollard@...)

"Is a planetary surface the right place for an expanding
technological civilization?"
- Gerard O'Neill

The shuttle has elaborate abort sequences for many parts of flight --
but only after the solids separate. The Challenger accident, of course,
involved the solids and happened pretty quickly. They never had a
chance.

On Saturday, June 8, 2002, at 03:06 AM, Ryan Healey wrote:

> In reality we want to have as complete an abort as we can get. If
> possible we
> should be able to abort at all points from the take-off run to the
> landing run.
> This is one reason why VTOHL isn't a good idea.
>
The International Space Station (ISS) most important legacy may be
jump-starting space tourism. Consider: the first space tourist, Dennis
Tito, was supposed to go to the Soviet era Mir space station. Under
pressure from NASA, Russia de-orbited the Mir which resulted in Mr. Tito
going to the ISS instead. Now the Mir was old, smelly, crowded and
probably not all that nice. The ISS was brand new, shinny, much more
roomy, etc. Mr. Tito came back to Earth with glowing accounts of how
great space is. Would his experience have been as good on Mir?

Al Globus
CSC at NASA Ames Research Center
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/~globus/home.html

It won't. The space elevator is in tension, not compression. In
tension there are materials that, theoretically, should work. In
compression, not even theoretical materials can do the job.

On Saturday, June 8, 2002, at 03:06 AM, Ryan Healey wrote:

> Would the cable stay up at the poles? It depends on how strong it is,
> I'd say
> it probably wouldn't.

Space tourism could be our ticket to the stars. Save your pennies,
suborbital flights for $100,000 may start in 2005! See
http://www.spaceadventures.com/suborbital for details.

Al Globus
CSC at NASA Ames Research Center
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/~globus/home.html