Hey all
wrninc@...
Thanks
Randy
Could we have a little bit of self-moderation? This is the Space Studies
Institute list (ssi_list). Arguments about Israeli and Palestinian
politics seem just a wee bit tangential to SSI's purpose. If there are
folks out there who have just joined the list who really are interested in
space industrialization and settlement, they might be turned off by such
excursions.
Thanks.
Ron Menich
I wish I could believe you, but I don't. NASA seems to be in the midst of
constant planning and re-planning for new Mars missions. Meanwhile, a
central question of prime importance to the future direction of space
industrialization and settlement ---- How much water if any is *really* at
the Lunar poles, and is it in a readily-extractable form? --- goes
unanswered. And we know more about black holes and quasars than we do
about NEAs, despite the facts that NEAs
a.) Have bombarded the Earth before with catastrophic effects; and
b.) Will figure prominently as resource mining sites in our move to space,
within the lifetimes of many people alive today.
seem to have crowd appeal (despite the magnificently successful NEAR
Shoemaker mission). Sexy seems to get the money.
Why is it that we spend money on ever-finer resolution pictures of Mars
today, when our entire civilization could be toasted by an asteroid
collision tomorrow? There are approximately 1300 known NEAs, and I've
read that there may be a total of 200,000 of them, meaning that we've so
far discovered less than 1% of the total. Of course, no one really knows
for sure how many there are. What a great tragedy it would be if we
learned all sorts of neato-keen things about Mars, Pluto, black holes,
quasars, and all manner of other heavenly objects, only to wake up one
morning that London had been erased from the map by a 21st-century Tunguska
experience.
We've had oodles of Mars orbiters and landers. We know a tremendous
amount about Mars already. We need to put further Mars exploration on ice
for the moment while we fill fundamental gaps in our knowledge of the Moon
and NEAs. What we need to know now is:
a.) Assessment of Lunar polar ice.
b.) How many NEAs are there, what are their orbits, and what are their
compositions
There's a limited space budget. A dollar spent on further Mars
exploration is a dollar less spent towards answering the basic questions
critical to future space industrialization and settlement. Mars **is**
in competition with the Moon (and with NEAs, for sure).
Ron Menich
MarsCity1@...
11:21 AM
Please
respond to
ssi_list
The Moon Is not in competion with Mars. We should explore both, ultilize
both and colonize both. They're both part of the new & final frontier of
space.
Rick L. Sterling-Member-The Mars Society
> It seems that Mars is sexy, whereas the Moon is passe' and NEAs just
don't
> seem to have crowd appeal (despite the magnificently successful NEAR
> Shoemaker mission). Sexy seems to get the money.
>
> Why is it that we spend money on ever-finer resolution pictures of
Mars
> today, when our entire civilization could be toasted by an asteroid
> collision tomorrow? There are approximately 1300 known NEAs, and
According to a TV show I saw on NEAs on the Discovery channel. The
first time we hear about a collision will be the blast. According to
the show, there is coverage of less than 1% of the sky, and there are
sections of the sky that are not covered at all.
The estimate they gave was that they know of 1% of all NEAs greater
than 1km in diameter.
Bill
Hello.
Con VoceViva puoi anche ascoltare ed inviare email al telefono.
Chiama VoceViva allo 0143 434343
http://voceviva.tiscali.it
--- In ssi_list@... "Vladimir Oscar Vasquez Franco"
> could be solved with easiness, will the capsule that is used for
the launchings possess aerodynamic properties in the first place,
besides possessing ailerons, or something more than it allows him to
have something of control when it is in the air, achieving the
atmosphere so an allied one is instead of an enemy, don't we maybe
have years building supersonic airplanes?, <
They will have to be moving supersonic before the engine will even
work. They have given a 10 year as max to build a mag-lev launch
system to act like a catapult for the SCRAM jet. The scram jet would
of course only be the first stage of the launch vehicle. It should
save a lot of money though. I believe it was supposed to cut costs by
a factor of 10.
I am not sure if this e-mail was received, so I will try again, sorry if it was the second time received.
We just saw a wonderful light show Sunday morning before daylight. The sky's of Afghanistan and other counties might see this one soon
http://www.smdc.army.mil/PhotoGallery/html/PhotoGallery.html
Some more links of interest someone sent me during my research:
http://www.smdc.army.mil/PhotoGallery/html/PhotoGallery.html
http://www.airbornelaser.com/
http://www.fas.org/spp/starwars/program/sbl.htm
http://www.sbl.losangeles.af.mil/Divisions/FrontOffice/body.htm
http://www.spaceref.com/directory/future_technology/solar_power_satellites/
And a presentation for all of you about Sep 11th events. If it offends anyone, let me know, and I will personal visit you and set you straight.
http://attacked911.tripod.com/
And for a Message from Boeing is also attached.
send message
A newbee question regarding the Billion Dollar Budget, what's OTV and HLLV?
Tnx in advance,
///David
Hello,
This email message is a notification to let you know that
a file has been uploaded to the Files area of the ssi_list
group.
File : /Administrator Xenophile's $75 Billion Budget.xls
Uploaded by : xenophile2002 xenophile2002@...
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You can access this file at the URL
To learn more about file sharing for your group, please visit
Regards,
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/David
--- In ssi_list@... David Larsson
> A newbee question regarding the Billion Dollar Budget, what's OTV
and HLLV?
>
> I googled for it and also had a look at SSI homepage without
success.
>
> Tnx in advance,
>
> ///David
>
doesn't need the robust launch systems to escape the Earth's
gravity, and more efficiently transfer payloads between two or more
orbital points.
HLLV = Heavy Lift Launch Vehicle - A launch vehicle that can launch
heavy payloads into orbit. For instance, skylab with a volume of 361
m^3 was launched in one shot (discounting the smaller attached
modules.)
http://www.astronautix.com/craft/skylab.htm
compared to ISS with a habitable volume of 425 m^3 and a mass of
186,357 kg
http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/station/isstodate.html
Hope that helps.
TangoMan
is anybody there?
some cool stuff, but I'm snipping straight to:
> developed sub-orbital infrastructure to get the tourists up to
> 145km. Not just a few, but a few hundred per day.
You take the fuselage of a Boeing 727(1), and rebuild it with
updated (not future or near-future) tech, such as composite
materials. Build another just like it. Build a fuel tank the same
size and shape. Put the two fuselages side by side, with say a metre
between them. Put the fuel tank beneath and between.
Put a cylinder, (say, two metres diameter) on top and between.
Then you stick on one of those pivoting oblique wings. So now the
thing doesn't go "BOOM" until you reach mach 2-point-something. The
cylinder contains wing-moving equipment and anything else that I've
forgotten.
Now, this looks like a collection of pipes, so we need to "blend"
the contours together. We also need a heat shield for re-entry. So
we cover it all with a heat-resistant material. So take out
the "inner walls," as it were, of the two fuselages and leave that 1-
metre spacing between as an extra-wide aisle, useful for emergences,
providing larger restrooms, etc.
We use J58 jet engines from the SR-71 Blackbird (2) and COBRA (3)
or RS-68 (4) rocket engines. The number and placement of these
engines is something we can talk about, if you like. Just for fun,
we run it at 5 G's down a 10 km maglev runway.
Re-entry is belly-down, with the wing held lengtwise along the top
until speeds drop to the point that wings are a good thing.
We can now take 125 to 300 passengers to dock with the rotovator.
Per flight. Or perhaps we man-rate Sea Dragon.
Xenophile (wishing he could buy a ticket)
(1) http://meltingpot.fortunecity.com/rundberg/267/727.htm
(2) http://www.hill.af.mil/museum/photos/coldwar/j58.htm
(3)
http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technology/sli_cobra_020904.ht
ml
(4) http://www.spacedaily.com/news/rlv-02d.html
Dear Moderator:
earlier today. I have posted it all again with a subject line.
Thanks,
Xenophile
This post, though not having a direct relation to the main topic, is in
response to a question asked of me by TangoMan. So if'n you haven't liked
Paul, TangoMan, and I's discourse in the past, DON'T read this.
>themselves... Probably closer proximity to Soviet psyops as well with
>Marxist programs in effect. That may sound nuts, but its true.
I'm not exactly certain of what you mean by this, but if you're
implying that the Europeans had Communist and Socialist Parties
vying for political representation within their societies, then yes,
the very presence of the ideologies and a means to give electoral
voice to their ideals will have a profound effect on European
outlook. America, almost alone in the world, has never had the
influence of Socialism, that is until the Green Party showed up,
premeating into the civilian consciousness.
TangoMan, I apologize for being a little confusing here (it was late when I
wrote this). What I meant is this: The Soviets had, during the Cold War,
many non-military efforts designed to strengthen their position and/or
weaken the West's - just as we certainly did within there borders. These
things included some or all of the following: Covert funding, orginization,
and training of groups, political or otherwise that they felt furthered
their objectives as described above. Greenpeace, amongst others, is
suspected to have been helped along quite a bit by Soviet involvement. My
point was, that sharing a border with Western Europe certainly made it
easier to infiltrate agents and ideas, and therefore, overtime a far greater
impact of left/socialist ideas, memes, and what have you in Europe than in
the US. Sure, a little speculation here, but I'd bet that this is awfully
close to fact.
In addition, I found an interesting article in-line with some of your most
recent posts about the paradoxical resistance of the Greens to efforts that
will lead to Space projects:
http://www.techcentralstation.com/121503A.html
Val
I think Frank already mentioned this, but it did occur to me that building
cylcers on the asteroid and launching them from there would pretty much
solve all the problems, and retain all the benifits. Fuel costs would be
greatly reduced over either of the previous methods, and a large number of
cyclers could be churned out in a short peroid of time. In fact, because, as
Tango pointed out, most of the materials for propulsion and construction
will come form the body itself, a large space infrastructure shouldn't even
be needed.
else is needed on the rock, and, voila: A cycler factory in an orbit close
enough to what we need to reduce fuel. Sounds good, eh?
And I wish we'd stop saying concrete... I think that particular material has
been shot full of holes. Dirt and composites is all we need - makes it a
whole lot simpler from a construction and logistics viewpoint.
Val
Stay informed on Election 2004 and the race to Super Tuesday.
--- In ssi_list@... "Valens Agnitio"
> methods, and a large number of cyclers could be churned out in a
> short peroid of time.
Yes and No. Fuel costs would be reduced, that is true, but you'd
need to find a number of other asteroids because you can't make the
Earth - Mars orbit be in a 1:1 resonance.
Consider that Earth will return to an arbitrary starting point 365
days along its orbit. Mars will return to an arbitrary point along
its orbit in 688 days.
So, if we launch from Earth and after a transit of X days, the
cycler arrives at Mars orbit and intersects the vicinity of the
planet Mars.
If the two plantets were in a 1:1 resonance, or a 2:1 resonance,
then return trips would be hunky dory, but they're not, so if we
launch from Mars and after X days of transit, the cycler will reach
Earth orbit, but Earth will be somwhere else on its orbit.
Earth and Mars are on a 1.88:1 resonance (688/365) so the cycler has
to make 7 more trips without picking up or dropping any cargo before
it can intersect Earth on its orbit and Mars on its orbit again.
Why 8 cyclers? Here's my thinking on the matter. If Earth and Mars
are aligned so that intersection occurs after X days of transit,
that same alignment will happen again in about 15 years.
1.88 years * 8 trips = 15.04 years. This means that if the resonance
can be engineered to be 1.875, or 684 days, then on each of the
Earth and Mars legs, the orbit intersection will occur 1.8 days
before or after the planet arrives in the vicinity.
That means to board the cycler at Earth, the ships will dock
4,680,000 km away from Earth, and 3,800,000 km away from Mars.
Now some of the cyclers will transit when Earth and Mars are at
their closest points, while others will transit while the two
planets are farthest apart. Each cycler will be on its own cycle. I
think by having about 8 cyclers, we'll have access to Mars once
every 22 months.
So, in my roundabout way of getting to the point, I don't think that
that one asteroid will be the location for building many cyclers.
Each cycler will need its own asteroid.
I'd appreciate some of you physics-savvy members checking all of my
reasoning because I'm not 100% confident of it. I have a niggling
feeling I'm missing something about these orbit calculations but I
can't figure it out yet.
TangoMan
John Hadden asked me to post the below, and it did seem on-topic: Hi Mr.Combs, hope you are well . Agreed with most of your response to Sailor Barsoom , I would have
added , imagine that Mars (or the Moon ) had a similar Earth-like environment , oceans , blue sky , clouds ,
land for farming ,lakes , rivers , etc. How long would it take for Humanity to overpopulate it ? 100 years ago ,
we were about 2 billion , we've since more than tripled to over 6 billion (6.9 ? ) . Can we triple again in the
next 100 years to 18 billion People or more ? Doubtful , even if we put excess population on the Moon
and Mars , there will still be billions of Human Beings born into poverty and living an all too short life of
misery before they die of malnutrition or starvation . If we stay on Earth , estimates are by 2050 we will be
able to support 9 - 10 billion , after that many more than today will perish needlessly .
This is why I find O'Neill Habitat concept so exciting , it will create
good jobs and nice homes for every Human Being born for many thousands of years . Am thinking it will
be possible someday to construct Space Colonies as big as the largest countries on Earth . This will
generate more tax-payers , so the rest of us do not have to pay so much tax ? (maybe not ) . The race
is on , who will start the Space Colony Revolution and improve the standard of living for the majority
of Humanity ?
times , have given up trying to get back on .
Cordially , John Hadden , jfhadden@...
Regards, Mike Combs
http://www.joel-robert.fr/home.php
It's easier to fear and huddle with one's own, rather than toeducate, inspire, update, and bring along those in other cultures andin our ownwho may understand the value and scope of science andgame-changing (world-changing) programs like space solar power, for example. Without such reachout, technological advancement designed to shoot down the good in the hands of the backward-looking may bring down SSP, and none of us want that. You do not want that. Learn to stand down when it's appropriate to do so. I see no problem with this Adminstration's efforts to reach out. It is not a selling out of America or Freedom. It is a celebration and promotion of same. Thoughtful and moderate people see no controversy. Extremist"conservatives"in media concoct it. I'm tired of the hateful BSgenerated by Fox and talk radio on this and other measures, policies, and statements made by intelligent moderates who are trying (and succeeding) to lead us into better, less fearful, times. The voting public is not stupid.
Good deal, Mike.
http://sklep.papierkowo.pl/mywork.php?html193
http://www.j-iphone-case.com/blog/wp-content/plugins/ztxunwoebeu/hotnews.php?account209.gif
I think somebody else is using your name, Mike.