Aucbvax.4208
fa.space
utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!space
Sun Oct 4 04:15:42 1981
SPACE Digest V2 #4
>From OTA@SU-AI Sun Oct 4 04:12:40 1981
SPACE Digest Volume 2 : Issue 4
Today's Topics:
What's all this fuss about water on moon? - An answer.
Address of Los Gatos Space Store?
Proxmire
extinction?!
Why we need water from the moon
Against the Halley Probe
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Date: 3 October 1981 07:46-EDT
From: Robert Elton Maas <REM MIT-MC AT>
Subject: What's all this fuss about water on moon? - An answer.
To: SPACE at MIT-MC
Here's why it's so important to find ice on the moon.
The moon has plenty of Oxygen, Silicon, Aluminum, Titanium,
and lots of other things we need to build space-stations of
enormous size, support life in these stations, and build
large solar-energy collectors. Two problems. There's hardly
any Hydrogen or Carbon in moonrocks near the equator (where
the astronauts landed), both of which are essential to producing
food in space. It would be a real pain if we had to send all
the Carbon and Hydrogen from Earth. We suspect there's lots of
carbon in carbonaceous-chondrite asteroids. Thus the remaining
major problem is finding Hydrogen.
Even if we found Hydrogen on Halley's comet this time around,
we wouldn't be able to harvest it until 76 years later. So
in the meantime we'd have to bring it from Earth or Jupiter,
both very expensive. But if we find water in the cold places
on the moon where it has remained for 4.5 billion years due
to extreme cold and moderate gravity, we can extract the Hydrogen.
------------------------------
Date: 3 October 1981 08:06-EDT
From: Robert Elton Maas <REM MIT-MC AT>
Subject: Address of Los Gatos Space Store?
To: SPACE at MIT-MC
Does anybody know the address&phone, or even the name (I can call
directory assistance if I have the name), of the neighborhood space store
in Los Gatos? I might like to take good old public transit down there
some afternoon and look the place over, maybe buy some Voyager pictures.
------------------------------
Date: 3 Oct 1981 0727-PDT
From: BART at CIT-20
To: Space-Enthusiasts at MIT-MC
Subject: Proxmire
The one I like best is the epithet uttered by an Air Force general,
"A Proxmire on you!"
-Bart Locanthi
------------------------------
Date: 3 Oct 1981 12:28:49-EDT
From: cjh at CCA-UNIX (Chip Hitchcock)
To: jef at lbl-unix
Subject: extinction?!
Cc: space at mit-mc
Calculations concerning the formation of an astrobleme are irrelevant
to questions of nuclear destruction, since it has long been a truism that
10 1-megaton bombs will produce far more widespread "useful" destruction
than 1 10-megaton bomb (the bigger a bomb is, the more of its energy is
spent just burning a big hole in the ground). Further, most material
I've seen about astroblemes suggests that their formation was not
accompanied by the release of vast amounts of high-flying radioactives.
With regard to this, isn't there anyone out there with some hard numbers
about the probability (given a major nuclear war) of an ON THE BEACH
scenario?
It is a common idea in SF (or was in the 50's and 60's) that we are on
the brink of nuclear destruction precisely because we developed so much
faster than the average. The problem is that this presupposes something
unique in our genetic or environmental makeup; without something to
compare against, this is a useless supposition. Fredric Brown, by
contrast, suggested that there is only a small window during which a
civilization can survive before collapsing into decadence, and that we are
immortal precisely because of the regenerating effect of a total nuclear
and [supernuclear] war (this being the 7th in a line of civilizations that
includes Mu and Atlantis); this is horrifying but thoroughly improbable.
Figures in a recent ASIMOV'S indicate that even a "Bussard ramjet" would
make, at most, about .17 c (?), but this ups the time to colonize the
galaxy to a million years or more at the hazard of substantial radiation
exposure; how much common ground and goal would remain after this period?
Finally, there is the chance that this prospect would daunt any race and
that a "hyperdrive" just can't be made on anything greater than a
subatomic scale, which would make a project like SETI all the more
important (cf Spinrad's recent SONGS FROM THE STARS---incredibly obnoxious
except for that one good idea).
------------------------------
From: MINSKY@MIT-AI
Date: 10/03/81 13:05:36
Subject: Why we need water from the moon
MINSKY@MIT-AI 10/03/81 13:05:36
To: TAVERES.MULTICS at MIT-AI, space at MIT-MC
CC: MINSKY at MIT-AI
Water on the moon could be important for practical lunar industry,
because there is virtually no hydrogen in the lunar surface, while
virtually all our chemical processes and rocket fuels depend on
hydrogen. If there is condensed water near the surface of the lunar
poles (the only places that never gets hot) then exploitation of lunar
materials becomes much more plausible.
Also, a polar, rotary-slingshot launching system should be explored,
because it might be magnitudes simpler than magnetic guns.
The worst thing about the moon is lack of carbon in the surface
material, which would exclude organic synthesis in large quantities.
This is annoying, for example, becausevirtually all plastics and
adhesives currently in use on Earth involve carbon. Many chemists
believe that with sufficient motivation, inorganic plastics and
adhesives could be developed.
I believe that with hard-landed teleoperator technology, perhaps with
a small permanent moon base of a hundred tons or so and a handful of
people, a lunar industry could be established at interestingly small
costs, e.g., under 100B, including facilities for launching materials
back to earth orbit. If there is water, then the launched material
could include packages of rocket fuel that could be used inexpensively
to get the stuff into earth orbit. There are proposals to use
aluminum and oxygen, both plentiful on the moon, for rocket fuel, but
obviously hydrogen is much lighter. Can provide references if any
interest.
------------------------------
Date: 3 October 1981 13:36-EDT
From: Hans P. Moravec <HPM MIT-MC AT>
To: SPACE at MIT-MC
Re lunar icepockets - this will be one of a dozen responses but ...
I think we should find ice on the moon so that when I go to live
near there I can take long showers and not have to squeeze my oxygen
out of rocks ... Actually I don't mind about the oxygen
------------------------------
Date: 4 October 1981 05:16-EDT
From: Jerry E. Pournelle <POURNE MIT-MC AT>
To: McLure at SRI-AI
cc: "REPLY-TO:" at MIT-MC, SPACE at MIT-MC
THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE ON THE MING DYNASTY Navy and the State
decision to cancel the Navy and allow Europeans to dominate (the
Ming Navy met Vasco De Gama at Madagascar...) was by Arthur
Kantrowitx.
Kantrowitz, now professor of physics at Dartmouth, was
formerly chief scientist at Avco Everett.
Dr. Kantrowitz is the newly-elected Chairman of the
Board of the L-5 Society.
------------------------------
Date: 4 October 1981 05:49-EDT
From: Jerry E. Pournelle <POURNE MIT-MC AT>
Subject: Against the Halley Probe
To: DIETZ at USC-ECL
cc: "REPLY-TO:" at MIT-MC, SPACE at MIT-MC
Unfortunately, given scarce resources to allocate, I
have to agree that Halley is not a mission NASA should pay for.
I am not as convinced that putting one in the Soviet
eyeball isn't worthwhile; but that should be paid for by Dept of
State, or the National Security Council, not by NASA.
In my judgment (as stated in the Council Report;
((Citizen's Council on National Space Policy, report available
at $4.50 postpaid from L-5 Society 1060 E Elm Tucson AZ 85719)
NASA primary function should be to develop new national
capabilities; missions must be secondary to technology
acquisition.
Lunar Polar mission is important because if there is
water ice at the Lunar poles, there is a real chance that a
lunar polar base could be made self-sufficient in a surprisingly
short time; and wouldn't be so very expensive since colonists do
not expect to return to Earth (and thus need not take lots of
fuel etc with them; can be supported by hard landed capsules.)
There are plans for power stations at lunar poles;
stations which can supply power to industrial satellites in
earth orbit; there are even plans for beaming power from the
Moon to Earth, although I am not convinced by this one.
Still, it is not so expensive to put a colony on the Moon as one
might think; and the power availability there is pretty high,
with large surface areas, and lots of stuff to work with
(including possibility of turning regolith into fairly good
low-grade colar collectors by automated machinery.)
I do fear the Halley is dead anyway. The latest budget
cuts diud NOT hit NASA with 12% for fy 82, but they are severe
enough that Halley -- and very likely Galileo -- are gone. NASA
Dep Admin Hans Mark uts his priorities at (1) getting Shuttle
fully operational, and (2) getting a permanent US manned
presence in space.
To do that he's got to cooperate with the deep pockets,
= military, which is an obvious reason for Abrahamson taking
over shuttle.
There's only one deep pocket in Washington now, and
that's over at te five-sided funny farm.
------------------------------
End of SPACE Digest
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