Aucbvax.4648
fa.space
utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!space
Sat Oct 24 06:24:16 1981
SPACE Digest V2 #19
>From OTA@S1-A Sat Oct 24 05:42:21 1981
SPACE Digest Volume 2 : Issue 19
Today's Topics:
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 23 Oct 1981 1321-PDT
From: Stuart McLure Cracraft <MCLURE AT SRI-AI>
To: space at MIT-MC
!a081 0758 23 Oct 81
BC-The Space Age I, Adv 28,990
$Adv 28
For Release Wed Oct 28 and thereafter
For use in connection with the space shuttle
Space Age I: Space Spinoffs.
By HOWARD BENEDICT
AP Aerospace Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - The nation's space age is nearly a quarter century
- and $125 billion - old. What return has there been from that
investment?
Plenty.
From its breathtaking beginning, space technology quickly mushroomed
from a Cold War prestige contest into an ever-growing
multi-billion-dollar market for hardware and services.
It has spurred several new industries, and, in the process, hundreds
of thousands of jobs and skilled people.
The technology of Apollo and other programs - computers,
electronics, metals - has found its way into medicine, communications,
transportation, industrial processes, public safety, construction,
home appliances, recreation and food products.
Americans, 73 of them, have logged a total of more than 2 1/2 years in
space, and they have walked on the moon. Unmanned marvels have landed
on Mars, penetrated the clouds of Venus, dashed through the rings of
Saturn and are probing the outer reaches of the solar system.
Military strategies have changed dramatically, and there has been
vast enrichment of scientific knowledge.
Space exploration has revolutionized many things, ''but it has not,
so far, revolutionized our lives,'' says Alex Roland, a historian
with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
''To date, the space age has had a less profound impact than the
atomic age that preceded it,'' he said. ''If tomorrow a green elephant
steps in front of the Viking lander on Mars, or if orbiting solar
installations take up some of the energy burden of the 21st century,
then perhaps the present era may one day be viewed as revolutionary.''
Nevertheless, Roland said, the legacy from space has been
substantial, and in the last decade the benefits have showered down on
almost every nation.
Space spinoffs are too numerous to list here, but the story of Echo
is a good example of how this research filters into the commercial
world.
Echo was America's first experimental communications satellite, a
large balloon, 100 feet in diameter.
In developing Echo, NASA needed a special material for the balloon's
skin. It had to be highly reflective to ''bounce'' radio signals and
it had to be lightweight and extremely thin so it could be folded
into a beachball-sized container for delivery to orbit, where it would
automatically inflate.
The material selected was mylar polyester coated with a reflective
layer of thin aluminum particles so fine that Echo's skin had a
thickness about half that of the cellophane on a cigarette package.
This process of coating the polyester with a super-fine mist of
vacuum-vaporized aluminum was called metallization - and Echo became
the catalyst that transformed a small-scale operation into a
flourishing industry.
Echo's requirements triggered extensive research and development of
metallization techniques for many space uses, mostly to insulate
spacecraft, manned and unmanned, from heat and radiation.
The research resulted in a still-growing line of commercial
metallized products - insulated outdoor garments, packaging materials
for frozen foods, wall coverings, aircraft covers, bedwarmers, window
shades, labels, candy wrappers, reflective blankets and photographic
reflectors.
Of all the promises of the early space era, the communications
satellite is the most fully realized. In 1963, private stockholders
and companies like AT&T, ITT and GTE joined to form Comsat, the
Communications Satellite Corporation. A year later, Intelsat, the
International Telecommunications Satellite Organization, was created,
with Comsat as a major partner.
Intelsat has grown from 19 to 106 member nations, with more than 200
ground stations around d3 e. Private firms and foreign
governments also have commissioned launches of their own
communications satellites, which are drawing the world closer
together.
Telephones and television sets are sprouting where they've never
been seen before - from the Arctic Circle to remote jungle islands.
Hundreds of millions of people can simultaneously watch live a single
event, such as the Olympics, a royal wedding or men walking on the
moon.
Innovative companies are merging computer and satellite technologies
to transmit financial, medical and other data across continents and
oceans in seconds, significantly altering the way the world does
business.
For about $15,000 anyone can purchase the equipment needed to
receive pictures and data from a fleet of U.S. weather satellites -
and more than 800 users spread over every nation have made the
investment.
While the goal of accurate two-week weather forecasts is still years
away, these orbiting weather eyes have greatly improved short-range
predictions and they have saved countless lives by warning of
approaching hurricanes and other storms and of flood threats from
rains and melting snow.
The next likely candidates for commerical operation are America's
Earth resources satellites, whose sensors and pictures are used as an
aid to oil and mineral exploration, crop forecasting, forest
inventories, and choosing where to build new factories to avoid
geologic faults. They guide boats to good fishing, environmentalists
to pollution sources and prospectors to uranium deposits.
NASA sells the pictures to anyone who wants them at a nominal price,
and $6 million worth were sold to non-government users last year,
with the biggest customers being mineral and petroleum companies. The
images, for example, are presently being used by U.S. companies
searching for oil in China.
The government and Congress are looking into how to transfer this
technology into the private sector.
Medicine also has benefitted greatly from space technology.
Pacemakers and other implantable heart aids are spinoffs from
miniaturized space circuitry. So are fast, accurate diagnostic
machines for many diseases.
Because of small sensors developed to monitor astronauts' physical
condition in space, a single nurse seated at a console can remotely
check the conditions of several hospital patients simultaneously.
And an emergency ward can get vital information such as pulse and
heart rate from a hospital-bound ambulance because of space-developed
monitoring equipment squeezed into a kit the size of a briefcase.
Miniaturized space electronics also produced digital watches and
pocket calculators and made the United States the world leader in
computers.
End Adv
ap-ny-10-23 1054EST
**********
!a082 0807 23 Oct 81
BC-The Space Age II, Adv 28,460
$Adv 28
For Release Wed Oct 28 and thereafter
For use in connection with the space shuttle
Space Age II: Updating the History of the Universe
With Laserphotos
By HOWARD BENEDICT
AP Aerospace Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - Dr. James A. Van Allen was on a Navy icebreaker
bound for Antarctica to study cosmic rays when Russia launched Sputnik
1 in 1957.
He received a cable urging him to hurry home to prepare instruments
for an American orbital attempt. He could not return immmediately,
but wired instructions on how to hook up a cosmic ray geiger counter
he had devised.
On Jan. 31, 1958, America's first artificial satellite, Explorer 1,
rocketed into orbit.
Van Allen, a State University of Iowa physicist, was astounded by
the first data radioed to Earth: a record of high radiation counts
alternating with periods of long silence.
He got the same results from Explorer 3, launched three months
later. He concluded the geiger counters were not broken, nor were they
silent for lack of radiation. At times, they simply were being
bombarded with such high doses they could not register it.
Surrounding the Earth, Van Allen announced, is a huge band of
high-energy radiation composed of particles trapped in our planet's
magnetic field. This Van Allen Belt stretched from about 400 to more
than 40,000 miles into space, extending the boundary of the atmosphere
influencing Earth.
The discovery stunned the scientific world, which generally believed
the Earth's upper air merged into the density of interplanetary gas
at an altitude of about 600 miles.
The findings also created a revolution in the space sciences by
demonstrating the ability of satellites to gather information from
above the distorting influence of the lower levels of the atmosphere.
For centuries, telescopes were the main data-collecting tools on the
universe. But they were limited because of the atmospheric blanket
which makes viewing space akin to looking at a fish through 35 feet of
water.
Scientists began devising ever-more-sophisticated instruments, and
investigations by hundreds of satellites have drawn this basic picture
on interplanetary space between the Earth and its sun:
Great flare eruptions on the seething surface of the sun send huge
tongues of radiation, the solar wind, streaming through space at
speeds of more than 1 million miles an hour.
The Earth's magnetic field acts like a protective umbrella, trapping
the radiation particles and forming the Van Allen belt. Without this
protection, life as we know it on Earth could not survive.
During periods of heavy flare activity on the sun, great amounts of
radiation are dumped into the Van Allen belt, causing magnetic
storms, disturbing radio communications and influencing weather.
Particles flowing through magnetic field openings at the North and
South Poles cause auroral displays like the fabled Northern Lights.
End Adv
ap-ny-10-23 1103EST
**********
!a088 0841 23 Oct 81
BC-The Space Age IV, Adv 28,930
$Adv 28
For Release Wed Oct 28 and thereafter
For use in connection with the space shuttle
Space Age IV: The Military, Seizing the High Ground
By HOWARD BENEDICT
AP Aerospace Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - American space reconnaissance photos are already
so good that they can tell whether a soldier has shaved - from more
than 100 miles up.
That's today. What about the future?
Laser battle stations armed with ''death rays' and protected by
dart-like spaceships.
Orbiting command posts directing ground, sea and air forces.
Killer satellites stalking the skies.
The United States and the Soviet Union have these capabilities under
way or on the drawing boards. Should an all-out arms race occur in
this decade, these space-age military concepts could transform global
military strategies.
The reflyable space shuttle gives the United States an edge - for
now.
The Soviets - with nothing similar - have denounced the shuttle as a
weapon system in disguise, claiming its sole purpose is to help
America dominate the Earth. They don't mention that the Soviet Union
itself possesses the only operational space weapon system - a
satellite killer capable of blowing U.S. payloads out of the sky.
Pentagon officials say that in the last decade the Soviets have
invested about twice as much money as the United State in military
research and development, creating a growing risk of technological
surprise.
American observers say that that 75 percent of the more than 100
satellites the Soviets launch each year have military assignments and
that their active Salyut space station project is aimed primarily at
perfecting a manned military capability in orbit.
The military will fly nearly 100 shuttle missions in the next
decade. But the Pentagon says these so-called ''blue shuttle''
missions are defensive in nature, using man to more efficiently and
cheaply do the jobs now being done by expendable rockets - principally
placing military payloads in orbit, with the added dimension of being
able to service them periodically.
More
ap-ny-10-23 1138EST
**********
!a090 0859 23 Oct 81
BC-The Space Age IV, Adv 28, 1st Add, a088,620
WASHINGTON: them periodically.
On the more exotic and ominous side, the shuttle within a few years
will be a testbed for laser beam weapons that could, if perfected,
attack hostile satellites and destroy enemy missiles as they rise
above the atmosphere. And shuttles could ferry up men and equipment
for the construction of those battle stations if they become
necessary.
From the very beginning of the space age, the military leaders of
the United States and the Soviet Unoin saw the benefits of using this
new ''high ground.'' The first military satellite was America's
Discoverer 1, launched in 1959, to take photographs and return the
film to Earth in a capsule that was snared over the Pacific by an Air
Force plane.
Technology has taken great strides since then, and now the security
of both nations is increasingly dependent upon orbiting satellites.
U.S. and Soviet payloads dispatch military messages around the
world; send navigation signals to ships, planes, submarines and troops
in the field; are alert to warn instantly of a missile attack, and
spy on each other and other nations with high-resolution cameras.
U.S. space cameras for months have taken special notice of Soviet
troop movements in and around Afghanistan and Poland.
President Johnson once said that the reconnaissance photos were
worth many times the entire U.S. investment in all space technology.
And last year, President Carter said: ''Photo reconnaissance
satellites have become an important stabilizing factor in world
affairs in the monitoring of arms agreements.''
There is growing concern at the Pentagon because the Soviets have
introduced a new destabilizing element with their development of a
killer satellite: a satellite that can track down its orbiting target,
maneuver near it, and explode, destroying both.
Pentagon observers say the hunter satellite is capable of striking
targets out to 600 miles, which makes America's navigation and
reconnaissance satellites vulnerable. Communications and
missile-warning satellites are stationed 22,300 miles up, but within a
few years they too may come within range of advanced killers or laser
beams.
The United States has sought for more than two years to negotiate a
ban on killer satellites, but talks with the Soviets have been
unsuccessful. So, the Defense Department is developing its own
satellite destroyer, to be operational in about two years.
Defense planners also are considering several methods for protecting
military payloads from ambush. Included are satellites hardened
against radiation damage, and others that could evade an attacker,
eject decoys to confuse it, or fire a laser blast at it.
They believe the Soviets have an edge in laser weaponry, and some
experts estimate that the Soviet Union could orbit a system of small
laser battle stations by 1986 - three to four years before the United
States would have that capability.
A laser beam weapon would generate a ray that travels in a straight,
intense, single wave path. It could, at high power, cut through thick
steel. Several shuttle flights are earmarked to prove out laser
weapon technology.
Another, more potent, space weapon being researched by both nations
is the charged-particle beam, believed to be several years away. In
such a beam, streams of highly-concentrated, high-velociy sub-atomic
particles would strike with such enormous energy that they would burn
or melt their targets.
The shuttle will carry its first military payloads next year, and by
1985 the Air Force plans to make heavy use of at least two of the
five shuttles.
The military is building its own shuttle launch base at Vandenberg
Air Force Base, Calif., and a secure control center at Peterson Air
Force Base, Colo. Until these are ready, the ''blue shuttles'' will
take off from the space agency's facility at Cape Canaveral, Fla.
End Adv for Release Wed Oct 28 and thereafter
ap-ny-10-23 1155EST
**********
-------
------------------------------
End of SPACE Digest
*******************
-----------------------------------------------------------------
gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen <
[email protected]>
of
http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/
This Usenet Oldnews Archive
article may be copied and distributed freely, provided:
1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles.
2. The following notice remains appended to each copy:
The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996
Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.
