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 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 3 October 1981 07:46-EDT From: Robert Elton Maas 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 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 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 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 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 ******************* ----------------------------------------------------------------- gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen 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.