COSMIC LOG, by Alan Boyle
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10880338/#060117b

Testing the space hotel:
In an example of beating space swords into plowshares, the Russians are
gearing up to launch the Genesis 1 inflatable spacecraft from the
Dombarovsky strategic-missile base in Russia’s Orenburg region, according to
a report distributed last week by the Interfax Military News Agency.
Bigelow Aerospace’s Genesis Pathfinder project is aimed at testing an
inflatable habitat design based on NASA’s TransHab project, and could lead
the way to the creation of a commercial space module known as the Nautilus
or the BA-330.

NBC News’ James Oberg wrote about the Dombarovsky base – and the prospect
that the Kosmotras rocket company would be using it for commercial
launches – more than a year ago. Last week’s report provides further hints
that the base will play a role in the testing of technologies that could
someday be used in Bigelow’s orbital space hotels.

Some details still need to be filled in: Interfax Military reported that the
Dombarovsky base would be preparing in March for launching the Genesis 1 on
a converted SS-18 intercontinental ballistic missile, but it did not spell
out when the landmark launch would actually occur.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10880338/#060117a

COSMIC LOG, by Alan Boyle // MSNBC.com

. Jan. 17, 2006 | 7:15 p.m. ET
Do astronauts and alcohol mix?

There’s another round of news reports from Russia about the prospects for
bringing alcoholic beverages aboard the international space station – with
an article in London’s Sunday Telegraph leading the way. This time, the head
of the cosmonaut corps at Russia’s space training center is quoted as saying
he’d let station residents sip about half a shot of cognac to celebrate New
Year’s or the end of a spacewalk.

Russian space officials are reportedly of the view that a little nip would
help cosmonauts relax after a tough job – and could even "replenish one’s
strength." But champagne would remain a no-no, because the pressurized
contents of a bottle could gum up the works in zero-gravity.

NASA, meanwhile, is sticking to its view that astronauts and alcohol should
not mix. Reading between the lines, it appears that the Russians are giving
an unofficial wink and a nod to an occasional drink, much as they did for
operations on the long-gone Mir space station. Just don’t expect to see NASA
astronauts joining in the toasts.

In an e-mail, NBC News space analyst James Oberg said the Russians’ reported
stance "only endorses the unofficial practice in place for decades." As
proof, he sent along a 1997 photo from Mir, accompanied by a drinking tale:

  "As early as the mid-1980s, crews received treats on supply drones that
included brandy-filled chocolates. The most famous ‘space cognac’ affair was
in February 1997, aboard Mir, after a flash fire nearly killed the six
crewmen (including American Jerry Linenger).

  "That evening, space doctors instructed the crew to get out the secret
bottle of cognac and take medicinal doses. Linenger declined, but
photographed the others. The interesting angle is that the men drank the
cognac through a straw.

  "NASA refused to release the photographs, but I filed FOIA on them and got
the images. One of them appeared in my 2002 book, ‘Star-Crossed Orbits:
Inside the U.S.-Russian Space Alliance.’ That image is attached."

Are NASA officials just being nervous Nellies? What do you see as the pros
and cons for alcoholic beverages (or other indulgences) in space? Let me
know , and I’ll pass along a selection of the feedback.

photo: Cosmonauts gather to have some cognac on the Mir space station in
1997, hours after a flash fire nearly killed them. The picture was taken by
NASA astronaut Jerry Linenger, who passed up the opportunity to imbibe.
http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/msnbc/Components/Photos/060117/060117_alc…

Reuters: NASA’s Pluto flight delayed again due to power outage
NASA canceled Wednesday’s launch of the U.S. space agency’s first probe to
Pluto after the mission control headquarters in Maryland lost power,
officials said.

The launch of the piano-sized New Horizons spacecraft on a massive Atlas 5
rocket had been postponed from Tuesday due to high winds at the launch pad
at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

NASA officials said it was not immediately clear why mission control at
Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory nearly 1,000 miles
away in Maryland lost power.

The agency hoped the problem would be resolved in time for the next launch
window between 1:08 p.m. and 3:07 p.m. on Thursday. NASA has until February
14 to launch the probe, but postponements could add up to 5 years to its
journey.

(This One Is For Pat)

At
<http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-blimp17jan17,0,1946470.story?co…>,
the Los Angeles Times is reporting:

Small Company Aims to Soar Above Lockheed to Win Blimp Contract
The firm is confident the Pentagon will pick its design for a craft to
move troops and cargo.
By Peter Pae
Times Staff Writer

January 17, 2006

"It’s the blimp industry’s version of David and Goliath.

An obscure Tarzana firm run by Russian emigres is locked in competition
with Lockheed Martin Corp., the world’s largest defense contractor, to
win a Pentagon contract to build 900-foot- long, blimp-like aircraft to
move cargo and troops into combat zones."

More on the site;
<http://www.latimes.com/media/thumbnails/photo/2006-01/21470640.jpg> is
an interesting picture showing a framework modelling the shape of the
blimp; it isn’t clear from the page if it is also modelling the
full-size framework.

/dps

The AIAA has published the following book:

http://www.aiaa.org/content.cfm?pageid=360&id=1280

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1563476967

The book is intriguing and seems to deal with many of the issues we
discuss here. The AIAA reference has a review by John Carmack.

Has anyone here read it? Is it worth purchasing?

Thanks,

Jim Davis

so who is working on their own rocket ship????

well?

Due to a website crash. photos of mine are not available until i pull out
the album and re-scan the images.

    Hydrogen can be reacted with lunar materials, at high temperature,
to derive iron, aluminum, magnesium, titanium, silicon and water.  The
water can be electrolized back into hydrogen and oxygen.  The hydrogen
can be recycled, with the oxygen becomming the primary economic
incentive for the whole process.  This could be the primary propelent
for extensive robotic missions to Mars, the asteroids and the moons of
Jupiter and Saturn.
    In the space colonization literature of the seventies, a mass
driver would launch twenty or so kilograms at a time to be collected by
a ‘catcher’ that would intercept it prior to perigee, otherwise it
would crash back into the moon.  Perhaps a much smaller system could be
built to launch ‘cannisters’ that would have not only the coils for
acceleration, but a pressurized oxygen tank with a nozzel in front,
along with valves on the sides for attitude control.  At apogee a jet
of oxygen would raise the perigee so that the cannisters could be
collected at leasure.
    It is conceivable that the cannisters could have a mass of less
than a kilogram and with the lunar material packed inside have a total
weight of around two kg.  This would put the mass of the accelerator at
under fifty tons, with a solar collector of nearly the same mass that
could provide the electricity to launch one or two cannisters a minute
during the lunar day.  Well over a hundred tons of moon soil and rock
could be put into orbit per year.  The cannisters could be recycled,
the landers using the same oxygen in the material that was delivered
into space.
    It is even possible that a market for lunar rocks could develope,
being easily identified by micrometeorite impacts on the surface.

[religion crosspost removed]

Bless You All wrote:
> Why do people act like it is???

Religion.

> God created evolution.  End of story.

That implies a discontinuity in the continuum.

That is the problem.

http://cosmic.lifeform.org

- — -

> don findlay wrote:

> > (Anyhow, ..still waiting for some grown-up to come with an explanation
> > how vertically dropping slabs can create **TWO** circumglobal mountain
> > belts on the planet – one extensional and the other compressional.  The
> > current ‘answer’  (favoured by grown-ups) seems to be childishly
> > idiotic.  No?  Yes?   If nobody is turning up to answer this one it can
> > only be because they’re afraid they might get handcuffed to their
> > explanation.  True grown-ups, indeed.
> I wonder if Stuart, …being a grown-up (when not blowing on his
> alphabet soup to create convection cells that is), and into handcuffs
> (literature ones I mean) … has an explanation for this one.  I mean
> from a thermodynamic, ‘energy’ point of view….

> What about it, Stu?   Dropping slabs, ..or friction?  Which?   and
> *TWO* mountain belts.  What was it you said about the elegance of
> convection and  Plate Tectonics?

It looks like Stu’s playing dumb on this one.  Maybe somebody in
physics with a geological bent can explain this one to poor dumb
geologists over here – seeing as to how geology these days is dependent
on physics for its Plate Tectonics:-  … How can subducting slabs
(dropping vertically into the mantle or grinding down the underside of
the crust (‘lithosphere’))  generate enough energy from uniformly
distributed "corpuscles of heat-releasing radioactive elements in the
mantle":-  http://users.indigo.net.au/don/ng/corpuscles.html
to make **TWO** mountain belts on the planet, ..1. the spreading ridges
on the ocean floors (which dwarf the regular ones for size and are
extensional), and 2. the regular ones in the continental crust which
are compressional?

>From an energy perspective I mean, ..these cold chunks of ocean floor

which have moved for thousands of kilometres, and have lost all their
heat on the way, …well not quite all since once they start to bend
down *THE ZONE* they release even more (to throw up these mountain
belts), ..I mean, how are we supposed to envisage this from an energy
perspective?   And why the big hiatus in losing heat – represented by
the big flat bit between the slope off the ridges, and the subduction
zone?

Doesn’t this mean (if we balance the compressional mountain belt with
the extensional one, and find the balance is with extension) that the
net effect is to keep making an *extensional* mountain belt and that
means the ridges (and the ocean floors) keep rising?

Also:-
_______________________________

http://scicolloq.gsfc.nasa.gov/Lowman.html
            PAUL LOWMAN
            GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER

            "Space Exploration and Plate Tectonics"

The second half of the 20th century saw two historic scientific
developments:  the achievment of space flight and the emergence of the
theory of plate tectonics.  These superficially independent events are
much more closely related than most scientists realize.   This lecture
will summarize major discoveries from space research, both terrestrial
and extraterrestrial, and demonstrate their relation to plate tectonic
theory.  Examples will include sea-surface altimetry, direct
measurement of plate rigidity and plate motion, remote sensing of
continental areas, discovery of folded mountains on Venus (a planet
with no plates), and evidence that even small bodies like the Moon have
undergone early global differentiation, forming crusts analogous to the
continental crust of the Earth.  Plate tectonic theory has been
essentially confirmed by space research, but it has also been found at
least incomplete, if not incorrect, in several respects.
____________________________________________

…And what does somebody from Goddard Space Centre mean when he says
that last bit about Plate Tectonics being incomplete?  He’s just said
it’s a "historic achievement".

..And " *SEVERAL* respects"?   Can anybody mention one?  What’s he
mean?  What’s he talking about?

"Pat Flannery" <flan…@daktel.com> wrote

> No, the Rogers Commission pointed out that the failed safety culture had
> pretty much arrived around the time the Shuttle entered service, and
> warned that NASA had to get its act together or something like that would
> happen again. They didn’t, and it did.

No, there were safety standards in place that should have
prevented the decisions that destroyed Challenger, and as
they decayed, people sensed the change. See
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/318/1

The same odor of a rotting safety culture was noticed again
by people in the late 1990s, and it kept getting worse as some
wrote things such as:

In Scientific American, February 2000:
"Many observers have been alarmed at the apparent increase [of failures],
which could be a symptom of deeper problems that could lead to more failures
in the future. . . . NASA will have to address its systemic weaknesses if it
is to avoid a new string of expensive, embarrassing and perhaps in some
cases life-threatening foul-ups."

In New Scientist, April 15, 2000:
"Critics say that a number of accidents, oversights and failures in other
NASA programmes indicate that other parts of the organisation are stretched
to breaking point. NASA, they say, is repeating the errors that led to the
Challenger disaster. The consequences of a future accident could, also, be
fatal.. . . The cost of forgetting is now measured in hundreds of millions
of dollars, years of delay and public humiliation. So far, no more human
lives have been lost but the question NASA must answer is whether this will
continue."