The Newsletter of
the Seattle Chapter
of
The National Space Society
»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»» October 1998 «««««««««««««««««««««
The National Space Society is an international membership group
dedicated to furthering the exploration and development of space. The Seattle
chapter mission is to facilitate Space Activism and all pro-Space activities; and to provide
a gathering place for space enthusiasts to meet, exchange information and ideas.
President:
Vince Creisler
vincelc@hotmail.com
Vice President: Chris Vancil
CLVANCIL@aol.com
Secretary:
Randy Rumley
rjrumley@juno.com
Treasurer:
David Stuart
xsxs80a@prodigy.com
Editor:
Christopher Erickson
aster@wolfenet.com
----------Board of Directors---------
Kelly Caviezel Gary Harrison Christopher Erickson
Susan Harrison Toni Rusi
------------Advisors------------
Terry Burlison
Chapter meetings are held at 7:00 PM on the second Saturday of each month, at the
Museum of Flight; parking is available in the lot North of the museum. To receive
information regarding upcoming events please send your name and addresses
to: Randy Rumley; 12008 S.E. 223rd Drive Kent, WA 98031
XXIII
so·journ(sò jûrn), to stay for a time in a place; live temporarily.
Message from the President
Controversy surrounds John Glenn's upcoming Shuttle flight. Critics see his mission as a publicity stunt, or a political favor rather than serious scientific experimentation. Whatever the true motives might be, John Glenn's second flight into Space certainly serves as a symbol of the Space Age.
Compare 1998 to 1962. Take the technological changes: For the mission, John Glenn is being tutored on using a laptop computer for the first time in his life - a device resulting in large part from the Space Race he helped to start. Or take the social change: The Russia he raced against now needs American dollars to keep its Space program limping along - the result of America's winning the Space Race/Cold War John Glenn was part of.
If Americans are still capable of honoring and appreciating genuine heroes, John Glenn is entitled to his flight.
Vince Creisler
President, NSS Seattle
New URLs:
Cape Canaveral Virtual Tour:http://www.imficad.com/~robsv/CCASVT/ccasvt.html
EVA Project Office:http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/xa/advanced.html
ISS SEXUS:http://station.msfc.nasa.gov/
STS95:http://shuttle.nasa.gov/index.html
Election Time Approaches
All positions within NSS Seattle are up for vote each January. To be eligible for a position you must be a member of NSS Seattle, and you must submit a Candidacy Statement for publication in Sojourner prior to December 10th, 1998.
Wanted:
The generous donation of one small tool box or tackle box to put tools
and supplies in.
Message from the Editor
In mid May I was shipped off to Los Angeles - on loan, and with little fanfare or notice I dropped the task of producing Sojourner onto the lap of Randy Rumley. His reaction was typical of one who has had a large package dropped onto ones lap, but he got right to it.
I commend Randy for his willingness to take on the task, but more so, for the quality of work that he has done. He advanced the format and style of Sojourner - it has been steered toward a more certain direction - and that format will remain. I offer much thanks to Randy and others who kept this piece of NSS Seattle alive this summer.
In our ongoing effort to define what Sojourner does, this issue, and those to come, will focus on the events occurring within our neighborhood. As always, your comments and suggestions are desired.
Chris Erickson
Editor
Is understanding how life exists in extreme conditions on Earth - such as hot springs in Yellowstone National Park, undersea vents where no sunlight penetrates and temperatures reach several hundred degrees, pools of brine within polar
The idea for an astrobiology program grew out of a special seminar, Planets and Life, offered at the university in 1996 shortly after the discovery of planets orbiting nearby stars and an announcement that NASA scientists possibly had found microbial fossils inside a Martian rock. That claim since has drawn much scientific skepticism, but the success of the seminar - it was attended by 30 graduate students and 20 post-doctoral researchers and faculty, and it sparked
much campus excitement - laid a foundation for a program in astrobiology. Woodruff Sullivan, a UW astronomy professor and adjunct history professor, spearheaded the seminar and is an astrobiology co-investigator. He expects about a dozen students when the program begins in the fall quarter of 1999.
But there is much to be done before then. Five new courses must be designed to complement existing courses that will be included in the curriculum, Sullivan said. Departments involved will have to devise different ways of testing and grading students involved in astrobiology, since an astrobiology student pursuing a degree in astronomy, for instance, will have significantly different course demands than other astronomy students. One-third of astrobiology course work will be in areas not closely related to the student's home department, so an astronomy astrobiology student might spend a great deal of time studying microbiology. Students also must take part in an annual workshop, three days of work in the field. It could be looking for microbes at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, Sullivan said, or using an electron microscope to study comet dust. "Everyone will have to get their hands dirty."
Conway Leovy, a UW atmospheric sciences professor and also a co-investigator, expects the program to be an education for faculty members as well as students. But he said the students will be particularly challenged as they blaze a new path, and it will be some time before the first doctoral degrees in astrobiology are awarded. "Astrobiology students will have to learn rigorously as well as more broadly than most other science graduate students," Leovy said. "We probably can't expect to see the fruits of our efforts in the form of many Ph. D. graduates sooner than five years from now."
Richard Gammon, who is a UW chemistry and oceanography professor and also is an adjunct professor of atmospheric sciences, helped write a financing proposal for the astrobiology degree program. He believes the approach of breaching traditional barriers between different science disciplines was a key to National Science Foundation support. "All of these efforts are to meet the needs of students of the future, who are going to need training across fields," Gammon said.
The UW is one of 17 universities sharing in $40.5 million in National Science Foundation graduate education and research training grants. For more information about the NSF program, visit:http://www.nsf.gov/igert/
Contacts:
Staley:
(206) 543-0461 or (206) 543-6646 or
e-mail at jstaley@u.washington.edu
Sullivan:
(206) 543-7773 or (206) 543-2888 or
e-mail at woody@astro.washington.edu
Leovy:
(206) 543-4952 or e-mail at leovy@atmos.washington.edu
Gammon:
(206) 543-1609 or (206) 543-4301 or
e-mail gammon@u.washington.edu
The Sea Launch command ship (Commander) arrived at its homeport in Long Beach California on the 13th of July. On board were the first two Sea Launch rockets (modified Zenit rockets), which were manufactured in the Ukraine. With the arrival of the launch platform (Odyssey) final preparations are underway for a slated launch of a Hughes HS 702 satellite for the PanAmSat GEO communications fleet.
While the mechanics of Sea Launch move ahead, concerns over technology transfer prompted the U. S. State Department to suspend work at the Long Beach homeport facility pending a study of the security issues.
Boeing is a 40-percent partner in the Sea Launch venture along with RSC-Energia, and KP Yuzhnoye/PO Yuzhmash - an Ukranian and Russian group responsible for the Zenit rocket and related mission control facilities, and Kvaerner Maritime of Norway.
News Release from the University of Washington
UW prepares for first graduate program in astrobiology to train those who will hunt for life in outer space
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
FROM: Vince Stricherz 206-543-2580
DATE: Sept. 30, 1998
UW prepares for first graduate program in astrobiology to train those who will hunt for life in outer space. The University of Washington is poised to become the first institution anywhere to launch a doctoral program specifically geared to train scientists to search for life on celestial bodies such as Mars or Europa, an icy moon of Jupiter.
The astrobiology program will be financed by a 5-year, $2 million grant announced today by the National Science Foundation and supplemented by $500,000 from the university. The highly interdisciplinary curriculum will involve 11 UW degree programs - Oceanography, Astronomy, Aeronautics & Astronautics, Genetics, Chemistry, Biochemistry, Microbiology, Atmospheric Sciences, Geophysics, Geological Sciences and History.
Graduates can receive degrees in any of those areas, with an endorsement noting an emphasis in astrobiology. The School of Oceanography will provide dedicated laboratory space for students to study organisms that live in extreme conditions.
Oceanography professors John Delaney and Jody Deming and associate professor John Baross have closely studied organisms living in high-temperature, high-pressure conditions in ocean environments where little light penetrates. Baross is trying to relate the conditions in which those organisms live now to conditions when life began on Earth 3.5 billion years ago.
Two entities outside the university are also participating. The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland will offer students a chance to study microbial life in the subterranean basalt formations in Eastern Washington. ZymoGenetics Inc. of Seattle, a subsidiary of Novo Nordisk A/S of Denmark that is interested in enzymes from unusual bacteria, is offering summer internships so students can pursue that work.
"We recognize that there is a good possibility that life exists in the solar system outside Earth, but if that life does exist it would be microbial, not the higher forms," said James Staley, a UW microbiology professor who is the principal investigator for astrobiology. The key to finding life in such forbidding environments
Upcoming Meeting
October 10th, 1998
This month our speaker is Joe Cassady, Manager of Business Development for Space at Primex Aerospace. The topic is a manned mission to Mars using Plasma thrusters. Primex Technologies is a major manufacturer of Attitude Control Thrusters.
On May 9th, Roger Meyers of Primex Aerospace presented a review of electrically powered thrusters including: Hydrazine Arc-jet, Hall Thruster, and Pulsed Plasma Thrusters.
Meeting Summary
September 12th
Terry Burlison built on his earlier lecture on Orbital Mechanics, discussing the techniques of Orbital Rendezvous. Terry, a former FIDO with the Shuttle program, explained the delicate maneuvering performed to put the Shuttle to the MIR, and how the range of required velocities at different altitudes, and the stresses of centrifugal force versus gravitational attraction are blended, bringing the rendezvous of tons of equipment traveling at many thousands of kilometers an hour to a matter of a few centimeters a second.
This review will be significant as we watch the ISS - more than five times as massive as the MIR complex - pieced together over the next five years.
ISS
Assembly Sequence - Rev D
As of October 2nd, construction of the International Space Station begins on November 20th of this year with the launch of the Functional Cargo Block (Zarya) aboard a Russian Proton booster. Following successful delivery of Zarya to orbit, the Unity Node with two pressurized mating adapters attached will be launched aboard the shuttle. This is scheduled for December 3rd.
The element of highest concern (the Service Module) is slated for launch aboard a Proton booster in July of next year. If this comes about we will have nearly a year of easy breathing - as easy as it ever is in these affairs.
Shortly after the delivery of the Functional Cargo Block, a Shuttle Orbiter will attach the Spacehab double cargo module to the Unity Node, opposite the Service Module. The next mission will attach the first Integrated Truss structure, communications equipment, and Control Moment Gyros. Expedition 1 Crew launch aboard a Soyuz rocket is scheduled for the Fall of 1999 (see center page for line drawing).
Source:http://station.nasa.gov/station/assembly/flights/chron.html
http://www.boeing.com/defense-space/space/spacestation/timeline.html
Private Launch Service Moving Forward
Kistler Aerospace announced in August that the commercial Space law amendments passed in the Senate will now allow the FAA to license commercial re-entry vehicles. If the amendments are passed into law this fall (as anticipated) they will clear road blocks that prevented Kistler from launching their recoverable K-1 rocket from a site at the Nevada Test Range. Launches will also be conducted from Woomera, Australia.
Source:http://www.kistleraerospace.com
Contacts:Sydney Shaw - sshaw@kistleraerospace.com
Mark Miller - mark.miller@ketchum.com
Mission to Jupiter anyone?
During our week in review (and other such matters) meeting at Barnaby's three weeks back, Chris Vancil, David Stuart, Randy Rumley, and I tossed around some ideas for a mission to perform gravitational measurements in the area between Jupiter and Saturn.
The discussion began with a statement from Randy concerning large baseline interferometry. A typical yak it up session followed, and somewhere along the line the idea of placing six satellites, with gravity measurement capability, at a sixty-degree spacing between the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn came up.
First: following the philosophy of better, cheaper, faster, we set our goals toward a minimalist view - this fit our level of experience in developing Space missions perfectly.
With all the opinions collected, the hunt for facts began. Fact 1 was that sensors capable of less than 1micro-g sensitivity are already flying. With 1µg the moon can be detected from Earth, and the Sun can be detected from Pluto with a few percent to spare. We don't know what fact 2 is yet, but it's going to be a good one.
The mission considerations are as follows:
1. By placing six satellites capable of detecting attraction by massive bodies to a sensitivity of 1µg in orbit between Jupiter and Saturn we can make periodic detailed studies of the gravity fields around these planets. We will be able to detect the moons of those two planets, and study the interactions. We will be able to verify the existence of stable regions at the LaGrange points sixty degrees ahead and behind the planet's orbits, and we may find objects populating those locations.
2. The region just beyond Jupiter is believed to be the source for most short period comets. If there is a large collection of loose debris in that region then we will be able to perform a cursory inventory.
3. With one satellite every sixty degrees we will perform a large baseline analysis of near Solar Space. It isn't likely that we will discover the mysterious planet X, but if there are anomalies in our part of the sky this would suggest that something is hanging around. It may also be that small massive bodies pass this way rather routinely, much the way comets race past Earth every few years. Little unattached Jupiters zipping past within a couple of AU (1 AU is the average distance between the Earth and the Sun) of our Solar system would be detected.
This whole issue was a sort of what if, but we began to see merit in the discussion so it has continued. Right now, it sits on a table waiting for a couple of things. The first is time - as usual. Some graphs exist showing the range that different objects that we are familiar with can be detected from. This graph also draws a line showing our limit - mass versus distance at 1µg. We have data sheets on the sensors. A graphic that demonstrates that by knowing angle vs. time, bearing rate, and strength of field; the size, direction and distance to the object can be accurately determined has been drawn.
Our priority is getting the Space Station presentation for RustyCon organized. That concludes in January. The next priority is determining if there is a proposal in this. Anyone wishing to share in the pondering is welcome to participate. Contact Chris Erickson or the others through the usual means, or come by Barnaby's South Center any old Tuesday.
What's on the web (the ever growing list of URLs):
The Astrobiology Web:http://www2.Astrobiology.Com/astro/
(astrobio@reston.com)
The Virtual Space Museum:http://www.ccas.ru/~chernov/vsm/halls.htm
ISS assembly sequence:http://station.nasa.gov/core.html
Space Place:http://www.thespaceplace.com/
Space Race:http://www.nasm.edu/GALLERIES/GAL114/SpaceRace/
Space Case:http://spot.colorado.edu/~marscase/
Mars Society:http://www.nw.net/mars/
U.S. Congress on the Internet:http://thomas.loc.gov/
Spacecast:http://www.spacer.com/main.html
Satellite passes:http://www.bester.com/satpasses.html
RealSpace Models:http://www.computal.com/realspace/
NINFINGER PRODUCTIONS-SVEN'S PAGE:
http://www.dtm-corp.com/~sven/models/models.html
Astronomical WWW resources:http://www.stsci.edu/astroweb/net-www.html
Space Publications and Magazines:http://www.space.ca/space-pub.html
Space Colonies:http://www.resto.om/astro/colonies.html#space
Lunar Prospector:http://lunar.arc.nasa.gov/
SpaceViews Newsletter:http://www.seds.org/spaceviews/
Space Links:http://www.newspace.com/ref/links/home.html
New Space Newsletter:http://www.newspace.com/news/masthead.html
Mike's Spacecraft Library:http://www.newspace.com/ref/msl/home.html
Launchspace:http://www.newspace.com/home.html
Zegrahm Space Voyages:http://www.spacevoyages.com
Archimedes Institue:http://www.permanent.com/archimedes/
Vandenburg launches:http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/rawhide_home_page/
Space laws & regulations:http://ast.dot.gov/regulations/index2.html
Orbit on-line:http://www.10mb.com/brv/orbit.htm
Terran Institute:http://www.geocities.com/~ttinstitute/main.html
The Space Frontier:http://www.space-frontier.org/CATS.
Spacezone:http://www.spacezone.com/
Space Almanac:http://www.afa.org/space/31.html
Sky & Telescope's web-site:http://www.skypub.com
Aerospace Index:http://www.ultranet.com/~adjm/aero/aeronav.html
SpaceNews:http://www.spacenews.com/homepage.html
Satellite Times:http://grove.net/html
Science Fiction Weekly:http://www.scifi.com/sfw
Federation of American Scientists Space Policy page: http://www.newspace.com/news/masthead.html
Astronaut Biographies:http://www.nauts.com:80/astro/astro.html
Space Shuttle Mission Archives:http://shuttle.nasa.gov/
MIR sighting info:http://shuttle-mir.nasa.gov/ops/mir/tracking/target.txt
NASA WWW servers:http://www.sti.nasa.gov:80/www.
ProSpace:http://www.prospace.org
Here are more interesting web sites:
Asteroid Hunting: http://www.skypub.com/benson/hunting.html
Opinion on US – Russian cooperation on ISS: http://www.spectator.org/archives/98-08_oberg.html
Anglo Australian Observatory: Clues to the origin of life: http://www.aao.gov.au/press/life.html
New Scientist: Article on Gary Hudson's rocket Roton (excellent article): http://www.newscientist.com/ns/980801/features.html
USA Today – Science: More rocks with info on life on Mars:http://www.usatoday.com/life/science/space/lss093.htm
Mars VR on CD-ROM: Full of pictures from Pathfinder: http://www.vrcamera.com/cdrom/cdrom.html
Astronomical WWW resources: http:// www.stsci.edu/astroweb/net-www.html
Astronaut Biographies: http:// www.nauts.com:80/astro/astro.html
Online Sojourner List
Let us know what you think of our pages send email to us by
clicking here
at NSS Seattle's webmaster
 |
 |