The Newsletter of
the Seattle Chapter
of
The National Space Society
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May 1998
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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------------
Terrill 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
XVIII
so·journ(sò jûrn), to stay
for a time in a place; live temporarily.
MESSAGE FROM THE
PRESIDENT
There are rumblings on Capitol Hill about canceling funding for the International
Space Station. ISS is more vulnerable now than ever before, thanks to delays
and cost overruns due to a variety of reasons. Even for diehard Space
enthusiasts, it’s difficult to feel warm and fuzzy about the space station
program.
Space enthusiasts will feel worse if the program collapses in a heap--making
rubble of future international cooperation, future Manned Space efforts and
American commitment to Space development. It would be along time before the
pieces of national space programs were put back together, if ever. There
are some Space enthusiasts who might welcome it. Those who unquestioningly
place faith in private enterprise as the sole means for opening the Space
Frontier.
They use the commercial airline industry as one of their examples. But how
could the airline industry operate without national agencies such as the
FAA and NTSB to provide regulation of airline operation and safety? How could
manufacturers have developed the current state of airliner and jet engine
technology without the foundations of military and civil programs? Purists
who think private industry will become spacefaring shed of governmental resources
will be waiting a long time.
Which brings us to the true role of ISS: pioneering the technologies, skills
and operational techniques private industry requires to become spacefaring
in a timely fashion. ISS should be looked upon as a space-operations equivalent
of the X-planes, providing experience and confidence for an era of space
industrialization to come.
Saving ISS from cancellation is not going to be an easy task. Like-minded
Space enthusiasts wanting to see ISS become a reality should prepare to commit
time and effort to the campaign. For my part as Spacecause regional phone-tree
coordinator, I need to finish establishing our network within the Puget Sound
area and beyond. The South and Central Sound regions are covered, thanks
to the assistance of Kent Murley and Chris Vancil. I need volunteers to cover
the Eastside and North regions. Please contact me if you want to help.
Vince Creisler
President, NSS Seattle
RENDEZVOUS
MAY 9, 1998
We will be back to normal this month, at the Museum of Flight, in the Red
Barn Classroom at 7:00pm.
Our Speaker for the May 9 meeting will be Roger Meyers of Primex Aerospace.
He will be speaking on Arcjet and Plasma thrusters. These are some of the
propulsion systems used on the latest satellites and exploration space craft.
Our outing at Norwescon was quite successful. Thanks to all who helped with
the table, meeting, and room party. Our 2 hour meeting was recorded and will
be shown on Cable Access channel 29. You can see and record it on Sunday
May 10'th from 5:00 PM till 7:00 PM. The day after this meeting. We may be
able to do this regularly, with the broadcast 1 month after the meeting.
Special thanks to John Stevens for this work. Anyway, come on in and
see us!
Randy J. Rumley
Secretary, NSS Seattle
NorWesCon '98
We want to thank those who gave panels at Norwescon -- Terry Burlison, Vince
Creiler, Chris Vancil, Randy Rumley, Dave Stuart & Chris Erickson. We
also want to thank those who staffed the club table Bonnie & Les Horst,
Randy Rumley, Chris Vancil, Vince Creisler, Dave Stuart, Gus Kuehne &
John Schlick the videographer. Plus, special food thanks to Bonnie
& Les Horst. As I understand it, there is a special request for
Terry's talk for an Oregon chapter meeting, so Terry made a very good impression
on a few of the members from there.
Happy 8th Birthday HST
Date Friday, April 24,
1998 12:35 PM
Hubble Space Telescope completes eighth year of exploration Infant galaies,
distant quasars, exploding stars, mysterious black holes, colliding galaxies.
Since its launch on April 24, 1990 NASA's Hubble Space Telescope
has provided a stunning view of our universe by making unique discoveries
and capturing spectacular images. To celebrate Hubble's eighth anniversary,
we have "gift wrapped" Saturn in a
colorful image
taken by the telescope's new infrared camera. We also have assembled a gallery
of the telescope's most compelling images and have prepared a summary of
its top scientific accomplishments. In its eight years of space exploration,
the 12.5-ton orbiting observatory has set many milestones. Here are some
of them.
* Circling Earth every 90 minutes, Hubble has traveled about 1.2 billion
miles, which is more than a one-way trip to Saturn.
* Astronomers using Hubble data have published 1,700 scientific papers.
* The total amount of Hubble data placed in archives is 4.44 terabytes, which
fills 710, 12-inch optical disks (6.66GB/disk).
* The telescope has taken about 120,000 exposures.
* Hubble has observed about 10,000 astronomical targets. More at:
http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/pr/1998/18/
Lava Tube Presentation Wins Over Planetary Scientists
by Bryce Walden
Oregon L5 Society, Chapter of National Space Society
Contact:<BWalden@aol.com>
1998 May 1
Oregon L5 researchers Cheryl Lynn York and Bryce Walden presented the paper,
"Utility of Lava Tubes on Other Worlds" to the Lunar and Planetary Institute's
Workshop on In Situ Resource Utilization ("ISRU") held in conjunction with
Space 98, April 26 - May 1 in Albuquerque NM. Co-authors of the paper were
Bryce Walden, Thomas L. Billings, and Cheryl Lynn York, all of Oregon L5,
planetary geologist Stephen L. Gillett of the University of Nevada, and Century
West (Bend OR) geotechnical engineer Mark V. Herbert.
About 60 people attended the workshop, including NASA managers, JPL engineers,
government research lab scientists, academic researchers, and industry
representatives.
The talk opened with Walden asking the audience, "Could you use 160 million
cubic meters of open space on the Moon, shielded by 40 meters of solid basalt,
with constant temperature and free of lunar dust?" This represented the average
measurement of 20 top lunar lava tube candidates published by Cassandra Coombs
and B. Ray Hawke in 1988. The total volume represented by these top 20 sites
was estimated to be over 3 billion cubic meters.
To those concerned with lunar base siting problems of solar and cosmic radiation,
solar storms, wide temperature swings between lunar day and night, and charged,
abrasive lunar rock dust, the question was of vital interest.
After York showed some viewgraphs of lava tube maps and diagrams, Walden
put on his white "Oregon Moonbase" helmut and launched into a slide show
of selected lava tube sites on Earth. He reminded the audience that lunar
caves were 10-15 times bigger than these terrestrial examples, and martian
lava tubes were 3-4 times as big. "Think about what you could do with these
spaces," Walden said.
The audience was repeatedly surprised by the size and variety of even terrestrial
lava tube caves. Some pictures caused an audible murmur from the gathered
experts. Many had never seen a lava tube cave before.
Only a brief question and answer period was permitted, due to workshop time
constraints. Questions focussed on sealing lava tube caves for pressurization,
protecting them from human activities within, and finding them.
After the workshop, several people approached York and Walden and thanked
them for the presentation. They said the pictures meant a lot to them, and
helped them to fully visualize the potential of these natural features.
A copy of the 2-page Abstract, including extensive footnotes, will be published
in the Workshop Proceedings in the next several months.
Scientists foresee 'gas stations' on Mars
By Michael Miller
PASADENA, Calif. (Reuters) - Sometime in the not very distant future, an
astronaut on Mars might say, ``Fill 'er up Joe, we're going home.'' At a
conference filled with visions of low-cost space exploration, scientists
on Wednesday concentrated on a thorny problem: How to get man and machinery
back from Mars. Researchers think Mars may be the easiest planet for future
manned missions to reach but getting back from Mars to Earth is another thing.
The answer might just be a Martian "gas station'' using the planet's own
resources to make fuel for the return trip home, Paul Mueller told fellow
space scientists at the third annual International Astronautical Association
Conference on Low Cost Planetary Missions here. Later, in an interview with
Reuters, Mueller said that while there had been several landings on Mars
by unmanned craft -- the latest being last year's highly successful Mars
Pathfinder mission -- taking off from the Red Planet "is certainly more difficult
than anything we have done so far.'' The National Aeronautics and Space
Administration (NASA) has the technology to build huge spacecraft and boosters
that could carry their own fuel to Mars and then take off again, at a cost
of billions of dollars.
But under the space agency's "faster, better, cheaper'' policy, that was
not feasible, Mueller said. Mueller, a senior research engineer at the Utah
State University's Space Dynamics Laboratory, said that the best way to return
samples to Earth in unmanned missions to Mars, as envisioned in NASA's plans
over the next six years, was "BYOP'' or Bring Your Own Propellants. "But
for any kind of human mission where you are trying to bring people back,
there's almost universal agreement that producing the power on Mars is the
preferred way to go,'' he said.
Mueller's team, in conjunction with NASA's scientists at the agency's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, are developing a system that will compress
carbon dioxide from the Martian atmosphere and mix it with hydrogen brought
from Earth to produce water and methane, the basic ingredients needed for
a propulsion system. The system could be used on a small, unmanned
craft that would collect soil and rock samples from the planet, make
its own fuel and take off to rendezvous with a mother ship orbiting the planet,
which would then return it to Earth. If that effort is a success, then follows
the master plan for a gas station on Mars. "The current plan ... is you land
an unmanned propellant production plant on Mars and let it sit there and
make propellant and then when it radios back and says it's full and ready
to go, then you make a decision to send people. You wait until you have the
fuel there until you send your people there,'' Mueller said.
Although the plan is not yet on NASA's official blueprint for the future,
Mueller believes it will go on the space agency's agenda. "It's a kind of
de facto plan that everyone agrees is the way to go, it just hasn't been
officially blessed yet,'' he said.
^REUTERS@
Send the kids to Mars!
On December 3, 1999 the Mars polar Lnader will enter the Martian atmosphere
encased in a protective shell and traveling at hypersonic speed. Its
parachute will open and it will rendezvous with the planet's surface at a
predetermined spot within 500 miles of the Martian south pole.
NASA invites you to be a part of this historic event. This website's
goal is to collect 1 million names of school children from around the world,
and combine these names on a CD-ROM that is going to be included in the payload
of the Mars Polar Lander. Amazing! You become part of history and at
the same time a little bit of yourself becomes part of Mars! OK, what
do I do? So how do you become part of history? Logon:
http://spacekids.hq.nasa.gov/mars/
What's on the Web:
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/
Plans to rcover
AsiaSat3:http://www.hughespace.com/hsc_pressreleases/98_04_29_lunar.html
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.versoft.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
Dear Seattle NSS folk,
Do you know the local AIAA section?
Pacific Northwest
Dr. Walter Christiansen
University of Washington
Dept. of Aero. & Astro.
P.O. Box 352400
Seattle, WA 98195
walt@aa.washington.edu
Pacific Northwest Section
Home Page
Regards,
Charles R.
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