Subject: Space-tech Digest #126 [ Not much happening. Feel free to start a discussion on your favorite space technology topic. --M. ] Contents: Re: 'Top Secret' spaceplane (3 msgs) SPACE Digest (3 msgs) FTP access to NASA reports (1 msg) ------------------------------------------------------------ To: henry@zoo.toronto.edu cc: space-tech@cs.cmu.edu Subject: Re: 'Top Secret' spaceplane Date: Fri, 11 Sep 92 12:12:37 +0100 From: Dominic Herity Obviously, when you read the subject line, you jumped to the conclusion that I endorsed the report mentioned. >There is a truly amazing body of mythology starting to surround SDIO, >including the belief that it has an enormous budget and could be doing >vast numbers of peculiar things without anyone knowing. It's the new >"Great Satan". Perhaps so. I can't comment on that. I was merely trying to relate without prejudice a report that I heard and soliciting informed intelligent opinion. I am disappointed that I got none from you because the quality of your postings is usually much higher. >>A DC-X would fit the description... > >Not even close, even if you ignore the fact that the first DC-X is still >several months away from flight. DC-X is not a space*plane* at all. I am quite aware of what DC-X is and isn't. The DC-X would fit the description if it _were_ a DC-X (which is not to say it is) because (a) It is unknown to the general public (b) It has a similar budget (c) It will travel at hypersonic speed (d) It was incubated in the 'top secret' environment of SDI. The word 'spaceplane' was the reporter's, not mine. Are you criticising me for correctly reporting what I heard? I did not suggest that the vehicle was a DC-X. The significance of DC-X to this subject is that it proves that the development of a vehicle capable f hypersonic and/or sub-orbital flight can be undertaken on a similar budget without attracting publicity. The existence of DC-X therefore makes the report _plausible_, though not _likely_. >Again, please check facts before engaging keyboard. In my mail, I made no mis-statements of fact and was better informed on my subject matter than you were in yours. One of the reasons I sent it was to check facts. Had you read the rest of your mail before engaging keyboard, you would have seen that Mark Flanagan made an excellent reply to my query last Friday and that your reply was irrelevent as well as devoid of information. I usually enjoy your postings. I hope you'll be back to your old form soon. Best Regards Dominic Herity ------------------------------ From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu Date: Fri, 11 Sep 92 11:24:21 EDT cc: space-tech@cs.cmu.edu Subject: Re: 'Top Secret' spaceplane To: Dominic Herity >Obviously, when you read the subject line, you jumped to the conclusion >that I endorsed the report mentioned. I no longer have a copy of the original to look at... but it sure sounded to me like you were saying "this might be true; if so, it might be some secret SDIO project; if so, it might be DC-X". The last two of those three propositions simply are not plausible. It could easily be a secret USAF project. I'd be extremely surprised if it were an SDIO project; I don't think SDIO could have hidden it, and furthermore I see no reason for them to do so. The USAF could and would. Why finger SDIO? This is silly, verging on superstition. As I understand it, the airliner encounter report specified that the object was *flying*, as in sustained horizontal flight. DC-X simply cannot do that at airliner altitudes. No way, no how. >I am quite aware of what DC-X is and isn't. The DC-X would fit the >description if it _were_ a DC-X (which is not to say it is) because > >(a) It is unknown to the general public Lots of things are unknown to the general public; the A-6 probably isn't well known to the general public. >(b) It has a similar budget No. The DC-X budget is tiny, tens of millions. The DC-Y budget will have to be rather larger, a billion or more. >(c) It will travel at hypersonic speed Only at extreme altitude. It is not capable of horizontal flight at any speed at airliner altitudes. >(d) It was incubated in the 'top secret' environment of SDI. As far as I know, there has never been anything secret about DC-X. It was incubated by factions outside the government entirely, and funded by SDIO because they were interested and open to the idea. The idea that everything SDIO does is "top secret" really *is* superstition; it simply isn't so. I agree that it could easily be a few-hundred-million secret USAF project. In fact, unless the report is wildly inaccurate, I'd say that's what it is. But I see no reason, none, zero, to bring either SDIO or DC-X into the speculations. Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 11 Sep 92 10:24:02 -0500 From: pgf@srl07.cacs.usl.edu (Phil G. Fraering) To: dherity@dsg.cs.tcd.ie, henry@zoo.toronto.edu Subject: Re: 'Top Secret' spaceplane Cc: space-tech@cs.cmu.edu SSTO was not incubated in a "black" enviornment. Where did you get this impression? It's been open all along. If you want to know the whole story, check out Gary Hudson's history, which I will post to this list as soon as I get permission. (Sorry about the delay, but a Category 4 Hurricane screwing up your backyard and uprooting large trees can do wonders for your free time for _weeks_ afterward). pgf ------------------------------ From: ssi!lfa@uunet.UU.NET (Louis F. Adornato) Subject: SPACE digest To: uunet!cs.cmu.edu!space-tech@uunet.UU.NET Date: Wed, 30 Sep 92 14:42:44 CDT X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.3 PL11] Has anyone heard about the status of the SPACE digest? There was some talk in spring about it being resurrected come fall. I don't know about you folks in the balmier climes, but here on the tundra, fall is definitely here Lou Adornato | The secretary (and the rest of the company) Supercomputer Systems, Inc | have disavowed any knowledge of my actions. Eau Claire, WI | "Eat cheese or die!" uunet!ssi!lfa or lfa@ssi.com | Wisconsin's State Motto ------------------------------ To: "Louis F. Adornato" Cc: space-tech@cs.cmu.edu, gwh@lurnix.COM Subject: Re: SPACE digest Date: Wed, 30 Sep 92 17:06:35 -0700 From: gwh@lurnix.COM SPACE Digest was supposed to be resurected by International Space University this summer. The person in charge was um, well, informed by his thesis advisor to concentrate on thesis. Steve Abrams and I will try and get it going again, if it has stopped or never completed restarting. [in my copious spare time]. -george william herbert gwh@lurnix.com gwh@soda.berkeley.edu ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 30 Sep 92 23:24:39 EDT From: Mark.Maimone@A.GP.CS.CMU.EDU To: digests@ISU.ISUNET.EDU Subject: Re: SPACE Digest Cc: space-tech@CS.CMU.EDU Lou (and everyone), Space Digest is alive and well, and has been for several months now. Notices were posted to sci.space, and (I thought) all of the previous subscribers. Sorry if we missed you.... George is right, I *am* concentrating on my thesis now. But luckily, Steve Abrams and I were able to get things running back in July, and he's handling the maintenance chores. So I'm now out of the loop, and working until my eyes cross (that happens when you look at lots of stereo images...). Here's a copy of the "Welcome Back" message that was sent on July 14 of this year. You can retrieve it, and the 264 issues that have been sent since then, by anonymous FTP to isu.isunet.edu (see the end of this message for details). Mark Maimone mwm@cmu.edu ==================== SPACE DIGEST RETURNS!!!!!! ==================== Space Digest, an electronic mailing list for all space-related topics, is back in action! After several weeks of changing moderators and fixing dozens of technical problems, everything is finally ready to go. ======================= WHAT IS SPACE DIGEST? ====================== Space Digest is a public forum for discussing all types of space-related topics. Email to the digest is collected during the day, and the condensed collection (sorted by Subject) is distributed at night. Three to four digests will be mailed on a typical day. Technically, Space Digest mirrors the Usenet newsgroup sci.space; all posts made to sci.space will appear in Space Digest, and vice versa. 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There are likely to be literally dozens (if not hundreds) of bad addresses on the mailing list, and we will need time to find them all. If you should receive too many (or not enough) copies of the digest, please send a message to space-REQUEST@isu.isunet.edu. We will respond as soon as we are able. Finally, a big THANK YOU!! to the folks who helped us make the transition to our new system: former moderators Todd Masco and Ted Anderson, the systems people at Carnegie Mellon, and all the Digest readers who provided advice (and some code!) for the port. Space Digest is now being administered under the auspices of the International Space University, at their Executive Offices in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. The folks there have donated the use of their hardware, and the time of several staff and volunteer workers, for this project. The principal maintainers at this time are Steve Abrams (steve@isu.isunet.edu) and Mark Maimone (mwm@cmu.edu), but please send all maintenance requests to the SPACE-REQUEST@ISU.ISUNET.EDU address. ======================= NOTES FOR OLD-TIMERS ====================== The most recent past issue was V14 #1087. We begin volume 15 with this announcement. The old addresses, space+@andrew.cmu.edu and space-request@andrew.cmu.edu, will continue to function for a while, but we ask that you please update your address lists to SPACE@ISU.ISUNET.EDU and SPACE-REQUEST@ISU.ISUNET.EDU. The Space Magazine is no longer available. Perhaps in the future someone will volunteer to moderate it, but for the moment no one is available. Some past volumes, and all future ones, will be available by anonymous-ftp on isu.isunet.edu (192.131.110.15), in directory /usr/anon/pub/space. If you don't have access to the FTP program, you can use an email-based FTP server. For information, send the message "help" to ftpmail@decwrl.dec.com if your account is on Internet; on Bitnet, use bitftp@pucc. The listserv at UGA also provides some retrieval and searching facilities. Send the message "help" to listserv@uga.bitnet for more details (Space Digest is known as "space" on that listserv). ------------------------------ From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu Date: Fri, 2 Oct 92 17:37:56 EDT To: space-tech@cs.cmu.edu Subject: FTP access to NASA reports In case some of you didn't see the enclosed, please take note. I'm told privately that this is not just a proposal, it's actually just about ready to go, but expressions of interest are urgently needed to convince management that it's worth doing. Langley is not involved in spaceflight a lot, they're more aeronautics, but even so they've done things like the HL-20... and if it works out okay, one might well hope that other NASA stuff will become available the same way. Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry Article 48831 of sci.space: Xref: utzoo sci.research:3364 sci.edu:2684 sci.space:48831 sci.astro:26452 sci.aeronautics:4765 sci.engr:3765 Newsgroups: sci.research,sci.edu,sci.space,sci.astro,sci.aeronautics,sci.engr Path: utzoo!torn!utcsri!rpi!usc!wupost!darwin.sura.net!news.larc.nasa.gov!fiddler!mln From: M.L.Nelson@LaRC.NASA.GOV (Michael Nelson) Subject: NASA TMs/TPs:would you like to ftp them? Message-ID: Followup-To: sci.research Sender: mln@fiddler (Michael Nelson) Organization: NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, VA USA References: Date: Fri, 2 Oct 1992 18:22:29 GMT Lines: 29 My question is if NASA-Langley Technical Memorandums and Technical Papers were available in PostScript form for anonymous ftp, would you find this desirable? I am contemplating making them available and would like to have some feedback to determine if such a service is waranted. Caveat #1 - The files would be available in directories corresponding to the year that they were released. An ascii Index of titles and possibly abstracts could be provided. Thus, searching is limited to perusing the abstract list. Caveat #2 - Some figures in the documents might not be availiable in electronic form. That is, some pictures and such that are part of the final TM/TP do not exist electronically. I have no idea how many papers this affects and to what extent. If you have feelings about this service, one way or another, please contact me. I have set follow-ups to sci.research, but email would be the easiest method. I can post the results of the inquiry and the status of the project if it is desired. thank you for your time, Michael Nelson NASA-Langley Research Center M.L.Nelson@LaRC.NASA.GOV ------------------------------ End of Space-tech Digest #126 *******************