Space Forum / Space Policy / January 2005

New page at
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/database/MasterCatalog?sc=LUNARRO
Some projected info:
Launch Date: 2008-10-01

(Apologies about asking in policy rather than tech).
Reading some the new technologies around thin-film (<10 micron) solar
panels, such as
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6802

I'm trying to think through different approaches to capturing
material catapulted off the lunar surface. The most comprehensive
reference design I've come across is by Heppenheimer, which we
discussed in sci.space.* in November, but only briefly.

hey hears a question that would probley take a lot to ancer.
if our universe was the size of a centameter, how many meters would
the nearest star be..
hint- the nearest star is 4.3 light years away

No, this is not an OT post. With the seemingly endless coverage of JC's
death, it is unfortunate that not 1 word has been said (as far as what I
have heard) about his great interest in astronomy. I can just assume that he
must have been interested in space exploration as well ...

Apparently, the Servicing Mission was killed, and now all the White
House wants to do is to mount an expensive robot mission that will
simply de-orbit HST.

Could you use hydrogen?  Be far cheaper then using xeon.
Christopher
++++++++++++
"The best way to keep one's word

What if the Saturn V was still being built?  Where would we be?
What number would we need to build each year to be financially
reasonable?  What sort of missions might it have done in the past 34
yrs?  How would its existence affect shuttle development?  How might it

"US ANTENNA FREEZES HOUR BEFORE SPACEWALK"
http://en.rian."ru/rian/index.cfm?prd_id=160&msg_id=5344258&startrow=1&date=2005-01-26&do_alert=0"
Is it just me, or does anyone else notice that Russian
media posts stories blaming the U.S. whenever there is

There has been a lot of progress in nuclear fusion in the last years.
The question is no longer if it is possible to achieve nuclear fusion on
earth, but how to make it economical.
One of the most promising approaches to practical nuclear fusion is

Some conspiracy theory novels are good reads; those that combine
publicly known seemingly random events with secret events to somehow
combine the whole can be appealing in that they allow our minds to get
rid of that randomness.  However, a new book; "Orion Protocol" by Gary

Raleigh NC News & Observer, Jan. 19.  Letter to the Editor:
Growing problems
Solutions to transit problems are difficult to find. Having moved here
from a large city I know that light rail, HOV lanes and other measures

I once read a book by Freeman Dyson in which he speculated that we were
more likely to find life in places that were colder rather than warmer.
He meant that we were more likely to find it in places like Titan or
Europa rather than closer to its sun.  I do not remember his reasoning

How can the Delta performance shortfall be explained?
First, the rockets fired for too short of a time.  Either (a) they did
not start with a full load, or (b) they ate it too fast, or (c) they
shut off while fuel still remained.

There are many reasons to replace conventional
rocket launchers with the engine cluster.
The conventional rocket engines are large, complex,
hand-crafted, and made of pipes welded together.