Aucbvax.4269 fa.space utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!space Tue Oct 6 04:13:00 1981 SPACE Digest V2 #6 >From OTA@SU-AI Tue Oct 6 04:08:24 1981 SPACE Digest Volume 2 : Issue 6 Today's Topics: Re: SPACE Digest V2 #5 Avoiding war, avoiding running out of oil, into space now! Summary of immediate priorities Re: SPACE Digest V2 #5 Conservation and mining rights on the moon Letter writing campaigns ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 5 Oct 1981 11:39:33-PDT From: decvax!duke!unc!smb at Berkeley In-real-life: Steven M. Bellovin To: ZEMON@MIT-MC, duke!decvax!ucbvax!space@Berkeley Subject: Re: SPACE Digest V2 #5 Cc: POURNE@MIT-MC There is a draft treaty on lunar rights, etc., that is (I think) signed but not ratified by the U.S. A strong opposition to the treaty has grown up, claiming that provisions declaring it to be "the common heritage of all mankind" would discourage private enterprise, since there'd be no guarantee of profits. Jerry Pournelle wrote a column on it in Analog several months ago (guess which side he's on...); I'm sure he can provide the reference more easily than I can. My own opinion after reading his column was that the language was fairly vague, and not likely to be a problem. Then again, I do have views on collective responsibilities, etc., that I'm *sure* he doesn't agree with.... ------------------------------ From: REM@MIT-AI (Sent by ___052@MIT-AI) Date: 10/05/81 20:08:53 Subject: Avoiding war, avoiding running out of oil, into space now! REM@MIT-AI (Sent by ___052@MIT-AI) 10/05/81 20:08:53 Re: Avoiding war, avoiding running out of oil, into space now! To: ARMS-D at MIT-AI, SPACE at MIT-AI Re needing oil to get into space: There's a critical window now when we have developed the technology to bootstrap ourselves into space, and we haven't yet exhausted the oil that made the industrial revolution possible. Once we get into space, have industry there to convert solar radiation into usable energy and convert moonrocks and asteroids into materials and fuels, we will be able to get along without oil. There's such a vast amount of energy and fuel out there in space that we could have robots out there manufacture foam-steel (iron from metallic asteroids) filled with hydrogen gas (hydrogen from water from lunar poles and/or asteroids/comets) and just drop it to Earth to be used here, or beam microwaves down and decompose seawater here. With vast surplusses of energy, there are amazing things that can be done. They don't even have to be efficient in terms of energy, because after all we're right now wasting 99.99997% of energy from the sun, so even if we get only 1% efficiency in our actual process we're doing several orders of magnitude better than we're doing currently by just letting it go to waste. The critical thing is bootstrapping, we have to use processes that don't require much from Earth, that get themselves bigger and bigger as they produce materials to be incorporated into their own selves. -- Now here's the rub. If we have a nuclear war or we spend the next 30 years "conserving" instead of developing space energy and manufacturing, we'll no longer have all this nice Petrolium, and it'll be harder to make rocket ships and other things to get the whole process started. If we wait too long, we may never again be able to get to space, and we'll stagnate here on Earth until we get wiped out. ------------------------------ Date: 5 Oct 1981 19:04:02-PDT From: jef at LBL-UNIX (Jef Poskanzer [rtsg]) To: SPACE at MC Apologies to all for my recent seemingly off-the-wall message about nuclear war and global extinction. As Ted guessed, it was supposed to go to ARMS-D. Blush, pound head on keyboard, tear hair, etc... --- Jef (I hope I got this one right.) ------------------------------ Date: 5 October 1981 22:36-EDT From: Robert Elton Maas Sender: ___155 at MIT-MC Subject: Summary of immediate priorities To: SPACE at MIT-MC Here's what seems to me to be the concensus on what's important in space: (1) Space Transport System (shuttle), to get people and equipment into low Earth orbit -- Although the 5th orbiter would be nice, at the present the project has enough money and just has to work out the technical problems. (2) LEO (Low Earth Orbit station, also known as space operations center), a place to house personnel and experiments BETWEEN shuttle flights -- I think this is funded but we have to keep it funded, not let it get cut. (Was it cut last week? I don't know.) (3) Lunar-polar-orbiter, survey polar regions for water ice, needed to get hydrogen for use in life-support, fuels, and manufacturing processes -- No funding presently, we urgently need funding for this!! (4) Asteroid-carbon-assey, land on various asteroids and assey the material to see how much carbon they contain, needed for life-support and many many industrial materials used in manufacturing (glue, lubricant, steel, fuels) -- No funding presently, we urgently need funding for this!! Once the above have all been accomplished, assuming the asseys show enough hydrogen and carbon for our needs, we can then proceed to build colonies on one of the polar regions on the moon, to process by remote control from Earth or LEO the lunar rock and water-ice, and we can seriously plan towards bringing an asteroid into Earth orbit to mine it for carbon and metals. Of less practical use, but of immense scientific value, are Galileo (probe Jupiter's atmosphere and survey the moons; funded but in danger of being cut), Halley (take pictures and analyze chemical content of Halley's comet; not funded, probably already too late to get funding, sigh), Solar polar mission (half-funded, sigh), Large Space Telescope (funded last I heard). Did I leave out anything important? Errata? Oh yes, almost forgot, SEPS (Solar Electric Propulsion System), useful for long space trips but not urgent presently. ------------------------------ Date: 6 October 1981 04:22-EDT From: Jerry E. Pournelle Subject: Re: SPACE Digest V2 #5 To: chico!duke!unc!smb at UCB-C70 cc: ZEMON at MIT-MC, POURNE at MIT-MC, SPACE at MIT-MC, duke!decvax!ucbvax!space at UCB-C70 Re the Moon Treaty: regardless of one's views on "collective responsibility" (whatever that means--does it mean no one is responsible since we all are?) vague language which becomes, under our Constitution, "supreme law of the land" is an invitation for lawyers to become wealthy while whatever the treaty concerned languishes. This is as true of the Moon Treaty as anything else. However, the subject is a dead letter. the Reagin Administration has no intention of submittiing that mess to the Senate (and for that matter, both Republican and Democrat leaders on the Foreign Relations Committee of the Senate have declared the Treaty not to be in the best interests of the USA.) ------------------------------ Date: 6 October 1981 04:39-EDT From: Jerry E. Pournelle Subject: Conservation and mining rights on the moon To: ZEMON at MIT-MC cc: SPACE-ENTHUSIASTS at MIT-MC SOME environmentalists have alrady spoken: it is sacrilege (and a violation of the rights of American Indians who worship the Moon) to mar its surface, including strip mining. I wish I were kidding. Observation: enough lunar material to build a dozen space solar power stations would be dug by a single bulldozer, and the "blemish" could not be seen from Earth with the best telescopes available. ah. well. ------------------------------ Date: 6 October 1981 05:34-EDT From: Steve Kudlak Subject: Letter writing campaigns To: SPACE at MIT-MC L-5 wants to do another letter writing campaign to try to stop budget cuts(or reverse??) being applied to NASA. They recommend writing to V.P. Bush at the following address: Vice President Bush Space Policy Council Executive Office Building Washington, D.C. 20501 (**Please include thisin space digest if it is not a duplication of previous message**) Have fun Sends Steve ------------------------------ End of SPACE Digest ******************* ----------------------------------------------------------------- gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen of http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/ This Usenet Oldnews Archive article may be copied and distributed freely, provided: 1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles. 2. The following notice remains appended to each copy: The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.