SELENE "Wish upon the moon!" Campaign

SELENE "Wish upon the moon!" Campaign
http://www.jaxa.jp/event/selene/index_e.html

Application Period: Friday, December 1, 2006 to Wednesday, February 28,
2007

Sponsor: Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency
Cooperation: The Planetary Society of Japan
and The Planetary Society (U.S.A)

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) plans to launch the lunar
orbiter "SELENE" on a H-IIA Launch Vehicle from Tanegashima Space Center in
the summer of 2007.

The SELENE is an artificial satellite that aims to collect closely featured
scientific data on "The formation of the moon and its transitional history
up to today," which is the biggest lunar exploration project since the
Apollo Project.

JAXA will accept from the public names and messages to deliver to the moon
aboard the SELENE. Please send us your wishful messages.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/calendar/
Snip
# Jan 31 - Deadline To Submit Name to Selene - [extended to 28 Feb - LRK -]
   http://www.jaxa.jp/event/selene/index_e.html
# Jan 31 - Asteroid 2006 CJ Near-Earth Flyby (0.026 AU)
   http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/db_shm?des=2006+CJ
Snip
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

I hope we get to see our names go to the Moon this Summer with the Japanese.
- LRK -

I wonder how much we will see from the USA if the money for space gets
diverted?  Watch those folks with the quill pens.  See  SpaceRef clips
below.
- LRK -


Thanks for looking up with me.

Larry Kellogg

Web Site: http://lkellogg.vttoth.com/LarryRussellKellogg/
BlogSpot: http://kelloggserialreports.blogspot.com/
RSS link: http://kelloggserialreports.blogspot.com/atom.xml
Newsletter: https://news.altair.com/mailman/listinfo/lunar-update
==============================================================
http://selene.tksc.jaxa.jp/index_e.html
SELENE is the most sophisticated lunar exploration mission in the
post-Apollo Era.

SELENE consists of the main orbiter and two small satellites - the Relay
satellite and the VRAD satellite.

The main orbiter will observe the distribution of the elements and minerals
on the surface, the surface and sub-surface structure, the gravity field,
the remnant of the magnetic field and the environment of energetic particles
and plasma of the Moon.

The Relay satellite will relay the doppler ranging signal between the Main
Orbiter and the ground station for the world's first direct measurement of
he gravity field in the farside of the Moon. The differential VLBI
Radio-Sources on board the Relay satellite and the VRAD satellite are used
to determine the gravity field of the Moon most precisely.

Mission Instruments

X-Ray Spectrometer 
http://selene.tksc.jaxa.jp/gaiyo/01_e.html
Four way doppler measurements by Relay satellite and Main Orbiter
transponder, Differential VLBI Radio Source, Radio science 
http://selene.tksc.jaxa.jp/gaiyo/02_e.html
Plasma energy Angle and Cmposition Experiment
http://selene.tksc.jaxa.jp/gaiyo/03_e.html
Lunar Radar Sounder
http://selene.tksc.jaxa.jp/gaiyo/04_e.html
Gamma Ray Spectrometer, Charged Particle Spectrometer
http://selene.tksc.jaxa.jp/gaiyo/05_e.html
Multi band Imager,  Spectral Profiler, Terrain Camera 
http://selene.tksc.jaxa.jp/gaiyo/06_e.html
Laser Altimeter 
http://selene.tksc.jaxa.jp/gaiyo/07_e.html
Lunar Magnetometer,
Upper-atmosphere and Plasma Imager
http://selene.tksc.jaxa.jp/gaiyo/08_e.html
High Definition Television
http://selene.tksc.jaxa.jp/gaiyo/09_e.html
Snip
==============================================================
http://www.jaxa.jp/index_e.html
February 1, 2007 Updated

On February 1, the JAXA Website was reborn with the aim to become a website
that is easier for users to view.

A new function, "RSS distribution," enables us to transmit to users JAXA's
latest information including "press releases" and "lists of updated items."
(RSS reader is needed to receive the distribution.)

We hope you enjoy the renewed JAXA website.

Snip
==============================================================
http://www.isas.jaxa.jp/e/forefront/index.shtml
The Forefront of Space Science

(24 January)
Space Inflatable Structures
http://www.isas.jaxa.jp/e/forefront/2006/higuchi/index.shtml
Ken HIGUCHI - Associate Prof., Department of Space Structure and Materials,
ISAS -

Inflatable structures, a typical example of which is the Tokyo Dome, have
many advantages, such as the provision of a large space, light weight and
few mechanical components. These features are also effective and
advantageous in space. This article outlines technologies for the three
processes - deployment, inflation and curing - required to build the
structure and also introduces future applications in space.

Snip
==============================================================

THE DAY IN SPACE
_________________
In today's space news from SpaceRef:

-- (NASA Excerpts) H. J. RES. 20 Making further continuing appropriations for the fiscal year 2007, and for other purposes http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.nl.html?pid=23210
-- Democrats File Joint Funding Resolution for FY 2007
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.nl.html?pid=21768
-- Weldon: Democrat Leadership Raids NASA Budget
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.nl.html?pid=21772

"Clearly, the new Democrat leadership in the House isn't interested in space exploration. Their omnibus proposal lists hundreds of new increases, including a $1.3 billion increase‹over 40% for a Global AIDS fund, all at the expense of NASA."


-- NASA Associate Administrators Discuss Budget Details
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.nl.html?pid=21769
-- NASA Announces FY 08 Budget Press Conference
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.nl.html?pid=21767

"NASA Administrator Michael Griffin briefs the media about the agency's Fiscal Year 2008 budget at 1 p.m. EST, Monday, Feb. 5. The press briefing is in NASA's main auditorium located at 300 E Street S.W. in Washington."


-- Sea Launch Experiences Anomaly During NSS-8 Launch
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.nl.html?pid=21766
[Has a YouTube clip of the fire ball. - LRK -]


"A Sea Launch Zenit-3SL vehicle, carrying the NSS-8 satellite, experienced an anomaly today during launch operations. All personnel at the launch site are safe and accounted for. (Includes link to video of rocket explosion)".


==============================================================

WHAT THE MIND CAN CONCEIVE, AND BELIEVE, IT WILL ACHIEVE - LRK

==============================================================

Apollo 1 Fire - 40 Years Ago

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_747.html
On January 27, 1967, Apollo 1's crew--Virgil I. "Gus" Grissom, Edward H. White II and Roger B. Chaffee--was killed when a fire erupted in their capsule during testing. Apollo 1 was originally designated AS-204 but following the fire, the astronauts' widows requested that the mission be remembered as Apollo 1 and following missions would be numbered subsequent to the flight that never made it into space.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A time to remember.
- LRK -

INCORPORATING SPACE INTO OUR ECONOMIC SPHERE OF INFLUENCE
Michael D. Griffin
Administrator
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
World Economic Forum
Jan. 26, 2007

Received the above and copied below from the NASA News list.
Here also is a link to it in PDF form.
- LRK -
--------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.nasa.gov/audience/formedia/speeches/index.html
ADMINISTRATOR GRIFFIN'S SPEECHES

01.26.07 - Remarks at World Economic Forum 2007
Some of us gathered here tonight grew up during the Apollo era of the 1960s,
NASA's apotheosis. We watched science fiction movies and television shows
that made us believe that we--all of us and not simply a few
astronauts--could become space travelers.
+ View PDF (36 Kb PDF)
http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/168156main_World_Economic_Forum_2007.pdf

Snip
--------------------------------------------------------------

Make it so!

Thanks for looking up with me.

Larry Kellogg

Web Site: http://lkellogg.vttoth.com/LarryRussellKellogg/
BlogSpot: http://kelloggserialreports.blogspot.com/
RSS link: http://kelloggserialreports.blogspot.com/atom.xml
Newsletter: https://news.altair.com/mailman/listinfo/lunar-update
==============================================================
Received from NASA News - To subscribe to the list,
send a message to: hqnews-subscribe@mediaservices.nasa.gov
- LRK -
--------------------------------------------------------------
RELEASE: Speech Transcript

INCORPORATING SPACE INTO OUR ECONOMIC SPHERE OF INFLUENCE
Michael D. Griffin
Administrator
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
World Economic Forum
Jan. 26, 2007

Good evening. Thank you for inviting me to speak tonight. It is not often
that an aerospace engineer is invited to speak to an economic forum.
However, I took a business degree along with my engineering and physics
coursework, and I appreciate the economic impact that space has on our
society, especially practical applications like communications, navigation,
weather and remote sensing satellites as well as the economic, national
security and scientific benefits. And this says nothing of the
less-quantifiable benefits of intellectual inspiration.

Some of us gathered here tonight grew up during the Apollo era of the 1960s,
NASA's apotheosis. We watched science fiction movies and television shows
that made us believe that we -- all of us and not simply a few astronauts --
could become space travelers. Arthur C. Clarke's and Stanley Kubrik's
masterpiece of science fiction "2001: A Space Odyssey" projected onto the
screen of our collective human consciousness a future for us where, by now,
hundreds of people would be living and working in space stations orbiting
the Earth and outposts would exist on our moon. We would be journeying to
other planets in our solar system, just as our European forbears came to
America looking for new beginnings. This space age vision of our future
proved illusory for our generation for two fundamental reasons: the
limitations of our economic resources and the limitations of technology.
Neil Armstrong's "giant leap for mankind" was not a journey that could be
sustained without a more concerted investment of time, resources and energy
than followed his seminal achievement on July 20, 1969.

But I believe that there are economic and technological reasons why we can
now begin to afford and sustain this Vision for Space Exploration in a
fashion where we "go-as-we-pay," and why the nations of the world making
such investments of time, resources and energy will find that the benefits
far outweigh the costs and risks involved. We have the technology and
economic wherewithal to incorporate the benefits of space into our sphere of
influence -- to exploit the vantage point of space and the space
environment, and the natural resources of the moon, Mars, and near-Earth
asteroids. Space exploration is not simply this century's greatest
adventure; it is an imperative that, if not pursued with some concerted
effort, will have catastrophic consequences for our society. I realize this
is a bold statement, so allow me to explain.

On the day before he was assassinated in Dallas, President John F.
Kennedy was in San Antonio, where he spoke about space exploration.
He invoked Irish writer Frank O'Connor, who told the story of "how, as a
boy, he and his friends would make their way across the countryside, and
when they came to an orchard wall that seemed too high, and too doubtful to
try, and too difficult to permit their voyage to continue, they took off
their hats and tossed them over the wall -- and then they had no choice but
to follow them." The United States, the European Union, Russia, China,
Japan, India, and others have tossed our caps over the wall of space
exploration.

In that same speech, President Kennedy recited several technical advances
from NASA's space program, explaining that "our effort in space is not, as
some have suggested, a competitor for the natural resources that we need to
develop the Earth. It is a working partner and a co-producer of these
resources." And he finished this speech with the recognition of the costs
and risks involved with space exploration: "We will climb this wall with
safety and with speed -- and we shall then explore the wonders on the other
side."

Even an emotionless engineer can be moved by President Kennedy's poetic
framing of the issues of space exploration, but since this is an economic
forum, let me now turn to the "dismal science." When President Kennedy spoke
those words in 1963, the Gross Domestic Product of the United States was
approximately $2.8 trillion, in FY2000 dollars. In 2005 it was approximately
$11 trillion in those same FY2000 dollars -- four times larger. In 1963, the
U.S. federal government spent approximately $600 billion, again in FY2000
dollars, with NASA's allocation representing 2.3 percent of that amount. At
the spending peak of the Apollo program, NASA represented 4.4 percent of the
federal budget. Today, with a U.S. federal budget of almost
$2.5 trillion, NASA's budget represents about 0.6 percent of that.

Clearly our economy has grown, our society has changed, and our priorities
for government spending have changed since 1963. Thus, in the latter half of
the 1960s and early 1970s, our nation's leadership decided that we should
not sustain such a high percentage of investment in the space program. In
these years, the priorities of the U.S. federal budget changed to
accommodate the escalating costs of the war in Vietnam, defense spending for
the Cold War, and Great Society programs. Today, the costs of the Global War
on Terrorism, Hurricane Katrina recovery, Social Security, and
Medicare/Medicaid dominate our federal government spending. The costs of our
nation's entitlement programs alone are projected to double in the next 10
years, from more than $1 trillion per year today to more than $2 trillion
per year, as the baby boomers like me begin to retire. By comparison, NASA's
budget of $16.2 billion for this year is somewhere in the realm of what
engineers call rounding error, at 0.6 percent of all federal spending.

Because of the magnitude of these changes over the last four decades, it is
important to view our nation's investment in our civil space and aeronautics
research program from this larger economic perspective, because some critics
have questioned the value proposition of even the current investment in
NASA. I believe that we must recognize that the development of space is a
strategic capability for our nations, and that we must bring the solar
system into our economic sphere of influence. And equally, I believe that
NASA must leverage the great economic engine of our nation and world.
Thus, the companies and countries that many of you represent can take
advantage of the trails we plan to blaze as we explore space, just as we
leverage the capabilities you create.

As a U.S. federal agency, NASA expects only inflationary growth in our
annual budget. Thus, we have adopted a "go-as-we-pay" approach for space
exploration, science missions and aeronautics research. Thus, the primary
pacing item for new ventures is our nation's ability to afford such
capabilities.

Over the next three years, our highest priority is to complete assembly of
the International Space Station and honor our agreements to our Russian,
European, Japanese and Canadian partners in this venture. It will not be
easy. The International Space Station is the world's greatest engineering
project, akin to such feats as the Great Wall of China, the pyramids of
Egypt, the Panama and Suez canals, or the sea walls of Venice. Friends of
mine who worked on the Apollo program have conveyed to me their belief that
the construction of the International Space Station is just as tough a job.

There are many critics of this space station, just as there were critics of
President Kennedy who called the Apollo program a "moondoggle." But I
believe that the greatest achievement of the International Space Station
partnership is the partnership itself, and that's a tough thing to
criticize. For over six years, astronauts and cosmonauts have been living
and working together onboard the space station. For the United States, the
station is a national laboratory in space, where we will conduct research to
make future exploration to other planets in our solar system possible. I
hope this partnership will reap even greater dividends as we explore space
together over many future generations. The unifying vision that forged this
partnership during the 1990s, prompted by the Gore-Chernomyrdin Commission,
is what we endeavor to carry forward today.

Our partnership has endured some hardships along the way, not least of which
was the Columbia accident. I hope and believe that those hardships have
built stronger bonds between us.

With the proper goals in mind, I believe the benefits of space exploration
far outweigh the risks. Among the most practical of these is our work with
hurricane-monitoring satellites, aircraft and sensors that allow
meteorologists to track such storms and predict their severity and impact.
Many people today do not even realize that their weather forecasts rely on
information from space assets.

Broader misconceptions exist. NASA spinoff technologies were never Tang,
Teflon or space pens. But while we actually can cite tens of thousands of
legitimate technology spinoffs, including medical devices, fuel cells and
batteries and even cordless tools, I would like to discuss a more seminal
point. I want people to realize the key areas where NASA's space endeavors
have created entirely new industrial capabilities that improve our
fundamental way of life.

For example, NASA is one of the major consumers of liquid hydrogen to fuel
our space shuttle and other rocket engines. Liquid hydrogen is also used in
the manufacturing of metals, glass, electronics and even foods. When you
hear the term "hydrogenated fats" applied to baked goods like pastries and
bread, it means that liquid hydrogen was one of the ingredients. NASA is
such a large consumer of liquid hydrogen that after Hurricane Katrina, we
returned several hundred thousand gallons to the nation's reserve and
delayed several space shuttle rocket engine tests to alleviate a national
shortage when our nation's liquid hydrogen production facilities and supply
lines were disrupted. Likewise, we are a major consumer of liquid oxygen.
Our huge demand market for these propellants sparked fundmental improvements
in the production and handling of these volatile substances. Today, the
ready availability of liquid oxygen allows firefighters, emergency response
teams and nursing homes to carry on their backs or in suitcases portable,
hand-carried oxygen tanks. In the 1960s, only select hospitals could supply
oxygen, in hazardous oxygen tents.

I am sure that many of you would agree with me that the greatest revolution
in our productivity and way of life has been the development of the personal
computer, internet and various handheld communication devices. Thirty-five
years ago, engineers like me used three pieces of wood and a piece of
plastic that moved -- the slide rule -- to make calculations. Thirty years
ago, 1,000 transistors could fit on a silicon chip; today, it's 100 million.
The cost of such chips has dropped by a factor of 100,000. Few people know
that the development of the first microprocessors was born of a competition
between Fairchild and Intel in the 1960s, to build components small enough
to fit in NASA spacecraft. This straightforward NASA technical requirement
spawned a whole new industry that grew in ways few, except perhaps Gordon
Moore, could predict. Necessity is the mother of invention, and I believe
that we are at our most creative when we embark on bold ventures like the
space program.

So, with the economic growth and technology development we have seen since
the 1960s, I believe that we are now entering a Renaissance period of space
exploration where we can realize the vision that eluded us earlier. And as
in the Renaissance, wealthy individuals will play a role in advancing the
work of our architects, engineers and technicians. These will be
entrepreneurs who have made their wealth in other endeavors -- Jeff Bezos
from Amazon, Bob Bigelow from Budget Suites, Richard Branson from Virgin and
Elon Musk of Paypal fame are examples. These gentlemen and others have put
their personal time, resources and energy behind the notion that many more
people can have personal experience in space than do so today. It is one
thing to view pictures of Earth from the vantage point of space, even on an
IMAX screen, but it is another thing entirely to see it with one's own eyes.
Many friends of mine have spoken of the epiphany they experienced from this.


But let me be clear. NASA's job is not to sponsor space travel for private
citizens. That is for private industry. My hope is the reverse; that when
the public can purchase rides into space, NASA can leverage this capability.
Likewise, I hope that one day NASA can leverage the expertise of companies
not unlike FedEx or UPS today, to meet our cargo needs for the space station
and future lunar outposts. And one day, maybe, astronauts onboard our Orion
crew exploration vehicle on their way to the moon and Mars can top off on
liquid hydrogen from commercially available orbiting fuel stations.

In the process of building these new space capabilities, these
entrepreneurs, along with NASA and other companies, are hiring more
aerospace engineers. I believe that a key measure of a society's economic
growth is the extent to which we are educating a technically literate people
who can build the infrastructure to advance that society. It is deeply
troubling to me when education statistics for the United States indicate
there are more bachelor's degrees in psychology being awarded than
engineering degrees. I am sure that even the economics majors here can
appreciate my concern!

Again, NASA hopes to leverage, to the maximum extent possible, the
capabilities that space entrepreneurs hope to create. A few years ago, when
I was in the private sector working at InQTel, I helped fund a small
software company seeking a better approach to visualizing satellite imagery.
Over the years, that company grew into the backbone for Google Earth. Now,
we hope to "spin-in" that capability to visualize imagery from other planets
in our solar system, like the moon and Mars, using data from various NASA
satellites and the Mars rovers. By invoking such commercial capabilities,
NASA can leverage the funding of other investors to our mutual benefit.

In conclusion, I would like to leave you with a final thought as to what
might happen if we do not explore space, if we do not follow the cap we
tossed over the wall in the 1960s. Last month in the journal Science,
researchers examining the primordial material returned by NASA's Stardust
space probe found that some of that material could not have come from the
Kuiper Belt in the outer reaches of our solar system, but instead could only
have come from our sun's core. Some of that material was even older than our
own sun. The history of life on Earth is the history of extinction events,
with evidence for some five major such events in the history of the Earth.
The last of these occurred approximately 65 million years ago, when the
dinosaurs that dominated the Earth for over 160 million years suffered a
catastrophic extinction. It is believed that this event was caused by a
giant asteroid which struck Earth in the Gulf of Mexico, triggering
tsunamis, tectonic shifts and radically changing Earth's climate.

The brief history of humans is next to nothing compared to the history of
other life on Earth, and even less so compared to the age of our solar
system or of the universe. Our species hasn't been around long enough to
have experienced a cataclysmic extinction event. But they will occur,
whether we are ready for them or not.

In the end, space exploration is fundamentally about the survival of the
species, about ensuring better odds for our survival through the
promulgation of the human species. But as we do it, we will also ensure the
prosperity of our species in the economic sense, in a thousand ways. Some of
these we can foresee, and some we cannot. Who could claim that he or she
would have envisioned the Boeing 777, after seeing the first Wright Flyer?
And yet one followed the other in the blink of an historical eye.

For this and many other economic and scientific reasons, we must explore
what is on the other side of that wall, walk in the footprints of Neil
Armstrong, and make that next giant leap for mankind.

Thank you.

-end-
==============================================================

WHAT THE MIND CAN CONCEIVE, AND BELIEVE, IT WILL ACHIEVE - LRK

==============================================================

Caltech and UCLA Researchers Create Memory Circuit the Size of a Human White
Blood Cell
http://pr.caltech.edu/media/Press_Releases/PR12942.html

PASADENA, Calif.--Don't throw away your laptop yet, but there's a promising
new high-tech invention being announced this week. Researchers have created
a memory circuit the size of a white blood cell that has enough capacity to
store the Declaration of Independence and have space left over. With 160
kilobits of capacity, it's the densest memory circuit ever fabricated.

Announcing the achievement in the January 25 issue of the journal Nature,
the team led by chemistry professor James Heath of the California Institute
of Technology says that the memory circuit is a milestone in manufacturing,
even if it's not anywhere near readiness for the market.

"It's the sort of device that Intel would contemplate making in the year
2020," says Heath, who is the Gilloon Professor at Caltech. "But at the
moment it furthers our goal of learning how to manufacture functional
electronic circuitry at molecular dimensions."

Snip
--------------------------------------------------------------

This would seem to be a bit more dense than my COMPUPRO 64KB Z89 computer
gathering dust in the garage.
http://www.tech.port.ac.uk/staffweb/andersod/CCS/resurrectionarticle?Article=5-7
http://www.thepcmuseum.net/hardware.php
http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=651&st=1

or the Apollo Guidance Computer.

--------------------------------------------------------------
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
Snip
The Block I AGC initially had 12K words of fixed memory, but this was later
increased to 24K. Block II had 32K of fixed memory and 4K of erasable
memory.
Snip
--------------------------------------------------------------

Now for Asimov's Positronic Brain.
- LRK -
--------------------------------------------------------------
http://forums.spacebattles.com/archive/index.php/t-94702.html
Snip
Earth might have settled the Moon as early as the late seventies.

Robutt, who could hear him by radio, squeaked and bounded after.
Jimmy, expert though he was, couldn't outrace Robutt, who didn't need a
spacesuit, and had four legs and tendons of steel. Robutt sailed over
Jimmy's head, somersaulting and landing almost under his feet.
[...]
Besides, how could it be dangerous racing through the dark when Robutt was
right there with him, bouncing around and squeaking and glowing? Even
without the glow, Robutt could tell where he was, and where Jimmy was, by
radar. Jimmy couldn't go wrong while Robutt was around, tripping him when he
was too near a rock, or jumping on him to show how much he loved him, or
circling around and squeaking low and scared when Jimmy hid behind a rock,
when all the time Robutt knew well enough where he was. Once Jimmy had lain
still and pretended he was hurt and Robutt had sounded the radio alarm and
people from Lunar City got there in a hurry. Jimmy's father had let him hear
about that little trick, and Jimmy never tried it again.
[...]
He stood there on all fours, his little foot-long body quivering and glowing
just a tiny bit, and his small head, with no mouth, with two large
glassed-in eyes, and with a bump where the brain was.
[...]
"Not a real one, Jimmy. Robutt's just steel and wiring and a simple
positronic brain. It's not alive."
"He does everything I want him to do, Dad. He understands me. Sure, he's
alive."
"No, son. Robutt is just a machine. It's just programmed to act the way it
does. A dog is alive. You won't want Robutt after you have the dog."
[...]
And the little robot-mutt, which had never been held so tightly in all its
existence, squeaked high and rapid squeaks-happy squeaks.

Description and capabilities of a primitive robot used as plaything and
caretaker for children. It can operate in the vacuum, has a built-in radar
and is at least as agile as a real dog. It is implied that the robot is
sentient and not just cleverly programmed.

Snip

Robot AL-76 goes astray (circa 2005 AD).

And at the central plant, a sudden explosion of near panic took place. For
the first time in the history of the United States Robots and Mechanical Men
Corporation, a robot had escaped to the outer world. It wasn't so much that
the law forbade the presence of any robot on Earth outside a licensed
factory of the corporation. Laws could always be squared. What was much more
to the point was the statement made by one of the research mathematicians.
He said: "That robot was created to run a Disinto on the moon. Its
positronic brain was equipped for a lunar environment, and only a lunar
environment. On Earth it's going to receive seventy-five umptillion sense
impressions for which it was never prepared. There's no telling what its
reactions will be. No telling!" And he wiped a forehead that had suddenly
gone wet, with the back of his hand.

Snip

About the cost of robots. Unfortunately, the prices given are esentially
meaningless without more knowledge about the economy.

Payne paused doubtfully. "I don't think I can build one." He wondered if it
would do any good to pretend he could.
"That's all right." AL-76 could almost feel the positronic paths of his
brain weaving into a new pattern, and experienced a strange exhilaration. "I
can build one." He looked into Payne's deluxe doghouse and said. "You've got
all the material here that I need."
Randolph Payne surveyed the junk with which his shack was filled:
eviscerated radios, a topless refrigerator, rusty automobile engines, a
broken-down gas range, several miles of frayed wire, and, taking it all
together, fifty tons or thereabouts of the most heterogeneous mass of old
metal as ever caused a junkman to sniff disdainfully.

A partial failure of its positronic brain and sheer single-mindedness makes
AL-76 create its own "Disinto". This means that the robot has in-depth
knowledge/schematics of the machine it is meant to operate and can build a
reproduction with scrap electronics.


>From a rusty and massive iron base that faintly resembled something Payne
had once seen attached to a secondhand tractor, it rose upward in rakish,
drunken swerves through a bewildering mess of wires, wheels, tubes, and
nameless horrors without number, ending in a megaphone arrangement that
looked decidedly sinister.
[...]
"It's the Disinto I'm making-so I can start to work. It's an improvement on
the standard model." The robot rose, dusted his knees clankingly, and looked
at it proudly.
[...]
There exists no adequate description of what occurred afterward, in spite of
the presence of seventy eyewitnesses. [...] AL-76 pulled a switch. The
Disinto worked, and seventy-five trees, two barns, three cows and the top
three quarters of Duckbill Mountain whiffed into rarefied atmosphere. They
became, so to speak, one with the snows of yesteryear.

Description of an "improved" Disinto, which probably means Disintegrator.
Considering the extremely destructive effects, the models used in the Lunar
mines are probably a bit less impressive.

He was yelling wildly and hoarsely, "Hey, you robot, you smash that thing,
do you hear? Smash it good! You forget I ever had anything to do with it.
You're a stranger to me, see? You don't ever say a word about it. Forget it,
you hear?"
He didn't expect his orders to do any good; it was only reflex action. What
he didn't know was that a robot always obeys a human order except where
carrying it out involves danger to another human.
[...]
Austin Wilde, Robotical Engineer, turned to Sam Tobe and said, "Did you get
anything out of the robot?"
Tobe shook his head and snarled deep in his throat. "Nothing. Not one thing.
He's forgotten everything that's happened since he left the factory. He must
have gotten orders to forget, or it couldn't have left him so blank. What
was that pile of junk he'd been fooling with?"

A simple order to forget makes a robot erase its full memory so completely
that not even a qualified roboticist can recover the lost information.

Snip
--------------------------------------------------------------

Hmmmmm. :-)

Thanks for looking up with me.

Larry Kellogg

Web Site: http://lkellogg.vttoth.com/LarryRussellKellogg/
BlogSpot: http://kelloggserialreports.blogspot.com/
RSS link: http://kelloggserialreports.blogspot.com/atom.xml
Newsletter: https://news.altair.com/mailman/listinfo/lunar-update
==============================================================
http://www.physorg.com/news88874126.html
Toward Building Molecular Computers

Don't throw away your laptop yet, but there's a promising new high-tech
invention being announced this week. Researchers have created a memory
circuit the size of a white blood cell that has enough capacity to store the
Declaration of Independence and have space left over. With 160 kilobits of
capacity, it's the densest memory circuit ever fabricated.

A team of UCLA and California Institute of Technology chemists reports in
the Jan. 25 issue of the journal Nature the successful demonstration of a
large-scale, "ultra-dense" memory device that stores information using
reconfigurable molecular switches. This research represents an important
step toward the creation of molecular computers that are much smaller and
could be more powerful than today's silicon-based computers.


The 160-kilobit memory device uses interlocked molecules manufactured in the
UCLA laboratory of J. Fraser Stoddart, director of the California
NanoSystems Institute (CNSI), who holds UCLA's Fred Kavli Chair in
Nanosystems Sciences and who was awarded a knighthood by Queen Elizabeth II
less than a month ago.

A bit, or binary digit, is the basic unit of information storage and
communication in digital computing. A kilobit is equal to 1,000 bits and is
commonly used for measuring the amount of data that is transferred in one
second between two telecommunication points.

The research published in Nature describes the fabrication and operation of
a memory device. The memory is based on a series of perpendicular, crossing
nanowires, similar to a tic-tac-toe board, with 400 bottom wires and another
400 crossing top wires. Sitting at each crossing of the tic-tac-toe
structure and serving as the storage element are approximately 300 bistable
rotaxane molecules. These molecules may be switched between two different
states, and each junction of a crossbar can be addressed individually by
controlling the voltages applied to the appropriate top and bottom crossing
wires, forming a bit at each nanowire crossing.

The 160-kilobit molecular memory was fabricated at a density of
100,000,000,000 (1011) bits per square centimeter - "a density predicted for
commercial memory devices in approximately 2020," Stoddart said.

A rotaxane is a molecule in which a dumbbell-shaped component, made up of a
rod section and terminated by two stoppers, is encircled by a ring. It has
the potential to be a molecular abacus. The bistable rotaxanes behave as
switches by incorporating two different recognition sites for the ring, and
the ring sits preferentially at one of the two, said Stoddart, leader of the
UCLA team. The molecule can act as a switch provided the ring can be induced
to move from one site to the other site and then reside there for many
minutes. The bistable rotaxane molecules used in the crossbar memory can be
switched at very modest voltages from an "off" (low conductivity) to an "on"
(high conductivity) state. The stoppers for the rotaxane molecules are
designed to allow the molecules to be organized into single-molecule-thick
layers, after which they are incorporated into the memory device, Stoddart
said.

Snip

Toward Building Molecular
Computers from PhysOrg.com

Don't throw away your laptop yet, but there's a promising new high-tech
invention being announced this week. Researchers have created a memory
circuit the size of a white blood cell that has enough capacity to store the
Declaration of Independence and have space left over. With 160 kilobits of
capacity, it's the densest memory circuit ever fabricated.

[...]

==============================================================
Caltech and UCLA Researchers Create Memory Circuit the Size of a Human White
Blood Cell
http://pr.caltech.edu/media/Press_Releases/PR12942.html

PASADENA, Calif.--Don't throw away your laptop yet, but there's a promising
new high-tech invention being announced this week. Researchers have created
a memory circuit the size of a white blood cell that has enough capacity to
store the Declaration of Independence and have space left over. With 160
kilobits of capacity, it's the densest memory circuit ever fabricated.

Announcing the achievement in the January 25 issue of the journal Nature,
the team led by chemistry professor James Heath of the California Institute
of Technology says that the memory circuit is a milestone in manufacturing,
even if it's not anywhere near readiness for the market.

"It's the sort of device that Intel would contemplate making in the year
2020," says Heath, who is the Gilloon Professor at Caltech. "But at the
moment it furthers our goal of learning how to manufacture functional
electronic circuitry at molecular dimensions."

The 2020 date assumes the validity of Moore's law, which states that the
complexity of an integrated circuit will typically double every year.
Current memory-cell size is .0408 square micrometers, so Moore's law assumes
that the electronics industry will achieve a device density comparable to
the Heath team's memory circuit in about 13 years.

However, the Caltech-UCLA team points out in their Nature article that
manufacturers can see no clear way at present of extending this
miniaturization beyond the year 2013. The new approach of the Heath team,
therefore, will show the potential for making integrated circuits at smaller
and smaller dimensions.

"Whether it's actually possible to get this new memory circuit into a
laptop, I don't know," says Heath. "But we have time."

The 160,000 memory bits are arranged like a large tic-tac-toe board: 400
silicon wires crossed by 400 titanium wires, with a layer of molecular
switches sandwiched between the crossing wires. Each wire crossing defines a
bit, and a single bit is only 15 nanometers wide, or about one
ten-thousandth the diameter of a human hair. By contrast, the most dense
memory devices currently available are approximately 140 nanometers in
width.

The molecular switches, called [2]rotaxanes, comprise two interlocking
components--a molecular ring encircling a dumbbell-shaped molecule--that
together are similar to a wedding band on a finger. When the molecular
switch is electronically triggered, the ring slides between two locations on
the dumbbell. Switching, then, arises from the different conductivities of
the molecular switch with respect to the ring position.

Heath's group manufactured the memory circuit in a clean-room facility in
their labs at Caltech, and the molecular switches were prepared by J. Fraser
Stoddart, who holds UCLA's Fred Kavli Chair in Nanosystems Sciences, and his
group.

The circuit has a bit density of 100 gigabit per square centimeter, which
Heath's fellow lead author Jonathan Green says sets the record for
integration density in a man-made object.

"We showed we can increase the density to nearly 1,000 gigabits per square
centimeter, but, beyond that, there is almost no point, because you begin to
run out of molecules," says Green, a Caltech graduate student in chemistry
and applied physics.

The capability to manufacture electronic circuitry at such extreme
dimensions opens up a host of new applications, ranging from extremely
sensitive chemical and biological sensors, energy-efficient logic circuits,
and a class of high-performance energy-conversion materials known as
thermoelectrics.

The other lead author of the paper is Jang Wook Choi, a graduate student in
chemical engineering at Caltech. The other authors are Akram Boukai, Yuri
Bunimovich, Ezekiel Johnston-Halperin, Erica DeIonno, Yi Luo, Bonnie
Sheriff, Ke Xu, and Young Shik Shin, all graduate students in Caltech's
Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, and Hsian-Rong Tseng and
Stoddart, both of UCLA.

Contact: Robert Tindol (626) 395-3631 tindol@caltech.edu
==============================================================

WHAT THE MIND CAN CONCEIVE, AND BELIEVE, IT WILL ACHIEVE - LRK

==============================================================

How We Hit That Sucker: The Story of Deep Impact
By William M. Owen Jr.
http://pr.caltech.edu/periodicals/EandS/articles/LXIX4/deepimpact.pdf


Larry Klaes provided a link to the article about the Deep Impact mission.
When you go there notice that this is the archive site for the Caltech
Engineering and Science quarterly magazine and has a lot of interesting
articles going back as far as 1997.  They have been publishing since 1937.
That is as long as I have been around too. :-)
http://pr.caltech.edu/periodicals/EandS/ 
- LRK -

--------------------------------------------------------------
>From Larry Klaes

Caltech's Engineering and Science quarterly magazine has an article in its
latest edition about Deep Impact.

Go here and scroll down to the first Features section:

http://pr.caltech.edu/periodicals/EandS/ESarchive-frame.html

Snip
--------------------------------------------------------------

My thanks to Larry Klaes for the above information.  I found the article
very interesting.  There is information about Comet 9P or Temple 1 as it is
known.  There is information about how you figure out how to get to a target
in space, as well as how you plan for things that can and will go wrong.
All very nicely explained with diagrams and images in a light hearted way.
Enjoy!
- LRK -


Thanks for looking up with me.

Larry Kellogg

Web Site: http://lkellogg.vttoth.com/LarryRussellKellogg/
BlogSpot: http://kelloggserialreports.blogspot.com/
RSS link: http://kelloggserialreports.blogspot.com/atom.xml
Newsletter: https://news.altair.com/mailman/listinfo/lunar-update
==============================================================
Larry Klaes says, " Go here and scroll down to the first Features section:

http://pr.caltech.edu/periodicals/EandS/ESarchive-frame.html "

Or select the link below.
- LRK -

--------------------------------------------------------------
http://pr.caltech.edu/periodicals/EandS/articles/LXIX4/deepimpact.pdf
How We Hit That Sucker: The Story of Deep Impact
By William M. Owen Jr.

"It's a big bullet with a small bullet hitting a comet.
So Dr. Owen, how did they hit that sucker?" - Le Val Lund

"YOU WANT TO DO WHAT??!!"

In a fit of irrational exuberance on the Fourth of July 2005, our project
manager Rick Grammier yelled out, "We hit that sucker!"

How do we make a hit like that? To paraphrase the bridgekeeper in Monty
Python and the Holy Grail, we just had to answer these questions three:
First, what was our quest, or where did we want to go? That falls under the
general heading of mission design. Second, where in space were we, and where
was our target? That's orbit determination, which is where I fit into the
scheme. And what could we do about getting to our target? That's maneuver
analysis.

Before we get into how Deep Impact did it, we need a little bit of
background. As always at the start of a mission, we begin with the science
objectives.  In our case, the requirements were, "We want to hit a comet."
At JPL, the reaction was, "You want to do WHAT??!!" The principal
investigator, Michael A'Hearn at the University of Maryland, planned this
mission to improve our knowledge of key properties of a comet's nucleus by
means of a massive impact at high velocity. In other words, he wanted to
make a crater in order to directly assess the interior properties of a comet
and figure out what it is made of. Every time a comet sails past the sun, it
loses a little bit of material, which is what makes its tail. But if we
could dig a hole deep enough, we would excavate to a pristine level that
hasn't been perturbed the way the surface has. The underlying material
preserves the primordial ingredients from which the planets of our solar
system condensed some 4.5 billion years ago.

Snip
[11 pages, 985 KB]
==============================================================

WHAT THE MIND CAN CONCEIVE, AND BELIEVE, IT WILL ACHIEVE - LRK

==============================================================

A Moon Full of Opportunity

I believe this article is worth careful reading.
- LRK -

--------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.thespacereview.com/
A Moon full of opportunity

One of the biggest criticisms leveled against NASA's plans to return to the
Moon and establish a base there is the lack of a clear rationale for doing
so. Paul Spudis asserts that the primary reason for doing so is
straightforward: to enable humanity's long-term future in space.
Monday, January 22, 2007
--------------------------------------------------------------

TO ENABLE HUMANITY'S LONG-TERM FUTURE IN SPACE.
- LRK -

--------------------------------------------------------------
A Moon full of opportunity
---
One of the biggest criticisms leveled against NASA's plans to return to the
Moon and establish a base there is the lack of a clear rationale for doing
so.  Paul Spudis asserts that the primary reason for doing so is
straightforward: to enable humanity's long-term future in space.
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/791/1
--------------------------------------------------------------
And at
--------------------------------------------------------------
-- A Moon Full of Opportunity
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.nl.html?id=1189

"The 2nd Space Exploration Conference held December 2006 in Houston outlined
several reasons for a human return to the Moon. Remarkably, some complain
that the reason for going to the Moon is still unclear. Possibly the sheer
scope of the envisioned surface activities diffuses its impact. Almost 200
activities were described for the Moon, grouped under six major "themes" (as
the agency calls them), including settlement, global cooperation, science
and preparation for Mars. This diffusion is both deliberate and
unavoidable."
--------------------------------------------------------------

If you don't read the whole article, here is a snip.
- LRK -

--------------------------------------------------------------
>From these statements, it is clear that the mission of going to the Moon is
one of development: developing new techniques, procedures, and technologies,
all with the aim of making spaceflight easier, routine and more capable.

If this wasn't clear enough, the speech of John Marburger two years later
clarified our ultimate objectives:

  President Bush's vision also declares the will to lead in space, but it
renders the ultimate goal more explicit. And that goal is even grander. The
ultimate goal is not to impress others, or merely to explore our planetary
system, but to use accessible space for the benefit of humankind. It is a
goal that is not confined to a decade or a century. Nor is it confined to a
single nearby destination, or to a fleeting dash to plant a flag. The idea
is to begin preparing now for a future in which the material trapped in the
Sun's vicinity is available for incorporation into our way of life.

And:

  We have known for a long time that a huge gap separates the objects
trapped by the gravity of our star, the Sun, and everything else. Phenomena
on our side of the interstellar gap, in what we call the Solar System, are
potentially amenable to direct investigation and manipulation through
physical contact, and can reasonably be described as falling within
humanity's economic sphere of influence. As I see it, questions about the
Vision boil down to whether we want to incorporate the Solar System in our
economic sphere, or not.

The administration clearly stated that we are going to the Moon to learn how
to use what we find in space to create new spacefaring capability. The goal
isn't simply to return to the Moon or even merely to send humans to Mars,
but rather to extend human reach beyond low Earth orbit and ultimately to
all possible destinations beyond.

The Vision for Space Exploration is different from any previous space
policy. By design it is incremental and cumulative. We make "steady
progress" no matter how slowly we may be forced to proceed at any given time
by fiscal constraints. Small steps that build upon each other create new
capability over time. Our activities will teach us not merely how to
survive, but how to thrive off-planet. Such a task includes inhabiting
planetary surfaces, doing useful work while we are there, and extracting
what we need from the material and energy resources we find. We will use
these new skills and techniques to build a space transportation
infrastructure that permits routine access to the Moon and all of cislunar
space.

The significance of this last point should not be underestimated; access to
cislunar space will revolutionize the paradigm of spaceflight. Currently, we
build disposable commercial space systems. They have a specific design
lifetime, after which they are simply abandoned. Combined with the high cost
of getting to low Earth orbit, this makes spaceflight difficult and costly.
Hence, space largely has been left as the province of government, except for
certain highly capitalized businesses such as global communications.

With the Vision realized, satellites can be serviced, maintained, extended,
and networked-space systems will be designed for an indefinite lifetime.
Given existing launch costs, we cannot do this now. Even lowering such costs
by an order of magnitude would still make even robotic servicing of
platforms at geosynchronous orbit marginal at best. However, if we build a
system that can refuel on the Moon using locally produced materials, we
create the capability to routinely go anywhere in cislunar space. Exporting
fuel extracted from lunar resources will permit us to go anywhere, anytime,
with whatever capabilities we need. This is the beginning of true
space-faring capability. Such an environment would unleash imaginations,
realize potential and expand technology, science, exploration and commerce.

Snip
--------------------------------------------------------------

And to add to current events, India recovered a space capsule they had
launched earlier.
- LRK -

--------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/ap_070122_india_capsulereturn.html
India's Experimental Space Capsule Returns to Earth
By The Associated Press

posted: 22 January 2007
12:37 p.m. ET

NEW DELHI (AP) - An Indian space capsule splashed down in the Bay of Bengal
on Monday, giving engineers a chance to test technology needed to return
astronauts to Earth, an official said.

The capsule orbited earth for 11 days before re-entering the atmosphere, S.
Krishnamurthy, a spokesman for the Indian Space Research Organization, told
The Associated Press.

The 550-kilogram (1,210-pound) Space-Capsule Recovery Experiment was
intended to test the organization's ability to track and recover a returning
space capsule, he said

Snip
--------------------------------------------------------------
http://presszoom.com/story_123318.html
India's SRE-1 Space Capsule Successfully Recovered
--------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1070123/asp/nation/story_7297989.asp
New Delhi/Chennai, Jan. 22: In 46 minutes, punctuated only by intermittent
claps and cheering in a control room, India today guided a space capsule
safely back home, propelling itself into the special club of three countries
that can launch as well as recover spacecraft.
Snip
--------------------------------------------------------------

Yes, should be an interesting year.

Thanks for looking up with me.

Larry Kellogg

Web Site: http://lkellogg.vttoth.com/LarryRussellKellogg/
BlogSpot: http://kelloggserialreports.blogspot.com/
RSS link: http://kelloggserialreports.blogspot.com/atom.xml
Newsletter: https://news.altair.com/mailman/listinfo/lunar-update
==============================================================
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/01/20040114-3.html
President Bush Announces New Vision for Space Exploration Program
NASA Headquarters
Washington, D.C.

THE PRESIDENT: Thanks for the warm welcome. I'm honored to be with the men
and women of NASA. I thank those of you who have come in person. I welcome
those who are listening by video. This agency, and the dedicated
professionals who serve it, have always reflected the finest values of our
country -- daring, discipline, ingenuity, and unity in the pursuit of great
goals.

America is proud of our space program. The risk takers and visionaries of
this agency have expanded human knowledge, have revolutionized our
understanding of the universe, and produced technological advances that have
benefited all of humanity.

Inspired by all that has come before, and guided by clear objectives, today
we set a new course for America's space program. We will give NASA a new
focus and vision for future exploration. We will build new ships to carry
man forward into the universe, to gain a new foothold on the moon, and to
prepare for new journeys to worlds beyond our own.

Snip
==============================================================
http://www.ostp.gov/html/jhmGoddardSymp03-15-06Release.pdf
44th Robert H. Goddard Memorial Symposium
Greenbelt, Maryland
March 15
Keynote Address
John Marburger
Director, Office of Science and Technology Policy
Executive Office of the President

It is a privilege for me to speak in this Symposium. My first job as a
scientist, before I went on to graduate school, was at Goddard Space Flight
Center. I had worked there during the summer of 1961, and returned as a full
time employee in what was then called the Thermal Systems branch in the
summer of 1962. Goddard was booming in those days, and the challenge of
making scientific instruments work in the space environment attracted many
fine scientists and engineers. I worked with a team trying to understand and
optimize the properties of materials that could be used as thermoelectric
generators for space applications, which shows you how broadly the spectrum
of science and technology must extend to support missions in space. In the
fall of 1963 I became a NASA graduate trainee in Stanford's then-new
Department of Applied Physics, and ever since have combined my love of basic
science with an interest in practical applications. The topic of this year's
Symposium, ". Engineers, Scientists and the Vision" reflects the combination
of mental attitudes needed to accomplish great things in space, and I am
pleased to add a few thoughts of my own this morning on these topics.

Snip
==============================================================
http://www.nss.org/settlement/moon/index.html
Excerpt from speech of John Marburger
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=19999

Director, Office of Science and Technology Policy
Executive Office of the President
March 15, 2006

The Moon has unique significance for all space applications for a reason
that to my amazement is hardly ever discussed in popular accounts of space
policy. The Moon is the closest source of material that lies far up Earth's
gravity well. Anything that can be made from Lunar material at costs
comparable to Earth manufacture has an enormous overall cost advantage
compared with objects lifted from Earth's surface. The greatest value of the
Moon lies neither in science nor in exploration, but in its material. I am
talking about the possibility of extracting elements and minerals that can
be processed into fuel or massive components of space apparatus. The
production of oxygen in particular, the major component (by mass) of
chemical rocket fuel, is potentially an important Lunar industry.

What are the preconditions for such an industry? That, it seems to me, must
be a primary consideration of the long range planning for the Lunar agenda.
Science studies provide the foundation for a materials production roadmap.
Clever ideas have been advanced for the phased construction of electrical
power sources - perhaps using solar cells manufactured in situ from Lunar
soil. A not unreasonable scenario is a phase of highly subsidized capital
construction followed by market-driven industrial activity to provide Lunar
products such as oxygen refueling services for commercially valuable
Earth-orbiting apparatus.
Snip
==============================================================

WHAT THE MIND CAN CONCEIVE, AND BELIEVE, IT WILL ACHIEVE - LRK

==============================================================

Improbable Events by Mike Combs
http://members.aol.com/howiecombs/improbable_events.htm

When you start up a large project, sometimes unexpected things happen.
Should you participate in building a habitat in space will you know exactly
how everything will go?  Will you be able to improvise to adjust to the
events that have not happened before?

How will you handle adding animals to your home away from home now in orbit?
I hope you took the time to read the short story by Mike Combs.
- LRK -

--------------------------------------------------------------
http://members.aol.com/howiecombs/improbable_events.htm
Snip
   Hickory Dickery Dare
   The pig flew up in the air.
   The man in brown
   Soon brought him down.
   Hickory Dickery Dare
Snip
--------------------------------------------------------------

You may already have been to Mike's website Space Settlement.
http://members.aol.com/oscarcombs/settle.htm
http://lkellogg.vttoth.com/LarryRussellKellogg/colonies.html

Mike writes Hard Sci-Fi, that is, Science Fiction that is based on science.
You might enjoy more of his stories.
- LRK -

--------------------------------------------------------------
http://members.aol.com/howiecombs/hard_s-f.htm
Snip
I enjoy writing hard science-fiction stories.  What is "hard"
science-fiction, and how does it differ from "soft"?  Well, hard sci-fi
begins by defining sci-fi as that branch of literature which is written with
science or technology as the main focus of the story.  Since the name of the
genre is "science-fiction", one might conclude this is how sf started out,
huh?
Snip
--------------------------------------------------------------

We can use more stories of what it will be like to move out of LEO.
- LRK -

Thanks for looking up with me.

Larry Kellogg

Web Site: http://lkellogg.vttoth.com/LarryRussellKellogg/
BlogSpot: http://kelloggserialreports.blogspot.com/
RSS link: http://kelloggserialreports.blogspot.com/atom.xml
Newsletter: https://news.altair.com/mailman/listinfo/lunar-update
==============================================================
Mike's time line of what he has written and when it takes place.
- LRK -
--------------------------------------------------------------
http://members.aol.com/howiecombs/timeline.htm
A Time-Line for my Hard Sci-Fi Stories

I have finally written enough fiction set in the same consistent future (or
at least two possible futures) that I finally felt the need to write a
time-line. Each entry is accompanied by a link to the story to which the
entry refers. The following acronyms are used:

Snip
==============================================================
And some of Mike's articles.
- LRK -
--------------------------------------------------------------
http://members.aol.com/howiecombs/articles.htm
Articles

==============================================================

WHAT THE MIND CAN CONCEIVE, AND BELIEVE, IT WILL ACHIEVE - LRK

==============================================================

THEMIS MISSION TO PROVIDE NEW UNDERSTANDING OF SUBSTORM LIFE CYCLE

--------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/themis/main/index.html
The Mission
THEMIS is a mission to investigate what causes auroras in the Earth's
atmosphere to dramatically change from slowly shimmering waves of light to
wildly shifting streaks of color. Discovering what causes auroras to change
will provide scientists with important details on how the planet's
magnetosphere works and the important Sun-Earth connection.
--------------------------------------------------------------

I missed a news briefing today.  There are links to images and more data on
the Prelaunch Briefing Page.
- LRK -

--------------------------------------------------------------
NASA will host a media teleconference to discuss the Time History of Events
and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms (THEMIS) mission on Wednesday,
Jan. 17, at 1 p.m. EST. Visit the event's briefing page for more
information.
+ View Prelaunch Briefing Page
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/themis/news/prelaunch_briefing.html
--------------------------------------------------------------

Will be interesting to see how five probes do flying in orbit.  Wonder if
they could fly five probes around the Moon at the same time?  Might happen
if everyone decides to go at the same time.
- LRK -

Thanks for looking up with me.

Larry Kellogg

Web Site: http://lkellogg.vttoth.com/LarryRussellKellogg/
BlogSpot: http://kelloggserialreports.blogspot.com/
RSS link: http://kelloggserialreports.blogspot.com/atom.xml
Newsletter: https://news.altair.com/mailman/listinfo/lunar-update
==============================================================

Space Weather News for Jan. 17, 2007
http://spaceweather.com

COMET UPDATE: Comet McNaught is emerging from the glare of the sun and, as
expected, solar heating has turned it into a spectacular naked-eye comet.
McNaught is visible from all parts of the Southern Hemisphere, sporting a
curved tail and a head almost as bright as the planet Venus.  Northerners
can watch the comet's progress by browsing daily photo galleries at
http://SpaceWeather.com .  Southerners should go outside tonight at sunset,
look west and see for themselves.

VENUS AND THE MOON:  Mark your calendar. On Saturday evening, January 20th,
the slender crescent Moon will glide by Venus forming a beautiful ensemble
in the western sky at sunset. This is something people in both hemispheres
can enjoy. Hint:  Look for the pair before the sky fades to black. Venus and
the Moon surrounded by twilight-blue is a scene of special beauty.

Visit http://spaceweather.com  for observing tips and updates.

==============================================================
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/themis/news/Themis_intro.html
THEMIS Will Judge What Causes Highly Dynamic Aurora

 01.09.07

On a clear night over the far northern areas of the world, you may witness a
hauntingly beautiful light display in the sky that can disrupt your
satellite TV and leave you in the dark.

The eerie glow of the northern lights seems exquisite and quite harmless.
Most times, it is harmless. The display, resembling a slow-moving ribbon
silently undulating in the sky, is called the aurora. It is also visible in
far southern regions around the South Pole.

Occasionally, however, the aurora becomes much more dynamic. The single
auroral ribbon may split into several ribbons or even break into clusters
that race north and south. This dynamic light show in the polar skies is
associated with what scientists call a magnetospheric substorm. Substorms
are very closely related to full-blown space storms that can disable
spacecraft, radio communication, GPS navigation, and power systems while
supplying killer electrons to the radiation belts surrounding Earth. The
purpose of NASA's Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during
Substorms (THEMIS) mission is to understand the physical instability
(trigger mechanism) for magnetospheric substorms.

A clash of forces we can't see with the human eye causes the beauty and
destruction of space storms, though the aurora provides a dramatic symptom.
Earth's molten iron core generates an invisible magnetic field that
surrounds our planet. This magnetic field and the electrically charged
matter under its control compose the Earth's magnetosphere.

Snip
--------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2007/jan/HQ_07011_THEMIS.html 
Jan. 17, 2007

Dwayne Brown/Tabatha Thompson
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1726/3895

Cynthia O'Carroll
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
301-286-4647

RELEASE: 07-011

THEMIS MISSION TO PROVIDE NEW UNDERSTANDING OF SUBSTORM LIFE CYCLE

WASHINGTON - NASA's THEMIS, the Time History of Events and Macroscale
Interactions during Substorms mission, is set to venture into space and help
resolve the mystery of what triggers geomagnetic substorms.
For the first time, scientists will get a comprehensive view of the substorm
phenomena from Earth's upper atmosphere to far into space, pinpointing where
and when each substorm begins.

Substorms are atmospheric events visible in the northern hemisphere as a
sudden brightening of the Northern Lights. THEMIS also will provide clues
about the role of substorms in severe space weather and identify where and
when substorms begin.

THEMIS' five identical probes will be the largest number of scientific
satellites NASA has ever launched into orbit aboard a single rocket.
This unique constellation of satellites will line up along the sun-Earth
line, collect coordinated measurements every four days, and be ready to
observe more than 30 substorms during the two-year mission. Data collected
from the five probes will pinpoint where and when substorms begin, a feat
impossible with any previous single-satellite mission.

"For more than 30 years the source location of these explosive energy
releases has been sought after with great fervor. It is a question almost as
old as space physics itself," said Vassilis Angelopoulos, THEMIS' principal
investigator at the University of California, Berkeley's Space Sciences
Laboratory. "A substorm starts from a single point in space and progresses
past the moon's orbit within minutes, so a single satellite cannot identify
the substorm origin.  The five-satellite constellation of THEMIS will
finally identify the trigger location and the physics involved in
substorms."

Snip

For more information about the THEMIS mission and imagery, visit:

www.nasa.gov/themis
 
-end-
==============================================================

WHAT THE MIND CAN CONCEIVE, AND BELIEVE, IT WILL ACHIEVE - LRK

==============================================================

Independent space colonization: questions and implications
by Taylor Dinerman - Monday, January 15, 2007

--------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/784/1

The term "space colonization" has been declared off-limits in polite
society. The "c-word" is supposed to invoke all the terrible aspects of
old-fashioned imperialism, particularly European imperialism. One notes that
neither the Japanese nor the Turks nor the Russians feel particularly guilty
about their now-defunct empires. Even in Europe, the epicenter of the guilt
trip questions are now being asked, there was a major debate in France last
year over whether the �positive aspects of colonialism� should be taught in
schools.
Snip
--------------------------------------------------------------

Soooh, a Lunar Base is set up and returns some scientific data and you would
like to see it expand.  Some of those ideas for mining He3 begin to work and
a space station at Earth-Moon L1 is constructed to handle transporting cargo
to various destinations in space or to Earth.

Your Lunar Base is growing in size and the numbers of personnel are
increasing.  You have satellites in polar orbits that have been checking for
magnetic anomalies and for different mineral resources.  You have
investigated some of the meteor crater sites and located not only iron but
some other metals like nickel and platinum.

A rotating space station to house humans is being constructed in cislunar
space and you are learning how to sling materials from your Lunar Base to
the construction site with a recently completed magnetic rail launcher.

This will take more robot mining machines and maintenance crews to provide
the resources.  You need a country store and some time out relaxation spots.
You are going to be here for longer than six months and would like some
comforts of home.

Can you build a town?  If so, who will run the place and have the force of
law?  We know that if you are in your spaceship that the country who owns
the craft has the responsibility for seeing things go according to their law
but now the number of "off world" built structures are springing up.  Who
controls that sintered regolith igloo you are living in?  If you do any
local trading, who will collect taxes and where will they go?
- LRK -

There is a flip side to this as well.  What if you decide to permanently
live off world and then have a change of heart and want to return to Earth,
will you still be a citizen of Earth?  What if you have kids born off world,
will they be citizens of Earth? (Especially if you get the treaties changed
to make an off world colony self governing.)

Adriano Autino is an Italian that would like to see some constitutional
amendments made that would ensure it is alright to live off world and return
to Earth, and I was just worried about getting out of LEO.
- LRK -

--------------------------------------------------------------
Dear subscribers of the Right to Space Constitutional Clause Proposal, Cari
firmatari della proposta costituzionale per il diritto allo spazio, (vedere
anche la versione Italiana pi� avanti)

ENGLISH ____________________________________________________
After a promising start, the collection of signatures now is steady. As it
was logic to expect, after two mounths since the last newsletter, we need
new initiatives, if we want to keep the attention alive around our proposal,
to widen the area of knowledge of it and thus to solicit new signatures. We
need in fact to acknowledge that an initiative like this shall be organized
on the long term, and we have to setup accordingly.
We wrote a letter to the EU functionair who deals about space, asking him to
consider our proposal to be inserted in the European Constitutional draft,
and he replied that he will do it. We will also look for some Italian
politic channel, which can be receptive to our proposal.
Likely in April we'll be in television, on RAI 2 in an evening program
(9 pm), and it will be a very good opportunity to spread our message, and to
give a kind of "political program" supporting the start of the space
economy.
I would like, for that time (three mounths since now) to setup a goal:
that the signatures collection will reach at least the dimension of some
hundreds (nowadays we are standing at 60 :'( ). Only in this way we can hope
that the TV "booster" could count on a sufficient amount of "fuel", to take
us at least at sub-orbit altitude ( :-) ) !

May I however ask to each one of you some small actions to support our
proposal? Few and simple things, requiring few minutes, or to synergically
exploit some opportunity you could already be involved in.
1) In case you publish and maintain a web site, you could put the logo of
the campaign in your home page (just copy the logo from tha tdf home page
http://www.tdf.it/ ), with the link to the page where people can sign
(http://www.tdf.it/ constitution/sr-clause.htm)
2) If you run a mailing list or a blog, you could write to your participant
friends, asking them to go on the above page, and sign.
3) If you have access to some media (newspapers, radio, tv), you could use
some opportunity to make know our initiative.
4) If you have access to some political access in your country, and you
think it could be open to our proposal, please feel free to talk with them,
if you have a chance.
5) Any suggestion to better organize the campaign is of course welcome.
Please post it to me or, for the ones who subscribed to the list, to the
rts@tdf.it list.

By our side (myself and Patrick Collins) we are obviously available for
interviews by phone or by email and, should arise the opportunity, to
participate to conferences and symposia, or however public opportunities
where the communication about our constitutional proposal would be welcome.

ITALIANO
Snip
--------------------------------------------------------------

I don't know if constitutional changes are necessary but I signed anyway.
Might bring some attention to the World and get others thinking about going
to space and covering all the bases should they get there and want to come
back.
- LRK -

Thanks for looking up with me.

Larry Kellogg

Web Site: http://lkellogg.vttoth.com/LarryRussellKellogg/
BlogSpot: http://kelloggserialreports.blogspot.com/
RSS link: http://kelloggserialreports.blogspot.com/atom.xml
Newsletter: https://news.altair.com/mailman/listinfo/lunar-update
==============================================================
Just in case you didn't get Jeff Foust's "This Week in The Space Review -
2007 January 15", you can subscribe at http://www.thespacereview.com/
- LRK -
--------------------------------------------------------------

Welcome to this week's issue of The Space Review:

The Vision at three: smooth sailing or rough seas?
---
Three years after President Bush announced the Vision for Space Exploration,
the program appears to be alive and well, but is not without significant
near-term challenges.  Jeff Foust explains why the next two years are so
critical to the future of the agency's long- term exploration plans.
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/785/1

Independent space colonization: questions and implications
---
The term "colonization" might have fallen out of favor in most audiences,
but the concept is essential to the long-term future of humans in space.
Taylor Dinerman discusses some of the legal issues of independent human
settlements beyond Earth.
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/784/1

Pay attention: get a free trip around the Moon
---
FreeSpaceShot.com opens today offering advertiser-supported free trips
around the Moon. Owner Sam Dinkin introduces the concept and its
implications.
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/783/1

The "base first" decision: crew survival and reusability
---
NASA's announcement last month that it plans to develop a lunar base will
shape the development of the vehicles that will take crews and supplies
there.  John Strickland examines the issues of crew survivability and the
importance of reusable spacecraft.
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/782/1

Celebrating Korolyov
---
Friday marked the 100th anniversary of the birth of Russian space pioneer
Sergey Korolyov.  Lorne Ipsum reviews the life and accomplishments of the
Chief Designer.
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/781/1

Snip
==============================================================

WHAT THE MIND CAN CONCEIVE, AND BELIEVE, IT WILL ACHIEVE - LRK

==============================================================

THE SKY AT NIGHT: WATCH ONLINE

Andrew Goffin, (and still looking up from the UK) sent me a link to THE SKY
AT NIGHT: WATCH ONLINE
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/space/spaceguide/skyatnight/proginfo.shtml

Thank you Andrew, it is a very nice interview.

--------------------------------------------------------------
British-born astronaut Piers Sellers talks to Patrick Moore about life orbiting the Earth and the future of the manned space programme. Patrick also previews NASA's forthcoming rescue mission to the Hubble space telescope.
--------------------------------------------------------------

I hope others will take a look as well.
- LRK -
--------------------------------------------------------------
hi Larry,

Long time no speak, but still here looking up....

With the talk of the moon and things I thought I'd bring to your attention
the following: -

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/space/spaceguide/skyatnight/

This has just celebrated the it's 50th anniversary a science programme on
TV that's been going for 50 years.

A bit of potted history the presenter is Sir Patrick Moore that help map the
moon that was used for the apollo mission.

Also the 50th anniversary programme which can be watched online has Dr.
Peirs Sellars , yes the one thats been on the space shuttle done 42 hours of
space walking around the ISS.

It's worth a look....

Regards
Andrew Goffin
(and still looking up from the UK)
--------------------------------------------------------------

Thanks for looking up with me.

Larry Kellogg

Web Site: http://lkellogg.vttoth.com/LarryRussellKellogg/
BlogSpot: http://kelloggserialreports.blogspot.com/
RSS link: http://kelloggserialreports.blogspot.com/atom.xml
Newsletter: https://news.altair.com/mailman/listinfo/lunar-update
==============================================================
Do take a look at what the BBC has here. - LRK -
--------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/space/spaceguide/skyatnight/

Watch Online
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/space/spaceguide/skyatnight/proginfo.shtml

Sir Patrick Moore
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/space/spaceguide/skyatnight/patrickmoore.shtml

Programme History
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/space/spaceguide/skyatnight/patrickmoore_article2.shtml

Multimedia Tribute
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/space/spaceguide/skyatnight/anniversarymedia.shtml

Newsletter
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/space/spaceguide/skyatnight/newsletter.shtml

Snip
==============================================================

WHAT THE MIND CAN CONCEIVE, AND BELIEVE, IT WILL ACHIEVE - LRK

==============================================================

British Plan For Solo Moon Missions Unlikely

Well that was a short mission.

Larry Klaes informed me of a link that says we were just talking.
- LRK -

--------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.moondaily.com/reports/British_Plan_For_Solo_Moon_Missions_Unlikely_999.html

British Plan For Solo Moon Missions Unlikely

by Staff Writers
London (AFP) Jan 10, 2007
A senior British space official played down media reports on Wednesday that
Britain is considering plans for its own mission to the moon. David Parker,
the director of space science at the British National Space Centre (BNSC)
told a news conference that such a plan was the "most unlikely outcome" of
Britain's space plans.

He was speaking after officials from the European and British space agencies
presented the fruits of two days of work ending Tuesday by 170 scientists,
industrialists and representatives of civil society in Edinburgh, Scotland.

"It was not meant to be a conclusive workshop, but the beginning of a
process that will develop in the next 18 months," Manuel Valls, a senior
official for space exploration at the European Space Agency said.

Snip
--------------------------------------------------------------

What was it that I said, "Newspaper articles, a mission do not make.  It
will come down to funding, so will see if darting the Moon happens from the
UK."
- LRK -

And I thought there might be someone new heading towards the Moon but no
problem there, as it was not meant to be a conclusive workshop.

Hmmm, the scientists say they can do it, the people might want them to do
it, BUT, just talking, not doing.  No politics here.  Go it alone, hmmmm.

Well you folks in the UK almost had your mark on the Moon.  Too bad, so sad,
and I would smile but have heard the same kind of thing on this side of the
pond.  We can do it, we want to do it, BUT, not on my watch, spent too much
money already on some foolishness.
- LRK -

Thanks for looking up with me.

Larry Kellogg

Web Site: http://lkellogg.vttoth.com/LarryRussellKellogg/
BlogSpot: http://kelloggserialreports.blogspot.com/
RSS link: http://kelloggserialreports.blogspot.com/atom.xml
Newsletter: https://news.altair.com/mailman/listinfo/lunar-update
==============================================================
Again, Google has a few links to this retraction. - LRK -
"British Plan For Solo Moon Missions Unlikely"
Results 1 - 10 of about 175 for "British Plan For Solo Moon Missions
Unlikely". (0.27 seconds)
--------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.moondaily.com/reports/British_Plan_For_Solo_Moon_Missions_Unlikely_999.html
British Plan For Solo Moon Missions Unlikely

London (AFP) Jan 10, 2007 - A senior British space official played down
media reports on Wednesday that Britain is considering plans for its own
mission to ...


http://www.spacedaily.com/
Space News From SpaceDaily.Com
British Plan For Solo Moon Missions Unlikely London (AFP) Jan 10, 2007 A
senior British space official played down media reports on Wednesday that
Britain ...

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Jupiter_Encounter_Begins_For_New_Horizons_Spacecraft_On_Route_To_Pluto_999.html
Jupiter Encounter Begins For New Horizons Spacecraft On Route To Pluto
British Plan For Solo Moon Missions Unlikely . Britain Considers Plans For
Solo Moon Missions . Metric Moon . Moon shots: China, Japan in '07; U.S.,
...

http://www.inboxrobot.com/news/mars-missions
Mars Missions News - Inbox Robot
British Plan For Solo Moon Missions Unlikely 11 Jan 2007 07:36 GMT ...
British Plan For Solo Moon Missions Unlikely If the "Moonlight" mission were
...

http://www.inboxrobot.com/news/asteroids
Asteroids News - Inbox Robot
British Plan For Solo Moon Missions Unlikely 11 Jan 2007 07:36 GMT ... led
the scientific discussions at the Edinburgh meeting said that the Moon, ...

http://space.physorg.com/sub_Space+Exploration/
PhysOrg.com: Space & Earth science news
British plan for solo moon missions 'unlikely': expert . Space & Earth
science / Space Exploration. 18 hours ago | User rating: not shown ( 2
vote(s) ) ...

http://www.physorg.com/search/particle
PhysOrg.com: + particle
British plan for solo moon missions 'unlikely': expert. 4 hours ago | User
rating: 1 / 5 after 1 vote(s) | pda version. A senior British space official
...

http://www.marsdaily.com/
Mars News from MarsDaily.com
British Plan For Solo Moon Missions Unlikely . Britain Considers Plans For
Solo Moon Missions . Metric Moon . Lunar Geminids ...

http://spaceandmystery.tripod.com/
WWW Space and Mystery - Space News and Information
01/11/07 Space.com: Eavesdropping on ET Sooner Than We Think 01/10/07
SpaceDaily: British Plan For Solo Moon Missions Unlikely ...

Snip - tsch, tsch - well at least some more links to look at items about
space. - LRK -
==============================================================

WHAT THE MIND CAN CONCEIVE, AND BELIEVE, IT WILL ACHIEVE - LRK

==============================================================