PLEASE NOTE:
*
CCNet DIGEST, 30 November 1998
------------------------------
(1) 2002: A SPACE GOLD RUSH
The Times, 28 November 1998
http://www.sunday-times.co.uk:80/news/pages/Saturday-Times/frontpage.html?1617548
(2) IN DEFENSE OF THE OBSERVERS ON LA PALMA
Jim Richardson <richardson@digitalexp.com>
(3) THE 1998 LEONIDS - A BUST OR A BLAST
NASA Science News <expressnews@sslab.msfc.nasa.gov>
(4) THE MONGOLIAN LEONIDS EXPEDITION
Daniel Fischer <dfischer@astro.uni-bonn.de>
(5) MUSINGS ON THE 1996 LEONIDS PEAK RATE
Rob McNaught <rmn@aaocbn.aao.gov.au>
(6) SEARCHING FOR ET FROM HOME
Andrew Yee <ayee@nova.astro.utoronto.ca>
(7) WATCHING OUT FOR ASTEROIDS
Michael Paine <mpaine@tpgi.com.au>
========================
(1) 2002: A SPACE GOLD RUSH
From: The Times, 28 November 1998
http://www.sunday-times.co.uk:80/news/pages/Saturday-Times/frontpage.html?1617548
Free marketeer sees asteroid as new Yukon, writes Damian
Whitworth
ON MONDAY Jim Benson hopes to complete a deal to buy a former
junior
rifle range on the outskirts of San Diego.
He plans to convert it into a workshop where technicians can make
a
small spacecraft. With this he hopes to become the first man on
Earth
to own another planetary body and start a 21st-century gold rush.
In early 2002, asteroid 4660 Nereus will come to within about 2.5
million miles of Earth, which, in space terms, is pretty close.
Some scientists believe that Nereus has quantities of water
sufficient
to have supported life; others that it could be stuffed with
precious
metals. Mr Benson intends to find out.
The Near Earth Asteroid Prospector is scheduled for launch,
probably
from Russia, in 2001 on the first private mission outside Earth's
orbit. The unmanned hexagonal craft, about 6ft by 3ft, will make
six
close passes of the Moon before being kicked out to chase Nereus
and
eventually make a rendezvous.
Mr Benson hopes that the experiments he conducts will not only
make him
a fortune but also start a race to discover and exploit other
planetary
bodies. He will claim ownership of this one himself.
Mr Benson, 52, retired a couple of years ago having sold his
computer
software company and needing never to work again. But after six
months
of pottering around his Colorado home he found he was bored and
started
looking for something else to do.
A space fanatic ever since he joined the Science Fiction Book of
the
Month Club at the age of ten, he immersed himself in space
literature
and was particularly excited by a book by Dr John Lewis, of the
University of Arizona, entitled Mining the Sky.
Like the prospectors of the 19th century, Mr Benson's eyes lit up
and
he founded SpaceDev, with offices in San Diego and Washington.
He is entering a business so expensive and so risky that it would
be
easy to say his grand vision is madness. But he has some
impressive
backers. Daniel Goldin, Nasa's reforming administrator, is
impressed by
his plans and he has recruited many of the top people in their
fields
to join him, including Peter Smith, who was responsible for the
camera
that produced the astonishing pictures returned from the Mars
Pathfinder mission. Mr Benson's business plan sounds impressive.
The spacecraft will be built from tried and tested off-the-shelf
components, as will be the launch rocket. The mission, he says,
will
cost $50 million (£30 million) and be funded entirely by
charging $10
million to $15 million to conduct experiments. Ten experiments
will be
a nice little earner. He says that other national space agencies,
including Brazil and Canada, are interested and Nasa will
probably buy
research data.
"When you look at it, we are not doing anything new at all.
But we will
be the first commercial company to launch a mission beyond Earth
orbit.
And we will be the first private space mission to land on another
planetary body," he says.
The long-term strategy is to examine ways of plundering the
natural
resources of the universe. "The resources on Earth are
finite and it is
hard to argue with the fact that they are becoming more difficult
to
get at," he says. "We will cross a threshold when it is
less expensive
to use those resources concentrated in space than those dispersed
on
Earth."
It is no surprise to hear that much of the coming months will be
taken
up in addressing conferences. He is unashamedly capitalist in his
approach. NEAP must make a profit, "or its first mission
will be its
last. If we want to go to space to stay, space has to pay".
He also believes passionately that the privatisation of space
exploration is the way forward: "I'm keenly interested in
opening up
the space frontiers for all humanity. We have got to get off this
planet. There are more jobs to be created, more wealth to be
created,
in space than any other imaginable sector.
"Space is a place, not a government programme. When people
realise that
a small company can launch a successful mission, it will unleash
a lot
of creativity and entrepreneurial spirit. It is an infinite
frontier
and humanity has always been challenged by frontiers."
He added: "This mission could set a precedent for private
property
rights in space. We are going to a small planetary body, without
public
subsidy, at our own risk and expense. If we are there, we landed
on it,
it's ours."
Copyright 1998, The Times Newspapers Ltd.
==================
(2) IN DEFENSE OF THE OBSERVERS ON LA PALMA
From Jim Richardson <richardson@digitalexp.com>
For many years during the 1950's and 1960's, a standard team of
six
observers was frequenctly employed in doing visual meteor data
collection. This is especially true for the programs supervised
by
Peter Milman, at Springhill Observatory in Ottawa, Canada.
A large,
heated, hexagon-shaped observing "coffin" was utilized,
with each
observer covering a 60 deg azimuth section of the sky, while
lying at
an inclined angle to the horizontal. Observers would call
out their
noted meteors to a separate recording individual, and
double-counting
was prevented. it was not expected that this standard team
of six
would detect ALL meteors occurring over the viewing area, but
would
instead show decreasing success as the meteor magnitudes grew
fainter:
"Millman believed that his standard team of six observers
should see
all zero-magnitude meteors, but only 60 per cent of the first
magnitude, 25 per cent of the second magnitude, 10 per cent of
the
third, 2 per cent of the fourth, and less than 0.5 per cent of
the
fifth-magnitude objects, visible over the entire sky. Other
workers
have evolved still different correction factors for this
effect...."
From: "Meteor Science and Engineering," D.W.R.
McKinley (1961).
McGraw-Hill Book
Co.: New York.
Milman attempted for many years to make his team of six observers
the
standard for the visual meteor science community, and references
to it,
and the correction factors utilized, are frequent in the
literature.
Although the American Meteor Society generally used the single
visual
observer for its own work, I have ocasionally run across pictures
or
references to a team of six observers, arranged in a hexagon,
covering
the whole sky together -- although each of these observers were
required to record his-her own data separately from the others.
Thus, although it is not the method currently in vogue with
visual
meteor observers, the La Palma method is not entirely baseless
either.
There are even correction factors in the old literature which
might
place these counts back in terms of the single-observer
visual rate
used today. The most restricting aspect of the method is that
only a
2-minute count was done: this should have been preferably
over a much
longer period. But there were other observers in the Canary
Islands at
the time, so we do have other data to compare with.
I commend the astronomers at La Palma for attempting to gather
some
useful information, and on the spur of the moment when faced with
extraordinary circumstances. I find it unrealistic to expect
professionals to be familiar with the current methods utilized by
data
collectors in a field far outside of their own specialty.
Even if the
counts obtained are not especially useful, the anecdotal
account of
the Nov 16-17, 1998 Leonids will become historic (along with
several
others from that night) in the annals of meteor astronomy. The
record
is much appreciated.
Best regards,
Jim
James Richardson
Tallahassee, Florida
Operations Manager / Radiometeor Project Coordinator
American Meteor Society (AMS)
http://www.serve.com/meteors/
==================
(3) THE 1998 LEONIDS - A BUST OR A BLAST
From NASA Science News <expressnews@sslab.msfc.nasa.gov>
Last week's Leonid meteor shower featured an unusual number of
fireballs. Many cast shadows, lit up the sky, and some reportedly
caused sonic booms. Readers from around the world contributed
photos of
these meteors and their colorful remnants for this article.
FULL STORY
at http://science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/ast27nov98_1.htm
================
(4) THE MONGOLIAN LEONIDS EXPEDITION
From Daniel Fischer <dfischer@astro.uni-bonn.de>
A much longer report on the Mongolian Leonid expeditions is now
ready
at
http://www.astro.uni-bonn.de/~dfischer/leo98/trip.html
together with some interesting links. Pictures will be added next
week.
Enjoy!
Daniel Fischer
==================
(5) MUSINGS ON THE 1996 LEONIDS PEAK RATE
From Rob McNaught <rmn@aaocbn.aao.gov.au>
Now that the 1998 shower is over, here are a few more musings on
1966
1) As I mentioned previously, seeing 40 meteors in a one second
interval does not equal a RATE of 40 meteors per second.
Some meteors
already in flight when that one second interval starts must be
removed.
With the radiant high in the sky from SW USA when 40 Leonids were
being
reported every second, the duration (D) of the Leonids would be
short
and I assume 0.3 seconds for the average meteor.. My
statistics are not
strong, but I believe the correction from the number seen (N) to
a rate
(R) in time (T) is
R = N * T/(T+D)
Thus for N=40 Leonids seen in T=1sec with D=0.3 sec gives R=31
Leonids/sec. This converts to an observed rate of 110,000/hr for
the
Milon observations at Kitt Peak.
James Young and others at Table Mountain estimated 50 Leonids
visible
in a 1 second glimpse, which in the above gives R=38 Leonids/sec
and
140,000/hr.
2) I do not accept the argument that 1 second was not 1 second
and I
don't know why this should be brought into question. I
would imagine
that most competent amateurs for whom time is an important
quantity,
could estimate a one second interval quite reasonably.
3) Regarding the stellar limiting magnitude from Kitt Peak based
on the
visibility of the Gegenschein, Marco suggests it was fainter than
+6.5.
I can still see the gegenschein when I take my glasses off when
my
stellar limiting mag drops to around +5. The visibility of
a diffuse
object cannot put strict constraints on the visibility of stellar
objects.
4) The suggestions that the high rates (corresponding to
ZHRs>100,000)
in 1966 don't correspond to observations overall may be the case,
but
my limited knowledge of 1966 observations show no
inconsistency. The
Young and Milon estimates are mentioned above, but Perry Bell in
Lubbock, Texas counted about 25/sec near the peak commenting
"Because
of the great number of meteors and the tremendous rates of fall
during
the peak of the shower from 5:35 to 5:55, with attendant lag in
counting quite obvious, one might reasonably correct the actual
count
by at least 50 percent if not more." (The Review of Popular
Astronomy,
Vol 61, No 543, 1967 Jan/Feb, pp9-11). Note that these are rates
and
not counts of what was visible in a one second
"snapshot". Correcting
by +50% gives R=37 Leonids/sec and 135,000/hr. As Bell
commented that
"At least one-half to two-thrids of the members of this
shower were
fireballs." [for which he used the definition "as
bright or brighter
than the brightest stars"] it would seem unlikely to me that
any
correction from an assumed faint limiting magnitude to +6.5 would
be of
much relevance.
5) When corrected for radiant elevation, these estimates imply a
ZHR >100,000.
Cheers, Rob McNaught
====================
(6) SEARCHING FOR ET FROM HOME
From Andrew Yee <ayee@nova.astro.utoronto.ca>
University of California-Berkeley
NEWS RELEASE: 11/25/98
Searching for ET from home -- UC Berkeley launches project to
draw
public into the search for extraterrestrial intelligence
By Robert Sanders, Public Affairs
BERKELEY -- One hundred lucky pioneers will get the chance of a
lifetime this month -- the opportunity to participate in a unique
search for extraterrestrial intelligence from their desktop
computer.
These one hundred will test a one-of-a-kind computer program
called
SETI@home that allows a desktop PC to analyze radio data from
space in
search of intelligent signals. If all goes well, the finished
product
will roll out next April for 100,000-plus people who have already
signed up to participate.
The computer program is essentially a screen saver that kicks in
when
your desktop computer is idle, and crunches data collected from a
radio
dish in Puerto Rico.
"SETI@home is a way of harnessing all the idle computers to
increase
our computing capacity and our chance of finding
extraterrestrials,"
said SETI@home project scientist Dan Werthimer, a research
physicist at
UC Berkeley's Space Sciences Laboratory.
SETI@home -- named after the acronym for the search for
extraterrestrial intelligence, SETI -- is a way for UC Berkeley's
SETI
physicists to more thoroughly analyze the data they receive daily
from
their ongoing survey of the sky using the large radio dish at
Arecibo,
Puerto Rico. This 20-year-old search, which piggybacks on the
Arecibo
telescope, is called SERENDIP IV -- the fourth incarnation of an
instrument designed to Search for Extraterrestrial Radio
Emissions from
Nearby Developed Intelligent Populations.
Unfortunately, the computer capacity available to SERENDIP is
sufficient to look for only the most obvious signals from
extraterrestrial civilizations, Werthimer said.
"In terms of science, SERENDIP is very powerful, but it
looks for a
very restricted class of signal," said Werthimer.
"SETI@home does an
exceptionally good job of analyzing a small band of signals very
thoroughly."
The radio data is broken down into small chunks -- typically a
range of
wavelengths -- through which the screen saver program can search
for
patterns that may indicate a deliberate broadcast from a distant
civilization.
"You can download enough data through the internet in five
minutes to
keep the computer analyzing for several days," said computer
scientist
David Anderson, project director and a long-time volunteer with
the
project. "The computer then sends back a summary of the
interesting
stuff it found, and gets another chunk of data."
As the computer works away at the data, the computer screen
displays a
three-dimensional graph charting the signal analysis.
Anderson developed the screen saver program that crunches the
data, now
available only for PCs. He currently is developing versions for
Macintosh, Unix, Linux and other systems.
"The point is to get the bugs out of the software so we are
ready to go
for 100,000 people in April," Werthimer said.
The SETI@home project is the first "distributed
computing" project to
offer the general public the opportunity to participate in
important
research. Distributed computing is a way of breaking down a
problem
requiring lots of computation into small chunks that can be done
by
many small computers distributed anywhere in the world.
"Ours is the first that actually does a useful computation
and sends
data both ways through the pipe," Anderson said.
The type of data coming from SERENDIP is particularly suitable
for
distributed computing, Anderson said, though other major
scientific
projects -- drug discovery, for example -- might also be
candidates.
The main requirement is number crunching, or in computer jargon,
CPU
(computer processing unit) time.
"Projects suitable for distributed computing are those that
are very
CPU intensive with not a lot of data to transfer," Anderson
said. "But
there are many such projects, which may create a future market in
CPUs."
SETI@home has been building to this point for several years,
mostly
with the help of volunteers. What finally got it off the ground,
however, was an infusion of money from the Planetary Society,
which
donated $50,000, and Paramount Studies, which donated another
$50,000
and is tying the project to the launch of its new movie,
"Star Trek:
Insurrection," December 11. Sun Microsystems also has
donated computer
equipment to SETI@home.
With the publicity generated by these two donors, the project is
getting a thousand new sign-ups each day, Werthimer said.
The SERENDIP IV instrument on the 1,000-foot diameter Arecibo
dish
looks at radio signals in the "water hole," an area of
the spectrum
identified as a possible region where advanced civilizations
might
broadcast a signal. It is located to either side of the 21
centimeter
wavelength, the wavelength of light absorbed by water molecules
in
space.
SERENDIP records signals in a band around the water hole and
stores
them on magnetic tape, which is expressed to UC Berkeley for
analysis.
The more detailed analysis that can be done by the SETI@home
screen
saver will look for unusual patterns that are too complex and
time
consuming for the SERENDIP project to attempt.
Whatever interesting signals may turn up from SETI@home must be
checked
by people like Werthimer to make sure they are not due to radio
interference from Earth or orbiting satellites.
"We're not asking people to call the press when they see a
spike on the
screen," Werthimer said. "We get strong signals all the
time and have
to sift through them."
[NOTE: More info of SETI@home is available at
http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/]
================
(7) WATCHING OUT FOR ASTEROIDS
From Michael Paine <mpaine@tpgi.com.au>
The following was published in the December 1998 (Vol 70, No.12)
issue
of Engineers Australia.
The Editor, Engineers Australia. Audiences who saw the movies
Deep
Impact and Armageddon no doubt came away thinking that we don't
need
Bruce Willis to save the world because there is a dedicated band
of
scientists staring at the skies looking out for an asteroid
"with our
name on it". Sorry - think again. The worldwide detection
effort is at
most, about one tenth of that needed to meet the realistic goals
of the
proposed international Spaceguard Survey. The shameful fact is
that
Australia's contribution is essentially zero. Government funding
for a
low-budget but highly successful asteroid search program was cut
in
1996 - probably because it straddled ministerial portfolios and
there
was no appropriate budget pigeonhole. In the next 50 years there
is a 1
in 2,000 chance of a 1 kilometre diameter asteroid impacting the
Earth
at a speed of around 70,000km/h. At this speed the object has
more
energy than its equivalent mass in TNT. The consequences would be
global and catastrophic - this would not be an "extinction
event" but
perhaps one quarter of the world's population would die and
civilisation would collapse. Impact by smaller objects occur more
frequently and could threaten the fragile global economy.
Why I am
raising this issue in an engineering magazine? I am a mechanical
engineer with a background in road safety research. When I
applied the
cost-effectiveness procedures that are used to justify road
safety
initiatives to the Spaceguard proposal I realised that the
project was
highly cost-effective. Furthermore this was based on very
conservative
estimates because it only considered Australian lives saved; it
did not
consider global fatalities, the economic consequences of an
impact or
the effects of tsunami hitting low-lying coastal areas. This is
clearly
a government responsibility but it appears that Australian
politicians
are not prepared to consider an issue that, in their judgement,
is not
likely to have an effect before the next election. I am hopeful,
however, that corporate Australia is more prepared to look to the
longer term and will sponsor an Australian Spaceguard program.
This has
occurred in the USA with the successful Spacewatch project. With
this
in mind I have prepared a website with a comprehensive proposal
for
Australia. This has been done entirely on a voluntary basis with
a
determination to "make things happen". On the Web see
http://www1.tpgi.com.au/users/tps-seti/sg_prop.html
or
search Alta Vista for "Spaceguard Australia".
Michael Paine
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