eder@ssc-vax.UUCP (Dani Eder) (12/14/83)
13 December 1983
The replies have tapered off again, so it's time to report on
the network L5 chapter. I have now a total of about 30 individuals
interested in some way in L5 on the net. Don Coleman (ittvax!dcdwest!
sdccs6!iy120) has volunteered to be 'chapter secretary'. I have
passed all the network addresses I have to him. Direct 'hello I'm
here' messages to him. I hope he will periodically send mailing
lists around.
I have talked to Ken Poe, who is Chapters Coordinator for L5,
and Joe Hopkins, who is responsible for new chapters. They are in
favor of our forming a chapter and hope we do not have the same
problems that CompuServe L5 ran into. Essentially their problems
were a very limited bulletin board system, and going off on a tangent
without letting the International L5 folks know what was going on.
The BB they used only held a certain amount of data, and was shared
with other users. The added volume they generated (15kbytes/day)
caused the message que to dump old stuff too fast (<3 days). There
was apparently no way to set up another newsgroup without essentially
paying CompuServe to buy a dedicated computer for them. The second
problem is that several people got an idea about populating a space
colony (i.e. taking reservations, selling tickets). L5 has been
trying hard recently to shed its 'flake' image, and this effort, if
it had been picked up by the general press, would have set us back'
years.
Going on to what this chapter can do, we can work on a good long
range plan for space development. While NASA has been hard at work
selling the space station, few people have given much thought to what
comes next. Even a forward looking agency like NASA is too preoccupied
with selling the current program to Congress and the Administration.
L5 is well suited to looking at the long range. I propose we start
a discussion in net.space on where we should go next in space, after
the space station. I will post a followup article that puts all the
comments and suggestions, including ones gathered from off the net,
into a common format.
To start people off, I think a short list of high priority jobs
for NASA should be
(a) a Lunar Polar Orbiter
(b) a Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous Mission
(c) development of a Shuttle Derivative Cargo Launch Vehicle
(d) development of a reuseable LOX-Propane booster engine
If anyone has a different list or wants to know the reasoning
behind mine; write, flame, post a followup, etc.
Dani Eder
ssc-vax!eder
Boeing Aerospace
net is quite higheric@apollo.UUCP (Eric Peters) (12/19/83)
For some reason, I have not seen a message describing L5, its constituency, its goals, its requirements for membership, etc. on the net. I caught a little of the early discussion of starting a USENET chapter, but nowhere have I seen a description of the organization. So, if I missed it, would someone please mail me the information, or, if it hasn't been posted (in the last month or two), then please take this opportunity to tell everyone what L5 is! It sounds interesting. (Does "L5" stand for something?) Eric Peters (...decvax!wivax!apollo!eric)