Date sent:        Mon, 15 Sep 97 19:16:00 UT
From:             "Dr. Julian Hiscox" <Marsbug@classic.msn.com>
To:               julian.hiscox@bbsrc.ac.uk
BCC to:          
Subject:          Marsbugs v13. n13.

MARSBUGS:  
The Electronic Exobiology Newsletter
Volume 4, Number 13, 14th September, 1997.

Editors:

David Thomas, Department of Biological Sciences, University of 
Idaho, Moscow, ID, 83844-3051, USA, thoma457@uidaho.edu or 
Marsbugs@aol.com.

Julian Hiscox, Division of Molecular Biology, IAH Compton 
Laboratory, Berkshire, RG20 7NN, UK.  Julian.Hiscox@bbsrc.ac.uk 
or Marsbug@msn.com

MARSBUGS is published on a weekly to quarterly basis as warranted 
by the number of articles and announcements.  Copyright of this 
compilation exists with the editors, except for specific 
articles, in which instance copyright exists with the 
author/authors.  E-mail subscriptions are free, and may be 
obtained by contacting either of the editors.  Contributions are 
welcome, and should be submitted to either of the two editors.  
Contributions should include a short biographical statement about 
the author(s) along with the author(s)' correspondence address.  
Subscribers are advised to make appropriate inquiries before 
joining societies, ordering goods etc.  Back issues may be 
obtained via anonymous FTP at:  ftp.uidaho.edu/pub/mmbb/marsbugs.

-----------------------------------------
(1) BOOK REVIEW:
-Asteroids: their nature and utilization.

(2) PUBLICATION WATCH
-----------------------------------------

(1)  BOOK REVIEW

Title:		Asteroids.
Subtitle:	Their Nature and Utilization.
Author:		Charles T. Kowal.
Pages:		153.
Publisher:	Wiley.
ISBN:		0-471-96039-X
Price:		30 pounds.  Hard back.

The space between and beyond the planets is not empty.  Comets, meteoroids, 
and asteroids are found there.  These bodies, along with gas and dust, make up 
the interplanetary debris.  There are three main regions of such material.  
The first is the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, which in general is 
composed of rocky material (silicates, iron and nickel).  The second, composed 
of comets, postulated by Gerard Kuiper, is past the orbit of Neptune.  
Finally, lies the Oort Cloud, named after the Dutch astronomer Jan Oort, who 
first postulated its existence and structure in the 1950s.  The majority of 
the comet nuclei in the Oort Cloud are probably distributed throughout a broad 
spherical shell between perhaps 25,000 (but possibly 40,000) and 60,000 AU 
from the Sun.  (1 AU is the average distance between the Earth and the Sun, 
149.6 x 106 km or 8.3 light minutes).
Asteroids and comets have played a very real part in both influencing the 
climate and the evolution of life on the Earth.  For example, the majority of 
water in our ancient oceans was thought to have been brought in by the influx 
of comets, and comets may also have provided many of the organic precursors to 
life, such as amino acids.  Asteroids and comets have also directly influenced 
the evolution of Homo sapiens by impacting with the Earth some 65-million 
years ago, contributing to the demise of the dinosaurs.  However, asteroids 
may also provide Mankind with unprecedented opportunities by supplying 
materials for future space born industries.
Asteroids by Charles Kowal is an excellent and clearly illustrated account of 
asteroids and comets.  Kowal is well qualified to write such a book being a 
senior project engineer on the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous mission.   He 
begins by describing the history and cataloguing of asteroids.  Then several 
chapters are spent describing the composition and orbits of the different 
classes asteroids and comets.  Of interest to the amateur and professional 
astronomer alike are those chapters which describe how we can go about 
observing, measure the colours and rotation rates, and compute the orbits of 
asteroids.  With the advent of affordable CCD cameras, all of this is within 
reach of most amateur astronomers.
Kowal ends the book by describing how asteroids can be mined and what 
incredible value they represent.  For example, one cubic kilometre of a 
nickel-iron asteroid contains 7 billion tons of iron, one billion tons of 
nickel, and enough cobalt to supply the entire world for 3000 years.  In 
today's prices this represents about 5 trillion US dollars!  Kowal also 
describes future missions to asteroids, and the Spacewatch and Spaceguard 
programmes - which will hopefully prevent us from meeting the same fate as the 
dinosaurs.  I thoroughly recommend this book to those interested in the minor 
planets.

-----------------------------------------

(2)  PUBLICATION WATCH

Economically viable Lunar development and settlement
Benaroya_H
Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, 1997, Vol. 50, No.9, pp323-324

Binary asteroids and the formation of doublet craters
Bottke_WF, Melosh_HJ
ICARUS, 1996, Vol.124, No.2, pp.372-391

 A model of outflow generation by hydrothermal under pressure drainage in 
volcano-tectonic environment, Shalbatana Vallis (Mars)
Cabrol_NA, Grin_EA, Dawidowicz_G
ICARUS, 1997, Vol.125, No.2, pp.455-464

Twelve years of Mir space station operations
Caldwell_LR
Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, 1997, Vol. 50, No.8, pp317-320

Hydrodynamic escape of oxygen from primitive atmospheres: Applications to the 
cases of Venus and Mars
Chassefiere_E
ICARUS, 1996, Vol.124, No.2, pp.537-552

Russian participation in the International Space Station: Status and Issues
Green_JL
Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, 1997, Vol. 50, No.8, pp296-302

Oxygen and carbon isotope ratios in Martian carbon dioxide: Measurements and 
implications for atmospheric evolution
Krasnopolsky_VA, Mumma_MJ, Bjoraker_GL, Jennings_DE
ICARUS, 1996, Vol.124, No.2, pp.553-568

Production of Lunar propellants (Lunprop)
Koelle_HH, Lo_R
Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, 1997, Vol. 50, No.9, pp353-360

Viking and the Question of Life on Mars, Part 1
LePage_AJ
SETIQuest, 1997, Vol. 3. No.3, pp1-6

SETI Synchronization: Passive and active strategies
Lemarchand_GA
SETIQuest, 1997, Vol. 3. No.3, pp8-15

An oxygen isotope model for the composition of Mars
Lodders_K, Fegley_B
ICARUS, 1997, Vol.126, No.2, pp.373-394

Commercial approach toward the future Lunar resource utilisation
Matsumoto_S, Isome_N, Yoshida_T, Kanamori_H, Takagi_K
Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, 1997, Vol. 50, No.9, pp333-336

Looking for life on Mars
McKay_CP
Astronomy, 1997, Vol. 25, No. 8, pp38-43

Limits on the CO2 content of the Martian polar deposits
Mellon_MT
ICARUS, 1996, Vol.124, No.1, pp.268-279

Deucalionis Regio, Mars: Evidence for a new type of immobile weathered soil 
unit
Merenyi_E, Edgett_KS, Singer_RB
ICARUS, 1996, Vol.124, No.1, pp.296-307

Mapping of spectral variations on the surface of Mars from high spectral 
resolution telescopic images
Merenyi_E, Singer_RB, Miller_JS
ICARUS, 1996, Vol.124, No.1, pp.280-295

Identification of a 10-mu m silicate absorption feature in the Acidalia region 
of Mars
Moersch_JE, Hayward_TL, Nicholson_PD, Squyres_SW, VanCleve_J, Christensen_PR
ICARUS, 1997, Vol.126, No.1, pp.183-196

Evolution of earth's noble gases: Consequences of assuming hydrodynamic loss 
driven by giant impact
Pepin_RO
ICARUS, 1997, Vol.126, No.1, pp.148-156

The algal blooms monitoring system
Pomfret_NE
Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, 1997, Vol. 50, No.10, pp371-373

Vertical distribution of water in the near-equatorial troposphere of Mars: 
Water vapor and clouds
Rodin_AV, Korablev_OI, Moroz_VI
ICARUS, 1997, Vol.125, No.1, pp.212-229

Lunar resource utilization
Risenberg_SD
Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, 1997, Vol. 50, No.9, pp337-352

Science onboard the Mir space station 1986-94
Salmon_Al
Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, 1997, Vol. 50, No.8, pp283-295

The selection of cosmonauts
Shamsutdinov_S
Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, 1997, Vol. 50, No.8, pp311-316

Retrieval of atmospheric temperatures in the Martian planetary boundary layer 
using upward-looking infrared spectra
Smith_MD, Conrath_BJ, Pearl_JC, Ustinov_EA
ICARUS, 1996, Vol.124, No.2, pp.586-597

Stress and flexural modeling of the Martian lithospheric response to Alba 
Patera
Turtle_EP, Melosh_HJ
ICARUS, 1997, Vol.126, No.1, pp.197-211

End Marsbugs. Vol.4. n13.

