Will it be possible for many of us to provide predictions for local media so that many more people can view overflights of the shuttle? Will it be possible for Chris Peat to upgrade heavens-above.com to use a new source of data? This is merely an initially-informed heads-up about new possibilities. It appears that the Office of Flight Dynamics at JSC (possibly at the urging(?) of Jonathan Weaver or perhaps Paul Maley(?)) has released a large number of anticipated elsets for the flight of STS-101 well in advance: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/elements/ http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/sightings/SSapplications/Post/JavaSSOP/orbit/SHUTTLE/SVPOST.html If this data is valid and can be understood (I haven't looked into that yet; I didn't see specific "valid until"), it should be possible to send copy to local newspapers a few days in advance with a note "cancel if very cloudy or inclement weather is forecast". Morning passes will be occurring over the next week or so at mid-northern latitudes. I'm not sure what data is being used, but an overview of visibility is at: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/sightings/sighttext/index.html Cheers. Walter Nissen wnissen@tfn.net -81.8637, 41.3735, 256m elevation --- hypothetically: Let's see, the greatest actual school tragedy in American history was a bombing, not a shooting. If Harris and Klebold had focused on getting off the bombs, up to 600 might have died. Hmmm. Now, if only we could find some way to make guns harder to get, maybe attack the fascination for guns so many shooters have, maybe we could convert some of these shooters into bombers, then maybe we could put an end to the steady decline in violent death at American schools for some years now, and start pushing up the numbers killed. reality: Be sure you actually want what you wish for. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe from SeeSat-L by sending a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@lists.satellite.eu.org http://www2.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sat May 20 2000 - 06:33:21 PDT