From: George William Herbert Subject: sci.space.{tech,science,policy} short FAQ Date: 12 May 1994 05:28:48 GMT Keywords: FAQ Welcome to the sci.space heirarchy. In these groups, you can find discussions ranging far and wide across all aspects of space science and travel. There are the following groups in the sci.space heirarchy: sci.space.tech sci.space.science sci.space.shuttle sci.space.policy sci.space.news This message will discuss sci.space.tech, sci.space.science, and sci.space.policy in general, and a slight bit about .shuttle and .news Note: there have been a number of questions about why the new groups configuration didn't make it out onto the space digest mailing list as had been discussed. A quick and dirty summary of the situation is that someone's masters thesis couldn't be put off any more. They have said they'll try to do the conversion as soon as possible. This is yet again a situation where volounteer efforts on the Net are adversely affected by Real Life. To quote from the charters of the groups s.s.tech, .science, and .policy... -----BEGIN CHARTERS----- Newsgroups lines: sci.space.tech Technical and general issues related to space flight. sci.space.science Space and planetary science and related technical work. sci.space.policy Discussions about space policy. CHARTER (as printed in the Call for Votes) This is a reorganization of the Usenet space-related newsgroups. It includes splitting sci.space, renaming of talk.politics.space, and drawing alt.sci.planetary in as an official sci group (part of sci.space.science). The original sci.space group will be removed as part of the first vote (rmgroup sci.space, newgroup sci.space.tech). The existing newsgroups sci.space.news and sci.space.shuttle are unaffected by this reorganization. sci.space.tech (moderated, moderator George William Herbert) Technical issues and directly related policy issues on all aspects of space flight; space launch vehicles present, past, proposed, and propulsion (including poorly or undeveloped methods such as ion, solar sail, laser-sail, antimatter, etc); space station design, engineering, operations, and goals; and any other types of spacecraft technology, engineering, operations, and related topics. Technical issues involved in developing space resources, colonization of space, etc. Technical, costing, and directly related policy decisions will also be appropriate. Questions about space technology, operations, engineering, etc. are all appropriate, at any level. sci.space.science (moderated, moderators gwh and Steve Willner) For discussing planetary and non-planetary space science; including technical issues in planetary science, planetary science space missions, techniques, goals, and information about the planets themselves, space astronomy, physics, space science in general, stellar science (ours and others), etc. Questions about space science, the planets, etc. The primary emphasis is on doing science in or about space; sci.astro remains the appropriate group for astronomy per se. sci.space.policy (unmoderated) Policy issues not directly related to technical issues in any space field, including government policies, budget priorities, mission type priorities, goals of space programs, the role of governments and space agencies in developing space, etc. Any discussions on technical issues where person feel the moderated groups are not giving full range of expression are also appropriate. The moderated groups shall have a policy of merely redirecting to .policy rather than outright rejecting inappropriate articles. The moderators may contact the poster and ask them if they would prefer to rewrite a borderline article rather than simply redirect it, at their discretion, but the author may insist on having the article posted as-is to sci.space.policy. All three groups will be gatewayed to the Space Digest mailing list, as sci.space is now. -----END CHARTERS----- Some short information about sci.space.shuttle and .news: sci.space.shuttle is more or less what it seems, a place for discussing the US space shuttle and (at least by convention) closely related topics. sci.space.news is for announcements, PR bulletins, etc. which are of interest to the space community. Both of these groups predate the sci.space reorg which resulted in the creation of sci.space.{tech,science,policy} . Moderators notes on .tech, .science: These groups will be moderated per the policy in the CFV. We will attempt to use a consistent format to identify any articles redirected from one group to another at the moderators judgement, probably X-Redirected-From: old.newsgroup or something like. The official moderation addresses are: sci-space-tech@isu.isunet.edu sci-space-science@isu.isunet.edu ARTICLE FORMATS For everyone's information, the software I use here to post the approved articles enforces things like the "more included text than new" restriction. Please, if sending a followup, make sure you have more added text than replied-to. Delete sections of those articles you're replying to which aren't appropriate for the followup. I will have to add spaces at the end or something to get your article posted if you don't, which is ugly. Also, please remember to type return at the end of each line. -- george william herbert gwh@crl.com Moderator, sci.space.tech Primary moderator, sci.space.science Work: System / Net Administrator, CR Labs Home/Play: Retro Aerospace KD6WUQ gwh@crl.com gwh@soda.berkeley.edu gwh@{isu,exec}.isunet.edu deltaV = g * Isp * ln(Mr) ... it's not just a good idea, it's the Law ----------------------------------------------------------------------------