----- Original Message -----
From: "George G. Dishman"
Newsgroups: sci.astro,sci.physics
Sent: Monday, July 07, 2003 5:50 PM
Subject: Spacecraft Doppler&Light Speed Extrapolation


"ralph sansbury" wrote in message
...
George Dishman suggested to me that Doppler signals sent to
a spacecraft and relayed back to earth would provide a good
test of the instantaneous speed of light hypothesis.
That hypothesis states that the r/c delay in light does
not
extrapolate
beyond c but at great distances does not increase beyond a
maximal value. Thus a
light source, 30 time 10^8 meters away, like a source 3 times
10^8
meters away still produces an effect in a second (due to
instantaneous forces that produce a cumulative effect rising
above threshold after such a one second at most delay)

The problem with this proposed test is that Doppler
data
that is inconsistent with the speed of light assumptions is
partially or entirely filtered out by NASA.

According to Morabito-Asmar(see Google) paper "The
closed-loop NASA tracking system produces Doppler counts,
Doppler
"pseudoresiduals"( residual based on predicted frequencies
used
to tune the receivers),signal strengths(AGCs) and Doppler
reference frequencies either in the form of a constant
frequency or uplink ramps." All this is output on a so called
ATDF tape ,

Note in particular this quote says that the signal
strength is obtained from the "AGC" meaning "Automatic
Gain Control". Looking at


http://spaceprojects.arc.nasa.gov/Sp...oneer/PNStat.h
tml

"DSS 63 acquired the downlink on time at -183 dbm.
After peaking the signal to -178.5 dbm, they locked
the telemetry at 16 bps with SNR of -0.5 db."

This suggests that a frequency near the predicted frequency
has
been
resonated and that an AGC circuit to reduce strong local
interference
has been employed so that subsequently the modulation code or
signal
can be removed and identified if it is really there to confirm
that
the tuned resonant frequency is not Johnson noise.
Clearly, the filtering techniques of nasa and Marquardt
are as they say they are namely used to avoid data too far from
the
predicted frequencies.
In spite of this I have some hope that the accepted data
in some cases will show that the received Doppler could have
been produced a second before by the receiving station
if the receiving station was also actively transmitting
at the time of reception.

The data you have is filtered and modified even further by Craig
Marquardt as you know.

( I am assuming that in this process the carrier frequency
is
modulated
so that when a resonant increase of a specific incoming
frequency
is produced
it is not Johnson noise or whatever but the code modulated
carrier from the
spacecraft.
I am also assuming that tuning around the predicted
shift will occur
so that even if the incoming frequency is not too far from
the
predicted frequency it can still be obtained)
The result is another "data" file attempting to be
consistent
with the
speed of light delay.

No, the filtering removes outliers far from the mean
of their neighbours, regardless of the speed of light.

I disagree. Since this gets rid of neighbors that depart
the most from the predicted values based on the speed
of light assumptions.


The assumptions of the speed of light
delay are so built
into all of the data coming from NASA that it may be
impossible
to
actually test the hypothesis that light is nearly
instantaneous.
But lets see. I am told that at 7:38 Mar 7 1988,
rx=2.291710886.9109Hz.

From the telnet ephemeris I find that Pioneer 10 had the
following heliocentric,xyz, coordinates in AU units:
snip
and that the Sun at the same time had :
snip
and so Canberra in solar coordinates would have an x
coordinate
which is the negative of the sun's x coordinate here etc.

I think you must be giving geocentric, not heliocentric,
coordinates since you have no reference to the Earth or
sites in the above. That gives you a rotating reference
frame and may lead to other problems. I would suggest
using barycentric coordinates for the sites and craft
to reduce these risks.

The coordinates are what is available from telnet and since
relativistic considerations are not necessary here have no risks
..
xy-plane: plane of the Earth's orbit at the reference
epoch
x-axis : out along ascending node of instantaneous plane of
the
Earth's orbit and the Earth's mean equator at the reference
epoch
z-axis : perpendicular to the xy-plane in the directional (+
or -) sense
of Earth's north pole at the reference epoch.

From this data one gets the craft-site difference vector
at
7:38 that represents the craft-site line "d" and the two time
difference vectors (7:38 and 7:37 etc) divided by 60 seconds
gives the speed
of the site,'vs', and the speed of the craft,'vc'.
The dot products of each velocity and the line "d"
divided by
the sum of squares of coordinates of "d" gives the
projections
of
these velocities on the line, "d" and the difference in these
projected
velocities gives the craft site relative velocity v which
plugged
into the
formula above gives the predicted Doppler.



If the predicted Doppler here is close to the observed rx
then
the instantaneous hypothesis is indicated.

Conversely if the actuals are closer to the conventional
prediction then your theory can be falsified.

Unfortunately because of the- acknowledged by nasa and
Marquardt
but not by you- filtering process guarantees that the
conventional
prediction is also close. So this proves nothing about the
conventional
prediction.
It does however permit a falsification of my theory that the
r/c speed of light does not extrapolate beyond r=c and that the
Doppler
signal could have been received within seconds or not.

However
the coseness of a single reading is a poor indicator.
But there may be hundreds of close readings just like
this
perhaps which thus confirm the hypothesis. The fact that there
aren't
many more is because there are so many gaps in the data due to
failed
attempts to tune in predicted frequencies ( based on the mistaken
and
never tested theorythat the r/c speed of light extrapolates to
distances
greater than c.)



The problem is to obtain from NASA the correct tx
values??????

Both sites transmitted at 2110883520Hz on both days so
there is no problem with that part.

I take you at your word but would like to know what nasa
documents say this.



Two further pieces of information are required. First
there is a transponder ratio of 240:221 that must be
included in the predictions. Secondly Ralph, you haven't
stated the equation to be used for the speed-related
frequency shift in your theory, equivalent to Doppler
shift in conventional theory.

The Doppler shift equation is (1+v/c)f without
relativitistic
modifications which are unnecessary here where v here is the
difference
in the projections of vs an vc on the line d.
(1+v/c)f is received by the spacecraft and retransmitted as
(240/221)(1+v)f so that(1+ v)^2 times 24/221 times f should be
received by the sending site a second or so later if the sending
site
was also scheduled to send at this time of reception
v denotes the sum of the projected craft and earth site
velocities
on the instantaneous line, d.
Its easy to put the data and equations in a spreadsheet and
calculate the answer
But I would suggest using the least filtered data. I am
working on
that now