Space shuttles carry two tons of lead blocks to compensate for designerror

source: http://www.space-travel.com/reports/...d_Not_999.html

It's an odd feature of aerospace history that many prototype aircraft
that never went into production become "cultplanes". Some prominent
examples are flying wings, Avro Arrow, B-70 Valkyrie, anything
designed by the Nazis in 1945.

Cultplanes have their own Web sites run by amateur enthusiasts who are
slightly dotty. These cultists take all the public relations hype from
the designers as gospel truth and ignore all the potential problems.
They argue that if their particular pet aircraft had been given a
chance, history would have been changed: Canada would still have an
aerospace industry, or supersonic airliners would be common, or the
Nazis would rule the world.

Some of these sites have a strong paranoid slant, claiming that the
Holy Plane was sabotaged by the Sinister Forces of U.S. Imperialism,
International Communism, or the Established Aerospace Corporations.
You can still see long-disproved conspiracy theories about the B-49
and the Arrow presented as historical facts on the Web.

We Space Cadets have our own "Cult Spacecraft". The blogosphere is
full of ardent fans of ex-projects like X-20, X-30, DC-X, X-33, X-34,
X-38 etc. who are convinced that their particular favorite would have
been the key to cheap and reliable access to space if only the
Sinister Forces hadn't killed it. These cultists are constantly
calling for one of these dead projects to be revived as an alternative
to the boring multistage expendable boosters we are still using.

This way lies madness - or at least irrelevance. Most of these cult
programs were technically impossible. They often had severe political
and management problems as well, but the main reasons for their
failure were fundamental laws of physics, aerodynamics, and
engineering that haven't changed today and never will. Trying to
revive them is wasted effort that only makes the space advocacy
community look technically illiterate and reduces its credibility.

So I have decided to expand an earlier article on this subject into a
series that will explain in plain English the reasons why some of the
more popular Cult Spacecraft would probably have been dead ends, even
if they had received unlimited funding and had perfect management.

The obvious place to start is with X-20/Dyna-Soar. This little black
spaceplane is not nearly as nutty as the other projects I will discuss
in later articles, but it does have several cult web pages full of
wishful thinking.

The Exospheric Bomber: Dyna-Soar had an unusually checkered
development history. It had at least 4 different names (BoMi, ROBO,
Dyna-Soar, and X-20), two prime contractors (Bell and Boeing), and a
bewildering variety of launch vehicles.

It originally wasn't a spacecraft at all, but an alternative method of
delivering a big thermonuclear bomb from the USA to the USSR. And it
originally wasn't an orbital vehicle intended to travel in vacuum, but
a "boost-glide" aircraft that was boosted to high altitude and speed
by a disposable booster, then flew once around the Earth in the upper
atmosphere where it was supported partly by wing lift and partly by
centrifugal force.

The goal of this original BoMi (Bomber Missile) or ROBO (Rocket
Bomber) was to attack the Soviet Union at altitudes and speeds higher
than the Mach 3 B-70 bombers and Navajo cruise missiles under
development at the same time. Speed/Altitude graphs for BoMi show that
it was designed to attack the USSR over the South Pole, instead of the
direct North Pole route.

The boost-glide concept poses formidable problems of navigation, bomb-
aiming, and thermal protection that are not adequately addressed in
the available sources. The vehicle would have left a hot plasma trail,
attracting both radar- and IR-guided missiles like a magnet. Course
changes would have been almost impossible. By 1958 it was clear that
the plain ballistic reentry vehicle was cheaper, lighter, and more
survivable than the "exospheric bomber" could every be - so BoMi was
restructured as a research vehicle.

It was given the name Dyna-Soar from the phrase "dynamic soaring"
which supposedly described its flight mode. Later it acquired the
parallel designation X-20 to indicate its new role as a successor to
the X-15 as a high-speed research vehicle.

In traditional X-plane fashion, it was planned to fly X-20 at
gradually increasing speeds and altitudes, starting with B-52 drops at
Edwards AFB and proceeding to suborbital flights from Cape Canaveral
to Caribbean islands or Brazil. Later the X-20 would launch from
Canaveral on a Titan IIIC, make one low partial orbit around the
Earth, and land at Edwards AFB. Eventually a multi-orbit capability
would be developed. This final version of X-20 would have retained the
partly-fueled Titan Transtage for orbital maneuvering and retrofire.

Zen and the Art of Spacecraft Design: The requirements of even
fractional-orbit spaceflight are so demanding that the X-20 turned
into an ultra-minimalist design that just barely met the once-around
mission requirements. Like the more recent X-38, it was not really a
complete spacecraft in the sense of Gemini, Soyuz, or Apollo. There
was no radar, computer, or maneuvering thrusters to change orbit.
Attitude control was by hydrogen peroxide thrusters with a very
limited fuel supply. And the life support system had very limited
capacity, apparently only for three orbits in the final design.

A major reason for this very austere systems fit was the weight and
space demands of the elaborate thermal control system needed to
survive reentry. X-20 had no external thermal insulation like the
Shuttle; it would have been covered with metal shingles made of rare
elements like zirconium, molybdenum, columbium and tantalum.

This metal skin was highly vulnerable to oxidation and needed a
silicon overcoating that might well have been as fragile as the
Shuttle tiles. It also had a high thermal conductivity; reentry heat
flowed freely through the "Thermal Protection System" which only
protected itself, not the spacecraft structure underneath.

To cope with this heat conduction, the wing, fuselage, and landing
gear structure of the X-20 was made of somewhat less exotic alloys and
allowed to heat up freely. But the pilot and internal systems still
needed protection. This was provided by a 3-stage active cooling
system:

Stage One was a layer of insulation to delay heat propagation into the
spacecraft interior.

Stage Two consisted of a double cabin wall enclosing a layer of water
which was stabilized by a gelling agent. This "water-wall" would boil
off during reentry.

Stage Three was a traditional aircraft glycol cooling loop that dumped
heat into a flow of liquid hydrogen from a huge spherical tank that
took up about 20% of the X-20's fuselage. The hydrogen was then burned
with liquid oxygen in APUs that provided hydraulic power for the
aerodynamic control surfaces.

This thermal control system was extremely wasteful of mass and
internal volume. Attempts to give X-20 some minimal operational
capability were severely limited by the available space. Every cult
web page about Dyna-Soar shows a cross-section of an "X-20X" 5-seat
space station crew ferry configuration - but if you look closely you
see that the escape rocket has been removed and the passengers are
crammed in so close that ejection is impossible.

Active cooling also placed a strict limit on the orbital stay time of
the X-20, since the LH2 would have been boiling off continuously in
space. This system could never have been used on the Space Shuttle
orbiters as some have suggested. The LH2 tank alone would have taken
up most of the cargo bay.

A supposed advantage of a robust TPS is that the vehicle is reusable
without elaborate and labor-intensive refurbishment. But the surviving
Dyna-Soar documents indicate that reusability was only a long-term
goal of the program. Boeing built mockups of a conventional production
line that would supply new X-20s for every mission. Ironically, the
competing Gemini capsule did demonstrate reusability when Gemini 2 was
reflown as Gemini B during the MOL program.

The Curse of the Bomber Generals: X-20 was managed by the U.S. Air
Force whose generals at that time were almost all former WWII bomber
pilots. Through the whole history of space travel, pilot-astronauts
and pilot-managers have shown a visceral dislike for ballistic RVs and
a psychological need for traditional stick-and-rudder controls. In the
Dyna-Soar this syndrome produced truly insane results.

The whole basis of the program was piloted reentry, but it was a very
strange sort of piloting. The X-20 astronaut would have sat in front
of a circular display with a grid of lines indicating various bank
angles and angles of attack. Below the display was a row of ten
buttons bearing the names of various US Air Force bases. (X-20's wire-
brush landing gear would only work on concrete runways, not dry lake
beds or dirt strips.)

Before reentry, the pilot pressed a button to choose a runway. After
that, a computer would project onto the display a pip indicating the
flight angles needed to reach the selected runway, and a second pip
indicating the actual angles currently being flown. The pilot had only
to keep the two pips together like a human servomotor.

Not content with this, the USAF actually insisted that the pilot
should "fly" the booster during the ascent to orbit, again robotically
following instructions presented by a computer while subjected to the
crushing g-force and intense vibration of a rocket launch! Studies of
this absurd guidance mode were actually continued after X-20 was
cancelled.

The designers at Boeing pandered to pilot prejudice even more with a
proposal for "Synergetic Orbital Plane Change." In this maneuver, Dyna-
Soar would have made a retro burn to drop its perigee into the
atmosphere, rolled onto its side and used aerodynamic lift to make the
plane change, then lifted itself back into stable orbit with another
burn.

The author of this idea seems to have forgotten that Dyna-Soar didn't
have a rocket engine - all its delta-vee was in the partly-fueled
Titan III transtage. With the flimsy and explosive transtage still
attached, this maneuver is quite impossible. This doesn't stop some
cultists from citing it even today.

Even the overall airplane-like configuration of the vehicle was
fundamentally wrong and obsolete by 1963:

1) A winged configuration is about three times as heavy as an
equivalent semi-ballistic capsule, and therefore costs three times as
much to launch. The one-man X-20 was operationally less capable than
the two-man Gemini, yet it required the expensive 4-stage Titan IIIC
instead of Gemini's cheap 2-stage Titan II. A major element of this
weight was a huge abort rocket (based on the Minuteman I Stage 3) that
had to be carted all the way to orbit.

2) A winged spaceplane located on top of a booster is an
aerodynamically unstable configuration, akin to an arrow with the
feathers at the front. The guidance packages and thrust-vector
controls on 1960 rockets were not capable of steering the stack in the
lower atmosphere. Huge tailfins were designed for all the proposed
boosters to maintain static stability. (This problem cropped up again
in the X-37B program and resulted in a big payload shroud being
added.)

3) A manual runway landing requires big windows in the front of the
vehicle, where reentry heating is intense. X-20 addressed this problem
with a detachable metal heat shield covering the windows. If this
failed to jettison, the unfortunate pilot would have no forward view
at all.

4) The pilot is seated in the correct position to take the launch g-
forces "eyeballs-in", but during reentry he is oriented in the
unfavorable "eyeballs-down" direction. This is tolerable during a
normal shallow low-g lifting reentry, but not in many launch abort
scenarios where the initial entry angle is very steep.

This "black zone" problem seems not to have been discovered until the
program was well under way. Robert Godwin's book reproduces a report
of April 1958 which states that the Dyna-Soar pilot would be subjected
to a peak g-load of 22 gravities during the worst-case launch abort.
This is about the same as in a Soyuz abort - but in a Soyuz the crew
is correctly oriented eyeballs-down.

Was McNamara Right? When Secretary of Defense Robert Strange McNamara
and his staff of "Whiz Kids" subjected X-20 to a series of reviews in
1963, it was revealed as more expensive, less capable, and less safe
than the existing semi-ballistic spacecraft, Gemini. By the time X-20
would actually fly in 1967-69, it would be an embarrassing
anachronism: a spacecraft with Mercury-like capability flying
alongside Apollo.

Furthermore, McNamara and at least some members of the Dyna-Soar
review panels were aware of the rapid progress being made by top-
secret unmanned military spacecraft such as CORONA and GRAB. These
programs were already far more capable in 1963 than any operational
variant of X-20 might have become circa 1975. Declassified documents
indicate that discussions of Dyna-Soar usually ended up discussing
whether any manned military space program was justifiable.

McNamara's decision to axe Dyna-Soar in favor of a military version of
Gemini was really a compromise, designed to keep the Defense
Department involved in manned space at minimum cost. But "Blue Gemini"
evolved into Manned Orbiting Laboratory (KH-10 DORIAN), an expendable
one-shot manned spy station.

MOL was absurdly more expensive than the parallel KH-9 unmanned system
and was cancelled in turn. The Soviets actually did deploy the Almaz
manned military space stations which proved beyond doubt that there is
no useful military role for men in space.

Dyna-Soar cultists have argued that McNamara was wrong in evaluating
the vehicle as an operational military spacecraft, since it was
intended as a pure X-vehicle to develop and evaluate the spaceplane
concept. It is politically incorrect to defend the man who gave us the
F-111B, the joint service belt buckle, and the Second Indochina War -
but I'll put my neck on the chopping block and claim that McNamara was
correct - at least from his perspective in 1963.

The whole purpose of experimental aircraft is to develop technology
for future operational vehicles - but all the new technologies being
developed for X-20 look like losers.

But from the perspective of 45 years later, I wish that McNamara had
made the wrong decision and allowed X-20 to continue. The program
would have been a waste of money in the short term, but it might have
saved both the USAF and NASA much more money and agony in the long
term.

The Dyna-Soar configuration was close to that eventually adopted for
the Space Shuttle Orbiter, much closer than the unmanned ASSET and
X-23A vehicles that were the only "winged" RVs actually test-flown in
the 1960s. Like the earlier X-planes, X-20 would have carried a huge
package of electronics to record aerodynamic data during reentry. A
similar package was carried by the first Shuttle Columbia in 1981 -
about a decade too late.

If X-20 had actually flown in the late 1960s, that instrumentation
would have supplied the Shuttle's designers with a priceless data
base. They would not have been forced to rely completely on wind-
tunnel data and primitive computer models and would have produced a
better design. For instance, the Orbiters carry two tons of lead
blocks in their noses to compensate for an error in aerodynamic
models, and X-20 data might well have prevented this mistake.

It is even possible that X-20 would have convinced NASA and USAF
management that a winged vehicle was the wrong way to go - that the
operational problems and parasitic weight were just too crippling to
be worth the supposed advantages of high cross-range capability and
runway landing.

Many people came to realize this unpleasant truth during the test
flights of Columbia in 1981-82, by which time it was politically
impossible to abandon the Shuttle or cut it back to an X-program.
Since then, spaceplanes have been rejected in favor of semi-ballistic
capsules every time they have competed for the same mission, most
recently in the Hermes/ARD, Kliper/ACTS, and OSP/Orion programs.

So this is my own alternate aerospace history fantasy: If there had
been a few X-20 flights, and the data base from these flights had been
available in 1971, it is possible that we could have avoided the whole
Space Shuttle fiasco? Might we have stuck with capsules instead of
getting lost in a blind alley? Could Dyna-Soar have saved us 14 dead
astronauts and over $100B of wasted money? Could we have spent the
last 35 years doing something useful in space, if that useless little
black spaceplane had actually flown?

The lowest cost/Kg was the Saturn 5. A rocket does not, of course,
need any ballast as its engines are directly underneath.

There are in fact two routes to lower cost spaceflight. One is a
reusable vehicle where wings are always envisaged, the other is to
rationalize on one type of rocket, mass produce and cut the production
cost. The first solution is the one NASA has tried and failed at. The
second is far more pragmatic, it lacks elegance but it would produce
real cost savings.


- Ian Parker

There's already a thread on this article at:

http://groups.google.com/group/sci.s...d3cc9fb?hl=en#

This has been debunked already.

Also, please do not post articles in their entirety, it violates copyright
law.


--
Greg Moore
Ask me about lily, an RPI based CMC.

wrote in message
...
source:
http://www.space-travel.com/reports/...d_Not_999.html

If X-20 had actually flown in the late 1960s, that instrumentation
would have supplied the Shuttle's designers with a priceless data
base. They would not have been forced to rely completely on wind-
tunnel data and primitive computer models and would have produced a
better design. For instance, the Orbiters carry two tons of lead
blocks in their noses to compensate for an error in aerodynamic
models, and X-20 data might well have prevented this mistake.

It is even possible that X-20 would have convinced NASA and USAF
management that a winged vehicle was the wrong way to go - that the
operational problems and parasitic weight were just too crippling to
be worth the supposed advantages of high cross-range capability and
runway landing.

Many people came to realize this unpleasant truth during the test
flights of Columbia in 1981-82, by which time it was politically
impossible to abandon the Shuttle or cut it back to an X-program.
Since then, spaceplanes have been rejected in favor of semi-ballistic
capsules every time they have competed for the same mission, most
recently in the Hermes/ARD, Kliper/ACTS, and OSP/Orion programs.

So this is my own alternate aerospace history fantasy: If there had
been a few X-20 flights, and the data base from these flights had been
available in 1971, it is possible that we could have avoided the whole
Space Shuttle fiasco? Might we have stuck with capsules instead of
getting lost in a blind alley? Could Dyna-Soar have saved us 14 dead
astronauts and over $100B of wasted money? Could we have spent the
last 35 years doing something useful in space, if that useless little
black spaceplane had actually flown?

"Greg D. Moore (Strider)" wrote in message
...
This has been debunked already.


I believe the X-33 was cancelled for political purposes, to allow Lockheed
et al to replace it with a long term very expensive moon shot.
Bush and Lockheed have been sleeping with each other since
Bush was a governor. I don't trust the decision to cancel the
X-33 at all, it smells.



Also, please do not post articles in their entirety, it violates copyright
law.


I keep hearing this, but it's just not true in this context.
Unless I go out and make money somehow with that article
there's nothing wrong with using it in usenet conversations.

This is speech, not broadcasting.

The US Supreme Court was very clear on that in their historic decision
which defined the legal character of the internet. In Reno v ACLU, the
court ruled that as the most mass participatory communication medium
known, internet conversations deserved the very highest level of
First Amendment protection.

Usenet speech has the highest protection of all.

This conversation, in the US, is no different than two people
talking in their living rooms or in the public square.
Copyright law does not apply in the least.

For non-commercial speech, essentially anything found
on the internet is already in the public domain. It's up
to the owner of the material to protect it behind a
credit card site etc. But if they publish it out on the net
any usenet speaker can repost it as they please.





--
Greg Moore
Ask me about lily, an RPI based CMC.

wrote in message
...
source:
http://www.space-travel.com/reports/...d_Not_999.html

If X-20 had actually flown in the late 1960s, that instrumentation
would have supplied the Shuttle's designers with a priceless data
base. They would not have been forced to rely completely on wind-
tunnel data and primitive computer models and would have produced a
better design. For instance, the Orbiters carry two tons of lead
blocks in their noses to compensate for an error in aerodynamic
models, and X-20 data might well have prevented this mistake.

It is even possible that X-20 would have convinced NASA and USAF
management that a winged vehicle was the wrong way to go - that the
operational problems and parasitic weight were just too crippling to
be worth the supposed advantages of high cross-range capability and
runway landing.

Many people came to realize this unpleasant truth during the test
flights of Columbia in 1981-82, by which time it was politically
impossible to abandon the Shuttle or cut it back to an X-program.
Since then, spaceplanes have been rejected in favor of semi-ballistic
capsules every time they have competed for the same mission, most
recently in the Hermes/ARD, Kliper/ACTS, and OSP/Orion programs.

So this is my own alternate aerospace history fantasy: If there had
been a few X-20 flights, and the data base from these flights had been
available in 1971, it is possible that we could have avoided the whole
Space Shuttle fiasco? Might we have stuck with capsules instead of
getting lost in a blind alley? Could Dyna-Soar have saved us 14 dead
astronauts and over $100B of wasted money? Could we have spent the
last 35 years doing something useful in space, if that useless little
black spaceplane had actually flown?

"jonathan" wrote in message
...

"Greg D. Moore (Strider)" wrote in
message ...
This has been debunked already.


I believe the X-33 was cancelled for political purposes, to allow Lockheed
et al to replace it with a long term very expensive moon shot.
Bush and Lockheed have been sleeping with each other since
Bush was a governor. I don't trust the decision to cancel the
X-33 at all, it smells.


Do you still believe in Santa Claus?




Also, please do not post articles in their entirety, it violates
copyright law.


I keep hearing this, but it's just not true in this context.
Unless I go out and make money somehow with that article
there's nothing wrong with using it in usenet conversations.


Yes there is.

This is speech, not broadcasting.

The US Supreme Court was very clear on that in their historic decision
which defined the legal character of the internet. In Reno v ACLU, the
court ruled that as the most mass participatory communication medium
known, internet conversations deserved the very highest level of
First Amendment protection.

While that may be true, it does not protect wholesale copying of material
from other sources.



Usenet speech has the highest protection of all.

This conversation, in the US, is no different than two people
talking in their living rooms or in the public square.
Copyright law does not apply in the least.

For non-commercial speech, essentially anything found
on the internet is already in the public domain.

Again, you're completely misreading the court's decision here.
In fact I'm not even sure how you can get to here from the decision.

It's up
to the owner of the material to protect it behind a
credit card site etc. But if they publish it out on the net
any usenet speaker can repost it as they please.





--
Greg Moore
Ask me about lily, an RPI based CMC.

wrote in message
...
source:
http://www.space-travel.com/reports/...d_Not_999.html

If X-20 had actually flown in the late 1960s, that instrumentation
would have supplied the Shuttle's designers with a priceless data
base. They would not have been forced to rely completely on wind-
tunnel data and primitive computer models and would have produced a
better design. For instance, the Orbiters carry two tons of lead
blocks in their noses to compensate for an error in aerodynamic
models, and X-20 data might well have prevented this mistake.

It is even possible that X-20 would have convinced NASA and USAF
management that a winged vehicle was the wrong way to go - that the
operational problems and parasitic weight were just too crippling to
be worth the supposed advantages of high cross-range capability and
runway landing.

Many people came to realize this unpleasant truth during the test
flights of Columbia in 1981-82, by which time it was politically
impossible to abandon the Shuttle or cut it back to an X-program.
Since then, spaceplanes have been rejected in favor of semi-ballistic
capsules every time they have competed for the same mission, most
recently in the Hermes/ARD, Kliper/ACTS, and OSP/Orion programs.

So this is my own alternate aerospace history fantasy: If there had
been a few X-20 flights, and the data base from these flights had been
available in 1971, it is possible that we could have avoided the whole
Space Shuttle fiasco? Might we have stuck with capsules instead of
getting lost in a blind alley? Could Dyna-Soar have saved us 14 dead
astronauts and over $100B of wasted money? Could we have spent the
last 35 years doing something useful in space, if that useless little
black spaceplane had actually flown?







--
Greg Moore
Ask me about lily, an RPI based CMC.

"Greg D. Moore (Strider)" wrote in
message ...
"jonathan" wrote in message
...

"Greg D. Moore (Strider)" wrote in
message ...
This has been debunked already.

I believe the X-33 was cancelled for political purposes, to allow
Lockheed
et al to replace it with a long term very expensive moon shot.
Bush and Lockheed have been sleeping with each other since
Bush was a governor. I don't trust the decision to cancel the
X-33 at all, it smells.

Do you still believe in Santa Claus?

Also, please do not post articles in their entirety, it violates
copyright law.

I keep hearing this, but it's just not true in this context.
Unless I go out and make money somehow with that article
there's nothing wrong with using it in usenet conversations.


Yes there is.

This is speech, not broadcasting.

The US Supreme Court was very clear on that in their historic
decision
which defined the legal character of the internet. In Reno v ACLU,
the
court ruled that as the most mass participatory communication medium
known, internet conversations deserved the very highest level of
First Amendment protection.

While that may be true, it does not protect wholesale copying of
material from other sources.

Usenet speech has the highest protection of all.

This conversation, in the US, is no different than two people
talking in their living rooms or in the public square.
Copyright law does not apply in the least.

For non-commercial speech, essentially anything found
on the internet is already in the public domain.

Again, you're completely misreading the court's decision here.
In fact I'm not even sure how you can get to here from the decision.

It's up
to the owner of the material to protect it behind a
credit card site etc. But if they publish it out on the net
any usenet speaker can repost it as they please.
--
Greg Moore
Ask me about lily, an RPI based CMC.

wrote in message
...
source:
http://www.space-travel.com/reports/...d_Not_999.html

If X-20 had actually flown in the late 1960s, that instrumentation
would have supplied the Shuttle's designers with a priceless data
base. They would not have been forced to rely completely on wind-
tunnel data and primitive computer models and would have produced a
better design. For instance, the Orbiters carry two tons of lead
blocks in their noses to compensate for an error in aerodynamic
models, and X-20 data might well have prevented this mistake.

It is even possible that X-20 would have convinced NASA and USAF
management that a winged vehicle was the wrong way to go - that the
operational problems and parasitic weight were just too crippling
to
be worth the supposed advantages of high cross-range capability and
runway landing.

Many people came to realize this unpleasant truth during the test
flights of Columbia in 1981-82, by which time it was politically
impossible to abandon the Shuttle or cut it back to an X-program.
Since then, spaceplanes have been rejected in favor of
semi-ballistic
capsules every time they have competed for the same mission, most
recently in the Hermes/ARD, Kliper/ACTS, and OSP/Orion programs.

So this is my own alternate aerospace history fantasy: If there had
been a few X-20 flights, and the data base from these flights had
been
available in 1971, it is possible that we could have avoided the
whole
Space Shuttle fiasco? Might we have stuck with capsules instead of
getting lost in a blind alley? Could Dyna-Soar have saved us 14
dead
astronauts and over $100B of wasted money? Could we have spent the
last 35 years doing something useful in space, if that useless
little
black spaceplane had actually flown?
--
Greg Moore
Ask me about lily, an RPI based CMC.

I thought the large discussion was a useful piece of work. It wanted
documentation -- pointers to resources that backup what is said and
provide good reason to believe it -- but where someone has done a good
and useful job it's nice to find it here. In ascii yet, like real text.
So I'd like to encourage and see the author build a site to carry his
very rich materials in hand. Both because they are immediately valuable
and useful to workers in the field, but also because things people know
are evanescent -- when the person goes, unless they are put out
somewhere, they are lost.

Yes, criticism offers to some people a method to feel superior. I think
that sort of stuff is just a social pollution and is best ignored.

Titeotwawki -- mha [sci.space.policy 2008 Dec 10]

On Wed, 10 Dec 2008 22:00:27 -0500, "Greg D. Moore \(Strider\)"
wrote:

Do you still believe in Santa Claus?

....Greg, there's nothing wrong with believing in Santa. It's believing
that you are Santa that's not acceptable.

OM
--
]=====================================[
] OMBlog - http://www.io.com/~o_m/omworld [
] Let's face it: Sometimes you *need* [
] an obnoxious opinion in your day! [
]=====================================[

"OM" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 10 Dec 2008 22:00:27 -0500, "Greg D. Moore \(Strider\)"
wrote:

Do you still believe in Santa Claus?

...Greg, there's nothing wrong with believing in Santa. It's believing
that you are Santa that's not acceptable.



Tell me kids that! :-)


OM
--
]=====================================[
] OMBlog - http://www.io.com/~o_m/omworld [
] Let's face it: Sometimes you *need* [
] an obnoxious opinion in your day! [
]=====================================[



--
Greg Moore
Ask me about lily, an RPI based CMC.

"Greg D. Moore (Strider)" wrote in message
...
"jonathan" wrote in message
...

"Greg D. Moore (Strider)" wrote in message
...
This has been debunked already.


I believe the X-33 was cancelled for political purposes, to allow Lockheed
et al to replace it with a long term very expensive moon shot.
Bush and Lockheed have been sleeping with each other since
Bush was a governor. I don't trust the decision to cancel the
X-33 at all, it smells.


Do you still believe in Santa Claus?


I think I can win that debate, the X-33 that is, not ol' Santa.

It was cancelled ...when was that? Oh yes, March 2001
just ...weeks... after Bush took office. Decades of effort
from the 70's on with various attempts at reusable space
planes flushed. And by a President in bed with Lockheed.

Are you that naive???

"The decision to terminate both X-33 and X-34 were made internally by NASA
and were not a White House decision, Stephenson said."

Right!


"McCurdy said NASA was only $8 million away from fixing the problem with the
vehicle's hydrogen fuel tank.

"The airframe was fine. The engines were running through their tests fairly
well. It would have been one-half the weight of the shuttle and you wouldn't
have had an external fuel tank or tiles," McCurdy said of the X-33."
http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/gener...uttle02043.xml






Also, please do not post articles in their entirety, it violates copyright
law.


I keep hearing this, but it's just not true in this context.
Unless I go out and make money somehow with that article
there's nothing wrong with using it in usenet conversations.


Yes there is.


The fair use doctrine is clear concerning non-commercial uses.

"In determining the "purpose and character of the use," courts also
consider whether the use is commercial or nonprofit.
"The crux of the profit/non-profit distinction is.whether the user
stands to profit from exploitation of the copyrighted material
without paying the customary price."

"However, "a use that has no demonstrable effect upon the potential
market for, or the value of, the copyrighted work need not be
prohibited in order to protect the author's incentive to create.
" See Sony, 464 U.S. at 450."
http://ilt.eff.org/index.php/Copyrig...ngement_Issues


"Under the Act, four factors are to be considered in order to determine
whether a specific action is to be considered a "fair use."
These factors are as follows:"

1.. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of
commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
2.. the nature of the copyrighted work;
3.. the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the
copyrighted work as a whole; and
4.. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the
copyrighted work.

"Fourth Factor (effect on potential market for protected work): Finally, the
fourth factor should be considered in our example. Courts have stated that this
is the most important factor in the fair use analysis"


"The four factors are split. However, courts would generally review this
analysis
and determine that, on the whole, the four factors weigh toward a finding
of fair use."
http://www.bitlaw.com/copyright/fair_use.html


A copyright holder must prove he lost money by the use
of his work. It's /absurd/ to think a usenet conversation would
rise to that level in any court. I doubt you can find even
a single case of a usenet speaker being successfully sued.

Besides, if copyright laws were to become too powerful, it would
merely force more to post anonymously, which is very easy.
Making the internet a true free-for-all.

Censors can't win...anymore.




This is speech, not broadcasting.

The US Supreme Court was very clear on that in their historic decision
which defined the legal character of the internet. In Reno v ACLU, the
court ruled that as the most mass participatory communication medium
known, internet conversations deserved the very highest level of
First Amendment protection.

While that may be true, it does not protect wholesale copying of material from
other sources.





Again, you're completely misreading the court's decision here.
In fact I'm not even sure how you can get to here from the decision.


Quotes from the decision

"From the publishers' point of view, it constitutes a vast platform from which
to address and hear from a world wide audience of millions of readers, viewers,
researchers, and buyers. [n.9] Publishers may either make their material
available
to the entire pool of Internet users, or confine access to a selected group,
such
as those willing to pay for the privilege."

"Judge Dalzell's review of "the special attributes of Internet communication"
disclosed by the evidence convinced him that the First Amendment denies Congress
the power to regulate the content of protected speech on the Internet. Id., at
867. His opinion explained at length why he believed the Act would abridge
significant protected speech, particularly by noncommercial speakers, while
"[p]erversely, commercial pornographers would remain relatively unaffected."
Id., at 879. ...and concluded that the Internet--as "the most participatory
form
of mass speech yet developed," id., at 883--is entitled to "the highest
protection
from governmental intrusion," ibid. [n.30"


Usenet conversations are protected speech.


So, if a court were to weigh the four criteria, the only one of the four
criteria violated would be the use of the entire work. But since the
other three favor fair use, usenet conversations would easily pass
the fair use test.

And.....

"In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship
extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept,
principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described,
explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work."
http://www.bitlaw.com/copyright/unprotected.html


A newspaper article states facts...not covered.