Never mind the shuttle crash, the real threat is the CAIB report

In article ,
Rand Simberg wrote:
A four-year delay?

Quoting from the web page that I already referenced:

The [Apollo Telescope Mount] development began in 1965 and was
scheduled for launch in 1968. The long delay in launch time meant
that the Principal Investigators, their in-house staffs, and their
contractors had to be supported for the additional four years.

a near disaster on launch
Was that a "management failure"?

Yes, according to:

http://history.nasa.gov/skylabrep/SRch9.htm

and the second craft (Skylab B) mothballed.
Was that a "management failure"?

If you spend many millions of dollars building a spacecraft and make
plans to launch it, if you already have a launcher for it too, and if
management then calls it off in favor of something "better" (the space
shuttle), that DOES look a management failure.
--
/\ Greg Kuperberg (UC Davis)
/ \
\ / Visit the Math ArXiv Front at http://front.math.ucdavis.edu/
\/ * All the math that's fit to e-print *

On Fri, 1 Aug 2003 03:43:21 +0000 (UTC), in a place far, far away,
(Greg Kuperberg) made the phosphor on
my monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:

In article ,
Rand Simberg wrote:
A four-year delay?

Quoting from the web page that I already referenced:

The [Apollo Telescope Mount] development began in 1965 and was
scheduled for launch in 1968. The long delay in launch time meant
that the Principal Investigators, their in-house staffs, and their
contractors had to be supported for the additional four years.

And that was a management failure how? Did "management" have the
prerogitive to launch in 1968?

and the second craft (Skylab B) mothballed.
Was that a "management failure"?

Who made that decision, and on what basis?

If you spend many millions of dollars building a spacecraft and make
plans to launch it, if you already have a launcher for it too, and if
management then calls it off in favor of something "better" (the space
shuttle), that DOES look a management failure.

That depends entirely on what you consider "management." Do you
imagine, in your feverish fantasies, that Congress had nothing to do
with that decision?

--
simberg.interglobal.org * 310 372-7963 (CA) 307 739-1296 (Jackson Hole)
interglobal space lines * 307 733-1715 (Fax) http://www.interglobal.org

"Extraordinary launch vehicles require extraordinary markets..."
Swap the first . and @ and throw out the ".trash" to email me.
Here's my email address for autospammers:

On Fri, 01 Aug 2003 03:28:40 GMT, h (Rand
Simberg) wrote:

On Thu, 31 Jul 2003 19:58:40 -0700, in a place far, far away, Mary
Shafer made the phosphor on my monitor glow
in such a way as to indicate that:

IIRC, intercepting them actually came to be somewhat of a game, since
they didn't shoot back. One way of bringing them down was to put your
wing under theirs, and do a quick bank, flipping it and destabilizing
its crude control system.

You don't remember quite correctly. Actually, you're too close, as it
were.

Well, that's why I qualified it with an IIRC. And of course, I'm a
little too young to have any direct memory... ;-)

So am I, of course.

The whole topic just came up in rec.aviation.military in its usual
cyclical fashion. Some years/cycles ago I read about disrupting the
flow, not tipping the vehicle physically. So, naturally, I checked
around and discovered it was true.

I'm not sure but that what they did was more dangerous, when you
consider how little we knew about spanwise flow and wingtip vortices
(vide the XB-70 and the F-104 collision).

Thanks, Mary.

My random collection of aerospace trivia is entirely at your service.
Collect the whole set! Buy the official binders and receive an
autographed copy of the advertising poster, suitable for framing!
Join today and get a free gift, a genuine inkjet reprint of a fuzzy
photo of an unidentified aircraft! The first hundred people to
respond will also receive a free F-4 Phantom keychain.

Mary

--
Mary Shafer Retired aerospace research engineer

On Thu, 31 Jul 2003 22:38:15 -0700, Mary Shafer wrote:

The whole topic just came up in rec.aviation.military in its usual
cyclical fashion. Some years/cycles ago I read about disrupting the
flow, not tipping the vehicle physically. So, naturally, I checked
around and discovered it was true.

I'm not sure but that what they did was more dangerous, when you
consider how little we knew about spanwise flow and wingtip vortices
(vide the XB-70 and the F-104 collision).

It seems far more dangerous to me. If you are going to physically
wack the wing, you can do that then get away from the thing fast,
since you're in control and planning ahead. But doing it indirectly
would require pretty fast reaction time, I'd think. Or maybe I'm not
visualizing this well and there's little chance of an unintended collision
from the destabilized V1?

My random collection of aerospace trivia is entirely at your service.
Collect the whole set! Buy the official binders and receive an
autographed copy of the advertising poster, suitable for framing!
Join today and get a free gift, a genuine inkjet reprint of a fuzzy
photo of an unidentified aircraft! The first hundred people to
respond will also receive a free F-4 Phantom keychain.

LOL- where do I sign up??

Dale

On Thu, 31 Jul 2003 22:38:15 -0700, in a place far, far away, Mary
Shafer made the phosphor on my monitor glow
in such a way as to indicate that:

Well, that's why I qualified it with an IIRC. And of course, I'm a
little too young to have any direct memory... ;-)

So am I, of course.

I apologize if I implied that you weren't. It wasn't intended. ;-)

I'm not sure but that what they did was more dangerous, when you
consider how little we knew about spanwise flow and wingtip vortices
(vide the XB-70 and the F-104 collision).

Now that's interesting. Are you saying that wasn't a result of a
physical collision (I'd always assumed that it was)? That it occured
because of aerodymamics alone? Or that the instability of the
proximity caused the actual collision?

--
simberg.interglobal.org * 310 372-7963 (CA) 307 739-1296 (Jackson Hole)
interglobal space lines * 307 733-1715 (Fax) http://www.interglobal.org

"Extraordinary launch vehicles require extraordinary markets..."
Swap the first . and @ and throw out the ".trash" to email me.
Here's my email address for autospammers:

On Thu, 31 Jul 2003 23:14:27 GMT, Brian Thorn
wrote:

On Thu, 31 Jul 2003 13:46:18 +0100, Cardman
wrote:

And I am sure that the oldest and most tapped oil fields have already
ran dry,

And there are many that have not yet been tapped, the Alaska Wildlife
Refuge, for one.

For obvious reasons...

but lets not forget that as more second and third world
countries become developed, then that demand on oil will grow.

The Green study took that into account. They measured rising
efficiency against growing demand to arrive at the mid 2030s.

Done correctly then.

Other
studies attribute more to conservation and improved efficiency

Improved efficiency? Good luck to them, when car manufacturers like to
make lots of fuel hungry cars as well.

and use of alternative energy to come up with much later dates.

Many of them busy on fuel cells these days, where they are also trying
to get the fuel into a different form.

Iraq is a huge country to search,

Ever thought about using technology? As it is not like they have to
personally turn over every rock.

Unfortunately, real life is not "Star Trek".

I never said it was, but there is a lot of technology that you can
use. As lets not forget how this same technology found the likes of
those mass graves in former Yugoslavia.

You can't set scanners to
maximum and find Saddam's stash of Smallpox warheads. They actually do
have to turn over every rock, more or less. In this case "turn over
rocks" equals "search every building, warehouse, garbage dump, etc."

Try deep underground in his chemical and biological weapons facility.

And you can't tell me that you don't have the technology to find holes
in the ground, where even the Mars Express is carrying technology not
unlike that to search deep into the Martian crust.

More US propaganda I see. Try you average Iraqi civilian who are
simply very annoyed at the US occupation of their country.

Only in certain areas, it seems. Not much around Baghdad, for example,

That would be odd given that this should be more of a problem around
population centers.

where support for the US is still quite high.

One thing I found interesting when I was watching feeds from Baghdad
was how a lot of people were wearing the green of Saddam's loyal
troops, and where these very people mixed in between the civilians as
if they were one in the same.

I just see it a little hard to see how a population who was pro-Saddam
could change so quickly. And even on the news they said how his most
loyal troops was in this area.

Anyone with some intelligence would avoid direct conflict with their
advancing troops (and B52s) and pick them off one by one later on.

Considering the lack of information coming out of Baghdad these days I
can only feel that it is not good.

Once Saddam is confirmed dead

Dead? Reports are around that he has been captured, which makes it a
little unjust to now execute him.

I've seen no such reports,

There was a report that he had been captured in his home town, which
is news that spread like wildfire.

The US reports no news on this matter, which is also something they
would do while they await DNA tests to confirm his identity.

I doubt it myself though, when with all that money he took he is most
likely living in a different country by now.

but will welcome a War Crimes Tribunal for that monster.

Yes, but the trial of a certain Serb was not going too well the last I
heard.

However, I think Saddam will prefer to die fighting,
like his sons, rather than be taken alive.

Perhaps, but he is bound to have a cushy life if he lived on trial or
no trial.

Saddam could be even harder to nail down.

and the Iraqis believe it,

The Iraqi people already know that he is gone for good.

No, they don't.

So what would you give the odds of him returning to power? Somewhere
around zero would you not say.

See, they know...

Al Jazeera, among others only two days ago broadcast
what was purported to be a speech of Saddam encouraging "his" people
to rise up against the Americans.

Yes, quite interesting, when one day it is that he is captured and the
next he is like walking through the streets.

Now, the Iraqis know that is laughable,

Certainly.

but it also reminds them that the man is still on the loose.

And can do nothing, when his call for other arab nations to join him
went unheard.

They will remain largely uncooperative
with the US until they know he's arrested or dead.

He is nothing more than a figurehead these days, when he simply lacks
the ground support since the US has been knocking off his most loyal
followers.

I do not see things changing much from what they already are.

Just offer them lots of money, a new identity, then a place for them
and their family to live in the U.S or elsewhere.

That has been done. No reward-seekers have been forthcoming, because
in Iraq the penalty for ****ing off Saddam was often death.

And yet someone has already collected the reward for the death of his
two sons. Now I am thinking that this whole story got warped to using
a different name...

If you
were lucky, it was a long prison sentence. And the Iraqis are not yet
convinced Saddam is gone for good.

Time will tell all, but as I said I don't believe that you will be
finding people wanting to talk about his WMD.

Or at least
Saddam's personal emergency stocks would have been destroyed long
before this War came about.

Or immediately before the war, which is a possibility I freely admit.

In any case Saddam was not the type of person to launch a WMD attack
on the West, when he has never done so to date.

The western leaders like to bring out such fear in their public.

But there is no question that Saddam had it even in the mid-90s. Even
the UN and Bush's critics admit that.

Perhaps, but you have no WMD now.

And since your President went to War based on that very reason, then
not yet finding any is at best embarrassing.

Saddam failed repeatedly to offer evidence it had been destroyed.

He turned over about 40,000 pages I recall all about his weapons
programs and how about he did not have any.

I watched the US talks at the UN and their evidence was at best
laughable.

The UN took the position "prove it's there and we'll approve the war".

Yet the UN never did approve this War...

Bush took the position "prove its gone and we won't go to war."

Not really.

The UN was pressing weapons inspectors, which Saddam agreed to near
the end. And of course the report then said that he did not have any,
where more than a few weapons inspectors are happy to say they do not
believe that he has any.

It is quite clear that the US wanted War all along, where all they
wanted were things that would not happen, like with Saddam and all his
followers leaving the country.

And Saddam almost certainly did still have it.

Prove it. :-]

He may have panicked and destroyed it in the final
weeks before the war when it became clear that the US was going in
with or without UN approval.

Or possibly long before.

In any case the key factor here is that all the time they do not find
Saddam's secret WMD stocks, then their whole reason for going to War
has not been validated.

Also it is really pointless looking in places like warehouses, when
Saddam has known about people looking for his WMD for years. And so if
he had any, then they would be the best hidden items in Iraq.

Very deep underground and no doubt wired with explosives to insure
that no one ever does see them.

Funny how the U.S has crap loads of WMDs. And they have even used them
on civilians once before.

We used them on the Japanese, by the way.

Yes I know.

And Saddam used his own weapons in the Iran/Iraq War, where he was
also kind enough to not drop them on US troops the first time around.

Not unexpectedly, the Japanese supported the war to remove Saddam.

Then the US supported and even armed Saddam in the Iran/Iraq War.

Then lets not forget how many people the trade embargo killed, when
the UN oil for food program only came about after it became a problem.

The embargo could have been ended at any time by Saddam and his sons
surrendering power.

Come off it. That is the one thing that everyone knows is not going to
happen, where anyone who demands it already knows the answer.

The US made no secret of the fact that it wanted
Saddam gone. But Saddam and his sons wouldn't leave.

And as Saddam once pointed out that it was a silly idea and that
President Bush should leave his country.

They wanted to remain in power at any cost, even if that cost was
thousands of civilians deaths.

You cannot blame someone for "being", when the US and UN imposed a
trade embargo off their own backs.

Not that this was very effective mind you, when companies looking to
make profit are always interested in trade.

Anyway I am only happy to tell you the truth,

I've heard very little truth from you. Outright falsehoods is closer
to an accurate description.

Then go and prove it, when all you have are different if not odd
ideas.

Ideas that I would not expect a US citizen to have, when the
politicians like to use western media to air their biased views.

that this is all about is that Iraq does not like the US,

That remains to be seen.

Well I was talking more in a country sense, but you can also read it
in the growing number of dead US soldiers each day.

your president is on his 9/11
crusade against his enemies, where he also hopes that doing this will
solve all those Middle East problems.

It's a good start.

Perhaps, but a lot of people will still consider it wrong, when they
do not believe that the state of Israel should have been imposed on
the region.

So all the time that people see that their former land is being
occupied by others, then peace is unlikely. They want them gone and
they are prepared to blow themselves up to see it happen.

Yes Iraq is now better off, but the dead and the families of those
dead won't be thanking you.

Fortunately, we are not asking for or expecting their gratitude.

And I doubt you would get anyway. Saddam good or bad was an Iraqi
citizen, where US and UK troops are not Iraqi citizens.

More likely you will pee them off and they
will bring you another 9/11.

We got 9/11 even without doing anything to the Iraqis, Al Qaeda, or
the Taliban.

US Forces in Egypt set one Osama Bin Laden off on his road to making a
smudge in the US history books. Combine that with the US imbalanced
handling of Israel problem, then that made for one extreme guy looking
to get the US involvement removed from the Middle East.

He did hate you with due reason.

And the Taliban were just some extreme religious guys who were
prepared to put up with him. Even Iran has an extreme religious
leadership, which is another country on the US War list.

It was our mere existence that they hated.

Not quite, when it is more a question of what you do than who you are.

Some people would say that 9/11 was just the US receiving back what it
has been dealing out for years.

As like it or not the US has been strongly on the side of Israel in
the region, where we all know what Israel has been up to.

So your assertion that we should instead do nothing now does not make
any sense.

I never said that nothing should be done, but a question is if the US
once again proving its might on the Middle East going to help here?

Hell they may even force the Palestinians to accept their own country,
but this won't end the problem.

What you should understand is that there is no right and wrong, when
it is only degrees of helping some and harming others.

If you will get another 9/11 I don't know, but this seems to me
dependant on not annoying those in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Cardman.

Greg Kuperberg wrote:

and the second craft (Skylab B) mothballed.

Was that a "management failure"?


If you spend many millions of dollars building a spacecraft and make
plans to launch it, if you already have a launcher for it too, and if
management then calls it off in favor of something "better" (the space
shuttle), that DOES look a management failure.

Oh, bull****, Greg. Backup hardware that isn't launched isn't
a sign of management failure.

Paul

In article ,
Paul F. Dietz wrote:
Oh, bull****, Greg. Backup hardware that isn't launched isn't
a sign of management failure.

But it was hundreds of millions of dollars of hardware! We're talking
about an entire space station and five Saturn rockets. And they had
a plan too. But management said, "Nah, the first one is working and
we have other commitments." This was worse than throwing away a Boeing
747, or a Concorde, because it's a "spare". On top of everything the
cancellation came when Skylab A had only been in orbit for three months.
If it made sense to mothball Skylab B, then Skylab A just wasn't very
important, which implies an even bigger management error.
--
/\ Greg Kuperberg (UC Davis)
/ \
\ / Visit the Math ArXiv Front at http://front.math.ucdavis.edu/
\/ * All the math that's fit to e-print *

In article ,
(Greg Kuperberg) wrote:

In article ,
Paul F. Dietz wrote:
Oh, bull****, Greg. Backup hardware that isn't launched isn't
a sign of management failure.

But it was hundreds of millions of dollars of hardware! We're talking
about an entire space station and five Saturn rockets. And they had
a plan too. But management said, "Nah, the first one is working and
we have other commitments." This was worse than throwing away a Boeing
747, or a Concorde, because it's a "spare". On top of everything the
cancellation came when Skylab A had only been in orbit for three months.
If it made sense to mothball Skylab B, then Skylab A just wasn't very
important, which implies an even bigger management error.

I let you out of my killfiles (actually, it was a time-based killfile
and you let yourself out by simply not polluting the .shuttle newsgroup
with your ill-informed nonsense) and this is what I get to see. *sigh*
If not for the entertainment value of watching you be intellectually
eviscerated by Rand, Doug and others I'd drop you right back in.

Do you REALLY not comprehend the differences between management,
administration and Congressional funding (and thus politics)? Your
"examples" of bad management have really nothing to do with management
at all.

--
Herb Schaltegger, Esq.
Chief Counsel, Human O-Ring Society
"I was promised flying cars! Where are the flying cars?!"
~ Avery Brooks

In article ,
says...
In article ,
Paul F. Dietz wrote:
Oh, bull****, Greg. Backup hardware that isn't launched isn't
a sign of management failure.

But it was hundreds of millions of dollars of hardware! We're talking
about an entire space station and five Saturn rockets. And they had
a plan too. But management said, "Nah, the first one is working and
we have other commitments." This was worse than throwing away a Boeing
747, or a Concorde, because it's a "spare". On top of everything the
cancellation came when Skylab A had only been in orbit for three months.
If it made sense to mothball Skylab B, then Skylab A just wasn't very
important, which implies an even bigger management error.

You have to understand that NASA doesn't control its own funding. They
were able to get Congress to approve funding for a backup Skylab, in case
the original one didn't make it into orbit, but when it came to flying
it, they were faced with having to shift funding from Shuttle development
(putting the Shuttle behind time from the starting line, as it were).
Congress was unwilling to fund both Shuttle development *and* flying a
second Skylab.

And at that point, the Shuttle represented the future of American manned
space flight, while Skylab was what it always was -- a way to use up
leftover Apollo hardware. With the mindset of the time, it's easy to see
how they came up with the decision they did. It wasn't "bad management,"
it was simply a choice between a limited number of additional missions
with what seemed at the time as dead-end technology vs. development of a
tool that promised to open up access to space for much less money. (So,
that was a pipe dream, but not a pipe dream generated from bad
management, just a pipe dream that happens when you let the salesmen
control your planning, LOL.)

But back to the main reason why Skylab B wasn't flown -- no one ever said
Congress was intelligent in how it allocates resources. But NASA is
somewhat over Congress' barrel when it comes to those things on which it
can spend money.

--

Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for | Doug Van Dorn
thou art crunchy and taste good with ketchup |