|
|
Thread Tools | Display Modes |
#41
|
|||
|
|||
The Space Race was about Power Projection - Miles O'Brien
On Wednesday, January 18, 2017 at 1:36:31 AM UTC-5, Fred J. McCall wrote:
"Scott M. Kozel" wrote: Do you think that a de-orbital surprise attack with a small cobalt bomb would do the trick, win that war outright? Stop talking nonsense. What such an attack would do is get the entire country of the attacker vaporized. I wasn't suggesting that anybody do that, the question was directed to Stuffie because I wanted to see what his response would be. |
#42
|
|||
|
|||
The Space Race was about Power Projection - Miles O'Brien
"Scott M. Kozel" wrote:
On Wednesday, January 18, 2017 at 1:36:31 AM UTC-5, Fred J. McCall wrote: "Scott M. Kozel" wrote: Do you think that a de-orbital surprise attack with a small cobalt bomb would do the trick, win that war outright? Stop talking nonsense. What such an attack would do is get the entire country of the attacker vaporized. I wasn't suggesting that anybody do that, the question was directed to Stuffie because I wanted to see what his response would be. So why 'cobalt bomb'? Insofar as short term (a few years) effects go, THERE IS NO BLOODY DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A 'COBALT' BOMB AND ANY OTHER NUKE OF SIMILAR YIELD. -- "Some people get lost in thought because it's such unfamiliar territory." --G. Behn |
#43
|
|||
|
|||
The Space Race was about Power Projection - Miles O'Brien
On Thursday, January 19, 2017 at 3:07:40 AM UTC-5, Fred J. McCall wrote:
"Scott M. Kozel" wrote: On Wednesday, January 18, 2017 at 1:36:31 AM UTC-5, Fred J. McCall wrote: "Scott M. Kozel" wrote: Do you think that a de-orbital surprise attack with a small cobalt bomb would do the trick, win that war outright? Stop talking nonsense. What such an attack would do is get the entire country of the attacker vaporized. I wasn't suggesting that anybody do that, the question was directed to Stuffie because I wanted to see what his response would be. So why 'cobalt bomb'? Insofar as short term (a few years) effects go, THERE IS NO BLOODY DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A 'COBALT' BOMB AND ANY OTHER NUKE OF SIMILAR YIELD. You already posted convincing logic that a cobalt bomb wouldn't blow up 1/3 of the world. Above, I posted in a attempt to elicit comments from Stuffie about his opinions about what a cobalt bomb would do. Stuffie? |
#44
|
|||
|
|||
The Space Race was about Power Projection - Miles O'Brien
From Scott Kozel:
On Thursday, January 19, 2017 at 3:07:40 AM UTC-5, Fred J. McCall wrote: "Scott M. Kozel" wrote: On Wednesday, January 18, 2017 at 1:36:31 AM UTC-5, Fred J. McCall wrote: "Scott M. Kozel" wrote: Do you think that a de-orbital surprise attack with a small cobalt bomb would do the trick, win that war outright? Stop talking nonsense. What such an attack would do is get the entire country of the attacker vaporized. I wasn't suggesting that anybody do that, the question was directed to Stuffie because I wanted to see what his response would be. So why 'cobalt bomb'? Insofar as short term (a few years) effects go, THERE IS NO BLOODY DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A 'COBALT' BOMB AND ANY OTHER NUKE OF SIMILAR YIELD. You already posted convincing logic that a cobalt bomb wouldn't blow up 1/3 of the world. Above, I posted in a attempt to elicit comments from Stuffie about his opinions about what a cobalt bomb would do. Stuffie? I totally agree with Fred's assessment. And I don't know how anyone would think anything different than Fred's assessment. Salting the earth only impacts long-term effects. To "win" a First Strike WWIII scenario, you would need to incapacitate all means of immediate retaliation. I doubt that *any plan* that was brewed up toward achieving that was ever considered to be effective. And so I thoroughly expect that no government leader ever, at any point in time, ever gave any serious consideration to conducting a First Strike. Launch On Warning was the no-brainer "defense" against any such plan, and this would mean that any attempt toward a First Strike "victory" would be met with disaster to both sides. My original speculation in this thread about how the shuttle might have been used in brewing up any kind of attack plan was referring only to the planners. It was their job to dream up crazy things. As it was, the only shuttles that were disintegrated happened as a result of lack of care, rather than anything intentional. I recently got to meet with one of the family members of the Challenger crew. A long time friendship predating the tragedy. We said nothing about the mission. But there was that tension that it was on both of our minds. ~ CT |
#45
|
|||
|
|||
The Space Race was about Power Projection - Miles O'Brien
On Saturday, January 28, 2017 at 5:39:54 PM UTC-6, Stuf4 wrote:
From Scott Kozel: On Thursday, January 19, 2017 at 3:07:40 AM UTC-5, Fred J. McCall wrote: "Scott M. Kozel" wrote: On Wednesday, January 18, 2017 at 1:36:31 AM UTC-5, Fred J. McCall wrote: "Scott M. Kozel" wrote: Do you think that a de-orbital surprise attack with a small cobalt bomb would do the trick, win that war outright? Stop talking nonsense. What such an attack would do is get the entire country of the attacker vaporized. I wasn't suggesting that anybody do that, the question was directed to Stuffie because I wanted to see what his response would be. So why 'cobalt bomb'? Insofar as short term (a few years) effects go, THERE IS NO BLOODY DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A 'COBALT' BOMB AND ANY OTHER NUKE OF SIMILAR YIELD. You already posted convincing logic that a cobalt bomb wouldn't blow up 1/3 of the world. Above, I posted in a attempt to elicit comments from Stuffie about his opinions about what a cobalt bomb would do. Stuffie? I totally agree with Fred's assessment. And I don't know how anyone would think anything different than Fred's assessment. Salting the earth only impacts long-term effects. To "win" a First Strike WWIII scenario, you would need to incapacitate all means of immediate retaliation. I doubt that *any plan* that was brewed up toward achieving that was ever considered to be effective. And so I thoroughly expect that no government leader ever, at any point in time, ever gave any serious consideration to conducting a First Strike. Launch On Warning was the no-brainer "defense" against any such plan, and this would mean that any attempt toward a First Strike "victory" would be met with disaster to both sides. As Rush Limbaugh would say, it would be "suuiiciiiiidddee!" My original speculation in this thread about how the shuttle might have been used in brewing up any kind of attack plan was referring only to the planners. It was their job to dream up crazy things. As it was, the only shuttles that were disintegrated happened as a result of lack of care, rather than anything intentional. Correct, they were management failures, not technological failures. |
#46
|
|||
|
|||
The Space Race was about Power Projection - Miles O'Brien
|
#48
|
|||
|
|||
The Space Race was about Power Projection - Miles O'Brien
|
#49
|
|||
|
|||
The Space Race was about Power Projection - Miles O'Brien
"Scott M. Kozel" wrote in message
... On Sunday, January 29, 2017 at 8:48:04 AM UTC-5, Jeff Findley wrote: In article , says... On Saturday, January 28, 2017 at 5:39:54 PM UTC-6, Stuf4 wrote: My original speculation in this thread about how the shuttle might have been used in brewing up any kind of attack plan was referring only to the planners. It was their job to dream up crazy things. As it was, the only shuttles that were disintegrated happened as a result of lack of care, rather than anything intentional. Correct, they were management failures, not technological failures. To be fair, middle level shuttle managers were put in a bad spot by the higher ups. They had to manage what amounted to an experimental program and pretend it was an "operational" program after five test flights. The higher ups put a huge amount of pressure on middle management to increase the flight rate. This created the management culture of "if we're going to ground it, you have to prove to me it will fail", which doomed the Challenger crew. Middle managers were also forced to do this with a budget which was smaller than it should have been. An example of this was right before Challenger there was a distinct lack of spare parts. They were pulling parts from recently returned orbiters so they could be installed on another orbiter which was being prepared to fly. Imagine if you had two cars and had to pull the cylinder head from one and install it on the other when you wanted to use it. Insane, right? To begin with, the SRBs ought to have been replaced with reusable liquid boosters, but that would have been *quite* expensive to develop (which is why SLS is still using solids). Other improvements, like non-toxic OMS/RCS propellants and replacing the APUs and hydraulics with electrically operated actuators would have improved the turn-around time and reduced the risks to ground crews. It was an avoidable disaster, they should not have launched on such a cold day, and that precipitated the failure of the O-rings. Except... the engineers thought they better understood the issue than they apparently did and cold was only ONE of the issues. It wasn't JUST the cold day, it was length of the cold-snap. AND the wind shear at the precisely wrong time. As Jeff says, really the proper solution was to stop launching. But, engineers did what they're supposed to do: optimize to the best of the ability given a bunch of competing variables. It's like the old cliché, "if black boxes can survive plane crashes, why not build the entire plane that way?" Well then the plane would be too heavy to fly. NO system is perfectly safe. They're simply "safe enough". Safe enough depends on a number of factors, including mission needs and outside pressures. Here, the outside pressures included a very real attitude that the shuttle was an operational system. That was a bad attitude, but one well beyond the engineers' ability to change. They were asked, based on all the flight data various questions such as if they thought they understood the problems and the issues. Yes, the O-rings should NEVER have been compromised according to design. BUT, the reality was, NO ONE was building SRBs this big. No one really knew 100% to get the system to operate as desired. So it became an issue of, "do we understand HOW it's working, given the current design." They normalized the deviance. The problem isn't that this necessarily happened (it happens everywhere to some extent in engineering, especially cutting edge projects) it's a matter of how much. Columbia could have been saved; if they used ground based telescopes to find the damage, then they would have had 2 weeks to come up with a patch from either material on board or material sent up on an expendable rocket, then EVAs to apply the patch. The ability to patch would have been marginal, but they would have had a good shot at a safe landing. If if if. Again, the bigger problem was the failure to stop and think. Rather than solve the problem of foam/ice lose, they decided, "well we think we understand the problem and we have missions to fly." Given the size of the problem, perhaps the ONLY answer would have been to ground the fleet. But that wasn't politically possible. Losing Columbia was a result of many decisions, not just ones after launch. -- Greg D. Moore http://greenmountainsoftware.wordpress.com/ CEO QuiCR: Quick, Crowdsourced Responses. http://www.quicr.net |
#50
|
|||
|
|||
The Space Race was about Power Projection - Miles O'Brien
Jeff Findley wrote:
In article , says... On Saturday, January 28, 2017 at 5:39:54 PM UTC-6, Stuf4 wrote: My original speculation in this thread about how the shuttle might have been used in brewing up any kind of attack plan was referring only to the planners. It was their job to dream up crazy things. As it was, the only shuttles that were disintegrated happened as a result of lack of care, rather than anything intentional. Correct, they were management failures, not technological failures. To be fair, middle level shuttle managers were put in a bad spot by the higher ups. They had to manage what amounted to an experimental program and pretend it was an "operational" program after five test flights. The higher ups put a huge amount of pressure on middle management to increase the flight rate. This created the management culture of "if we're going to ground it, you have to prove to me it will fail", which doomed the Challenger crew. Middle managers were also forced to do this with a budget which was smaller than it should have been. An example of this was right before Challenger there was a distinct lack of spare parts. They were pulling parts from recently returned orbiters so they could be installed on another orbiter which was being prepared to fly. Imagine if you had two cars and had to pull the cylinder head from one and install it on the other when you wanted to use it. Insane, right? To begin with, the SRBs ought to have been replaced with reusable liquid boosters, but that would have been *quite* expensive to develop (which is why SLS is still using solids). Other improvements, like non-toxic OMS/RCS propellants and replacing the APUs and hydraulics with electrically operated actuators would have improved the turn-around time and reduced the risks to ground crews. Unfortunately, SLS/Orion seems to have given up on reuse which creates a vicious cycle of low flight rates and high launch costs. The very low flight rate is bad for safety for a variety of reasons. Imagine a job where every task you perform has to be done perfectly, but you only do each task every other year, so you are assigned hundreds of tasks to perform for each mission. You'd have little chance to get better at your tasks, since by the time you have to repeat a task, you will have forgotten most of what you learned from doing it the last time. There are times when I think Usenet needs a 'Like' button... -- "Adrenaline is like exercise, but without the excessive gym fees." -- Professor Walsh, "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" |
Thread Tools | |
Display Modes | |
|
|
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Thread Starter | Forum | Replies | Last Post |
Miles O'Brien has arm amputated after accident | Jeff Findley[_4_] | Policy | 2 | February 26th 14 11:19 PM |
CNN's Miles O'Brien was oh-so-close to being the first U.S. newsmanin space. | Terrell Miller | History | 0 | May 28th 05 06:05 PM |
CNN's Miles O'Brien was oh-so-close to being the first U.S. newsmanin space. | Terrell Miller | Policy | 0 | May 28th 05 06:05 PM |
CNN's Miles O'Brien was oh-so-close to being the first U.S. newsmanin space. | Terrell Miller | Space Shuttle | 0 | May 28th 05 06:05 PM |
Miles O'Brien (of CNN) is soooo suave | AldoNova | History | 1 | January 5th 04 07:01 AM |