Space Program Needs The Right Stuff

On Mon, 22 Dec 2003 17:19:35 -0800 (PST), in a place far, far away,
(Derek Lyons) made the phosphor on my
monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:

(Rand Simberg) wrote:

On Sat, 20 Dec 2003 14:51:18 -0800 (PST), in a place far, far away,
(Derek Lyons) made the phosphor on my
monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:

Right. And innovation would have prevented Fermi 2 how? (Since that
Fermi 2 was a fabrication error.) How would innovation have prevented
Browns Ferry? (Since Browns Ferry was a management and common sense
failure.) How would innovation have prevented TMI? (Since TMI was a
managment and operational error.)

By designing so that meltdown is impossible. Dyson has discussed
this.

And that prevents management, operational, and bonehead errors how?

It doesn't. It just reduces the likelihood that such errors will
cause damage or kill people.

h (Rand Simberg) wrote in message ...
On Mon, 22 Dec 2003 17:19:35 -0800 (PST), in a place far, far away,
(Derek Lyons) made the phosphor on my
monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:
Right. And innovation would have prevented Fermi 2 how? (Since that
Fermi 2 was a fabrication error.) How would innovation have prevented
Browns Ferry? (Since Browns Ferry was a management and common sense
failure.) How would innovation have prevented TMI? (Since TMI was a
managment and operational error.)

By designing so that meltdown is impossible. Dyson has discussed
this.

And that prevents management, operational, and bonehead errors how?

It doesn't. It just reduces the likelihood that such errors will
cause damage or kill people.

TMI is an excellent example of this. Few people know how
similar the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl disasters were.
They were really fairly comparable nuclear physics wise.
But whereas TMI was more or less a concerning footnote,
Chernobyl was an unquestioned catastrope. The difference
is due to the safety features in the design of the reactors,
namely that American/Western reactors had a fair many and
Soviet reactors had few to none. Chief among the
differences is that TMI was built with a containment vessel,
which prevented widespread release of radioactive debris
even in the worst case scenario. Chernobyl was built
without one, so it's reactor innards spewed radioactive
fallout into the open air for days before any sort of
containment could be built after the fact (and,
considering the difficulty of building around a lethally
radioactive destroyed reactor, it's little surprise that the
quality of construction of said after the fact containement
vessel left quite a bit to be desired).

h (Rand Simberg) wrote in message ...
On Mon, 22 Dec 2003 17:25:30 -0800 (PST), in a place far, far away,
(Derek Lyons) made the phosphor on my
monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:

Which technology? Air dropped spaceplanes? Air dropped launchers?
Hybrid engines? Which?

Suborbital reusables.

Problem is, why should NASA have chased this technology?

Because it provided a pathway to eventually learning how to do
affordable orbital reusables.

Which of
it's organizational goals does it meet?

None, apparently, but NASA's organizational goals have little or
nothing to do with running a cost-effective space program.

Spending whatever has nothing whatsoever to do with anything
associated with our resident warlord, and that's a fact. Though JFK
would have been proud of what I'm offering, though still thoroughly
dead because of the cold-war moon-race was everything, as in all or
nothing. There's still an ongoing cold-war over energy resources as
well as for energy alternatives.

Our NASA certainly needs an over-dosage of honesty, truth of history
and of what's affordably obtainable, without creating excessive CO2
contributions nor carnage or busting the bank.

Even though the lunar environment simply wasn't then and isn't now the
sort of Apollo "walk in the park" as most folks would like to think,
such as most snookered Americans and the likes of wizard Jay suggest.
Good grief, we need to get ourselves unplugged from their Borg
collective, then get into an actual life as well as an education, then
stop lying to ourselves and everyone else.

I believe, as well as do others, the moon is our pitstop key to going
places, especially with the lunar stash of H3, made easily accessible
via the LSE-CM/ISS.

Just in case you've missed out on my warm and fuzzy timeline of the
JFK demise rant, I've included some further thoughts as to our
moon-race, of the all or nothing "cold-war" aspects of the JFK demise,
placing some of my most recent thoughts into this document. Hopefully
I've managed to share by reintroducing a little aspect of fun into the
following page.
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/moon-04.htm

BTW; Those Apollo moon landings weren't faked, just weren't manned.

Now I'm understanding why the likes of Dr. Zubrin and of Brad Edwards
want nothing whatsoever to do with anything lunar, even though our
moon offers not only the most H3 bang for the buck, but of likely the
only viable alternative pitstop worthy of getting folks to/from places
like Mars or Venus.

This following topic should place new meaning to the moon being too
hot to humanly touch without getting seriously slapped by our resident
warlord, as for our moon offering way more than it's fair share of H3
energy. As such, here's a little more of my tit for tat favor
returning, as an update that's going thermalnuclear upon lunar H3.

"LSE-CM/ISS, mining and exporting H3"

This topic may become a bit premature for the likes of myself.
However, if there's been decades worth of talk, as well as in-depth
R&D as to our obtaining and then utilizing sufficient amounts of H3
from the moon, and that there's absolutely nothing that's energy
insurmountable other than for our physically obtaining said H3, then
perhaps the LSE-CM/ISS is just the H3 ticket to ride.

Of course, if we wait around for the likes of China, Japan, India,
other middle Easterns, or simply allow those Russian *******s that
seem to truly have every incentive you can possibly think of to being
the firstest with the mostest of their establishing this LSE-CM/ISS,
as for established such prior to ours. Well damn, this could become a
wee bit of a button pushing problem, seeing that only one of these LSE
suckers can exist (coexist isn't even an option), and of whomever has
the first LSE key will thereby rule the energy wealth of the future,
and perhaps rule upon a whole lot more if push comes to down to shove.

According to a few too many respected folks, this H3 energy is more
than a viable alternative, of which our moon has way more than it's
fair share of.

So, I think it's time we go back into a moon-race wars, though this
time not anything cold, but as hot and nasty as it takes because, if
we don't they will, it's that simple. If all else fails, we can nuke
whomever is annoying us and then use our "so what's the difference"
warlord qualifier as for exterminating whomever gets in our way (at
least the Pope will have to be on our side). Stealth donkey-carts or
not, the moon belongs to us because, we've made everyone think that
we've already been there and done that (so it's all ours, period!).

It sort of sounds like H3 is even offering somewhat of an ideal
spacecraft propulsion solution that'll kick butt.

No wonder our incest of esteemed astrophysics and astronomy Borgs are
keeping "mum's the word" about the moon, wanting nothing whatsoever to
do with our going back, and will do almost anything as to keeping
others from attempting. It's all about energy, just like the previous
three significant wars, actually a forth being the 6-Day war and I'm
fairly certain there are many smaller energy tit for tats, plus there
was certainly an undertow of WW-II having to do with energy agendas,
namely Hitler having more than his fair share, but also as for Japan
becoming energy export capable, by way of their conquering other
peoples land and of taking resources.

It seems, as long as others don't have the capability of extracting
lunar H3, then we're happy campers, as it's never been for an actual
shortage of Earthly energy resources, as much as it's been an
orchestrated agenda of keeping others from acquiring anything that
offers an affordable potential, as that way we don't have to actually
try to accomplish efficient and worthy goals for humanity, just as
long as the rest of our world remains in sufficient conflict or
without an affordable energy resource, while we continue to profit
from their demise, as then we rule by way of default and/or via world
class (shock and awe) WMD if need be, then invoke our "so what's the
difference" ruling if and when we're caught doing another one of those
Pope/Cathar atrocities.

Although, I do have a few recent comments on the H2O2/C12H26 thing:
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-irrce.htm
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-h2o2-irrce.htm
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-hybrid-irc.htm
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-cm-ccm-01.htm
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-lm-1.htm

The page on the GV-LM-1 is pertaining to the lunar metro bus that's
track driven and capable of circumventing that moon, along with
fending off those pesky micro-meteorites and of whatever radiation.
This bus is H2O2/C12H26 fueled, operating from the IRRC engine that's
a rather happy camper in space as it is under water. If we're ever
going to have the LSE-Lobby, by all means we'll need a transporter
that'll survive, and for doing such in good style.

The LSE-CM/ISS that offers a means to many ends, is actually all about
our affordably and safely going places, such as off to visit those
frozen and irradiated to death Mars microbes, or otherwise off to
visit those nice Venus Cathar lizard folk, at least from the outpost
or vantage of VL2, where we'll deploy the likes of TRACE-II as
providing our first interplanetary communications platform, or sort of
laser-packet transponder of interplanetary smut.

Regards, Brad Guth / IEIS~GASA

Brad Guth wrote:

Regards, Brad Guth / IEIS~GASA

When the robo-mod software lets Brad Guth's lunacy through unchecked, it's
seriously time to reconsider subscribing to this newsgroup. What's the
point of moderation? Brad's stuff is not "spam" in the traditional "grow
your private parts with the lowest mortgage rates using Norton Antivirus"
sense but it's still not on-topic except in some imaginary universe of
Brad's. :-/

--
Herb Schaltegger, B.S., J.D.
Reformed Aerospace Engineer
Remove invalid nonsense for email.

Atlas/Delta launchers are single shot spacecraft, meaning that each vehicle
flew only once. SS1 is reusable, and as such it's only comparisons are
other spaceplanes, like the X-1, X-15 and the Space Shuttle.

Jim Davis wrote in
. 1.4:

Jim Kingdon wrote:

No, sorry. Various Atlas models flew 342 times during the same period
that the X-15 was flying. Various Thor/Delta models flew 318 times.

Jim Davis

John Schutkeker wrote:

Atlas/Delta launchers are single shot spacecraft, meaning that
each vehicle flew only once. SS1 is reusable, and as such it's
only comparisons are other spaceplanes, like the X-1, X-15 and
the Space Shuttle.

No, John. Mr. Kingdon was specifically comparing the X-15 to
contemporary expendables, claiming that the X-15 acheived a higher
flight rate. I merely pointed out that claim was incorrect.

Jim Davis

"Frank Scrooby" wrote in message ...
Hi

"Sander Vesik" wrote in message
...

much snipped

concept works, practical application
Automotive: Daimler-Benz ( 1886 ) Ford Model - T ( 1908 )

Uhh.. this is gross misstatement of the car business. Ford didn't
really make cars be widespread.

If Ford didn't then who?

Certainly none of his contemporaries. They didn't build cars for the masses,
they were building cars for the aristrocracy. Luxury goods for luxury
people.

Ford made cars in numbers that all his compeditors put together could not
match.

Ford made automobiles affordable to the people who actually worked on the
production lines to manufacture them (and by implication to almost everyone
else).

Ford made automobiles maintainable to the common man, by making them simple
enough for the ordinary man to fix. Before Ford cars had been grossly
complex pieces of machinery that need the constant attention of skilled
mechanics.

Ford made automobiles accessible to the common man by making them easy to
operate. He established a simple set of controls and didn't change them with
every new model. Admittedly his Model-T set isn't the same set we use today,
but it was the set that launched the Age of Automobiles.

--
Sander

+++ Out of cheese error +++


Who are you going to hold up as the inventor of the first practical
motorcar? Certainly no one before Ford produced anything like Ford's volume.
Prior to the Model-T the only complex mechanical items that had been
produced in similar numbers were firearms.

The fact that 90% of the planet didn't get to see or embark upon a motorcar
before 1950 doesn't make the fact any different that 10% of them did in the
decade after the Model T went into production. And the overwhelming majority
of that 10% saw and rode in and would only have recognized a Ford, until at
least the 1940s.

The man had faults (Big ones, San Andres Faults) but he (and his company,
and the several thousand very bright people he employed and routinely
listened to) turned the motorcar from a rich man toys into a workhorse of an
entire civilization. If you wish to claim otherwise you'd better have pretty
astounding facts.

Regards
Frank


The modern motor car was made prevalent by the mass manufacturing
techniques and processes of the Japanese Car industry. America's only
contribution as usual is to claim it as their own.

Hi all

"TerryPauley" wrote in message
om...

The modern motor car was made prevalent by the mass manufacturing
techniques and processes of the Japanese Car industry. America's only
contribution as usual is to claim it as their own.


Um sorry but you're clueless... we were not discussing the 'modern' motor
car, but the 'practical' automobile, the first car that ordinary people
could buy and drive without expecting the thing to explode before they got
halfway down the block. Henry Ford did that, there were no Japanese involved
(well there might have been some Japanese workers, but given the man's
attitude toward non-whites, I doubt it). We're talking about a vehicle that
car that was the first that people could purchase and see and use. The
Japanese automobile industry didn't exist until the 1960s and it didn't
produce anything for export till the 1970s. It didn't really produce
anything that any but the most patriotic Japanese would want to drive until
the 1970s. There were companies in Japan producing cars and trucks after the
war (and even before the war), at a steady rate of 1 or 2 every week in the
1950s. They had 250cc 2-stroke engines that would poison the traffic behind
them with carbon monoxide.

By comparison the United States managed to give away tens of thousands of
trucks during World War II. GIVE AWAY. Here you go Joe and Winston, charity
from the citizens of the US of A, no need to pay us, just get rid of that
dreadful fellow with the toothbrush moustache. And those trucks were the
trucks that the Soviet and British Army rode to Berlin. Their own homebuilt
**** broke down every fifty feet and needed six hundred unique parts that
had to be made a blind one-handed Bavarian watchmaker.

That fails to even start to take into account the tens of thousands of
Jeeps, Sherman tanks, Deuces-and-a-Halfs and other vehicles that the US
armed forces used for their own purposes during WWII. Or the hundreds of
thousands of civilian vehicles that continued to run and operate through out
the war and the Depression before that, and kept the American economy
ticking over. Those cars did not magically appear from nowhere and they were
not the individually assembled works of art that the European automakers
insisted on assembling. They were mass-produced items, identical in every
way upon leaving the factory, assembled from interchangeable parts.

Get a clue. You can't build and maintain ten of thousands (or even hundreds
of thousands) of vehicles without a fairly decent mass production technique.
The Americans did it, and did it quickly because they already had the vast
infrastructure and more than a decade of experience in place. Japan hadn't
built a single car or car engine when Ford was rolling hundreds of Model Ts
off the production line.

Sure it wasn't the Japanese cheap mass-produced mini-cars of the 1970s, but
then nothing was. What the Japanese did in the 70s was put 2 robots into
each process and take two workers out and thus reduce the production cost,
wastage and time by half. Detroit (and the European automakers) didn't take
the hint fast enough and took a big hit.

I am not belittling what the Japanese auto-companies did in the 1970s. Thank
goodness they did it. They changed the way cars and probably every product
on the planet were made. But they didn't invent the car, or the mass
production technique or the process or the philosophy. Their single biggest
innovation was to get the people off the production line and replaced with
machines. I don't know if that is even a thought that is original to them.

Henry Ford did not invent the idea of mass production or interchangeable
parts or the philosophy behind the production line, or even the automobile.
But he combined them into an extremely powerful idea and an industry long
before anyone else did. But rights of him being an American (god I hate
using that term - it refers to the inhabitants of two continents and what
about 12 different countries? It's like calling some one from Nigeria an
African, technically correct but not very accurate), a citizen of the United
States, the United States, gets to lay claim to being the place that made
the automobile accessible to the ordinary person. Japan wasn't anywhere
close at the time.

Regards
Frank Scrooby
(not an American, or an a Citizen of the USA)

"John Schutkeker" wrote in message
8...
Atlas/Delta launchers are single shot spacecraft, meaning that each
vehicle
flew only once. SS1 is reusable, and as such it's only comparisons are
other spaceplanes, like the X-1, X-15 and the Space Shuttle.

Nitpick: X-1 wasn't a spaceplane. Not even close.

I think Luna as a way station out to the local solar system makes all
kinds of sense. It's largely out of our gravity well; but if
something needs to be moved -- people, machinery, chemicals, what have
you -- it's only a relatively short and quick jump to move it. Not
like the three months across the Atlantic back in the 1600's and
1700's. Most of the difficulties and risks of going out to deeper
space are right there with major resources almost at hand. What more
could you ask of a place for serious practice?

On which topic, how about moving the Space Station from its political
orbit to an orbit in our solar system ecliptic. This would greatly
improve its utility.

There is something more you could ask, and I think we don't have it.
I do not see how anyone can seriously think of today's America, its
government, and its people, as a space-faring nation. It's just not
the not the money, so liberally committed to a larger military
industrial complex and to wars to keep it busy; not the people, shaped
early in life as consumers and TV watchers but not for the hard
reality based thinking that survival in a space environment is going
to need.

And for a serious program, stepwise advancement is proven to work; but
it's not in Bush's proposal. He wants to say, let's do it all at
once, Luna and Mars. Which obviously is not only inappropriately
large and slow, but very expensive. The numbers are interesting:

For wars safely far overseas, hundreds of billions of dollars; but if
we just take the most recent example, another $87 billion, and compare
it to less than $1 billion proposed for space research and settlement,
I think those numbers strongly imply a definite priority.

And as for all that technical work that has to be done, come *on* now.
We were a very large step up on that back in the 1970's. The Saturn V
heavy lift booster's blueprints were then sold for scrap paper, the
industrial base was dismantled, and our generation of men who went out
to space and those who did the engineering for it are all retirement
age, else dead.

So what do we have? Look at the Columbia disaster. As vs Apollo, our
current generation of, well, engineers, wouldn't even look to see if a
problem existed after getting strong signals it did. They'd rather
just sit there and vaguely hope those people up there didn't come down
dead.

For these reasons I doubt we really have all that much technical
problem about getting out into space again: the problem is, it's all
in old books and very few people nowadays have the hands-on any more
to use it. So I look for 20 years to catch-up and begin to get past
what we had 30 years ago. If some sort of a real program gets
started. But I don't look for Bush's carefully chosen words to
survive past the next election. A year from now we might be hearing
something like, "...What? Space? But we couldn't do *that.* You
know (extended vacuous rant spiced with Christian ideology)," while a
close observer may be guessing where the next war will be.

Because, what else can Bush's words be for? Is Bush going to rustle
up a bunch of bible-thumping faith-based engineers and we'll have a
space program because we Believe? No, I don't think even Bush and his
ilk are *that* far out. I think rather, the Republicans are pulling
out all the stops to touch a maximum number of hot spots and so win
the coming Presidential election. (Will he need Supreme Court help
again?) Following which, we see piles more of same old same old.

*Grump* -- Martha Adams