Hubble to be abandoned

Henry Spencer wrote:


The eventual compromise was a rather smaller F-106 production run, and
reluctant acceptance that many of the F-102As would continue in service
until more advanced interceptors joined the F-106s. But the F-103 and
F-108 ended up being canceled, and so the F-102As stuck around a while.


Don't forget how Canada's Voodoos and Bomarcs became an integral part of
the air defense equation after the Avro Arrow got canceled. I wonder how
many Canadians know that their country once possessed nuclear weapons?

Pat

"Peter Stickney" wrote in message
...

The fact that the AL ANG was a Tactical Recon Squadron, which was
flying RF-84Fs (And, in fact, the RF-84s were grounded that year, as
the wings kept falling off),

Ah yes, the old RF-84 "Sleepy Weasel"

--
Terrell Miller


"It's one thing to burn down the **** house and another thing entirely to
install plumbing"
-PJ O'Rourke

"Herb Schaltegger" lid
wrote in message ...
Scott Hedrick wrote:


"rk" wrote in message
...
However, the one big driving factor was the horribly low turnout.

In a historically large Democratic area.

No, nationwide.

South Florida is not nationwide, but it is the area where morons could not
punch holes in paper.

"Brian Thorn" wrote in message
...

Maybe, maybe not. If you think elections are hotly contested now,
imagine them without the Electoral College!

yep, the EC has one crucial thing going for it: it provides a buffer from
the extreme forms of ballot-box stuffing.

--
Terrell Miller


"It's one thing to burn down the **** house and another thing entirely to
install plumbing"
-PJ O'Rourke

Brian Thorn wrote in message . ..

Or that the Shuttle *might* not survive reentry. If you thought a
Shuttle had a 50% probability of intact reentry, you probably wouldn't
want to be on it, but neither would you want to be standing in its
flight path hoping that it would break up.

Agreed. But who would be standing in the middle of the South Pacific?
And if the South Pacific was a safe enough place to dump Mir, GRO, and
other spacecraft, why not a dead Shuttle?

You're mistaking me for Jorge. I never thought the South Pacfic was a
good place for Mir or GRO.

More ambitiously, I'd urge the three remaining Shuttles be modified
for complete autonomous landing. Then, if there is only a 50% chance
the Orbiter won't survive re-entry, it can be aimed for a real landing
site at Guam, Easter Island, Ascension Island, or Diego Garcia.

And tell dependents on those islands that their lives are worth less
than that of an astronaut?

I don't think either you understand the political and PR implications
of the things you're suggesting.

Nothing like it has ever been done before, and we are asking it be done by a company which has never flown *anything* in space. Call me skeptical

How about cynical? Dutch Space builds hardware used on every Ariane 5
flight. They've also built hardware for ISS.

Orbital Recovery's vehicle won't allow Hubble to continue doing science. That's going to
take replacing the gyros, and machines aren't anywhere close to doing
that yet.

They aren't proposing that machines do that.

Why is their non-existent spacecraft so much easier for you to get
behind than a relatively simple modification to a spacecraft that has
flown 113 times?

It would be cheaper than a Shuttle flight. It would entail less risk
than a Shuttle flight. And NASA has already rejected the possibility
of a Shuttle flight.

Do you know someone other than NASA who can provide a Shuttle flight?

Orbital Recovery believes moving Hubble to ISS is within the
capabilities of their solar-electric propulsion system with an
appropriate fuel load. What reason do you have for believing
otherwise?

The definition of 'appropriate fuel load'. The flight path, and its
prolonged exposure to radiation in the van Allen fields.

Please show your calculations. Better still, show where Orbital
Recovery made errors in their calculations.

Don't worry, though. Jorge has successfully convinced me that resuming
Shuttle flights to ISS is much more dangerous than I thought and any
attempt to mitigate those dangers has insurmountable obstacles. The
only prudent course of action is to cancel the remaining modules,
ground the Shuttle immediately, and rely on Soyuz instead. :-)

Nope, that won't work either. Soyuz has suffered two fatal accidents,
as well, and even more near-misses than Shuttle. :-)

When did Soyuz have an accident that was fatal to people on the
ground? Or a near miss. You know full well that is the risk I was
talking about. Astronauts are *not* the only people whose lives
matter.

Pat Flannery wrote in
:

Jorge R. Frank wrote:

Not even that much is required. The current plan is to perform the
deorbit burn in the OPS2 orbit software, without even invoking the
entry software. So the computers don't even "know" they're deorbiting
- just performing a really big retrograde burn with a negative HP,
then maneuvering to an attitude with the payload bay doors toward the
velocity vector (tumbling would actually delay breakup a bit, and the
goal is the earliest possible breakup).

Let's bring her in like that...with the payload bay doors _open_, so
that they tear off and slam into the tops of the wings; which combined
with the negative G stresses on wings, should make them come off
rather nicely.

Exactly... if your goal is an early breakup, that's the best way to do it.

--
JRF

Reply-to address spam-proofed - to reply by E-mail,
check "Organization" (I am not assimilated) and
think one step ahead of IBM.

On Sat, 14 Feb 2004 19:44:14 GMT, (Henry Spencer)
wrote:

In article ,
Mary Shafer wrote:
The point of having a crew on board is not to handle the normal case --
given adequate guidance data, autopilots make perfectly adequate
stick-and-rudder jockeys -- but to deal with unforeseen problems.

...Taking the
pilot out of the loop until there's a problem means that there will be
a certain time delay before the pilot reacts at all, and even longer
for the pilot to get into the loop and in control...
I might point out that there's a study of the X-15, which had both a
pilot and various backup systems, that shows that with only the pilot
the X-15 would have been lost on half the flights and with only the
backup systems it would have been lost on half the flights, too...

However, that same study pointed out that the key role of the pilot is
*not* to be the stick-and-rudder jockey, not even the emergency-backup
stick-and-rudder jockey. His primary job is systems manager, figuring out
what's gone wrong and working around it using the backup systems. That's
why the presence of the backup systems is so crucial: he's not useful
unless he has options to exercise, and it's got to be more than just
deciding whether to move the stick left or right.

Exactly. You and I have discussed this topic before, I think in the
specific case of pilots on trans-Atlantic flights being about 3/4ths
asleep when the alarms started going off, and we are in violent
agreement. It's not a new problem. I think you and I have been
discussing it, off and on, for about fifteen years, now that I do a
little arithmetic, and we didn't start at the beginning.

In fact, all these problems are so old that we keep declaring them to
be solved. Then they sneak back in and bite us. It's really kind of
discouraging that we can't find a reasonable pilot-vehicle interface
somewhere between the pilot hand-flying everything and the pilot-dog
aircrew (the dog is there to bite the pilot for trying to touch any of
the controls and the pilot is there to feed the dog). The
system-manager role certainly is such an interface, but it does have
problems.

I'm not sure but that better autopilots create a bigger interface
problem. Some of the Airbus incidents seem to indicate that this is a
possibility, maybe. Probably so do some of the Boeing incidents, but
I haven't heard about them. Maybe Boeing has reaped the benefits of
letting Airbus go first and they're creating different problems.


--
Mary Shafer Retired aerospace research engineer

"Scott Hedrick" wrote in news:UkQXb.58425$8a5.48785
@bignews1.bellsouth.net:


"Brian Thorn" wrote in message
...
But that's a different issue than recounting, and that
particular fiasco can be laid entirely at the feet of the Democratic
Party (the county election commissioner at the time was a Democrat).

I believe her appointed replacement was also a Democrat, and was recently
removed because of gross negligence.



Nope -- the butterfly ballot was from Theresa LePore, who was the
commissioner in Palm Beach County. The grossly negligent commissioner is
Miriam Oliphant, who negligized (?) in Broward County until Gov Bush
suspended her.

--
Reed

In article ,
(Henry Spencer) writes:
In article ,
Peter Stickney wrote:
Well, for mediocre, we sure had a lot of them - nearly 1,000, if you
include the Tuns ((The 2-seat TF-102s)...

That wasn't a huge production run by the standards of the time. Between
disappointing flight performance (even after the F-102 - F-102A fixes),
and the need to fall back on an older fire-control system because
development of the definitive MX-1179 was running impossibly late, the
F-102A ended up being considered an interim aircraft. The first F-102A
production order was accompanied by an order for prototypes of the F-102B,
which is what became the F-106. The F-102B was going to be the one that
would actually meet the original expectations for electronics capability
and flight performance.

You're correct in that the F-102 didn't deliver the performance that
was originally expected, although it was more than adequate to deal
with the threat that actually developed - A Mach 0.8-.0.85 Bomber
penetrating at or above the Tropopause. As for production numbers,
let's take a look at the rest of the Century Series:
They're broken down by role, in cases where they aren't convertable
from one to another.
Airplane Total Role
Production
F-100A-D 2,294 Day fighter-bomber
F-100F 333 Two-seat version of F-100D, Combat Capable
Total 2,627 F-100 Series Fighter-Bombers

F-101A,C 126 Single-seat day fighter-bomber (Nuke Strike only)
RF-101A,C 201 Day Photo Recon & Nuke Strike
Total 327 F-101 Fighter Bomber/Recce (Equivalant Strike)

F-101B 478 Two-seat All-Weather Interceptor
Total 478 F-101 All-Weather Interceptors

F-102A 875 Single Seat All Weather Interceptor
TF-102A 131 Two-Seat Transition trainer, Combat Capable
Total 1006 F-102 All-Weather Intercptors

F-104A 155 Single-seat Day Fighter-Interceptor
F-104B 26 Two-seat F-104A
Total 181 F-104 Interceptors

F-104C 77 Single-seat Fighter-Bomber (Nuke Strike)
F-104D 22 Two-seat F-104C
Total 99 F-104 Fighter-Bombers

F-105B,D 685 Single-seat Fighter-Bomber
F-105F 143 Two-seat F-105D, COmbat capable
Total 828 F-105 Fighter-Bombers

F-106A 277 Single-seat All-Weather Interceptor
F-106B 63 Two-seat version of F-106A
Total 340 F-106 All-Weather Interceptors

So, the F-102 numbers don't look so bad, in context. Don't forget
that, compared to earlier fighters, like the F-86, the Century Series
was about an order of magnitude increase in cost and complexity to
build and maintain.

Note as well that the F-101 and F-104C FIghter-Bomber versions were
useless for COnventional Warfare. As bombers, they were only capable
of delivering nuclear weapons. Both were limited to only one Tactical
Fighter Wing each.

BTW, there were only about 370 or so F-106's made. They entered
service in 1959. The last Regular AIr Force F-102s phased out in
1972-73. ... Since it took 'bout 13 uears for the -102s to leave, I don't
think that that counts as quick replacement.

It would have been, had the F-106 been on schedule (1957-8) and bought in
the numbers intended (1000+). But the specs had escalated, and the F-106
had engine and intake problems, and the MA-1 (nee MX-1179) was by no means
fully debugged, and it took time and money to solve those problems... at a
time when IRBMs, ICBMs, and other missile programs were increasingly
eating all available USAF funds, and the need for expensive air-defence
interceptors which had no antimissile capabilities was being questioned.

That's really the point - the nature of the threat had changed. The
Soviets, realizing that if they were to try to attack the inhabited
portions of North America (Southern Canada on down) that they'd have
to fly several hours over the Canadian Shield, most of it under
continuous radar coverage. There was no way they could build a
supersonic bomber that could do this, and no way they that could build
an airplane long-ranged enough to fly that distance at low altitude.
NORAD is one of the most astonishing achievements of International
Cooperation and Development. Between Canada and the U.S., we built a
system that essentiall wired an entire continent for sound, in some of
the most inacessable and difficult territory on the planet, adn
developed a defence force and command and control system that allowed
everything coming in to be tracked and intercepted. (Y'know, all the
Arrow-heads miss that one. The Canadian contribution to Civil
Engineering by developing the DEW Line and the Mid-Canada Line is
incredible. It was a much more difficult task - nearly equivalent to
building undersea habitats or Lunar bases. (Albeit a bit easier to get
to)

That effort drove the Soviets to skip advanced manned bombers, and
air-breathing Cruise Missiles, and jump straight for ICBMs.
(Putting some Space Context back in)

The eventual compromise was a rather smaller F-106 production run, and
reluctant acceptance that many of the F-102As would continue in service
until more advanced interceptors joined the F-106s. But the F-103 and
F-108 ended up being canceled, and so the F-102As stuck around a while.

Before the Mid '50s, the average lifetime of a jet fighter, in
forst-line service, was about 2-3 years. Afer that, it stretched to
20-30 years. Part of that was reaching the maximum level of
performance that could be sustained economically. That kind of caught
everyone by surprise.

--
Pete Stickney
A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many
bad measures. -- Daniel Webster

In article ,
Pat Flannery writes:


Henry Spencer wrote:


The eventual compromise was a rather smaller F-106 production run, and
reluctant acceptance that many of the F-102As would continue in service
until more advanced interceptors joined the F-106s. But the F-103 and
F-108 ended up being canceled, and so the F-102As stuck around a while.


Don't forget how Canada's Voodoos and Bomarcs became an integral part of
the air defense equation after the Avro Arrow got canceled. I wonder how
many Canadians know that their country once possessed nuclear weapons?

And the Canadian CF-104s in France and Germany were Nuke-Only
airplanes, as well. It wasn't until the Trudeau Administration that
they received any ability to use conventional weapons.

Oh, and the Canadian Army in Germany relied on Nuke-warhead Honest
John rockets, as well.
FOr a small-peace-loving country, they were awfully willing to jump
onto teh Nuclear Bandwagon. (Even more than we were, in fact.)

--
Pete Stickney
A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many
bad measures. -- Daniel Webster