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Military vs Civilian Orbital Laboratories, Vehicles, and Crews



 
 
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  #62  
Old March 16th 08, 02:47 PM posted to sci.space.policy,sci.space.station,sci.space.shuttle,sci.space.history
Rand Simberg[_1_]
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Default Military vs Civilian Orbital Laboratories, Vehicles, and Crews

On Sun, 16 Mar 2008 01:55:38 -0600, in a place far, far away, Pat
Flannery made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:



wrote:
It's hard to tell around here. There are lots of suspects. He could
even be talking to himself.


Rand, when you're not spouting evil bull****, you're spouting nasty
bull****. That causes me to suspect you probably aren't very popular
with the ladies! lol.


Oh, don't get him started on that; according to his descriptions he's
the greatest cocksman since Casanova. :-D


Yet another person who fantasizes about what I've written.
  #63  
Old March 16th 08, 07:49 PM posted to sci.space.policy,sci.space.station,sci.space.shuttle,sci.space.history
BradGuth
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Posts: 21,544
Default Military vs Civilian Orbital Laboratories, Vehicles, and Crews

On Mar 12, 4:28 am, wrote:
The purpose of the space shuttle was to transition our man in space
activity away from ambitious interplanetary development schemes to
general disillusionment with space travel and spread the gospel of the
ultimate futility of interplanetary development, with its basic tenets
marginalized by science fiction and ufo cultism.

Where would aviation be without heavier than air aircraft following
the Hindenberg disaster? and the Shenandoah crash? What if there
were a genre of literature dedicated to fantastical tales of a future
air age, complete with gremlins, trolls and angels beyond the clouds
and air admirals riding shotgun over Earth?

We'd still be using steamships to cross the Atlantic and anyone
proposing air travel as a practical possibility would be viewed as the
very definition of crank or worse.

So, without large reusable heavy lift launchers, without nuclear
thermal rockets, we are stuck with the modern day equivalent of
dirigibles which after decades of use dispel any notion of practical
commercial space development and are only waiting for a disaster big
enough to end public enthusiasm once and for all.

Which was its job from the outset.

We had the means to travel to mars in the 1960s, we merely elected not
to puruse it. Why? Because it would inspire the American public to
irrationally support the enlargement of a costly and endless space
development effort that paid no dividends (in the view of the decision
makers) to the American public, exposed our best rocket and nuclear
technologies to public scrutiny, flew in the face of missile and
nuclear prolifaration goals, distracted us from our Cold War efforts
and military obligations, gave rise to crazy 'one world' and
'planetary' notions that were anti-national and pro-communist (in the
view of the decision makers) and ultimately had the potential of
creating a military capability off-world that would one day turn
against the United States and be beyond the United States to do
anything about (just like the US turned against Britain eventually and
kicked their butts in world war two)

For all these reasons, JFK had to be stopped, and the program he
saddled this nation with would be brought down and forgotten over
time.

A week after the assasination LBJ and McNamara reviewed themoon
program budget for 1964 and radically reduced the size and scope ofApollo, and ended any plans to flight test more visionary programs
like Rover. By 1967 when it was clear we would beat the Russians to
themoon, the budget was cranked down dramatically. It stayed in free
fall until after themoonlandings. After Nixon organized a Space
Task Group that chaired by Spiro Agnew to look at the future of Space
travel after themoonlanding. NASA came up with a laundry list.
Nixon said pick one item on that list. They picked the Shuttle as the
first step promsing radical cost reductions. The Shuttle got funded,
but not without getting a huge makeover by the Airforce that
dramatically increased development cost with wings engines and tiles
it didn't really need and the Army, that mandated SRBs which were
dangerous and low performing, in lieu of a fully reusable first stage,
increased operating costs. While the shuttle was funded, needed
infrastructure and support equipment was ignored - so flight costs
were very high, reducing flight rates, which further increased costs
above projections. This 'missed target' was used to lambast NASA and
every loss, accident, and mishap has been used to call for the ending
of man in space as a useless waste - fromApolloone onward. One day,
without a clear compelling vision, with only marginalizing chatter,
and with no clear technical or scientific basis supporting them - the
dream of space travel will end - leaving the high frontier of low
Earth orbit to NSA and NRO.

Which is how certain types wanted it from the very beginning.

Had we stuck with the Saturn V and invested money in launch
infrastructure and streamlining the handling of vehicles and
propellants, we could have lowered costs.

Had we a phased approach to making the Saturn V reusable, starting
with the first stage - making that a flyback booster - testing the
concept with a flyback titan - space access would be dramatically
reduced in cost. The money saved would be spent on payloads.

Had we stuck with the Rover program, we would have had a nuclear
thermal upper stage flying by the time we landed on themoon. That
stage, combined with increased spending on payloads, would have put a
Skylab type module on the surface of themoonand powered it, and we
wuold have had amoon-base at Tranquility by 1972.

Apollo12 landed within 100 yards of Surveyor 3 on Oceanus
Procellarum in 1969, two years after the robot spacecraft touched down
on themoon, which demonstrated the feasability of supplying a lunar
base.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...adSurveyor.jpg

What would this path have given us? For the same money spent on
Shuttle, by 1980s we would have had a human presence on theMoonequal
to that of Little American in Antarctica, and in the 1980s,

Americans would likely have been as enthusiastic about that, as they
were about Polar Exploration in the 1920s. Funding would not have
been a problem for NASA in this situation. We would have been well
situated with experience of long term habitation on themoon, and
nuclear thermal rockets, to travel to Mars any time between 1972 and
1980. Who knows where that would have eventually led us? Setting up
a base on Mars is very similar ot setting up a base on themoon, once
the transfer times are taken into account. We likely would have had a
'little America' on Mars, and be thinking bigger thoughts.. The
amount of time the coed crews spent in transit on these longer
journeys would have likely ended up in some powerful reflection and
experiences that would have given us new insights in the 1990s that
cannot be predicted -except to say they'd be transformative of our
entire global culture. Such transforming universal visions of human
experience, would likely have communicated and motivated folks who are
now motivated by lesser visions - and likely have avoided our present
war on terror.

The 24 astronauts who visited themoonin the 20th century, had their
share of modern day shamans - which is at once amazing and
frightening.

Alan Bean trained himself to be a professional artist to capture the
emotion of his journey and to create a permanent record of his
achievements. He had this idea one day when he was visiting the
Louvre, and wondering about how the future would regard his mission.
He realized that the paintings he was looking at were hundreds of
years old. He felt it important to create an artistic record of the
journey. That's what he did.

Edgar Mitchell, taking star sightings with an Astrolabe on his return
from themoononApollo14 had an epihanny while staring into the
milky-way with a low power telescope flying above themoon. When he
returned to Earth, he founded the Noetic Institute in an effort to
develop and understand his insight.

Other astronauts joined religious orders. Still others were treated
for what were termed mission related psychological difficulties.

This from a population of 24 hard-boiled fighter jock scientists.

What would be the artistic, religious and philisophical insights of a
generation of astronauts with hundreds working and living on themoon? We can only imagine the impact by noting that a single picture
of the planet Earth snapped above themoonby Frank Borman Christmas
1968 electrified and transformed the world, giving rise to the
popularity of the environmental movement, the gaia hypothesis and idea
of the Earth as one place with common problems and common solutions
that all of us have to work together to figure out.

The power of that image motivated people like Carl Sagan to take a
picture of Earth from Voyager's perspective beyond Jupiter. This was
opposed for decades, until, finally, Carl, dying from Lukemia, and
pulling out all stops, got permission to take a picture fo Earth from
the Oort Cloud. At that distance, the Earth wasn't even a pixel size
- it slightly brightened a single pixel. He tells the story in his
last book, Pale Blue Dot.

As the specialist said in their once classified briefing documents -
anti-national ideas that did not benefit the United States and would
benefit the communists - our sworn enemy at that time - must be
supressed.

Get a clue people. Eisenhower was advised that the National Academy
of Sciences should operate as a board directing NASAs strategic
direction and growth - a Space Council that recieves a set amount of
funding each year for five or ten year terms. Eisenhower ignored
this. Why? Because such a well reasoned strategic development of
space capabilities would lead to growth, achievement, excitement, more
public money, greater public enthusiasm without end. Who knew where
it would take us? Eisenhower felt it would take us into bankruptcy.
Kennedy felt it would take us to where we needed to be in the 21st
century. Eisenhower, Nixon and LBJ all felt that JFK was an
impractical playboy who never had to balance a budget, and he would
lead this nation to economic, political and military ruin.

Does anyone know where the phrase - to boldly go where no man has gone
before - came from?

It did not come from Gene Roddenberry.

I will give the pointer to the source to anyone who asks.


You are such a believer in whatever's mainstream status quo, even
though the laws of physics are not in support, nor have you any peer
replicated science that's independent of our NASA in support of our
supposed moon landings.

We don't even have squat in a station-keeping orbit of the moon's L1.
Go figure, how the hell one can exploit our moon without first having
an oasis/gateway within the moon's L1.
.. - Brad Guth
  #64  
Old March 16th 08, 07:52 PM posted to sci.space.policy,sci.space.station,sci.space.shuttle,sci.space.history
BradGuth
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Posts: 21,544
Default Military vs Civilian Orbital Laboratories, Vehicles, and Crews

On Mar 12, 4:52 am, wrote:
On Mar 12, 8:28 am, wrote:

The Shuttle got funded,
but not without getting a huge makeover by the Airforce that
dramatically increased development cost with wings engines and tiles
it didn't really need and the Army, that mandated SRBs which were
dangerous and low performing, in lieu of a fully reusable first stage,
increased operating costs.


Among with the other crazy non existent crap in your rant,

The Army had nothing to do with the Shuttle


Fully reusable LRBs are in every way far superior to those extremely
polluting SRB's.
.. - Brad Guth
  #65  
Old March 17th 08, 04:11 PM posted to sci.space.policy,sci.space.station,sci.space.shuttle,sci.space.history
Eric Chomko[_2_]
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Posts: 2,853
Default Military vs Civilian Orbital Laboratories, Vehicles, and Crews

On Mar 16, 3:55*am, Pat Flannery wrote:
wrote:
It's hard to tell around here. *There are lots of suspects. *He could
even be talking to himself.


Rand, when you're not spouting evil bull****, you're spouting nasty
bull****. *That causes me to suspect you probably aren't very popular
with the ladies! *lol.


Oh, don't get him started on that; according to his descriptions he's
the greatest cocksman since Casanova. :-D


I believe he meant rooster fighting...


  #66  
Old March 17th 08, 04:12 PM posted to sci.space.policy,sci.space.station,sci.space.shuttle,sci.space.history
Eric Chomko[_2_]
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Posts: 2,853
Default Military vs Civilian Orbital Laboratories, Vehicles, and Crews

On Mar 16, 9:47*am, (Rand Simberg)
wrote:
On Sun, 16 Mar 2008 01:55:38 -0600, in a place far, far away, Pat
Flannery made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:



wrote:
It's hard to tell around here. *There are lots of suspects. *He could
even be talking to himself.


Rand, when you're not spouting evil bull****, you're spouting nasty
bull****. *That causes me to suspect you probably aren't very popular
with the ladies! *lol.


Oh, don't get him started on that; according to his descriptions he's
the greatest cocksman since Casanova. :-D


Yet another person who fantasizes about what I've written.


No, the fantasy is that you HAVE written anything worthwhile!
  #67  
Old March 19th 08, 04:48 PM posted to sci.space.policy,sci.space.station,sci.space.shuttle,sci.space.history
[email protected]
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Posts: 1,465
Default Military vs Civilian Orbital Laboratories, Vehicles, and Crews

On Mar 16, 4:10*am, Pat Flannery wrote:
wrote:

Warheads re-entered at nearly orbtial velocity. *The design of re-
entry vehicles - RV - is STILL highly classified!


I hate to tell you this, but there are before-and-after photos of the
ablative warhead of a Minuteman II in the book *"US Nuclear Weapons"
from around 1985.
Getting info on the specifics of the RV design is fairly easy...what
exactly's _inside_ the RV is a bit more difficult.
Ever since Minuteman III our RV's have been pretty much identical in
design...sharply swept cones.
Here's the W-87 MIRV warheads off of a Peacekeeper ICBM:http://www.talkingproud.us/ImagesMil.../RVSinCone.jpg
And a cutaway of one:http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi..._Warhead.jpg/4...
The above mentioned book has cutaways of the RV showing spin-up motors,
and antennae positions for arming.

Pat


I agree with all of that - but 1985 is about 30 years after the time
we're talking about, so, it doesn't really conflict - however, even
today there are laws on the books that restrict a clear engineering
analysis of a lot of the details from entering public discourse. Can
you point to an engineering analysis that details out the materials,
their thermal properties, their proper application and so forth?

I can give you a photo of a can of coca-cola, I can even buy one and
hand it to you. I can't give you the formula for the syrup however.

  #68  
Old March 19th 08, 05:12 PM posted to sci.space.policy,sci.space.station,sci.space.shuttle,sci.space.history
[email protected]
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Posts: 1,465
Default Military vs Civilian Orbital Laboratories, Vehicles, and Crews

On Mar 17, 11:12*am, Eric Chomko wrote:
On Mar 16, 9:47*am, (Rand Simberg)
wrote:





On Sun, 16 Mar 2008 01:55:38 -0600, in a place far, far away, Pat
Flannery made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:


wrote:
It's hard to tell around here. *There are lots of suspects. *He could
even be talking to himself.


Rand, when you're not spouting evil bull****, you're spouting nasty
bull****. *That causes me to suspect you probably aren't very popular
with the ladies! *lol.


Oh, don't get him started on that; according to his descriptions he's
the greatest cocksman since Casanova. :-D


Yet another person who fantasizes about what I've written.


No, the fantasy is that you HAVE written anything worthwhile!- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_...th_Baron_Byron

Learn the 'underlook' that Lord Byron perfected - and say very little
- leaving most the the woman's imagination - which will run rampant
against the look and the silence. lol. This according to experts on
the subject.

Here's Chris Rock's take ...


A woman knows if she's gonna **** you
within the first five minutes of meeting you.



Women know right away.



They're shaking hands like,
''l'm gonna **** him.



''l hope he don't say nothing too stupid.''



That's right, fellas,
don't say nothing too stupid...



because women are all about the mood.



lf she's in the mood to **** you,
shut up and let it happen.



'Cause if you say the wrong thing,
them panties are coming up mighty fast.



''What'd you say?''



She be on the phone with a girlfriend,
''Yeah, l was gonna give him some...



''but he just started talking.



''l hate a yakking man, child.''



Good luck!
  #69  
Old March 22nd 08, 12:38 AM posted to sci.space.policy,sci.space.station,sci.space.shuttle,sci.space.history
BradGuth
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Posts: 21,544
Default Military vs Civilian Orbital Laboratories, Vehicles, and Crews

On Mar 19, 8:12 am, wrote:
On Mar 17, 11:12 am, Eric Chomko wrote:



On Mar 16, 9:47 am, (Rand Simberg)
wrote:


On Sun, 16 Mar 2008 01:55:38 -0600, in a place far, far away, Pat
Flannery made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:


wrote:
It's hard to tell around here. There are lots of suspects. He could
even be talking to himself.


Rand, when you're not spouting evil bull****, you're spouting nasty
bull****. That causes me to suspect you probably aren't very popular
with the ladies! lol.


Oh, don't get him started on that; according to his descriptions he's
the greatest cocksman since Casanova. :-D


Yet another person who fantasizes about what I've written.


No, the fantasy is that you HAVE written anything worthwhile!- Hide quoted text -


- Show quoted text -


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_...th_Baron_Byron

Learn the 'underlook' that Lord Byron perfected - and say very little
- leaving most the the woman's imagination - which will run rampant
against the look and the silence. lol. This according to experts on
the subject.

Here's Chris Rock's take ...

A woman knows if she's gonna **** you
within the first five minutes of meeting you.

Women know right away.

They're shaking hands like,
''l'm gonna **** him.

''l hope he don't say nothing too stupid.''

That's right, fellas,
don't say nothing too stupid...

because women are all about the mood.

lf she's in the mood to **** you,
shut up and let it happen.

'Cause if you say the wrong thing,
them panties are coming up mighty fast.

''What'd you say?''

She be on the phone with a girlfriend,
''Yeah, l was gonna give him some...

''but he just started talking.

''l hate a yakking man, child.''

Good luck!


You are a very sick little cut and paste puppy. Which of the three
silly Mooks are you?
.. - Brad Guth
  #70  
Old March 22nd 08, 09:19 PM posted to sci.space.policy,sci.space.station,sci.space.shuttle,sci.space.history
[email protected]
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Posts: 349
Default Military vs Civilian Orbital Laboratories, Vehicles, and Crews

On Mar 12, 7:28*am, wrote:
The purpose of the space shuttle was to transition our man in space
activity away from ambitious interplanetary development schemes to
general disillusionment with space travel and spread the gospel of the
ultimate futility of interplanetary development, with its basic tenets
marginalized by science fiction and ufo cultism.


I'm finding the first part of your above statement a bit confusing. To
me, the purpose you claim for the space shuttle -- "to transition our
man in space activity away from ambitious interplanetary development
schemes" -- ignores the established fact that at the time, "our man in
space activity" had been limited to earth orbit and moon travel.
(Realistically, "general disillusionment with space travel" seems to
decry moon travel, not "interplanetary schemes.")

The last part of your statement is similarly difficult to accept.
Although some have "marginalized by science fiction and UFO cultism,"
didn't they mostly do so with respect to moon landings and earth
sightings reported prior to Nixon, rather than "interplanetary
development schemes?"

I guess I'm a bit too well grounded in "creep before you crawl" to
ignore the value of having a functional space shuttle and an
operational space station prior to full-blown moon exploration, let
alone travel to a nearby planet. At work, I had friends with advanced
degrees from Cal Tech. Their families suffered hardship when the MOL
was canceled, but they picked up the pieces and started over.

JTM
 




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