Hubble to be abandoned

Kevin Willoughby wrote:

Here is another potential tall-tale that someone here maybe able to
confirm/deny. I've been told that the US Navy deliberately designs
nuclear submarines with minimal levels of automation.

That's true, but becoming less so over time. (Most of what passes for
automation even today is 'old tech', I.E. thoroughly proven and
extremely well known.)

In part, this is due to a reluctance to trust fancy automatic systems,
especially since when all hell breaks loose these systems may be
in an unexpected situation.

There's a lot of individual reasons behind that basic statement...
There were problems in the past with ensuring that if an automated
system died, it could quickly and cleanly be overridden, and operated
thereafter on the backups. There were problems with design,
installation, operations, maintenance etc...

(Automated diving and driving systems for example turned out to have
an unexpected error mode... It was boring as hell watching the
CONALOG screen, and very tiring trying to maintain 110% alertness
across the length of a watch. The operators tended to fall asleep.)

In part this is because it gives the crew a chance to develop
a gut-feel about how the system should work, making the crew more
sensitive to unusual conditions.

I suspect it has more to do with the extreme conservatism of submarine
designers and operators.

D.
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Corrections, comments, and additions should be
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"Greg D. Moore (Strider)" wrote in message
...

"Scott Hedrick" wrote in message
...

"Mary Shafer" wrote in message
news
There
were probably Roman engineers saying the same thing, only in Latin.

Shades of "History of the World, Part I."

I always preferred Life of Brian for my Latin.

I liked Wayne and Shuster.

"Bartender, give me a martinus."
"You mean a martini."
"If I want two, I'll ask for them."

"Andrew Gray" wrote in message
. ..
In article , Pat Flannery wrote:

That's why I thought NASA set itself up for criticism by implying that
the Shuttle was as safe as an airliner early on.

Hmm. "Early on". This wasn't, y'know, a press release after one of those
large airliner crashes that the late 1970s seemed to have in profusion,
was it?

It's a bit hard to get two Shuttles to hit each other, especially when one
has just been launched into a fog

(Peter Stickney) wrote



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

Which reminds me...

Many years ago, in a briefing about SIOPish things, ISTR that
there was mention of F-104s assigned to one-way nuclear strike
missions into China. I think they were supposed to have been
based on Taiwan, but maybe it was elsewhere -- Okinawa?

Anybody know whether that was actually true?

In article ,
says...
Yes, that was my point, only 51.3% of the voting age population turned out at
the polls. So about 1/2 of the voting age population voted for "don't care,"
which far exceeded the number of votes that any of the candidates received, by
about a factor of 2.

"Don't care" or "None of the above"?
--
Kevin Willoughby lid

Imagine that, a FROG ON-OFF switch, hardly the work
for test pilots. -- Mike Collins

In article ,
"Terrell Miller" writes:
"Pat Flannery" wrote in message
...


Peter Stickney wrote:

The airplane was also rather dangerous to fly, as well, and losses
were high. - by 1960, when it had been in service for 5 years, more
than 500 had been totally destroyed in flying accidents.


I knew about the roll coupling problem due to the undersized vertical
fin, but didn't know the attrition rate was quite that appalling.


this may be urban myth, but a long time ago I read that part of the "Saber
Dance" thing was because a specific old-timer at the McDonnell plant was
supposed to be installing nuts upside down for some reason, but he'd been
there twenty years and he knew damn well you don't install nuts back'ards.
So under certain flight profiles an aileron would get hung up on the
"properly" installed nut. Apparently they never told the poor schlub how
many pilots he'd killed.

It sounds like the conflation of two stories. The Sabre Dance (the
film of one appears in the movie "X-15", with Charles Bronson as a
steely-eyed Test Pilot) occurred when you got an F-100 way on the
backside of the Thrust/Drag Curve, where Induced Drag is incredibly
high, and the airplane's going too slow for the controls to have much
effect. At that high an AoA, you can be well below the power-off
stall speed - you've got the engine's thrust helping fight gravity,
you see, and there's not enough oompth to accelerate to a reasonable
flying speed. That's one of the most chilling pieces of film I've
ever seen. You know the guy's had it, there's no way out, he's to low
& slow to eject, even if he could take his hand off hte stick to reach
for the handle, you just don't know when.

The other problem offurred with F-86Fs and F-86Hs built, I believe, at
North American's Inglewood plant. There was a connection in the
aileron linkage that, because of the danger of the linkage binding
when the wing flexed at high speeds, needed to be assembled in an
unusual, non-standard manner. (This fault, BTW, is what killed Joe
MacConnel, the #1 USAF/UN Ace from the Korean War, while testing the
F-86H) Some guy on the line figured that the drawings were wrong,
'cause you just don't put a bolt in that way, and did the hookup the
way he thought it should be done.

The roll-yaw coupling is something that really started appearing when
airplanes began getting very long, woth their mass distributed along
their length. Since the datum line of teh aircraft is almost always
at some angle to the flight path, a fast roll will tend to make thos
masses want to moge away from teh axis of the roll. This makes the
fuselage yaw. The magnitude and rate of onset of that yaw can be high
enough to be completely out of control, and may lead to structural
failure. The early short-tailed F-100As, and the X-3 research
aircraft were the first serious cases of this problem.

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

In article ,
(Allen Thomson) writes:
(Peter Stickney) wrote



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

Which reminds me...

Many years ago, in a briefing about SIOPish things, ISTR that
there was mention of F-104s assigned to one-way nuclear strike
missions into China. I think they were supposed to have been
based on Taiwan, but maybe it was elsewhere -- Okinawa?

Anybody know whether that was actually true?

The First Rule of Nuke Stuff. Those who know don't post. Those who
post don't know.

Since I don't know, I wonder whose 104s they'd be. The USAF had only
one wing of F-104 Fighter-Bombers, the 479th out of George AFB in
California. They tended to be more Air Superiority types, though.
The F-104As were strictly Interceptors. The biggest thing they
carried in service was an AIM-9.

Unlike NATO, there weren't many candidates for "dual-key" nukes.
Hmm.. In the early '60s, PACAF had airplanes based in Japan and
Okinawa that would stand nuke alert in Korea, adn Okinawa, IIRC.
The likely candidates there would be the Okinawa based 18th Tactical
Fighter Wing, and the Japan-based 8th TFW. Both started the '60s
flying F-100Ds, and transitioned to F-105Ds early on.
Then, too, there were the Mace cruise missiles based in Okinawa. I
suppose you could count that as a one-way mission.
(Didn't the Navy have their Regulus subs in the Pacific until the
mid-late '60s, too?)


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

On or about Fri, 13 Feb 2004 17:06:39 GMT, Doug . . made the sensational claim that:
True... but shuttle pilots *do* get time in the modified Gulfstream,
which, while not the shuttle, is modified to fly exactly like the
shuttle on approach. It's not exactly time "in type," but it's better
than just sitting in a Link Trainer.

I saw one of those Gulfstreams obviously doing a simulated shuttle landing
from the parking lot of the KSC headquarters building. Nothing quite prepares
you for the sight of an airplane headed almost straight *down*.
--
This is a siggy | To E-mail, do note | Just because something
It's properly formatted | who you mean to reply-to | is possible, doesn't
No person, none, care | and it will reach me | mean it can happen

Herb Schaltegger lid wrote in message ...

You want me to do your Environmental Impact Statement for you?

It's not mine to create. It's debatable whether NASA is required to do one
at all,

Nope. If you talked to NASA, you would find that they required to do
(and have done) an EIS for the Shuttle, as well as supplemental EIS's
for missions such as Cassinni that entail possible additional impact.
If you talked to the FAA, you would find that a reentry is considered
a "federal action" covered by the National Environmental Protection
Act of 1969.

even presuming (which you're far too guilty of doing in every
thread you take part in) that any debris survives an
intentially-destructive entry. Cite me the section of the Environmental
Protection Act that requires an Environmental Impact Statement from NASA
for a destructive entry - if you can.

One doesn't need proof that debris survives reentry to require an EIS.
The reason for doing an EIS is to determine things like that. And the
act is "NEPA," not "EPA."

*You* are the one suggesting there is a hazard from "17 tons of extremely
toxic chemicals", a contention unsupported by anything but your own posts.

Nope, again. I'm suggesting that you don't *know* whether there's an
impact because you haven't done any research. Research and evidence
are what an EIS requires. Faulty assumptions, insults, and superior
attitude do not constitute proof.

Peter Stickney wrote:
The First Rule of Nuke Stuff. Those who know don't post. Those who
post don't know.

That has been grossly exaggerated.

Those who know often post; so far, nobody who knows has
posted inappropriate material which was not either otherwise
declassified or rendered non-sensitive by the passage of time.

There are several ex-nukes who have contributed to alt.war.nuclear
over the years...


-george william herbert