NASA PDF - Project Able - Lunar Module deploys up to 3000-ft solar reflector in earth orbit

"Rusty" wrote:


wrote:
Rusty wrote:
Here is a NASA report just added to the NTRS server in PDF format.

It's a 1966 NASA/Grumman study that uses a manned Lunar Module to
deploy a 400-ft to 3000-ft solar reflector in a 6000 nm or 24 hr earth
orbit. The reflector would be used to illuminate selected areas of the
earth during the hours of darkness. This proposed program was called
Project Able.

Any indication what the ultimate purpose was? I assume the national
security classification indicates that it was for military or
intelligence use.

I assume Project Able was for the benefit of the Defense Department.

Please provide a basis for that assumption.

Through the years, the media and NASA have repeatedly stated, that U.S.
civilian space program was totally in the open, unlike the Soviets.
It's interesting to see NASA documents that were once classified or
confidential, now being posted on the NTRS server, that disprove those
statements.

'Confidential' *is* a classification. (The whole list being
Unclassified, For Official Use Only, Confidential, Secret, and Top
Secret.) The presence of a classification does not mean that it's DoD
related - the classification system system is more-or-less a goverment
standard used by all departments and branches.

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL

OM wrote:

...And when you think about it, the CLM (Combat LM) wouldn't have had
to get -that- close to the target to do sufficient damage. It would
have just had to let loose the paint against the flow of rotation
enough to cause a gradual buildup on the target to the point where the
thermal absorptiion would have done it in. Would have taken longer,
but it would have improved our "plausable deniability" in the long run
:-)



"Saturn V launch? What Saturn V launch?" ;-)

Pat

In article om,
Rusty wrote:
Through the years, the media and NASA have repeatedly stated, that U.S.
civilian space program was totally in the open, unlike the Soviets.
It's interesting to see NASA documents that were once classified or
confidential, now being posted on the NTRS server, that disprove those
statements.

You need to draw a distinction between the program and its technology,
because the latter had considerable overlap with military stuff, most
notably in rocketry. When you get down to the level of technical detail,
nobody's ever tried to pretend that there wasn't stuff that was stamped
SECRET for at least a little while.
--
spsystems.net is temporarily off the air; | Henry Spencer
mail to henry at zoo.utoronto.ca instead. |

OM wrote:


...From what I recall of this one, the disaster area use was felt to
be the best implementation, considering the total area of ilumination
that such an array theoretically could have provided.



I'd like to figure out just how little you'd have to flex that reflector
to focus it to a point from GEO; it's probably a few millimeters.

Pat

Scott Lowther wrote:



One is forced to wonder what will happen now that this report has been
made public. Will Nagin and the Dems start to berate
Bush/Cheney/Haliburton for not having built Able to light up NOLA?


Murtha is an evil, weak-kneed traitor...no, Murtha is a military
hero...what will tomorrow bring from Cheney's office?

Pat

Henry Spencer wrote:


And what? The bad news is, the physics doesn't allow you to get a tight
focus at a distance, because the Sun is not a point source. Inherently
the best you can do is to make the light per square degree of sky, as seen
at the target, equal to that of the Sun. A 3000ft reflector at a distance
of hundreds of kilometers isn't going to fry anything, because it'll be a
small fraction of a degree wide (vs. half a degree for the Sun). The
light at the target will be a small fraction of normal sunlight. To fry
something, you need to fill a sizable part of its sky with reflector.



Oh, that's no fun! What was the point of developing it if you couldn't
use it as a death ray? :-)
Seriously though- if the point of the gizmo is to light up a night time
area of the Earth with reflected sunlight, how bright of an illumination
could you get on a moonless night with this thing? Also, wouldn't even
very small distortions in it's form (a few millimeters) cause its
illumination level to oscillate severely as the light striking the
Earth's surface shifted all over the place?

Pat

Derek Lyons wrote:

'Confidential' *is* a classification. (The whole list being
Unclassified, For Official Use Only, Confidential, Secret, and Top
Secret.)

Nit: FOUO isn't a national security classification, though it's
frequently misused as one.

The presence of a classification does not mean that it's DoD
related - the classification system system is more-or-less a goverment
standard used by all departments and branches.

There's an interesting discussion about how classification was being
viewed in NASA in the mid-1960s at
http://history.nasa.gov/HHR-32/ch14.htm

" wrote:

The presence of a classification does not mean that it's DoD
related - the classification system system is more-or-less a goverment
standard used by all departments and branches.

There's an interesting discussion about how classification was being
viewed in NASA in the mid-1960s at
http://history.nasa.gov/HHR-32/ch14.htm

The classification guide mentioned therein would make for some
interesting reading.

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL

Derek Lyons wrote:

The classification guide mentioned therein would make for some interesting reading.

Indeed so. But I think the discussion in the cited chapter,
particularly as it relates to narrow versus broad interpretations of
what constitutes "national security" and how that should affect
application of national security classification is very interesting in
itself.

It's a discussion/dispute that goes on to this day. It's easy to argue
that the narrow interpretation should be used, and equally easy to make
the case for the broad interpretation. I'm mostly in the narrow camp
but see the point the broadians are making. Somehow it reminds me of
Gulliver's Travels.

In article ,
Pat Flannery wrote:
...A 3000ft reflector at a distance
of hundreds of kilometers isn't going to fry anything, because it'll be a
small fraction of a degree wide (vs. half a degree for the Sun)...

Seriously though- if the point of the gizmo is to light up a night time
area of the Earth with reflected sunlight, how bright of an illumination
could you get on a moonless night with this thing?

Hmm... Speaking without having read the report, you're going to want a
fairly high orbit -- the reflector isn't much use if it's above the
horizon at the desired site for only a few minutes at a time.

Call it 1km across and say it's 6,000km away; that makes it roughly
1/100th of a degree wide. That gives about 1/2500th of full sunlight.
Full sunlight is, if memory serves, about 10,000 foot-candles, and you can
read and write -- although not comfortably -- at 1 foot-candle. So yeah,
it's not exactly bright, but enough to be useful.

Also, wouldn't even
very small distortions in it's form (a few millimeters) cause its
illumination level to oscillate severely as the light striking the
Earth's surface shifted all over the place?

At first glance, I'd say that changes in its overall shape would be
trouble, but local rippling etc. wouldn't do more than decrease the
overall intensity some.
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spsystems.net is temporarily off the air; | Henry Spencer
mail to henry at zoo.utoronto.ca instead. |