STS51L Accident Questions

Terrell Miller wrote:

Derek Lyons wrote:
Terrell Miller wrote:


Derek Lyons wrote:


The Shuttle can carry it's destination with
itself, where the CSM has to have one provided.

erm...Derek, please take a moment and realize exactly what
you just said...

And you think it's not what I meant?

A Shuttle can launch a wide variety of missions without requiring that
there be something for it to meet in orbit. It carries it's purpose
with itself.

...which begs the question: what point is the journey, then?

y'know?

ROTFLMAO. So, since the Shuttle can carry the SRTM or Spacehab/lab
with itself to orbit... There's no need to send it orbit.

You know better.

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

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

wrote:

Derek Lyons wrote:
A Shuttle can launch a wide variety of missions without requiring
that there be something for it to meet in orbit. It carries it's purpose
with itself.

A CSM is quite limited in what it can do usefully on orbit without
requiring a second launch.

First, I don't see exactly what advantages this has (other
than bundling launch failures together so that they affect
multiple aspects of the mission rather than being more or
less isolated).

Lets see.. It utterly eliminates the need for rendezvous procedures,
docking hardware, and independent flight capability for the payload.
It eliminates the parasitic weight of a shroud for the payload. It
ensures that the payload and it's operators arrive on orbit, together,
always.

And those are just the ones that occur off the top of my head.

That's *not* to say the Shuttle is the is the best way to do things,
or that it's advantages outweigh the disadvantages. But to pretend
the Shuttle has no advantages is nothing but handwaving FUD.

And contrary to vigorous handwaving of the Capsule Cabal, the cargo
will not tend to itself. Provisions must be made for it.

Second, this is a non-issue with regards to the subject of the
sub-thread. If there is a payload that can be launched into
LEO that can serve as a "target" for the Shuttle, in that it
serves as a mission that is sufficiently useful to warrant
launching the Shuttle with said payload in the cargo bay,
then that same payload would obviously warrant a cargo-only
launch for rendezvous (if necessary) in a cargo-bay-less
manned spaceflight scenario.

No, it's not obvious. You fail to account for all the things a
'target' payload needs that a 'piggyback' payload doesn't. It also
ignore the problem that in few instances is a 'target' payload
recoverable, whereas a 'piggyback' payload always is.

So, it's a distinction without a difference.

Hardly.

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

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

Pat Flannery wrote:
Len wrote:

There were--and are--workable solutions. They just
haven't been tried. Instead, official funding has
gone into unnecessarily complex technical approaches.
Two-stage--or even some assisted single-stage--
space transports with existing rocket technolgy, plus
clever system design, will work. This approach was
almost tried in 1972, before being drowned out by the
Space Shuttle. It was almost tried again two decades
later in a black program before being preempted by NASP.


The Air Force had their minishuttle on the 747 carrier concept, but I

guess they didn't think it was worth it without the ability to carry
big
reconnaissance satellites.
....snip...

I was referring to our 1971 Windjammer concept--which was
the direct precursor of the Boeing RASV. In the late '70's
we also proposed the first use of a 747 for launch of an
orbiter on top. This also interested the Air Force, but
led to the Boeing Space Sortie Vehicle (minishuttle)
--which evolved to something very different from what we had
proposed earlier. I now think there are much better ways
to launch orbiters than conversion of existing transports
or other existing aircraft.

IMO, the RASV was a much more substantial and promising effort.

The other half of my 1962 position was to rely
on Saturn 1 and rendezvous in LEO to get to the
moon. Like the Manhattan project, I would not
have put all the eggs in one basket. Rather, I
would have gone for one or more competitive
aproaches--competition is probably always cheaper
than concentrating resources without competition. My
competitive suggestion was to go for a (reusable) two-stage
space transport (reusable being a redundant word, IMO).
I think the LEO rendezvous approach could have
been done just as quickly and cheaply as developing
a whole new direct flight vehicle such as Saturn V.



Is the idea to attach a RLV upper component to a lunar apacecraft
using
a direct landing on the lunar surface and return to Earth then? Or
does
the the RLV just carry the crew to the orbital assembly site of the
lunar spacecraft? A returning aerodynamic RLV could use the Dyna-Soar

skip technique to lower the reentry heating of return at lunar
velocities.

No. The idea either with Saturn 1's and/or a two-stage
space transport to LEO was to get to LEO cheaply. This
would have presented many options that would have been
better, IMO, than direct flight. After all, "once you
get to LEO, you are half-way to anywhere."

Best regards,
Len (Cormier)
PanAero, Inc.
(change x to len)
http://www.tour2space.com

Pat

"Pat Flannery" wrote ...
Peter Stickney wrote:
Let's see now - Three Points:
Bats use their echolocation to detect food in the air,
at distances long enough to allow maneuvering to intercept the target.
Are you suggesting that an F-117 has a lower acoustical cross-section
than a Mosquito?

I saw a bat fly into a chain link fence once. I'm still trying to figure
that one out.

That's odd. Because I seem to recall seeing a bat fly _through_ a chain
link fence.

Peter Stickney wrote:

If that thing were so good at reflecting _all_ types of
wave-propagation phenomena, you wouldn't be able to _see_ the bloody
thing, _would_ you? After all, light & radio are only different
colors of Electromagnetic Radiation.

As I said in another post, ultrasonic waves and microwaves have similar
wavelengths. Apart from the scalar vs. vector aspect and the materials
aspect, they are reflected and refracted in a surprisingly similar
manner. Importantly, they are affected by surface roughness and
geometry imperfections in a similar way. Light, with a wavelength
shorter than either of the above by a few orders of magnitude, behaves
very differently.

Almost twenty years ago, my former PhD advisor, an expert in scattering
and diffraction by electromagnetic waves, was part of a team that
received a sizeable grant to translate his work in EM into a form usable
in the acoustics domain. It was easier than many might have expected
because it mainly involved taking his solutions to the vector wave
equation and recasting them in the form of solutions to the far simpler
scalar wave equation.

Another fellow who did his PhD in electromagnetics at UBC almost thirty
years ago went on to work as a defence scientist. He made quite a
name for himself by taking techniques used to predict scattering and
diffraction of EM waves and applying them to underwater sonar. Again,
it was the similarity in wavelength that made this work.

--
Dave Michelson

Terrell Miller wrote:


It wouldn't have worked - the wave action would break up the burning
oil slick, which would have 2 effects - gaps in the flames, and the
burning oil would turn into a mass of small burning oil puddles, which
wouldn't receive enough fuel to keep burning.


doesn't matter, by the time the flames disperse all the ammo in the
Higgins boats would have cooked off and the entire invasion force
would be charred hamburger patty


The real big problem is how do your invading troops breath in an area
that has no oxygen left in it, as it's been all consumed by combustion?

Pat


Pat

Derek Lyons wrote:



BTW, here's what you need for your desk:
http://www.worldaircorps.com/tmpages/c5820r3w.htm



I've been thinking about that one for a while.


Needs the world in full color as the base, centered on the North Pole.

Pat

Pat Flannery wrote:

Derek Lyons wrote:

BTW, here's what you need for your desk:
http://www.worldaircorps.com/tmpages/c5820r3w.htm

I've been thinking about that one for a while.

Needs the world in full color as the base, centered on the North Pole.


Needs to be a little higher accuracy. That's why I've been thinking
about it, and not saving for it.

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

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

Dave Michelson wrote:

Another fellow who did his PhD in electromagnetics at UBC almost thirty
years ago went on to work as a defence scientist. He made quite a
name for himself by taking techniques used to predict scattering and
diffraction of EM waves and applying them to underwater sonar. Again,
it was the similarity in wavelength that made this work.

The problem is this, active sonars don't operate in the ultrasonic
range. Not the sub-hunting ones anyways.

But then *I* know this from experience. You know nothing but second
hand information and keep spewing it in the face of corrections from
two people.

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

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

"Paul Blay" wrote in message
...
"Pat Flannery" wrote ...
Peter Stickney wrote:
Let's see now - Three Points:
Bats use their echolocation to detect food in the air,
at distances long enough to allow maneuvering to intercept the target.
Are you suggesting that an F-117 has a lower acoustical cross-section
than a Mosquito?

I saw a bat fly into a chain link fence once. I'm still trying to figure
that one out.

That's odd. Because I seem to recall seeing a bat fly _through_ a chain
link fence.
Well, there are different sizes of bats...