news flash.......mosley bleeds from O-ring.

On Tue, 15 Jun 2004 13:53:21 -0400, "Ami Silberman"
wrote:


NASA was an important part of the cold war, which, broadly speaking, was
about defending the American way of life. Not everything involved in doing
so was military. NASA utilized experienced military personel, rented space
from the Air Force, and used equipment developed originally for the
military.

The NACA even located its laboratories adjacent to or on military
bases. Langley is at Langley AFB, Ames is at what was NAS Moffett,
Dryden is at Edwards AFB. NASA didn't put most of its field centers
at military bases, except that Kennedy is at Patrick AFB. However,
Johnson has a detachment at what was Ellington AFB.

This is, however, not because the NACA or NASA were military agencies,
but because they were government agencies. And agencies operating
aircraft. That meant that putting their facilities at military
airfields and using military services (ATC, firefighting, aerodrome
maintenance) made sense and saved money.

Anything more recent? It was about national defense (satellite recon) in the
late 50s. It was about technology demonstration and possible defense
applications in JFKs day (but it was not funded by the DoD.) Reagan was
pushing the shuttle as a vital carrier for military payloads, including SDI.

It was never the essence of the planetary science portion of NASA, and it is
very arguable whether the manned program was more than part-time dedicated
to defense needs. As an artifact of history (the cold war), NASA was
originally staffed with many active duty defense people, and people who had
worked for the services, because they had the experience, and the security
clearances. (Just because something is civilian doesn't mean that it doesn't
require security.)

Believe me, by the mid-60s the aeronautics part of NASA wasn't about
national defense or technology for the military. Yeah, we had US Army
officers at Dryden, but they were doing things like writing FORTRAN
programs to support NASA's research. Hinge moments for the lifting
bodies, for example.

Hell, we can't even fly aircraft with cannon installed. Or own
air-to-air missiles, although we can have dummies. NASA is a civilian
agency and can't do things like that.

Mary, the ultimate civilian

--
Mary Shafer Retired aerospace research engineer

On Mon, 14 Jun 2004 15:33:51 -0400, (Peter
Stickney) wrote:

She also seems to be unaware of the fire that destroyed most of the
military personnel records (16-18 million people's worth, with no
backup copies whatsoever) on July 12, 1973. Getting DD-214s for
anybody whose service dates from before that time is problematical.

Not everybody, only the folks with last names through K or so. My
father's records weren't lost, but my uncle's (a Gilbert) were.

Mary

--
Mary Shafer Retired aerospace research engineer

On Mon, 14 Jun 2004 01:13:05 -0500, OM
om@our_blessed_lady_mary_of_the_holy_NASA_researc h_facility.org
wrote:

On Sun, 13 Jun 2004 22:07:17 -0700, Mary Shafer
wrote:

However, he did fly in a NASA project in support of X-20,
mimicking the RTLS escape sequence for the X-20 if the rocket had a
problem on launch and the X-20 had to set itself free and land.

...Details! Details! Aunt Mary, tell us a bedtime story about this
one, PLEASE!!! :-) :-) :-) :-)

Search the LaRC technical paper archive for a paper by Rob Rivers and
Bruce Jackson on the HL-20 escape at launch. It'll have a nice
reference to the X-20 project, as well as describing what Moon and
BJax did with the T-38 at Wallops.

Or you can look in the Dryden technical paper archive for my paper on
in-flight simulation at Dryden.

Mary

--
Mary Shafer Retired aerospace research engineer

From Ami:

We are in agreement that NASA was not a military agency. But unlike
your highway analogy, notice that NASA *did* have many military
personnel.

We are? I was pretty sure that you were arguing otherwise.

Clearly, NASA was created as a civilian agency. It was civilian in
1958. It is civilian today.

The view I have been presenting is that NASA's mission of human
spaceflight had, primarily, a military purpose critical to national
defense.

Civilian government agencies could be split into two groups: those
that had national defense roles, and those that didn't. At the top of
the non-defense list, you'd find:

- The National Endowment for the Arts.
- ...

At the top of the other list, you'd find:

- NASA
- AEC
- CIA
- ...

And while NASA is a civilian agency, I would not apply the adjective
"non-military" because the military was so heavily involved in NASA.

(I hope this clarifies my position.)

And NASA did not
own or operate a single ICBM booster. They owned and operated boosters
which
had been developed as boosters for ICBMs, but were modified for manned
and
unmanned space missions.

Both the weaponized ICBM and the Mercury booster carried the exact
same Air Force designation:

Atlas-D.

But there were differences between the two versions.
http://www.fas.org/spp/military/prog...unch/atlas.htm says that the
man-rated ones were the Atlas LV-3B variant, which was the first operational
version of the Atlas ICBM, but in 1960 the AF moved to the CGM-16D model.

Here is a website that shows the sequence of 1958 serial numbers of
Atlas boosters:

http://home.att.net/~jbaugher/1958.html

Notice that NASA launches are sandwiched between military ICBM
launches:
....
[ICBM] 7080 (85D) launched Nike Target 21 Dec 20, 1965, Vandenberg
AFB, CA
[ICBM] 7081 (86D) launched Nike Target 23 Feb 11, 1966, Vandenberg
AFB, CA
[ICBM] 7082 (87D) launched Aug 9, 1962, Vandenberg AFB, CA
[NASA] 7083 (88D) used to launch Mercury Atlas MA-4. First successful
orbital
flight by Mercury capsule Sep 13, 1961. One orbit of
duration
1 hr 49 min 20 sec. Capsule recovered.
[ICBM] 7084 (89D) launched OV1-9/10 Dec 11, 1966, Vandenberg AFB, CA
....
__________


http://www.simnasa.org/mercury/launch_vehicles.html says that "Extensive
redesign of several systems was needed in order to "man rate" this missile".

Compare to this statement on that other site you provided:
"The design of the basic Atlas has changed very little over the
years."

(That is referring to NASA as well as Air Force launches.)

NASA ordered the Atlas and the Titan boosters straight from the Air
Force, not the contractors. I don't know what Atlas modifications you
are referring to, but in the case of the Titan, minor modifications
(for pogo suppression, etc) could actually be used by the Air Force as
improvements to future versions of the ICBM.

Sure, were they? I'm not saying that there wasn't a very close
co-development cycle on the Atlas and the Titan II, but that co-development
cycle was broken for the Saturn and various Delta, Centaur etc. planetary
probe launchers.

The impression I have gotten is that the Air Force was generally
opposed to independent NASA development.

I'm sure that civilian agencies used plenty of
Jeeps, which were originally military vehicles. That doesn't mean that
those
agencies were militarized.

I consider it to be a plain fact that NASA was militarized. Military
pilots flying on top of military rockets. Those boosters even had Air
Force serial numbers.

The plan to launch test pilots into space atop Redstone rockets and
Atlas rockets existed before NASA ever came into existence. They were
Army and Air Force programs. NASA simply took over.

Sure, but I don't think that "militarized" means what you think it does. It
means "taken over by the military", or "issued arms". If anything, NASA
"civilianized" military officers by including them in a civilian agency.

I was saying that NASA took over military programs for human
spaceflight. NASA could have done their own, starting from scratch.
They didn't. The Mercury 7 could have been seven civilians. They
weren't.

And the fact that astronauts were given *military promotion in rank*
for flying a space mission goes directly against your notion of having
civilianized them.

NASA was an important part of the cold war, which, broadly speaking, was
about defending the American way of life. Not everything involved in
doing
so was military. NASA utilized experienced military personel, rented
space
from the Air Force, and used equipment developed originally for the
military. They did not, however, participate in deterence, force
projection,
nor (until the shuttle) military development.

No? You might be interested in looking at this Vintage NORAD
Slideshow that was posted to the forum a couple of years ago. I'll
cut straight to a two slide sequence:

http://www.pinetreeline.org/slides/slide12.html
http://www.pinetreeline.org/slides/slide13.html

The first slide is of nuclear annihilation of America. The second
slide shows the orbital groundtracks of Vostok 3 and 4. The message
is crystal clear:

Launches of ICBMs with human payloads communicates nuclear destructive
capability (as Sputnik did years before).

Yes, true. I am more or less in agreement with you that the initial manned
programs of both the USSR and the USA both communicated military nuances --
particularly the Vostok, Mercury, and Salyut programs. (And the USSR
actually had purely military programs such as the Almaz.) I just think that
this ended with the start of Apollo. The Saturn was not a launch vehicle
with any real military purpose, and there was no intent for it to launch
military payloads. (Unlike the Titan III, for example.)

There are others on this forum who have voiced that same view. It
basically holds that Mercury and Gemini had military implications.
Apollo didn't. And then the shuttle program again was military.

I certainly agree that Apollo was not a weapon. Now perhaps you'd
like to add your take on the direct words of JFK that the sole
justification for funding Apollo was its national security
implications.

I've posted the transcript. Here's a link with the audio if you'd
like to hear the man speak himself:

http://history.nasa.gov/JFK-Webbconv/index.html

It was about national defense in 1958. It is still about national
defense today. Eisenhower created it to consolidate key military
space programs. JFK hammers the point that it was funded as a defense
program. Reagan repeats that theme in his 1982 space policy.

Anything more recent? It was about national defense (satellite recon) in
the
late 50s. It was about technology demonstration and possible defense
applications in JFKs day (but it was not funded by the DoD.) Reagan was
pushing the shuttle as a vital carrier for military payloads, including
SDI.

Those are three solid points. More recent? It all seemed downhill
from Reagan. But if we look hard enough, I'm sure we'd find
something.

Part of national defense does not mean military. There are plenty of parts
of the government which are, in part, a part of national defense (such as
the CDC) which are nevertheless civilian. Some of these even have military
officers who are attached to them. NASA had a heavy military presence
because those military officers had the required skills that NASA needed.
Their secondment or transfer was negotiated among the stakeholders.

Required skills?! Let's check that!

Ham and Enos had the required skills to pilot a Mercury capsule. You,
Ami, have the required skills. NASA had many thousands of
non-military candidates available to them who could have done just
fine.

A military presence was deliberately infused into NASA's most visible
roles, even though it was totally unnecessary.

Security clearances aren't all that hard to get for people who walk in
off the street. Even Bill Clinton can get one! I've never taken much
stock in that explanation for why test pilots were chosen.

I believe that they were much more difficult to get during the 60s. Also,
the delay (at least today) until final approval is over a year. Another
issue was that, unlike many DoD or miltiary jobs which require a clearance
to continue, it was felt that the astronaut candidates needed clearances to
participate in the initial screening.

There were plenty of civilians who, like military test pilots,
*already had their clearance*.

That Right Stuff story does not hold water.

snip
"Ike melded the NACA to *parts* of DoD..."

(Take the case of JPL and Redstone getting broken away from the Army
and absorbed by NASA as two examples.)

Yes, but he was taking parts of the DoD and giving them to NASA. That seems
to me that part of the DoD became parts of NASA.

(That is what I was saying.)

The biggest case of the
opposite would have occured had shuttles actually been launched from
Vandenberg under AF control.

That would have been interesting to see.

I would even guess that several of the moonwalkers themselves got so
wrapped up into the PR aspects that they lost contact with the sole
justification that JFK had to remind Jim Webb about.

Most of the moonwalkers hadn't even been in NASA when JFK was alive. During
that period, six years was a long period of time. I doubt that any of the
astronauts were explicitly aware of JFK's justification. They were aware
that they were participating in operations in the national interest.

Eight of the twelve moonwalkers were selected while JFK was alive.
While none of the twelve may have been at JFK's private meeting, they
*all* knew what the Cold War was about.

It was about a thermonuclear standoff.

All of those astronauts knew that they were volunteering to ride atop
ICBM boosters.

There was lots more going on to tell them that their primary mission
was thermonuclear power projection. Khrushchev boldly stated in
public that his cosmonauts could just as well have been warheads. I
provided links to that NORAD slideshow equating Vostok to a nuclear
onslaught. There have been hundreds of posts on this forum discussing
the overt signs of how the purpose of NASA was nuclear deterrence.

(You can search the archives for ["space race" "nuclear threat"] to
review many of the facts presented.)

A question that I would be very intrigued to hear them field is, "What
connection do you see between Apollo and the nuclear arms race?"

I would be interested in seeing what they would say about that as well. The
results are likely to be suprising to one or the other of us.

Actually I would not be surprised if none of them admit to seeing any
connection. I'm sure that they'd all prefer to be remembered as
having peacefully served all mankind, instead of bio-placebo warheads
along with the astrochimps.

A main reason why people tend to neglect this dark aspect to human
spaceflight is because it is, well, dark.


~ CT

On Wed, 16 Jun 2004 21:15:22 -0700, Mary Shafer
wrote:

Or you can look in the Dryden technical paper archive for my paper on
in-flight simulation at Dryden.

....And one day hope to get you to autograph a copy, too :-)

OM

--

"No ******* ever won a war by dying for | http://www.io.com/~o_m
his country. He won it by making the other | Sergeant-At-Arms
poor dumb ******* die for his country." | Human O-Ring Society

- General George S. Patton, Jr

On Wed, 16 Jun 2004 21:12:39 -0700, Mary Shafer
wrote:

Hell, we can't even fly aircraft with cannon installed. Or own
air-to-air missiles, although we can have dummies. NASA is a civilian
agency and can't do things like that.

....Yeah, but the thought of something like HiMAT or one of the
scientific Habus doing a strafing run on a certain someone's house
right about now just has me tingling with delight :-) :-) :-)

OM

--

"No ******* ever won a war by dying for | http://www.io.com/~o_m
his country. He won it by making the other | Sergeant-At-Arms
poor dumb ******* die for his country." | Human O-Ring Society

- General George S. Patton, Jr

"Dave Michelson" wrote in message
newsG7Ac.736895$Pk3.502319@pd7tw1no...
I'm referring to you Scott.

Why would "scott" want to killfile Betty's sweetie?

From Dave Michelson:
LaDonna Wyss wrote:

CT, you go. You're doing quite well, and it's wonderful to hear a
voice of reason.

Would people PLEASE just killfile this person and be done with it.

If the above doesn't confirm that no good can come from attempting to "reason"
with "it", then nothing will.

I'm referring to you Scott. You, too, OM. Herb, Daniel: That goes for you,
too. And everyone else who sees the need to reply to "it".

Thanks.

We wouldn't want to encourage independent thought, now would we.


~ CT

From Greg Moo

Whether or not you are aware of it, flag protocol is explicitly
specified by United States Code. According to this code, those who
are to render a hand salute are military personnel, and that is *only*
when they are in uniform.

Actually the only reading I get of that is that applies during the pledge of
allegience.

If you are suggesting an open interpretation of this US code regarding
flag protocol, then you are inviting a position that it is ok to do
anything outside of these specified methods. That is the angle taken
by lawyers of people who burn US flags.

I do not necessarily disagree with that view.

The point being made, however, was that Neil and Jack had an awareness
of proper protocol. This extrapolates to a view that it was improper
for even military astronauts to salute the flag unless they were in
uniform.

And all of that saluting by the military moonwalkers invites the view
that their Apollo space suits were their military uniforms.

In any case, I'll continue to show my respect how I feel appropriate thank
you very much.

I never expressed that I didn't want you to salute the flag. I never
even expressed that I didn't want Neil or Jack to salute the flag.
The point was regarding *their* views on the appropriateness of doing
so.

If you have an alternative explanation as to why there are no pictures
of these two civilians saluting the flag, I'd be glad to consider it.


~ CT

"Stuf4" wrote in message
om...

We wouldn't want to encourage independent thought, now would we.

LaDonna's thoughts are not independant; they are the same thoughts, actions
and words of any troll and the people who respond are simply clogging this
group up.

The troll "LaDonna Unit" has even had threads started on her/it's behalf
("LaToya acts as expected" from Scott Hedrick being just one example).

Killfile her/it! The responses to this troll are no different than for any
of the Maxson/CT trolls ("You have never provided any proof of what you say"
etc, ad infinitum).

DUMP THE BITCH!!

--
Alan Erskine
We can get people to the Moon in five years,
not the fifteen GWB proposes.
Give NASA a real challenge