"Space Race" on Wikipedia

In article ,
Jim Oberg wrote:
...only one failure, the December 1957 Vanguard TV-3 launch.

There was an earlier Vanguard non-orbit attempt failure...

Nope. All Vanguard launches before TV-3 were successful.

that was on front pages too -- the second stage falling horizontally
trailing fire from one end.

TV-3 was the first Vanguard with a live second stage. (TV-2 had a dummy
second stage; TV-1 was the Vanguard third stage on top of a Viking; TV-0
was a Viking carrying some Vanguard subsystems.)

(Ref: Kurt Stehling, "Project Vanguard".)
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On Sun, 20 Nov 2005 18:13:39 GMT, (Henry Spencer)
wrote:

(Ref: Kurt Stehling, "Project Vanguard".)

....Regretfully, this is one book I've a) never found in the Half-Assed
Books' space & astronomy sections, and b) therefore haven't read.
What's your opinion on this one, Henry?

OM
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On Sun, 20 Nov 2005 09:36:40 -0500, mike flugennock
wrote:

Still, it's _real_ space history I'm after, and between Encyclopaedia
Astronautica and the ALSJ, I get more than I can handle, and not a word
of it in Klingonese.

....Ok, so I've been rather occupied of late. I'll work on the
translations and get back with you :-P

OM
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]=======================================[
OMBlog - http://www.io.com/~o_m/omworld
Let's face it: Sometimes you *need*
an obnoxious opinion in your day!
]=======================================[

"Stuf4" wrote in
ups.com:

I haven't seen anyone at sci.space post a reference to this "Space
Race" article from Wikipedia, so here it is:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_race

I will be interested to see any constructive feedback you may have.

"After its successful landings on the Moon, the U.S. explicitly disclaimed
the right to ownership of any part of the Moon."

The US had already explicitly done so when it ratified the Outer Space
Treaty of 1967, well before the first landing.

For that matter, the article makes no mention of any of the space treaties,
their role in the space race, nor their role specifically (the Outer Space
Treaty and the Rescue Agreement especially) in leading to Apollo-Soyuz.

I would consider the Moon Treaty of 1979, and the L5 Society's successful
effort to block US ratification of same, as beyond the intended scope of
the article.
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In article ,
OM wrote:
(Ref: Kurt Stehling, "Project Vanguard".)

...Regretfully, this is one book I've a) never found in the Half-Assed
Books' space & astronomy sections, and b) therefore haven't read.
What's your opinion on this one, Henry?

It's a pretty good account of what it was like to be struggling to get
one of those things up with inadequate money and awkward constraints.
Stehling was head of propulsion for Vanguard, so he was down in the
trenches trying to make the misconceived rocket work.

(Vanguard was sold as being pretty much a Viking plus an Aerobee-Hi plus a
new solid third stage. The third stage was ready promptly -- Vanguard
TV-1, the second "Vanguard" flight, was a live test of the third stage
atop a surplus Viking -- and never gave the slightest trouble. Stehling
says that had the first and second stages *really* been just a Viking and
an Aerobee-Hi, Vanguard would have been flying at least a year earlier,
and would have had a fair chance of beating Sputnik. But it wouldn't have
had enough payload to launch the big instrument-loaded satellite that the
science side had come up with. So the first stage had to be a heavily
upgraded Viking, and the second a heavily upgraded Aerobee-Hi, and that
was where the nightmares started.)

Not an outstanding must-have book, but quite interesting.
--
spsystems.net is temporarily off the air; | Henry Spencer
mail to henry at zoo.utoronto.ca instead. |

Jorge R. Frank wrote:

"After its successful landings on the Moon, the U.S. explicitly disclaimed
the right to ownership of any part of the Moon."

The US had already explicitly done so when it ratified the Outer Space
Treaty of 1967, well before the first landing.


It's interesting how that first treaty is phrased - national ownership
of the Moon, or any part of it outside of a scientific base is a no-no,
but there's a big loophole (unintentional?) in it that suggests that
private ownership might be okay.
I assume that at the time it was drafted private means of getting to the
Moon seemed so unlikely that no one thought that a treaty regarding that
possibility was even necessary.

Pat

In message , OM
writes
On Sun, 20 Nov 2005 18:13:39 GMT, (Henry Spencer)
wrote:

(Ref: Kurt Stehling, "Project Vanguard".)

...Regretfully, this is one book I've a) never found in the Half-Assed
Books' space & astronomy sections, and b) therefore haven't read.
What's your opinion on this one, Henry?

If you want it, there are currently five copies available through
Abebooks, starting at $47.

OM wrote:

On Sun, 20 Nov 2005 09:36:40 -0500, mike flugennock
wrote:


Still, it's _real_ space history I'm after, and between Encyclopaedia
Astronautica and the ALSJ, I get more than I can handle, and not a word
of it in Klingonese.


...Ok, so I've been rather occupied of late. I'll work on the
translations and get back with you :-P

Oh, no; you don't get it, I guess. That was meant to be an
_expression_of_relief_ at the fact that there are no bull**** Star Trek
trivia entries -- including translations of content into Klingonese --
at EA or ALSJ.

The consensus among a lot of "wags" is that Wikipedia is basically your
one-stop resource for all your Star Trek trivia needs.


--

..

"Though I could not caution all, I yet may warn a few:
Don't lend your hand to raise no flag atop no ship of fools!"

--grateful dead.
__________________________________________________ _____________
Mike Flugennock, flugennock at sinkers dot org
"Mikey'zine": dubya dubya dubya dot sinkers dot org

Pat Flannery wrote in
:

Jorge R. Frank wrote:

"After its successful landings on the Moon, the U.S. explicitly
disclaimed the right to ownership of any part of the Moon."

The US had already explicitly done so when it ratified the Outer Space
Treaty of 1967, well before the first landing.

It's interesting how that first treaty is phrased - national ownership
of the Moon, or any part of it outside of a scientific base is a
no-no, but there's a big loophole (unintentional?) in it that suggests
that private ownership might be okay.
I assume that at the time it was drafted private means of getting to
the Moon seemed so unlikely that no one thought that a treaty
regarding that possibility was even necessary.

I don't think so. No one considered it a loophole at all at the time
because the legal basis for property rights is deeply rooted in sovereignty
[1]. By denying government sovereignty to the moon (in Article II), the
treaty also effectively denies private ownership.

Granted, they attempted to close the "loophole" with the Moon Treaty, but I
consider that a "belt-and-suspenders" approach. The Moon Treaty was aimed
more at mineral rights than private ownership anyway. Although the US
government disclaimed ownership of the moon, it did (and still does) claim
ownership of the Apollo samples. By doing so, it established a precedent
for governments to claim mineral rights to the moon without claiming
ownership of the moon itself (i.e. if you extract it, you own it). The Moon
Treaty attempted to close that *real* loophole with the "common heritage of
mankind" provision.

[1] - We've discussed this before in this NG. Private ownership of property
is backed by a title issued by whatever government has sovereignty over the
property. If there is a property dispute, the courts of that government
have jurisdiction. So the "titles" to lunar property being sold by private
entities are bogus because there is no lunar sovereignty to back them up.
--
JRF

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check "Organization" (I am not assimilated) and
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mike flugennock wrote:
I haven't used Wikipedia much at all, especially since I've been reading
about how the thing is edited and QC'ed; there've been a lot of
interesting reports about it in The Register, especially one to the
effect that Wikipedia's a helluva resource if you're researching Star
Trek trivia.

There are currently 833,045 articles in the English Wikipedia alone,
not including Wiktionary and all the other branches. Of those,
70,500 pages return some reference to Star Trek -- that's 8.5%. A lot,
sure, but a lot more effort goes into the ``serious'' pages. A lot
of the science entries are really very good.

Still, it's _real_ space history I'm after, and between Encyclopaedia
Astronautica and the ALSJ, I get more than I can handle, and not a word
of it in Klingonese.

Some of it might as well be in Klingonese - particulary articles
on contemporary Russian missiles which appear to consist of press releases
translated using Babelfish:

``The system used a new-concept guidance system, which realistic
tests showed to be effective against the entire range of intended
targets.''

Sure.

I don't pretend that Wikipedia is the be all and end all of
knowledge, but then I wouldn't say that about any web site. But it's
usually a good starting point.

Give it a try, you might enjoy it ( and possibly even contribute! ).

--
Andrew Bunting