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The Space Race was about Power Projection - Miles O'Brien



 
 
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  #41  
Old January 18th 17, 12:15 PM posted to sci.space.history
Scott M. Kozel[_2_]
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Posts: 160
Default The Space Race was about Power Projection - Miles O'Brien

On Wednesday, January 18, 2017 at 1:36:31 AM UTC-5, Fred J. McCall wrote:
"Scott M. Kozel" wrote:


Do you think that a de-orbital surprise attack with a small
cobalt bomb would do the trick, win that war outright?


Stop talking nonsense. What such an attack would do is get the entire
country of the attacker vaporized.


I wasn't suggesting that anybody do that, the question was
directed to Stuffie because I wanted to see what his response
would be.

  #42  
Old January 19th 17, 09:07 AM posted to sci.space.history
Fred J. McCall[_3_]
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Posts: 10,018
Default The Space Race was about Power Projection - Miles O'Brien

"Scott M. Kozel" wrote:

On Wednesday, January 18, 2017 at 1:36:31 AM UTC-5, Fred J. McCall wrote:
"Scott M. Kozel" wrote:


Do you think that a de-orbital surprise attack with a small
cobalt bomb would do the trick, win that war outright?


Stop talking nonsense. What such an attack would do is get the entire
country of the attacker vaporized.


I wasn't suggesting that anybody do that, the question was
directed to Stuffie because I wanted to see what his response
would be.


So why 'cobalt bomb'? Insofar as short term (a few years) effects go,
THERE IS NO BLOODY DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A 'COBALT' BOMB AND ANY OTHER
NUKE OF SIMILAR YIELD.


--
"Some people get lost in thought because it's such unfamiliar
territory."
--G. Behn
  #43  
Old January 20th 17, 12:30 AM posted to sci.space.history
Scott M. Kozel[_2_]
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Posts: 160
Default The Space Race was about Power Projection - Miles O'Brien

On Thursday, January 19, 2017 at 3:07:40 AM UTC-5, Fred J. McCall wrote:
"Scott M. Kozel" wrote:

On Wednesday, January 18, 2017 at 1:36:31 AM UTC-5, Fred J. McCall wrote:
"Scott M. Kozel" wrote:


Do you think that a de-orbital surprise attack with a small
cobalt bomb would do the trick, win that war outright?


Stop talking nonsense. What such an attack would do is get the entire
country of the attacker vaporized.


I wasn't suggesting that anybody do that, the question was
directed to Stuffie because I wanted to see what his response
would be.


So why 'cobalt bomb'? Insofar as short term (a few years) effects go,
THERE IS NO BLOODY DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A 'COBALT' BOMB AND ANY OTHER
NUKE OF SIMILAR YIELD.


You already posted convincing logic that a cobalt bomb wouldn't
blow up 1/3 of the world.

Above, I posted in a attempt to elicit comments from Stuffie
about his opinions about what a cobalt bomb would do.

Stuffie?
  #44  
Old January 29th 17, 12:39 AM posted to sci.space.history
Stuf4
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Posts: 554
Default The Space Race was about Power Projection - Miles O'Brien

From Scott Kozel:
On Thursday, January 19, 2017 at 3:07:40 AM UTC-5, Fred J. McCall wrote:
"Scott M. Kozel" wrote:
On Wednesday, January 18, 2017 at 1:36:31 AM UTC-5, Fred J. McCall wrote:
"Scott M. Kozel" wrote:
Do you think that a de-orbital surprise attack with a small
cobalt bomb would do the trick, win that war outright?

Stop talking nonsense. What such an attack would do is get the entire
country of the attacker vaporized.

I wasn't suggesting that anybody do that, the question was
directed to Stuffie because I wanted to see what his response
would be.


So why 'cobalt bomb'? Insofar as short term (a few years) effects go,
THERE IS NO BLOODY DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A 'COBALT' BOMB AND ANY OTHER
NUKE OF SIMILAR YIELD.


You already posted convincing logic that a cobalt bomb wouldn't
blow up 1/3 of the world.

Above, I posted in a attempt to elicit comments from Stuffie
about his opinions about what a cobalt bomb would do.

Stuffie?


I totally agree with Fred's assessment.

And I don't know how anyone would think anything different than Fred's assessment. Salting the earth only impacts long-term effects. To "win" a First Strike WWIII scenario, you would need to incapacitate all means of immediate retaliation.

I doubt that *any plan* that was brewed up toward achieving that was ever considered to be effective. And so I thoroughly expect that no government leader ever, at any point in time, ever gave any serious consideration to conducting a First Strike.

Launch On Warning was the no-brainer "defense" against any such plan, and this would mean that any attempt toward a First Strike "victory" would be met with disaster to both sides.


My original speculation in this thread about how the shuttle might have been used in brewing up any kind of attack plan was referring only to the planners. It was their job to dream up crazy things.


As it was, the only shuttles that were disintegrated happened as a result of lack of care, rather than anything intentional.

I recently got to meet with one of the family members of the Challenger crew. A long time friendship predating the tragedy. We said nothing about the mission. But there was that tension that it was on both of our minds.

~ CT
  #45  
Old January 29th 17, 06:52 AM posted to sci.space.history
Scott M. Kozel[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 160
Default The Space Race was about Power Projection - Miles O'Brien

On Saturday, January 28, 2017 at 5:39:54 PM UTC-6, Stuf4 wrote:
From Scott Kozel:
On Thursday, January 19, 2017 at 3:07:40 AM UTC-5, Fred J. McCall wrote:
"Scott M. Kozel" wrote:
On Wednesday, January 18, 2017 at 1:36:31 AM UTC-5, Fred J. McCall wrote:
"Scott M. Kozel" wrote:
Do you think that a de-orbital surprise attack with a small
cobalt bomb would do the trick, win that war outright?

Stop talking nonsense. What such an attack would do is get the entire
country of the attacker vaporized.

I wasn't suggesting that anybody do that, the question was
directed to Stuffie because I wanted to see what his response
would be.

So why 'cobalt bomb'? Insofar as short term (a few years) effects go,
THERE IS NO BLOODY DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A 'COBALT' BOMB AND ANY OTHER
NUKE OF SIMILAR YIELD.


You already posted convincing logic that a cobalt bomb wouldn't
blow up 1/3 of the world.

Above, I posted in a attempt to elicit comments from Stuffie
about his opinions about what a cobalt bomb would do.

Stuffie?


I totally agree with Fred's assessment.

And I don't know how anyone would think anything different than Fred's assessment. Salting the earth only impacts long-term effects. To "win" a First Strike WWIII scenario, you would need to incapacitate all means of immediate retaliation.

I doubt that *any plan* that was brewed up toward achieving that was ever considered to be effective. And so I thoroughly expect that no government leader ever, at any point in time, ever gave any serious consideration to conducting a First Strike.

Launch On Warning was the no-brainer "defense" against any such plan, and this would mean that any attempt toward a First Strike "victory" would be met with disaster to both sides.


As Rush Limbaugh would say, it would be "suuiiciiiiidddee!"


My original speculation in this thread about how the shuttle might have been used in brewing up any kind of attack plan was referring only to the planners. It was their job to dream up crazy things.


As it was, the only shuttles that were disintegrated happened as a result of lack of care, rather than anything intentional.


Correct, they were management failures, not technological failures.
  #46  
Old January 29th 17, 02:48 PM posted to sci.space.history
Jeff Findley[_6_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 2,307
Default The Space Race was about Power Projection - Miles O'Brien

In article ,
says...

On Saturday, January 28, 2017 at 5:39:54 PM UTC-6, Stuf4 wrote:
My original speculation in this thread about how the shuttle
might have been used in brewing up any kind of attack plan
was referring only to the planners. It was their job to
dream up crazy things.


As it was, the only shuttles that were disintegrated happened
as a result of lack of care, rather than anything intentional.


Correct, they were management failures, not technological failures.


To be fair, middle level shuttle managers were put in a bad spot by the
higher ups. They had to manage what amounted to an experimental program
and pretend it was an "operational" program after five test flights.
The higher ups put a huge amount of pressure on middle management to
increase the flight rate. This created the management culture of "if
we're going to ground it, you have to prove to me it will fail", which
doomed the Challenger crew.

Middle managers were also forced to do this with a budget which was
smaller than it should have been. An example of this was right before
Challenger there was a distinct lack of spare parts. They were pulling
parts from recently returned orbiters so they could be installed on
another orbiter which was being prepared to fly. Imagine if you had two
cars and had to pull the cylinder head from one and install it on the
other when you wanted to use it. Insane, right?

To begin with, the SRBs ought to have been replaced with reusable liquid
boosters, but that would have been *quite* expensive to develop (which
is why SLS is still using solids). Other improvements, like non-toxic
OMS/RCS propellants and replacing the APUs and hydraulics with
electrically operated actuators would have improved the turn-around time
and reduced the risks to ground crews.

Unfortunately, SLS/Orion seems to have given up on reuse which creates a
vicious cycle of low flight rates and high launch costs. The very low
flight rate is bad for safety for a variety of reasons. Imagine a job
where every task you perform has to be done perfectly, but you only do
each task every other year, so you are assigned hundreds of tasks to
perform for each mission. You'd have little chance to get better at
your tasks, since by the time you have to repeat a task, you will have
forgotten most of what you learned from doing it the last time.

Jeff
--
All opinions posted by me on Usenet News are mine, and mine alone.
These posts do not reflect the opinions of my family, friends,
employer, or any organization that I am a member of.
  #47  
Old January 30th 17, 06:42 AM posted to sci.space.history
Scott M. Kozel[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 160
Default The Space Race was about Power Projection - Miles O'Brien

On Sunday, January 29, 2017 at 8:48:04 AM UTC-5, Jeff Findley wrote:
In article ,
says...

On Saturday, January 28, 2017 at 5:39:54 PM UTC-6, Stuf4 wrote:
My original speculation in this thread about how the shuttle
might have been used in brewing up any kind of attack plan
was referring only to the planners. It was their job to
dream up crazy things.


As it was, the only shuttles that were disintegrated happened
as a result of lack of care, rather than anything intentional.


Correct, they were management failures, not technological failures.


To be fair, middle level shuttle managers were put in a bad spot by the
higher ups. They had to manage what amounted to an experimental program
and pretend it was an "operational" program after five test flights.
The higher ups put a huge amount of pressure on middle management to
increase the flight rate. This created the management culture of "if
we're going to ground it, you have to prove to me it will fail", which
doomed the Challenger crew.

Middle managers were also forced to do this with a budget which was
smaller than it should have been. An example of this was right before
Challenger there was a distinct lack of spare parts. They were pulling
parts from recently returned orbiters so they could be installed on
another orbiter which was being prepared to fly. Imagine if you had two
cars and had to pull the cylinder head from one and install it on the
other when you wanted to use it. Insane, right?

To begin with, the SRBs ought to have been replaced with reusable liquid
boosters, but that would have been *quite* expensive to develop (which
is why SLS is still using solids). Other improvements, like non-toxic
OMS/RCS propellants and replacing the APUs and hydraulics with
electrically operated actuators would have improved the turn-around time
and reduced the risks to ground crews.


It was an avoidable disaster, they should not have launched on such a cold day, and that precipitated the failure of the O-rings.

Columbia could have been saved; if they used ground based telescopes to find the damage, then they would have had 2 weeks to come up with a patch from either material on board or material sent up on an expendable rocket, then EVAs to apply the patch. The ability to patch would have been marginal, but they would have had a good shot at a safe landing.
  #48  
Old January 30th 17, 12:11 PM posted to sci.space.history
Jeff Findley[_6_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 2,307
Default The Space Race was about Power Projection - Miles O'Brien

In article ,
says...

On Sunday, January 29, 2017 at 8:48:04 AM UTC-5, Jeff Findley wrote:

To be fair, middle level shuttle managers were put in a bad spot by the
higher ups. They had to manage what amounted to an experimental program
and pretend it was an "operational" program after five test flights.
The higher ups put a huge amount of pressure on middle management to
increase the flight rate. This created the management culture of "if
we're going to ground it, you have to prove to me it will fail", which
doomed the Challenger crew.

Middle managers were also forced to do this with a budget which was
smaller than it should have been. An example of this was right before
Challenger there was a distinct lack of spare parts. They were pulling
parts from recently returned orbiters so they could be installed on
another orbiter which was being prepared to fly. Imagine if you had two
cars and had to pull the cylinder head from one and install it on the
other when you wanted to use it. Insane, right?

To begin with, the SRBs ought to have been replaced with reusable liquid
boosters, but that would have been *quite* expensive to develop (which
is why SLS is still using solids). Other improvements, like non-toxic
OMS/RCS propellants and replacing the APUs and hydraulics with
electrically operated actuators would have improved the turn-around time
and reduced the risks to ground crews.


It was an avoidable disaster, they should not have launched on such
a cold day, and that precipitated the failure of the O-rings.


Agreed that they should not have launched when it was so cold. But, the
fact is they shouldn't have been launching AT ALL. Prior flights showed
evidence of o-ring erosion. Those o-rings were never designed to come
into contact with hot combustion gases. The fact that this was
happening indicated a design flaw that needed to be fixed.

The SRB field joint design was quite simply an accident waiting to
happen. Even if Challenger had not launched on that cold morning, if
they continued to launch without a field joint redesign, we would have
eventually lost an orbiter. One huge contributing factor was the fact
that segments became "out of round" after flight and were often
difficult to get back into shape and reassemble. The fact is that the
shuttle should never have been flying with o-ring erosion taking place.

Columbia could have been saved; if they used ground based telescopes
to find the damage, then they would have had 2 weeks to come up with
a patch from either material on board or material sent up on an
expendable rocket, then EVAs to apply the patch. The ability to
patch would have been marginal, but they would have had a good shot
at a safe landing.


It is debatable if Columbia could have been saved. Yes, the consensus,
after the fact, is that military ground based telescopes should have
been used to attempt to assess the damage. Mounting a rescue mission
before the crew ran out of consumables would still have been quite
difficult, with no guarantee of success. Patching the hole would have
been problematic because it most likely was quite large and was on the
wing leading edge, which is one of the hottest parts of the orbiter on
reentry.

Their best bet for being saved would have been to launch the next
scheduled shuttle mission as a rescue mission with only a pilot and co-
pilot and bring back the crew on a known good shuttle. Ground crews
would have been working 24/7 to make this happen and the schedule would
have needed to be shortened as much as possible.

But again, the shuttle should not have been flying at all with ET foam
shedding. It was never designed to withstand foam impacts to the
orbiter's fragile TPS.

Notice the commonality? In both cases the shuttle was flying and
encountering anomalies which the designers never anticipated. But,
because this was supposed to be an "operational" system, standing down
to actually analyze and fix the problems was quite simply not allowed by
the culture at the time.

After both Challenger, also note that many other potential problems were
fixed. There were many issues that the shuttle was flying with that
could have caused loss of crew. for example, the landing steering and
braking systems were quite marginal before Challenger since the wheel
brakes in the main landing gear did double duty by using differential
braking to steer. During the grounding, they added nose wheel steering
and the "drag chute" to take *a lot* of load off the wheel brakes.

Jeff
--
All opinions posted by me on Usenet News are mine, and mine alone.
These posts do not reflect the opinions of my family, friends,
employer, or any organization that I am a member of.
  #49  
Old January 30th 17, 05:27 PM posted to sci.space.history
Greg \(Strider\) Moore
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 752
Default The Space Race was about Power Projection - Miles O'Brien

"Scott M. Kozel" wrote in message
...

On Sunday, January 29, 2017 at 8:48:04 AM UTC-5, Jeff Findley wrote:
In article ,
says...

On Saturday, January 28, 2017 at 5:39:54 PM UTC-6, Stuf4 wrote:
My original speculation in this thread about how the shuttle
might have been used in brewing up any kind of attack plan
was referring only to the planners. It was their job to
dream up crazy things.


As it was, the only shuttles that were disintegrated happened
as a result of lack of care, rather than anything intentional.

Correct, they were management failures, not technological failures.


To be fair, middle level shuttle managers were put in a bad spot by the
higher ups. They had to manage what amounted to an experimental program
and pretend it was an "operational" program after five test flights.
The higher ups put a huge amount of pressure on middle management to
increase the flight rate. This created the management culture of "if
we're going to ground it, you have to prove to me it will fail", which
doomed the Challenger crew.

Middle managers were also forced to do this with a budget which was
smaller than it should have been. An example of this was right before
Challenger there was a distinct lack of spare parts. They were pulling
parts from recently returned orbiters so they could be installed on
another orbiter which was being prepared to fly. Imagine if you had two
cars and had to pull the cylinder head from one and install it on the
other when you wanted to use it. Insane, right?

To begin with, the SRBs ought to have been replaced with reusable liquid
boosters, but that would have been *quite* expensive to develop (which
is why SLS is still using solids). Other improvements, like non-toxic
OMS/RCS propellants and replacing the APUs and hydraulics with
electrically operated actuators would have improved the turn-around time
and reduced the risks to ground crews.


It was an avoidable disaster, they should not have launched on such a cold
day, and that precipitated the failure of the O-rings.


Except... the engineers thought they better understood the issue than they
apparently did and cold was only ONE of the issues. It wasn't JUST the cold
day, it was length of the cold-snap. AND the wind shear at the precisely
wrong time.

As Jeff says, really the proper solution was to stop launching. But,
engineers did what they're supposed to do: optimize to the best of the
ability given a bunch of competing variables. It's like the old cliché, "if
black boxes can survive plane crashes, why not build the entire plane that
way?" Well then the plane would be too heavy to fly.
NO system is perfectly safe. They're simply "safe enough". Safe enough
depends on a number of factors, including mission needs and outside
pressures.

Here, the outside pressures included a very real attitude that the shuttle
was an operational system. That was a bad attitude, but one well beyond the
engineers' ability to change.
They were asked, based on all the flight data various questions such as if
they thought they understood the problems and the issues.

Yes, the O-rings should NEVER have been compromised according to design.
BUT, the reality was, NO ONE was building SRBs this big. No one really knew
100% to get the system to operate as desired. So it became an issue of, "do
we understand HOW it's working, given the current design." They normalized
the deviance. The problem isn't that this necessarily happened (it happens
everywhere to some extent in engineering, especially cutting edge projects)
it's a matter of how much.


Columbia could have been saved; if they used ground based telescopes to
find the damage, then they would have had 2 weeks to come up with a patch
from either material on board or material sent up on an expendable rocket,
then EVAs to apply the patch. The ability to patch would have been
marginal, but they would have had a good shot at a safe landing.


If if if. Again, the bigger problem was the failure to stop and think.
Rather than solve the problem of foam/ice lose, they decided, "well we think
we understand the problem and we have missions to fly." Given the size of
the problem, perhaps the ONLY answer would have been to ground the fleet.
But that wasn't politically possible. Losing Columbia was a result of many
decisions, not just ones after launch.



--
Greg D. Moore
http://greenmountainsoftware.wordpress.com/
CEO QuiCR: Quick, Crowdsourced Responses. http://www.quicr.net

  #50  
Old January 30th 17, 09:30 PM posted to sci.space.history
Fred J. McCall[_3_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 10,018
Default The Space Race was about Power Projection - Miles O'Brien

Jeff Findley wrote:

In article ,
says...

On Saturday, January 28, 2017 at 5:39:54 PM UTC-6, Stuf4 wrote:
My original speculation in this thread about how the shuttle
might have been used in brewing up any kind of attack plan
was referring only to the planners. It was their job to
dream up crazy things.


As it was, the only shuttles that were disintegrated happened
as a result of lack of care, rather than anything intentional.


Correct, they were management failures, not technological failures.


To be fair, middle level shuttle managers were put in a bad spot by the
higher ups. They had to manage what amounted to an experimental program
and pretend it was an "operational" program after five test flights.
The higher ups put a huge amount of pressure on middle management to
increase the flight rate. This created the management culture of "if
we're going to ground it, you have to prove to me it will fail", which
doomed the Challenger crew.

Middle managers were also forced to do this with a budget which was
smaller than it should have been. An example of this was right before
Challenger there was a distinct lack of spare parts. They were pulling
parts from recently returned orbiters so they could be installed on
another orbiter which was being prepared to fly. Imagine if you had two
cars and had to pull the cylinder head from one and install it on the
other when you wanted to use it. Insane, right?

To begin with, the SRBs ought to have been replaced with reusable liquid
boosters, but that would have been *quite* expensive to develop (which
is why SLS is still using solids). Other improvements, like non-toxic
OMS/RCS propellants and replacing the APUs and hydraulics with
electrically operated actuators would have improved the turn-around time
and reduced the risks to ground crews.

Unfortunately, SLS/Orion seems to have given up on reuse which creates a
vicious cycle of low flight rates and high launch costs. The very low
flight rate is bad for safety for a variety of reasons. Imagine a job
where every task you perform has to be done perfectly, but you only do
each task every other year, so you are assigned hundreds of tasks to
perform for each mission. You'd have little chance to get better at
your tasks, since by the time you have to repeat a task, you will have
forgotten most of what you learned from doing it the last time.


There are times when I think Usenet needs a 'Like' button...


--
"Adrenaline is like exercise, but without the excessive gym fees."
-- Professor Walsh, "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"
 




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