Flying Saucers Vs the Internet
It was different then. Back in 1956, in an America full of confidence and an even greater sense of wonder, even the New York Times was willing to publish a review of a serious documentary on Flying Saucers. AH Weiler wrote in the review “the fact that truth can be more engrossing than fiction is quietly and effectively demonstrated in ‘Unidentified Flying Objects,’ which landed at the Mayfair yesterday.”
If “Unidentified Flying Objects” is not as startling as an imaginary invasion by tiny, green men with pointed heads, it does, however, leave an impression of restrained documentation that is instructive and sobering …
“Unidentified Plying Objects” is not a specially imaginative example of movie-making. But in avoiding sensationalism the producers have given dignity to the “credible observations of relatively incredible things.”
The movie is now available on YouTube either in its entirety or split in 12 parts, the first starting here.
Even viewers who think UFOs and flying saucers are bunk will find the movie still functions, albeit unintentionally, as a very effective Time Machine. Through the magic of the Internet the viewer can go back to a time when you could walk up to an airplane on a runway, park a convertible all day in a street on Washington DC, work as a public information officer for the Air Force and still be journalist in good standing, and describe the defense of the United States from all enemies, foreign and domestic, terrestrial or extra-terrestrial with an entirely straight face.
Thrill to the sight of prop-driven F-51s circling around towers guided only by men looking out the window with binoculars. Marvel at an age when people took video on film in cameras that were made in the United States. Watching astounding scenes of people analyzing things by measuring angles, figuring distances and calling for information on telephones. Open the portals of memory to an age when Life Magazine and Look were read by millions of people nationwide.
Although the movie does not begin with LP Hartley’s famous lines, “the past is a foreign country: they do things differently there,” it could have. Indeed, the first impulse on watching the documentary is to rush out and look up, not at the sky, but at the street level. Where did it go, that other country? One is almost tempted to ask whether Flying Saucers really could have existed in the 1950s and have stopped existing for us today because we no longer have the wonder to reach for the stars.
But Weiler was right. “Unidentified Flying Objects” remains a convincing docudrama in its own way both on the subject of UFOs themselves and about the way we moderns have learned to look inwards, as if to gaze in any other direction were foolish. And strange though it may seem, the universe was a larger place then, in the 1950s. It was a time when people were willing to accept the possibility of man treating with God and settling other planets, as we would think of going down to the mall, back before it became crazy to think it.
Someone once remarked that people who lived more than a 100 years ago were not as stupid as we think. Perhaps that’s true even if they didn’t have Iphones. For most human history it was normal to wonder what was over the next hill, across the unconquered ocean and beyond the sea of sand. The heavens were our birthright and exploration our destiny.
Who could have guessed that in the 21st century, forty plus years after landing on the moon, NASA’s would be reduced to boosting the self-esteem of the Muslim world or that the most highly regarded minds of Western science would see it as as their unsacred duty to never let humanity stain the heavens with their nuclear power and nonecological ways. Perhaps Ezekiel did.
And when the cherubims went, the wheels went by them: and when the cherubims lifted up their wings to mount up from the earth, the same wheels also turned not from beside them. When they stood, these stood; and when they were lifted up, these lifted up themselves also: for the spirit of the living creature was in them. Then the glory of the LORD departed from off the threshold of the house, and stood over the cherubims.
Is it too late to follow in their fiery path? Probably. The carbon footprint would be too big.
How to Publish on Amazon’s Kindle for $2.99
The Three Conjectures at Amazon Kindle for $1.99
Storming the Castle at Amazon Kindle for $3.99
No Way In at Amazon Kindle $8.95, print $9.99
“The heavens were our birthright and exploration our destiny.”
yea i look at the pictures in books about the development of the railroads in the us and wonder where that spirit has gone.
newrouter:
Sadly, that spirit is being squished into a malleable mass of uniformly equal density.
It has been said before but…We gotta get our butts off this planet and away from earthly masters.
Thank you, Mr Fernandez, for writing this.
In 1956 I was a USAF Radar Intercept Controller in Southern Japan and one night we saw streaks across the face of our radar scopes indicating targets moving at what seemed to be thousands of knots per hour.
In short order it was determined that a technical glitch was the cause, and it was quickly fixed.
In the interval, however, we took this very seriously.
There are many revision pathways. A story can begin as testimony, which turns into a myth, then a ridiculous metaphor, and finally a hoax… anything to avoid what was clearly reported.
Of course it doesn’t help if the original witness lied and embellished. Authorities calling spacecraft “unknowns” and “unidentified” was an early form of PC in a way.
Although the movie does not begin with LP Hartley’s famous lines, “the past is a foreign country: they do things differently there,” it could have. Indeed, the first impulse on watching the documentary is to rush out and look up, not at the sky, but at the street level. Where did it go, that other country? One is almost tempted to ask whether Flying Saucers really could have existed in the 1950s and have stopped existing for us today because we no longer have the wonder to reach for the stars.
+100
No person in the shadow of the Roman Empire could look back with more sadness than we have today, of having walked on the moon 40 years ago, and now being afraid of our own shadows. Our technology is massively better today, and admittedly the trip brings back nothing of immediate cash value, but like much in life, it’s the journey that’s worthwhile. Not to mention it might pay off, eventually.
Niven and Pournelle touched on this melodramatically at the end of Lucifer’s Hammer, where they have to decide whether to risk a battle to save a nuclear plant from anti-technology cannibals. There might not be a replacement for a century or more, but could it be worth even the victory? They go for it, of course.
We’ve lost the frontier.
Dare we eat a peach?
–
c @ 6: what do you think, do the number work?
I’ll also note it’s a ten year project that ramps up rather slowly.
Everything you need to know about James Cameron’s asteroid mining
http://blastr.com/2012/04/everything-you-need-to-kn-30.php
Everything you need to know about James Cameron’s asteroid mining
Planetary Resources just wrapped up a press conference in Seattle, officially announcing both its existence and its ambitious plan to mine near-Earth asteroids. We were listening in live, and here’s everything you need to know about how this asteroid mining plan is going to work and when it’s going to happen.
Essentially, Planetary Resources is looking to send spacecraft to mine near-Earth asteroids for resources ranging from precious metals (like platinum) to water. The company has assembled a team of engineers and visionaries with a large helping of financial support from the likes of Larry Page and James Cameron, and today they went public with their vision for the future of harvesting resources from space.
There are between 500,000 and 1 million near-Earth asteroids greater than 50 meters in size, and any one of them might be brimming with useful goodies. Planetary Resources thinks that we’ve gotten to the point where it makes sense (both technologically and financially) to take advantage of this.
SpaceX delays first private launch to space station
by Staff Writers
Washington (AFP) April 24, 2012
SpaceX has postponed by a week its bid to become the first private company to attempt to launch an unmanned cargo vessel to the International Space Station.
“After reviewing our recent progress, it was clear that we needed more time to finish hardware-in-the-loop testing and properly review and follow up on all data,” SpaceX spokeswoman Kirstin Brost Grantham said late Monday.
http://www.space-travel.com/reports/SpaceX_delays_first_private_launch_to_space_station_999.html
iPAD MAN
I lived a hundred years ago
A hundred years and more
And so today I am to you
A running bleeding sore
A man with nothing on his mind
But food to stay alive
In darkened times of mindless life
To stupid to survive
And yet how is it that today
Your iPad cultures seem
To know not God and more you have
Forgotten how to dream
We morons sailed adventured seas
And looked to distant stars
We conquered mountains, built a stair
To Venus and to Mars
We left to you a world of awe
Broad shoulders for your feet
To stand upon to reach the heights
We thought you would complete
The work begun when ancient man
First wondered what’s in store
Only to find you iPad men
Don’t wonder any more
Don’t look at stars and wonder how
The universe was made
And how the butterfly takes wing
Or why the flowers fade
You iPad men who know not aught
And think you know it all
Now spend your lives on facebook
Waiting for your cell phone call
c @ 6: what do you think, do the number work?
I’ll also note it’s a ten year project that ramps up rather slowly.
…………..
Yeah nothing is going to happen immediately, next year or five or ten years from now.
They’ll likely spend the next 5-10 years just mapping the asteroids for their orbits and their content. This author
The coming golden age
by Eric R. Hedman
Monday, April 23, 2012
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/2067/1
compares their efforts to those the US Exploring Expedition of 1838 to 1842, that explored the south pacific. That expeditions results were part of the smithsonian’s first exhibits. btw the article a good historical read.
do the numbers work? not now. most of material to be mined is designed for a later time when there will be need of more material in space.
Webb Telescope Spinoff Technologies Already Seen in Some Industries
04.18.12
A critical component of the James Webb Space Telescope is its new technology. Much of the technology for the Webb had to be conceived, designed and built specifically to enable it to see farther back in time. As with many NASA technological advances, some of the innovations are being used to benefit humankind in many other industries.
The Webb telescope is the world’s next-generation space observatory and successor to the Hubble Space Telescope. The most powerful space telescope ever built, the Webb telescope will provide images of the first galaxies ever formed, and explore planets around distant stars. It is a joint project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency.
New technologies developed for NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have already been adapted and applied to commercial applications in various industries including optics, aerospace, astronomy, medical and materials.
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/technology/features/webb-spinoffs.html
New ‘life in space’ hope after billions of ‘habitable planets’ found in Milky Way
737 Comments
11:00AM BST 28 Mar 2012
Researchers discovered that at least 100 of the ”super-Earths” may be on our galactic doorstep, at distances of less than 30 light years, or about 180 trillion miles, from the sun.
Astronomers say the findings were made after conducting a survey of red dwarf stars, which account for about four in five stars in the Milky Way.
They calculate that around 40 per cent of red dwarfs have a rocky planet not much bigger than Earth orbiting the ”habitable zone”, in which liquid surface water can exist.
Scientists say that where there is water, there also could be life although they add that being in the habitable zone is no guarantee that life has evolved on a planet.
Dr Xavier Bonfils, from Grenoble University in France, who led the international team, said: ”Because red dwarfs are so common – there are about 160 billion of them in the Milky Way – this leads us to the astonishing result that there are tens of billions of these planets in our galaxy alone.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/9170683/New-life-in-space-hope-after-billions-of-habitable-planets-found-in-Milky-Way.html
I think the first thing we’ll need is property rights in space so instead of Bali Hai, people can dream of Bali High, their own special asteroid. That would be cool. Maybe there can be a future business in asteroid customizations. Hollow it out, maybe and build a life support system on it, and put it on a 100 year trajectory to Alpha Centauri or something. Maybe the actual customization work will be done by self-replicating nanobot spawn kits you can buy at Home Depot.
Technological advancement usually creates tensions with status quo. Left to itself, humanity will seek its source. But in the process there will be a tug of war: for while man will always want to fly the State will always want to issue the license first. The only lasting way for wowsers to control humanity is to a set a limit on his imagination; to make Hope and Change nothing more than a synonym for tax and spend. That way we will remain forever bound, not by gravity, but by the poverty of our conceptions. Which of these tendencies wins in the long run will probably determine the fate of man. My money is on the saucers.
The effort of the administration to boost the self esteem of the sons of the prophet is a resounding success; no muslem country can put a man into orbit; neither can we.
Does Star Trek make space travel look too easy?
by Andre Bormanis
Monday, April 23, 2012
Comments (17)
In an interview with a reporter from the Associated Press, Scott Pace, the current director of the Space Policy Institute at The George Washington University and a former NASA associate administrator, was asked to comment on the April 12th failure of the North Korean rocket launch. He noted that sending a vehicle into space is still a significant technical challenge, and added, “In many ways, the worst enemy of NASA is Star Trek… Captain Picard says ‘engage’ and the ship moves. And people think ‘How hard can this be?’” Filmmaker James Cameron supposedly made a similar comment about Star Trek’s depiction of space travel several years ago. This, so the argument goes, leads to unrealistic expectations in the public mind about where we should be these days on the Final Frontier. Reality has fallen far short of the galaxy-hopping future envisioned by Star Trek, and NASA takes the blame.
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/2069/1
The past isn’t as foreign as it might first appear. Johan Huizinga got it wrong. They did things differently and they also did things the same. Even in antiquity. And the ancients could be just as smart as us and just as stupid. We know a lot because we stand on their shoulders. They didn’t stand on anyone’s shoulders. They just thought it up and did it.
I know something about the past. I grew up in it after all. What they did do differently back then was hats. Everybody wore hats. Hoo-ha, did they ever. Men, women, children, everybody. And they wore their Sunday best to baseball games at Ebbets Field. Men in auits with white shirts and ties and straw boaters. Women in fancy dresses and hats with feathers. In the summer heat. My grandpa and my father and his brothers owned enough fedoras between them to open a hat shop.
Men in suits not auits.
Fear not because human DNA supplies the liberty and adventure genes to every new generation. We have discovered that Democratic Socialism turns normal people into a bunch of hand-wringing sissies. The hand wringers remove themselves from the world by using social networks and by developing an addiction to images on hand held back-lit screens. They are the hand gazers.
Sooner or later a generation will be born that doesn’t buy the Socialism and will allow their liberty/adventure genes to express themselves. They will be fully engaged with the world. It will be interesting to see if hand gazers are replaced by star gazers.
I was an aerospace engineer, worked with Bob Zubrin on projects toward colonizing Mars. Always dreamed of visiting Mars.
What we refer to as UFOs are actually Demons, servants of the Prince of the power of the air. Everyone wants to get a “close encounter” ride, enthused like I once was … all are mesmerized by a visitation of superior beings.
Hugging straight into Lucifer’s arms.
Seek yee the true Superior Being.
18. Reloader
“What we refer to as UFOs are actually Demons….”
Or Vimanas, maybe?
I would like some advice.
I’ve finished my first ebook. Its about 13000 words. I’ve got a bunch of designers to do this cover for me.
http://rdwaterpower.com/Charles_book_cover_final_04-24-12.jpg
The book is a how to.
What format do you publish in if you want to do amazon kindle apple barns and noble plus a couple other places.
For example do you just put the ebook in adobe pdf format which I think is supported by all or do you do amazon formats for amazon, apple for apple, barnes and noble for barns & noble. etc.
Do all formats support graphics. Or is it best not to have graphics inside an ebook.
Many people live in the past, most Democrats for example. Closer to wretchard‘s home in Oz I have been to Western Australia. They are still waiting there for 1957 to show up, any day now. Someone from Sydney said to me, “3,000 miles and thirty years behind us.”
For those deaf to sarcasm, the provincials of LA or NY’s Upper West or East Sides or the DC Beltway or probably Sydney are probably both less secure in their past and less effective in using change, as opposed to merely consuming it, than the scions of Queens or Queensland.
To be fair most people need to live largely in a place with meaningful associations, that is largely in the past, with specified excursions into modernity. It is necessary to engage with modernity, for those in modern cities or engaged in creative work that may happen frequently. Even for them though the departure from the nest of the past is usually controlled and limited. Those who insist on living totally at the cutting edge of modernity are frightening. People fear them and those instincts are probably rooted in a good perception that something is wrong. Even the most trendy fashionista will often confess in an interview how offstage they revert to comfort clothes and food and objects from their family’s past. As my comment on the last thread noted the totalitarians seek to destroy the Past and all associations and memories. Like with Obama all their achievements are in the future.
One risk is that of a reaction from the constant denigration of the past by the would be Children of the Future. That can take the form of another source of division used by those eager to exploit and manipulate. The first use of the term “national socialism” was by the French Antisemite Maurice Barrès who considered the assimilated cosmopolitan Jews to be “rootless.”
The business about mining asteroids is entirely dependent upon Cheap Access to Space (CAtS). Getting from the ground to Low Earth Orbit represents 99.99% of the economic barrier against industrializing space.
The Space Shuttle was supposed to solve the problem of CAtS and failed utterly.
The engineers who designed the Space Shuttle were genuinely brilliant. They knew that the promises concerning the Space Shuttle’s capabilities were lies. The engineers had no choice. Either build the Space Shuttle or have the whole Space Program terminated immediately.
The hope was that a Second Generation Space Shuttle which was genuinely economical could be built before the original Space Shuttle timed out. The X-33 project was the last hope for a NASA funded Second Generation Space Shuttle. Not only did X-33 fail… It never had a prayer from the day that it was designed. X-33 was a prototype for a Single Stage to Orbit vehicle (SSTO). All masters level aeronautical engineers are expected to solve the Rocket Equation and prove that SSTOs were impossible to build with real materials. This didn’t stop Lockheed Martin from taking taxpayer money in an attempt to build an SSTO. Lockheed Martin will always take government money if it is offered.
There are aeronautical engineers who claim that CAtS is impossible and the aerospace analog of controlled nuclear fusion, i.e. always 20 years in the future.
I personally do not believe this.
However I do suspect that government funding of a viable CAtS system maybe politically impossible, i.e. the expensive research and development necessary to make a CAtS system viable will always be traded off for reduction of near term costs. This is the aerospace analog of government expenditure that can not be reduce to less than the amount taxed because the political price is too high (“honest” politicians are always replaced with crooks and demagogues who tell the sheeple soothing lies). Consequently the national debt always increases even though everyone involved knows with mathematical certainty that deficit spending will eventually destroy the political process, i.e. ever increasing debt is passed onto future generations until it is impossible to pay and consequently defaulted on. This observation leads to the conclusion that democracy is intrinsically unstable and self destructive. Long term survival is possible only under a political process where the decision makers look at the cold hard numbers and make tough unpopular decisions. How do we reconcile that sort of political process with the notion of the “consent of the governed”? How can honest and competent technocrats be put in power without going through the process of a democratic election?
CAtS won’t happen until after that political puzzle is solved.
“For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see,
Saw the vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be;
Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails,
Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales;”
Alfred Lord Tennyson, 1835. I thought I might see this in my lifetime. Thanks to frigging NASA and the pork-distributors, I won’t.
Fletcher Christian:
“I thought I might see this in my lifetime. Thanks to frigging NASA and the pork-distributors, I won’t.”
Yes, FC, thanks to those.
But the list goes on, much further. It is also thanks to:
-Generic lack of vision of the bulk of politicians AND some of the general poulation who are so concerned with consolidating power and comfort in their little circle they’ll crush any attempt to go beyond it
-A need by many people to feel that their own self/family/community is the most special of things and a fear (unfounded) that development offworld – or horror of horrors, life elsewhere – will be a blow to that “specialness”
-Outcome egalitarianism that resulted in affirmative action and the need to allocate resources for space development on the basis of companies/individuals being minority owned/minorities or female owned/females instead of merit alone
-Other flavors of outcome egalitarianism (more on a meta level) that say things like, “it’s not fair for only a few countries or nations to have this technology when other do not” or “we can’t allow the benefits of space to accrue only to the West”
-Strip mining of government funds to buy the votes of people who want guaranteed government checks in exchange for easy and unproductive jobs (or to not work at all) instead of spending that money on something which has a large postive multiplier on science, technology, and private industry
-Cheap, easy access to music and video entertainment that has taken the place of great dreams and striving and dulled people’s imagination
-Popular media promotion of art/humanities/social science types with a simultaneous denigration of STEM trained people – said media manipulation primarily a function of the left and their control of the media narrative combined with mating preference trends that former commenter Whiskey was highly skilled at articulating
-Fear on the left that mankind in space will be beyond their control to order about and tax
-Fear of governments generally that a robust private enterprise space industry will not be completely under their own control within their own borders but will naturally migrate to the best place to do that business (as manufacturing has)
-An inability of the baby boomer left to accept that their vision for human exploration in and habitation of space needed to be a plastic concept which met some of their expectations and disappointed in some areas, and their petulant attitude of “if I can’t have it exactly like I imagined, we should just pitch the whole mess”
These and other reasons all have contributed to the demise of space exploration/use. In the end, it will be up to private enterprise to do the job, since in this area, as so many others, government just can’t answer the bell.
no mo uro – I have an idea, don’t know whether it’s original. Hollywood has enormous amounts of money to throw around, but so have many other organisations. So the idea comes to me that a film adaptation of some appropriate near-future hard-SF novel (Ben Bova’s work comes to mind) faithful to the book might just help to turn the tide.
As for private enterprise doing the job, one reason that may be difficult is shortage of trained personnel – engineers, trained artisans of one sort or another. Which is mostly the fault of government.
Besides the excellent points made by no more uro, I think government-run space projects have an inherent disadvantage in Western democracies. Space exploration and settlement have very long lead times, and it’s hard to retain focus when the party in power is constantly changing, each with different goals and objectives, and different kinds of pork to going to different constituencies.
The Soviet space program was less afflicted by this problem, given their totalitarian system. They played the hare to America’s tortoise, and racked up an impressive string of “firsts” before falling behind to our more flexible and innovative economic system. Even so, Russia is still using rockets, spacecraft, and launch facilities that were originally developed in the 50s and 60s, and they work well for their intended purpose.
I remember watching one of the later Apollo launches on TV and seeing none other then Jesse Jackson leading a protest at the Cape, saying that the money being spent on going to the Moon could be better used to “help the poor”. Even as a kid, I thought that was incredibly short-sighted.
I think that, in the long run, space settlement can only be done by private industry with private property rights in a free-market system. Sadly, our society is currently moving in the opposite direction.
The COTS 2+ Dragon launch is currently scheduled for May 7 at 9:38 a.m. EDT.
Personally, I have a hard time remembering a launch I’ve been this excited about. I’d have to go back to the first Shuttle flight in 1981, if not Apollo itself. And for an unmanned test flight, no less!
A lot is riding on this flight. It’s a very complicated mission, and if it fails, I expect the naysayers to come out of the woodwork, gloating and calling for investigations.
Fletcher Christian #25:
I, also, am a lifelong sci-fi fan (mostly hard sci-fi) and have often entertained similar thoughts over the years.
However, an older and wiser no mo uro is less excited. First of all, good hard sf has been done by the movie industry and the public’s eyes glaze over in most cases. The reasons for said glazing are, I’m sure, readily apparent to you or any intelligent person, so I won’t enumerate them, but they must be faced honestly. As the commenter Charles #14 has pointed out, people are a lot more comfortable with the idea that space travel is some oh-so-sophisticated European intonating the word “engage” and the living room with NPR on the radio and PBS on the monitors moves magically through space, said living room being a nursery for little kids and simulataneously a warship, in a confederation which is so communist they have abolished money and free enterprise (!) but somehow have crafted all of this technology and infrastructure. I wish it weren’t the case, but it is.
The curious thing about Star Trek, beloved as it was by the liberal peacenik retards, was that it was a hierarchy subject to military discipline, not remotely like a democracy or libertarian paradise. Individuals had no apparent autonomy. The Computer told everyone what to do, for the best interest of all. I suggest liberals liked it because the Computer represented their vision of Good Government, always right and good. It took no thought or risk to determine what to do. The Computer would direct you. Truly a libtard’s paradise.
“Someone once remarked that people who lived more than a 100 years ago were not as stupid as we think.” I believe, with no doubt that the people who lived 100 years ago where much smarter than we are today! everything we have comes from them, all the advancements of today are simple refinements of their work! the last two generations have not made any of the barrier smashing break thru that the people of a hundred years ago started… We Are Dumber in many more ways and it is by their Hand!!! (put that in your pipe and smoke it)
Human (higher life form) Space travel is a fantasy and will remain for the next couple hundred of years if not forever! I am not talk’n about to the Moon flight I am talk’n to Mars or any other Planet outside the protective magnetic shield that encompasses the Earth and Moon, Until Man figures out how to make a Gravitational Magnetic shield comprisable to the Earths we will go nowhere, Man’s intelligence on Gravitational Magnetism’s isn’t much more then Newton’s work!
From one of those email your friends send around that contain an interesting perspective that isn’t taught in our schools just how the world really was like a mere hundred years ago, out of 4,000 years of recorded history -
The average life expectancy for men was 47 years.
Fuel for this car was sold in drug stores only.
Only 14 percent of the homes had a bathtub.
Only 8 percent of the homes had a telephone..
There were only 8,000 cars and only 144 miles of paved roads.
The maximum speed limit in most cities was 10 mph.
The tallest structure in the world was the Eiffel Tower !
The average US wage in 1910 was 22 cents per hour.
The average US worker made between $200 and $400 per year.
A competent accountant could expect to earn $2000 per year,
A dentist $2,500 per year, a veterinarian
between $1,500 and $4,000 per year,
and a mechanical engineer about $5,000 per year.
More than 95 percent of all births took place at HOME.
Ninety percent of all Doctors had NO COLLEGE EDUCATION!
Instead, they attended so-called medical schools,
many of which were condemned in the press
AND the government as ‘substandard.’
Sugar cost four cents a pound.
Eggs were fourteen cents a dozen.
Coffee was fifteen cents a pound.
Most women only washed their hair once a month,
and used Borax or egg yolks for shampoo.
Canada passed a law that prohibited poor people
from entering into their country for any reason.
The Five leading causes of death were:
1. Pneumonia and influenza
2. Tuberculosis
3. Diarrhea
4. Heart disease
5. Stroke
The American flag had 45 stars.
The population of Las Vegas , Nevada , was only 30!
Crossword puzzles, canned beer,
and iced tea hadn’t been invented yet.
There was no Mother’s Day or Father’s Day.
Two out of every 10 adults couldn’t read or write
and only 6 percent of all Americans had graduated from high school.
Marijuana, heroin, and morphine were all available
over the counter at the local corner drugstores.
Back then pharmacists said, ‘Heroin clears the complexion,
gives buoyancy to the mind,
regulates the stomach and bowels,
and is, in fact, a perfect guardian of health’
( Shocking? DUH! )
Eighteen percent of households had at least
one full-time servant or domestic help.
There were about 230 reported murders in the ENTIRE U. S. A. !
Eggplant #22:
“Either build the Space Shuttle or have the whole Space Program terminated immediately.”
Uh, no. By that time the unmanned part of the “space program” had attained the staus of a utility system: water; power; sewage disposal; communications; etc. We already could not get along without it and there was every reason to think it would expand. By 1968 GPS was still years in the future but people were relying on space-based navigation (e.g., Transit). The USAF already was saving $100K a day by using weather satellites instead of airplanes. And so on and so on. People still thought – and today still think – of Space as symbolic launches that carried hopes aloft, but the day to day process of launching yet another Corona or TIROS was the reality.
But Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo, magnificant achievements that they were, were dead ends. Spectacular stunts meant for political purposes, and no more. The USAF planned a manned recon space station, MOL, but figured out automated systems could do the job better and much cheaper. And other than that the need for man in space had not been made.
So the answer was the Space Shuttle, a system that would protect the jobs of those in manned space by taking over the real justification for launching everything.
I just finished reading a very interesting book, “Hellions of the Deep.” It describes how the US went from world leader in torpedo design in WW1 to a screwed up mess by the start of WW2. The reason was that the government took over torpedo design and manufacture and politicians protected the jobs of the government employees, who emphasized spending money on employing as many people as possible. They succeeded in producting the most limited in quantity and performance, unrelible and expensive torpedoes in the world. Even before the end of WWII the USN had all but shut down the Newport torpedo station and after the war closed it entirely. This same fatal process was applied to manned space, and tragically was actually expanded to cover all space launches.
In many respects the SpaceX and Orbital Sciences commercial launch efforts as well as those planned by Boeing and Lockheed Martin, represent finally running manned space like the rest of the space program. The really sad part is that it is still focused on justifying jobs rather than on actual sustained manned exploration.
Eggplant has already said what my first thought was about this asteroid mining plan – it just doesn’t work economically if you have to launch from earth’s gravity well and bring things back down here. As he pointed out, 99% of the energy is expended just getting to LEO. Suppose, for the sake of argument, you could locate an asteroid made of solid gold – or make it solid platinum, whatever you want. Just carve off a chunk and bring it back, right? But your transport costs, with current technology, are STILL going to be around $1 MILLION per ounce! How can any physical resource conceivable justify an expense of $1 million per ounce?
And an even bigger problem – you can increase the efficiency by an order of magnitude (factor of 10) and you’re still at $100,000 per ounce. You’ve got to upgrade your capabilities by several orders of magnitude to make this work, and we just ain’t there. If you’re going to put that much effort into it, then robotic mining of nodules on the sea floor is always going to be more cost effective and less technically challenging. (although today even that is still far too expensive to be worthwhile)
Now there IS one way in which this not only can work, but will probably be necessary, and writers like Vernor Vinge and others have already anticipated this. The problem of getting things back and forth to LEO is alleviated if you have large orbital spacedocks in LEO with both habitation and manufacturing sections, building things only available in a zero-G environment. When *they* exist, then it will be cheaper for them to get their supplies from asteroids and the like than to boost them from Earth, and the products they manufacture would have to be high value enough to be worth shipping down to earth. (room temperature superconductors? Who knows?)
So, IF we want some kind of asteroid mining to be worthwhile, we first will have to build LEO spacedocks capable of housing first several thousand, eventually several million people. They are the only ones who will be able to make efficient use of this source of commodities, and til those spacedocks are in place, this idea is just one more popular mechanics pipedream.
I think it could happen by, say, the year 2200. But not much earlier. And of course our descendants may be living in mud huts under the protection of the local castle by then, too.
Walt – That was fantastic. Superlative, even by the very high bar you have established with previos poetry.
This is a great topic, and I have quite a few remarks, which will have to wait for later today as I am NOT typing anything lengthy on the iPhone, which is the only innertubes tool I have on me at the moment.
Charles @ 6 et al – It’s time to pull out those old slide rules!!!
According to “everything you need to know…”
A basketball court is 94′ x 50′ and the rim is 10′ high, so the volume of refined platinum group metals available would be 94 x 50 x 40 = 188,000 cu ft.
Platinum weighs 1,339 lbs/cu ft. So the potential haul is 188,000 x 1,339 = 251,732,000 lbs.
Now we need to apply the lessons of Apollo 11 & 13. The goal in each was to fly men to the surface of the moon and return them safely to Earth. Apollo 11 succeeded. By the time Apollo 13 took flight, the public was bored. But it became front page news due to the “if it bleeds, it leads” ethos. The thought of having the astronauts lost in space never to return was depressing, the reality of saving them was exhilarating.
So we need to look at two types of missions, mining and manned exploration.
From a mining standpoint you want to safely return the metal to the Earth. That means you need to de-orbit it from orbital speed of 18,000 mph. Got a big catcher’s mitt?
From a manned exploration standpoint, one can visualize the explorers setting forth, never to return, IF there is a “land of milk and honey” where the “streets are paved with gold” awaiting them. Having them reach a cold, barren, lifeless asteroid with no chance of return would be depressing.
Frankly, I think Cameron has a better chance looking to explore the seas. I just got a new book, “The CIA’s Greatest Covert Operation, Inside the Daring Mission to Recover a Nuclear-Armed Soviet Sub”. That was real life, not a TV show. In 1969 the CIA went to see the already operational Glomar Challenger, built to recover manganese nodules from the floor of the Pacific. They re-purposed the ship to its spy mission of lifting a Soviet sub three miles from the floor of the Pacific instead.
Author David H. Sharp writes (pg19) “It was claimed that the Glomar Challenger could maintain station over a point 10,000 feet below within a radius of less than 100 feet”. And he notes its design was an improvement over that of CUSS I designed for Project Mohole http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Mohole
I remember my Dad telling us kids about his cool new method of maintaining station with her, “…it had four steerable main propulsion thrusters somewhat resembling large outboard motors” (pg 17). We did not watch TV, we played outdoors and read books in my house. And we marvelled at the things Dad had designed! On July 20, 1969, I was an employee of Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corp (soon to be Grumman Aerospace) as a 20 year old thermodynamicist when the Eagle landed on the Sea of Tranquility.
Re; Single stage to orbit- The Atlas that put John Glenn into orbit was pretty close – it dropped two engines, but flew all the way using the same tankage and structure. That was 40 years ago and we’ve got fancy composites and new alloys to play with now. SSTO is an engineering and structures problem according to a fair number of rocket engineers. Aluminum beer cans have about the right mass ratio.
The real trick is going to be going from the artillery model where you throw the whole thing away to the airline model where you only burn the fuel, which is cheap.
Re 22. Eggplant
“The business about mining asteroids is entirely dependent upon Cheap Access to Space (CAtS). Getting from the ground to Low Earth Orbit represents 99.99% of the economic barrier against industrializing space.
The Space Shuttle was supposed to solve the problem of CAtS and failed utterly.”
“Cheap” is always relative. If spending billions on a space program is politically popular then for politicians it is cheap. Even if the actual economic benefits are pennies on the dollar.
If they need those billions to buy votes to get reelected, then a space program is a useless money pit.
So if the government is responsive to citizens, we citizens ought to be able to convince each other the space program is still “cheap” enough to be worthwhile and organize to support candidates who would fund it. However, I don’t think that is the case anymore.
Assuming the American people do manage to wrest control of the government back from the ruling class, we may actually see the question of the relative expense of the space program open for debate. Until then we should pray the EPA doesn’t ban private rockets in the USA because of their carbon footprint.
“Someone once remarked that people who lived more than a 100 years ago were not as stupid as we think. Perhaps that’s true even if they didn’t have Iphones. For most human history it was normal to wonder what was over the next hill, across the unconquered ocean and beyond the sea of sand. The heavens were our birthright and exploration our destiny.”
My current reading passion revolves around the theme of the expolorers from the late 1800s to early 1900s. It’s just amazing how bold and brave (overused words, but appropriate) these guys were. Forget the iphone; these guys did some amazing things with tools/gear that are museum pieces. Very humbling.
Charrles @ 20:
This source should answer some of your questions:
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/52
I became disgruntled that common sense in 1956 is today looked at as a dangerous wild West. In 100 years, they’ll be holding their hands over their kids eyes at video of us walking around without helmets. Don’t worry about aliens, we were colonized and destroyed by political correctness.
RWE @ 33 – Speaking about how having the government take over and tell those who pioneered the field how to do things “better” and thereby screwing matters up…
From Sharp’s book (pg 23)
So what part of the newly designed Hughes Glomar Explorer failed and resulted in only a segment of the sub being recovered?
THE CLAW!
Do you think the same guys who designed the USS Laffey http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Laffey_(DD-724) might have known something about the structural strength of damaged naval vessels, such as sunken submarines?
I see I conflated the two ships in my post #36 above. Glomar Challenger was a deep sea drill ship which served as the inspiration for Hughes Glomar Explorer, the CIA vessel masquerading as a manganese mining ship. Sorry for the confusion!
I’m not going to make any specific guesses here, not for fear of sounding silly, but for fear of being to close to target. Let me just say that with an eye toward logical inference, in all likely hood, the vast majority of what we have seen as evidence of extraterrestrial contact/activity has been Earthly in nature. If we are to extrapolate ourselves (as humans) into the future, let’s say a billion years technologically, we would likely be able to visit/view other habitable planets of our choosing, without their knowledge. And if we were feeling particularly fond of a certain species and we saw that they were very imminently about to achieve a level of technological ubiquity which could threaten their very existence, we might subtly but actively intervene. Knowing now what we do about the age of the Universe, our galaxy, our solar system and our planet, Earth and knowing what we do about the abundance of planets like Earth in our galaxy and the Universe by extrapolation, it would seem that such technologically advanced species almost certainly exist.
37. Hunt Johnsen
SSTO: yes, composite airframes would go a long way towards achieving SSTO, but so would refraining from adding ‘qualifiers’ to the design process. It seems that whenever someone designs an SSTO concept, they end up being purists, and insist that 1) nothing be ejected or thrown away, and 2) all sorts of flight path variables, environmental concerns, redundancies, etc. are added to the design process — and the project fails.
X-33 failed because the most sophisticated design was chosen, but the project would have failed with the other two entries as well.
DROP TANKS AND ‘JATOS’
Think outside the orthodox SSTO box, and you can still have SSTO. Putting all the boost phase propellant in an external drop tank offloads as much as 2/3 of the fuel and up to half of the structural weight. WWII planes that used drop tanks for long missions were considered whole planes even after they dropped their tanks, so the same should apply to a launch vehicle — you would think. I am always astounded that when an option like this one — or the equivalent of JATO boost off the pad — are suggested as alternatives to ‘pure’ SSTO that they are rejected out of hand. Why? Because of the corrupted nature and actual objectives of space R&D: to prolong costly projects as long as possible to satisfy certain constituencies. That is one of the primary reasons we are stuck on Earth more tha 40 years after Apollo.
The idea of starting a company to do asteroid mining for profit at this time is pure folly.
Fortunately, that doesn’t seem to be the intent of the asteroid venture Charles writes about above. The intent is exploratory: to find out how to do the processes and determine the viabilty of the whole notion of exploiting extraterestrial resources. I would love to have a conversation with my old acuaintance Pete Diamandis, who is the actual originator of this venture. He could clear up any misconceptions about what the project intends to do.
A HUNDRED YEARS AGO IN AMERICA
Chronicling America at the Library of Congress is scanning in and cataloguing newspapers of the past.
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/
I have found this stuff really fascinating. A typical newspaper front page of that time was a marvel of efficiency. At a glance — and longer scrutiny — the front page was a panorama of many different facets of life, say, in 1912 on any given day. You could pick up what attitudes and worldviews were, what sports were popular, what great events had happened, etc.
Give it a try folks.
e @ 22: There are aeronautical engineers who claim that CAtS is impossible and the aerospace analog of controlled nuclear fusion, i.e. always 20 years in the future.
I’m afraid that’s coming to be my conclusion.
If someone managed to land a hundred tons (or whatever) of platinum on Earth at zero cost, doubling the world supply – it would just cut the price per ounce in half. A nice profit, but not unlimited, and not without negative consequences for those holding or producing the old way.
I thought the “standard” answer is that we have to have productive, self-sustaining colonies on the moon to BUILD the LEO civilization to REACH further into the solar system via asteroids, comets, and then eventually Mars and maybe some moons of Jupiter or Saturn.
*unless, that is, we *do* get a good ground-based fusion 10x cheaper than anything we have now, and that changes all the equations, and of course even moreso if we can use the same technology for ground to orbit, or at least orbit to space.
13. walter adams, sorry bud but IIRC, there are humans in orbit as I type. Have been for years.
Asteroid miming isn’t for bringing raw materials back to earth. It is to supply orbital manufacturing with raw resources. What will be manufactured are the robotic mining ships.
Chemical rockets are a dead end. They are used because they were available. There are other theories about getting to LEO that need to be explored.
My favorite is the space elevator. Right now we cannot create anything with the strength to hold up over 23,000 miles. 100 years ago we couldn’t build an airplane that could fly 500+ people half way around the world. Today it’s commonplace.
Never give up on the future.
Shielding Space Explorers from Cosmic Rays “http://engineering.dartmouth.edu/~Simon_G_Shepherd/research/Shielding/docs/Parker_05.pdf” this article is basically the same paper I read way back in the mid 1970′s, there’s been little change in this absolute must overcome obstacle before anything evolved above bacteria can go past the Moon, this also doesn’t cover any of the other major dangers of deep space travel such as micro asteroids or other unknowns yet in countered… Space flight beyond the Moon ain’t happen’n in this generation or the next. (Sorry to be a downer)
Something that I find interesting about Science Fiction (SF) is it’s typically based upon bad science and clueless understanding about aerospace technology. If you can tolerate it, sit through a 1950s science fiction movie about landing on the Moon. Almost always, the vehicle is Single Stage to Orbit (SStO) that flies from the surface of the Earth to the surface of the Moon (typically it is unshielded nuclear powered). The vehicle is almost always a scaled up version of a German V-2 rocket (aerodynamic shape traveling through the vacuum of space). Rarely is the problem of gravity or the inability of sound to travel through vacuum considered. The whole thing is very stupid. Ironically these silly 1950s SF movies were among the main reasons why the Apollo program was funded.
At present, doing good science fiction movies is very difficult because the audience has the experience of the Apollo Program, the Space Shuttle, the International Space Station (ISS) and the robotic interplanetary missions. Hollywood has tried to work around this by presenting “retro-science fiction” such as the recent “John Carter” flop (which I actually enjoyed) and “Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow” (which I did not enjoy). For the most part, these retro-science fiction movies don’t work. People want to watch fantasy. To fill that niche, Hollywood has resorted to classic sword-and-sorcery stuff, e.g. “Lord of the Rings”. I greatly enjoyed the “Lord of the Rings” but the basic problem with sword-and-sorcery is the hero can always get himself out of any fix at anytime by simply pulling out a magic sword or putting on a magic ring. The constraint of reality is why good science fiction ultimately beats sword-and-sorcery. This brings me to the movie “Avatar”. I need to emphasize that I was deeply offended by the political message behind “Avatar” and the shear stupidity of “Avatar’s” plot, i.e. neolithic people armed with pointed sticks defeated in combat people armed with functioning interstellar travel technology.
How many milliseconds would the “good guys” in “Avatar” have survived if the “bad guys” had opted to “nuke them from orbit”?
Okay, disclaimer aside: the science fiction in “Avatar” was really really cool. Why? Because the science fiction actually catered to people who knew something about aerospace technology. The starship in “Avatar” actually had a thermal radiator that was glowing red hot. The starship also had a proper artificial gravity and believable structure. James Cameron actually bothered to consult an aeronautical engineer and took the engineer’s advice (almost unheard of in Hollywood). They actually had Space Shuttle derivative vehicles to fly from the starship to the surface of Pandora. The Space Shuttle actually had a real thermal protection system. For the most part, the science in “Avatar” was very good. They actually showed blast waves from explosions and the optical effect of gases with different indexes of refraction mixing. The backdrop of Pandora orbiting a gas giant was way cool. The landing scene of the Space Shuttle derivative was very believable. What a terrible shame that the plot and political message behind “Avatar” was so completely brain dead! However the message is clear from “Avatar”: It is still possible to make highly entertaining science fiction if you hire good technical consultants and actually follow their advice.
Finally concerning James Cameron: He’s the guy that I would like to hate but can’t. I hate his politics (he’s a Hollywood moonbat) and the way he treats people. The way he treated Linda Hamilton was disgraceful. However I greatly admire the courage he has shown in deep ocean exploration. His support of the Space Program and his efforts at advancing science fiction are worthy of respect.
Earlier I said @ 22: “There are aeronautical engineers who claim that CAtS is impossible and the aerospace analog of controlled nuclear fusion, i.e. always 20 years in the future.”
Josh @ 47 replied:
“I’m afraid that’s coming to be my conclusion.”
As an aerospace engineer with 36 years of professional experience, it is my opinion that CAtS is possible. I could introduce you to colleagues who would immediately contradict me about this but I believe they are wrong. The key to making CAtS work is extreme budgetary discipline with a strong focus on total costs and technological out come. Developing a working CAtS technology has value in its own right and should be part of the consideration. For example, there is no way you could build an economically viable automobile if you had to develop internal combustion engine technology from scratch. The requirement of developing considerable new and expensive technology is the main reason why CAtS is beyond the private sector and must be funded by government. The mindset is the government creates the raw technology for gratis and then private industry takes that raw technology and uses it to unlock the resources of the Solar System (solve the chicken-and-egg problem with initial massive government funding). Obviously this is anathema to Libertarians and technophobic socialists.
The mindset is the government creates the raw technology for gratis and then private industry takes that raw technology and uses it to unlock the resources of the Solar System (solve the chicken-and-egg problem with initial massive government funding). Obviously this is anathema to Libertarians and technophobic socialists.
Can’t argue with the notion that the government is best equipped to develop new propulsion and launch technology, as well as other space R&D. The problem has been that funds that could have been used to aggressively advanced — for instance — rocket engine development has been gobbled up by boondoggles that relied on conventional propulsion and launch technologies.
Actually, what is needed is another major war. Almost all current technology is the result of either WW2 or the cold war. What would be even better is to find a technology pump other then war.
Eggplant @ 50 –
“For the most part, these retro-science fiction movies don’t work. People want to watch fantasy.”
That is where you are wrong. People want reality TV, particularly Discovery TV, and the ratings prove it. Deadliest Catch, American Logger, Storm Chasers, Gold Rush, MythBusters
in short
MEN WITH MACHINES!
They want to be re-assured they we can still do things and make things. That we are not just a service economy, but still the World’s Strongest Manufacturing Economy
Don Rodrigo @ 51 – If you wanted to spend some government money wisely!
You want to see advances in propulsion? How about the progression in ships? Low pressure coal fired steam to high pressure superheated steam, to distillate fueled gas turbines and nuclear? And the attainable future would be supercritical carbon dioxide turbines with thorium reactors as the heat source. 90% of the world’s trade goes by sea. Modernize the propulsion plants of ships and you would have a reason to embark on a second shipbuilding program comparable to the Liberty Ships.
That would appeal to the American People’s imaginations!
My father was heavily involved with the multiple transitions from the coal era to gas turbines. Another thing he worked on was container ships. Back in the 1950′s the docks were controlled by the Mob through the unions. Theft from cargos was rampant (ever heard anyone complain about missing valuables from luggage in the care of the TSA?). So the cargo container was devised to stop theft from break bulk cargos. Those early Sea-Land ships started a revolution that has now made expansion of the Panama Canal an economic reality.
And offshore drilling programs based on the Glomar Challenger now provide huge economic benefits from the continental shelf, a larger land area than the Continental United States.
The new frontier is within reach.
To reclaim a stolen slogan
YES WE CAN! (AKA – CAN DO!)
18. Reloader- Supposing that’s technically right, what would it mean? Superficially it looks like competing entities have been pulling our legs, and are probably even colluding together. This would make sense if you believe that most villains are mere sock-puppets. God and the devil aren’t cousins, but all angels may share the same payroll, whatever their job training entails.
50. eggplant- won’t CAtS make it easy to menace the earth then? Nudge an asteroid in our path, and we won’t have to wait for Iran or global warming to kill us…
Don Rodrigo:
Perhaps the most screwed up aspect of X-33 (note: I was involved with the program, as you might have guessed) is that it was BOTH an “X” program that could fail and still learn something AND (in the view of NASA) was finally doing the Space Shuttle over and getting it right.
So the set of requirements they came up with for the final vehicle were the Shuttle’s. NASA took the Moorman Study’s recommendations far too literally and set out to replace the Space Shuttle directly rather than advance the state of RLV technology and maybe get a pathway to a usable vehicle. The X-1, X-2, X-3, X-4, X-5, X-15 were not designed to produce a usable vehicle directly. The X-33 should have taken the same classic approach. Adding in manned requirements merely ensured it would never work right.
I have long thought that when they decided to build the Shuttle they canceled the wrong half – the reusable first stage. Given the real objective of the program they built the orbital half instead and ended up with the most marvelous, expensive and useless flying machine ever built.
Years ago I started working on an SF story where they are working on building an SSTO vehicle, find it won’t work, and have to put an expendable stage on the bottom. At that point the Program Manager hands all the technical decisions over to an old experienced engineer and tells him he’s got it – because he was the only one that was not totally captured by the SSTO mythology. Wish I had finished the story now.
CharlesWhite @ 49 said:
“Shielding Space Explorers from Cosmic Rays…”
In the trade these are called “Galactic Cosmic Radiation” (GCR). People like to go on about the problems of zero gravity but that specific problem can be resolved either with artificial gravity or possibly with pharmaceuticals. GCRs are a big nuisance and not easily shielded against. For example, to completely shield against GCRs requires concrete walls about 12 feet thick (not an option for a spacecraft). If you have a concrete shield about 1 foot thick then the radiation actually gets worse due to secondary cosmic radiation showering out of the shield due to collisions with the primary GCRs. Oddly enough, radiation shields made out of wax (hydrocarbons) can reduce the effects of GCRs. However the best defense is to reduce exposure time (that was the defense used by the Apollo astronauts). GCRs are the main reason why colonies on the lunar surface are not an option (people on the Moon must live deep underground). Also the lower lunar gravity is probably insufficient to maintain human physiology. These are among the many reasons why Mars colonization advocates like myself argue that the Moon should be bypassed and people go directly to Mars for space colonization.
The orbital mechanics of getting to Mars fast is interesting but outside the scope of this discussion. However Space Colonization boils down to getting to Mars fast, get within the Martian atmosphere which shields against primary GCRs and make maximum use of the Martian regolith (soil) for shielding against secondary cosmic radiation.
The next venue beyond Mars and near-Earth asteroids is Saturn (radiation environment around Jupiter is intolerable). Getting astronauts to Saturn without killing them due to GCRs is an “interesting” problem. That’s something my great-great-grandchildren will have to solve. The Mars problem is the one that I’m focused on.
Baobo @54 said:
“won’t CAtS make it easy to menace the earth then? Nudge an asteroid in our path, and we won’t have to wait for Iran or global warming to kill us…”
Actually whacking bad guys with an asteroid is better than nuking them (no radioactive fallout).
If James Cameron were not such a self-referential putz, instead of doing a 3-D remake of Titanic, he would have done a 3-D examination of the wreck of K-129!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_submarine_K-129_(1960)
How much did the CIA really raise three miles from the bottom of the sea?
But that would make his grandstanding during the Deepwater Horizon blowout look like what it was, relentless self-promotion.
CATS and SSTO are achievable. A system designated Black Horse was a USAF SSTO concept utilizing an Aerospace vehicle that would launch horizontally and be refueled midair at an altitude of 60.000 feet and continue to LEO. Modern materials and Airframes make this concept even more possible today!
Katana #58:
Black Horse never was supposed to get to LEO. It was to eject an expendable upper stage that would. Ultimate payload to orbit was in the range of trivial.
It was developed under the idea that we had to make the space launch business look like the operation of a fighter unit and thus give employment to all those unemployed post-Cold War airplane people, instead of space launch engineers who were not “real” Air Force types. Thus the basic idea was much the same as that which drove the Shuttle, and it was just as bad an idea.
eggplant- the damage from small meteors is kinetic, but large collisions convert the object into a nuclear blast. That’s why most craters are round no matter what angle they came from. Maybe we shouldn’t invent cheap access to space – Iran might do something bad with it, or even someone at NASA.
ref: “thousands of knot per hour”…
Taking vast delight in navigational pedantry I must point out that a “knot” is already a measurement of velocity, i.e., a speed of one knot is one nautical mile per hour. Never, ever add “per hour” when speaking of speed in knots! The reason that speed in knots is used is to simplify navigation because a nautical mile is the lineal distance circumscribed on the earth’s surface in traversing exactly one minute of latitude, which is constant in all latitudes. By contrast, one minute of longitude is much more compressed nearer the poles than at the equator (where in fact it equals one minute of latitude), so it is not a fixed measure of distance.
55. RWE
I could have written what you did, because I’m on the same wave length when it comes to X-vehicle development. Remember NASP (X-30)? That was even more egregious in its misdirection than X-33, I think.
Agreed on a reusable first stage rather than an orbiter.
Eggplant @ 56 is right about secondary radiation. Cosmic rays we will probably just have to live with. Of greater concern are occasional eruptions from the sun. A water tank shelter is likely to be the answer to that problem. Zero gravity caused physiological deterioration can be solved with a large centrifuge.
More importantly, transportation to orbit need not be a major barrier. Rockets are surprisingly efficient in converting chemical energy to orbital energy. They are around 20+% efficient. Moreover, fuel is really cheap. I have only done the calculations for liquid hydrogen SSTO’s and a particular type of two stage rocket (based on NASA propellant cost numbers). The propellant cost works out to between $10 and $15 per pound of payload delivered to the ISS. Max Hunter told me his private numbers were substantially less than that!
Transportation cost, therefore, is bound up with a combination of disposable hardware and the large standing army. Max said that his Thor missile required a launch crew of only four. It also went from inert and housed in a shelter to erected, fully fueled, gyros spun up and launched in a handful of minutes – combat necessity. The DCX had a similar small launch crew.
There is an aerospace underground consensus developing that payload delivery costs to high LEO should not exceed $100 per payload pound. Escape from the Earth might be twice that. The $100 figure includes transportation system acquisition and amortization, all ground handling, insurance, and investment in a follow-on generation of rockets. Mining astroids looks to be a good economic deal with the right space system infrastructure.
With respect to the X33, my opinion is that NASA deliberately sabotaged that program to prevent competition with the Shuttle. First of all, they took the program away from SDIO where there was a clear management charter, and corporate will, to succeed. Second, Dan Goldin actually boasted that Lockheed was picked because it proposed the most risky technology. Third, after the failure of the carbon tanks Lockheed found a good solution with advanced aluminum tanks. It was at this point that Goldin pulled the plug on the X33. Draw your own conclusions.
Chet Richards @ 63 said:
“Transportation cost, therefore, is bound up with a combination of disposable hardware and the large standing army. … The DCX had a similar small launch crew. … There is an aerospace underground consensus developing that payload delivery costs to high LEO should not exceed $100 per payload pound.”
The magic number that I’ve heard is $100/kg. When we can get CAtS down to $100/kg then the whole Solar System opens to industrialization and colonization. Currently there is a glass floor at $10,000/kg. The Space Shuttle was sold to the US Congress as providing launch costs at $1000/kg. That number was a bald face lie. I’ve heard that the Space Shuttle’s actual number was $48,000/kg. SpaceX originally said they could get to LEO at $1000/kg. Unfortunately SpaceX bumped against the $10,000/kg glass floor along with everyone else. I am convinced that no practical Expendable Launch Vehicle (ELV) can get below $10,000 and only a Reusable Launch Vehicle (RLV) can get to the magic $100/kg. This RLV must be maintainable by a small crew of people (under 100). The RLV must be highly robust, i.e. you can leave it outside in the rain or a hailstorm. The RLV must run on cheap and safe fuel, i.e. kerosene NOT liquid hydrogen. Do not fixate on Isp (specific impulse). Instead, worry about the volumetric efficiency of the vehicle’s fuel and the effect of skin friction. The RLV’s structure must have a long life expectancy to amortize unit manufacturing costs over many missions. This requirement dictates that the structure NOT be aluminum and probably needs to be titanium that is annealed by reentry heating. The thermal protection system (TPS) needs to be very fault tolerant, i.e. a leading edge can hit a pelican or goose in flight resulting in significant degradation of the TPS but not result in catastrophic failure during reentry. That requirement dictates that the delicate silica tiles used in the Space Shuttle are not a TPS option and probably a titanium shingle, hafnium diboride or some other hot metal TPS are obligatory. The development costs for what I’ve just described would be huge, e.g. $10 billion plus or minus $5 billion. There is no way any private funding source is going to cover this. Until this CAtS system is up and running, all talk about mining the asteroids, etc. is fantasy, naivety or a public relations exercise.
This thread has run out of steam. Also this is comment #4 so I’m done.
Gosh, I came late to the party and it turns out our auspicious engineers have succeeded in desiccating the thread to a condition drier than a dead dingo’s you-know-what.
So let me try a different tack.
1956(ish) … Wretchard’s original reference.
– Were major American cities really as devoid of curb litter & busted sidewalks, and as conspicuously swept tidy, as I’ve seen in photos? Go check out the photo archive of Wichita KS from the 1950s: wichitaphotos.org . How clean everything looks. How proudly kept up.
– And check out these photos of a Burdine’s department store in Miami in the 1950s: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/gsc.5a22633/
or Best’s department store in Pennsylvania in 1957: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/gsc.5a25049/
Notice anything?
What leaps out at me is the acres and acres of open floor space. How roomy and luxurious it feels just looking at it. And how starkly different from department stores today, where floors are so crammed with merchandise that you can barely move between the racks without knocking something to the floor.
– Look at these folks dressed in their Sunday best for a flight on a Pan Am plane: http://www.etsy.com/listing/92006056/pan-american-world-airways-flight
These are civilized people. American cousins, 2 generations removed, of the dapperly dressed denizens of Downton Abbey.
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So what in the sam hill has happened to us?
The “Mad Men” phenomenon fascinates me. Viewers seem to be endlessly fascinated by the clothes, cocktails, and manners of the characters, as if aware and appropriately dismayed that that aspect of our American civilization (dressing up in a suit & hat, or dress & hat & gloves, to go to a — baseball game!!!) has been lost.
At the same time … a lot of conservatives have also — accurately, IMO — sussed out the undertone of Boomer-prog condescension that the series wears like a Fruit of the Loom tee under its starch-collared Van Heusen. The trajectory of the show has yet to play out but it appears to be suggesting that the seeds of the destruction of the world of Don & Betty Draper (beautiful, doomed dinosaurs) were already evident in 1960 (the story’s inception) and that, aw shucks, they had to go in order to make way for black secretaries and swinging single female ad executives. IOW, Mad Men is, editorially speaking, obsessed with all the usual “social issues” that you would expect Boomer progressive creators to be obsessed with — blacks, women and gays as victims, the 1960s as their unfettering.
Attitude towards the past, and the people of the past, is one of the signature divisions between conservatives and progressives, IMO. Progressives (as the label suggests) have this intrinsic judgmentalism & sense of moral superiority towards people from past generations. “WE are not like THOSE people. WE are more enlightened now. We are better, more tolerant, noble.” yadayadayada
Conservatives OTOH seem much more willing and able to take the past on its own terms, or at least as near as that can ever be done, because conservatives (again, as the label suggests) believe in that democracy of the dead, that our forebears built and believed some/many things worth preserving, and that setting oneself up as morally superior to one’s ancestors is a rather punkish and immature attitude.
Are racism and sexism worse sins, more odious character and cultural flaws, than hedonism, narcissism, ingratitude, arrogance, faithlessness and envy? I ask because the Boomer-prog mentality that is so comfortable in judging and condemning generations of past Americans for their racism and sexism seems entirely unaware that it, too, shall be judged by future generations, and that every ounce of gracelessness it pours like acid on generations past will, in turn, in time, be poured out upon it, as well.
Is it possible that the Americans who came before us were better people than we are? More committed; more resilient; more brave; more curious and ingenious and resourceful; tougher in mind, body, and spirit? And all this, in addition to being racists and sexists?
The conservative, IMO, is quite comfortable with the contradiction. Recognizes that human beings are flawed. That great human beings can and usually do have great flaws. That an ancestor who might well shame us in a present-day townhall setting amongst our neighbors of different skin colors … could, at the same time, still be the first person we would want on the parapet beside us when our American home is in peril.
OTOH if you want to watch a lefty’s head explode try suggesting to him/her that his/her feckless, transnationalist self would not be worthy to empty the spittoon of many a racist, sexist American patriot of yore.
What the lefties seem unwilling to acknowledge is that THEY are not the measure of all humanity. That one can deplore racism and still laud an ancestor who exhibited traits of honor, generosity, courage, and conviction, even if, yup, that ancestor held deplorable views on race.
The finger-wagging at past generations by the current crop of godless pc blame-America-first zealots running the media-education complex is not lost on traditional Americans.
The other odd thing about “Mad Men” to me is that I don’t recognize the characters, even though the show purports to be depicting “America in the 1960s.” Don & Betty Draper are not my parents, nor are they the parents of anyone I grew up with. Peggy’s proving-a-point naked strip in front of a male co-worker is completely outrageous even today, let alone by 1960s standards, and the most stunning thing about it is that NO ONE connected with the show appears to have recognized just how completely implausible that kind of thing would be to anyone outside the Hollywood bubble.
Apparently, in Tinseltown, no one can hear your soul scream.
As C.S. Lewis pointed out, the abolition of God is necessarily followed by the abolition of man. Today’s NASA as a Muslim self-esteem project, rather than an agency taking man to Mars, makes perfect sense in an age of self-shackling.