View 471 June 18 - 24, 2007 (original) (raw)
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
The new column is up, and we're caught up now at Chaos Manor Reviews.
We continue to add content to the SUBSCRIBER AREA over at Chaos Manor Reviews. It now includes:
Fiction in Progress:
Excerpts from Inferno 2
Excerpts from Mamelukes
Readers and Non-Fiction:
A Step Farther Out
Another Step Farther Out
California Sixth Year Reader
More will be added, and if we get some more subscribers, I'll look into making all this available in multiple formats.
The newest addition to the subscriber area is the old standby A Step Farther Out, complete with illustrations and the original introductions by Larry Niven and A. E. Van Vogt. This is courtesy of Mr. Steve Martin, who has done a beautiful job of formatting this work. The book was first published in the early 1980's. The purpose was to persuade people that we are not doomed, and we would live to see the 21st Century. After all, Isaac Asimov had said we wouldn't, and so had many academic economists and "ecologists". Computer Models of Doom abounded, and they all showed enormous die-offs of humans through famine and disease. The conventional wisdom was that we were doomed.
A Step Farther Out disputed that: we could, I argued, have not mere survival, but survival with style, using renewable resources.
We have made it to the 21st Century. Alas, many of the measures I proposed for Survival With Style have yet to be implemented; and A Step Farther Out, and its sequel Another Step Farther Out, both available in the subscriber area of Chaos Manor Reviews, remains relevant to our time.
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I am also mailing a copy of the pdf format edition of The Strategy of Technology by Stefan Possony, Jerry Pournelle, and Francis X. Kane to all Patron subscribers. Patron subscribers have kept this place going for years, and I haven't done much in return. I'm working on some new rewards, although I understand that most patrons have subscribed as support for what we do, not for the goodies. (An on-line edition of Strategy of Technology has always been available to all readers.)
This would be a good time tosubscribe, or if you haven't got around to doing it yet, to renew your subscription. And thanks again to all who help keep us going here.
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The copies of the pdf format of The Strategy of Technology were sent to all patron subscribers. As usual we had a number of returns. If you did not get yours, please tell me, and make sure I have your current email address; many of you change addresses without telling me, which is pretty reasonable -- I don't imagine telling me your subscription address is high on the red star list of things to do.
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NASA and Shuttle Design
Who Killed The Dream?
Most of this is from another conference, but it's of general interest:
We have told the story of how Space Shuttle went from being a simple reusable access to space pickup truck to a horse designed by a committee. One part of the design process was NASA's hope to take space access away from the Armed Services by making the Shuttle able to perform just about any mission the Armed Services wanted. In practice this mean USAF; the Navy in those days wasn't all that interested in space (although Arthur Clarke had already pointed out that if the human race is to survive, then for the vast majority of our history the word "ship" will mean "space ship"). The Air Force had a particular mission requirement: launch from Vandenberg, go over the Soviet Union, and return to land at Edwards AFB. This required a large cross range capability, which required wings, which dominated Shuttle design.
As one observer puts it, "the SAOAM (that's the Silly Ass Once Around Mission) requirement was dropped by the Air Force in 1974, two years after the SAOAM (along with the volume of the cargo bay) had defined the Shuttle's design."
All this is pretty well known, but it's worth repeating. In the course of discussion Dr. Phil Chapman, one time Antarctic explorer and former US Astronaut, said this, which I quote with his permission:
The payload bay was bigger than NASA needed because it was sized to carry the giant Big Bird reconnaissance satellite, but the invention of the CCD array made that system obsolete by 1973. When Big Bird and "the Soviet surveillance once-around mission" went away, NASA could have saved money by starting over with a new design -- but that would have been politically embarrassing, especially as deleting USAF participation would have made it entirely clear that the mission model used to justify the shuttle was not just absurdly optimistic but fraudulent.
NASA's need to save face in 1974 and thereafter has destroyed the dreams of two generations of space enthusiasts, cost us two shuttle crews, wasted 35 years and and several hundred billion dollars, turned the NASA human spaceflight program into a boondoggle that the public no longer supports, and wasted the opportunity to make an irrevocable leap into space that was afforded by the Cold War. Way to go, NASA.
Those responsible for this debacle who still survive (and I could name names) should be pilloried in stocks at the JSC Main Gate, so that citizens passing by could pelt them with vegetables. I would be happy to provide plenty of rotten fruit for the purpose.
Phil Chapman
I am not sure rotten vegetables would be appropriate. I suggest offal.
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Re: "Death of the Dream"
I don't understand why everyone keeps crapping all over NASA for their "failure" in the Shuttle design. Indeed, Chapman's quote in the View describes exactly how it WASN'T the fault of NASA!
Chapman claims that NASA ought to have gone back and re-done the Shuttle from square one. See, the problem there is that without Air Force money there WAS no Shuttle�and Air Force wouldn't provide money unless they got what they wanted. And the USAF fell in love with the idea of a "space plane"; they weren't interested in any of these silly old spam-in-a-can capsules or Big Dumb Pipes.
If you want to throw trash at someone, throw it at the USAF. As time goes by and I learn more about the military/scientific history of the twentieth century's latter half, my opinion of the USAF continues to descend.
Mike Powers
Many of us who worked with the Air Force, particularly those from Schriever's camp, have a different view.
NASA wanted control of space. This mean exclusive control. They wanted to be sure that everyone who had access to space was thoroughly NASA, a 45 year old PhD, a real astronaut; no simple jet jockeys and pilots, no flight engineers, and certainly no enlisted personnel. To keep control of space NASA offered to do any job anyone proposed. After all, hadn't they GONE TO THE MOON? This was NASA. (No, they hadn't gone to the Moon. General Phillips came and and took over Apollo, and directed the effort to go to the Moon; but that's another story.)
NASA's policies were deliberate. They knew precisely what they were doing. They were keeping USAF from having a space program. And the Navy.
If Navy and Air Force had been given the mission of developing space access and missions in space we would be on the Moon now.