View 578 July 6 - 12, 2009 (original) (raw)
This week:
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Saturday, July 11, 2009
I've been a bit under the weather. I also have a plot problem. It's being solved but it is taking time and attention.
I've never met John Derbyshire, but we've corresponded and I am usually quite fond of his writings. I was taken aback by his latest article in National Review. He writes about the upcoming anniversary of Apollo 11 -- and calls it a folly. A magnificent folly, but a folly.
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/
Magnificent+folly.-a0202564161
Of course it's a shock to me. I worked on Apollo although I was out of the aerospace business by July, 1969; I was at that time Deputy Mayor of Los Angeles and involved in political activities including electing Congressman Barry Goldwater, Jr. Young Barry got on the Space Committee, and managed to keep NERVA going for a few years. In any event I was at a political yard party in Tolucca Lake when the Eagle landed; but I spent a good ten years working toward getting us to the Moon, and while I can't say my part in the effort was ever decisive, I was instrumental in developing the human factors data on which the Apollo moon suits were designed and chosen. As I told John Campbell, Jr. (editor of Analog Science Fiction) I pr0bably cooked more people than any cannibal. That would have been in the 1950's. I also interviewed with McDonnell Aircraft and met old man McDonnell in his big corner office overlooking the airport outside St. Louis. He liked to see the airplanes roll down the runway and take off, and told me he wasn't really interested in getting to space although his company had the Gemini contract.
Not long after that I got out of human factors and into operations research where I spent the rest of my aerospace career. My last aerospace assignment had to do with the Apollo mission, and I was one of the mission planners for Apollo -- 19, I think it was. Of course there was no Apollo 19, which is why I was no longer in aerospace by July, 2009, having spent several years as a professor and as head of the Pepperdine Research Institute doing Air Force strategic studies.
It's a shock to realize that many people can't remember a time when mankind had not been to the Moon. Those who grew up after Apollo do not, I think, realize just how tremendous an accomplishment the Moon landings were. Apollo 11 was the second most complex activity in human history; the most complex took place on the 6th of June, 1944. D-Day involved even more people doing even more tasks than Apollo, but nothing else we ever did equals those actions, at least for events that happened in one to several days. Moreover, when Kennedy said we were going to the Moon, most of those who had to make it happen were certain that it couldn't be done in under ten years. Chris Kraft was one of them. Werner von Braun said he could make it happen, and it would not have happened without him, but the actual credit for getting the mission accomplished on time goes to Lt. General Samuel Phillips. To General Phillips this was a mission, and it was his job to make it happen. He was not building technology or trying to make the United States a spacefaring nation.
Years after Apollo I had a conversation with John R. Pierce, Chief Technologist at Jet Propulsion Laboratory. John said that we'd made a mistake. In Heinlein's future history, we go to the moon in stages first developing sub-orbital capabilities, then satellites, and finally went to the Moon; and we should have done it that way this time.
At the time I got somewhat angry in my disagreement with him, but it's pretty clear John was right. He really meant that we should have learned to build space ships, real reusable ships that could fly suborbital, then orbital, then be refueled in orbit -- rather than developing a big disintegrating totem pole that could only be used once. I think he was right, and we may have to do it all over again before we can become a space-faring nation. Indeed, I said as much as Chairman of the Citizens Advisory Council on National Space Policy when we wrote the report "America a Space Faring Nation," and later when we submitted the proposal for SSX which became the DC/X, an actual reusable space ship (although it never got to space). If you're interested in that, it's inthe SSX Concept and other papers referenced in there.
Apollo didn't have to be a folly. There were plenty of ways to follow on with real development to become a space faring nation. Lyndon Johnson, not my favorite President, understood how decisive space supremacy could be. Reagan understood the value of space. Bush I wasn't interested, and we got DC/X only because Dan Quayle was chairman of the National Space Council and Bush let Quayle have his way, sort of, only there weren't funds for the full SSX.
As to why we ought to be a spacefaring nation, I've said it many times and in many places, but it's worth saying again: 90% of the resources easily available to mankind are not on the Earth. They're in space. I said all that in A Step Farther Out and it's still true.
I've been trying to find a way you can buy a copy of The Lightship, which I remember being performed by Cynthia McQuillan who I think wrote it. I have heard it performed by Leslie Fish as well. I did find the lyrics, and they say it all:
THE LIGHTSHIP
The full earth stands at our left hands
and the pale moon on the right.
All fire and steel, our catherine wheel
rolls through the endless night.
The sun may burn at full astern,
as the power cells drink deep;
both day and night are in our sight
from waking unto sleep.[Refrain]
And we spin long light from the glory of the sun,
yes, we spin long light from the glory of the sun,
and the light gems glow on the earth below,
in the bright web spun from the glory of the sun.The powers run from the brazen sun,
through the web of heaven's height
to the opal world, like a clouded pearl
strung on a thread of light.
And we pace our turn from bow to stern
through the elfin summer field,
where the power cells like flower bells
drink all the sun can yield.And we spin long light from the glory of the sun,
yes, we spin long light from the glory of the sun,
and the light gems glow on the earth below,
in the bright web spun from the glory of the sun.The well paced blips of the factory ships
slide past our orbit's brink
like a swarm of bees in the girder trees,
come to our flowers to drink.
And the earth is clean as a springtime dream,
no factory smokes appear,
for they've left the land to the gardener's hand,
and they all are circling here.And we spin long light from the glory of the sun,
yes, we spin long light from the glory of the sun,
and the light gems glow on the earth below,
in the bright web spun from the glory of the sun.
I have it on a very old tape.
I do have these songs by Julia Ecklar on the cost of Apollo. They may give some hint of the emotions that drove the program.Memorial. The Phoenix.
Apollo became a magnificent folly; but it need not have been that at all. It's still raining soup out there in space, and we are hunting up forks instead of making soup bowls.
(And see next item on space power.Discussion continues next week.)
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Subject More on Space-Based Power
Jerry,
A little more on space-based solar power. What do you think of these efforts?
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/
2009/07/will-the-stars-align-for-space-
based-solar-power.ars
-- Dwayne Phillips
I think that almost anything is cheap compared to what we are doing. We send trillions to the middle east, we are playing goofy games with cap and trade, we throw money in directions that will not bring us energy cheap or expensive: for a lot less than the stimulus we could build a TVA in space. We got TVA out of the Roosevelt recovery program.
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