Clark:
That's the Anasari X-PrizeTM, isn't it? *grin*
Patrick: "Plan on it."
Gee. I will. Is that, then, somehow *bad* that we then will have *gotten* Bin Ladin? Isn't that what we've been *after?* I'm confused. Please explain.
All ---
Here's what Christopher Hitchens has to say on this subject, as of two days ago. I agree with him.
http://slate.msn.com/id/2107193/
Patrick ---
Geez, I've said the sort of thing you said in your original post back in the day, and I'd get roundly upbraided by both you and Teresa when I'd say it.
Glad to see you've finally seen the light. (Light. Hey, we've got a *motif* goin here, right? )
-- Tim Kyger
Paid political professional for past 15 years; politically active since 1970...and a FORMER fan, then, by that definition.
I love the theme song to The Daily Show. "Dog on Fire" -- the name of their theme appeals to me.
A laugh riot of a show.
Ya wanna go back to the Moon? (I do.) It's relatively easy, and relatively cheap.
Yes, you could go back to the moon, and in fact, you could do it for just a few billion dollars and in three years. That's if you do it in an intelligent way (which I'll outline in a moment). This plan would leave you with a capability to continue to have lunar missions, and start to build a moonbase. Per mission costs would be relatively high, but then, the current NASA plan will cost even more. And you'd be able to take stuff to the moon to build a base. Luna City, you betcha! (And who *knew* that Luna City would be at the South Pole? The South has risen again! )
All it requires is the development of a single new vehicle. We've got all the rockets we need, actually; lots of 'em. They're just not Saturn Vs, and they all cost a lot. You'd do things differently than you did Apollo, is all.
Alas, what is being bruited about over at NASA is some sort of program that will take tens of billions to do, and *might* get us back to the Moon by about 2020. Or so. Maybe. Possibly. That is, if in the meanwhile, NASA doesn't change its mind. Again.
And I make the bold prediction (ha!) that what'll happen is this. NASA's budget will be increased, and increased again; and then we'll shut down the Shuttle program (yea!!!) providing even more money at NASA for NASA to spend.
And just like the Space Station program, or the X-33 program, or the X-34 program, or the SLI program...NASA will spend money, make viewgraphs, and build and fly *nothing.*
And that's assuming that they get any bucks in the first place!
When I say NASA, please realize that I'm referring to the Code M Empire -- the Station/Shuttle folks. The self-licking ice cream cone of NASA that results in a $5 billion dollar a year performance art piece. The Shuttle goes up (well, maybe...) and supports the Station. And what does the Station do? It is the destination of the Shuttle. But with only two people on board, all that they can do is to maintain the Station in working order. So, what is the Shuttle for? To support the Station.
And it goes round and round and round and round, aand it does nothing, and it costs $5 billion a year. But it's a pretty sight when it goes over at night.
I think NASA ought to get itself an NEA grant for this spactacular art installation.
How would *I* go back to the Moon? Here's how. (And it won't happen. Not a chance.)
You buy a Russian Proton rocket launch. The payload will be a Delta IV upper stage; the newly developed "Centaur on steroids" stage. You put that puppy into Low Earth Orbit (LEO). Repeat with a second Centaur Supreme (Taco Bell trademark); dock both together. Now launch a Soyuz with a crew of three and dock *that* to the stack. (All three of these launchs can be purchased commercially; the Russians make great stuff for really cheap. And it's all built like a tank.) The Delta IV second stages are also available for purchase from Boeing. We can probably get a good group rate for buying in bulk.
Anybody remember what Soyuz was also called? Any hands? You? Yes? That's right. "Zond." Zond was actually *tested* coming back from the Moon, after a circumlunar flight. Twice.
We need a lander. It needs to be reusable. It also needs to be able to ferry cargo down to the Lunar surface, to build Luna City. *That's* the expensive part, and the part that will probably need some time and money. Two billion dollars to develop it from scratch? Probably that, or $4 billion. This is the ONLY expensive part of all of this.
But we know how to do it. Designs for such a lander were outlined 15 years ago. It's only a matter of some SIMPLE engineering.
If NASA develops this lander, it's gonna cost $15 billion, easy.
You launch this lander (fueled and crew-less) into orbit. On a Proton? A Delta IV? Ariane V? Don't know. But we have all of those big launchers available to us (as well as the Atlas V, too, and maybe even a Shuttle-C configuration).
If we need to, we can send the lander up in sections/modules.
Anyway, we dock the landerto the stack already in orbit, and then fire up Centaur Supreme Number One (making sure we give credit to trademark holder Taco Bell), and we're Off To The Moon.
We arrive at the Moon, and use the Centuar Supreme No. 1 to burn into orbit. Our intrepid crew gets into the Lander, and down they go. They do their One Small Step thing; they get back in; they return to orbit and rendezevous and dock with the Centaur Supremes and the Soyuz/Zond. Centaur Supreme No. 1 is now toast; we toss it. We use Centaur Supreme No. 2 to refuel the Lander; we always want to leave our campsite better off than how we first found it. We leave the Lander in Lunar orbit for the next mission. (We won't have to drag it along with us to the Moon next time around.) We fire up the remaining Centaur Supreme and we're off on our return to Earth. Cue the tickertape parade...
We *could* be back in three years. We could. But we won't be. We *might* be back by 2013, under the NASA plan. We might be.
But NASA's history says otherwise. *sigh*
Always be careful what you ask for. You may get it.
Well, Patrick, as to the debate on Hubble shutdown...that's actually been ongoing for about two years or so. Dr. John Bacall even chaired a panel on the subject that reported back in August or so. The argument was over whether or not to fly a *5th* Hubble servicing Shuttle flight or not (number 4 is the one that just got canceled). The reason that Hubble was going to be turned off about 2010 (by not flying a 5th servicing mission) was to be able to put monies into what was once called the Next Generation Space Telescope, which is now the James Webb Space Telescope. (*Shoulda* by rights been the Lyman Spitzer Space Telescope. But I digress...)
The Webb is due, or was due, to be launched about 2011 or 2012. It'll be a six meter telescope, as contrasted with the 2.4 meter Hubble. In other words, a MUCH bigger light bucket. It's mission? To see all the way back to the time of photon decoupling: First Light.
At six meters, it was almost going to be able to do that. Very probably. In any case, it was as big as could be done for a next step, and for the money the project was going to be able to get.
But there's something funny about all that First Light. It's light from 13.4 billion years ago in time, and from 13.4 billion light years away in space. It's so far away and so long ago that it's all redshifted into the near and mid infrared. So, the Webb isn't a very good optical telescope (like Hubble is). It's optimised to be a very good infrared telescope.
What you'd really want to do is to have both operating, side by side.
In any case, there's another bit to consider about the Webb. It's going to be sent to the Earth-Sun L2 point; that's the one starside in direction instead of Sunside. It's to put it into a position so that it receives as little heat radiation (i.e., stray infrared) from Earth, or the Moon, or whatever. This also means that it can't be repaired or serviced. And that's how it's being designed -- to be a oneshot that will work for however long it works (probably many, many years actually).
There isn't any real practical way to accelerate the building schedule of the Webb (so as to, perhaps, backstop Hubble) other than throwing LOTS of money at the program -- and even then it wouldn't be possible to get it into position for launch any sooner than say four years from now, no matter what you spend. So it's likely to not be a program that will be speeded up.
It *is* likely that the Webb *will* be a program that is protected by O'Keefe, however. Ya see, he named it...and James Webb is a hero of O'Keefe's. (Mine too.)
Before I begin...let me make a comment on the Hubble murder.
It isn't being done due to cost reasons (the cost, say, of a Shuttle mission: a cool billion bucks). And it isn't being done due to, say, Sean O'Keefe, the head of NASA, being unenthusiastic about space science (or O'Keefe carrying out the feeling that his higher-ups might be unenthusiastic about space science). No, the Hubble is being murdered because O'Keefe is chicken. Yellow. A coward. Buck buck buck buck...
To repair Hubble (or "service" it), you have to have a Shuttle mission to it. (Well, not actually; but in practical terms at this moment that's the case.) As David W has noted, the problem are the gyros. Hubble gyros have been failing at a mean rate of about one every six months to a year or so since the damn thing got launched. It has six on board; it needs three to do fine, long exposure science; it can just get by and do some crappy kinda science on two. When you get to just one, you close up shop.
Right now Hubble has three working gyros, and they're not sure about one of them. It looks like it's going to go within a few months. So it ain't 2007 we're talking about; it's just a few weeks.
On each and every Hubble servicing mission to date, they have had to replace about four gyros.
Hubble is in a 28 degree inclined to the equator orbit. Space Station Alpha is in a 56 degree orbit. If you launch to Hubble with the Shuttle, and you have a problem -- say, with a wing leading edge RCC panel, said panel having been hit by ice from the external tank during ascent -- there is no way you can get to the Space Station and dock, to take safe haven.
What Sean O'Keefe has decided, in his wisdom, is that there will never ever ever be another Shuttle flight that is not launched into a 56 degree orbit to rendezvous with the Space Station. Because if one were to do so, there *might* be a possibility that you might lose a Shuttle and crew again, since you then have no ability to abort to the Station.
Buck, buck, buck, buck...
Needless to say, the money to fly the next Hubble servicing mission *was* in the budget. And also needless to say, everyone at Johnson was ready, willing, and actively WANTING to fly SM-4 to Hubble. The only one with a weak heart here is Sean O'Keefe. Who doesn't want to possibly ever lose a Shuttle on his watch (a second time).
That said...on to the Bush space plan.
My reaction? Here are these guys, in the very narthex of *my* High Church of Spaceflight, and they're desecrating the altar.
Nothing I can put my finger on, mind you. In fact, the plan makes a lot of sense (if you share some of their assumptions that is). But nevertheless...I don't believe it.
Continued on next rock.
The following comments are probably far afield from commenting on a comment on Robert Heinlein, but what the heck; welcome to the blogosphere85
Jonathan Vos Post notes that I92ve been a 93space advocate94 for many years, but what he may not know is that I92ve been a student of the history of the politics of space and science for even longer. As well, I92m a pedant. So take cover, all!
Jonathan, there *wasn92t* any 93National Science Council94 under Eisenhower. Immediately after Sputnik, Ike *did* establish a 93President92s Science Advisory Council94 (93PSAC94 96 love those acronyms85) and he also appointed a Presidential science advisor; the very first official one. Ike92s first Science Advisor was Dr. James Killian, Jr., and he served from late 1957 through 1959, and when he left Dr. George Kistiakowsky did take over, and was there until JKF92s guy Dr. Jerome Wiesner took over. (Killian and Weisner were from MIT, too, BTW. FWIW.) You *did* spell 93Kistiakowsky94 right, which beats me (thank Ghu for spellcheck!).
Eisenhower actually *did* listen to Killian and Kistiakowsky. Of course, he started to listen to them circa November, 1957, many years into his Presidency. But he had access to piecemeal science advice before then from, for example, the AEC92s General Science Advisory Committee.
FDR did take science advice, and again, it was on a piecemeal basis, with Vannevar Bush trying to make it a more permanent and official function and position. Bush served into the Truman Administration and into the late 9140s, although Truman ignored him (this is well documented).
Kistiakowsky *was* on the PSAC when it was formed, so I92m assuming that he was the Vice Chair of that, as you noted.
But we now get to one of SF92s biggest Urban Legends: The one that has Heinlein getting something before the Truman Administration92s highest levels for consideration. We probably even know the proximate source of this Urban Legend: Ginny Heinlein herself. I cite Ginny Heinlein, because I heard this legend originally from her. It has RAH writing some sort of proposal up to do a space program and having it get as far as a Truman Cabinet meeting for consideration. Truman (according to Virginia Heinlein) turned to his science guy, Vannevar Bush, and said something like, 93Is this thing OK?94 And then V. Bush was reported to have said, 93No.94 And so Truman then passed on the proposal, and that was the end of it.
That's the story, anyway.
However, there is ABSOLUTELY NO DOCUMENTARY EVIDENCE THAT ANYTHING LIKE THIS EVER HAPPENED. I92ve looked. I92ve researched it. I wanted to write a paper on it for the AAS92 annual Space History competition. However, like all Urban Legends, there *are* elements of truth, *real* things, that fed and feed into this legend, and are probably the cause. (And so I now have a Heinlein connection for this post!)
Here92s the first 93real94 event that probably started this urban legend. Heinlein *did* write a paper, dated 17 August 1945, to his boss at the Philadelphia Navy Yard/Philadelphia Navy Aeronautical Station. This paper proposed that the Navy begin a program to develop 93war rockets94 that would lead to rockets capable of travel to the Moon. It was the very last thing Heinlein did there; he left that afternoon at 5pm, after dropping this paper on his now-former boss92 desk, leaving to move back to California: he'd just quit.
This paper and its treatment (it went nowhere and was totally ignored and not in any way acted upon) is probably the source of what some thought had gone up the chain to Truman to be turned down.
There *were* meetings at which various rocket development proposals went before Truman, and at which V. Bush pooh-poohed those proposals, and at which, as a result, said proposals were canceled by the Truman Administration. A great example of this is the funding for the MX-774 program, which is the direct ancestor rocket and program for all of the U.S.92 ICBMs and IRBMs; Truman cancelled it, and the three MX-774s only flew because what the Convair Corporation, which was the contractor, shoved in company money to finish and fly them. (It paid off; they were the ones selected in 1954 to lead the crash-program to build, fly, and field the Atlas ICBM.)
Truman canceled a *lot* of rocket and space-related programs in the 1947 time period as part of a larger bunch of defense cuts in order to try to return to a pre-WWII state of defense establishement, and also in an attempt to balance the Federal budget. FWIW.
The MX-774 program was cancelled at about the very same time that Heinlein was (a) getting a lot of stories published in the Saturday Evening Post, reaching a large audience with stfnal ideas for the first time (excepting, of course, Hiroshima and Nagasaki and that pesky atomic bomb thingy), as well as (b) the very same time that Heinlein was writing a series of articles, only one of which got published, advocating a system of orbital atomic bombs as a means of peacekeeping (a fictionalized version of this same proposal is *the* background of 93Space Cadet.94) He had an article, co-written by Lt. Caleb Laning USN, published in 93Colliers94 on 30 August 1947, 93Flight Into The Future.94 93Colliers,94 at that time, had a circulation of about 2 million or so, in a population of about 150 million; it had an incredible impact and readership. 93Colliers,94 also at this time, had an editor, Cornelius Ryan, who was sympathetic to stfnal content. Ryan is the editor who, in 1952, searched out Willy Ley and von Braun to write the landmark85er85Collier92s series on spaceflight. (Ryan also wrote the book 93The Longest Day.94 Yes, it's that movie, too.)
I think that it is these elements that have conflated together to form this particular urban legend.
Oh, and before I forget again, let me add two more absolutely vital books:
John Logsdon's "The Decision To Go To The Moon,"
and Asif A. Siddiqi's brillant history of the early Soviet Space program, "Challenge to Apollo."
Not a speck 'o' Heinlein in either of 'em.
Not a speck 'o' SF in either of 'em either.
In fact, I'd make a major case for SF *not* having much *if any* effect upon the major decisions that brought the early space programs of the US and the USSR into existence.
I can't get to the Clute article from my browser for some damn reason. It may be due to my current location: A secure undisclosed SCIF here deep in the bowels of the Pentagram.
In any case, I have to strongly differ with Clark Myers about RAH's purported influence upon the space program. ("Heretic!") Yeah, a lot of folks *were* baptized in the High Church of Space by Robert Heinlein. (I'm not one of them, BTW; I was gotten to first by Willy Ley and Fletcher Pratt.) But these RAH-influenced folks are almost all of a *second* generation; the ones who, like me, grew up with Apollo. And who are pissed off as hell that we don't have "2001" here in 2003...
And my generation *didn't* forge that long, first step to LEO. We had nothing to do with it. Our parents did.
It's a long argument to make. Read "The Rocket Team" and "The Rocket Societies" for starters. Next, knock back "The Spaceflight Revolution" by Dr. Wm. Sims Bainbridge. Finish it off with a "Colliers" magazine chaser, circa 1952, and make sure it comes with that special Disney topping, circa 1956. That first generation of astronautics came into existence (in a broad way) because of (a) guys wanting to Just Do Science (Van Allen, the Vanguard guys); (b) guys wanting to Smite The Enemy (ICBM developers in the U.S. and the USSR); and the space crazies who'd been the space crazies who turned *Heinlein* into a space crazy (Von Braun, Ley, Oberth). Sputnik had nothing to do with Heinlein, and neither did Vanguard 1 or Explorer 1...or Project Mercury, or Vostok. Or Gemini, or Apollo, or Soyuz, or Zond for that matter.
Nevertheless, he's still a hell of a read.
Jon Stewart and the show that he's on (which is *not* the Jon Stewart show by any means)is, to me, a scream. TimBob says check it out. As always, YMMV.
--- Tim Kyger (Fort Worth, Texas; a-yup)
Condolences to Teresa, indeed. I think I even once was at this particular Grandmother's house -- perhaps even twice, now that I think on it a bit.
And a Skylark? Yow! ((Are the NESFA folks
-aware- of the stuff that you get published? )) ((Here's to science fiction with bolts and rivits that stick up INTO the slipstream! ))
"Yo ho ho and a point of order!"
"Who's *that?*"
"Oh, that's just Greybeard, the Parlimentary Priate..."
--- with his parrot Redactor, no less!
Actually, you got married that afternoon, as I recall (me being the Maid of Honor), and then that evening left for Seattle, not some weeks later. It was a Friday, too, as I recall. (I could be wrong, though.)
And I further recall that youse two also had an 8-track of "Abby Road" in the car (a rental). But that's not important now...
What you also fail to mention is that, at least for me, the summer of IguanaCon II's soundtrack *was* the LP "Excitable Boy." That, and Al Di Meola's "Casino."
Patrick, you may not remember this, but I do clearly -- when you arrived back in Phoenix shortly before the beginning of summer, you brought with you a cassette tape of "Excitable Boy" for me (the obverse was Elvis Costello's "This Year's Model"). I still have that tape. That was my introduction to Zevon, as well as to E.C., and for that I am eternally grateful.
*sigh* Laura Nyro, and now Zevon. Damn it.
This is *so* true and right.
If I had the bucks, I'd do it.
Heck, this is a rounding error around the Bill Gates household.
What exactly *is* the course list to become a dissapated rich man, by the way? I was never able to find them listed in any of the college catalogs I ever looked at...
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| 2004 | 10 |
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| 2002 | 13 |
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