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Mysterious Cold War Spacecraft Designs!
Kermit Woodall writes: "This is worth checking out: www.deepcold.com -- illustrated reports on US/Soviet cold war spacecraft designs that never saw completion." This site looks like a labor of love. I wonder what's being planned now that'll get scrapped but we won't know about till 2041 ...
I would like to remind all of you that the complete foundation of the US space program was not created by americans, but rather germans who, were.. uh.. 'offered' jobs here. We are still seeing their research affect our space program. A good example would be ion propulson research which was initiated by Von Braun, der father of der Amerikan space programme. Heck, nearly all of the small arms(among other things) the US Army uses today are copies or descendants of copies of German weapons. The M-60 machine gun is a good example of that.
Spooks don't disappear, they just change targets.
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
Some of these look pretty nice, but others look like rejects from 80's cartoons.
:)
I'm sure "Dyna Soar" could carve out a nice place in "The Transformers" or "G.I. Joe", but the name is still too cheesy. Good thing they didn't build it. Spiral looks pretty, though.
This is *definitely* a labor of love, looking at what he had to do to get the images to look nice. Three different programs, image maps, mapping textures to individual, hand-picked polygons, tweaking... Ugh. Too much work for me.
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Just asking, but I was under the impression that MOL and Dynasoar were either not secret or have been declassified since 1970, at least.
Another good site along these lines is the Encyclopedia Astronautica, if I could remember where it is.
(currently testing something about signatures here)
The only way that the amount of plutonium on Cassini could be dangerous to large numbers of people is if it were dispersed in a fine dust. That is simply impossible - or, to be scientifically precise, is so improbable as to be unworthy of consideration.
The plutonium stored in RTGs is mixed into a hard ceramic which is designed to crack into large pieces. The ceramic is encased in such a way that it is designed to survive re-entry.
The most dangerous thing that would happen from Cassini, or any other RTG-powered spacecraft, smashing into the earth, would be that it would land on someone's head.
The next most dangerous unplanned-reentry scenario, and the most likely scenario for plutonium poisoning of anyone, is that chunks of solid ceramic with plutonium oxide in them would smack small craters in the ground, and that some exceptionally stupid person would walk up to the craters and decide to devour the hot smoking projectiles buried in the craters. That's really the only (statistically feasible) way the plutonium could be ingested by anyone. Of course, eating the stuff probably wouldn't kill you anyway because you'd excrete it all in a day or two.
Indeed, the anti-Cassini activists even admitted that the most dangerous period was during launch - and during launch, the forces involved are simply not enough to disperse the plutonium in a dangerous manner. Worse-case scenario is a launch explosion which would scatter big ceramic chunks around the area - where they would sit and do no harm. A launch explosion simply cannot vaporize these things, they're very solidly built.
I worked out the odds a few years back when Cassini launched. The total statistical danger to human life posed by Cassini between its launch and its flyby turned out to be far smaller (by several orders of magnitude) than the danger, during the same period of time, that an unrecognized near-earth asteroid would smack the planet hard enough to cause mass extinction. If people are concerned about death from above, they should put their activist effort into programs to identify near-earth asteroids.
Jamie McCarthy
Jamie McCarthy
jamie.mccarthy.vg
AC, Thanx for the links! I've been looking for Saanger info for a while, with little luck.
J05H
gigantino.tv - Heavy but weighs nothing.
Who in their right corporate minds is going to subject a bunch of old people rich enough to afford it, and therefore rich enough to afford trained attack lawyers, to several G's of acceleration at liftoff?
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Think "hidden insights". In this case hidden from the person who had them. (you're right about the less than universally excellent quality of moderation these days, though)
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Search on the terms "South Vietnam" and "self-immolation". Always seemed pretty extreme to me.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Who actually signed the ABM and other treaties? Russia, or the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics? Are any other former USSR members obligated in any way by any of those treaties?
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
WvB was not involved in the Manhattan project as he was still an active Nazi working in Holland to build V2's. But otherwise yes he was the NASA director during the Saturn V effort.
Actually most of the Nazi scientists that formed the core of the American space program were hurried out of Germany at the end of the war and hidden away in military projects in the US. This was called 'Project Paperclip'. The reason they were hidden away was not because we were afraid that the Russians would get them. Instead it was because we KNEW they were actively being sought by Allied agencies for prosecution as war criminals for their activities during the war. It was a well known open secret that von Braun and company were ardent, respected, honored and low numbered Nazi party members, that they made extensive use of slave labor in camp Dora and other places, that the entire Nazi space medicine program was founded on torture and murder of victims in the camps and that the US gov't under Paperclip which was a joint project of the CIA and DIA was hiding these people. In several instances Paperclip arranged to 'kidnap' back several scientists who had actually been captured and detained in the US and overseas.
Because as we all know you can't shut off an SRB. So there must have a liquid fuel component or the story is incorrect.
The 68000 came out in the late seventies. IIRC one 68000 controls each of the shuttle's 3 main engines. They are mounted on the engines to avoid long control cables (and have to endure lots of g's due to vibration) and make sure that the engines don't explode in operation.
The shuttle's engines are used to nearly maximum of their power unlike earlier engines like Saturn's for example. Before engines had to be seriously oversized to be driven at a fraction of their available power just because of the danger of an explosion.
Bwahahahah! [Bob falls over laughing]
-=Bob
Local drugstore. Buy some hydrogen peroxide.
There is some US law, or UN regulation that bans RTGs, it was passed, and was set to go into effect like a month after Cassini was launched
This guy points out that the plutonium is in a pelittized form. Even if that stuff were to fall into earth orbit, it wouldnt kill us.
The reason nasa scraped use of RTGs is because of public outcry over the shooting of plutonium. The media would say, that their newest space craft is carring 6 pounds of plutonium, when only one pound is enouf to kill everybody on earth. Of course, the media dosent tell people it is in a ceramic form.
Taken directly from the deepcold website:
If the person who makes the images himself is saying they are fictional interpretations then, really, how can you argue as to authenticity? What I said was what he said on the web site. If I'm wrong, he's wrong.
If you read what I posted, I said:
Aside from the text describing the projects, the author states that these are total fabrications.
Meaning, that the text descriptions weren't fabrications.
If you read the fine print on this site, you'll see that all of these designs (save one) are made up by the site's author. Aside from the text describing the projects, the author states that these are total fabrications. While I suspect he's done his homework on making the designs look authentic, and they certainly look plausible, I have real doubts any "rogue nation" is going to get anything out of this site that they couldn't get out of "Avaiation Week."
What happens when these old folks come back? Their bones, which weren't so strong to begin with, would be far too weak from the loss of calcium. Astronauts in the primes of their lives who have spent months in space need a good deal of training and reconditioning before they return to normal, so imagine whatit would be like for an elderly person. Forget about weekend visits and the like, too...
:)
If you blast Grandpa into orbit, he ain't coming back.
-- John Truong
Does it really matter that the shuttle was originally designed in the late 70's? The F-117a was designed around the same time. Almost every one of our front line fighters (F-14, F-16, F-15), come from the 60's.
That doesn't mean that they are still based on technology from that era, though. All have updated computer systems, glass cockpits, better engines, etc... The platform might be a few decades old, but the technology is quite current.
I though the site (deepcold.com) is very beautifully crafted. The attention to detail, the planning, and the focus on process is great. I was very impressed by the page which describes the making the models, and I love how the whole thing was made by one (1) person USING CHEAP READILY AVAILABLE MACINTOSH SOFTWARE AND HARDWARE. This is a reminder to all of the creative, talented, amazing people out there, that it does take a 256 processor SGI Onix reality engine, with Softimage XSI, Maya , and Pro-Engineer, and a crew of 400 animators and designers and editors etc; to create really amazing work with creativity, perseverance and passion. People on this site have tons of great ideas, but spend too much time talking about them, and rumminating both about which tools to use and how much god damn linux nodes, it will take and wether to use overclocked atlhons, verses liquid cooled Alphas. /.ers get a grip and remember that why you are using this site (News for Nerds) in the first place is that you where the geeks in school who spent countless hours soldering together random parts to make your own computers, or in some cases film recorders. Instead of merely yapping, put your money where yo mouth is and challange, George Lukas and the like by producing your own "Starwars", (shieet!! he's even using All hd VIDEO for his next Episode 2) which hopefully wont SUCK as much as the first one --Did that freakky ridiculous comic relief character need to have a stupid Jamaican accent, and why is there so much ecco's of the Aryan Power movement in this movie (Darth Vador's mom has a German Accent?) . Why is it if Linux is so so great, there still isn't real strong video support in it, why is it that even BeOs has more tools to make a Starwars than all of the Linux distro's and it's legions of coders? Let's not even talk about content. it seems the Whole culture of linux is driven By 4 or 5 people, with a bunch of others just following and repeating everything they hear. This is supposedly the place of people who take their lives into their own hands, by making their own tools and thinking their own ideas. But all I really see here is a bunch of drones, who spend their time Politiking and creating more conjecture to pile on top of all the shit we already have, and none really pushing the enveloppe by creating something trully amazing. But I guess we only really need one Linus. the rest of youz, can just follow around, and FANTISIZE, which is a lot different than CREATING. (the only way things get done is by doing them) Sorry about being so High and Mighty but I needed to rant about something that I myself is as most of you are guilty of.
A) It's the X-Prize not X-Project
B) It doesn't have to be orbital, it only has to reach an altitude of 100 kilometers.
Our shuttle's new "glass" dash...
...some days you're the dog, some days you're the hydrant...
http://spacefligh t.nasa.gov/station/assembly/flights/2000/1r.html
Looks like the prototype minus some panels & the rapid-fire gun.
You're referring to an ongoing USAF project called the Airborne Laser (ABL). Contractors include Boeing, TRW, and Lockheed Martin.
Curiouser and curiouser...
Umm... no, the SR-71 doesn't look like queen amidala's ship, smartass. I appreciate the "kids" sentiment, tho...
Man these designs are nothing. You guys should see what the Air Force was working on in the 60's with Adolph Coors.
Coors originally had a ceramics manufacturing plant out in Colorado (someone feel free to correct me at any time if my dates and places slip) that the government used to send contracts to. He later opened a brewery up the road and became famous, but before that, his ceramics plant was manufacturing nuclear ramjet engine cores for a little Air Force black ops deal called Project Pluto.
Here's how it worked: You take a standard nuclear core, but honeycomb it so it's air-cooled. Set the thing inside a large ramjet-type design inside something the size of an ICBM, get the thing up to about Mach 2 with solid rocket boosters, and start up the engine. It'll last about six months of continuous operation, during which time you have the thing run laps over the Pacific. Give it cruise-missle-like guidance, load it up with strategic H-bombs, and when a war breaks out, simply cruise the things over to their intended targets at around Mach 6.
Nothing can catch them, or shoot them down, or even see them coming. It would have been the perfect first-strike weapon, or the perfect retalitory weapon, as there's no pilots to scramble out of bed, and all you have to do is push the button!
For several reasons, however, the program was cancelled, as they couldn't get around problems like, the exhaust is highly radioactive, consisting of particles of the ceramic core, and dust from the fuel rods themselves. Plus, nap-of-the-earth flight at supersonic speeds tends to annoy whoever's directly underneath, and our allies might get pissed at being horribly irradiated and defeaned as the thing screamed overhead.
Also, there were some difficulties with explaining away such an obvious terror weapon as a "defensive solution."
I stand corrected - forgot most of the details, just knew that Cassini had to come back by Earth, and the more hard-core environmentalists were having conniptions.
Thanks for the info!
Plat
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
Ok, so the guy did a really nice job with the rendered pictures, and the "cool" look of the site. So all in all it just all seem prefect.
;)
But there's just one tiny thing that's missing, PROOF ?
Ok so I guess if your an X-Files junky an tend to believe the whole conspiration theories it's ok the jump straight ahead a go for all this.
But I simply can't get the feeling of a "never published" Popular Mechanics about secret space programs out of my head
Just give me a tiny bit of FACTS, and I will shut up
Murphy(c)
Please do yourself a favor and go educate yourself a little bit about world religions before spouting such ignorant and prejudiced crap. Let me suggest Huston Smith's The Religions of Man as a starting point.
There are plenty of Muslim and Buddhist scientists and engineers out there. Yes, there are also those who are ignorant and fearful about science, but one can say the same about Chrsitians, Jews, Hindus, Pagans, and atheists.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
It'll cost me $50 to nuke Redmond and I get to use Linux or *BSD? What do I get when I spend $100+ for Windows?
A Blue Screen? That's it?
Devil Ducky
Devil Ducky
MY peers would get out of jury duty.
Actually the name for Russian Shuttle is "Buran" that means "Snow storm". "Energiya" (just Russian for 'energy') is a rocket booster intended to carry Buran into orbit. Energiya was capable of placing 100 metric ton payload into near-earth orbit. There were two launches of Energiya sometime around 1988. Buran has flown once in an automatic mode (without a crew on board and with fully automatic landing). In early 90s the program was discontinued because of the collapse of the Soviet Union and radical changes in Russian military doctrine. There is still a deteriorating gigantic launch pad for Energiya rockets at Baikonur in Kazakhstan. Three Burans were built and are kept somewhere in Russia now. There is a web site about this project http://www.buran.ru/ with some pretty pictures (all in Russian).
> I think it's in an amusement park somewhere at the moment. There was something like that in Gorky Park (now called 'Neskushnyi sad') in Moscow. But actually that was not Buran itself but its full-scale mockup originally used to test spaceship aerodynamics.
Russians had little ressources and electronic stuff, but they did make up for it with more inventivity and originality in design. Plus they are the only country on earth using metric system in their planes (ie altitude in meters) - which is cool.
We nuke it from orbit.. It's the only way to be sure.
What's my Karma Mr. Burns? "Excellent"
Don't all these pictures remind you of that Battlezone(the remake, not the original) game by Activision?
Now we just need to defend America from Washington..you decide which one..
----- LoboSoft specializes in Digital Language Lab
Because of Mr. Newton (and to a limited degree Mr. Einstein), the chances of a collision with the Earth during this fly by were approximately 0%
;-)
not to argue too fine a point here. But it most certainly is a finite percentage chance that the Cassini spacecraft could hit the earth, all that had to happen was for it to have a trajectory that brought it slightly to low in earth orbit, where the upper atmosphere would slow it down. As long as those NASA engineers calculate everything right, no problem, but we know they have a bit of the problem with the whole yard/meters thing
Spyky
Yeah, I'm a smartass. It's just the weather, sorry. But the Royal Starship is clearly SR-71 inspired. Check these out http://www.starwars.com/vehicles/royal_starship/1_ bg.html http://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/gallery/photo/SR-71/Small /EC97-43902-1.jpg http://mercury.spaceports.com/~dstar/ships/queenst arship.jpg
I am quite civilized, and I should be brought a beer immediately. -- Bruce Sterling
More likely, they had to wear space suits to survive the altitudes that the craft flew at...IIRC, the SR-71 flew at very high altitudes. Besides, no suit is going to protect from a crash in one of those babies...
"Nobody owns the fucking words man." - James Dean
Thumbs up for a really beautifully made page and greats pics :) Really worth taking a look at, damn interesting too. I never knew that these projects even had existed
UNIX _is_ userfriendly, it's just particular about who it's friends are....
Wow, this site is really fast - even when slashdotted! The webmaster, Dan, must have some pretty special setup.
Dude?
What have you been smoking?
Can I have some?
I remember reading in some newspaper some years ago (I think it was ~freshman year of high school) about the Navy and Air Force having spacecraft that they used for (???) something. Anyone know if that was true? Just planning stages? Or another media screwup? It'd be damn interesting to see some of those...
Technically you are right, there is no way for sound to be heard in a vacuum because there is nothing to carry the wave.
However, if you put a spaceship (bubble, rocket, etc..) up there, fill it with air, and start blasting Jimi Hendrix, you will most certainly hear it if you are inside the bubble.
Maybe that movie was all made in a theoretical super bubble. Invisible to the naked eye and strong enough to hold in enough air for the sound to be carried on!
Hey, it could happen..
Rami James
Pixel Pusher
ALST R&D Center, IL
--
rJames.org - illustration
They have a total of 5 of these computers, 3 of which are functioning during flight, with the others are in a standby mode, ready to be powered up at a moments notice. The 3 computers vote on all things they measure. Of one disagrees a set number of times, it is thrown out of the pool and a backup brought online in it's place. This is, I am sure, a vastly simplified explanation. All flight software is written in assembler and ADA.
Why did they not update these? I believe the newest CPU they use in space now is a special version of the 486 qualified for spaceflight (one replaced an old 286 on hubble I believe). Everything NASA sends in space has to be miltary quality or above (more above then anything). It MUST not fail or people will die! So, NASA has to go with proven technologies. Putting a Pentium !!! Xeon for the shuttles computer is just asking for trouble. The other reason they went mainframe with those is IO! The shuttle is fly by wire and every flight surface and reaction jet has multiple redundant sensors monitoring their function. They can't wait on a hd or memory to respond. MUST HAVE NO BOTTLENECKS! Lives are at stake. This is why computers in spacecraft are not as complex as you might think.
Go to NASA
Go to NASA's website to check out the FAQ on the shuttle.
Gorkman
You know they're watching us...
We can get the plutonium on the black market to power the thing.
Or you can just get it from.......oh no! It's the Lybians!!!
=)
Pablo Nevares, "the freshmaker".
Pablo Nevares, "the freshmaker".
For everyone who can't/won't do a google search themselves. ;-)
n um=10&lc=www&btnG=Google+Search BR> www.arnold.af.mil/aedc/systems/60- 933.htm
/coldwar.htm
/search?q=%2BSpiral+%2Bspacecraft&num=10&lc=www .html
Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL)
www.google.com/search?q =Air+Force+MOL+&num=10&lc=www
www.airspacemag.com/ ASM/Mag/Index/1998/JJ/Contents.html
www.farhills.org/s/lees/space/air force.htm
Dyna Soar
www.google.com/search?q=dynasoar&lc= www
www.google.com/search?q=dyna+soar+%2Bsmithsonian&
www.nasm.edu/galle ries/gal114/SpaceRace/sec500/sec540.htm
www.hq.nasa.gov/offi ce/pao/History/Timeline/1961-4.html
Blue Gemini
www.google.com/search?q=Bl ue+Gemini&num=10&lc=www
student.uq.edu.au/~s373901/land
www.hq.nasa.gov/office/ pao/History/SP-4203/ch6-2.htm
LK Lander
www.google.com/search? q=%2BLK+%2BLander&num=10&lc=www
www.interaxs.net/pub/spacey/lk1.htm
www.ninfinger.org/~sven/mode ls/sovietsp/lk.html
Spiral
www.google.com
www.mcs.net/~rusaerog/spiral/spiral
General Spacecraft info
www.rocketry.com/mwade/spaceflt.htm Encyclopedia Astronautica
LongTail SSH Brute Force analysis tool is here!
someone should send these things to romero and tell him to make a real game :o)
Got Rhinos?
Yes, you to can buy a BURAN and bankrupt yourself just like it bankrupted the Soviet Space Program! Russians say it beats the US Shuttle in every way (except safety) and they should know because they stole the US shuttle plans themselves to build it in the first place.
Notice the heat sheilding values on Buran aren't as good as the shuttle. Notice also that the higher lift/drag coeff isn't necessarily good because it means the ship won't slow down during re-entry as fast.
I would expect the Buran to be better in most ways, which it is. Buran benefitted from almost 8 more years of work/technological improvement. It may also be a second generation orbiter (since the CIA and NASA thinks espionage may have been involved in its design) with the US shuttle being the first generation.
So far I've gotten all my Karma from telling people they are wrong... :)
Free music from Jack Merlot.
I remember the Russians built a radio-controlled killer satilite back in the 60's. It was loaded w/ explosives and simply rammed into it's intended target, then kaboom.
"Reality is less than television."-Brian Oblivion
What really happened is that USAF trashed these plans because of much more promising UFO technology, that they aquired from the aliens in return for allowing them to do a few anal probes. Sounds like a good trade to me I just wish that they had stated it publicly. What the hell do I care if Bubba Joe Billy Bob John Boy Robinson, gets an anal probe as long as I get to ride or better yet fly one of those UFO's. ;)
I have to go I see some men in a black sedan pulling up.... later.
Environmentalists are their own worst enemy. ~tricklenews.com
It's one thing to pick up a few tons of fertilizer.. Where does one go shopping for rocket fuel, hmm?
Weapons of Mass Analysis
Here's a tip I found someplace.
To play DVD's with the Windows Media Player
1.Run Regedit
2.Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ MediaPlayer \ Player \ Settings
3.Create a new string EnableDVDUI
4.Give it a value of yes
5.The next time you start the Media Player, you can do a File / Open DVD
You should also be able to convert the output of DeCSS to mpeg, but I've never had the need to research that. DeCSS only removed the encryption, and therefore also the zoning. One has to find out the format of VOB files first, and since this is not a 'normal' format, you may have some trouble.
I usually use remote selector on my driver and player. Do a search for that, and I'm sure there may be related information hanging around there... there was last time, but I did not really care to read more. You may also want to follow LiViD developments, as they are basically working on the same thing... They have source for a player that can play raw VOB files from Linux AFAIK.
Hope this helps.
(domini@e.co.za)
The USAF McDonnell Blue Gemini looks cool and stuff, but as far as all these flying thingies are concerned : Jar-Jar Binks is still a far greater force!
-hehe-
"What if some group of Buddhist extremists decides to build its own Blue Gemini or ZVEZDA and rain death down upon Western civilization?"
What are they going to do, fly up into outer space and light themselves on fire at us??
"the Pentagon wouldn't have wasted its money on anything that wasn't completely feasible."
Ahhhh yes. $400 for a hammer but the Pentagon would never even dream of wasting money. Not them.
But what do I know? I'm going back to playing tennis with my yak...
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
Yes, there are. They're just extremely laid back and calm. :)
Why is this scored "2, Interesting"?
Is this not a reference to Falling Down and thus more deserving of "2, Funny"...
Apparently, the moderators do not ... I'm always on the lookout for obscure references in the forums that seem to pass others by ...
"got into the habit of having rockets regularly going up and down with a plutonium payload? " sorry, they have been for years. And these things are all but bullet-proof. I read about one satelite that cam crashing back to the ground that had one of these - they picked up the plutonium thingamajig, dusted it off, and plan on using it again. I admittedly have little first hand knowledge of these in particular, but being an ex-nuke industry type I can tell ya that a VAST majority of nuke-paranoia is total BS. It's a shame that an entire US industry is doomed to fail because of some misinformed zealots...
mas cerveza, por favor politically incorrect stu
>
>Ahhhh yes. $400 for a hammer but the Pentagon would never even dream of wasting money. Not them.
But a hammer is completely feasible, therefore the Pentagon would waste its money on a hammer.
The Economics of Website Security
1.) The Soviets had a series of reactor powered radar missions designed to look for ships. Most of those are still up there in high orbits - one dropped radioactive material on Canada in the late 1970's. Apollo 13 also had a RTG that I believe is in the Pacific ocean now.
2.) Note that every surface or air test of a Plutonium bomb released kilgrams of the stuff into the air! Over the life of the cold war there were literally metric tons of Plutonium released into our atmosphere by such tests. We're still here. If Cassini had hit the atmosphere over your house, you'ld be still here too.
BTW, I am just a space junkie, not a classified person, but I was aware of all of the missions in http://www.deepcold.com/ except for the Zvezda mission, which is just a modified Soyuz
Does anyone know what has been happening with the laser based satellite gun which is supposed to be able to shoot satellites down from a surface based site. Any links would be much appreciated. I was reading about this a couple of years back and some of the Air Force's research at Los Alamos but I haven't heard anything new or seen any press on it.
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
NPS Internet Solutions, LLC
www.npsis.com
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
www.haidacarver.com
The name was short for Dynamic Soaring, which is a concept that dates back to Sanger's original design for a german spaceplane in WWII. Given the less than humorous attitude of the Air Force, I doubt they intended it to be funny, though looking back on it now, it kinda is.
Link to a current article at SpaceDaily.com
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/laser-00 e.html
I believe there are more links at the end of the article.
There were actually 12 copies made, but only one was intended for space flight. And part-ownership of one of them may be for sale on ebay soon, sort of. This article at SpaceDaily.com gives details, and has a picture of the one for sale, which is currently used as a Theme Park attaction?!?!
no sound in space? nonsense! haven't u ever seen star wars?! arf arf
so u don't like the site then?
Who the crap moderated my post as "Insightful?" I shudder to think that someone who would take that post seriously weilds such power...
---
Dammit, my mom is not a Karma whore!
The threat of a small extremist group making a craft that is capable of going into orbit is highly unlikely.
Dude, didn't you see the episode of South Park where Starving Marvin finds the Marglark spacecraft?
uhmmmmm, i don't think that's what he was talking about. he was refering to the 'X-Prize' http://www.xprize.org/ something TOTALLY unrelated to NASA's push for a single stage to orbit aerospike design type reusable spacecraft, the X-33 being developed by Lockheed Martin and NASA. And i would HARDLY refer to it as a 'piece of junk', i dont know any other projects in the works that are going to reduce the cost of lofting payload into orbit by a factor of 10, DO YOU? can you at least cite reasons why it is such a piece of junk?
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
These things were canceled while the "Red Menace" was breathing down our necks. Furthermore, too much war is a problem here since Vietnam had something to do with the cancelation of some of these projects (it probably played a big part in finishing off Apollo too).
Give peace a chance, dude!
Of course, those who feared the second are just stupid. Blowing up on take-off is a serious possibility, but failing to orbit properly sure as hell isn't. NASA uses tactics like that all the time, and note that all the accidents you hear about involve in trying to land or them breaking up in deep space. Earth is an awful small target, even with gravity to contend with.
They did. US Spacecraft Squanto Terror, first launnched March 1964, a thor-launched spacecraft armed with nuclear explosives designed for attacking enemy spacecraft. By 1965, they were declared totally operational, capable of firing a missile to within a mile of their targets (with a nuke, that's good enough). A treaty was signed banning nuclear weaponry from space, and the Johnson Island launch facility was put out of service by 1975. I got this info from the Encyclopedia of US Spacecraft (Bison Books,1985).
If brute force doesn't work, you're not using enough.
It doesn't have to be an orbital flight (to make the contest a *little* easier), a suborbital flight will do just fine. It's that darn getting-into-space-in-the-first-place thing that's a bitch :P
--
Soma: because a gramme is better than a damn.
I mean, please! "DynaSoar" sounds too much like Dinosaur to me. Is this site a joke?
---K2K was here---
It is funny, though, that the Russian Mars probe, that crashed, has never been repeated, although they must have had two more to spare!
This is by far the longest the human race has gone without a war between major world powers. I wonder if it will be any different if we develop the technology to successfully win a nuclear war.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
Dyolf Knip
Dyolf Knip
And can someone with an aerospace engineering degree tell me what the difficulties are in building one? One would think they'd be easier to do than a rocket launch since you can get lift for the first 15 miles or so, as opposed to going straight up.
Dyolf Knip
Dyolf Knip
the Pentagon wouldn't have wasted its money on anything that wasn't completely feasible
Ummm... I work for the DoD, and more specifically, I work on a training system that's currently 3 years behind schedule, on it's second set of contractors, and has so far run up a tab of $70 Million to replace an ancient VAX 8650 system.
And the funny part is, when/if this new system works, it will cost about $1 Million more a year to upkeep than the old VAX will...
Wu-Tang Name: Half-Cut Skeleton Get your own Wu-Na
"Did these photoshop twiddlers ever think for a second that there are mutiple studies done that time reading comprehension and accuracy that PROVE that fonts, serif fonts, in fact, on a white background are easiest to read. White on grey is arrogantly obnoxious. "
Uhhh, Wrong. That study was for Black (actually "blue-black")serif fonts on White PAPER. Your monitor acts differently. White backgrounds on monitors are damaging (eye-strain) and not very easy to read. Actually for monitors, white SANS serif text on dk blue background works best.
Carry on, mate.
Reality does not happen until you analyze the dots. -Don DeLillo (Underworld)
Thanks, I book marked the link.
You get (5, insightful for understanding) obscure humor.
"I am an American. You are a sick asshole!!"
I do believe they did it (at least partly) for research purposes, even if Glenn pulled some strings. And I do believe they will get some information out of it. Theiy should be able to compare how fast the old guys bones weaken compared to "the fresh meat", how heart rythm and other vital functions are affected by zero gravity and so on.
---
This message has been ROT-13 encrypted twice for higher security.
use of the German scientists they kidnapped. Those taken by the Russians, many of them went straight to Siberia. Wait, lots of military research stations are out there... or was that just Goldeneye? Never mind me, my brain needs to be remounted. (=
When the pack animals stampede, it's time to soak the ground with blood to save the world. We fight, we die, we break our cursed bonds.
Chris 'coldacid' Charabaruk Meldstar Entertainment
But hey, if we sneak in a secret agent, he could probably crash the security system (esp. if it runs on win2k) and then we all storm in!
When the pack animals stampede, it's time to soak the ground with blood to save the world. We fight, we die, we break our cursed bonds.
Chris 'coldacid' Charabaruk Meldstar Entertainment
And I thought he also played a small role on the Manhattan Project too... Or are my sources, as usual, wrong? (=
(PS I do seriously have bad resources)
When the pack animals stampede, it's time to soak the ground with blood to save the world. We fight, we die, we break our cursed bonds.
Chris 'coldacid' Charabaruk Meldstar Entertainment
I read that story too....
It said that the [!!!] had [^^^^]
but I didn't believe it.
One day when I was hangin'
with the J A C [junior astronomera
club] drinkin' 160 proof Tequilla
on the corner. The Moon related to
me this story.
He and some of the gang were
out taking shots of the Persiede shower,
they saw some strange ?|?|?, which they
scoped with their 6" reflector with
camera mount. They got a dozen good shots,
which they presented at one of their
meetings. The next thing you know, These
[%&#] come busting in the door grabbing up the shots. They were leaning on on this kid
on the wall, [who didn't know a damm thing]
looking for the negatives and contact sheets.
So while I was taking a hit from somewhere behind me I heard a rattle like 8
and a half by 11 glossies. It looked like
what is now called a delta wing with a [!!!]
on its {*&*}. The kid they grabbed didn't
know any thing about the pictures much less
that.... when they ^&^.... Tuff.
By a careful evaluation of my rap
sheet you can {...{() } by careful!?!.
^ ^ ^ ^ ^
A MICROWAVE LASER can put
a lump in a politically
active chest. Aluminum foil
can stop it.
Well there is a story in bits & pieces
about how This kid who was born to a
couple of free masons, who had certain
interesting psychological qualities so they were
ordered to marry.
The child failed his godhood test at
6 months old so they've been using him as
a guinea pig ever since.
Being that the child didn't fail
the godhood test by much however they've
made attempts to control him during which
he discovered there secret language and
world order. {Comes in handy making turns
in heavy traffic.)
Don't know what paranoid english is,
A dialect of of Geeko/Nerdish perhaps?
For questions of a specific nature
[except for the location of the vacated
Nazibunker/weapons arsonal is] ask. It
might help me to write a webpage on the subject.
If your not a mason however the thought
of coming back to this page is scaring you.
^ ^ ^ ^ ^
You can be played like a puppet by
stimulating your internal organs with
the em effects of a MICROWAVE LASER
I believe the flying disc your ,easily bombed airstrips.
talking about is the Avro disk,
designed to take off vertically,
This would have allowed the
Nazis to loft flying wing configuireation
bombers w/o building extensive
It is rumored the that the Stealth people
made a number of midnight visits to
the captured model.
Its designers whereabouts is supposed
to be a mystery. The best possibility is hes being moved about by 'operation paperclip'
a gov. agency holding German scientists.
^ ^ ^ ^ ^
Just as laser surgery can
improve your sight
a MICROWAVE LASER can
blur it
Speaking of Superior Russian Design, that comment reminded me of the russian Tupolev-???, which was a Concorde lookalike. It had the same speed as the Concorde, gained the same altitude and made exactly the same deficits in operation. ;)
My hovercraft is full of eels
... [The Dyna Soar] could carry "stand-off" nuclear weapons into orbit. I am somewhat suprised that the United States government did not pursue this avenue relentlessly. In the era of McCarthyism and the Cuban Missile Crises the capability to launch nuclear arms into geo-syncronous orbit on a stand off mode would have seemingly been invaluble. And on another note, I wonder if the name of the thing is an intentional play on words or not ;-)
-- Les
The saga of the N1 (Russia's attempt at a Moon booster) is great - lots of little engines, makes big BOOM!
I love vegetarians - some of my favorite foods are vegetarians.
While not nearly enough has been done to keep the shuttles up to date, some work has been done on the shuttles -- recently, as reported on Slashdot I believe, Columbia was fitted with a "glass cockpit" -- LCD displays instead of hardwired controls. The links shows work that's been done on Columbia, plus other info about Columbia in general.
Wasn't John Glenn's return to space supposed to be to study the effects of low gravity on older people? I've heard it was just because he had pull as a US senator, but maybe we will get some valuable information out of this.
Amazing!
;)
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Dufus.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
It wasn't so much the media. People are always more willing to listen to first statements over later statements, bad news over good news, and simple answers over complex answers. Therefore, when the opponents of nuclear power, spread the simple bit of misinformation (knowingly or not) about plutonium, that was the bit that made the news. Anyone who tried to clean up the multiple errors had to fight that early impression, and was doomed to failure.
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
1) Buran has no engines. It uses that space for cargo instead.
2) Buran still uses the old tile method for heat shielding. The Space Shuttle no longer uses the original asbestos tile. Now they have a spray-on version that doesn't fall off like the tiles did.
DOesn't really matter, space shuttles are a loser's game anyhow right now. It costs too much to launch payload into orbit for most purposes -- big dumb rockets can be built for cheap to launch most payloads (except for people, who need safer handlikng). The only use for a space shuttle is for a manned space program, and even there, the Russians did just fine with "dumb" capsules for many years, building Mir without a shuttle even.
Buran, alas, is one of those great ideas that won't ever really fly.
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
Actually it is not thousand time more expensive then coal --- only slightly more. The reason nuclear energy is more expensive is because nuclear power station have to meet much more strict restrictions on emission of radioactive elements then coal ones. If coal power stations were required to emit as little radioactive elements as nuclear ones, coal power would be more expensive. Coal power stations in US emit about 2000 tons of torium and 800 tons of uranium yearly.
Is there an original version of the above somewhere written in coherent,non-paranoid English? It sounds as though it would be interesting.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
by 1967 - with unmanned Corona satellites effectively managing this task and military costs escalating in Vietnam - MOL [the Manned Orbital Laboratory] was cancelled.
// Zarf //
Darn it. At the same time that the Cold War inspired these great innovations, the money spent on Cold War related efforts killed them! Danged if you do... danged if you don't.
Ofcourse today, there isn't much reason to go into space because we have the internet. Otherwise wouldn't VC's be spending some of that cash on space-tech? Or... maybe they are... and we don't know about it because we're computer geeks?
-
[signature]
First of all, it's SDI, not "Star Wars."
Secondly, your facts are in error. SDI was not cancelled because "the new laser technology failed to materialise." The whole POINT of the SDI effort was to build simple kinetic energy interceptors using off the shelf parts. Lasers were never part of the game plan, except in a "in 20 years, if this becomes available we'll use that too" sort of way. (Unlike Joe Reporter, I actually bothered to read the government releases on the SDI program in NTIS.)
The kinetic energy interceptors WERE developed, with a fair degree of success. They were called "brilliant pebbles," which is a play on "smart rocks," which is slang for kinetic energy interceptors. They made the news, and I even saw video of one of them flying around. Unfortunately, since the press had never done their research in the first place, they covered the story as "hey, guess those lasers didn't work out," which is insulting given that the only people talking seriously about fielding lasers at that point were Time and Newsweek.
I recommend checking around at college or city libraries near you to see if you can browse the NTIS reports (Otherwise, you'd have to spend big bucks getting things mailed to you on microfiche). You will get a lot clearer picture of what was going on than was given in the mainstream press.
Jon
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
Buddhist Extremists Attack Temple
.... blah blah blah
Disassociated Press (DP) - Dhaka, Banglehesh
Bhodidharmilt, the paramilitary wing of the radical Buddhist extremist party staged a predawn raid at several area Christian churches this morning, killing at least 3 priests and kidnapping dozens of little children from daycare. "All I could see were orange robes, gas masks and blazing machine guns" said parishoner Albert Walker, who survived by hiding under a pew in the Choir Loft. "We were in the middle of morning vespers when we heard a commotions outside and suddenly the doors were bashed in with some strange god-headed battering ram, followed by dozens of bald headed, mantra chanting monks."
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
You can see pictures of the plane at this page.
My favorite factoid about Hyper-X is that the front half of the plane, more or less, is solid tungsten -- one of the densest materials there is; significantly denser than lead or even gold. Tungsten is very resistant to heat; and the weight serves as ballast to keep the pointy end forward -- but as I build model planes out of balsa wood using something 100 times as dense tickles my funny bone.
thad
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
The plutonium paranoia is a recent development. NASA flew RTGs on deep space missions and used them to power the ALSEP lunar experiment packages left on the Moon by the Apollo missions.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Are there any Buddhist extremists? I always thought Buddhists were really laid back and calm...
----- Documentation is worth it just to be able to answer all your mail with 'RTFM' - Alan Cox.
It is actually called the X Prize, and the web page is here.
Woogie
OK, I don't have details so you can file this response in the "rumour has it" category. However, the Metric/Imperial error seems to have been a *very* limited mistake caused by a misunderstanding between a supplier (I'm tempted to say Lockeed Martin but I may be well out on that one), and the customer (JPL, if I'm not mistaken).
I do not believe that this error - embarrassing and fundamentally unforgivable as it is - is a general indication of deterioration within NASA and related organisations. NASA, and JPL in particular, has a 30-year history of outstanding celestial navigation - work out the error-bars on getting Gallieo into Jovian orbit for instance.
So, to come back to the points above I personally would not be more wary today than during Cassini. You're extrapolating a single error into a systemic failure based on an extremely limited sample set.
Having said all that, I'd agree that the EI statement basically represents a pro-Cassini standpoint (after all, NASA's hardly likely to say "we'd like to launch this probe that will kill all life on earth if it blows up and oh by the way our launchers have a 20% failure rate"), although there's also something called Common Sense to be used.
RTGs (not russian honest-to-god Almaz reactors, but RTGs) have been flown, AND brought back to earth the "easy way" and the "hard way" (commonly known as "lithobraking" :-), with no measurable environmental damage. Apollo 13's RTG lies in 5 miles of water in the pacific after a 7KM/Sec re-entry, with no leakage. Yes, in theory there's enough Pu per RTG to eliminate humanity (for it's poisionous effects, not it's radioactivity). However that assumes you can magically transform that Pu from a solid lump contained in a foot-cubed package into sub-micron particles evenly distributed throughout the entire biosphere. Finding mechanisms to achieve this are somewhat problematic :-)
--
I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy
Cassini did not "orbit Earth for a few days". Cassini flew-by Earth, at an insignificant distance (astronomically speaking), and thus gained a significant velocity boost in exchange for stripping the Earth of a infinitesimal amount of it's orbital velocity about the sun.
Because of Mr. Newton (and to a limited degree Mr. Einstein), the chances of a collision with the Earth during this fly by were approximately 0% (to any degree of precision you choose). The environmentalist's assessment of the danger to the biosphere caused by this manoever was therefore even harder to justify than the fears of contamination during launch.
However I would have been very interested to have seen a competent arguement made over the increase in global warming that will *inevitably* result from the momentum-loss caused by Cassini - after all, our orbit is now *that much* closer to the sun :-).....
--
I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy
If you mean Cassini, yeah, people kinda went goofy over that. Even better - it actually had two chances to kill us all. After orbiting Venus for a little while for a gravitational boost, Cassini had to orbit Earth for a few days to do the same thing. Some were afraid the Saturn probe would somehow end up crashing through the atmosphere and spilling the plutonium all over the atmosphere and into our lungs.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
Well, AC - whoever you are - thank you!
For years I have tried to find out more information on the Antipodal Bomber, the only reference being some book I had checked out long ago from the library when I was a kid - I thought I might have dreamt the whole thing. Thank you for restoring my sanity!
BTW, this is what I live to see on the web - not all the commercial shit that is out there, but honest sites bringing cool information - information that is hard or impossible to find otherwise...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
And can someone with an aerospace engineering degree tell me what the difficulties are in building one? One would think they'd be easier to do than a rocket launch since you can get lift for the first 15 miles or so, as opposed to going straight up.
The big difficulty is heating and engines.
From memory, low earth orbital velocity is around mach 25.
For a space plane, you want to breathe oxygen from the atmosphere for as long as you can, this cuts down the amount of oxidizer you need to carry along.
However, the faster you go in the atmosphere, the greater the frictional drag, and the hotter you get. The fastest a known jet plane has gone in the atmosphere is about Mach 3.3, with the SR-71. To do this, it needed special alloys, a corrugated skin, and leaky fuel tanks (which seal when the plane heast up). To go faster, you need better materials, and perhaps a regeneratively cooled skin (cooled with liguid hydrogen or liquid methane perhaps). The fastest a known manned plane has gone (except for the shuttle) is Mach 6-ish, with the X-15. The X-15 was rocket powered, which brings us to the engine question.
A conventional jet engine burns fuel at subsonic speeds, meaning the airflow through the engine must be subsonic.
So what do supersonic planes do? They slow down the airflow using compressive shockwaves, generated by the nose, and engine inlet geometry. Each change in contour generates a small shockwave, which slows and compresses the airflow a little bit. You build enough little shockwaves, and your supersonic airflow becomes subsonic, and your engine works. You can only do this so much, though, and the maximum supersonic speed you can reasonably slow down is probably around Mach 3.3.
There is a theoretical solution though, the Supersonic Combustion Ramjet, or SCRamjet. The Scramjet burns fuel at supersonic velocities, and is theoritically capable of reaching Mach 25.
Of course, you need alloys that can withstand the heating of Mach 25, and you need a way to push the SCRamjet to supersonic speeds, which is either rockets or another jet engine.
Interestingly, a SCRamjet was scheduled to be tested on an X-15 flight, but the program was cancelled.
You may get better mileage from a rocket powered plane that gets some atmospheric oxygen, it lets you cut your takeoff mass.
Why did rockets get us into orbit? They are a brute force solution, bring everything with you you need to burn, and don't speed up until you're past the astmosphere.
Wild rumors? There have been plans for liquid methane cooled Mach 5 surveillance craft floating around which ride on their shockwave, and you can do a web search on Aurora.
Hope this helps,
George Haberberger
BSAE Penn State, 1988
There's an interesting analysis of the Cassini Environmental Impact Statement here. I'd take it with a grain of salt, but I'd take NASA's statements on the risks the same way. (Check out pre-Challenger estimates of risk on the Shuttle, for example.)
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
The russian shuttle was an almost exact copy of the US shuttle, but it was called 'Boran' or something similar. I think it's in an amusement park somewhere at the moment. Energija is a russian booster-rocket, quite a powerful one. Can't give much details since I don't know them :)
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
It was. The idea goes way back and I think the BIS (British Interplanetary Society) had some of the earliest ideas about this.
I am quite civilized, and I should be brought a beer immediately. -- Bruce Sterling
Kids these days. Jesus Christ.
I am quite civilized, and I should be brought a beer immediately. -- Bruce Sterling
John Walker's Website contains information on the Salyut 3 (Almaz) station that apparently carried an automatic cannon (like on a MiG fighter). Cosmonaut Pavel Popovich (the ?4?th person to fly in space) claims he flew on the station with the weapon aboard but it was only fired once to test when no cosmonauts were on board. They had to hook the station's thrusters into the controls so they would fire simultaneously to offset the thrust of the gun. Wierd stuff eh? Strange but (apparently) true.
I am quite civilized, and I should be brought a beer immediately. -- Bruce Sterling
Who are these idle millionaires who are supporting this prize? Why not invest this cash with a reputable company they think has major potential instead of setting up this little trust to hasten something that takes time to do right and when isn't done correctly might just kill test pilots and passengers?
I've seen this Diamandis character on TV, all he needs is a persian cat and a monocle and he's a damn Bond Villian. Nothing stinks of insincerity like talking about how there are expected casualties in the new privte space race. Screw him, no one's life is worth his prize and private developers should take the responsible and slow way to develop a reusable 'space' tourist craft.
...we get the plans (we can do it, we're SLASHDOT, we can do anything) and build our very own Zvesda (the Russian word for "star" BTW). We can get the plutonium on the black market to power the thing. I have some contacts in Sankt Petorburg who would be more than willing to help.
/. reader were to contribute just $50.
Once she is in orbit, we begin our conquest of Redmond. Fisrt, we launch an offensive against Microsoft's network of spy satillites (you know they're watching you!), then, drop a small nuke on M$ headquarters in Redmond.
We can raise the money without any problems, if every
Long Live TUX!!!
-----
Vikhozhu odin ya na darogu;
Skvoz' tuman kremnisti put' blectit;
Noch' tikha. Pystinya vnemlet bogu,
Rhapsody in Numbers
Molog
So Linus, what are we doing tonight?
So Linus, what are we going to do tonight?
The same thing we do every night Tux. Try to take over the world!
IIRC, the Tupolev-144 was largely a carbon copy of Concorde, at least in it's later incarnation. The first prototype (that flew before Concorde) was configured differently. It carried more passengers than Concorde, but was a lot less fuel efficient (It was heavier, and needed more power). Details on the amount of spying that took place can be found here. It seems that Soviet Russia certainly did not have her eye solely on the USA.
Of course, popular theory would suggest the West would never have stooped to spying back, until it was discovered that the famous crash at Le Bourget, which sank the Tupolev's reputation was caused by maneouvres to evade a French Mirage photo-reconaissance jet ;-)
There was a comparitively recent NASA experiment on supersonic transport, using the Tupolev as a basis.
This could be considered OT, but it shows exactly how much those on both sides of the Iron Curtain would throw at a project to keep them one step ahead (Not that I would relish a return to those dark old days).
- "How do we do it? Volume!" - The Bursar of Unseen University.
Even if Cassini had slammed into the earth, the plutonium was of insignificant quantity to do any damage, I believe. And had the rocket that launched Cassini exploded on launch, the RTG would have survived intact and still sealed. There was more danger due to falling debris than due to radiation from a comprimised RTG.
-Aerowolf
I used to work on this stuff at NorTek until I got laid off. I was pissed off for a while, until I discovered the internet. The site makes me nostalgic for the days when I was defending America from communism.
"I am an American. You are a sick asshole!!"
A lot of these designs sure look a lot like things I've read about in comics, but the best part is that they might actually work! Personally, I think it's a bit strange that NASA is still using the space shuttle, wich to my knowledge is built on tecnology from the (late) 70's. (Perhaps they work by the slogan "If it works, don't fix it"?) I suppose they have changed a few parts inside of it, but still, the design is about as old as I am. (And I sure wouldn't last long in space! ;-) ) The more interesting it will be to see if any of these will make it into orbit, and hopefully (I might be a bit egoistic here, but when I'm happy, I can start helping others being happy, right? And I know I'm not alone about this.) space vacations in no-gravity environment will be possible before I'm to old to participate. A weekend in space with friends or family might be great fun!
And then there is a scientific view of it. I don't know much about this, but the has been done research of how no gravity affect old people. How about living on "Mars retirement home" for a couple of months a year. Floating around, don't having to stand on those weary bones. I suppose there would be a back side to this, too, but I can't really think of any (except for the bones weakening from lack of "use"), since I don't have any first hand information (yet).
And profit. Of course, some (a lot) people will try to make money on this, and I know they would probably get mine. However, I don't think I'll live to se huge mining shuttles returning from other planets with minerals and other things. But if this science takes on part of the development speed that we see when it comes to computers, I might be prooven wrong about that.
Still, it is interesting to see that the designs look quite a bit like the old spaceships, landers and return capsules. Could it be that we found the best alternative "right away"?
---
This message has been ROT-13 encrypted twice for higher security.
I heard a funny story about this: the reason is computing power, the difference similar to the gulf between Playstaion 1 and 2. The science of modern stealth topology comes out of an old book by a Russian scientist who studied the effects of radar on simple polygons. The early designers of the stealth fighter used this book as their bible and created a computer simulation to generate the profile of the plane. The computer and program were very crude (by today's standards) and could only model a small number of primitive polygons.
Later versions of the software and hardware have become much more sophistiacted so we end up with profiles like that of the stealth bomber. Sleek and smooth.
Anyone looking for information on the Sanger spaceplane (which both Dyna-Soar and its Soviet equivalent were influenced by) should try here.
Actually, anyone interested in aerospace "what if"s might find the site that's on kinda interesting - lots of information on what Nazi Germany had waiting in the wings towards the end of the war - had the war gone on longer and Germany's industry not been pretty much reduced to rubble by that point. Simultaneously fascinating and frightening.
I really appreciate the hard work that these people went through to get this site up. It's an incredible piece of work, and I can imagine it being informative for both space buffs and the curious individual.
but...
I watched their movie about the LK Lunar Lander and, of course, they got it all wrong. There is no sound in space! . Will anyone ever get this one thing right? I mean, they easily could've put on Russian radio communications during landing (that would've been cool) and given the extraordinary detail they went into in this site, you'd think they wouldn't let something like that slip through.
All well, that's just a pet peeve of mine. Please return to your regular reading.
The site references this, but provides no link. You can visit it here. Quite a bit of information can be found there. Pictures, articles, etc.
-dwd-
I had thought that the nuclear propulsion method Niven/Pournelle proposed in Footfall had actually been a cold war design at one point.
I've been told that the U.S. Air Force is still pissed off about the cancellation of DynaSoar, Blue Gemini, and the "Blue Shuttle". They had a great program when they were flying the X-15. After that, all of their manned space programs were repeatedly cancelled in favor of NASA programs.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
There was actually an unmanned MOL test flight just before the project was cancelled. The Gemini capsule it carried was a refurbished one that had flown before and so was the first spacecraft to fly in space twice, about 20 years before the first shuttle flight. Here's a picture of a MOL Gemini and you can see the hatch in the heat shield that would lead back into the main part of the spaecraft. This actually isn't as dodgy as it sounds as during re-entry the heat would melt the hatch shut making it quite secure. Another interesting thing is that the Titan III rocket developed to launch MOL was eventually used to launch the Voyager probes and the Viking spacecraft to Mars. To know what they're currently doing up there, the best source is the Federation of American Scientists site, www.fas.org
...that the "50-50 concept model" of the space plane looked a lot like queen amidala's ship???
Zvezda would have been powered while in orbit by 2 plutonium radioisotope generators and had a rapid-fire gun for defense against killer-satellites.
I can see including an anti-satellite gun ("sputoyed" anyone?), but the last time NASA launched a probe with an RTG, people went ballistic (no pun intended). And that's for a one-time launch. You can imagine what the furor would be if either space agency got into the habit of having rockets regularly going up and down with a plutonium payload?
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
This just illustrates the great evil of our times: peace.
Just think what marvels would have been cooked up during the cold war if it had lasted. But, nooooo, we had to get all warm and fuzzy. Without the "Red Menace" breathing down our necks, we stopped out push for better, faster, cheaper ways to kill people.
All those talented designers...wasted on bridges and curing diseases...
---
Dammit, my mom is not a Karma whore!
1. completely onboard-computer operated
2. had solid fuel booster, which had more then enough power.
3. has been a rip-off the US Shuttle.
The onboard computer had less power then amiga, just that the code was superb (I wish people writing that code would write something for Linux). When they first fired this up, it flew so fast, that they had to shut the main thruster before it actually went to the orbit, because they were afraid they would loose it somewhere above Canada.
Now, talking about Superior Russian Design...
Madame Curie lived to be 82 after
,they didn't NEED me they
being exposed to concentrations of
radiation that would be equal to the
nuclear waste collected from running the entire
world for a century.She was rxposed every day for
five years and went on to live longer than 70
% of the readers might expect to share.
People used to wear false teeth & paint
their apartments with a yellow Uranium oxide,
which is slightly radioactive.
To run the planet would take 3 lbs of uranium a
year. The ash for running the planet for a 100
years would fit into your monitor box.
If You melted the 300 lbe of Uranium
into 5 tons of silicon oxide the resultant
rock would be as radioactive as any other rock.
Drop it into a subducting plate and it wouldn't
appear again for a billion years.
What they are burying in all those
containers is plastic gloves. The barrels are
half filled with plastic gloves.
So far the wealth and birthright of
2 generations have been looted by the ignorant
who profess a knowledge well beyond their
training or interest.
I could make a dosimeter that would
allow these SO CALLED CONCERNED CITIZENS
to pick lo rad foods at their grocers.
The cost in parts? less than a buck.
[a piece of cyano acrylate doped with
zinc oxide,a photodiode a cheap digital
watch chip & a case]
Picking between carrots or potatos
or apples grown in NATURALLY radioactive
soils or the lesser radioactive vegs&
meats would make the difference equal to
having been 200 miles down wind in the
fallout of a 1 megaton bomb. [difference in internalized rads after a month or so. But you
won't find a single one of them that
would go for $10 to protect themselves or
their beloved families. They advocate the destruction of the dreams & and aspiratione
of 2 generations on ideas they wouldn't invest a thin dime on.I can only believe that its because the know the truth. What other reason could there be.
In 1945 the US developed techniques that
allowed them to put together enough fissionble
material to make a bomb which a free mason president droped. Two years later the age of the UFO opened.
A number of years back I was an M P, I got
called to this traffic accident. This guy
who came thru the halt sign was doing a great
job of looking skunked. After trying to convince me that the girl in the other was responsible he
finally blurts out , hes a mason, switch the report around or things could get difficult for you. I had just come from sleeping over nuclear
weapons for six months, how bad could it be.
[The free masons are those guys who
accused themselves of killing several popes ,
stole money from same, (knights Templar)
caused the anti masonic third party with a
murder, branded themselves the beast by
placing their great seal on the dollar.
("He looks with favor upon our new world
order") And they brag they don't pay tickets;
they got contacts. So half my squad & ths desk seargent had a field day messing with me. It was only later I realized
could have lost the report or my junior could have wrote & signed it. If I had stuck it to the wrong guy they could easily own me today.
I don't khow how it looks to you , I know how it seemsto me. I don't think that the Space program is going to pass muster and looking at the pretty pictures doesn.t make it better
^ ^ ^ ^ ^
The guys with Desert
Storm syndrome have
been thoroughly checked
for chemical and
bacterial agents but
none were found. Sounds
the only other possibility is
MICROWAVE LASERl,
The X-Project is here to make sure great ideas happen. With a prize of 10 million dollars on the line the last time I heard there was about 50 contestents. The contest? The first reusable orbital craft. If you can design a craft that can carry 3 people, reach high enough altitudes to enter into orbit, return to earth, and send another 3 people up within a week, you win. There is supposedly a constestant ready to launch this summer, and many more within three years. Who needs governments, we have competition.
That's why I'm starting to wonder whether putting DeepCold.com on the Intneret was a safe move. The principal threat in the world today has shifted from rogue nation-states to paramilitary fringe groups. What if some group of Buddhist extremists decides to build its own Blue Gemini or ZVEZDA and rain death down upon Western civilization? Would-be terrorists have often gotten bomb plans off the Internet... wouldn't getting spaceship plans off the Internet be the logical progression? We couldn't even do a damn thing to stop it, since U.N. regulations prohibit nations from building weapons in space. I really don't want to have look up in the sky every day wondering if a nuclear missile is waiting up there with my name on it. Remember that kids' book "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs"? Well, picture a really, really violent version of that and you've sort of got what I have in mind. This is a fascinating subject, but as much as I hate to say it, some information is better off classified...
BTW, congrats to DeepCold.com for not suffering from the Slashdot Effect (yet).
Yu Suzuki
Yu Suzuki
Deamcast. It's thinking.
This is going to sound kind of silly, but has anyone else noticed a preferences for angularly joined planar surfaces in US designs and smooth curved surfaces in Soviet designs?
With the exception of the spacecraft that are meant to be stuck on top of a cylindrical rocket, the American designs featured on this site all look vaguely like modern stealth aircraft (which have good reason to look that way). Even compare the design of the Soviet lunar landar to the US LEM. The US LEM has a kind of geodesic look to it, wheras the Soviet design looks like an oblate spheroid.
I've heard that the Russian spacecraft are rather more handbuilt than US ones; could this somehow be related to the different look of Russian craft? Or is there a kind of aesthetic sense which consciouly or unconsciously crept into the designs so they would look "cool"?
Remember the old TV show, "Batman"? The Batmobile has the kind of angular design aesthetic that displaced the melted edge look of the 40's and 50's autos in the 60's. US aerospace designs seem to have undergone the same transition.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Here's a link to the russian space shuttle Buran in english. And for you dot.com millionaires it looks like you can buy one, in russian though. Real photos, not any of that CG crap. This one is especially sexy, can we say Brrrr, comrade?
This badboy's rocket, Energia, could lift 4 times the tonnage compared to the space shuttle's engine and booster, it even had an automatic landing program.
does that make you horny, baby?
ack! don't hit me! it was just a joke!
-- Dr. Eldarion --
It's not what it is, it's something else.