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NASA Contractors Censoring Saturn V Info
cybrpnk2 writes "Get ready to surrender your data sheets, study reports and blueprints of the Saturn V to stay in compliance with ITAR. Armed guards are reportedly taking down and shredding old Saturn V posters from KSC office walls that show rough internal layouts of the vehicle, and a Web site that is a source for various digitized blueprints has been put on notice it may well be next. No word yet if the assignment of a Karl Rove protege high up in NASA has any connection."
After all, space has been opened for the enterprising public, maybe NASA wants to keep their edge in rocket development.
Tells you something about R&D if that 'edge' is 40+ years old...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
WTF is happening? First it was the availability of mobile coverage that was secretized, and now Saturn V?
For fu&k's sake, its Saturn V !!! Not the plans to latest Anti-Gravity Cavorite
And secondly, it has been available in school/college libraries for a long time now?
So will the SS take down http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_Vtoo ?
I guess if Rove & Co were living in ancient ages, they would have made sure that any reference to catapults were removed from Library of Alexandria?
How do you re-secretize something that is in Public Domain???
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
It's a damn shame that a nice launch vehicle also happens to make a nice ICBM, but the progress of getting off this rock is a teenie bit more important that keeping foreign countries from spending less than a few million dollars and a few years of research and development to make their own design. Meanwhile, the much harder problem of making a man rated rocket is being done over and over and over again. Talk about duplication of efforts.
How we know is more important than what we know.
No word yet if the assignment of a Karl Rove protege high up in NASA has any connection.
So why bother mentioning it unless you're trying to establish some sort of political agenda of your own?
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The real reason may be that now there are several countries developing long range missiles. Old Saturn design could well be used for such purpose.
I can't speak on behalf of NASA but I belive either NASA does not want competitors to use blueprints and re-adapt old tech. to make basic and efficient rockets. Could it be because of security issues? Can the blueprints lead to the creation of missiles? In any case, mass censoring of prints and pictures will not affect the free distribution of them - it's the web. you can't control it. *seeding blueprints via p2p networks*
Do I require the c-sig package to have a signature?
You've got it all wrong.
It's so they can hide the mini-bar from the kids...
What part of "a well regulated militia" do you not understand?
Aren't they a bit late to stop this information getting out? If it's been in the public domain for years then anyone interested in using it would already have a copy.
Just buy a new one from ebay: http://cgi.ebay.com/Apollo-Saturn-V-Plans-1967-Ama zing-Item_W0QQitemZ230155998873QQihZ013QQcategoryZ 13903QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
Seriously though, this must be some kind of silly bureaucratic mixup, someone overreacting to the new directive from above etc.
As if someone trying to build a freaking ICBM would not have already picked up every bit of public information (and more) regarding US, Soviet etc rocket technology.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
I would think older, simpler rocket designs would be more applicable to the needs of an emerging space power or rogue terrorist group. Why not censor and confiscate information about the older Titans that carried Gemini? Or the Redstone, Atlas, or even Little Joe rockets that propelled the Mercury program? Sure, they don't have the glamour or cachet of the Saturn V (which was, and still is, a beautiful machine), but I'm sure there are a lot of old technical manuals and such about those floating around. (I live in Central Florida, and have been to many estate sales of former NASA employees where there are tons of such material available. And, yes, I have profited quite nicely from them on eBay, thank you.)
But this is a futile effort -- 40 years of being in the public domain is a bit much to reverse and cover up now. Why do so many people still think that you can rein this stuff in after it's already been so widely disseminated? Especially in the Internet era -- it's like when someone wants something taken down from YouTube or some other site when millions have already viewed and downloaded the file, and copies and copies of copies and copies of copies of copies are multiplying like bunnies through the "tubes." Nowadays, once something is "out there" it's OUT, and you can no more undo the damage than you can "unexplode" a bomb.
"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." -- Eric Hoffer
Seriously, this is not your political blog, I'm no right winger, but even I'm getting sick of it.
The question that comes up is - How open do you think NASA should be? Can sharing of information (incl. blueprints) be so sensitive (to security? to prevent new companies from showing up?)? There are so much corporate interests in making money and humanity is not open-minded enough - there will always be a nut-head somewhere who will use the information to do something really bad. I wonder if the data from CERN will be censored as well.
Do I require the c-sig package to have a signature?
I love a bit of hyperbole. We'll make a tabloid out of slashdot yet! Some security minion becomes "armed security cop", becomes "armed guards".
What a pity no mention was made of what he was wearing, otherwise we would be on to his jackboots by now.
what the heck are you doing here then ?
Read radical news here
The Saturn V is one of the greatest accomplishments of American Engineering. To shroud it like this is nothing short of disrespectful to those who built it, not to mention a pretty startling reflection of the current status of science in America.
That all said, anybody who would consider using a Saturn 5 rocket as any sort of weapon is absolutely insane. The Saturn rockets were huge, and designed to deliver massive payloads (all of Skylab was launched via a single Saturn booster). The capacity of a Saturn rocket is just shy of 118 times as massive as the largest nuclear device ever constructed.
Needless to say, it'd be pretty damn difficult for anybody to hide a rocket that big, along with that much nuclear material.
Smaller rockets are scarier, because bombs don't need to be particularly heavy in order to cause serious damage, and because they can be easily concealed and launched at sea.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Hmm, do they really think they're gonna be successful in blotting out references to Saturn V info on the web?
Hey, censor-guys, lemme give you an example, see if you follow:
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
So why bother mentioning it unless you're trying to establish some sort of political agenda of your own?
If they're actually doing the deed, and it appears they are, what difference does the motivation of the whistle blower make? Why would you defend this heavy handed stupidity under any circumstances?
Anyone with the wherewithal to develop a launch vehicle can simply purchase one from the Russians...already assembled and working, complete with the ground support crew to service it. If the Russians can't handle the order they could go to the Chinese, India, or Pakistan. They're not going to try duplicating a multi-stage liquid fuel lift vehicle based on 30 year old technology.
How does that old phrase go? Strain out a gnat and swallow a camel? Something like that.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
...that this is just a Slashvertisement for up-ship.com?
./ revenue collection system, a la Roland Piquepaille et al?
The first thing most Slashdotters will have done is try to grab a copy of the Saturn V blueprints for themselves only to find that they're required to pay that site for them.
Has kdawson been manipulated yet again, or is it just another part of the
There is no benefit from hiding information about technology. Take the atom bomb as an example. Once you know its possible to build one you are halfway there. The leap wasnt that somebody succeded in building an atom bomb but rather that someone had a rough idea that it might work. Any country hellbent on making a missale can do so over a small period of years. They know its possible and building the knowledge up isnt that hard. Often the basic information (fuels, materials etc) are very well documented, all you need is to work out the kinks IRL. Sadly things like this hurts the US most since their engineers wont learn from previous mistakes and endavours. They have to relearn things over and over from person to person.
HTTP/1.1 400
All I see is a guy who makes his living selling memorabilia and documents screaming about the possibility of some of those docs becoming artificially scarce (in just a few short hours!) and the only corroboration he seems to have is what looks to be the excerpt of what could have been an email from an unknown person in some NASA office somewhere at Kennedy. Something smells.
Notmysig
WRONG! ...in order to keep our enemies from attacking the top secret laser-equipped moon bases he's built ...
They're CHENEY's haliburton-built moonbases. Rove only organises the black PR for them.
Sure about that? The two nations that have put people on the moon have done it through government initiative. Most (not all) big corporations have a very limited long term vision, they look to the next quarter and how their stock prices will do.
The last 40 years not much has happened in the private sector. I'm not talking about satelites.
... I can expect a dawn raid from armed police/soldiers to take back my Airfix model?
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
>The two nations that have put people on the moon have done it through government initiative
TWO nations?????
I've never seen it discussed anywhere that more than one country has put people on the moon.
Too bad they forgot to take down the Saturn V Flight Manual from their own site, huh?
g ov/19750063889_1975063889.pdf
http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.
"How do you re-secretize something that is in Public Domain???"
The crazy conspiracy theorist in me thinks that it might be a little worse than that. Maybe, they don't care about the Saturn V at all. Maybe its nothing more than a test, a social experiment of sorts. A test, of how effectively they can rewrite history and how much the public will care. And let us hope they are not successful, as if this is true and they are successful, we have much bigger concerns than the preservation of the history of space exploration on our hands.
Or maybe the crazy conspiracy theorist in me is just a little too crazy and I'm talking out of my ass. But we must watch this.
What next?
Will engineers have to design vehicles with their eyes closed?
People think this has something to do with ballistic missiles, but it might be something else. Our newly planned Ares rocket designs will use engines and possibly other elements derived from the Saturn rockets. Maybe they think the new vehicles might be targeted by terrorists or a foreign power for some reason. Does anyone know?
That was Mercury. Apollo was specifically designed for moving a 100,000 lb. payload including three live humans to the Moon and back. It was not designed as a missile nor could it be repurposed as one that would in any way better the on-hand ICBM stocks.
.....this isn't the rocket you're looking for.
I wonder they're going to remove the working examples of Saturn V [pdf] rockets that seem to populate the landscape.
Oh, never mind, they moved Marshall space flight center to Kenya
WTF?
Pavlov wouldn't be so famous if he'd used a can opener instead of a bell.
If the guard had half a brain, he'd know that ITAR has to do with export, not possession. Under ITAR, the version of IE that supports 128-bit encryption held the same classification; this didn't mean that you had to wipe your hard drive and go back to the 64-bit version, just that you couldn't give/sell/loan your computer to someone in another country. ITAR has no jurisdiction or concern with regard to ownership within the United States.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
... the same Saturn V that they said they couldn't build again even if they wanted to because the plans were lost? At least they were "in a cellar, with the light broken, behind a door marked 'Beware Of The Tigers'" when John Lewis went looking for them while researching for "Mining The Sky". After the book came out the NASA inspector general's office decided that sounded too sToOpId and said they were in fact in storage.
I've no doubt they'd destroy the lot of it. Look what the US made Canada do about the Avro Arrow when they wanted Canada to buy the BOMARC instead of sell great jets. This is what happens when corporate welfare reaches into the billions of dollars. NASA has to feed the hand that, um, that they feed.
Nothing for it but to buy as many of the data sets from that private site as possible, and if they make him shut down, keep sending them out to as many people and places as possible. It wouldn't even be copyright violation, because the plans weren't his. They belong to the people of the US, since they, via their whole owned subsidiaries NASA and the US government, paid for them.
We're supposed to have a law that says what's copyrighted by the government goes to the public. Everything we were doing at NIH came under that, and full text of all the research was to be made available for free through PubMed. These plans would fall under the same law.
I wonder what'll happen when they try to make the National Association of Rocketry stop selling the blueprints (http://www.nar.org/NARTS/NARTScatalog.pdf). The ATFE, waving the PATRIOT act came and tried to shove new laws down our throats, and so far we (with our sister organization Tripoli Rocketry Association) have held them off in federal court. Not too shabby for a bunch of old farts that can't give up their childhood hobby and have taken it to some truly awesome proportions. We don't take kindly to the government telling us to stop doing what we know good and well we have a right to do. Comes from working successfully with some of the most nit picky government agencies through the years. And this is just about the Saturn. We sell blueprints for some weapon system missiles. If they don't raise a stick about those, but do about the Saturn, you'll know this is about protecting their contract-children.
I fully expect them to try to push through paying the aerospace companies to develop what they developed 40 years ago. I expect them to announce building their new lifters based on the Saturn designs.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
The atom bombs dropped on Japan fit into B29 bombers (one each). That limits their upper weight to probably a couple tons. The Saturn V can accelerate 100 tons much of the way to the 60 miles high and 17,000 mph needed for orbit. If it was going to be used to pop Israel from Iran, (just to pick a coupla countries at random), it could probably move 300-400 tons worth - no need to kick it that high or fast. Think approx 150 Hiroshima-sized bombs on Israel - the ground zeroes would overlap.
"Overkill" seems an inadequate word. Keep in mind also that it took a huge chunk of the US GDP (not federal budget - gross domestic product) to achieve the moon shots the Saturns were built for.
No "terrorist" country is gonna be able to build anything that big for the next 1000 years.
The Saturns are dinosaurs - impressive, huge, and history.
Pavlov wouldn't be so famous if he'd used a can opener instead of a bell.
the PAC! peopleagainstcensorship.com
You know how far those poster "blueprints" will get you in building one of the most complex systems ever created by humans-- over 1 million systems comprise the saturn V.
I remember a comment from a literary critic - forget who- on much thriller writing from the early 20th century. One of the common themes was dastardly (insert enemy here) trying to steal the plans of the latest battleship. As he pointed out, you would need (in those days) an entire railway train to steal the plans for a battleship. You might be able to find out about the planned armament, and even the displacement and SHP, but these would certainly not help very much in building a copy.
Pining for the fjords
or is it just a plan to have me buy a set of plans for the Saturn V?? it worked.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
They weighed 5 tons. and the B-29's had to be specially outfitted to carry them. That works out to about 800 pounds per kiloton.
"Modern" weapon design (early 1960's) produces yields somewhere in the 1 kiloton per pound to 1 kiloton per kilogram range.
so does this mean that they are going to pack up and stow in a secret warehouse the saturn V that is on display at U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama? i mean heck, who needs a poster when you can drive over with a tape mesure and check out the real thing?
I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.
for crap submissions from paranoid "editors" who post stories of extremely dubious and easily dispelled content slurring political figures, at the peril of alienating long-time readers who are getting tired of this crap.
Caught you! sniveling little man, I made a valid point in light of today's contentious times that any censorship is wrong. The idea is to play to strength not to weakness. If the weakness of your position makes you afraid of Foxnews and any mention of the recent censorship drive by Moveon.org causes you to censor like Joe then I have won my point. Cry censor boy cry - take your ball home to the mommy state.
Added Pressly: "Oh, and by the way, milk is nothing but liquid meat."
The original work was done during the 50's. The saturn was started for the military and had 2-fold purpose. The first being to put into space a military/manned orbiting station for monitoring USSR. Once we automated that, the MOS concept went away. The second WAS to launch a nuke. Keep in mind that we did know how big our nukes would get. In particular, America was well aware of the development on Tsar and Eisenhower started the development of saturn. Fortunately, we moved away from the idea of building bigger nukes and decided that it was better to go with more nukes (bigger soldier vs. more soldiers).
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Man, the Inspiral Carpets are going to be gutted to find their songs are being censored!
--- Band: Joey Ultra
If you think rocket-science is all about space, you're utterly naive.
Of course they're censoring the Saturn V- it's an extremely complex ICBM (Inter-continental Ballistic Missile). Believe it or not, there are few countries out there with that level of rocketry available- notice that Iran and North Korea do not have ICBM's.
They have every right to censor this- and they should. The fewer nations have the ability to use this, the better.
Our enemies are still 50+ years behind us in ballistics. Recognize that the longer we keep this out of their hands, the better.
There's a good reason the space race was restricted to the cold war, and did not continue afterwards.
Does this mean they'll remove the thruster cones from the Smithsonian Air & space museum? I better destroy my photos from the museum trip.
ITAR could be a real problem for a LOT of activity if they chose to chase after people.
If you read the COPYING file in the Maxima computer algebra program, you will see the following paragraph:
"Distribution of such derivative works is subject to the U.S. Export
Administration Regulations (Title 15 CFR 768-799), which implements the
Export Administration Act of 1979, as amended, and/or the International
Traffic in Arms Regulations, of 12-6-84, (Title 22 CFR 121-130), which
implements the Arms Export Control Act (22 U.S.C. 2728) and may require
license for export."
It is included in the file at the request of the folks who gave the original distributor permission. Can anybody explain why a COMPUTER ALGEBRA PROGRAM would constitute something worth putting under ITAR? When did math become classified? (IIRC, Mathematica has similar restrictions. Maple is based in Canada - does that mean Maple is a security threat because it's a CAS not under US control?)
I have a feeling a rather impressive array of open source software tools COULD fall under this control, if someone wanted to be sufficiently nit-picky about it - after all a CAS apparently does. Never mind all the technology being sent overseas to get short term cost gains, for example. (It would be rather entertaining to see if they would try to put ITAR restrictions on programs written overseas but widely available here - "distributed authorship" might blow a few fuses.)
People overseas are just as smart as we are (hell we're educating the best of them in universities right here!) and will figure out anything we can given time. The wars being fought today aren't about short term technology advantages, and the benefits of wide technological literacy far outweigh any temporary slowdowns the "bad people" would have getting ahold of whatever they need.
Maybe they should ban all "smart people" from ever leaving the US, like the USSR tried to do with their high profile brains? Get a Phd, get assigned an "information security manager" you have to report to? If you show signs of being too "smart" you are forced to register so the powers that be can keep an eye on you? I don't know how else you prevent the spread of these ideas. Do you scan every CD leaving the country to make sure it doesn't contain a copy of Mathematica? How do you control information in a digital age?
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
The creator of this post (Jacob Smith) hereby releases it, and all of his other posts, into the public domain.
...Germany should issue a patent claim against NASA? Vergeltungswaffe 2 (V2) constitutes prior art :P
Analex - they certainly seem to be. I'm willing to bet that it's one idiot jobsworth in a brown uniform.
When did Slashdot get sucked into the Democrats' fever swamp?
What?
Are we sure this isn't a stunt by somebody who just wants to find all the cool Saturn V stuff at the NASA website?
;-).
I suspect the links that will result in the comments from this article will constitute the best Saturn V information index the NASA website has ever seen
One of the oft repeated tenets of those who believe in the moon landing hoax theory is that the Saturn V was such a piss poor design that it was no way robust enough to get us safely to the moon and back.
And so NASA now gives the hoax believers ammo, by confiscating and banning all internal plans and diagrams for the rocket. Obviously they don't want anyone to know...
Mir tut es leid, Menschen daß Einfältigfehlersuchenbaumfolgendenaffen sind.
Does this mean that SS/FBI/NSA/DIA agents will fine-comb every library/school in the US (CIA in the rest of the world), and tear out every page in books that depicts the interior of the Saturn V rocket?.
I better warn Conan the Librarian then....
That's all we need terrorist on the moon!
Ya know, most of the Shrub/Dick/Carl efforts to monopolize information tick me off. This hits harder than that, I am deeply saddened. The last time the USA had a public money supported program that captured the imagination was Apollo. Today we have no national dream; the only thing we hope for the end to the Iraq nightmare. So Irag's gonna cost us a trillion dollars -- what could we have done with that money? Not rob our kids for it? Invest in something with a positive ROI?
Mostly released by NASA and mostly copyright free. I'd like to see them get that genie back in the bottle.
Boeing was billing the gummint $1M/year to warehouse all the blueprints back in the late 1970s. Gummint decided to cut costs, so they stopped paying the storage fees. Since they didn't pay Boeing to microfilm the blueprints, Boeing shredded them. (And billed the gummint for shredding costs.)
At least the data will still be appreciated.
And may I suggest that anyone who wants to think freely consider going abroad themselves? Back to the Vietnam era - if you don't want to be co-opted, get out!!!
The guy telling people to take down gift shop diagrams will probably be canned. It's a waste of taxpayer dollars and he's obviously going overboard.
Why they censor an old piece of rocketry?
Is there some reason to this.The only thing i see connected to it the moon landing hoax conspiracy(which is ridicoulous btw).
Its 40 years since the design been used.
I work over at Marshall and we've had no such issues...
This was just some dim asswipe (probably republickin) government lackey being itself. The posters in question were bought at the gift shop. Heaven forbid this dim bulb of an ITAR CZAR ever crosses the threshold of that hotbed of anachary. Sticky red granny brains would be splattered all over the walls no doubt. Their corpses hauled to Gitmo to suffer a ten year inquisition laying in the hot sun with piss soaked sand bags over their heads. Serves em right.
>It's what they came up with that was buildable in the time allotted. Sure, NASA was working on single stage
>to orbit designs, but they knew SSTO wouldn't be doable until the 90's, and the challange was to get there
>before 1970. It was a pure case of 'throw enough money at the problem and you'll get results'.
I recently toured the Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville. Here is how the progression of our space program appears from that visit:
V2: Badass
Mercury: More Badass
Gemini: More Badass
Apollo: More Badass
Space Shuttle: Cost Effective
We aren't good enough at space travel yet to be focusing on Cost Effective. We need more "Badass" in our space program.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
It's what the Germans came up with in the time. That was a Werner von Braun machine, NOT a good ole' American ingenuity device.
The Apollo design was also inherently safe, and there were a number of ways of recovering or escaping from a disaster. Look at the redundancy which enabled Apollo 13 to re-jig its mission on the fly and survive a Service Module explosion!
The Apollo astronauts would also have survived both the the Space Shuttle tragedies. The Shuttle WAS and American design, and has a whole lot of design flaws. It can only make LEO, and failed in its main design objective of being cheap and re-usable.
If we want a decent space vehicle, we should re-engage German engineers to do it for us.
Does no one realize that Osama has access to money? I have it on good authority that all it takes to get into space is money. I'm sure Osama has enough, all he's waiting for is the right plan to spend the money on. We do not want to see Osama hiding in caves on the moon! Just imagine the kinds of devious attacks he could device while lurking in that moon cave. Help us stop the Lunar branch of Al Quaeda and its evil space jihad!
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Isn't this a dupe from, uh, the cold war.
What if Tetris was invented by Nazis?
That's it! Its a scam to drive up the price of Saturn V paraphernalia everywhere.
You do realize that Atlas and Titan were American designs and Gemini had a LOT of potential to do back then what we're trying to do now, don't you? Including EOR instead of LOR which makes much more sense.
And stop that German thing. Germany and Europe have had 40 years and they can't even make a GPS constellation work. They're not that good.
Ok, which one of these links is the story? This is ridiculous. Half of the time the text within the link doesn't tell you what the link will be about in these slashdot blurbs. Maybe the links should just be at the bottom and a each have a short description of where it goes.
simple, fast homepage with your links: http://www.ngumbi.com/
Net net: it doesn't take any one trying to crack down to make something ITAR controlled and spoil everyone's fun. It's bureaucracy in action, enforcing rules just to satisfy it's own self-worth. Much like Sarbanes-Oxley
#-#
Ad Astra Per Aspera
A rough road leads to the stars
Doesn't it make sense to revamp the Saturn 5? Wasn't there good, complete scientific data from all the times we launched the vehicles?
:)
Why, then, does it seem strange that they pull all the details from the public, in hopes it doesn't get sabatoged?
(Any more than allowing a drunken astronaut to fly it...)
--- For a good time mail uce@ftc.gov
"First off you don't have to use the whole thing, secondly double check a couple of facts, the primary fuel for the Saturn V system was LOX and kerosene."
The First stage used LOX and kerosene the second and third stages used LOX and H2.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Does this mean that my old pog container from Hardee's, shaped in the form of a Saturn V rocket (thanks to the Apollo 13 movie marketing scheme), is at risk?
The Saturn V is one of the greatest accomplishments of GERMAN Engineering. To shroud it like this is nothing short of disrespectful to those who built it, not to mention a pretty startling reflection of the current status of science in America.
There, fixed that for you......
Here's why:
After they spend $100 billion building it they'll be broke.
It will be easily visible by satallite imagery.
One bombs will likely be enough to take it out.
Although not nuclear, 1000 tons of liquid hydrogen and oxygen is enough to leave a dent in the earth and take out anyone working on the project as well as whatever warhead was near by.
If you think education is expensive, you should try ignorance -- Derek Bok, president of Harvard
This is because one contractor got into trouble over ITAR and the others are all working to avoid massive fines and restrictions. Distribution of Shuttle-related material that used to be public is also becoming restricted. I don't believe that it's that they're afraid that a terrorist group is going to build a Saturn V or Shuttle, it's that the principles involved in designing a huge rocket are the same as those for designing a smaller rocket.
It seems pretty foolish to try and "put the genie back in the bottle." Maybe they want space contractors to get into the habit so new designs are not made public.
Instead of an ICBM with explosives, use a Sat V. Much bigger fireball from the fuel alone. No need to pack explosives as well. At least if you want to go conventional instead of nuklear.
heh.
Free ?! Does that mean I can't get a Discount ?!
This message was
"have enemies, who could destroy a city of ours within minutes, so we did not have anything to fear."
John Kennedy reused those words, and the USSR actually had that capability. Now we're run by a bunch of idiot who are intent on creating a climate of fear. Congrats for buying in.
Are you really that ignorant, or are you shilling for the world's worst leader, George Bush?
This article is true... (or at the very least, the opinions over the action are the correct rationale)
This is an article that refers to a usenet post from a guy who claims to own a site that resales NASA material who proclaims he's been goosestepped on.
If this were a conservative talking about Clinton this guy would've been tracked down for verification.
But hey, it's a slam against the Bush administration... we can easily take this statement at face value...
It's not Karl Rove, it's Dick Cheney. He remodeled a Saturn V rocket into an outhouse and wants some privacy.
You can't take the sky from me...
One thing I've tried to look for (unsuccessfully) is for ancient aircraft technology. For example, the old MARS seaplane makes a great waterbomber. What if you could get the old plans, update them where you can, and build a new aircraft?
Slice it the other way - the Saturn V is a historical monument, and the knowledge and materials available today will allow anybody that wants to build a competing vehicle the ability to build a rocket that is much more efficient.
So the end result here is that somebody probably lost their mind and had to motivate that they actually were doing something to protect the security. There are other issues that are much more pressing than shredding Saturn V documents to improve security.
I can state a lot of interesting alternatives, I refrain from it just to avoid giving anybody with terrorist ideas a hint.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Goddard did. The Americans have invented all forms of transport apart from the horse and cart, which just shows you how backward Europe is.
We invented:
the rocket
the aeroplane
the blimp
the car
the speedboat
the monorail
the bermuda yacht
roller skates
If we hadn't sent them Fords they'd still be riding donkeys in Europeland!
Which came first Slashdot criticizing it, or Karl Rove doing it?
The problem here is KR's unqualified flunkies being placed in DOJ, NASA, FEMA, CIA and even senior NSA posts.
Furthermore we are talking about technology that is 40 years old now. Pretending that we can put that genie back in the bottle is exactly the sort of fantastic thinking that leads to terrible security. Even if you can not make it impossible for your enemies to obtain a secret, you can still make it harder -- every step of the way. True, but we're not talking about secrets, we're talking about information that has been freely available for decades. Even referring to it as a "secret" is dishonest, wishful thinking.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
I think most people here are completely missing the point.
Someone in a position of authority, in the United States, insisted that a publicly available poster be taken down and destroyed, then came by with security forces to ensure compliance. Compliance, for whatever reason, was achieved.
I'm in Canada. I'd fucking laugh at someone who told me to take down and destroy an inoffensive poster. I'd laugh even harder if they came by with a security guard too. In fact, I'm sure the security guard would be laughing too. And then I'd tell my fucking co-workers the tale and we'd all be slapping our knees and shaking our heads. And the poster would still be hanging there, having become a major office conversation piece.
I wonder what Stanley Milgram (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment) would say about this...
You are smart. Figure it out!
The webpage referenced in the original posting is *my* webpage. I talked to the General Dynamics ITAR compliance feller this morning; there is *not* an ITAR issue with the drawings and documents I have for sale on my webpage. As to the earlier poster-shredding incident, it's something he has no knowledge of, and is something that current GD/NASA policy would not have supported. Likely an isolated incident. Once again: problem resolved without casualties.
Note that providing the ITAR controlled information to
a foreign national is considered as a "deemed export",
so if the pictures are indeed ITAR controlled (which
seems foolish, but so be it), if a foreign national
could walk through the offices and look at it, that
would be a deemed export and might be in violation.
The original guy with the website issue has posted an update:
b rowse_thread/thread/a607576dfe803de0/265b512758989 6cf?hl=en#265b5127589896cf
http://groups.google.com/group/sci.space.history/
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
Personally, I'd love it if some of those darn terrorists decided to spend their time and effort on building ICBMs according to line-drawing plans from POSTERS of the Saturn V.
1) it would take them forever
2) when it inevitably exploded on launch, good odds that it would take all of their certainly-rare warheads, it would also likely take out all of their semi-capable scientific minds as well (if the explosion didn't get them, the post-explosion witch hunt for the scapegoat would)
Building a Saturn V *is* rocket science, you're not getting anything from a poster that's terribly critical anyway.
-Styopa
This may be Slashdot Heresy, but isn't the Saturn V design actually kind of buggy? As I recall, the "pogo" issue (high-frequency, high-amplitude variations in thrust) occurred during several launches, was not solved during the program, and was later learned to be extremely serious. There were a few engine shut-downs during launches, which made orbit anyways, because the shut-downs were relatively late in the firing, and there were lots of engines.
Aha, found a link.
This caused a lot of problems for Apollo 6 and Apollo 13, the latter of which of course later had much more serious problems.
It's not obvious that you would want to reproduce this, necessarily.
2*3*3*3*3*11*251
"I just send 'em, don't know where they come down - that's a different department", said Werner Von Braun.
Only three things are certain; death, taxes, and apocryphal quotations - Ben Franklin.
I think what really happened is someone who should know better was just overreacting. I suspect the guy from the export office was recently given some kind of badge and combined with waking up on the wrong side of the bed insighted some sort of unfortunate power trip.
:)
He needs to personally go back and apologize to everyone he made take down their posters and purchase replacements from the gift shop to make up for all the ones that were distroyed.
I would also point out that before this action was taken there were less people in the world who cared about downloading posters of an ancient rocket... Enjoy your stay at Gitmo
linky
... and they know NOTHING about shredding at KSC. Furthermore, the only reference to shredding at KSC is a second-hand anonymous quote. It was probably an isolated incident, if even...
/. for not doing even the slightest bit of research ... no other news source was carrying this stuff, the only place you could find it were two postings by Lowther on forums.nasaspaceflight.com and alt.space.history. But of course, when kdawson saw the reference to Karl Rove, he just couldn't help himself.
This whole thing was a lot of fud. Scott Lowther finally talked to GD, and there was NOTHING wrong with the content on his site
And shame on
Read somewhere that the factories themselves (i.e. one large enough to build the beast) were torn down. Also that about half of the plans (the ones that matter) are MIA.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
All of this drama over a note some blogger got about a NASA subcontractor's employee being an ass-hat.
Now it's the evil neo-cons and six degrees of GWB. There should be a tag for cryingwolf!
Yes, I've noticed that idiots really DO feel quite uncomfortable around smarter people. It's the realization of inferiority that makes being here sting. Try MySpace, that'll probably be more familiar to you.
> How about some discussion without the knee-jerk blame everything
> bad on conservatives because we have no platform or ideas of our own
> and so must rely on attacking the other guy partisanship?
^^^^ What you describe is a traditional REPUBLICAN tactic, not a democrat one. Or have you missed how every time a bush failing is exposed, they try to retort with: "But Clinton got a blowjob in the White House.", or "Clinton did this", or "Clinton did that", or Clinton... Clinton... Clinton?!?!?
According to my parents (I'm too young to remember, myself.) the reganistas did the same thing as the bushies... only it was Carter who was the scapegoat for all of reagan's failings... something about a Democrat-induced "malaise".
Hm, interesting story, I'll use it as an example when educating my kids, when the time comes. Thank you.
P.S. The optimal approach is to use the 'they' pronoun.
The saddest poem
But the credit for the invention of the rocket belongs to China. There is no way you can spin that, however much you try to sneer. By the way, all of the rockets used as weapons today are descended from the Chinese design, not from Goddard's: because they use solid fuel, they are very different from Goddard's liquid fueled rockets.
This is such a liberal tinfoil site its not even funny... my God you people are paranoid.
Such lurid evidence that the military/industrial complex actually did something right, and that it wasn't intended just to kill people, has to be a sore embarassment to the leaders of the current establishment.
Total mad props. Sorry I don't have mod points. Hundreds of /. dorks spilling thousands and thousands of words, and yours is the first to point out something I noticed immediately -- this is all based on a SINGLE USENET POST.
Again, props.
Actually, I've noticed the opposite.
;)
Smarter people tend to be uncomfortable around me.
I'd stay away from them, just on account of good manners, but they're so lively, in an edgy, nervous, morose sort of way. I can't wait to see what they'll come up with next. Even when they do the simplest things. I even like intelligent women.
Funny eh ?
I've been thinking about making a collection or something. Probably trade in my penny-blacks and olhos-de-boi and set up a... (what's it called when you collect smart people ? oh yeah ! A Foundadtion. Or an Academy). Right.
Anyway, YMMV
Damn. I need to learn to preview.
Should read less than 6 years.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
that NASA gave me during the moon launches, for my ideas that they patented in regards to habitats, solar roof shingles, recycling, and other mechanisms (back when I was a kid, I had no idea some of it was worth money, just wanted to help).
They can have them back when they pry them from my cold dead hands.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Unless you get the Ex-USSR to collectively destroy all copies of Soyuz /
Progress - from the '50s to the present-day versions. Not to mention the N1 (G1e or SL15), the -7 "" (R-7 Semyorka ), and all other versions of extremely modern, dangerous technology. Like
Historical:
Ariane 1 Ariane 2/3 Ariane 4 Atlas ICBM Atlas II Atlas III Black Arrow Delta III Diamant Energia Europa H-II J-I Juno I M-V N1 R-7 Semyorka Saturn I Saturn IB Saturn V Saturn INT-21 Scout Thor Titan (I, II, III, IIIB, IV) Vanguard Voskhod Vostok
Or even
Current:
Ariane 5 Atlas V Athena Cosmos-3M Delta II Delta IV Dnepr GSLV H-IIA Long March Minotaur Molniya Pegasus Proton PSLV Rockot Shavit Soyuz (U, FG, 2) Taurus Tsyklon Zenit
Nope. Not a chance.
Unless the objective is to keep the technology from falling into the hands of U.S. citizens. But, o:-o why would that be something that might become a "problem" ?
"I here tell there's this crowd on the intertubes that likes to shutdown sites that have interesting articles. Why it is un-American to have one group of people reading interesting things on the intertubes while denying others the same with their so-called slashdot effect. Think of the children."
-The Bipartisan Investigation To Close Hrmm Examine Slashdot (BITCHES)
Smart people need stupid people to do all the boring stuff that has always worked. Stupid people need smart people to think up new stuff that might work better. Isn't it a lovely coincidence that evolution has provided humanity with an optimal mix of smart and stupid people? The inferiority complex comes from society's over-valuation of the innovator role, and the undervaluation of the support role. If we valued according to the excellence of a person's contribution in their natural role, people wouldn't try to inhabit roles they were unsuited for. People wouldn't be jealous of others with differing abilities, because of the acknowledgment that all contributions are valuable, and that a system can't function optimally with the wrong mix of parts.
Because we over-value the leadership role, for instance, people who aren't leaders try to be leaders. This makes people suspicious of leaders. As people have no access to leaders who are part of the dominant cultural group, only their own leaders, they try to tear down the leaders that are accessible to them. As real leaders absolutely need the support and approval of their followers in order to lead, the real leaders can not inhabit their natural role. Instead, talentless fakers who are not inhibited by a natural leader's need to actually lead people where they want to go become the leaders of society. And they hate the rest of for "making" them be leaders. Noblesse Oblige, why is it an obligation? To a real leader, it feels like a motivation, not an obligation. And real leaders never feel superior to those they lead.
Similarly, real smart people do not feel superior because of their brains or ability to think logically. That need to feel superior is just a defense reaction to being put down all the time.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
They are going to be using some of the Saturn V technology in whatever they build to return us to the moon.
Of course Goddard made the first successful liguid-fueled rocket, although other teams all over the world were working on it at the same time. And, the Wright Brothers were the first team to succeed in powered takeoff of a plane, out of the many teams around the world. But rockets and guns were invented by the Chinese, as was spaghetti. The blimp was just a motorized balloon, invented by the French. The car was a German invention; Henry Ford simply applied mass production techniques to reduce the cost. The first practical motorized boat was developed by Fulton in the US, based on an English engine design. As to the other inventions, I can't comment. BTW, the Saturn V was a highly upscaled German V2, designed primarily by the mostly German-born American team. In spite of American propaganda, the Russian space effort was not based on German designs. The telling factors: -German and US designs call for a single set of pumps per combustion chamber, -Russian designs, which predate the early German designs, call for multiple combustion chambers for each set of pumps. Oh yes, since some of you will want to call me a foreigner; to some of you I am. Born and raised in New Jersey, resident at various times in New York, Connecticut, and Maryland.
If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? If not now, when?
I ordered my drawings. Once I build this thing, what do I fuel it with? Astronaut Farmer
He who said 1,000,000 monkeys on 1,000,000 typewriters would eventually type the great novel, never saw an AOL chat room
There's been a rash of public access restrictions to once considered open access government imagery since the late 90's. Even model planes, tanks, cars, ships, etc are threatened by this new fangled fleecing of what was once public domain.
Don't be surprised if some mega corp lawfirm strolls into a court room with some bureaucrats (easily bought) stamp of approval sell off of all information rights to the Saturn V and what not telling you to cease and desist building that pirated three foot tall model with your kid.
This is probably more akin to the sellout of the Smithsonian multimedia access rights to a private corporation than melodramatic "neocon" skullduggery. Face it people, your government, left and right, is selling you all out to the highest briber. Hell, they even sold off the human genome under Clintons watch. Now Bush follows suit with your favorite icons.
And people thought Clinton's selling access to the Lincoln bedroom was over the top. Bend over, grab your ankles and say thank you, may I have another to your new corporate masters as they rape your wallet and dignity.
The threat of someone building a Saturn V for the purpose of terrorism is analogous to the threat of someone building a second moon to shade us from sunlight and destroy our crops.
A Saturn V is a very big thing. Even one Saturn engine is a big thing. Since the posters don't have usable dimensions (to 0.001 in) they're about as useless as a photograph of a nuclear weapon is to the construction of a nuclear weapon.
I can understand the government's concern here. There is advanced Space Shuttle simulation software available for download on the internet. It even comes with a highly detailed Space Shuttle flight manual.
The most disturbing part is, nefarious organizations are willing to sell this top secret material to the the highest bidder. Just imagine if this were to fall into the hands of the terrorists.
I'm not sure what an Atari 2600 is. Probably some kind of NASA super computer...
Take off every Sig. For great justice.
So, if someone were to say at the end of a submission on NASA's current foibles:
"Bill Clinton was directly involved in the appointment of people who were in NASA at the time of drinking before flight incidents and still there at the time of the attempted sabotage of an ISS flight computer."
And I questioned that perhaps, maybe, just possibly it was included as a largely non sequitor slam against the Clinton administration, then I would be signaling that I didn't care about NASA's troubles and only cared for protecting the honor of the previous administration?
Huh? What Molniya* orbit are you on?
(* highly eccentric)
all people around world know that moon landing was faked, only Americans are blind
People are animals and as such, are competitive. Just like wolves and dogs and monkeys and every other thing that walks or crawls tests and fights to get the right to lead and breed, so do people.
People want to be leaders because leaders get all the resources. It works out, in that, people compete to lead, and therefor, those who can beat their way to the top are tested by society to be the fittest.
If you are not a leader of some sort, you really are a loser, and you just need to suck it up and accept it.
This is my sig.
Now lookie there, you've gone and ruined a perfectly good troll response to a troll post with all your 'logic' and 'rightness'. :-)
So the contractor didn't do it. Who did?
Life is irony, and nothing ever goes as planned.
What should we expect? The gov't continues to censor. They arrest protesters, ban books like America Deceived, stifle Ron Paul and watch as Europe jails Ernst Zundel.
Last link (before Stark County District Library bends to gov't will and drops the book):
America Deceived (book)
That's all you forgot... to mention "Think of the Children!"
Figure in the time/money and costs to design and build a command module that has friggin wings?
WTF people!
The shuttle is so far from "Cost Effective" its F'n Scary. It's taken what... nearly 30 years for Nasa to go BACK to a cost effective design that DOESN'T have stupid wings.
Cost effective... *sheesh*
Do a little research please. Oh wait... make that alittle research... wouldn't want to offend the alot gods!