The End of an Era

[Black Aeronaut]

I'm gonna go on a little rant here, so please bear with me. I do have a point I'd like to make.  Critique gracefully accepted, so long as it is gracefully offered.

If you want to get down to the root of why manned space exploration isn't economical, then here it is: space holds little tactical value, save as a place to hang cameras.

That's it. The only reason why NASA came about was as a response to the Soviet space program - who just happened to come up with the idea of putting a transponder up there just to see if it was feasible. Although they weren't the first. Hitler originally wanted to have colonies (and probably weapons platforms) in orbit - give the poor sick twisted bastard credit: he was certainly visionary.

Anywho, NASA, at it's roots, was a military operation. Don't ask me why they decided to split it off from the newly created Air Force - I guess it made it look a little more friendly to the taxpayers. Their sole purpose at the time was really to compete with those crazy Reds. It started first with satellites, then with manned capsules. Soon enough, the Moon was being eyed hungrily, with Mars, maybe, as dessert.

You see, it was all about invisible threats - that insane craze that right-wingers worked themselves into a frothing frenzy over. These people were so deathly afraid that the Russians were gonna pull something with their space gimmick, and we just had to be a step ahead of them... only to their chagrin, we were always a step behind.

First satellite in stable orbit? Russians.

First man to orbit the Earth (and not the half-assed little hop we did in response)? Russians.

First woman to orbit the Earth (in what I see as a flagrant sin of pride)? Russians. And she was originally a textiles worker!

It was the Moon that changed it all. Soviet workmanship left something to be desired, especially after one particularly nasty disaster wherein an entire Russian crew perished when a atmospheric pressure equalization valve opened far too early during re-entry. Not to say that the American side didn't suffer it's setbacks (Apollo 1 Fire), but our side was quick to find flaws and correct them. Meanwhile, in Russia the program was looked upon with distrust as more and more equipment proved to be... flaky.

When the United States put a man on the moon, that was it. The Apollo missions were cut short and re-purposed to 'friendship missions' with the Russians - America's superiority had been established.

Sure, there was Skylab - something to keep the academics happy. The Space Shuttle itself was something for everyone. Originally intended to 'shuttle' people in and out of orbit, military and academics alike continued to pile in their requests for what the orbiter would be capable of until it became a mammoth of a space vehicle with enough cargo capacity to carry an entire city bus into orbit.

But all them same, the ride was already over. We never did go to Mars because the Russians never made a point about it. And had they perfected their own Buran orbiter, then NASA's shuttles would have certainly received upgrades - all in the name of the military mandate.

This is one of those times that I'm am quite ashamed of my country - even as much of a hawk as I tend to be. We had, back then, the ability to take things to the next level - to go to mars and begin building self-sufficient Lunar colonies with the aim of eventually seeding Martian and Lagrangian colonies. But once the Russians gave up, the funding got cut. And there is no way you can convince the budget committees to give on it - they're too busy playing tug-a-war between the DoD and Welfare - never mind even bigger problems such as the Trade Deficit.

My only real hope of going to space is left in the hands of corporate entrepreneurs, for in this day and age they are the ones that truly rule the USA.

[ordnance11]

So maybe having the Chinese getting into the act would be a good thing. It'll spur the competition again. Otherwise I fear the U.S. may end up acting the role of the Portugese in the era of space exploration. Blazed the path and then fell behind with other countries gaining the role of Spain and Britain.
__________________
Into terror!,  Into valour!
Charge ahead! No! Never turn
Yes, it's into the fire we fly
And the devil will burn!
- Scarlett Pimpernell

[HoagieOfDoom]

...who just happened to come up with the idea of putting a transponder up there just to see if it was feasible.

Sputnik has a funny history. The rocket it rode on, the R7, was originally pitched to Kruschev by its chief designer, the legendary Segei Korolev, as an ICBM. But the R7 is the single most useless ICBM created for a variety of reasons, which were completely intentional on Korolev's part as he was duping Kruschev so he could get funding for a space shot. Once more military ambition leads to scientific progress. Also, Sputnik 1 was originally supposed to the carry the then still incomplete Sputnik 3 scientific payload, but Kruschev was insistent on getting something launched in time for the International Geophysical Year.

Hilariously, Kruschev had no idea how much of a political bombshell Sputnik turned out to be. He was reportedly flabbergasted (and then delighted) by the American response.

Anywho, NASA, at it's roots, was a military operation. Don't ask me why they decided to split it off from the newly created Air Force - I guess it made it look a little more friendly to the taxpayers.

The various organizations that went into NASAs creation (the National Advisory Committe on Aeronautic, various personnel and equipment from the Army Ballistic Missile Agency [like Wernher von Braun], a few elements from the Navy's Project Vanguard) were military or military-inspired endeavors, but NASA itself was created as a civilian agency from those components. There was never a split off from the Air Force because the Air Force was already doing its own thing with ICBMs (from which came the Atlas and Titan II rockets and the Rocketdyne F-1 engines that powered the first stage of the Saturn V). While NASA in the 60s was working on getting a man to the moon the Air Force was running its own concurrent programs more focused on taking advantage of low earth orbit with project like Blue Gemini, the X-23 Dyna-Soar and the Manned Orbiting Laboratory, none of which progressed past the mockup stage. When the 70s rolled around, the Air Force was proficient in its own use of light- and medium-launch vehicles for spy satellites using Atlas and Delta series rockets, though they would piggyback on certain NASA projects.

First woman to orbit the Earth (in what I see as a flagrant sin of pride)? Russians. And she was originally a textiles worker!

This was a purely political stunt. Kruschev made a big show of the communist ideal, that is that all are equal regardless or race, class, gender, what have you, and really milked Valentina Tereshkova's flight all it was worth. Ironically, after her flight she retired from their cosmonaut corps, married another cosmonaut and became the ideal housewife, never flying again.

Soviet workmanship left something to be desired, especially after one particularly nasty disaster wherein an entire Russian crew perished when a atmospheric pressure equalization valve opened far too early during re-entry.

This was the Soyuz 11 accident, which happened after the Apollo mission. The crew had spent nearly a month aboard Salyut 1, the world's first space station. The Soyuz 1 accident might be what you're thinking of. After two unmanned tests of the Soyuz they got ahead of themselves and decided to launch two manned Soyuz capsules in succession, the hope being that they would perform a manned orbital rendezvous. When Soyuz I reached orbit, pilot Vladimir Komarov (the only cosmonaut in Soyuz I) immediately ran into a whole slew of problems, ranging from electrical issues with the solar panels to faults in the computer. It was bad enough that after only a few orbits an abort was called for and Komarov's wife was called to the command center for basically a last conversation with her husband. On de-orbit, the parachutes tangled and the capsule slammed into the Earth at nearly 300m/s.

NASA took risks that were just as bold and dangerous (Apollo 8) but managed to come through them unscathed, beyond Apollo 1 of course.

...but our side was quick to find flaws and correct them.

Not without the mother of all witch hunts, though. North American Aviation got creamed following the fire at the pad, although blame lay equally with them and NASA. And that's not even considering the political fallout. But to be fair to the Russians, they ran into a major problem when Korolev, their chief architect of their moonshot program, died following surgical complications before serious testing of the Soyuz and the N1 rocket could begin. His successor, something-or-other Mishin (Valentin is his given name, I think), was largely thought to be overly cautious and is listed as a contributor to the eventual downfall of the Russian moonshot.

BA, you may be interested in checking out the history of the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N1_rocket]N1 Rocket. It was the Russian version of the Saturn V, and while it produced more thrust overall the Saturn's use of liquid hydrogen gave it a boost in terms of tonnage-to-space.

My only real hope of going to space is left in the hands of corporate entrepreneurs, for in this day and age they are the ones that truly rule the USA.

The private sector vs. government space flight debate is interesting, but better discussed over on the politics board.

EDIT: Cleared up some context, spelling and tag syntax.

[Bob Schroeck]

The private sector vs. government space flight debate is interesting, but better discussed over on the politics board.

Indeed. This was supposed to be a memorial thread, and came very close to being locked when it veered rather obnoxiously off topic. Any further non-memorial discussion should be elsewhere.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[HoagieOfDoom]

Atlantis has docked with the ISS. Reportedly everything is going better than expected.

[robkelk]

The Register: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/07/11 ... le_launch/]Diary of a cameraman at the last shuttle launch

NASA: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegal ... _2001.html]A Different Perspective (coincidentally, Image of the Day #2001)
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Shader]

Cool pic I found 30 years in the making:

Father
and Son: STS-1 and STS-135 by
arockalypse, on
Flickr

Epic. In a word... simply Epic.

[Matrix Dragon]

Okay, that pic is awesome.

[robkelk]

(I posted this to Fenspace; I really should post it here, too)

Discovery's Flight Deck. Requires Flash.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Dartz]

It might sound daft, but I'll never cease to be amazed by how much the flight deck of the Space Shuttle looks like what you'd imagine the flight deck of a space ship should look like. A mass of switches, mixed with high-tech electronic displays.
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?

[Rev Dark]

Okay - when the shuttle lands, everyone should be wearing gorilla suits.
(Not my idea - brilliant - but not my idea.)

[robkelk]

And she's home.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Dartz]

Meanwhile, 42 years ago .
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?

[Sweno]

Nature has put together a compilation off all 135 shuttle launches here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=II7QBLt36xo

well worth the 8 minutes it takes out of your day.
-Terry
-----
"so listen up boy, or pornography starring your mother will be the second worst thing to happen to you today"
TF2: Spy

[Logan Darklighter]

An email posted today on the Cosmolist (A Yamato/Star Blazers mailing list) from Walter Amos. Reprinted verbatim (except for editing of headers etc.)

--------------------

from: Walter Amos (email address)
subject: Shutting Down Shuttle Trajectory

This is a kinda rare video so I wanted to blast it out to everyone I could think of who might be remotely interested....

First, a bit of background (for those receiving this email who already know this history, skip the next paragraph).

From early 1997 - late 2004 I worked at United Space
Alliance in Houston, in support of the Shuttle program at NASA Johnson
Space Center.  I was part of a team developing a replacement for the
Shuttle Trajectory Server system on the Mission Operation Computer (MOC)
in Mission Control Center (MCC),
basically the central system which correlates all the observations of
Shuttle flights, estimates orbits, and generates the displays which the guys sitting at stations in Mission Control are looking at and on which flight controllers make operational decisions.  This was called the Trajectory Server Upgrade Project,
since its task was to convert the server software which was written in
ancient assembly language and FORTRAN (core parts of which dated back to
the Apollo era), and rewrite it in as-portable-as-possible C to run on
modern UNIX workstations instead of the ancient IBM mainframe system
which cost a great deal to keep running (and which was only kept around
because of the criticality of this system which ran on it).  Its main
function was to do calculations and update data values in tables which
were accessible to existing simple numerical displays at the various MCC
stations, but we also developed additional displays for the operators
of the server itself in tcl/Tk.  The first shuttle mission in which our
server was the primary operational server for the entire flight was STS-111.

With the conclusion of the Shuttle program, the trajectory server system we worked on was shut down for the final time recently.

Yesterday I received an email from my former cubicle-mate, still in the Houston area:

[Navigation
co-worker] shut down the Traj Server for the final time this morning.
I'm told that before doing so he added to the messages the final words
of Hal 9000, and then "Will I dream?" Someone took video of this, and if they get it up to YouTube I'll let you know.

Lots of people pretty depressed today.

Here is said video of the final Trajectory Server shutdown. 

Regrettably
I think the HAL9000 line was missed in the displayed message list, but
probably wouldn't have been very readable anyway given the focus from
the smart phone.  

But
I think this sort of background computer operation at MCC isn't
something those on the outside get to see much of, and the final
sign-off is a worthwhile thought as well.

-Logan
--------------------
Cmdr. Jeffrey Sinclair: "No. We have to stay here. And there's a simple reason why. Ask ten different scientists about the environment, population control, genetics, and you'll get ten different answers, but there's one thing every scientist on the planet agrees on. Whether it happens in a hundred years or a thousand years or a million years, eventually our Sun will grow cold and go out. When that happens, it won't just take us. It'll take Marilyn Monroe, and Lao-Tzu, and Einstein, and Morobuto, and Buddy Holly, and Aristophanes, and - all of this - all of this - was for nothing. Unless we go to the stars."
--------------------

[classicdrogn]

I cried. Before, I could at least pretend that SOMEBODY would be doing the things I'd always wished I'd done. This world is more worthless than ever.

- CD
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows