[HN Gopher] A Cold War mystery: Why did Jimmy Carter save the sp... ___________________________________________________________________ A Cold War mystery: Why did Jimmy Carter save the space shuttle? Author : xrayarx Score : 99 points Date : 2023-02-01 16:22 UTC (6 hours ago) (HTM) web link (arstechnica.com) (TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com) | [deleted] | maliker wrote: | Other folks have pointed out there are military applications, and | I read a while back that these kind of "space planes" have a | unique advantage: with their wings they can dip into the | atmosphere and very quickly change their trajectory without using | a lot of fuel. From a military perspective, I'm guessing this | makes them harder to shoot down. The military is still flying | space planes [0] so this makes sense to me. | | [0] https://www.livescience.com/spaceplane-lands- | after-908-days-... | gumby wrote: | I have to confess when I read this I thought, "Jeez, just go ask | the guy" and...the author did! So great to see actual journalism. | DonHopkins wrote: | Wow, what I would give to just hang out and chat with Jimmy | Carter! | | I wonder if he asked him about the killer rabbit? | | Maybe I could get an appointment to sit down with him if I | claimed I was the guy who helped eradicate the Guinea Worm? | | https://www.cartercenter.org/about/experts/donald_hopkins.ht... | e12e wrote: | Thanks, for others wondering: | | > Why did the president ultimately support funding the shuttle | in its time of need? "I was not enthusiastic about sending | humans on missions to Mars or outer space," Carter told Ars. | "But I thought the shuttle was a good way to continue the good | work of NASA. I didn't want to waste the money already | invested." | harveywi wrote: | To Jimmy Carter's credit, the space shuttle Columbia disaster | could have prevented if the thermal foam on the external shuttle | tanks had been replaced with a sweater. | neovialogistics wrote: | I found the Soviet Union's alleged theory explaining the American | space shuttle to their own leadership[1] to be quite interesting. | According to some documents submitted to the central committee by | the head of the fledgling Keldysh institute (famous for it's | faculty - Israel Gelfand and Alexey Lyapunov among others), the | shuttle could theoretically launch in a trajectory from | Vandenburg, CA south towards and over Antarctica and northwards | over the Indian Ocean towards Moscow, with several nuclear | weapons aboard, as a kind of hypersonic dive bomber. | | This would, in a nuclear exchange, bring the mean time from | initial detection of an American attack to the first nuclear | strike on Moscow down from seven minutes (UGM-73 missiles on a | depressed trajectory launched from the North Sea near Denmark)[2] | to a little over three minutes. | | Fears of this, according to the theory, led to several of the | design specifications for the Buran shuttle. I find the extensive | concerns about, and optimizing of strategy around, minimizing | warning time in a nuclear exchange to be fascinating. | | [1]https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3855/1 [2]https://www.s | cienceandglobalsecurity.org/archive/sgs03gronlu... (PDF) | xattt wrote: | Nuclear capability explains the "single polar orbit with a | large crossrange" requirement. How was the shuttle capable of | such a large crossrange? Maneuverability in the atmosphere? | nickff wrote: | The large delta wings on the space shuttle are what allow the | large cross-range, by letting it "turn" on the way down. The | single polar orbit was to allow rapid, stealthy insertion of | a reconnaissance satellite into polar orbit. According to the | space shuttle engineers, there was never any contemplation of | arming the shuttle, though the DoD did set many requirements | (including payload bay size and cross-range). | KRAKRISMOTT wrote: | So an old school hypersonic glider | nickff wrote: | Basically, although the space shuttle has the worst glide | ratio of any aerospace vehicle I am aware of. To simulate | landing the shuttle, they used a businessjet with the | engines in reverse... | Sharlin wrote: | A brick with small stubby wings bolted on. | rpmw wrote: | Yep! No go arounds once you re-entered. | | Here's the training aircraft: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuttle_Training_Aircraft | yodon wrote: | >the shuttle could theoretically launch in a trajectory from | Vandenburg, CA south towards and over Antarctica | | Having spent time at the South Pole, the ice runway at the | South Pole Station was sized and built and in part funded by | NASA to handle the scenario in which a shuttle on a trajectory | that took it over the pole found itself in need of an emergency | divert runway. | tobinfricke wrote: | To what extent was the runway there "built" as a permanent | installation, vs being an ephemeral phenomenon that is | refreshed season by season? | yodon wrote: | It requires maintenance but it's not like the ice is going | to melt in the South Pole "summer." | TedDoesntTalk wrote: | Not yet | stolenmerch wrote: | Side trivia: 20 years ago today the Space Shuttle Columbia | disintegrated as it reentered the atmosphere over Texas, killing | all seven astronauts on board. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Columbia_disaste... | yamtaddle wrote: | Day or two after that happened, it occurred to me to scan back | through the Cowboy Bebop episode "Wild Horses" and see which | shuttle it'd featured, because I couldn't recall. | | It was Columbia, of course, so that episode joined seemingly | every movie made between '73 and '01 and set in NY (that was | still pretty fresh, too, mind you) in being a bit of a | _distracting_ watch, in a way that was not originally intended. | graphe wrote: | I remember seeing this in school when I was a kid. That was | when space exploration because tainted in my generation. It was | cool but astronaut wasn't something anyone wanted to be anymore | so you die in the atmosphere. | | Sorry it was the challenger! | bluGill wrote: | Are you thinking of Challenger which was more than 20 years | ago? | dylan604 wrote: | > It was cool but astronaut wasn't something anyone wanted to | be anymore so you die in the atmosphere. | | That's a strong disagree from me and people I spoke with. | There were lots of "if they knocked on my door today asking | if I wanted to join, I'd do it in a heartbeat" comments. I | was one of them, as a 6th grader. | | Nobody every thought being an astronaut was without risk, did | they? Every time a fighter pilot takes off, there's an | inherent risk with that, yet people are lined up to join. I'm | sorry you're such a "fair weather fan", but that just means | one less person to compete with for those that _actually_ | want to do it | graphe wrote: | It wasn't just the students. I think if the attitude of the | teachers were different I might still have wanted to be | one. Safety was important and teachers were cautious. | | Were you shown the hour(s) of exercises they had to do | daily to maintain their muscle? That was enough to make | most kids say no thanks if chosen lol. | simne wrote: | This case is very likely of model "too large to fail". | | Last time it used, when appear high probability of recession, and | govt prints money and feed them to larges financial companies, to | keep them alive. | | Opposite to print money, usually, to suffer huge losses of | popularity, because without these measures, could close large | chain of connected to subjects companies, will need to spend | money to pay for unemployment. | | So I think, Carter's decisions where because it was easy solution | for him, and less fear than to close. | | Examples of brave side politics are very rare, one of them | Thatcher, decided to close mining companies, which decades fed by | govt subsidies, which costed her very expensive. | throwaway81523 wrote: | Carter almost destroyed the space shuttle. See the book | "Enterprise" by Jerry Grey for history. | Maursault wrote: | I'm not sure you can blame him, though. President Carter is | exceptionally intelligent, graduated in the top 7.2% of his | Naval Academy class of 820 after studying nuclear engineering | and completed graduate studies in nuclear physics and reactor | technology. Everyone just assumes _Space!_ We all insist on it, | but we all don 't have the full picture. The man is practical, | understood the costs, risks and value of, as of then, | unrealized benefits. The last thing NASA needed in the late | 1970's and early 1980's is an uncommonly intelligent President | of the United States. It was their bad luck, and yet they | lucked out. Give President Carter a break. The man is a saint. | Compare to President Clinton, who is also highly intelligent, | and yet not a saint. I'm not saying he's bad, just a bad, bad, | boy. | hindsightbias wrote: | Carter always gets painted as some sort of dove but he only | cancelled the B-1A. | | Fully funded carriers, MX, Trident/SLBM, LA subs, Aegis | destroyers, GLCM, ALCM, SLCM, Harpoon, F-117, B-2 development and | $trillions more. | LarryMullins wrote: | For the Shuttle to be cancelled by politicians is one thing; | that's just democracy in action. For the Shuttle to fail under | its own weight is quite another; that's technical and | organizational failure. The latter reflects poorly on the | politicians who oversaw it and the country generally. It would | have been a bad look for Carter's legacy, whether or not he hated | NASA. | mrpippy wrote: | I think it's obvious at this point, but Eric Berger is doing/has | done an amazing job covering space for Ars Technica | joezydeco wrote: | The answer is buried right in the middle of the article: | | _Back in 1970, to win Department of Defense support at the | program's outset, NASA had redesigned the shuttle to launch | national security payloads. Now, that decision paid off._ | | If you visit the Museum of the Air Force in Dayton Ohio, the | guides will tell you straight out that the cargo bay (and thus | entire airframe) of Shuttle was enlarged to be able to hold a | Keyhole/CORONA imaging satellite and retrieve it if necessary. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CORONA_(satellite) | simne wrote: | Definitely, no. | | Shuttle was designed, to make use of capacity of Morton Thiokol | Inc. enterprise, which without SRB's was near 100% military | enterprise (created to build SRB's for ICBM's). | | That time Moon program was on liquid fueled rocket, but with | nazi smell, so made political decision, to make 100% domestic | design, without any traces to German works. | pram wrote: | The Air Force also planned to have its own squadron of | shuttles. | Apocryphon wrote: | As depicted in _Moonraker_ | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asgLef3oVAw | bradyd wrote: | Moonraker is one of the only movies to properly depict a | Shuttle launch, and it came out before the Shuttle ever | flew. | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nH3EsUTPihg | skhr0680 wrote: | I used to work with an English chap who made a habit of | reminding me that _Moonraker_ had US Space Marines a good | few years before _Aliens_ ... Semper Fi! | wkat4242 wrote: | And a good few decades before space force! | JKCalhoun wrote: | Yeah, that's unfortunate. We got a boxcar with wings. | VLM wrote: | I've never gotten a straight answer on who came first the KH-11 | or HST. The mirrors are the same size and they both fit in the | bay. | | A long time ago I considered writing a "sci fi techno thriller" | book plot along the lines of the HST was intentionally mis- | built to own the Russians trying to copy the KH-11. There's | easier ways to make money LOL. | | In the 70s progress was fast and they were blasting new | observation sats every couple months and new generations every | couple years so it seemed sensible to have a "space truck" to | service the rapidly changing technology. Then things settled | down and at least declassified nothing is new in quite some | time WRT observation sats. | | Kind of like rapid changes in the PC industry in the 80s then | things slowed down a lot to the point we don't "need" a Radio | Shack or CompUSA anymore. | | People thought the rapid progress of the 70s in spy sats was | going to go on forever, so we need a "space truck" to keep up | with rapid changes, and like most things predicted to go on | forever, it didn't. | adastra22 wrote: | The keyhole satellites. Because of security classification | the Hubble design had to be semi-cleanroom reengineered, but | the contractors were the same and in fact many of the same | engineers worked on both. The keyhole test equipment in | Sunnyvale was reused for Hubble. | AnotherGoodName wrote: | qq and probably no one would answer but did keyhole have | the same mirror defect? | | Hubble was fixed by the costar addition. I wonder if | there's missions to fix keyhole we don't know about. | qbrass wrote: | The defect was a huge deal for a long range telescope | because the distortion makes up a larger part of the | image the further out you go. | | At Earth to spy satellite distances, it's like 1/4" and | probably below the resolution of the camera used at the | time. | VLM wrote: | That was the entire point of my Sci Fi techothriller I | never finished writing where the plot was the HST was a | declassified KH-11 and to F the Soviets over we released | the declassified HST with an intentional fault so the | Soviet clone would be faulty. Its a win-win because the | service mission to fix the HST made the right people on | our side extra money, but the Soviets didn't have a | working-enough space-truck to fix their clones of the | HST/KH-11, and we were certainly not going to volunteer | to fix their KH-11 clone for them LOL. | | It was never going to be a good book plot so I gave up on | it. Unrealistic that they'd steal "everything" including | the intentional mistake. The idea of a double agent plot | where "their guy" was actually "our guy" who made sure | they stole the entire lot including the intentional | grinding error was, um, cringy. In defense of my bad | novel plot, I was young at the time, and I've read worse | books. | Sharlin wrote: | I always thought that Hubble in fact _was_ a declassified | KH-11. And indeed the NRO declassified and donated a | couple more obsolete Keyholes to NASA in 2012 [1], one of | which is now being used as the chassis (and optics?) of | the NGRST [2]. | | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_National_Reconnais | sance_O... | | [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Grace_Roman_Space | _Telesc... | e12e wrote: | Hehe, see also: "the Zenith Angle" by Bruce Sterling (he | did complete his book). | johntb86 wrote: | https://space.stackexchange.com/a/58290 lays out some | evidence that Kodak built similar mirrors for the KH-11 | spy satellites, while Perkin-Elmer was selected for | Hubble (and had built smaller mirrors for other spy | satellites). | TedDoesntTalk wrote: | I can't speak specifically for keyhole, but I know that | Kodak definitely worked on spy satellites. My father | worked there and on them. | ArnoVW wrote: | From what I remember, the defect was a manufacturing | defect, not a design flaw. | | Some chipped paint meant that a critical distance was | extended by the thickness of the paint layer. | laverya wrote: | Well, there's been a LOT of KH-11 satellites over the | years, so unlike with Hubble the NRO has had the | opportunity to just put up an updated satellite instead | of trying to fix an existing one. | | Seriously, Wikipedia lists 5 _generations_. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KH-11_KENNEN 5+3+4+3+3 | total launches. | adastra22 wrote: | No, that was a manufacturing mistake not a design error. | A different contractor was used. | DonHopkins wrote: | >so we need a "space truck" to keep up with rapid changes | | Check out Space Truckers, with square pigs, because they pack | so tightly! | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReKKdeDpb8A | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zcBjI9N0rI | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8Ifaeff0mA | Gibbon1 wrote: | My dad worked for NASA during that time. The above is 100% what | he said. NASA needed the air forces support which meant being | able to launch large spy satellites. Which also meant the thing | was really expensive making it a white elephant. It drained a | the money that could have been spent to implement more modern | launch systems. People used to get pissed off when I'd say the | best thing for NASA to do was to stop flying the shuttle. | Retrospectively that was the right thing to do. | marktangotango wrote: | That's interesting, also a possible insight into what the X-37b | mission is. Retrieving payloads, but what payloads? | khuey wrote: | The X-37B is much smaller than the shuttle (it was originally | intended to fit in the shuttle's payload bay). It physically | can't retrieve satellites of any significant size. | ridgeguy wrote: | This may be changing with rapid extension of satellite size | towards the small end of the spectrum. Small size is now | significant. | | For example, a radar imaging constellation might consist of | multiple transmit/receive satellites, each of which could | be quite small (say, 1 - 5 cu. ft.). The X37B could | accommodate that - especially after it snipped the solar | panels off. | kranke155 wrote: | I'm really curious, do we have any idea whatsoever what the | X-37 is being used for? | euroderf wrote: | It carries a negotiating table. Our telepresence on one | side, the aliens['] on the other. | jacquesm wrote: | That highly depends on who 'we' is. | | Anybody really in the know is definitely not going to | spill the beans. The payload is very small, the stated | reasons it flew its missions are 'testbed' for various | technologies. Which may well be all there is to it. | ceejayoz wrote: | One common theory is it's being used to do close-up | inspections of other countries' satellites. Bonus points | if you can attach a magnetic limpet mine to them for | future usage. | yetanotherloser wrote: | Wouldn't the mass change cause some kind of detectable | change in the satellite's trajectory over time? | dylan604 wrote: | It would not need to be very big mine though would it? A | grenade would probably be just fine to eliminate the | satellite from being useful. Something that small means | it could carry a lot of ammo | ceejayoz wrote: | I don't think anything particularly detectable; they're | so outweighed by the planet they're orbiting that the | barycenter doesn't move measurably. | | (To be clear, I'd imagine they're only doing the | inspection thing right now, but I do suspect they're at | least tinkering with on-orbit capture, refueling, | disabling etc. with an arm.) | dmurray wrote: | What if your satellite did some more manoeuvres for | station keeping, wouldn't you notice the mass difference | then? | cjbgkagh wrote: | A big advantage of space planes is the ability to change | orbit very quickly, could be used for reconnoissance or | as a weapons delivery vehicle. | the_third_wave wrote: | Only if they're in low enough orbits to make use of | atmospheric drag. Such orbits decay quickly if the | vehicle does not have boost capacity. Given the extremely | long missions this thing flies - several missions over | 700 days - it seems unlikely for it to make use of | atmospheric drag. It might do so when in a highly | elliptical orbit but even then it needs to perform a burn | at apogee to keep it from re-entering before long. | cjbgkagh wrote: | There is value from the optionality of having a | capability even if it isn't regularly used. | fragmede wrote: | The links to the specific missions on the wikipedia page | have some expert conjecture, based on observations by | amateur skywatchers, so we have a good idea that it's | being used to launch military surveillance and | communications satellites, as well as being used to test | new hardware. Which is all rather broad and generic, but | if it _were_ aliens, it 's not like they'd tell us | anyway. | | Even if it were actually confirmed that OTV-1 launched a | military surveillance satellite, we still wouldn't know | how good it is at that other than some hard limits due to | physics (mirror size and atmospheric interference). | timschmidt wrote: | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQN4hId5psg | | "Everything We Know About The US Air Force's Secret Space | Plane - The X-37B" by Scott Manley | Lammy wrote: | Obviously total speculation, but it's the right size to | be a flying speed-of-light weapon platform. USAF have | been interested in such tech for a long time. Some fun | links: | | - Directed Energy Directorate home page during the years | 1999-2006: https://web.archive.org/web/20060831035044/htt | p://www.de.afr... | | - Directed Energy Directorate home page during the years | 2009-2016: https://web.archive.org/web/20160428181404/htt | p://www.kirtla... | | - LASER Effects Test Facility fact sheet from 2002 | showing a 50-kilowatt CO2 LASER setting a test target on | fire: https://web.archive.org/web/20070315131556/http://w | ww.de.afr... | nradov wrote: | It seems small for any sort of directed energy weapon | with a useful power output. There wouldn't be enough | capacity for a big generator and heat radiators. | joezydeco wrote: | What if the X37B _was_ the imaging satellite? | dylan604 wrote: | Why would they build it to retrieve itself? That's very | meta | the_third_wave wrote: | If that is its mission the answer is "small payloads" since | the carrying capacity of the thing would be quite limited | with its 2.1 x 1.2 m [1] payload bay. That leaves little room | for the grappling arm or other mechanism needed to pluck a | satellite out of its orbit. | | I suspect it does not retrieve payloads but takes them up and | down again. Which payloads? Good question. Experimental | sensors meant for inclusion in next-generation reconnaissance | satellites maybe? | | [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20150321121050/http://www.boe | ing... | adolph wrote: | Also the form and glidepath potential of the shuttle was | designed for military capabilities to capture an adversary's | satellite that were never used, according to "The Most | Important Space Shuttle Mission Never Happened" by Scott Manley | [0]. His source is this pdf [1]. | | 0. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_q2i0eu35aY | | 1. http://www.jamesoberg.com/sts-3A_B-DRM.PDF | wkat4242 wrote: | Kinda good too because that would be pretty close to an act | of war and set a dangerous precedent for the weaponisation of | space. | | You prepare for the war you don't want to fight... | dylan604 wrote: | How would capturing a satellite from orbit be any different | than a soldier walking up to an enemy's position and | driving off with a tank or flying a jet out from under | their nose? Some shit would definitely be on the fan at | that point. | wkat4242 wrote: | That's what I mean exactly. | | I'm glad we were never in the situation where this would | have been thinkable. Because it would mean direct war | between superpowers. | sidewndr46 wrote: | It's sort of interesting for them to point this out. This is | also why the Titan IV program came into being. The Space | Shuttle simply not being available meant that it was needed to | develop an equivalent unmanned lift vehicle. I think the same | museum even has some stuff from a Titan IV on display | joezydeco wrote: | They actually have a CORONA satellite on display and will | tell you all about how it worked. So you know we're three or | four generations beyond that technology now. | | https://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/Visit/Museum- | Exhibits/Fact... | sidewndr46 wrote: | I remember as a kid we had textbooks that explained that | the CORONA satellites were state of that art and used for | surveillance. This was in the early 00s. Even then I looked | at those little things and came to the conclusion that this | was not in fact the entire extent of the US surveillance | capabilities. | joezydeco wrote: | What blew my mind was how large it was. You're thinking | it's a camera...how large can that be? It's the size of a | school bus. | sidewndr46 wrote: | I think you are thinking of KH-9 satellites. CORONA is | just a tiny little thing. | JonSchneider wrote: | Believe it or not, they have an entire Titan IV on display: | https://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/Visit/Museum- | Exhibits/Fact... | | It's pretty impressive in person. | | (Scroll through the gallery that isn't obviously a gallery | near the top to see it) | euroderf wrote: | As a teenager I tried to spec out a flying Titan III model | using standard tube sizes from Estes. Never carried to | fruition tho. | daveslash wrote: | The _potential_ Military applications of the Space Shuttle were | why the Soviets copied it so closely. They didn 't know _why_ | or _what_ clandestine military purpose the shuttle had, but | they knew that when they found out, they 'd want the same | capabilities. So they just copied it, not knowing _why_. | | " _Faced with the poorly understood threat of a military space | shuttle, the Soviets decided that copying the American | spacecraft exactly was the best bet. The logic was simple: if | the Americans were planning something that needed a vehicle | that big, the Soviets ought to build one as well and be ready | to match their adversary even if they didn't know exactly what | they were matching._ " [0] [1] | | [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6428205 | | [1] | https://web.archive.org/web/20131001110918/http://arstechnic... | sgt101 wrote: | Buran was radically different - no internal rockets, just | jets. Unmanned optionally. | | The most interesting thing is that the launcher (Energina) | was actually also used to launch a space battlestation. | | No - I am not kidding. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyus_(spacecraft) | [deleted] | euroderf wrote: | A specific case of the general idea of superpower | convergence. | 082349872349872 wrote: | "...the deciding factor was when we learned that your | country was working along similar lines, and we were afraid | of a doomsday gap." -- AdS (fict) | daveslash wrote: | " _This is preposterous! I never approved of anything | like that!_ " ~ PM (fict) | | " _Our source was The New York Times._ " ~ AdS (fict) | KerrAvon wrote: | Carter's actual answer, though: he didn't want to throw away | the money that had already been spent. Left unsaid is that the | money in question represented a lot of jobs, and congresspeople | in certain areas of the country would have thrown a fit, and | the last thing Carter needed was to further irritate Congress. | DonHopkins wrote: | This classic SNL skit from 1979 explains what a great nuclear | engineer Jimmy Carter really is, and Rodney Dangerfield explains | just how big Jimmy Carter really is. | | https://archive.org/details/saturday-night-live-s-04-e-16-ri... | | ("The Pepsi Syndrome" skit starts at 8:15) | | Dr. Edna Casey: Well Mrs. Carter, it's difficult to comprehend | just how big he is but to give you some idea, we've asked | comedian Rodney Dangerfield to come along today to help explain | it to you. Rodney? | | [Rodney Dangerfield enters] | | Rodney Dangerfield: How do you do, how are you? | | Ross Denton: Rodney, can you please tell us, how big is the | president? | | Rodney Dangerfield: Oh, he's a big guy, I'll tell you that, he's | a big guy. I tell you he's so big, I saw him sitting in the | George Washington bridge dangling his feet in the water! He's a | big guy! | | Rosalynn Carter: Oh my God! Jimmy! Oh God! | | Rodney Dangerfield: Oh, he's big, I'll tell you that, boy. He's | so big that when two girls make love to him at the same time, | they never meet each other! He's a big guy, I'll tell you! | | Rosalynn Carter: Oh no! Oh Jimmy! My Jimmy! | | Rodney Dangerfield: I don't want to upset you lady, he's big, you | know what I mean? Why he could have an affair with the Lincoln | Tunnel! I mean, he's really high! He's big, I'll tell you! He's a | big guy! | | Rosalynn Carter: No! No! No! | | Ross Denton: Rodney, thank you very much. You can go. | | Rodney Dangerfield: It's my pleasure. He's way up there, lady! | you know what I mean? | | [goes off, leaving Rosalynn Carter very upset] | ck2 wrote: | Ah a space shuttle article, wonder if they will use one of my | favorite photographs from that era... | | Yup! | | https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Star_... | | But gosh they screwed up by naming the one that would never go | into space "Enterprise" | jedberg wrote: | Enterprise was supposed to go to space, but it ended up being | cheaper to build Challenger from spare parts because the design | specs had changed. It then ended up being cheaper to build | Endeavor from spare parts than retrofit Enterprise after the | Challenger tragedy. | DonHopkins wrote: | I vaguely remember that some crazy conspiracy theorist | confronted Captain Kirk once, and tried to force him to put | his hand on the Bible and swear to God that Star Trek wasn't | fake, and not just shot on a sound stage Hollywood, and then | Captain Kirk punched him in the face! | codezero wrote: | This exact thing definitely happened to Buzz Aldrin when he | was confronted about the moon landing being fake, and it's | caught on film :) | | https://boingboing.net/2022/09/10/i-cant-believe- | its-20-year... | consumer451 wrote: | Is this an attempt at feeding noise into ML data thereby | giving humans some more time to rule the earth? | | If so, I support it wholeheartedly. | dylan604 wrote: | one of my favorite shuttle images was the one with the iPod on | the dash while in orbit. | | https://news.softpedia.com/news/iPod-in-Space-81065.shtml | vondur wrote: | I assumed the space shuttle was going to be used to retrieve | things from space. Maybe even someone else's satellites. My | father used to work in the heat treating industry, and they did a | bunch of work on the space shuttle and many other | aerospace/military projects. | VLM wrote: | We certainly hauled a bunch of sats home over the decades, see | STS-51-A for a typical declassified example of some relatively | boring comsats. | | The classified missions published landing weights for some | reason; they were low; the assumption is they never hauled | anything home or they faked the landing weights because it | wouldn't matter if they told the truth or not to the public | (AFAIK no payload related change in realistically observable | flight path was ever seen by independent observers) | | Westar 6 was later relaunched as AsiaSat 1. It trips non-space | people out because "everyone knows" SpaceX and the old shuttle | are the only things ever launched into space, landed, and re- | launched back into space, but they were doing this back in the | 80s with comsats and who knows what the military was up to. | wkat4242 wrote: | The 60s spy sats also took photos on film that were ejected | in re-entry capsules and captured in mid-air using an | airplane. Really crazy stuff they came up with and I'm | surprised it actually worked. Engineering chops they sure had | and balls too because capturing a falling object from space | is pretty dangerous. | | Of course then there were the soviets launching entire | nuclear reactors into orbit for a few months' worth of radar | duty. Ok the US did one too but it was just one. All those | Russian cores are still in orbit except the two that crashed. | | Crazy times. | zerocrates wrote: | Stuff that goes inside the shuttle (as I assume a satellite | in this case does) I don't know that I'd "count" in that | sense. Like, obviously the humans riding inside various craft | were routinely launched, landed and relaunched under that | same kind of definition. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-02-01 23:00 UTC)