OT: Moon Landing

d couldn?t get solid fuel rockets working

owed them how to do it that the focus shifted

ld War, before that the US military rocket program was non existent

ty fuse

"In the last months of the war, he helped in the American efforts to design and build an atomic bomb"

"Toward the end of the war, Oppenheimer, who was directing the effort to ma ke an atomic bomb, asked Lauritsen to go to Los Alamos, New Mexico, to assi st with the project. Lauritsen complied with the request."

"During 1944 and 1945, he spent a considerable fractionof his time at Los Alamos with Oppenheimer, participating inthe technical steering committee and in the scientific develop-ment work."

"Key person"??? If he was only working with them for less than a year, it seems a bit much to say he was a "key" person, unless there were dozens or hundreds of "key persons".

I seem to recall they had trouble with the shaped charges for the plutonium bomb and eventually brought in an explosives expert who was able to make t hat work. I would say *that* guy was a "key" person. George Kistiakowsky

Indeed. Naming attributions seem to vary with institution.

You can use brine or slightly better sodium sulphate but it doesn't behave quite the same. Fairly high currents flow to make it spin.

You think the Pentagon isn't, or wasn't historically, interested in the ability to deliver a load of personnel or troops and equipment anywhere on the planet in under 90 min? IDK about that...

You're evaluating it divorced from the context of the time it was developed. Space Shuttle wasn't just a science/cargo vessel it could have been a formidable weapon, too. It really did scare the shit out of the Soviets (well, an idealized version of it that was more capable than it actually was, at least) enough that they felt they had to expend a significant amount of time and money building their own.

It was for potentially grabbing Soviet satellites right out of the sky and hauling them back for examination. That capability scared the Soviets.

The shuttle also had 1000 km crossrange, so it could launch northbound from Vandenburg, dump anything out the payload bay on the trip - spy satellites, fractional orbital bombardment payload, nuclear warheads, whatever, shoot them off in all directions into orbits "silently" so they'd be hard to track, and be back home to land in 90 minutes at Vandenburg before anyone could figure out what it was up to or what it released.

OK, ya, I'm afraid that's too true. Some just don't understand boarders, unless it's around their gated community. Ya know, to keep the riff raff out.

Mikek

and couldn?t get solid fuel rockets working

showed them how to do it that the focus shifted

orld War, before that the US military rocket program was non existent

mity fuse

gn and build an atomic bomb"

make an atomic bomb, asked Lauritsen to go to Los Alamos, New Mexico, to as sist with the project. Lauritsen complied with the request."

at Los Alamos with Oppenheimer, participating inthe technical steerin g committee and in the scientific develop-ment work."

t seems a bit much to say he was a "key" person, unless there were dozens o r hundreds of "key persons".

He was pulled in because of his successful work on amongst other things the rocket development since Oppenheimer was pushed to hard and could not mana ge any more. Charles sat next to Oppenheimer, desk to desk, until the the M anhattan Project was shut down

Charles was also one of the 11 persons IIRC that selected the atomic bomb t argets

He was key in finding the person, whom you mention, that could produce the shaped charge molds with no outline errors that was the biggest problem the y had

Charles was not always liked, because he had a no bullshit attitude, went a round rank to get things done. That?s how he was so successful in t he rocket development going directly to the military people that was in tro uble due to a highly hierarchical organization (which military isn? t?)

Some books about the bomb were written by disgruntled people that had exper ienced being bypassed by Charles, and the books are clearly biased by that account

Cheers

Klaus

Sorry, Sylvia, but I *cannot stand* those particular creeps so couldn't bear to watch.

The type of guy who was OK with being a member of a team to select cities full of civilians for nuclear destruction but people he worked with were surprised he didn't follow procedure/care about their feelings, sometimes?

What's scary about the shuttle? I mean, to anyone except the crew?

Why does any of that need a human crew?

related:

Tracking a satellite, maneuvering up to it with the OMS, securing it to the Canadarm with some kind of adapter (Soviets didn't conveniently build their satellites with Canadarm adapters, unfortunately) pulling it in and securing it in the bay for return not an easily automate-able process at the time, or even currently, probably.

Being able to examine a Soviet satellite intact and figure out what kind of optics and hardware and shit it was using would have been an absolute treasure-trove.

They never did that, because just doing it might have started a war. But just the possibility was very worrisome.

A good number of Shuttle flights with DoD payloads/missions are still totally classified. Almost nothing is known about those missions or what payload they launched, or what they did while they were up there.

Some of the payloads were surely spy satellites and there are some guesses as to the type. some of them are just ???

They might have captured a Soviet satellite for all we know, and the Soviets might have just chosen to say nothing about it. If so, nobody's talking.

Also you can launch more complex satellites with larger solar arrays with lower risk (to the very expensive satellite, at least), sometimes the components fail to flip out/deploy properly, see: Skylab.

Having humans around who can spacewalk out and give the thing a "kick" to get it working can mean the difference between a normally functioning (very expensive) satellite and very expensive space junk

"A camel is a horse designed by a committee".

The worst thing that there were a lot of conflicting requirements that were forced into a single design. Some of the worst requirement was the return mass requirement, which was worsened due to the heavy delta wings which was required due to the cross range requirement.

Some early shuttle design called for a two stage fully reusable design with also a winged first stage. Unfortunately the fully usable first stage was scrapped for the fear of high development costs.

When designing a space launcher you should aim for a light upper stage construction with as much fuel as possible and hence a good mass ratio and a good delta-v. A heavy reusable first stage does not harm very much.

If I had to design a reusable space launcher (without heavy return capability), would use a oxygen/kerosine burning first stage, possibly implemented as two winged booster stage and a H2/O2 non-reusable central stage and a non-reusable payload bay. For manned flights, put a reusable mini-shuttle o top of it all.

The winged boosters would use aerodynamic forces to kill the horizontal velocity, possible assisted by a small light weighted ramjet.

You got things in the wrong order, StarWar (SDI) was initiated when the STS was already in the test phase.

To each their own, I suppose. I've found most of their stuff quite amusing.

Sylvia.

The Almaz (Salyut 2, 3, 5) had a 23 mm cannon (normally used as a bomber tail gun), which might have made approaching the Almaz a bit harder :-).