| Tuesday, June
19, 2007
The new column is up, and we're caught up now at Chaos Manor Reviews.
We continue to add content to the SUBSCRIBER AREA
over at Chaos Manor Reviews.
It now includes: Fiction in Progress:
Excerpts from Inferno 2
Excerpts from Mamelukes
Readers and Non-Fiction:
A Step Farther Out
Another Step Farther Out
California Sixth Year Reader
More will be added, and if we get some more subscribers, I'll look into
making all this available in multiple formats.
The newest addition to the subscriber area is the old
standby A Step Farther Out, complete with illustrations and the
original introductions by Larry Niven and A. E. Van Vogt. This is courtesy
of Mr. Steve Martin, who has done a beautiful job of formatting this work.
The book was first published in the early 1980's. The purpose was to
persuade people that we are not doomed, and we would live to see the 21st
Century. After all, Isaac Asimov had said we wouldn't, and so had many
academic economists and "ecologists". Computer Models of Doom abounded, and
they all showed enormous die-offs of humans through famine and disease. The
conventional wisdom was that we were doomed. A Step Farther
Out disputed that: we could, I argued, have not mere survival, but survival
with style, using renewable resources. We have made it to the
21st Century. Alas, many of the measures I proposed for Survival With Style
have yet to be implemented; and A Step Farther Out, and its sequel Another
Step Farther Out, both available in the subscriber area of Chaos Manor
Reviews, remains relevant to our time. ========
I am also mailing a copy of the pdf format edition of The Strategy of
Technology by Stefan Possony, Jerry Pournelle, and Francis X. Kane to
all Patron subscribers. Patron subscribers have kept this place going for
years, and I haven't done much in return. I'm working on some new rewards,
although I understand that most patrons have subscribed as support for what
we do, not for the goodies. (An on-line
edition of Strategy of Technology has always been available to all
readers.) This would be a good time to
subscribe, or if you haven't got around to
doing it yet, to renew your subscription. And
thanks again to all who help keep us going here.
======================= The copies of the pdf format of The
Strategy of Technology were sent to all patron subscribers. As usual we had
a number of returns. If you did not get yours, please tell me, and make sure
I have your current email address; many of you change addresses without
telling me, which is pretty reasonable -- I don't imagine telling me your
subscription address is high on the red star list of things to do.
=============== NASA
and Shuttle Design Who Killed The Dream?
Most of this is from another conference, but it's of general interest:
We have told the story of how Space Shuttle went from being a simple
reusable access to space pickup truck to a horse designed by a committee.
One part of the design process was NASA's hope to take space access away
from the Armed Services by making the Shuttle able to perform just about any
mission the Armed Services wanted. In practice this mean USAF; the Navy in
those days wasn't all that interested in space (although Arthur Clarke had
already pointed out that if the human race is to survive, then for the vast
majority of our history the word "ship" will mean "space ship"). The Air
Force had a particular mission requirement: launch from Vandenberg, go over
the Soviet Union, and return to land at Edwards AFB. This required a large
cross range capability, which required wings, which dominated Shuttle
design. As one observer puts it, "the SAOAM (that's the
Silly Ass Once Around Mission) requirement was dropped by the Air Force in
1974, two years after the SAOAM (along with the volume of the cargo bay) had
defined the Shuttle's design." All this is pretty well known,
but it's worth repeating. In the course of discussion Dr. Phil Chapman, one
time Antarctic explorer and former US Astronaut, said this, which I quote
with his permission:
The payload bay was bigger than NASA needed because it was sized to
carry the giant Big Bird reconnaissance satellite, but the invention of
the CCD array made that system obsolete by 1973. When Big Bird and "the
Soviet surveillance once-around mission" went away, NASA could have
saved money by starting over with a new design -- but that would have
been politically embarrassing, especially as deleting USAF participation
would have made it entirely clear that the mission model used to justify
the shuttle was not just absurdly optimistic but fraudulent.
NASA's need to save face in 1974 and thereafter has destroyed the
dreams of two generations of space enthusiasts, cost us two shuttle
crews, wasted 35 years and and several hundred billion dollars, turned
the NASA human spaceflight program into a boondoggle that the public no
longer supports, and wasted the opportunity to make an irrevocable leap
into space that was afforded by the Cold War. Way to go, NASA.
Those responsible for this debacle who still survive (and I could
name names) should be pilloried in stocks at the JSC Main Gate, so that
citizens passing by could pelt them with vegetables. I would be happy to
provide plenty of rotten fruit for the purpose.
Phil Chapman
I am not sure rotten vegetables would be appropriate. I
suggest offal. ======== Re: "Death of
the Dream"
I don't understand why everyone keeps crapping all
over NASA for their "failure" in the Shuttle design. Indeed, Chapman's quote
in the View describes exactly how it WASN'T the fault of NASA!
Chapman claims that NASA ought to have gone back and
re-done the Shuttle from square one. See, the problem there is that without
Air Force money there WAS no Shuttle…and Air Force wouldn't provide money
unless they got what they wanted. And the USAF fell in love with the idea of
a "space plane"; they weren't interested in any of these silly old
spam-in-a-can capsules or Big Dumb Pipes.
If you want to throw trash at someone, throw it at the
USAF. As time goes by and I learn more about the military/scientific history
of the twentieth century's latter half, my opinion of the USAF continues to
descend.
Mike Powers
Many of us who worked with the Air Force, particularly those
from Schriever's camp, have a different view. NASA wanted
control of space. This mean exclusive control. They wanted to be sure that
everyone who had access to space was thoroughly NASA, a 45 year old PhD, a
real astronaut; no simple jet jockeys and pilots, no flight engineers, and
certainly no enlisted personnel. To keep control of space NASA offered to do
any job anyone proposed. After all, hadn't they GONE TO THE MOON? This was
NASA. (No, they hadn't gone to the Moon. General Phillips came and and took
over Apollo, and directed the effort to go to the Moon; but that's another
story.) NASA's policies were deliberate. They knew precisely
what they were doing. They were keeping USAF from having a space program.
And the Navy. If Navy and Air Force had been given the
mission of developing space access and missions in space we would be on the
Moon now.
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