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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Boulder Creek CA
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May 16, 2010 - 11:52pm PT
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Perception is funny stuff. When we see something unusual that doesn't fit our perceptual experience, we tend to compulsively jump to an explanation from our base of known understanding. Science and Lipan Apache trained trackers try mightily to avoid that phenomena; and succeed some of the time.
However some things just blow our mind. For example most people have no conception of the sensations experienced in a skydive; and their preconceptions almost always turn out to be quite incorrect. That was certainly true of me, and I already had experience with long leader falls. That is why we start people with tandem skydives for their first two or three jumps, until they get used to the idea. Once you get used to the unusual perceptions, it turns out to be a wonderful sport.
Another example is flying rockets and space travel, which are very non-intuitive. Astronauts experience various disorienting phenomena that are nothing like what Hollywood portrays.
A related example is the 'fireflys' viewed outside his Mercury spacecraft by the first orbiting American, John Glenn; a very level-headed guy if there ever was one. The next Mercury astronaut, Scott Carpenter, was so intrigued by these 'fireflys' that he ignored Mission Control orders and almost used up all his thruster fuel chasing them around; and could have burned up in the upper atmosphere due to loss of control on re-entry. (He was never allowed to fly again.) These 'fireflys' are now a familiar phenomena and turn out to be brightly sunlit ice crystals from the urine dump valve.
I once made a particular business trip from D.C. to Sandia and Los Alamos; and one of my good friends found out about it. She was the owner of a well respected consulting company in Maryland. She flew out to join me, because she wanted me to confirm her sightings of UFOs in the Albuquerque area. (No this was not Linda Moulton Howe, who is one of the most careful observers I've ever known.)
So this friend and I were driving from Albuquerque towards Santa Fe and she pointed out a couple of 'Mother Ships' hovering over Santa Fe. It turns out that she was not used to seeing lenticular clouds over Washington D.C.! She was quite chagrined at my explanation.
A little later in the trip we stayed at Aqua Caliente and that night hiked the clear desert night to the top of a hill. From the top of the hill she was startled to see a bright white light pass over us from South to Northeast without making a sound; and she challenged me to explain that one! I told her to count to 12 and see what happens. My timing guess was just about right for the double sonic boom that hit us.
I'm not at all saying that everything people see has such easy explanations; just that we have to be very careful, even with trained observers.
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Boulder Creek CA
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May 17, 2010 - 12:31am PT
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Rokjox,
You are asking questions close to my heart.
A German named Eugen Saengler invented the idea back in 1935 with his Silbervogel.
It requires a great deal of energy to change the orbital plane of a spacecraft; almost as much as the energy to launch it. Saengler published papers proposing a vehicle that could descend into the upper atmosphere and use aerodynamic effects to change its orbital plane, and then skip back off into space like a skipping stone on a pond.
The USAF picked up on the idea in the late 1950s with the Dyna-soar space program as a successor to the X-15. In my opinion it was for various reasons our best idea for space vehicles. That program produced the X-20 and X-24 that proved the re-entry concepts that were later used for our Space Shuttle Program. Dyna-soar was canceled in favor of a civilian space launch program: the Vanguard, that didn't turn out too well.
The X-37 mini-shuttle is somewhat of a revitalization of that idea. It was sitting partially forgotten in a hanger at NASA Dryden for years, and I was privileged to spend hours crawling around admiring it. Recently the USAF picked up on the idea and launched it. It can stay up much longer than a couple of weeks.
I don't know much more than that as to what the USAF has in mind for it, but it's not difficult to imagine the advantages of an eye in the sky that can rapidly change orbits.
There are several commercial ventures that are currently taking advantage of the research done for the Dyna-soar program. I am a big promoter of the idea of a very small vehicle that is closer to a powered skydiver than a spaceplane.
Another German, Alban Geisler, is developing this idea with his SkyRay and Gryphon; with a version marketed through SpelCo. They have made many hundreds of test flights. The mini-jet turbine and solid-rocket powered Gryphon wing is air-launched at high altitude from a cargo plane with a skydiver pilot in a pressure suit, with fly-by-wire flight stabilization, seamless transition from aerodynamic control to thruster control, and helmet-mounted full avionics display. I think this idea will have the same impact on space travel as the personal computer relative to mainframe computers.
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Boulder Creek CA
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May 17, 2010 - 01:34am PT
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It seems fairly likely that there is at least one agent provocateur participating in this thread.
I'm reminded on an old South African saying that whenever three people gather to conspire, two are police agents and the third a fool.
I'm also reminded of the old saying that you should never argue with a fool, because people won't be able to tell the difference.
I am unimpressed by people hiding their identity. And I will be a lot more impressed if people will constrain themselves to treating each other with polite respect.
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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May 17, 2010 - 01:48am PT
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Permit me to doubt that anything in low earth orbit could 'bounce' off the atmosphere without losing some kinetic energy/momentum, and likely de-orbiting, unless some energy was added at some point. Newtonian physics applies to space planes, too. Anything hitting the atmosphere, even very obliquely, will lose some energy. Ed?
But if Rokjox says that the passengers on the space plane can't make phone calls while it's re-entering, for once I'll agree with him.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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May 17, 2010 - 02:05am PT
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A robotic space fighter for sattelite destruction would require the ability to launch into VERY high orbits, far beyond anything ever achieved by the shuttle.
I would only need to fire it's weapons at things in very high orbits, which is different than having to go them itself.
Having a space fighter seems like a likely program the military would consider a high priority. Whoever has the first space fighter rules.
Could also defend against aliens if they think there are any (but sort of a joke given the technology aliens would have to have. Maybe they are so advanced they don't realize what bloodthirsty bastards we could be and don't have weaponized crafts)
Peace
Karl
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Shack
Big Wall climber
Reno NV
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May 17, 2010 - 03:22am PT
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1. Where is the little mini-shuttle?
It should be on its way back any time now, 12 days was it's advertised limits.
Where in the world do you get your disinformation? All the specs I saw said up to 9 months!
2. What good is a mini shuttle with no cargo bay, no pilot and no room for troops or satellites?
Again, you obviously are not well informed. How could you possibly think there is no cargo bay?
6. Who is the manufacturer?
It must have taken thousands of guys to build it,
Also, not a big secret. The X-37 has been around for a number of years.
7. Why haven't we already heard all about it?
We know that nobody in Government or private industry can keep a secret.
What??? We have. Maybe YOU haven't. Try this TOP SECRET DOCUMENT, it will answer all your questions, but shhhhh, keep it on the down low, we don't want any black helicopters eavesdropping on us.
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Shack
Big Wall climber
Reno NV
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May 17, 2010 - 03:50am PT
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How to "prove" someone is a witch...
Klimmer: There are ways of *telling* whether she is a witch!
Roxjok: Are there? What? Tell us, then! Tell us!
Klimmer: Tell me. What do you do with witches?
Roxjok: BUUUURN!!!!! BUUUUUURRRRNN!!!!! You BURN them!!!! BURN!!
Klimmer: And what do you burn apart from witches?
Other villager: More Witches!
Roxjok: Wood.
Klimmer: So. Why do witches burn?
Roxjok: (tentatively) Because they're made of.....wood?
Klimmer: Goooood!
Klimmer: So. How do we tell whether she is made of wood?
Roxjok: Build a bridge out of 'er!
Klimmer: Aah. But can you not also make bridges out of stone?
Villagers: oh yeah. oh. umm...
Klimmer: Does wood sink in water?
One Villager: No! No, no, it floats!
Roxjok: Throw her into the pond!
Villagers: yaaaaaa!
Klimmer: What also floats in water?
Roxjok: Bread!
Another Villager: Apples!
Roxjok: Uh...very small rocks!
Another Villager: Cider!
Another Villager: Uh...great gravy!
Roxjok: Cherries!
Another Villager: Mud!
Roxjok: Churches! Churches!
Another Villager: Lead! Lead!
Roxjok: A Duck!
Villagers: (in amazement) ooooooh!
Klimmer: exACTly!
Klimmer: So, *logically*...
Roxjok: If...she...weighs the same as a duck......she's made of wood.
Klimmer: and therefore...
Roxjok: A Witch!
All Villagers: A WITCH!
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Klimmer
Mountain climber
San Diego
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Topic Author's Reply - May 17, 2010 - 09:34am PT
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The fact that NASA is part of DoD is no secret.
Someone should post up that evidence. It is in abundance. At the moment I don't have the time.
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Boulder Creek CA
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May 17, 2010 - 11:04am PT
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Mighty Hiker,
Yes, an orbiting space plane loses energy by going into the upper atmosphere. This either puts you in a lower and faster orbit; or you keep skipping and eventually return to earth. You need a re-boost to maintain or gain a higher orbit.
The Dyna-soar design includes an expendable service module with two engines: one liquid and one solid. The liquid can be used either for a re-boost burn or a de-orbit burn. The solid is there as a backup for a de-orbit burn in case you can't re-light the liquid fueled engine and need to return the crew to earth in an emergency.
The Dyna-soar solid-fuel engine also serves as a launch-abort escape system. For other programs the launch-abort escape system is normally dead weight that gets thrown away once you are high enough in the launch phase i.e. Mercury, Apollo, Orion. For Dyna-soar it also gives you a very valuable backup for an emergency de-orbit burn.
Now you have me starting to list the reasons why I think the Dyna-soar is such a good design.
I worked on the Orion launch-abort system which is currently being tested; and got a NASA award for my contributions to the design of the launch emergency detection system. I lobbied heavily for the Dyna-soar approach. There were some studies commissioned to look at variants of it that would work on a capsule type space vehicle. But someone made a decision to stay with an Apollo style throw-away launch-abort tower. I'm not sure if the reasons were technical or just political.
The X-37 does have a large liquid-fueled engine and fairly large fuel tanks, but not solid-fuel engines so far as I know. But it is not currently designed to keep a crew alive. I'm not telling you anything that is not widely published on the internet; and that is where I get most of my own information.
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Boulder Creek CA
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May 17, 2010 - 11:17am PT
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I am interested in some of these discussions and think they can be very worthwhile. I am not interested in the defaming and irrelevant cross talk between members. I left the Washington D.C. area because the primary local sport seems to be character defamation. I didn't get to be a target, but didn't want to stick around until becoming one. It's also why I left the Camp 4 community. I didn't return to communicating with this community because my tolerance for this sort of thing has gotten any better. Those of you who have self-worth ego challenges should find some better way to resolve them than anonymous personality clashes in an open forum.
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Boulder Creek CA
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May 17, 2010 - 11:37am PT
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HFCS,
religion has some aspects like climbing a big mountain. on the lower slopes there are many paths. however as you go higher on the mountain there are fewer paths. the summit does not care by what path you arrive...
although i like this analogy, it is limited. in my opinion our society has just barely begun our education into the nature of reality
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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May 17, 2010 - 11:43am PT
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Karl asks:
So you're not quite saying that the United States is really committed to the peaceful only use of outer space are you?
I guess it depends on what you consider peaceful to be.
 The GPS system was launched to improve the accuracy of ballistic missiles.
Spy satellites to provide accurate location information and intelligence
Underseas mapping of density, speed-of-sound measurements, seafloor mapping, cataloging undersea sounds all to aid in submarine force.
etc...
All of these technologies are dual use, as far as having weapons floating around in orbit, so far we are adhering to the stronger interpretations of the treaty.
As with everything, defense of the national resources against hostile challenges is a role the federal government has and must fulfill. So we are prepared/preparing to meet the military challenges of other nations.
In our democracy, all voices are heard, even those who would advocate for an escalated military presence in space. The best thing we can do as a populace is to inform ourselves on the issues and be prepared to participate in choosing the country's leadership.
That leadership is only as wise as the people electing it to office.
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MeatBomb
Gym climber
Boise, I dee Hoe
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May 17, 2010 - 12:36pm PT
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rokjox I just get tired of being called such an idiot by Pate and Meetball, I wanted to let them have a chance.
RokJox you are the largest wind bag perhaps to ever haunt a forum. I feel sorry for your family and if any of them need some help, or perhaps you could do everyone a favor and self admit, here is a place and number for them/you to call:
Intermountain Hospital
303 North Allumbaugh
Boise, ID 83704
800-321-5984
http://www.intermountainhospital.com
God speed---
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Shack
Big Wall climber
Reno NV
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May 17, 2010 - 12:39pm PT
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Tom, I really appreciate your posts.
But someone made a decision to stay with an Apollo style throw-away launch-abort tower.
Speaking of the launch abort tower...it too was tested recently (May 6th).
It is designed for the new Orion crew vehicle.
Orion Crew Vehicle launch abort system
The video of the test is awesome.
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Boulder Creek CA
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May 17, 2010 - 02:37pm PT
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Pate,
A civilization is based upon trust, and I agree that a great deal of the trust that holds our society together has been betrayed. So I don't expect to be granted any special regard. If I share something and you prove me wrong, then I am just as much inerested in knowing that as you are.
I do have more of an insider view into the space programs than most, having been very involved for many years. However I do not have any special clearances other than the usual checks required of anyone who provides services to the government.
I think that open internet forums offer hope to learn and share knowledge. My hope has been that there is a certain amount of shared trust and intelligence within the climbing community. I know there is a lot of disinformation being put out to obscure the truth regarding some topics. So I am very disappointed to see the disrespect being slung around. To my way of thinking that is just useless noise in the system and is perhaps being instigated as part of a disinformation campaign. If we can't get beyond the noise of personal attacks, then this forum is a waste of time for all involved.
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