OT: Moon Landing

On Sunday, July 14, 2019 at 11:05:39 PM UTC-4, Rick C wrote:

On Sunday, July 14, 2019 at 3:19:17 PM UTC-4, bloggs.fre...@gmail.com wrote:
On Sunday, July 14, 2019 at 12:42:53 PM UTC-4, John Larkin wrote:
On Sun, 14 Jul 2019 09:13:51 -0700 (PDT),
bloggs.fredbloggs.fred@gmail.com wrote:

On Sunday, July 14, 2019 at 9:59:05 AM UTC-4, Cursitor Doom wrote:
Gentlemen,

As we approach the 50th anniversary of the 'first manned moon landing' as
it were, I'm just wondering what proportion of the group believe the
whole thing was just an elaborate hoax for whatever reason?

It might as well have been. Either real or hoax, nothing came of it. Just more circus for the nitwits, and nerd welfare of course.



It was real enough, but expensive, dangerous, and useless. Like the
ISS.

"Exploring space" is an oxymoron.

If Von Braun and his crew hadn't showed up, the American buffoons would still be trying to use a scaled up Estes pressurized water rocket...

"Robert Hutchings Goddard was an American engineer, professor, physicist, and inventor who is credited with creating and building the world's first liquid-fueled rocket. Goddard successfully launched his rocket on March 16, 1926, ushering in an era of space flight and innovation."

Goddard never amounted to much. He was ill all his adult life and lacked the energy to actually build anything, preferring to piddle with elementary ideas and take forever to prototype a few demonstrations He was never part of or built/sold an organization to advance the science, mainly because he had no desire to do so. All this crap about his significance is just that, crap. Same with naming science centers after him long after he was dead. It's just your typical propagandist ploy of pushing the American exceptionalism garbage as well as getting out from under the stigma of completely under-utilizing the individual when he was alive- you know that pesky era when they wouldn't give him any money for anything. America of that time period was not far removed from the gold standard of education being defined as the ability to write your name. It was a pretty sorry place IOW.

--

Rick C.

-- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
-- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Klaus Kragelund]

Goddard and the top military scientists were focused on liquid rockets and couldn’t get solid fuel rockets working

It was not until the Danish immigrant Charles Lauritsen came along and showed them how to do it that the focus shifted

Charles team from Caltech produced millions of rockets for the Second World War, before that the US military rocket program was non existent

Charles also was key person in the atom bomb construction and the proximity fuse

Amazing that so few people know of his career

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Christian_Lauritsen


Cheers

Klaus

 

[Clifford Heath]

On 16/7/19 12:05 am, Martin Brown wrote:

My own school had a particularly inspiring biology teacher who ran the
science club. Our bias was therefore on interesting rare animals
(anything that wasn't actually deadly that turned up at the docks).

I still recall watching a Maxwell's spur arcing and sparking as it spun
through a pool of mercury flicking tiny droplets along the bench.

The only other reference Google can find online for "Maxwell's spur" and
mercury is a message you wrote in 2009.

What is it, and what do other people call it?

Clifford Heath

 

[Clifford Heath]

On 15/7/19 10:46 pm, Michael Terrell wrote:

On Monday, July 15, 2019 at 4:02:57 AM UTC-4, Clifford Heath wrote:
On 15/7/19 10:12 am, Clifford Heath wrote:
On 15/7/19 9:23 am, Michael Terrell wrote:
The video was slow scan, due to the transmit power requirements.
Higher bandwidth required more power than was available.
They sent ten frames per second, 320 lines. It was scan-converted for
TV. In those days the scan conversion was a camera pointed at a picture
tube.
https://www.sacbee.com/news/nation-world/article232663442.html
It was a little more complex than that. Scan converters were generally rack mounted units designed to maintain proper alignment of the monitor and camera.

Of course, but the point is that the "frame store" for conversion was
just phosphor persistence.

> It was recorded onto a Telemetry logging recorder, which was also FM. The 70 MHz IF from the Telemetry receivers IF was recorded on broadband logging recorders, for archival, or later processing of the individual channels.

Wow, 70MHz bandwidth on tape, that's a lot! A lot of tape, at least... I
had no idea it was even possible.

Thanks!

Clifford Heath.

 

[Jasen Betts]

On 2019-07-16, Clifford Heath <no.spam@please.net> wrote:

On 16/7/19 12:05 am, Martin Brown wrote:
My own school had a particularly inspiring biology teacher who ran the
science club. Our bias was therefore on interesting rare animals
(anything that wasn't actually deadly that turned up at the docks).

I still recall watching a Maxwell's spur arcing and sparking as it spun
through a pool of mercury flicking tiny droplets along the bench.

The only other reference Google can find online for "Maxwell's spur" and
mercury is a message you wrote in 2009.

What is it, and what do other people call it?

Possibly "Barlows's wheel"?

--
When I tried casting out nines I made a hash of it.

 

[Rick C]

On Monday, July 15, 2019 at 4:36:33 PM UTC-4, Klaus Kragelund wrote:

Goddard and the top military scientists were focused on liquid rockets and couldn’t get solid fuel rockets working

It was not until the Danish immigrant Charles Lauritsen came along and showed them how to do it that the focus shifted

Charles team from Caltech produced millions of rockets for the Second World War, before that the US military rocket program was non existent

Charles also was key person in the atom bomb construction and the proximity 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 make an atomic bomb, asked Lauritsen to go to Los Alamos, New Mexico, to assist 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".

Amazing that so few people know of his career

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Christian_Lauritsen

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 that work. I would say *that* guy was a "key" person. George Kistiakowsky

--

Rick C.

++ Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
++ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

Jasen Betts <jasen@xnet.co.nz> wrote in
news:qgjrol$h6n$2@gonzo.revmaps.no-ip.org:

On 2019-07-16, Clifford Heath <no.spam@please.net> wrote:
On 16/7/19 12:05 am, Martin Brown wrote:
My own school had a particularly inspiring biology teacher who
ran the science club. Our bias was therefore on interesting rare
animals (anything that wasn't actually deadly that turned up at
the docks).

I still recall watching a Maxwell's spur arcing and sparking as
it spun through a pool of mercury flicking tiny droplets along
the bench.

The only other reference Google can find online for "Maxwell's
spur" and mercury is a message you wrote in 2009.

What is it, and what do other people call it?

Possibly "Barlows's wheel"?

Or a Van De Graaff generator when it snaps?

Sounds like something to do with arcing.

 

[Martin Brown]

On 16/07/2019 07:44, Jasen Betts wrote:

On 2019-07-16, Clifford Heath <no.spam@please.net> wrote:
On 16/7/19 12:05 am, Martin Brown wrote:
My own school had a particularly inspiring biology teacher who ran the
science club. Our bias was therefore on interesting rare animals
(anything that wasn't actually deadly that turned up at the docks).

I still recall watching a Maxwell's spur arcing and sparking as it spun
through a pool of mercury flicking tiny droplets along the bench.

The only other reference Google can find online for "Maxwell's spur" and
mercury is a message you wrote in 2009.

What is it, and what do other people call it?

Possibly "Barlows's wheel"?

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.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

 

[bitrex]

On 7/14/19 5:00 PM, John Larkin wrote:

An idea that was never implemented. Both the US and Soviet military
considered and cancelled manned spaceflight programs. Both realized
that unmanned spacecraft made more sense for them.


Why did the Shuttle have such huge return load capacity other than
returning a military space laboratory ?

Must have been a mistake, since it never did return such a lab.

The entire Shuttle program was a mistake.

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.

 

[bitrex]

On 7/15/19 2:43 AM, upsidedown@downunder.com wrote:

But manned space flight? The Pentagon hasn't been very interested in
that.

What was the MOL project (a Gemini capsule on top of a 3 m diameter
space laboratory to be launched by Titan III M) ?

An idea that was never implemented. Both the US and Soviet military
considered and cancelled manned spaceflight programs. Both realized
that unmanned spacecraft made more sense for them.

The Soviets had the Almaz (a.k.a Salyut 2/3/5) military space
stations. At least one had a 23 mm cannon, apparently for self
defense


Why did the Shuttle have such huge return load capacity other than
returning a military space laboratory ?

Must have been a mistake, since it never did return such a lab.

The Spacelab concept was similar. It was taking down for
reconfiguration / rebuilding between missions. t would have made more
sense to send up a new lab for each mission.

The LDEF material testing spacecraft was one of the few missions, in
which a heavy load really needed to be returned for result analysis..

The entire Shuttle program was a mistake.

Agreed.

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.

 

[bitrex]

On 7/14/19 4:07 PM, John Larkin wrote:

Space flight, like high-energy physics, is primarily a cultural
activity. (Space flight also has a strong military dimension.)


But manned space flight? The Pentagon hasn't been very interested in
that.

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...

 

[amdx]

On 7/14/2019 11:26 AM, Chris wrote:

On Sun, 14 Jul 2019 10:27:35 -0500, amdx wrote:

We're to busy fighting an alien invasion!

Fighting?? Co-operating with it more like.

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

 

[bitrex]

On 7/16/19 6:25 PM, bitrex wrote:

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

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

Cheers

Klaus


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?

related: <https://youtu.be/KLODGhEyLvk?t=3>

 

[John Larkin]

On Tue, 16 Jul 2019 16:35:36 -0400, bitrex <user@example.net> wrote:

On 7/14/19 5:00 PM, John Larkin wrote:

An idea that was never implemented. Both the US and Soviet military
considered and cancelled manned spaceflight programs. Both realized
that unmanned spacecraft made more sense for them.


Why did the Shuttle have such huge return load capacity other than
returning a military space laboratory ?

Must have been a mistake, since it never did return such a lab.

The entire Shuttle program was a mistake.



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.

Why does any of that need a human crew?


--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc
picosecond timing precision measurement

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

 

[John Larkin]

On Tue, 16 Jul 2019 16:29:49 -0400, bitrex <user@example.net> wrote:

On 7/15/19 2:43 AM, upsidedown@downunder.com wrote:


But manned space flight? The Pentagon hasn't been very interested in
that.

What was the MOL project (a Gemini capsule on top of a 3 m diameter
space laboratory to be launched by Titan III M) ?

An idea that was never implemented. Both the US and Soviet military
considered and cancelled manned spaceflight programs. Both realized
that unmanned spacecraft made more sense for them.

The Soviets had the Almaz (a.k.a Salyut 2/3/5) military space
stations. At least one had a 23 mm cannon, apparently for self
defense


Why did the Shuttle have such huge return load capacity other than
returning a military space laboratory ?

Must have been a mistake, since it never did return such a lab.

The Spacelab concept was similar. It was taking down for
reconfiguration / rebuilding between missions. t would have made more
sense to send up a new lab for each mission.

The LDEF material testing spacecraft was one of the few missions, in
which a heavy load really needed to be returned for result analysis..

The entire Shuttle program was a mistake.

Agreed.


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.

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




--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc
picosecond timing precision measurement

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

 

[bitrex]

On 7/16/19 5:46 PM, Klaus Kragelund wrote:

On Tuesday, July 16, 2019 at 9:11:38 AM UTC+2, Rick C wrote:
On Monday, July 15, 2019 at 4:36:33 PM UTC-4, Klaus Kragelund wrote:
Goddard and the top military scientists were focused on liquid rockets and couldn’t get solid fuel rockets working

It was not until the Danish immigrant Charles Lauritsen came along and showed them how to do it that the focus shifted

Charles team from Caltech produced millions of rockets for the Second World War, before that the US military rocket program was non existent

Charles also was key person in the atom bomb construction and the proximity 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 make an atomic bomb, asked Lauritsen to go to Los Alamos, New Mexico, to assist 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".


Amazing that so few people know of his career

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki
--
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 manage any more. Charles sat next to Oppenheimer, desk to desk, until the the Manhattan Project was shut down

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

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 they had

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

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

Cheers

Klaus

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?

 

[Cursitor Doom]

On Mon, 15 Jul 2019 11:54:53 +1000, Sylvia Else wrote:

On 14/07/2019 11:59 pm, Cursitor Doom wrote:
Gentlemen,

As we approach the 50th anniversary of the 'first manned moon landing'
as it were, I'm just wondering what proportion of the group believe the
whole thing was just an elaborate hoax for whatever reason?



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sE-tpiAiiHo

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



--
This message may be freely reproduced without limit or charge only via
the Usenet protocol. Reproduction in whole or part through other
protocols, whether for profit or not, is conditional upon a charge of
GBP10.00 per reproduction. Publication in this manner via non-Usenet
protocols constitutes acceptance of this condition.

 

[Klaus Kragelund]

On Tuesday, July 16, 2019 at 9:11:38 AM UTC+2, Rick C wrote:

On Monday, July 15, 2019 at 4:36:33 PM UTC-4, Klaus Kragelund wrote:
Goddard and the top military scientists were focused on liquid rockets and couldn’t get solid fuel rockets working

It was not until the Danish immigrant Charles Lauritsen came along and showed them how to do it that the focus shifted

Charles team from Caltech produced millions of rockets for the Second World War, before that the US military rocket program was non existent

Charles also was key person in the atom bomb construction and the proximity 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 make an atomic bomb, asked Lauritsen to go to Los Alamos, New Mexico, to assist 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".


Amazing that so few people know of his career

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki
--
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 manage any more. Charles sat next to Oppenheimer, desk to desk, until the the Manhattan Project was shut down

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

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 they had

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

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

Cheers

Klaus

 

[bitrex]

On 7/16/19 6:29 PM, John Larkin wrote:

On Tue, 16 Jul 2019 16:29:49 -0400, bitrex <user@example.net> wrote:

On 7/15/19 2:43 AM, upsidedown@downunder.com wrote:


But manned space flight? The Pentagon hasn't been very interested in
that.

What was the MOL project (a Gemini capsule on top of a 3 m diameter
space laboratory to be launched by Titan III M) ?

An idea that was never implemented. Both the US and Soviet military
considered and cancelled manned spaceflight programs. Both realized
that unmanned spacecraft made more sense for them.

The Soviets had the Almaz (a.k.a Salyut 2/3/5) military space
stations. At least one had a 23 mm cannon, apparently for self
defense


Why did the Shuttle have such huge return load capacity other than
returning a military space laboratory ?

Must have been a mistake, since it never did return such a lab.

The Spacelab concept was similar. It was taking down for
reconfiguration / rebuilding between missions. t would have made more
sense to send up a new lab for each mission.

The LDEF material testing spacecraft was one of the few missions, in
which a heavy load really needed to be returned for result analysis..

The entire Shuttle program was a mistake.

Agreed.


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.

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

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

 

[bitrex]

On 7/16/19 6:29 PM, John Larkin wrote:

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.

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

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.