OT: Moon Landing

[bitrex]

On 7/16/19 6:54 PM, bitrex wrote:

On 7/16/19 6:31 PM, John Larkin wrote:
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?



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.

 

[bitrex]

On 7/16/19 6:31 PM, John Larkin wrote:

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?

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.

 

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.

"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.

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.

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

 

[Sylvia Else]

On 17/07/2019 8:13 am, Cursitor Doom wrote:

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.

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

Sylvia.

 

On Tue, 16 Jul 2019 18:54:29 -0400, bitrex <user@example.net> wrote:

On 7/16/19 6:31 PM, John Larkin wrote:
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?



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.

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 .

 

[Michael Terrell]

On Tuesday, July 16, 2019 at 6:31:33 PM UTC-4, John Larkin wrote:

Why does any of that need a human crew?

Why do we need humans to design electronics?

 

On Wed, 17 Jul 2019 08:29:17 +0300, upsidedown@downunder.com wrote:

The entire Shuttle program was a mistake.

Agreed.


You're evaluating it divorced from the context of the time it was
developed.

"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.

Apparently the reason for this single design this was financing, i.e.
you had to spread federal money to all states and constituencies to
get support from all senators and Congress representatives.

 

amdx <nojunk@knology.net> wrote in news:qglf08$d2m$1@dont-email.me:

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

I always understood it to mean access to a ship (or 'boat').

The part everyone seems to have forgotten is that permission to
board is always expected to be asked first.

We need to properly repel unwanted boarders as well.

I still say my Circus Cannon idea is good.

If you are worried about it being humane, we could give them a nice
oxy addiction to ease the pain of the ejection and make it harder to
get back too.

 

[gregz]

Clifford Heath <no.spam@please.net> wrote:

On 15/7/19 9:23 am, Michael Terrell wrote:
On Sunday, July 14, 2019 at 11:32:44 AM UTC-4, amdx wrote:
On 7/14/2019 8:59 AM, 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?



The question is just to stupid to entertain.
But I have to ad, this morning I saw the seamstresses from Platex even
got in on the hoax of sewing moon suits together.
I was about 14 then and my mom let me stay up late to watch it.
I remember how crummy the video was.
The video was slow scan, due to the transmit power requirements. Higher
bandwidth required more power than was available. It was also heavier
than they could take on the mission. You can only get so much gain from the antennas.
Slow scan allowed the video to be transmitted on an audio channel. Once
it was received on earth, it was scan converted, to let the public see
it. It was crappy video, or nothing.
Amateur radio operators still use Slow Scan video on the HF and VHF bands.
It's been decades, but I think it was eight seconds per frame for
Amateur radio, to fit into a 5KHz audio channel. One commercial product was 'Robot'?
Some use NTSC video at higher frequencies. Some old CATV modulators are
on the proper bands, and are used with an amplifier for ATV.

The guys at HoneySuckle Creek who ran the equipment that showed the world
the First Step are having the (last?) big reunion this weekend. 450
Apollo tragics (including moi) will be there with them. Mike Dinn was
station manager at the time, and there are others still around who were
present at the time. So if you want to know any technical details, now
would be a really good time to ask! Also Andrew Tink's book "HoneySuckle
Creek" has most of the details.

Clifford Heath.

There are a lot of details on Honeysuckle Creek Tracking website.

Greg

 

[gregz]

Michael Terrell <terrell.michael.a@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sunday, July 14, 2019 at 11:32:44 AM UTC-4, amdx wrote:
On 7/14/2019 8:59 AM, 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?



The question is just to stupid to entertain.
But I have to ad, this morning I saw the seamstresses from Platex even
got in on the hoax of sewing moon suits together.
I was about 14 then and my mom let me stay up late to watch it.
I remember how crummy the video was.

The video was slow scan, due to the transmit power requirements. Higher
bandwidth required more power than was available. It was also heavier
than they could take on the mission. You can only get so much gain from the antennas.

Slow scan allowed the video to be transmitted on an audio channel. Once
it was received on earth, it was scan converted, to let the public see
it. It was crappy video, or nothing.

Amateur radio operators still use Slow Scan video on the HF and VHF bands.

It's been decades, but I think it was eight seconds per frame for Amateur
radio, to fit into a 5KHz audio channel. One commercial product was 'Robot'?

Some use NTSC video at higher frequencies. Some old CATV modulators are
on the proper bands, and are used with an amplifier for ATV.

It was my impression video was transmitted as PCM digital data, recorded
onto data tape. There was a slow scan TV viewer at stations which showed
best quality. I would ask questions to one of the lead engineers, but have
not emailed him lately to see if I'm wrong.

Greg

 

[Martin Brown]

On 16/07/2019 21:23, bitrex wrote:

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...

So long as there was a *very* long runway for them to land on.

I am reminded of the Specsavers advert in the UK.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2nlyMIi610

Not sure Luton airport runway would be long enough though.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

 

I can't believe anyone is still on about this. I have analysed the situation and the bottom line is that because the world was watching to fake it they would have had to spend more money than to actually do it. Kids had telescopes back then, and that includes in Russia. They would have loved to expose any possibility of deception during the cold war.

The most powerful piece of evidence they have is debunked. It is not disproven but it is proven not to be proven. This is the waving of the flag when there is supposedly no atmosphere.

Now, why is there no atmosphere ? because of solar wind, the same reason a comet's tail ALWAYS points away from the sun. (or nearest star) If it can blow the atmosphere off of Mars it can move a piece of cloth.

There are conspiracy theories that are true, oh yeah, but this ain't one of them.

It is just too easy.

 

[Martin Brown]

On 18/07/2019 12:17, jurb6006@gmail.com wrote:

I can't believe anyone is still on about this. I have analysed the
situation and the bottom line is that because the world was watching
to fake it they would have had to spend more money than to actually
do it. Kids had telescopes back then, and that includes in Russia.
They would have loved to expose any possibility of deception during
the cold war.

There are still no optical telescopes on Earth that can resolve the
lunar landing sites or spot an orbiter against the moons glare.

However, everybody and their dog with a decent receiver and a relatively
high gain antenna was eavesdropping on the lunar command module comms.
Including a high school in Kettering, England who were famous for it.

The most powerful piece of evidence they have is debunked. It is not
disproven but it is proven not to be proven. This is the waving of
the flag when there is supposedly no atmosphere.

It was supported by a rigid rod along the top. Clearly visible in this
picture. ISTR the flag initially very crumpled slowly straightened out.
Basically as the fabric adjusted to being unfurled.

https://www.space-images.com/wallpapers/apollo/11-flag1/apollo11_01_1920x1200.jpg

I hope the Chinese visit at least one Apollo site as tourists (not
Apollo 11 though) and bring back a Hasselblad. Be interesting to see how
well the red and blue pigments in the flag stand up to hard UV. They
were apparently stock items made of nylon so probably won't have lasted
very well in a hard vacuum (see other thread about plastics in vacuum).

Gravity still acts on the flag and so do Newtons laws. The thing behaves
pretty much like a compound pendulum because of the rod at the top.

Now, why is there no atmosphere ? because of solar wind, the same
reason a comet's tail ALWAYS points away from the sun. (or nearest
star) If it can blow the atmosphere off of Mars it can move a piece
of cloth.

Comet tails do not always point away from the sun! The main white dust
tail actually sits behind the comet along its recent trajectory. Only
the ion and gas tail points directly away from the sun. The naked eye
comet Hale-Bopp in 1996 showed this phenomena beautifully for months.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet_Hale%E2%80%93Bopp

The distribution of dust along the orbit of periodic comets is what
gives us predictable meteor showers Perseids next up on 11-13th August.

There are conspiracy theories that are true, oh yeah, but this ain't
one of them.

It is just too easy.

The thing that would have been impossible to fake was the rock samples
they brought back with isotopic signatures and minerals not of this
Earth. Russia grabbed some robotically a year later and both sets agree.

Pieces of moon rock and even bits of Mars fall to Earth from time to
time and command a high price with some avid collectors (pricing science
out of the market for highly sought after pieces sold at auction).

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

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

 

jurb6006@gmail.com wrote in
news:4fdbfd88-7f28-454d-848f-dc606c21eed7@googlegroups.com:

This is the waving of the flag when there is supposedly no
atmosphere.

You are an abject idiot. The flag was held by a stiff rod at the
top.

There was no waving. There was no flapping. There was no faking.

Except for your birth certificate. Your parents faked that, because
you were not born. You were shat.

 

[bitrex]

On 7/17/19 1:41 AM, upsidedown@downunder.com wrote:

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.

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 .

I've read it speculated that the US planned to grab Salyut 7 at some
point with the Shuttle, it would've probably just barely fit in the
payload bay, maybe so but I'm not sure of how much intelligence interest
a pretty aging design of Soviet space station would've provided at that
point, I would think the DoD/NRO would've been most interested in their
optics capabilities and also some of the satellites that had small
liquid metal-cooled fission reactors onboard

 

[Rick C]

On Tuesday, July 16, 2019 at 3:11:38 AM UTC-4, 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/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

Someone else who was important but not well acknowledged...

https://www.npr.org/2019/07/18/739934923/meet-john-houbolt-he-figured-out-how-to-go-to-the-moon-but-few-were-listening

--

Rick C.

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

 

[bitrex]

On 7/18/19 1:51 PM, bitrex wrote:

Removing the main engines from the orbiter entirely and just having
maneuvering engines on it, and lofting it with a big dumb Saturn V-like
booster with lox/kerosene lower stages was the approach the Soviets took
with Buran, and probably would've been a fairly rugged and relatively
low-cost system had the program continued.

Back in '74 or whenever they thought they could save some $$$ by making
the SSMEs reusable along with the SRBs and only discarding a relatively
cheap external tank instead of the whole booster with the main engines
still attached.

Yeah maybe would've been cheaper if they were hitting 50 flights a year
but when averaging only a half-dozen they never hit the cost to flight
ratio to save anything doing that. The soviets had the benefit of some
hindsight observation and while they may have been "communist" they
could definitely ballpark the Shuttle's maintenance costs vs.
turn-around time and run the accounting on that and come to the
conclusion NASA was not saving any cash by trying to make as much as
possible re-usable, on less than 10 flights a year.

Eh, actually the Soviets were probably too far into the development
process by 1981 to gain much resusability design guidance from looking
at the US program, the Soviet project started earlier than I had
thought, in 1974.

 

[bitrex]

On 7/18/19 1:51 PM, bitrex wrote:

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.

Removing the main engines from the orbiter entirely and just having
maneuvering engines on it, and lofting it with a big dumb Saturn V-like
booster with lox/kerosene lower stages was the approach the Soviets took
with Buran, and probably would've been a fairly rugged and relatively
low-cost system had the program continued.

The Buran was designed from the outset to have autonomous flight and
landing capability and be able to go ahead and launch in freezing cold
and atrocious weather not at all like southern Florida.

The first launch was in terrible weather conditions they didn't scrub
anything just fly it, guys:

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ASPDBuG53A>

 

[bitrex]

On 7/17/19 1:29 AM, upsidedown@downunder.com wrote:

"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.

Yeah, NASA had a previously-existing contracts with the NRO/DoD to
provide some amount of military flights, likely signed off on by folks
who weren't even involved by the time the thing started flying regularly.

Even before the Challenger accident the DoD had concluded they weren't
particularly interested in using the Shuttle routinely for their
payloads, it was clear NASA could never hit the turnaround times
required to make it financially viable.

Yeah it'd be very nice to simultaneously have human astronauts in space
that can patch up a satellite which isn't working properly after launch
and also leverage economy of scale of 50-80 flights per year, but the
Shuttle flights never got close to the kind of turn-around time (I think
the most they flew in a year was 9, in '85) and didn't offer much
advantage over just accepting the risk of launching a pricey satellite
on a dumb booster and hope for the best

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.

Removing the main engines from the orbiter entirely and just having
maneuvering engines on it, and lofting it with a big dumb Saturn V-like
booster with lox/kerosene lower stages was the approach the Soviets took
with Buran, and probably would've been a fairly rugged and relatively
low-cost system had the program continued.

Back in '74 or whenever they thought they could save some $$$ by making
the SSMEs reusable along with the SRBs and only discarding a relatively
cheap external tank instead of the whole booster with the main engines
still attached.

Yeah maybe would've been cheaper if they were hitting 50 flights a year
but when averaging only a half-dozen they never hit the cost to flight
ratio to save anything doing that. The soviets had the benefit of some
hindsight observation and while they may have been "communist" they
could definitely ballpark the Shuttle's maintenance costs vs.
turn-around time and run the accounting on that and come to the
conclusion NASA was not saving any cash by trying to make as much as
possible re-usable, on less than 10 flights a year.

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

It all sounds good on paper, man, but NASA received bids from four
different companies, IIRC one of them maybe it was Lockheed's involved a
ramjet, NASA rejected that stuff not because they thought they were bad
designs intellectually but just on complexity and cost vis a vis 1975
technology.

North American's design was taken because they thought North American's
was the KISS-est that could accomplish the requirements (including above
mentioned NRO contract obligation) and they had the most realistic cost
projections which were still way off.

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.

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

I think SDI might have scared politicians in the SU who didn't have an
engineering or science background in the same way that certain US
politicians who didn't have an engineering or science background were
enamored with it; I don't know how much it actually worried the Soviet
military leadership/defense engineering industry. Pragmatically speaking
the Shuttle was a real thing with real military capability that existed
already and SDI was and still is mostly fantasy-land stuff.

 

> You are an abject idiot. The flag was held by a stiff rod at the top.

And the Dow is down a quarter point.

>There was no waving. There was no flapping. There was no >faking.

They showed it. They thought it was prof positive but it was not. That flag DID move and it did it for the same reasone there is not atmosphere on Mars.

>Except for your birth certificate. Your parents faked that, >because you were not born. You were shat.

They shat better than your Parents punk, ten paces, come on bitch. We'll see who is left.