OT: Moon Landing

[bitrex]

On 7/18/19 3:57 AM, Martin Brown wrote:

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.

Don't need runways (artist's conception):

<https://youtu.be/Mk4wEAO07hM?t=148>

 

[bitrex]

On 7/18/19 4:04 PM, Martin Brown wrote:

On 18/07/2019 20:14, bitrex wrote:
On 7/18/19 3:57 AM, Martin Brown wrote:
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.


Don't need runways (artist's conception):

https://youtu.be/Mk4wEAO07hM?t=148

Teleporting works instantly anywhere in "artists concention".

Avoids all that tedious landing shuttle craft in Star Trek.

They also make spacecraft boosters, and crew modules that can carry
passengers that can land upright nowadays u know:

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otfBviE1G3k>

 

[Rob]

gregz <zekor@comcast.net> wrote:

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.

The video was slow scan but not as slow scan as the amateur radio operators
use. That is indeed more like a slideshow, and this had several frames
per second at low resolution.

I think it was analog on the way down, maybe then it was digitized to be
written to data tape. However, it was displayed on a CRT tube (with
long persistence) with a TV camera in front that output it as NTSC video
and that was sent around the world and recorded by TV stations.

There are lots of recordings of this NTSC signal but unfortunately the
recording of the original slowscan signal (which today could have been
converted to digital at a higher quality than via the CRT->CAMERA conversion
done back in the day) has been lost.

A short fragment of the event exists on film, which is of better quality
than the NTSC recording. And of course many recordings on film made by
the crew themselves exists.

Note that quite often people claim to "remember" that they saw the moon
landing live on TV, however this was never transmitted live on TV. It
was audio only. The first steps on the surface were transmitted live,
the landing itself was recorded on film, taken back to earth, developed,
and shown only later.

 

[Martin Brown]

On 18/07/2019 20:14, bitrex wrote:

On 7/18/19 3:57 AM, Martin Brown wrote:
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.


Don't need runways (artist's conception):

https://youtu.be/Mk4wEAO07hM?t=148

Teleporting works instantly anywhere in "artists concention".

Avoids all that tedious landing shuttle craft in Star Trek.


--
Regards,
Martin Brown

 

[Klaus Kragelund]

Description of the scan converter :

https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/SMPTE-79-7-1970.pdf

Cheers

Klaus

 

[Michael Terrell]

On Thursday, July 18, 2019 at 6:27:50 PM UTC-4, Klaus Kragelund wrote:

Description of the scan converter :

https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/SMPTE-79-7-1970.pdf

That's what I remember seeing, a long time ago.

 

[Michael Terrell]

On Thursday, July 18, 2019 at 4:10:40 PM UTC-4, Rob wrote:

gregz wrote:
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.

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.

The video was slow scan but not as slow scan as the amateur radio operators
use. That is indeed more like a slideshow, and this had several frames
per second at low resolution.

I think it was analog on the way down, maybe then it was digitized to be
written to data tape. However, it was displayed on a CRT tube (with
long persistence) with a TV camera in front that output it as NTSC video
and that was sent around the world and recorded by TV stations.

There are lots of recordings of this NTSC signal but unfortunately the
recording of the original slowscan signal (which today could have been
converted to digital at a higher quality than via the CRT->CAMERA conversion
done back in the day) has been lost.

A short fragment of the event exists on film, which is of better quality
than the NTSC recording. And of course many recordings on film made by
the crew themselves exists.

Note that quite often people claim to "remember" that they saw the moon
landing live on TV, however this was never transmitted live on TV. It
was audio only. The first steps on the surface were transmitted live,
the landing itself was recorded on film, taken back to earth, developed,
and shown only later.

NASA had more bandwidth than Amateur Radio operators were allowed, so they could scan a little faster, but both systems used free running sync systems. Film shot off of a CRT is called Kinescope. The scan converters were physically similar to a Kinescope system, but with a video camera instead of a 16mm B&W camera. I hated running Kinescope films for Broadcast. It was cheap, and flimsy. It was intended for archival, or very limited runs. It was easy to break, and lower quality than a real film. There was no way to get the two sets of scan lines, to line up so the quality went down. I had line regulation problems at that TV station. It wasn't unusual to have the projector strip the sprocket holes, or cause multiple breaks from sudden changes in line voltage.

 

[Michael Terrell]

On Thursday, July 18, 2019 at 4:04:13 PM UTC-4, Martin Brown wrote:

On 18/07/2019 20:14, bitrex wrote:
On 7/18/19 3:57 AM, Martin Brown wrote:
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.


Don't need runways (artist's conception):

https://youtu.be/Mk4wEAO07hM?t=148

Teleporting works instantly anywhere in "artists concention".

Avoids all that tedious landing shuttle craft in Star Trek.

The concept of a trans[porter predates Star Trek by decades.

 

On Thu, 18 Jul 2019 13:51:08 -0400, bitrex <user@example.net> wrote:

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

Apparently the original design assumption was that the Orbiter would
only require an airline style A-check between flights, but in reality
heavy C- or D-checks were needed to be perform between flights
essentially disassembling and reassembling a lot of the Orbiter.

 

[Jan Panteltje]

On a sunny day (Thu, 18 Jul 2019 15:27:46 -0700 (PDT)) it happened Klaus
Kragelund <klauskvik@hotmail.com> wrote in
<f4e165a6-dd41-4dd7-8306-686af020a256@googlegroups.com>:

Description of the scan converter :

https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/SMPTE-79-7-1970.pdf

Cheers

Klaus

Thank you, nice paper.
it takes me right back to those days working with Ampex quadruplex 2 inch tape.
we got the Apollo feeds nicely at 625 lines interlaced,
I think at that time real time converted by the BBC converter in the UK
from the US 512 lines or whatever feed.
Nice how they use the vidicon storage, takes me right back to my first vidicon camera design in 1968 or so.
We had vidicons everywhere, those were used in film editing tables.
Ah all the time element compensation, for those who know about amtec and colortec...
All the sync stuff, been a while...
Nice job!

 

[bitrex]

On 7/19/19 1:07 AM, upsidedown@downunder.com wrote:

On Thu, 18 Jul 2019 13:51:08 -0400, bitrex <user@example.net> wrote:

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

Apparently the original design assumption was that the Orbiter would
only require an airline style A-check between flights, but in reality
heavy C- or D-checks were needed to be perform between flights
essentially disassembling and reassembling a lot of the Orbiter.

I think sometimes it's difficult to know what it's actually going to be
like to do things until you actually do them and get away from the
abstract and into boots-on-the-ground work. A lot of things were still
unknown at the time of the first flight and the engineers would be happy
to test and verify each stage in the design as long as possible it was
finally management's job to say "okay guys we have to fly this thing,
can't test and revise forever on the ground, and start doing it and see
how it goes."

The A-checkout was the ideal but I think once they started launching and
servicing they realized that the system of launch/service/turn-around
was all a much more complex thing than any airliner was. There were many
more criticality 1 systems as compared to an airliner that had to be
right or a loss of the crew was almost guaranteed like the heat shield
and the payload bay door latching system, for example. Nobody ended up
wanting to be the person that hurry-upped any of that stuff.

 

On Thu, 18 Jul 2019 15:27:46 -0700 (PDT), Klaus Kragelund
<klauskvik@hotmail.com> wrote:

Description of the scan converter :

https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/SMPTE-79-7-1970.pdf

This document also mentioned the 1.6 s 1280 line super low scan mode,
which was available in the lunar surface camera. It was intended if
the ascent stage failed to ignite so that the astronauts could send
back high definition pictures from the Moon until their oxygen supply
would run out.

When viewing the video in Europe, the picture quality from the Houston
and from the Moon was further degraded due to the 525/60i to 625/50i
scan conversion.

Wonder if the original 10fps tapes are still available ? Running them
through a modern digital scan converter and gamma correction might get
a bit better picture.

Regarding the picture quality of early satellite links, I was watching
the live broadcast of Surveyor 1 landing from JPL control center
Pasadena CA in 1966. Apparently the broadcast came through two
satellites to Europe and had at least one standard conversion in the
chain. Apparently they had compressed the video waveform and
horizontal synch pulses too much, since all vertical things in the
picture from Pasadena were wavy and that changed all the time .

 

[bitrex]

On 7/19/19 2:51 AM, bitrex wrote:

Apparently the original design assumption was that the Orbiter would
only require an airline style A-check between flights, but in reality
heavy C- or D-checks were needed to be perform between flights
essentially disassembling and reassembling a lot of the Orbiter.


I think due to compartmentalization and the sheer size of the project
involving many teams working on many specialized systems it was possible
for some to lose the forest for the trees and even some in NASA
management, perhaps, didn't quite realize the scale and complexity of
the thing they were working on the construction of.

Thinking they're managing the development of something more like a
space-airliner and they don't even quite realize the total scope of the
project until it rolls out into the sun out of the VAB the first time
and they realize "Oh, it's this gigantic super-complex machine from the
future" it may have been a humbling experience even for some involved
directly in its development.

Keep in mind some of the people involved in the project probably dated
back to the Mercury and Gemini projects, the first flight of the Shuttle
was only 20 years after the first manned orbit. It wasn't that long ago
at that time.

Sort of like the Concorde rolling out 20 years later to an audience of
some of the same people that had watched the Wright Flyer as comparison,
even the NASA veterans may have felt a little out-of-the-depth.

 

[bitrex]

On 7/19/19 1:07 AM, upsidedown@downunder.com wrote:

On Thu, 18 Jul 2019 13:51:08 -0400, bitrex <user@example.net> wrote:

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

Apparently the original design assumption was that the Orbiter would
only require an airline style A-check between flights, but in reality
heavy C- or D-checks were needed to be perform between flights
essentially disassembling and reassembling a lot of the Orbiter.

I think due to compartmentalization and the sheer size of the project
involving many teams working on many specialized systems it was possible
for some to lose the forest for the trees and even some in NASA
management, perhaps, didn't quite realize the scale and complexity of
the thing they were working on the construction of.

Thinking they're managing the development of something more like a
space-airliner and they don't even quite realize the total scope of the
project until it rolls out into the sun out of the VAB the first time
and they realize "Oh, it's this gigantic super-complex machine from the
future" it may have been a humbling experience even for some involved
directly in its development.

 

On Thu, 18 Jul 2019 08:33:06 -0000 (UTC), gregz <zekor@comcast.net>
wrote:

<Apollo video>

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.

With square pixels 320 x 4/3 x 320 x 10 Hz = 1.4 Mpix/s and 6
bits/pixel is 8 Mbit/s which requires a considerable bandwidth. The
available bandwidth was 0.5 MHz, so you must remember wrong.

The baseband analog bandwidth required by 1.4 Mpix/s is 700 kHz, so
using the 0.5 MHz analog bandwidth, the horizontal resolution was
slightly worse than vertical resolution.

 

[gregz]

Rob <nomail@example.com> wrote:

gregz <zekor@comcast.net> wrote:
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.

The video was slow scan but not as slow scan as the amateur radio operators
use. That is indeed more like a slideshow, and this had several frames
per second at low resolution.

I think it was analog on the way down, maybe then it was digitized to be
written to data tape. However, it was displayed on a CRT tube (with
long persistence) with a TV camera in front that output it as NTSC video
and that was sent around the world and recorded by TV stations.

There were cameras pointed at TV, including 8mm film, and still film shots.
It's not clear to me a video camera was used, but a scan converter was used
for the TV broadcast, and this was also videotaped.

Greg

There are lots of recordings of this NTSC signal but unfortunately the
recording of the original slowscan signal (which today could have been
converted to digital at a higher quality than via the CRT->CAMERA conversion
done back in the day) has been lost.

A short fragment of the event exists on film, which is of better quality
than the NTSC recording. And of course many recordings on film made by
the crew themselves exists.

Note that quite often people claim to "remember" that they saw the moon
landing live on TV, however this was never transmitted live on TV. It
was audio only. The first steps on the surface were transmitted live,
the landing itself was recorded on film, taken back to earth, developed,
and shown only later.

 

[piglet]

On 19/07/2019 6:07 am, upsidedown@downunder.com wrote:

Apparently the original design assumption was that the Orbiter would
only require an airline style A-check between flights, but in reality
heavy C- or D-checks were needed to be perform between flights
essentially disassembling and reassembling a lot of the Orbiter.

Yes, like replacing large numbers of the fragile tiles after each
flight. Almost each one a different shape to all the others and each
taking man hours to affix, a massive achilles heel in the scheme.

piglet

 

On Fri, 19 Jul 2019 02:57:41 -0400, bitrex <user@example.net> wrote:

On 7/19/19 2:51 AM, bitrex wrote:

Apparently the original design assumption was that the Orbiter would
only require an airline style A-check between flights, but in reality
heavy C- or D-checks were needed to be perform between flights
essentially disassembling and reassembling a lot of the Orbiter.


I think due to compartmentalization and the sheer size of the project
involving many teams working on many specialized systems it was possible
for some to lose the forest for the trees and even some in NASA
management, perhaps, didn't quite realize the scale and complexity of
the thing they were working on the construction of.

Thinking they're managing the development of something more like a
space-airliner and they don't even quite realize the total scope of the
project until it rolls out into the sun out of the VAB the first time
and they realize "Oh, it's this gigantic super-complex machine from the
future" it may have been a humbling experience even for some involved
directly in its development.

Keep in mind some of the people involved in the project probably dated
back to the Mercury and Gemini projects, the first flight of the Shuttle
was only 20 years after the first manned orbit. It wasn't that long ago
at that time.

And less than 40 years since the V2 first launch.

Previously with expandable vehicles, you could take ultimate
performance from various components such as engines. The only
requirement was that it should last long enough until the stage had
separated and the next stage taken over. Some Saturn V first stages
have been recovered from the Atlantic. Some F1 engines were nearly
burned through, so a JOT (Just on time) performance.

For a reusable device, you have to derate it sufficiently, so that it
is reliable for multiple flights before a large overhaul. Clearly too
much performance was required from the SSMEs, since a lot of overhaul
was required after each flight.

Sort of like the Concorde rolling out 20 years later to an audience of
some of the same people that had watched the Wright Flyer as comparison,
even the NASA veterans may have felt a little out-of-the-depth.

 

piglet <erichpwagner@hotmail.com> wrote in news:qgrv02$v6f$1@dont-
email.me:

> . Almost each one a different shape

EVERY single one, a different shape.

 

Michael Terrell <terrell.michael.a@gmail.com> wrote in
news:7d3f64d5-1070-48bb-b059-d8f2c1052bbf@googlegroups.com:

On Thursday, July 18, 2019 at 4:04:13 PM UTC-4, Martin Brown
wrote:
On 18/07/2019 20:14, bitrex wrote:
On 7/18/19 3:57 AM, Martin Brown wrote:
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.


Don't need runways (artist's conception):

https://youtu.be/Mk4wEAO07hM?t=148

Teleporting works instantly anywhere in "artists concention".

Avoids all that tedious landing shuttle craft in Star Trek.

The concept of a trans[porter predates Star Trek by decades.

Hell, even "The Fly" does by about one decade. 1958, with Vincent
Price.