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spike wrote:
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<pre wrap="">...On Behalf Of Emlyn
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<pre wrap=""><!---->...
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<pre wrap=""><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_(Stephen_Baxter_novel)">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_(Stephen_Baxter_novel)</a>
Has anyone here read this? If you're a space nut and you
haven't, then you should, the obsessive detail on the innards
of the US space program is really something...
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Emlyn, from the wiki discription, it almost sounds like a humorless satire.
I recognized some of the allusions, a disease that attacks only Han Chinese
would be a sly reference to HIV, fundamentalist christian president a poke
at Reagan or Carter for instance.
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Carter may have belonged to a fairly fundamentalist sect but he was
pretty liberal. Even Reagan was liberal in his religious remarks
compared to GW Bush and to some degree Bush senior as well. The latter
claimed that atheists were not really Americans, for instance. <br>
<blockquote cite="mid:5FBA2B2925404AA4BF1A87298C2E7FD0@spike"
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</pre>
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<pre wrap="">... And if you've
ever thought an old Saturn V should be refurbished and flown
now, it's a book for you :-)...
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In some important ways, humanity was more advanced in space travel fifty
years ago than today. We had the industrial base engaged in building that
kind of stuff, we had the top minds in engineering emplyed in it, we had the
attention and the dreams of the populace. Almost all of that is gone now.
What has improved? Control systems, digital processing equipment,
communications gear has improved vastly. Metallurgy, some. Lightweight
structures, a little. Propulsion, no. Almost nada in real advances in
propulsion technology since the Saturn V days, and I see little on the
horizon in the foreseeable.
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Lots in minituarization, computation and communication though. <br>
<br>
<blockquote cite="mid:5FBA2B2925404AA4BF1A87298C2E7FD0@spike"
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If we had a way to build the Saturn V today it would be a hellll of a leap
forward from where we are. Even the commies aren't producing their biggies
these days.
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Is this technically particularly challenging or really big $$$ even?
Why can't a private group / corp take this on? <br>
<br>
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<pre wrap="">But, it bugs the crap out of me for a lot of reasons,
particularly the one-eyed glorification of the old days (the
60s pretty much)... Emlyn
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The 60s were good days for the rocket biz. We must be ready to recognize
that technology isn't always forward in all fields. Almost all and almost
always, but some technologies do rot on the vine. Plenty of our reference
material generated in that decade is still in use today. Pretty soon the US
will have no manned access to LEO, after landing guys on the moon over 4
decades ago.
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The more I dig into old tech the more I amazed at how much was dreamed
up and studied way back then. <br>
<br>
<blockquote cite="mid:5FBA2B2925404AA4BF1A87298C2E7FD0@spike"
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Emlyn if you get a chance, try to talk one on one with some of the rocket
guys who were in their 20s in about 1960. There were some things that were
just fundamentally different back then, and better in a lot of ways for the
space biz.
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I had more than a few friends who did heavy science, especially physics
majors when space was HOT and there was that push to not be left behind
in science and math. In the 70s most of them ended up moving to
software or in some cases, pumping gas. It was pretty sad.<br>
<br>
- samantha<br>
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