14 ms·

A Cold War mystery: Why did Jimmy Carter save the space shuttle?

165 points by xrayarx 4y ago

joezydeco 4y ago
The answer is buried right in the middle of the article: Back in 1970, to win Department of Defense support at the program’s outset, NASA had redesigned the shuttle to launch national security payloads. Now, that decision paid off. If you visit the Museum of the Air Force in Dayton Ohio, the guides will tell you straight out that the cargo bay (and thus entire airframe) of Shuttle was enlarged to be able to hold a Keyhole/CORONA imaging satellite and retrieve it if necessary. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CORONA_(satellite) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CORONA_(satellite)
- marktangotango 4y ago
  That's interesting, also a possible insight into what the X-37b mission is. Retrieving payloads, but what payloads?
  - khuey 4y ago
    The X-37B is much smaller than the shuttle (it was originally intended to fit in the shuttle's payload bay). It physically can't retrieve satellites of any significant size.
    - kranke155 4y ago
      I'm really curious, do we have any idea whatsoever what the X-37 is being used for?
      - cjbgkagh 4y ago
        A big advantage of space planes is the ability to change orbit very quickly, could be used for reconnoissance or as a weapons delivery vehicle.
        the_third_wave 4y ago
        Only if they're in low enough orbits to make use of atmospheric drag. Such orbits decay quickly if the vehicle does not have boost capacity. Given the extremely long missions this thing flies - several missions over 700 days - it seems unlikely for it to make use of atmospheric drag. It might do so when in a highly elliptical orbit but even then it needs to perform a burn at apogee to keep it from re-entering before long.
        cjbgkagh 4y ago
        There is value from the optionality of having a capability even if it isn’t regularly used.
      - jacquesm 4y ago
        That highly depends on who 'we' is. Anybody really in the know is definitely not going to spill the beans. The payload is very small, the stated reasons it flew its missions are 'testbed' for various technologies. Which may well be all there is to it.
      - fragmede 4y ago
        The links to the specific missions on the wikipedia page have some expert conjecture, based on observations by amateur skywatchers, so we have a good idea that it's being used to launch military surveillance and communications satellites, as well as being used to test new hardware. Which is all rather broad and generic, but if it were aliens, it's not like they'd tell us anyway. Even if it were actually confirmed that OTV-1 launched a military surveillance satellite, we still wouldn't know how good it is at that other than some hard limits due to physics (mirror size and atmospheric interference).
      - timschmidt 4y ago
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQN4hId5psg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQN4hId5psg "Everything We Know About The US Air Force's Secret Space Plane - The X-37B" by Scott Manley
      - Lammy 4y ago
        Obviously total speculation, but it's the right size to be a flying speed-of-light weapon platform. USAF have been interested in such tech for a long time. Some fun links: - Directed Energy Directorate home page during the years 1999–2006: https://web.archive.org/web/20060831035044/http://www.de.afrl.af.mil/ https://web.archive.org/web/20060831035044/http://www.de.afr... - Directed Energy Directorate home page during the years 2009–2016: https://web.archive.org/web/20160428181404/http://www.kirtland.af.mil/afrl_de/ https://web.archive.org/web/20160428181404/http://www.kirtla... - LASER Effects Test Facility fact sheet from 2002 showing a 50-kilowatt CO² LASER setting a test target on fire: https://web.archive.org/web/20070315131556/http://www.de.afrl.af.mil/factsheets/letf.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20070315131556/http://www.de.afr...
        nradov 4y ago
        It seems small for any sort of directed energy weapon with a useful power output. There wouldn't be enough capacity for a big generator and heat radiators.
        Tostino 4y ago
        Right, short of a small reactor onboard, it seems unlikely to be able to store the energy or power densities required while in flight. Obviously there may be some unknown breakthrough that allows it...but I'm skeptical.
      - ceejayoz 4y ago
        One common theory is it's being used to do close-up inspections of other countries' satellites. Bonus points if you can attach a magnetic limpet mine to them for future usage.
        yetanotherloser 4y ago
        Wouldn't the mass change cause some kind of detectable change in the satellite's trajectory over time?
        ceejayoz 4y ago
        I don't think anything particularly detectable; they're so outweighed by the planet they're orbiting that the barycenter doesn't move measurably. (To be clear, I'd imagine they're only doing the inspection thing right now, but I do suspect they're at least tinkering with on-orbit capture, refueling, disabling etc. with an arm.)
        dmurray 4y ago
        What if your satellite did some more manoeuvres for station keeping, wouldn't you notice the mass difference then?
        lmm 4y ago
        Maybe. The mass of an explosive could be pretty small compared to the mass of a satellite. And even if you do notice that your (secret military) satellite is slightly heavier than the spec says, what would you do about it?
        matthewdgreen 4y ago
        How expensive is it to attach a couple of space-rated external cameras to a modern satellite? This wouldn’t eliminate the threat but it would certainly remove the uncertainty. Presumably once you recognized the threat, then defending against it couldn’t be the hardest problem to solve.
      - euroderf 4y ago
        It carries a negotiating table. Our telepresence on one side, the aliens['] on the other.
        simne 4y ago
        Or black box, so they will spend millennia to understand, what we want to say :)))))
        euroderf 4y ago
        Or... freak out and ATTACK!
    - joezydeco 4y ago
      What if the X37B was the imaging satellite?
      - dylan604 4y ago
        Why would they build it to retrieve itself? That's very meta
        IIAOPSW 4y ago
        Don't you get it. Its shuttles retrieving other shuttles all the way up!
        dylan604 4y ago
        Russian nesting shuttles?
    - ridgeguy 4y ago
      This may be changing with rapid extension of satellite size towards the small end of the spectrum. Small size is now significant. For example, a radar imaging constellation might consist of multiple transmit/receive satellites, each of which could be quite small (say, 1 - 5 cu. ft.). The X37B could accommodate that - especially after it snipped the solar panels off.
  - the_third_wave 4y ago
    If that is its mission the answer is "small payloads" since the carrying capacity of the thing would be quite limited with its 2.1 x 1.2 m [1] payload bay. That leaves little room for the grappling arm or other mechanism needed to pluck a satellite out of its orbit. I suspect it does not retrieve payloads but takes them up and down again. Which payloads? Good question. Experimental sensors meant for inclusion in next-generation reconnaissance satellites maybe? [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20150321121050/http://www.boeing.com/boeing/defense-space/ic/sis/x37b_otv/x37b_otv.page https://web.archive.org/web/20150321121050/http://www.boeing...
  - hammock 4y ago
    https://youtu.be/KZX1YCmzHEw?t=109 https://youtu.be/KZX1YCmzHEw?t=109
- sidewndr46 4y ago
  It's sort of interesting for them to point this out. This is also why the Titan IV program came into being. The Space Shuttle simply not being available meant that it was needed to develop an equivalent unmanned lift vehicle. I think the same museum even has some stuff from a Titan IV on display
  - JonSchneider 4y ago
    Believe it or not, they have an entire Titan IV on display: https://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/Visit/Museum-Exhibits/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/692874/lockheed-martin-titan-ivb-rocket/ https://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/Visit/Museum-Exhibits/Fact... It's pretty impressive in person. (Scroll through the gallery that isn't obviously a gallery near the top to see it)
  - joezydeco 4y ago
    They actually have a CORONA satellite on display and will tell you all about how it worked. So you know we're three or four generations beyond that technology now. https://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/Visit/Museum-Exhibits/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/195923/cold-war-in-space-top-secret-reconnaissance-satellites-revealed/ https://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/Visit/Museum-Exhibits/Fact...
    - sidewndr46 4y ago
      I remember as a kid we had textbooks that explained that the CORONA satellites were state of that art and used for surveillance. This was in the early 00s. Even then I looked at those little things and came to the conclusion that this was not in fact the entire extent of the US surveillance capabilities.
      - joezydeco 4y ago
        What blew my mind was how large it was. You're thinking it's a camera...how large can that be? It's the size of a school bus.
        4y ago
- pram 4y ago
  The Air Force also planned to have its own squadron of shuttles.
  - Apocryphon 4y ago
    As depicted in Moonraker https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asgLef3oVAw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asgLef3oVAw
    - skhr0680 4y ago
      I used to work with an English chap who made a habit of reminding me that Moonraker had US Space Marines a good few years before Aliens … Semper Fi!
      - wkat4242 4y ago
        And a good few decades before space force!
    - bradyd 4y ago
      Moonraker is one of the only movies to properly depict a Shuttle launch, and it came out before the Shuttle ever flew. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nH3EsUTPihg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nH3EsUTPihg
- adolph 4y ago
  Also the form and glidepath potential of the shuttle was designed for military capabilities to capture an adversary's satellite that were never used, according to "The Most Important Space Shuttle Mission Never Happened" by Scott Manley [0]. His source is this pdf [1]. 0. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_q2i0eu35aY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_q2i0eu35aY 1. http://www.jamesoberg.com/sts-3A_B-DRM.PDF http://www.jamesoberg.com/sts-3A_B-DRM.PDF
  - wkat4242 4y ago
    Kinda good too because that would be pretty close to an act of war and set a dangerous precedent for the weaponisation of space. You prepare for the war you don't want to fight...
    - dylan604 4y ago
      How would capturing a satellite from orbit be any different than a soldier walking up to an enemy's position and driving off with a tank or flying a jet out from under their nose? Some shit would definitely be on the fan at that point.
      - wkat4242 4y ago
        That's what I mean exactly. I'm glad we were never in the situation where this would have been thinkable. Because it would mean direct war between superpowers.
      - IIAOPSW 4y ago
        A better analogy might be detaining a ship or in international waters or implementing a blockade such as the Cuban missile crisis. It is technically casus belli, but rarely does it get escalated that far. Rational actors don't really want to start a war over an incident that doesn't even involve their sovereign territory.
        dylan604 4y ago
        I don't think a blockade is the same thing though. A blockade just prevents a ship from going to the destination or the route it was wanting. It is still free to maneuver and is still in control of the flag it operates under.
- KerrAvon 4y ago
  Carter's actual answer, though: he didn't want to throw away the money that had already been spent. Left unsaid is that the money in question represented a lot of jobs, and congresspeople in certain areas of the country would have thrown a fit, and the last thing Carter needed was to further irritate Congress.
- daveslash 4y ago
  The potential Military applications of the Space Shuttle were why the Soviets copied it so closely. They didn't know why or what clandestine military purpose the shuttle had, but they knew that when they found out, they'd want the same capabilities. So they just copied it, not knowing why. "Faced with the poorly understood threat of a military space shuttle, the Soviets decided that copying the American spacecraft exactly was the best bet. The logic was simple: if the Americans were planning something that needed a vehicle that big, the Soviets ought to build one as well and be ready to match their adversary even if they didn’t know exactly what they were matching." [0] [1] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6428205 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6428205 [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20131001110918/http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/09/the-life-and-death-of-buran-the-ussr-shuttle-built-on-faulty-assumptions/ https://web.archive.org/web/20131001110918/http://arstechnic...
  - Perceval 4y ago
    > They didn't know why or what clandestine military purpose the shuttle had, but they knew that when they found out, they'd want the same capabilities. So they just copied it, not knowing why. This is the exact same thing that's happened with the Chinese and the X-37B: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-37 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-37 * https://www.forbes.com/sites/ericmack/2022/08/22/mysterious-chinese-spaceplane-apparently-still-overhead-18-days-after-launch/?sh=27d79f0f7a0e https://www.forbes.com/sites/ericmack/2022/08/22/mysterious-...
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - euroderf 4y ago
    A specific case of the general idea of superpower convergence.
    - 082349872349872 4y ago
      "...the deciding factor was when we learned that your country was working along similar lines, and we were afraid of a doomsday gap." — AdS (fict)
- VLM 4y ago
  I've never gotten a straight answer on who came first the KH-11 or HST. The mirrors are the same size and they both fit in the bay. A long time ago I considered writing a "sci fi techno thriller" book plot along the lines of the HST was intentionally mis-built to own the Russians trying to copy the KH-11. There's easier ways to make money LOL. In the 70s progress was fast and they were blasting new observation sats every couple months and new generations every couple years so it seemed sensible to have a "space truck" to service the rapidly changing technology. Then things settled down and at least declassified nothing is new in quite some time WRT observation sats. Kind of like rapid changes in the PC industry in the 80s then things slowed down a lot to the point we don't "need" a Radio Shack or CompUSA anymore. People thought the rapid progress of the 70s in spy sats was going to go on forever, so we need a "space truck" to keep up with rapid changes, and like most things predicted to go on forever, it didn't.
  - adastra22 4y ago
    The keyhole satellites. Because of security classification the Hubble design had to be semi-cleanroom reengineered, but the contractors were the same and in fact many of the same engineers worked on both. The keyhole test equipment in Sunnyvale was reused for Hubble.
    - AnotherGoodName 4y ago
      qq and probably no one would answer but did keyhole have the same mirror defect? Hubble was fixed by the costar addition. I wonder if there's missions to fix keyhole we don't know about.
      - laverya 4y ago
        Well, there's been a LOT of KH-11 satellites over the years, so unlike with Hubble the NRO has had the opportunity to just put up an updated satellite instead of trying to fix an existing one. Seriously, Wikipedia lists 5 generations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KH-11_KENNEN https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KH-11_KENNEN 5+3+4+3+3 total launches.
- Gibbon1 4y ago
  My dad worked for NASA during that time. The above is 100% what he said. NASA needed the air forces support which meant being able to launch large spy satellites. Which also meant the thing was really expensive making it a white elephant. It drained a the money that could have been spent to implement more modern launch systems. People used to get pissed off when I'd say the best thing for NASA to do was to stop flying the shuttle. Retrospectively that was the right thing to do.
- simne 4y ago
  Definitely, no. Shuttle was designed, to make use of capacity of Morton Thiokol Inc. enterprise, which without SRB's was near 100% military enterprise (created to build SRB's for ICBM's). That time Moon program was on liquid fueled rocket, but with nazi smell, so made political decision, to make 100% domestic design, without any traces to German works.
- JKCalhoun 4y ago
  Yeah, that's unfortunate. We got a boxcar with wings.
- angst_ridden 4y ago
  I did work on the Inertia Upper Stage (IUS) project. That was the booster that would take satellites from the shuttle bay into their final orbits. A lot of the IUS specifications were classified because of the payloads that were intended. Even the name of the program that made those specifications and the name of the organization that was behind the program were classified. Of course, that all kind of fell apart when _Deep Black_ was published, and a lot of code names (the uttering of which were absolutely verboten) were suddenly being bandied about on the evening news. I was in the weird position of pretending to not know code names that were being discussed on broadcast TV.
  - aidenn0 4y ago
    Yeah, even the existence of NRO was officially classified until almost 20 years after it was first accidentally disclosed.
  - KennyBlanken 4y ago
    Now, what'll really bake your noodle: the Soviets almost certainly knew those codenames, projects, etc. There's tons of stuff that everyone in the security services knows but is still "classified" and verboten from public discourse or even private conversation. Half the purpose of classified program rules is to keep the public from realizing how much money is being pissed away on ridiculous boondoggles.
- MichaelMoser123 4y ago
  it could also be used to snatch enemy satellites from orbit - that's how we got the capability to repair the Hubble space telescope. Snatching satellites from space was a big deal, you could potentially get rid of a space based early warning system. i guess that potential must have made some Soviet planners quite nervous(or eager), as it would imply first strike capabilities.
- cratermoon 4y ago
  And incidentally, because the Hubble space telescope is widely acknowledged but not officially recognized as a Keyhole/CORONA turned the other way around, that's why it happened to be an excellent fit for the shuttle cargo bay.
deleted 4y ago
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LarryMullins 4y ago
For the Shuttle to be cancelled by politicians is one thing; that's just democracy in action. For the Shuttle to fail under its own weight is quite another; that's technical and organizational failure. The latter reflects poorly on the politicians who oversaw it and the country generally. It would have been a bad look for Carter's legacy, whether or not he hated NASA.
mrpippy 4y ago
I think it's obvious at this point, but Eric Berger is doing/has done an amazing job covering space for Ars Technica
- tunesmith 4y ago
  I think these sorts of articles are so hard to write, where it's simultaneously the story of what happened, with sources, but also the story of how they know; how they found out. It's two different modalities of explanation and you have to be a pretty expert writer to seamlessly switch back and forth between the two. I run into this challenge pretty regularly when writing retrospective analyses with tech.
ck2 4y ago
Ah a space shuttle article, wonder if they will use one of my favorite photographs from that era... Yup! https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Star_Trek_cast_and_Space_Shuttle_Enterprise.jpg https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Star_... But gosh they screwed up by naming the one that would never go into space "Enterprise"
- jedberg 4y ago
  Enterprise was supposed to go to space, but it ended up being cheaper to build Challenger from spare parts because the design specs had changed. It then ended up being cheaper to build Endeavor from spare parts than retrofit Enterprise after the Challenger tragedy.
  - DonHopkins 4y ago
    I vaguely remember that some crazy conspiracy theorist confronted Captain Kirk once, and tried to force him to put his hand on the Bible and swear to God that Star Trek wasn't fake, and not just shot on a sound stage Hollywood, and then Captain Kirk punched him in the face!
    - consumer451 4y ago
      Is this an attempt at feeding noise into ML data thereby giving humans some more time to rule the earth? If so, I support it wholeheartedly.
    - codezero 4y ago
      This exact thing definitely happened to Buzz Aldrin when he was confronted about the moon landing being fake, and it's caught on film :) https://boingboing.net/2022/09/10/i-cant-believe-its-20-years-ago-today-that-buzz-aldrin-punched-a-moon-landing-denier-in-the-face.html https://boingboing.net/2022/09/10/i-cant-believe-its-20-year...
      - arp242 4y ago
        I believe that was the joke.
vondur 4y ago
I assumed the space shuttle was going to be used to retrieve things from space. Maybe even someone else's satellites. My father used to work in the heat treating industry, and they did a bunch of work on the space shuttle and many other aerospace/military projects.
- VLM 4y ago
  We certainly hauled a bunch of sats home over the decades, see STS-51-A for a typical declassified example of some relatively boring comsats. The classified missions published landing weights for some reason; they were low; the assumption is they never hauled anything home or they faked the landing weights because it wouldn't matter if they told the truth or not to the public (AFAIK no payload related change in realistically observable flight path was ever seen by independent observers) Westar 6 was later relaunched as AsiaSat 1. It trips non-space people out because "everyone knows" SpaceX and the old shuttle are the only things ever launched into space, landed, and re-launched back into space, but they were doing this back in the 80s with comsats and who knows what the military was up to.
  - wkat4242 4y ago
    The 60s spy sats also took photos on film that were ejected in re-entry capsules and captured in mid-air using an airplane. Really crazy stuff they came up with and I'm surprised it actually worked. Engineering chops they sure had and balls too because capturing a falling object from space is pretty dangerous. Of course then there were the soviets launching entire nuclear reactors into orbit for a few months' worth of radar duty. Ok the US did one too but it was just one. All those Russian cores are still in orbit except the two that crashed. Crazy times.
    - angst_ridden 4y ago
      Yeah, the "snag this roll of film with a plane as it parachutes down" is the kind of thing that elicits a "wait .. what!?" reaction. But then, so does the quality of the images they captured relative to what would be expected given the times.
stolenmerch 4y ago
Side trivia: 20 years ago today the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated as it reentered the atmosphere over Texas, killing all seven astronauts on board. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Columbia_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Columbia_disaste...
- graphe 4y ago
  I remember seeing this in school when I was a kid. That was when space exploration because tainted in my generation. It was cool but astronaut wasn't something anyone wanted to be anymore so you die in the atmosphere. Sorry it was the challenger!
  - bluGill 4y ago
    Are you thinking of Challenger which was more than 20 years ago?
  - dylan604 4y ago
    > It was cool but astronaut wasn't something anyone wanted to be anymore so you die in the atmosphere. That's a strong disagree from me and people I spoke with. There were lots of "if they knocked on my door today asking if I wanted to join, I'd do it in a heartbeat" comments. I was one of them, as a 6th grader. Nobody every thought being an astronaut was without risk, did they? Every time a fighter pilot takes off, there's an inherent risk with that, yet people are lined up to join. I'm sorry you're such a "fair weather fan", but that just means one less person to compete with for those that actually want to do it
    - graphe 4y ago
      It wasn't just the students. I think if the attitude of the teachers were different I might still have wanted to be one. Safety was important and teachers were cautious. Were you shown the hour(s) of exercises they had to do daily to maintain their muscle? That was enough to make most kids say no thanks if chosen lol.
gumby 4y ago
I have to confess when I read this I thought, "Jeez, just go ask the guy" and...the author did! So great to see actual journalism.
- DonHopkins 4y ago
  Wow, what I would give to just hang out and chat with Jimmy Carter! I wonder if he asked him about the killer rabbit? Maybe I could get an appointment to sit down with him if I claimed I was the guy who helped eradicate the Guinea Worm? https://www.cartercenter.org/about/experts/donald_hopkins.html https://www.cartercenter.org/about/experts/donald_hopkins.ht...
- e12e 4y ago
  Thanks, for others wondering: > Why did the president ultimately support funding the shuttle in its time of need? “I was not enthusiastic about sending humans on missions to Mars or outer space,” Carter told Ars. “But I thought the shuttle was a good way to continue the good work of NASA. I didn’t want to waste the money already invested.”
neovialogistics 4y ago
I found the Soviet Union's alleged theory explaining the American space shuttle to their own leadership[1] to be quite interesting. According to some documents submitted to the central committee by the head of the fledgling Keldysh institute (famous for it's faculty - Israel Gelfand and Alexey Lyapunov among others), the shuttle could theoretically launch in a trajectory from Vandenburg, CA south towards and over Antarctica and northwards over the Indian Ocean towards Moscow, with several nuclear weapons aboard, as a kind of hypersonic dive bomber. This would, in a nuclear exchange, bring the mean time from initial detection of an American attack to the first nuclear strike on Moscow down from seven minutes (UGM-73 missiles on a depressed trajectory launched from the North Sea near Denmark)[2] to a little over three minutes. Fears of this, according to the theory, led to several of the design specifications for the Buran shuttle. I find the extensive concerns about, and optimizing of strategy around, minimizing warning time in a nuclear exchange to be fascinating. [1]https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3855/1 https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3855/1 [2]https://www.scienceandglobalsecurity.org/archive/sgs03gronlund.pdf https://www.scienceandglobalsecurity.org/archive/sgs03gronlu... (PDF)
- xattt 4y ago
  Nuclear capability explains the “single polar orbit with a large crossrange” requirement. How was the shuttle capable of such a large crossrange? Maneuverability in the atmosphere?
  - nickff 4y ago
    The large delta wings on the space shuttle are what allow the large cross-range, by letting it "turn" on the way down. The single polar orbit was to allow rapid, stealthy insertion of a reconnaissance satellite into polar orbit. According to the space shuttle engineers, there was never any contemplation of arming the shuttle, though the DoD did set many requirements (including payload bay size and cross-range).
    - KRAKRISMOTT 4y ago
      So an old school hypersonic glider
throwaway81523 4y ago
Carter almost destroyed the space shuttle. See the book "Enterprise" by Jerry Grey for history.
- Maursault 4y ago
  I'm not sure you can blame him, though. President Carter is exceptionally intelligent, graduated in the top 7.2% of his Naval Academy class of 820 after studying nuclear engineering and completed graduate studies in nuclear physics and reactor technology. Everyone just assumes Space! We all insist on it, but we all don't have the full picture. The man is practical, understood the costs, risks and value of, as of then, unrealized benefits. The last thing NASA needed in the late 1970's and early 1980's is an uncommonly intelligent President of the United States. It was their bad luck, and yet they lucked out. Give President Carter a break. The man is a saint. Compare to President Clinton, who is also highly intelligent, and yet not a saint. I'm not saying he's bad, just a bad, bad, boy.
  - throwaway81523 4y ago
    The book that I mentioned discussed the context in great detail. Also, smart people do dumb things all the time.
DonHopkins 4y ago
This classic SNL skit from 1979 explains what a great nuclear engineer Jimmy Carter really is, and Rodney Dangerfield explains just how big Jimmy Carter really is. https://archive.org/details/saturday-night-live-s-04-e-16-richard-benjamin-04-07-1979 https://archive.org/details/saturday-night-live-s-04-e-16-ri... ("The Pepsi Syndrome" skit starts at 8:15) Dr. Edna Casey: Well Mrs. Carter, it’s difficult to comprehend just how big he is but to give you some idea, we’ve asked comedian Rodney Dangerfield to come along today to help explain it to you. Rodney? [Rodney Dangerfield enters] Rodney Dangerfield: How do you do, how are you? Ross Denton: Rodney, can you please tell us, how big is the president? Rodney Dangerfield: Oh, he’s a big guy, I’ll tell you that, he’s a big guy. I tell you he’s so big, I saw him sitting in the George Washington bridge dangling his feet in the water! He’s a big guy! Rosalynn Carter: Oh my God! Jimmy! Oh God! Rodney Dangerfield: Oh, he’s big, I’ll tell you that, boy. He’s so big that when two girls make love to him at the same time, they never meet each other! He’s a big guy, I’ll tell you! Rosalynn Carter: Oh no! Oh Jimmy! My Jimmy! Rodney Dangerfield: I don’t want to upset you lady, he’s big, you know what I mean? Why he could have an affair with the Lincoln Tunnel! I mean, he’s really high! He’s big, I’ll tell you! He’s a big guy! Rosalynn Carter: No! No! No! Ross Denton: Rodney, thank you very much. You can go. Rodney Dangerfield: It’s my pleasure. He’s way up there, lady! you know what I mean? [goes off, leaving Rosalynn Carter very upset]
harveywi 4y ago
To Jimmy Carter's credit, the space shuttle Columbia disaster could have prevented if the thermal foam on the external shuttle tanks had been replaced with a sweater.
maliker 4y ago
Other folks have pointed out there are military applications, and I read a while back that these kind of "space planes" have a unique advantage: with their wings they can dip into the atmosphere and very quickly change their trajectory without using a lot of fuel. From a military perspective, I'm guessing this makes them harder to shoot down. The military is still flying space planes [0] so this makes sense to me. [0] https://www.livescience.com/spaceplane-lands-after-908-days-orbit https://www.livescience.com/spaceplane-lands-after-908-days-...
hindsightbias 4y ago
Carter always gets painted as some sort of dove but he only cancelled the B-1A. Fully funded carriers, MX, Trident/SLBM, LA subs, Aegis destroyers, GLCM, ALCM, SLCM, Harpoon, F-117, B-2 development and $trillions more.
simne 4y ago
This case is very likely of model "too large to fail". Last time it used, when appear high probability of recession, and govt prints money and feed them to larges financial companies, to keep them alive. Opposite to print money, usually, to suffer huge losses of popularity, because without these measures, could close large chain of connected to subjects companies, will need to spend money to pay for unemployment. So I think, Carter's decisions where because it was easy solution for him, and less fear than to close. Examples of brave side politics are very rare, one of them Thatcher, decided to close mining companies, which decades fed by govt subsidies, which costed her very expensive.
DerekL 4y ago
Title needs (2016).
rl3 4y ago
>But Carter, according to Kraft, had just returned from Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) in Vienna, and he had spoken with the Soviet leader, Leonid Brezhnev, about how the United States was going to be able to fly the shuttle over Moscow continuously to ensure they were compliant with the agreements. Assuming this was 1972, the United States had several generations of image reconnaissance satellites in orbit at the time.[0] The shuttle made a good cover story I suppose. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Reconnaissance_Office#GEOINT_imaging https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Reconnaissance_Office...
- CalChris 4y ago
  > Assuming this was 1972 Carter was inaugurated President on January 20, 1977.
  - rl3 4y ago
    Whoops, minor detail! Caffeine was not kind today.. Correction: The SALT II agreement was reached in June, 1979 and I believe that’s the correct period of time for the paragraph I quoted above. It’s worth noting the US had a couple KH-11s already flying at that point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KH-11_KENNEN#Block_I https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KH-11_KENNEN#Block_I
fallingfrog 4y ago
They probably knew it was a rube goldberg contraption but were hoping to make the Soviets waste resources trying to copy it, and then accidentally ended up getting it to work.
lumost 4y ago
There's another good explanation, The US didn't want to flush the investment in Apollo entirely. The space shuttle was conveniently expensive enough and on paper sustainable enough to keep the space program alive. In hindsight, there is limited evidence that private companies would have been competitive with the space shuttle in the 1970s.
harimau777 4y ago
For what it's worth, I heard Kraft speak about 15 years ago and tell the story of Carter bragging about the shuttle. As he told it, he walked into the meeting expecting to tell Carter that they were going to have to cancel the shuttle program. However, before he could start Carter told him that he had just been speaking to Brezhnev and telling them how much the shuttle was going to outshine what they were doing. Without missing a beat, Kraft said "Mr. President, I'm going to need three million dollars".[1] [1] I don't recall the exact amount he said.
wolverine876 4y ago
[2016]

165 points by xrayarx 4y ago

The answer is buried right in the middle of the article: Back in 1970, to win Department of Defense support at the program’s outset, NASA had redesigned the shuttle to launch national security payloads. Now, that decision paid off. If you visit the Museum of the Air Force in Dayton Ohio, the guides will tell you straight out that the cargo bay (and thus entire airframe) of Shuttle was enlarged to be able to hold a Keyhole/CORONA imaging satellite and retrieve it if necessary. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CORONA_(satellite) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CORONA_(satellite)

marktangotango 4y ago
That's interesting, also a possible insight into what the X-37b mission is. Retrieving payloads, but what payloads?
- khuey 4y ago
  The X-37B is much smaller than the shuttle (it was originally intended to fit in the shuttle's payload bay). It physically can't retrieve satellites of any significant size.
  - kranke155 4y ago
    I'm really curious, do we have any idea whatsoever what the X-37 is being used for?
    - cjbgkagh 4y ago
      A big advantage of space planes is the ability to change orbit very quickly, could be used for reconnoissance or as a weapons delivery vehicle.
      - the_third_wave 4y ago
        Only if they're in low enough orbits to make use of atmospheric drag. Such orbits decay quickly if the vehicle does not have boost capacity. Given the extremely long missions this thing flies - several missions over 700 days - it seems unlikely for it to make use of atmospheric drag. It might do so when in a highly elliptical orbit but even then it needs to perform a burn at apogee to keep it from re-entering before long.
        cjbgkagh 4y ago
        There is value from the optionality of having a capability even if it isn’t regularly used.
    - jacquesm 4y ago
      That highly depends on who 'we' is. Anybody really in the know is definitely not going to spill the beans. The payload is very small, the stated reasons it flew its missions are 'testbed' for various technologies. Which may well be all there is to it.
    - fragmede 4y ago
      The links to the specific missions on the wikipedia page have some expert conjecture, based on observations by amateur skywatchers, so we have a good idea that it's being used to launch military surveillance and communications satellites, as well as being used to test new hardware. Which is all rather broad and generic, but if it were aliens, it's not like they'd tell us anyway. Even if it were actually confirmed that OTV-1 launched a military surveillance satellite, we still wouldn't know how good it is at that other than some hard limits due to physics (mirror size and atmospheric interference).
    - timschmidt 4y ago
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQN4hId5psg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQN4hId5psg "Everything We Know About The US Air Force's Secret Space Plane - The X-37B" by Scott Manley
    - Lammy 4y ago
      Obviously total speculation, but it's the right size to be a flying speed-of-light weapon platform. USAF have been interested in such tech for a long time. Some fun links: - Directed Energy Directorate home page during the years 1999–2006: https://web.archive.org/web/20060831035044/http://www.de.afrl.af.mil/ https://web.archive.org/web/20060831035044/http://www.de.afr... - Directed Energy Directorate home page during the years 2009–2016: https://web.archive.org/web/20160428181404/http://www.kirtland.af.mil/afrl_de/ https://web.archive.org/web/20160428181404/http://www.kirtla... - LASER Effects Test Facility fact sheet from 2002 showing a 50-kilowatt CO² LASER setting a test target on fire: https://web.archive.org/web/20070315131556/http://www.de.afrl.af.mil/factsheets/letf.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20070315131556/http://www.de.afr...
      - nradov 4y ago
        It seems small for any sort of directed energy weapon with a useful power output. There wouldn't be enough capacity for a big generator and heat radiators.
        Tostino 4y ago
        Right, short of a small reactor onboard, it seems unlikely to be able to store the energy or power densities required while in flight. Obviously there may be some unknown breakthrough that allows it...but I'm skeptical.
    - ceejayoz 4y ago
      One common theory is it's being used to do close-up inspections of other countries' satellites. Bonus points if you can attach a magnetic limpet mine to them for future usage.
      - yetanotherloser 4y ago
        Wouldn't the mass change cause some kind of detectable change in the satellite's trajectory over time?
        ceejayoz 4y ago
        I don't think anything particularly detectable; they're so outweighed by the planet they're orbiting that the barycenter doesn't move measurably. (To be clear, I'd imagine they're only doing the inspection thing right now, but I do suspect they're at least tinkering with on-orbit capture, refueling, disabling etc. with an arm.)
        dmurray 4y ago
        What if your satellite did some more manoeuvres for station keeping, wouldn't you notice the mass difference then?
        lmm 4y ago
        Maybe. The mass of an explosive could be pretty small compared to the mass of a satellite. And even if you do notice that your (secret military) satellite is slightly heavier than the spec says, what would you do about it?
        matthewdgreen 4y ago
        How expensive is it to attach a couple of space-rated external cameras to a modern satellite? This wouldn’t eliminate the threat but it would certainly remove the uncertainty. Presumably once you recognized the threat, then defending against it couldn’t be the hardest problem to solve.
    - euroderf 4y ago
      It carries a negotiating table. Our telepresence on one side, the aliens['] on the other.
      - simne 4y ago
        Or black box, so they will spend millennia to understand, what we want to say :)))))
        euroderf 4y ago
        Or... freak out and ATTACK!
  - joezydeco 4y ago
    What if the X37B was the imaging satellite?
    - dylan604 4y ago
      Why would they build it to retrieve itself? That's very meta
      - IIAOPSW 4y ago
        Don't you get it. Its shuttles retrieving other shuttles all the way up!
        dylan604 4y ago
        Russian nesting shuttles?
  - ridgeguy 4y ago
    This may be changing with rapid extension of satellite size towards the small end of the spectrum. Small size is now significant. For example, a radar imaging constellation might consist of multiple transmit/receive satellites, each of which could be quite small (say, 1 - 5 cu. ft.). The X37B could accommodate that - especially after it snipped the solar panels off.
- the_third_wave 4y ago
  If that is its mission the answer is "small payloads" since the carrying capacity of the thing would be quite limited with its 2.1 x 1.2 m [1] payload bay. That leaves little room for the grappling arm or other mechanism needed to pluck a satellite out of its orbit. I suspect it does not retrieve payloads but takes them up and down again. Which payloads? Good question. Experimental sensors meant for inclusion in next-generation reconnaissance satellites maybe? [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20150321121050/http://www.boeing.com/boeing/defense-space/ic/sis/x37b_otv/x37b_otv.page https://web.archive.org/web/20150321121050/http://www.boeing...
- hammock 4y ago
  https://youtu.be/KZX1YCmzHEw?t=109 https://youtu.be/KZX1YCmzHEw?t=109
sidewndr46 4y ago
It's sort of interesting for them to point this out. This is also why the Titan IV program came into being. The Space Shuttle simply not being available meant that it was needed to develop an equivalent unmanned lift vehicle. I think the same museum even has some stuff from a Titan IV on display
- JonSchneider 4y ago
  Believe it or not, they have an entire Titan IV on display: https://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/Visit/Museum-Exhibits/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/692874/lockheed-martin-titan-ivb-rocket/ https://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/Visit/Museum-Exhibits/Fact... It's pretty impressive in person. (Scroll through the gallery that isn't obviously a gallery near the top to see it)
- joezydeco 4y ago
  They actually have a CORONA satellite on display and will tell you all about how it worked. So you know we're three or four generations beyond that technology now. https://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/Visit/Museum-Exhibits/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/195923/cold-war-in-space-top-secret-reconnaissance-satellites-revealed/ https://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/Visit/Museum-Exhibits/Fact...
  - sidewndr46 4y ago
    I remember as a kid we had textbooks that explained that the CORONA satellites were state of that art and used for surveillance. This was in the early 00s. Even then I looked at those little things and came to the conclusion that this was not in fact the entire extent of the US surveillance capabilities.
    - joezydeco 4y ago
      What blew my mind was how large it was. You're thinking it's a camera...how large can that be? It's the size of a school bus.
      - 4y ago
pram 4y ago
The Air Force also planned to have its own squadron of shuttles.
- Apocryphon 4y ago
  As depicted in Moonraker https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asgLef3oVAw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asgLef3oVAw
  - skhr0680 4y ago
    I used to work with an English chap who made a habit of reminding me that Moonraker had US Space Marines a good few years before Aliens … Semper Fi!
    - wkat4242 4y ago
      And a good few decades before space force!
  - bradyd 4y ago
    Moonraker is one of the only movies to properly depict a Shuttle launch, and it came out before the Shuttle ever flew. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nH3EsUTPihg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nH3EsUTPihg
adolph 4y ago
Also the form and glidepath potential of the shuttle was designed for military capabilities to capture an adversary's satellite that were never used, according to "The Most Important Space Shuttle Mission Never Happened" by Scott Manley [0]. His source is this pdf [1]. 0. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_q2i0eu35aY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_q2i0eu35aY 1. http://www.jamesoberg.com/sts-3A_B-DRM.PDF http://www.jamesoberg.com/sts-3A_B-DRM.PDF
- wkat4242 4y ago
  Kinda good too because that would be pretty close to an act of war and set a dangerous precedent for the weaponisation of space. You prepare for the war you don't want to fight...
  - dylan604 4y ago
    How would capturing a satellite from orbit be any different than a soldier walking up to an enemy's position and driving off with a tank or flying a jet out from under their nose? Some shit would definitely be on the fan at that point.
    - wkat4242 4y ago
      That's what I mean exactly. I'm glad we were never in the situation where this would have been thinkable. Because it would mean direct war between superpowers.
    - IIAOPSW 4y ago
      A better analogy might be detaining a ship or in international waters or implementing a blockade such as the Cuban missile crisis. It is technically casus belli, but rarely does it get escalated that far. Rational actors don't really want to start a war over an incident that doesn't even involve their sovereign territory.
      - dylan604 4y ago
        I don't think a blockade is the same thing though. A blockade just prevents a ship from going to the destination or the route it was wanting. It is still free to maneuver and is still in control of the flag it operates under.
KerrAvon 4y ago
Carter's actual answer, though: he didn't want to throw away the money that had already been spent. Left unsaid is that the money in question represented a lot of jobs, and congresspeople in certain areas of the country would have thrown a fit, and the last thing Carter needed was to further irritate Congress.
daveslash 4y ago
The potential Military applications of the Space Shuttle were why the Soviets copied it so closely. They didn't know why or what clandestine military purpose the shuttle had, but they knew that when they found out, they'd want the same capabilities. So they just copied it, not knowing why. "Faced with the poorly understood threat of a military space shuttle, the Soviets decided that copying the American spacecraft exactly was the best bet. The logic was simple: if the Americans were planning something that needed a vehicle that big, the Soviets ought to build one as well and be ready to match their adversary even if they didn’t know exactly what they were matching." [0] [1] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6428205 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6428205 [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20131001110918/http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/09/the-life-and-death-of-buran-the-ussr-shuttle-built-on-faulty-assumptions/ https://web.archive.org/web/20131001110918/http://arstechnic...
- Perceval 4y ago
  > They didn't know why or what clandestine military purpose the shuttle had, but they knew that when they found out, they'd want the same capabilities. So they just copied it, not knowing why. This is the exact same thing that's happened with the Chinese and the X-37B: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-37 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-37 * https://www.forbes.com/sites/ericmack/2022/08/22/mysterious-chinese-spaceplane-apparently-still-overhead-18-days-after-launch/?sh=27d79f0f7a0e https://www.forbes.com/sites/ericmack/2022/08/22/mysterious-...
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- euroderf 4y ago
  A specific case of the general idea of superpower convergence.
  - 082349872349872 4y ago
    "...the deciding factor was when we learned that your country was working along similar lines, and we were afraid of a doomsday gap." — AdS (fict)
VLM 4y ago
I've never gotten a straight answer on who came first the KH-11 or HST. The mirrors are the same size and they both fit in the bay. A long time ago I considered writing a "sci fi techno thriller" book plot along the lines of the HST was intentionally mis-built to own the Russians trying to copy the KH-11. There's easier ways to make money LOL. In the 70s progress was fast and they were blasting new observation sats every couple months and new generations every couple years so it seemed sensible to have a "space truck" to service the rapidly changing technology. Then things settled down and at least declassified nothing is new in quite some time WRT observation sats. Kind of like rapid changes in the PC industry in the 80s then things slowed down a lot to the point we don't "need" a Radio Shack or CompUSA anymore. People thought the rapid progress of the 70s in spy sats was going to go on forever, so we need a "space truck" to keep up with rapid changes, and like most things predicted to go on forever, it didn't.
- adastra22 4y ago
  The keyhole satellites. Because of security classification the Hubble design had to be semi-cleanroom reengineered, but the contractors were the same and in fact many of the same engineers worked on both. The keyhole test equipment in Sunnyvale was reused for Hubble.
  - AnotherGoodName 4y ago
    qq and probably no one would answer but did keyhole have the same mirror defect? Hubble was fixed by the costar addition. I wonder if there's missions to fix keyhole we don't know about.
    - laverya 4y ago
      Well, there's been a LOT of KH-11 satellites over the years, so unlike with Hubble the NRO has had the opportunity to just put up an updated satellite instead of trying to fix an existing one. Seriously, Wikipedia lists 5 generations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KH-11_KENNEN https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KH-11_KENNEN 5+3+4+3+3 total launches.
Gibbon1 4y ago
My dad worked for NASA during that time. The above is 100% what he said. NASA needed the air forces support which meant being able to launch large spy satellites. Which also meant the thing was really expensive making it a white elephant. It drained a the money that could have been spent to implement more modern launch systems. People used to get pissed off when I'd say the best thing for NASA to do was to stop flying the shuttle. Retrospectively that was the right thing to do.
simne 4y ago
Definitely, no. Shuttle was designed, to make use of capacity of Morton Thiokol Inc. enterprise, which without SRB's was near 100% military enterprise (created to build SRB's for ICBM's). That time Moon program was on liquid fueled rocket, but with nazi smell, so made political decision, to make 100% domestic design, without any traces to German works.
JKCalhoun 4y ago
Yeah, that's unfortunate. We got a boxcar with wings.
angst_ridden 4y ago
I did work on the Inertia Upper Stage (IUS) project. That was the booster that would take satellites from the shuttle bay into their final orbits. A lot of the IUS specifications were classified because of the payloads that were intended. Even the name of the program that made those specifications and the name of the organization that was behind the program were classified. Of course, that all kind of fell apart when _Deep Black_ was published, and a lot of code names (the uttering of which were absolutely verboten) were suddenly being bandied about on the evening news. I was in the weird position of pretending to not know code names that were being discussed on broadcast TV.
- aidenn0 4y ago
  Yeah, even the existence of NRO was officially classified until almost 20 years after it was first accidentally disclosed.
- KennyBlanken 4y ago
  Now, what'll really bake your noodle: the Soviets almost certainly knew those codenames, projects, etc. There's tons of stuff that everyone in the security services knows but is still "classified" and verboten from public discourse or even private conversation. Half the purpose of classified program rules is to keep the public from realizing how much money is being pissed away on ridiculous boondoggles.
MichaelMoser123 4y ago
it could also be used to snatch enemy satellites from orbit - that's how we got the capability to repair the Hubble space telescope. Snatching satellites from space was a big deal, you could potentially get rid of a space based early warning system. i guess that potential must have made some Soviet planners quite nervous(or eager), as it would imply first strike capabilities.
cratermoon 4y ago
And incidentally, because the Hubble space telescope is widely acknowledged but not officially recognized as a Keyhole/CORONA turned the other way around, that's why it happened to be an excellent fit for the shuttle cargo bay.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

LarryMullins 4y ago

For the Shuttle to be cancelled by politicians is one thing; that's just democracy in action. For the Shuttle to fail under its own weight is quite another; that's technical and organizational failure. The latter reflects poorly on the politicians who oversaw it and the country generally. It would have been a bad look for Carter's legacy, whether or not he hated NASA.

mrpippy 4y ago

I think it's obvious at this point, but Eric Berger is doing/has done an amazing job covering space for Ars Technica

tunesmith 4y ago
I think these sorts of articles are so hard to write, where it's simultaneously the story of what happened, with sources, but also the story of how they know; how they found out. It's two different modalities of explanation and you have to be a pretty expert writer to seamlessly switch back and forth between the two. I run into this challenge pretty regularly when writing retrospective analyses with tech.

ck2 4y ago

Ah a space shuttle article, wonder if they will use one of my favorite photographs from that era... Yup! https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Star_Trek_cast_and_Space_Shuttle_Enterprise.jpg https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Star_... But gosh they screwed up by naming the one that would never go into space "Enterprise"

jedberg 4y ago
Enterprise was supposed to go to space, but it ended up being cheaper to build Challenger from spare parts because the design specs had changed. It then ended up being cheaper to build Endeavor from spare parts than retrofit Enterprise after the Challenger tragedy.
- DonHopkins 4y ago
  I vaguely remember that some crazy conspiracy theorist confronted Captain Kirk once, and tried to force him to put his hand on the Bible and swear to God that Star Trek wasn't fake, and not just shot on a sound stage Hollywood, and then Captain Kirk punched him in the face!
  - consumer451 4y ago
    Is this an attempt at feeding noise into ML data thereby giving humans some more time to rule the earth? If so, I support it wholeheartedly.
  - codezero 4y ago
    This exact thing definitely happened to Buzz Aldrin when he was confronted about the moon landing being fake, and it's caught on film :) https://boingboing.net/2022/09/10/i-cant-believe-its-20-years-ago-today-that-buzz-aldrin-punched-a-moon-landing-denier-in-the-face.html https://boingboing.net/2022/09/10/i-cant-believe-its-20-year...
    - arp242 4y ago
      I believe that was the joke.

vondur 4y ago

I assumed the space shuttle was going to be used to retrieve things from space. Maybe even someone else's satellites. My father used to work in the heat treating industry, and they did a bunch of work on the space shuttle and many other aerospace/military projects.

VLM 4y ago
We certainly hauled a bunch of sats home over the decades, see STS-51-A for a typical declassified example of some relatively boring comsats. The classified missions published landing weights for some reason; they were low; the assumption is they never hauled anything home or they faked the landing weights because it wouldn't matter if they told the truth or not to the public (AFAIK no payload related change in realistically observable flight path was ever seen by independent observers) Westar 6 was later relaunched as AsiaSat 1. It trips non-space people out because "everyone knows" SpaceX and the old shuttle are the only things ever launched into space, landed, and re-launched back into space, but they were doing this back in the 80s with comsats and who knows what the military was up to.
- wkat4242 4y ago
  The 60s spy sats also took photos on film that were ejected in re-entry capsules and captured in mid-air using an airplane. Really crazy stuff they came up with and I'm surprised it actually worked. Engineering chops they sure had and balls too because capturing a falling object from space is pretty dangerous. Of course then there were the soviets launching entire nuclear reactors into orbit for a few months' worth of radar duty. Ok the US did one too but it was just one. All those Russian cores are still in orbit except the two that crashed. Crazy times.
  - angst_ridden 4y ago
    Yeah, the "snag this roll of film with a plane as it parachutes down" is the kind of thing that elicits a "wait .. what!?" reaction. But then, so does the quality of the images they captured relative to what would be expected given the times.

stolenmerch 4y ago

Side trivia: 20 years ago today the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated as it reentered the atmosphere over Texas, killing all seven astronauts on board. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Columbia_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Columbia_disaste...

graphe 4y ago
I remember seeing this in school when I was a kid. That was when space exploration because tainted in my generation. It was cool but astronaut wasn't something anyone wanted to be anymore so you die in the atmosphere. Sorry it was the challenger!
- bluGill 4y ago
  Are you thinking of Challenger which was more than 20 years ago?
- dylan604 4y ago
  > It was cool but astronaut wasn't something anyone wanted to be anymore so you die in the atmosphere. That's a strong disagree from me and people I spoke with. There were lots of "if they knocked on my door today asking if I wanted to join, I'd do it in a heartbeat" comments. I was one of them, as a 6th grader. Nobody every thought being an astronaut was without risk, did they? Every time a fighter pilot takes off, there's an inherent risk with that, yet people are lined up to join. I'm sorry you're such a "fair weather fan", but that just means one less person to compete with for those that actually want to do it
  - graphe 4y ago
    It wasn't just the students. I think if the attitude of the teachers were different I might still have wanted to be one. Safety was important and teachers were cautious. Were you shown the hour(s) of exercises they had to do daily to maintain their muscle? That was enough to make most kids say no thanks if chosen lol.

gumby 4y ago

I have to confess when I read this I thought, "Jeez, just go ask the guy" and...the author did! So great to see actual journalism.

DonHopkins 4y ago
Wow, what I would give to just hang out and chat with Jimmy Carter! I wonder if he asked him about the killer rabbit? Maybe I could get an appointment to sit down with him if I claimed I was the guy who helped eradicate the Guinea Worm? https://www.cartercenter.org/about/experts/donald_hopkins.html https://www.cartercenter.org/about/experts/donald_hopkins.ht...
e12e 4y ago
Thanks, for others wondering: > Why did the president ultimately support funding the shuttle in its time of need? “I was not enthusiastic about sending humans on missions to Mars or outer space,” Carter told Ars. “But I thought the shuttle was a good way to continue the good work of NASA. I didn’t want to waste the money already invested.”

neovialogistics 4y ago

I found the Soviet Union's alleged theory explaining the American space shuttle to their own leadership[1] to be quite interesting. According to some documents submitted to the central committee by the head of the fledgling Keldysh institute (famous for it's faculty - Israel Gelfand and Alexey Lyapunov among others), the shuttle could theoretically launch in a trajectory from Vandenburg, CA south towards and over Antarctica and northwards over the Indian Ocean towards Moscow, with several nuclear weapons aboard, as a kind of hypersonic dive bomber. This would, in a nuclear exchange, bring the mean time from initial detection of an American attack to the first nuclear strike on Moscow down from seven minutes (UGM-73 missiles on a depressed trajectory launched from the North Sea near Denmark)[2] to a little over three minutes. Fears of this, according to the theory, led to several of the design specifications for the Buran shuttle. I find the extensive concerns about, and optimizing of strategy around, minimizing warning time in a nuclear exchange to be fascinating. [1]https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3855/1 https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3855/1 [2]https://www.scienceandglobalsecurity.org/archive/sgs03gronlund.pdf https://www.scienceandglobalsecurity.org/archive/sgs03gronlu... (PDF)

xattt 4y ago
Nuclear capability explains the “single polar orbit with a large crossrange” requirement. How was the shuttle capable of such a large crossrange? Maneuverability in the atmosphere?
- nickff 4y ago
  The large delta wings on the space shuttle are what allow the large cross-range, by letting it "turn" on the way down. The single polar orbit was to allow rapid, stealthy insertion of a reconnaissance satellite into polar orbit. According to the space shuttle engineers, there was never any contemplation of arming the shuttle, though the DoD did set many requirements (including payload bay size and cross-range).
  - KRAKRISMOTT 4y ago
    So an old school hypersonic glider

throwaway81523 4y ago

Carter almost destroyed the space shuttle. See the book "Enterprise" by Jerry Grey for history.

Maursault 4y ago
I'm not sure you can blame him, though. President Carter is exceptionally intelligent, graduated in the top 7.2% of his Naval Academy class of 820 after studying nuclear engineering and completed graduate studies in nuclear physics and reactor technology. Everyone just assumes Space! We all insist on it, but we all don't have the full picture. The man is practical, understood the costs, risks and value of, as of then, unrealized benefits. The last thing NASA needed in the late 1970's and early 1980's is an uncommonly intelligent President of the United States. It was their bad luck, and yet they lucked out. Give President Carter a break. The man is a saint. Compare to President Clinton, who is also highly intelligent, and yet not a saint. I'm not saying he's bad, just a bad, bad, boy.
- throwaway81523 4y ago
  The book that I mentioned discussed the context in great detail. Also, smart people do dumb things all the time.

DonHopkins 4y ago

This classic SNL skit from 1979 explains what a great nuclear engineer Jimmy Carter really is, and Rodney Dangerfield explains just how big Jimmy Carter really is. https://archive.org/details/saturday-night-live-s-04-e-16-richard-benjamin-04-07-1979 https://archive.org/details/saturday-night-live-s-04-e-16-ri... ("The Pepsi Syndrome" skit starts at 8:15) Dr. Edna Casey: Well Mrs. Carter, it’s difficult to comprehend just how big he is but to give you some idea, we’ve asked comedian Rodney Dangerfield to come along today to help explain it to you. Rodney? [Rodney Dangerfield enters] Rodney Dangerfield: How do you do, how are you? Ross Denton: Rodney, can you please tell us, how big is the president? Rodney Dangerfield: Oh, he’s a big guy, I’ll tell you that, he’s a big guy. I tell you he’s so big, I saw him sitting in the George Washington bridge dangling his feet in the water! He’s a big guy! Rosalynn Carter: Oh my God! Jimmy! Oh God! Rodney Dangerfield: Oh, he’s big, I’ll tell you that, boy. He’s so big that when two girls make love to him at the same time, they never meet each other! He’s a big guy, I’ll tell you! Rosalynn Carter: Oh no! Oh Jimmy! My Jimmy! Rodney Dangerfield: I don’t want to upset you lady, he’s big, you know what I mean? Why he could have an affair with the Lincoln Tunnel! I mean, he’s really high! He’s big, I’ll tell you! He’s a big guy! Rosalynn Carter: No! No! No! Ross Denton: Rodney, thank you very much. You can go. Rodney Dangerfield: It’s my pleasure. He’s way up there, lady! you know what I mean? [goes off, leaving Rosalynn Carter very upset]

harveywi 4y ago

To Jimmy Carter's credit, the space shuttle Columbia disaster could have prevented if the thermal foam on the external shuttle tanks had been replaced with a sweater.

maliker 4y ago

Other folks have pointed out there are military applications, and I read a while back that these kind of "space planes" have a unique advantage: with their wings they can dip into the atmosphere and very quickly change their trajectory without using a lot of fuel. From a military perspective, I'm guessing this makes them harder to shoot down. The military is still flying space planes [0] so this makes sense to me. [0] https://www.livescience.com/spaceplane-lands-after-908-days-orbit https://www.livescience.com/spaceplane-lands-after-908-days-...

hindsightbias 4y ago

Carter always gets painted as some sort of dove but he only cancelled the B-1A. Fully funded carriers, MX, Trident/SLBM, LA subs, Aegis destroyers, GLCM, ALCM, SLCM, Harpoon, F-117, B-2 development and $trillions more.

simne 4y ago

This case is very likely of model "too large to fail". Last time it used, when appear high probability of recession, and govt prints money and feed them to larges financial companies, to keep them alive. Opposite to print money, usually, to suffer huge losses of popularity, because without these measures, could close large chain of connected to subjects companies, will need to spend money to pay for unemployment. So I think, Carter's decisions where because it was easy solution for him, and less fear than to close. Examples of brave side politics are very rare, one of them Thatcher, decided to close mining companies, which decades fed by govt subsidies, which costed her very expensive.

DerekL 4y ago

Title needs (2016).

rl3 4y ago

>But Carter, according to Kraft, had just returned from Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) in Vienna, and he had spoken with the Soviet leader, Leonid Brezhnev, about how the United States was going to be able to fly the shuttle over Moscow continuously to ensure they were compliant with the agreements. Assuming this was 1972, the United States had several generations of image reconnaissance satellites in orbit at the time.[0] The shuttle made a good cover story I suppose. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Reconnaissance_Office#GEOINT_imaging https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Reconnaissance_Office...

CalChris 4y ago
> Assuming this was 1972 Carter was inaugurated President on January 20, 1977.
- rl3 4y ago
  Whoops, minor detail! Caffeine was not kind today.. Correction: The SALT II agreement was reached in June, 1979 and I believe that’s the correct period of time for the paragraph I quoted above. It’s worth noting the US had a couple KH-11s already flying at that point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KH-11_KENNEN#Block_I https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KH-11_KENNEN#Block_I

fallingfrog 4y ago

They probably knew it was a rube goldberg contraption but were hoping to make the Soviets waste resources trying to copy it, and then accidentally ended up getting it to work.

lumost 4y ago

There's another good explanation, The US didn't want to flush the investment in Apollo entirely. The space shuttle was conveniently expensive enough and on paper sustainable enough to keep the space program alive. In hindsight, there is limited evidence that private companies would have been competitive with the space shuttle in the 1970s.

harimau777 4y ago

For what it's worth, I heard Kraft speak about 15 years ago and tell the story of Carter bragging about the shuttle. As he told it, he walked into the meeting expecting to tell Carter that they were going to have to cancel the shuttle program. However, before he could start Carter told him that he had just been speaking to Brezhnev and telling them how much the shuttle was going to outshine what they were doing. Without missing a beat, Kraft said "Mr. President, I'm going to need three million dollars".[1] [1] I don't recall the exact amount he said.

wolverine876 4y ago

[2016]