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"and the meddling of the military" "The Air Force put some tough requirements on it, such as the requirement for enough cross-range capability when landing to

by hga 13y ago

"and the meddling of the military" "The Air Force put some tough requirements on it, such as the requirement for enough cross-range capability when landing to be able to launch into a polar orbit from Vandenberg, deploy a satellite, and land back one orbit later." That's not what I remember at the time this was happening, nor was it e.g. the story in a good study published in Science. Sure, the DoD/intelligence community wouldn't have minded such a capability, but NASA insisted on it to make the shuttle more attractive to them and to help justify the monopoly NASA obtained on these sorts of launches. Something the DoD didn't like at all, and was partly freed from after the Challenger disaster. Which also prompted a closer look at the safety of Vandenberg launches and the canceling of them.

mikeash 13y ago
Here's a source for you: http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4221/ch5.htm http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4221/ch5.htm Quote: "However, it meant that if a shuttle was to execute a one-orbit mission from Vandenberg, it would return to the latitude of that base after 90 minutes in space only to find that, due to the earth's rotation, this base had moved to the east by 1100 nautical miles. Air Force officials indeed expected to launch the Shuttle from Vandenberg, and they insisted that the Shuttle had to have enough crossrange to cover that distance and return successfully." It goes into quite a bit of detail on the Air Force's involvement and reasoning. I'd be interested to see them if you had sources that say otherwise.
- hga 13y ago
  You don't suppose the official, house NASA history of the Shuttle might be a bit unreliable on these issues??? My sources are what I contemporaneously learned and remembered in the '70s, and that paper in Science (the world's #2 science journal after Nature, not that it wasn't back then very political, just that this claim cuts against their politics). It would have been published in the '80s, very possibly after the Challenger disaster prompted a lot of second looks, but I can't be more specific.
  - mikeash 13y ago
    Yes, an official NASA history is certainly going to be biased. On the other hand, you've given me no reason whatsoever to believe you over them. Your ??? is completely out of line. I merely gave a source for what I said and asked if you had one. I understand if you don't, but don't be surprised if I then don't necessarily believe your claim.
    - hga 13y ago
      But I do have a source; it would be behind a paywall if I could find it/went to the trouble of trying to find it (the search would probably cost money to make sure I found the right article). At best I hoped to plant a seed of doubt about yet another archetypal bashing of the military; clearly I've failed. My "???" indicates I think it's quite possible the author's sources lied to him. You're welcome to believe that NASA people, when talking about their greatest and most expensive in every way failure---these decisions killed two complete crews of 7 each---are more honest than I am, but I'm not entirely sure how much company you'll have, the world has seen rather a lot of post-Apollo NASA by now.... (This alone should give one serious pause: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogers_Commission_Report#Role_of_Richard_Feynman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogers_Commission_Report#Role_...).
      - mikeash 13y ago
        It's not "bashing of the military". The Air Force didn't want the Shuttle, but once they were forced into it, they wanted to make it useful to them. The fault lies with the people who forced two organizations with widely different goals to come up with a single vehicle that worked for both of them. I don't understand your incredulity at my reaction. What exactly did you think was going to happen when you showed up making an effectively anonymous comment saying, "no, that's wrong, believe my 30-year-old memories over the official history"?
        hga 13y ago
        You're contradicting yourself: first you said: "The Space Shuttle was a political football whose design was dictated by the whims of Congress and the meddling of the military first...." Then you note the military didn't want it, but wanted it to be useful if forced. I would add the Science article specifically addressed the single orbit polar mission, saying the Air Force didn't see a great need for that and would have been happy with gentler flight profiles. It explicitly said NASA insisted on it, and that's consistent with their post-Apollo institutional biases, much the same produced the hot-rod SSMEs. "Meddling", when it wasn't, qualifies as bashing in my book, especially in the full context of your sentence. As for my incredulity, maybe start here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historiography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historiography I was a History minor in college....

by hga 13y ago

mikeash 13y ago

Here's a source for you: http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4221/ch5.htm http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4221/ch5.htm Quote: "However, it meant that if a shuttle was to execute a one-orbit mission from Vandenberg, it would return to the latitude of that base after 90 minutes in space only to find that, due to the earth's rotation, this base had moved to the east by 1100 nautical miles. Air Force officials indeed expected to launch the Shuttle from Vandenberg, and they insisted that the Shuttle had to have enough crossrange to cover that distance and return successfully." It goes into quite a bit of detail on the Air Force's involvement and reasoning. I'd be interested to see them if you had sources that say otherwise.

hga 13y ago
You don't suppose the official, house NASA history of the Shuttle might be a bit unreliable on these issues??? My sources are what I contemporaneously learned and remembered in the '70s, and that paper in Science (the world's #2 science journal after Nature, not that it wasn't back then very political, just that this claim cuts against their politics). It would have been published in the '80s, very possibly after the Challenger disaster prompted a lot of second looks, but I can't be more specific.
- mikeash 13y ago
  Yes, an official NASA history is certainly going to be biased. On the other hand, you've given me no reason whatsoever to believe you over them. Your ??? is completely out of line. I merely gave a source for what I said and asked if you had one. I understand if you don't, but don't be surprised if I then don't necessarily believe your claim.
  - hga 13y ago
    But I do have a source; it would be behind a paywall if I could find it/went to the trouble of trying to find it (the search would probably cost money to make sure I found the right article). At best I hoped to plant a seed of doubt about yet another archetypal bashing of the military; clearly I've failed. My "???" indicates I think it's quite possible the author's sources lied to him. You're welcome to believe that NASA people, when talking about their greatest and most expensive in every way failure---these decisions killed two complete crews of 7 each---are more honest than I am, but I'm not entirely sure how much company you'll have, the world has seen rather a lot of post-Apollo NASA by now.... (This alone should give one serious pause: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogers_Commission_Report#Role_of_Richard_Feynman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogers_Commission_Report#Role_...).
    - mikeash 13y ago
      It's not "bashing of the military". The Air Force didn't want the Shuttle, but once they were forced into it, they wanted to make it useful to them. The fault lies with the people who forced two organizations with widely different goals to come up with a single vehicle that worked for both of them. I don't understand your incredulity at my reaction. What exactly did you think was going to happen when you showed up making an effectively anonymous comment saying, "no, that's wrong, believe my 30-year-old memories over the official history"?
      - hga 13y ago
        You're contradicting yourself: first you said: "The Space Shuttle was a political football whose design was dictated by the whims of Congress and the meddling of the military first...." Then you note the military didn't want it, but wanted it to be useful if forced. I would add the Science article specifically addressed the single orbit polar mission, saying the Air Force didn't see a great need for that and would have been happy with gentler flight profiles. It explicitly said NASA insisted on it, and that's consistent with their post-Apollo institutional biases, much the same produced the hot-rod SSMEs. "Meddling", when it wasn't, qualifies as bashing in my book, especially in the full context of your sentence. As for my incredulity, maybe start here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historiography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historiography I was a History minor in college....