Space and Science BS Thread

Meh, that answer isn't as funny.

 

true...

 

https://twitter.com/falcon9block5/status/1408194350262067201?s=21

 

Never forget:

https://twitter.com/nasahistory/status/1408170568160104456?s=21

 

Everything becomes a political issue when it comes time for funding and which states get the juiciest worms. The Avro CF-105 Arrow was a textbook case of how politics can screw up an amazing project. A new Canadian prime minister canned the project and had all test materials destroyed, planes included. Engineers working on that were recruited and key members of the Apollo project.

 

Really sorry to post this as it seems things have calmed down a bit.

Doing the science on some outrageous, ludicrous ideas is a good thing.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-modest-proposal-lets-change-earths-orbit/

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXQ2lO3ieBA

 

Ah, that memory feels like a steel blade against my rib...the Avro Arrow. What could have been.

Who are you American from Cali who is wise in the abilities of the Arrow?

 

I'm Canadian and my mom was a Major in the Canadian Forces on the Air Force side of things. I'm well aware of the interceptor that never was because it would of pooped on other period US interceptor designs.

Funny side story, she was on the procurement team for the CF-18 and handled all the logistics for a wing at one point based on Germany. Some of her stories about what US companies tried to do to secure the bid for the new fighter at the time are crazy.

 

Where’s the Canadian flag emoji?

Seriously, thanks to your mom and family for supporting free speech, freedom from oppression, free speech and all of the other trappings of democracies

 

Thanks . I feel bad for her because she started from nothing, her family was dirt poor and she joined as a way out, and left while on the command track because she wanted to have kids. So I effectively ended her career lol.

Edit: Funny side story, the general that just got sacked for sexual harassment was junior to my mom and she knew of him when she made it to senior officer. She thought he should never of made it into senior command lol.

At one point she was in charge of pretty much everything that happened at CFB Trenton before it ramped down too. She wasn't the base commander, but everything that came in or out she had to sign off on. On the science side she's a math genius, she advanced quickly through a scholarship program for cadets that showed extreme aptitude for mathematics. She helped develop some software for OTH radar detection that's still the basis of what's used to help increase resolution on some wavelengths, I don't know what it's called lol. Spent a ton of time up on the Dew line and in Alaska testing new software when it wasn't the norm yet to see a woman on remote bases, let alone an officer on a small radar base with maybe a dozen men lol. Then she went to Germany and finally Trenton (Ottawa) where she met my dad (a farmer lol).

This is the first generation on my moms side with no one in the military. They really ramped down the force size up here after the cold war. I blame a lot of the problems the military is going through here, if you follow them, on the exit of a lot of bright people right around when my mom left and a lack of brainpower from my generation joining because of the cutbacks. I wonder how much has been lost in Canadian Scientific Development with the reductions in military budget.

 

https://youtu.be/8DYje57V_BY

 

I was a USAF brat that rose to awareness at RAF Lakenheath back when the Beatles were still in Liverpool So I was at least aware of the various flight demonstration teams and always thought the snow birds were cool. A bit over a year ago I saw a mention of an interceptor that never was and found a movie starring Dan Akroyd that probably took a fair amount of license but still had some depth to it. Certainly tantalizing with might have beens but the lasting impression I got was how much the Apollo missions owe to the Canadians that were headhunted when it all went south. I enjoyed the myth(?) that one plane was hastily moved to a secret underground base, it tied in with all of the Bond/Flint movies of the day.

 

Well as it turned out, like the F-104 it would never have been used as a supersonic interceptor to take out Soviet bombers. So it turns out to have been a wise decision to end the program.

Come to think of it the USAF decided not to pursue the F-107 either.

 

It set the Canadian military aviation industry back and it has never recovered. Canada went on to purchase interceptor fighters from the US, usually at inflated costs (procurement stories back then are insane), and lost an industry that has never really returned. The story isn't about how slow turning Interceptors turned out to be a bad plan for low intensity conflict and training, it's about how a political decision to support US over Canadian at home caused the death of an industry and an instant brain drain to the US.

 

Who knows? There were other consequences as well. The SST program failed in the US and only Concorde was left. With what was learned from the Arrow, a contract for planes, and an intact industry and development team Canada would have had the jump on both of them. It’s not far fetched to envision something akin to Boeing north of the border.

 

It's not impossible for it to still happen to this day. All it would take is for a country to make the right moves. Thousands of manufacturers have left the US for other countries, many because of laws and regulations. Take Spacex for example. Look at the amount of flac that they have been receiving from the local government and other groups. Now imagine Canada saw this, and said "hey Elon, here is an iron clad contract that says you can do what ever you want, when you want, come build a starship factory in Canada". While he would most likely finish the pathfinding in Texas, you know he would put serious consideration into the offer. The offer would most likely have to be exactly that though. Or they could offer Bezos 10-20 billion a year like he was trying to get from NASA, and HE could move Blue Origin up there. Unfortunately there are few countries doing this. Everyone is coming together and doing partnerships instead. I think competition would make things move faster.

Another space race would be awesome, and it's something I think we might actually get. Most countries were discouraged because they saw the cost that the major players were spending to get to space. The Space Shuttle adjusted for inflation cost 1.5 Billion per launch. Or you could jam 3 astronauts into a telephone booth on top of a rocket in Russia for 350 million. If the costs end up being anywhere near what Elon has hinted, which is pretty much just fuel and i've heard estimates on it's fuel cost being 2-300k, other countries might/should/will follow suit.

What I find crazy, and I'm sure i'm overlooking something, is this. A 747 can carry 150 tons, same as Starship. a 747 will burn 5 gallons per mile, and with a flight from LA to Hong Kong being 4500 miles, that could burn 100k in fuel. With a full Starship stack holding 5,000 TONS of fuel, single digit efficiency increases could equal dozens more tons of capacity and could eventually be cheaper than a 747. I would so love to see something like that happen.

 

Not to mention, CH4+LOX is easier to synthesize than aviation kerosene .. so you could, hypothetically do it in a carbon free way, too.

 

The Aero spike engine could do this easily but still needs development. Another example of quitting with the finish in sight. Maybe political, maybe not but with a launch tower built, 96% of the parts made, and a working prototype engine the NASA head of the program(X-33) test program stood up before Congress and told them not to fund it because it wouldn’t work without the composite tanks they hadn’t yet worked the bugs out of. 3 years later the tanks were ready but no more bird or project. It might have been the future of SSTO or at the very least a substantial increase in the efficiency of multi-stage rockets that would greatly increase payload capacity since even small gains there amount to huge amounts of fuel no longer needed or carried instead of payload.

 

https://twitter.com/spacex/status/1408438784824279042?s=21


https://twitter.com/tgmetsfan98/status/1408449285943857152?s=21

Return to LZ-1 is still the plan from what I can find.