Personal computing discussed
Moderators: askfranklin, renee, emkubed, Captain Ned
clone wrote:the cold war never wound down, Russia failed but in the eyes of the U.S. it's never wound down, it's why their defense budget keeps growing, it's why civil liberties are considered by those who matter as a legacy of the past.
clone wrote:for a nation competing on the global stage the cold war will never end.
clone wrote:as for slowing down it was defense capital that got silicon valley going which directly led to this explosion in tech we are enjoying today, so while the space race slowed due to the lack of tangible gains to be had the pace of growth in other sectors certainly hasn't.
clone wrote:if I was to place a bet on why humanity isn't in space nearly so much as we'd hoped, I'd place it on our inability to find a viable means of producing gravity for prolonged exposure to space.
JohnC wrote:For anyone who actually want to read about facts - I suggest getting a good Russian-English dictionary or a person who can fluently read and translate Russian text and start your own research into Buran program (starting around 1972 year and in particular the research of financial viability and practicality of "reusable spacecraft systems" that was done during that time by various scientific institutes tasked by USSR's Military-Industrial Commission) and the whole USSR's economy and political system during those years.
Then you might actually learn that it was always about this and not the silly nonsense like "improving the well-being of common people through scientific research".
JohnC wrote:That's a partial reason, yes. But it was not the major one. Tu-144 was not a military airplane and was never intended for any military purposes and it was also known that it would be economically impractical to use it even before its construction started. Its highly "unfinished" and unreliable state was also known before it was forced to be put into passenger service. All because of what I've said before
superjawes wrote:Guys, this has gone from a pretty neat converation about space/autoflight tech to Cold War R&P.
clone wrote:just the idea that we could do it in 1987 would have gotten me so juiced back in 1987 that I'd have been thinking that a 2001 space station and an eventual prolonged journey into space would have been entirely feasible.
John Young? wrote:"I think if you look at all the things we had to do, flying a winged launch vehicle into space without any previous unmanned test, it probably was very bold and we thought we knew a lot more than we did."
John Young wrote:They wanted to fly the thing unmanned. I went to many, many meetings where they [said they] wanted to fly the thing unmanned, but finally the program manager up at [NASA] Headquarters John Yardley, he said he wasn't going to come across California with nobody in the spacecraft. So, we got to fly it manned. It's probably the safe way to do it. We looked at California and there were all kinds of places you can land out there... including the freeways, which I saw in a TV movie where they did land on the freeway." (laughs)
clone wrote:if I was to place a bet on why humanity isn't in space nearly so much as we'd hoped, I'd place it on our inability to find a viable means of producing gravity for prolonged exposure to space.
It isn't the lack of artifical gravity in space that's the problem, it's the abundance of natural gravity keeping us of out of it.
I mean, really.
JohnC wrote:These idiots couldn't even transliterate names properly - it's not "Tushina", it's "Tushino" factory, named after the city of Tushino. And Unit 2.01 was never moved to Germany.
Glorious wrote:The space program was a futuristic prestige project which helped them to keep that vision alive. Without putting a man into space they would had nothing to point to as evidence that their society was advancing as it was supposed to according to Marxist-Leninism.
Luminair wrote:JohnC wrote:These idiots couldn't even transliterate names properly - it's not "Tushina", it's "Tushino" factory, named after the city of Tushino. And Unit 2.01 was never moved to Germany.
Amy Shira Teitel is not infallible, but she is an kind of an expert on space history and deserves our modicum of respect
clone wrote:do you believe for an instant that the U.S. is going to allow anyone to surpass them in tech, offensive or defensive if they can prevent it AND/OR do you believe in response any nation is going stop investing in attempts to at least remain within a distance of the U.S. if they are able?
clone wrote:(I didn't talk about defense budgets because they don't apply)
clone wrote:Russia failed but in the eyes of the U.S. it's never wound down, it's why their defense budget keeps growing
clone wrote:1st part: the struggle to mass produce transistors didn't lead to the explosion in tech in Silicon Valley!!! (financed in the beginning by the defense department which was willing to pay anything to get them).... really? .... seriously?.... it wasn't defense department money that changed a farming community into silicon valley?
clone wrote:that's what I found most impressive about it given it was back in 1987.
cphite wrote:Actually, that isn't correct. In terms of what is keeping us out of space for long periods of time, lack of gravity in space is a bigger factor than the abundance of gravity on the ground.
We've already solved the gravity on the ground problem - that's what rockets are for. That technology has improved over the years, but it really hasn't changed all that much. Launching people into space has long been mastered.
Glorious wrote:cphite wrote:Actually, that isn't correct. In terms of what is keeping us out of space for long periods of time, lack of gravity in space is a bigger factor than the abundance of gravity on the ground.
We've already solved the gravity on the ground problem - that's what rockets are for. That technology has improved over the years, but it really hasn't changed all that much. Launching people into space has long been mastered.
There are plenty of Russians who have spent around a year in space. Were they weak when they returned to Earth? Sure, but they seem to be ok.
Meanwhile, it costs around a quarter of million dollars to put a single person into low earth orbit. That's a real problem.
Didn't you read any science fiction as kid? I'm paraphrasing, but didn't Heinlein famously say "Once you're out of the gravity well you're not halfway to the moon, but halfway to anywhere.
Or you could read Clarke's "fountains of paradise."
It isn't rocket science.
Krogoth wrote:To nitpick at Heinein's quote, it still requires a lot of energy and time to reach anything beyond the Earth/Moon system that isn't interplanetary or interstellar space. Don't get any me wrong, it still require a lot of energy for any significant mass to achieve escape velocity from the Earth.
Glorious wrote:Krogoth wrote:To nitpick at Heinein's quote, it still requires a lot of energy and time to reach anything beyond the Earth/Moon system that isn't interplanetary or interstellar space. Don't get any me wrong, it still require a lot of energy for any significant mass to achieve escape velocity from the Earth.
Oh, that's entirely true and not really a nitpick at all.
I'm just pointing out that the problem with space travel isn't the lack of artificial gravity but the preponderance of natural gravity.
... Then you might actually learn that it was always about this and not the silly nonsense like "improving the well-being of common people through scientific research".
...on a side note "Gagarin"... (typo? or lost in translation?)
Glorious wrote:cphite wrote:Actually, that isn't correct. In terms of what is keeping us out of space for long periods of time, lack of gravity in space is a bigger factor than the abundance of gravity on the ground.
We've already solved the gravity on the ground problem - that's what rockets are for. That technology has improved over the years, but it really hasn't changed all that much. Launching people into space has long been mastered.
There are plenty of Russians who have spent around a year in space. Were they weak when they returned to Earth? Sure, but they seem to be ok.
Meanwhile, it costs around a quarter of million dollars to put a single person into low earth orbit. That's a real problem.
Didn't you read any science fiction as kid? I'm paraphrasing, but didn't Heinlein famously say "Once you're out of the gravity well you're not halfway to the moon, but halfway to anywhere.
Or you could read Clarke's "fountains of paradise."
It isn't rocket science.
cphite wrote:Correct. The rocket science aspect is fairly well settled. It's the medical stuff that's the real challenge.
cphite wrote:Or you could read Clarke's "fountains of paradise."
Or hell, why not just grab a couple of Star Trek novels... it's only a matter of time before we have teleportation, warp drive, and energy shields...
Captain Ned wrote:Getting things/people out of Earth's gravity well without using chemical rockets will be the first great step forward. Personally, I've always believed the space elevator to be the best method for this as it greatly reduces the needed mass to be lifted and allows for electrical power to provide the required force. A station above geosync (most elevators are designed with the center of mass at geosync) would greatly reduce the propulsive needs for escape velocity.
bthylafh wrote:Captain Ned wrote:NERVA engines attached to an interplanetary tug would be much easier to make. We were apparently quite close to making flight-ready hardware in the '70s before NASA's budget got cut.Getting things/people out of Earth's gravity well without using chemical rockets will be the first great step forward. Personally, I've always believed the space elevator to be the best method for this as it greatly reduces the needed mass to be lifted and allows for electrical power to provide the required force. A station above geosync (most elevators are designed with the center of mass at geosync) would greatly reduce the propulsive needs for escape velocity.