[HN Gopher] A Cold War mystery: Why did Jimmy Carter save the sp...
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A Cold War mystery: Why did Jimmy Carter save the space shuttle?
Author : xrayarx
Score : 99 points
Date : 2023-02-01 16:22 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| [deleted]
| maliker wrote:
| 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-...
| gumby wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.ht...
| e12e wrote:
| 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."
| harveywi wrote:
| 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.
| neovialogistics wrote:
| 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 [2]https://www.s
| cienceandglobalsecurity.org/archive/sgs03gronlu... (PDF)
| xattt wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| So an old school hypersonic glider
| nickff wrote:
| Basically, although the space shuttle has the worst glide
| ratio of any aerospace vehicle I am aware of. To simulate
| landing the shuttle, they used a businessjet with the
| engines in reverse...
| Sharlin wrote:
| A brick with small stubby wings bolted on.
| rpmw wrote:
| Yep! No go arounds once you re-entered.
|
| Here's the training aircraft:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuttle_Training_Aircraft
| yodon wrote:
| >the shuttle could theoretically launch in a trajectory from
| Vandenburg, CA south towards and over Antarctica
|
| Having spent time at the South Pole, the ice runway at the
| South Pole Station was sized and built and in part funded by
| NASA to handle the scenario in which a shuttle on a trajectory
| that took it over the pole found itself in need of an emergency
| divert runway.
| tobinfricke wrote:
| To what extent was the runway there "built" as a permanent
| installation, vs being an ephemeral phenomenon that is
| refreshed season by season?
| yodon wrote:
| It requires maintenance but it's not like the ice is going
| to melt in the South Pole "summer."
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| Not yet
| stolenmerch wrote:
| 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_disaste...
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Day or two after that happened, it occurred to me to scan back
| through the Cowboy Bebop episode "Wild Horses" and see which
| shuttle it'd featured, because I couldn't recall.
|
| It was Columbia, of course, so that episode joined seemingly
| every movie made between '73 and '01 and set in NY (that was
| still pretty fresh, too, mind you) in being a bit of a
| _distracting_ watch, in a way that was not originally intended.
| graphe wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Are you thinking of Challenger which was more than 20 years
| ago?
| dylan604 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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.
| simne wrote:
| 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.
| throwaway81523 wrote:
| Carter almost destroyed the space shuttle. See the book
| "Enterprise" by Jerry Grey for history.
| Maursault wrote:
| 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.
| hindsightbias wrote:
| 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.
| LarryMullins wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| I think it's obvious at this point, but Eric Berger is doing/has
| done an amazing job covering space for Ars Technica
| joezydeco wrote:
| 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)
| simne wrote:
| 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.
| pram wrote:
| The Air Force also planned to have its own squadron of
| shuttles.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| As depicted in _Moonraker_
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asgLef3oVAw
| bradyd wrote:
| 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
| skhr0680 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| And a good few decades before space force!
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Yeah, that's unfortunate. We got a boxcar with wings.
| VLM wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| qbrass wrote:
| The defect was a huge deal for a long range telescope
| because the distortion makes up a larger part of the
| image the further out you go.
|
| At Earth to spy satellite distances, it's like 1/4" and
| probably below the resolution of the camera used at the
| time.
| VLM wrote:
| That was the entire point of my Sci Fi techothriller I
| never finished writing where the plot was the HST was a
| declassified KH-11 and to F the Soviets over we released
| the declassified HST with an intentional fault so the
| Soviet clone would be faulty. Its a win-win because the
| service mission to fix the HST made the right people on
| our side extra money, but the Soviets didn't have a
| working-enough space-truck to fix their clones of the
| HST/KH-11, and we were certainly not going to volunteer
| to fix their KH-11 clone for them LOL.
|
| It was never going to be a good book plot so I gave up on
| it. Unrealistic that they'd steal "everything" including
| the intentional mistake. The idea of a double agent plot
| where "their guy" was actually "our guy" who made sure
| they stole the entire lot including the intentional
| grinding error was, um, cringy. In defense of my bad
| novel plot, I was young at the time, and I've read worse
| books.
| Sharlin wrote:
| I always thought that Hubble in fact _was_ a declassified
| KH-11. And indeed the NRO declassified and donated a
| couple more obsolete Keyholes to NASA in 2012 [1], one of
| which is now being used as the chassis (and optics?) of
| the NGRST [2].
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_National_Reconnais
| sance_O...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Grace_Roman_Space
| _Telesc...
| e12e wrote:
| Hehe, see also: "the Zenith Angle" by Bruce Sterling (he
| did complete his book).
| johntb86 wrote:
| https://space.stackexchange.com/a/58290 lays out some
| evidence that Kodak built similar mirrors for the KH-11
| spy satellites, while Perkin-Elmer was selected for
| Hubble (and had built smaller mirrors for other spy
| satellites).
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| I can't speak specifically for keyhole, but I know that
| Kodak definitely worked on spy satellites. My father
| worked there and on them.
| ArnoVW wrote:
| From what I remember, the defect was a manufacturing
| defect, not a design flaw.
|
| Some chipped paint meant that a critical distance was
| extended by the thickness of the paint layer.
| laverya wrote:
| 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 5+3+4+3+3
| total launches.
| adastra22 wrote:
| No, that was a manufacturing mistake not a design error.
| A different contractor was used.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| >so we need a "space truck" to keep up with rapid changes
|
| Check out Space Truckers, with square pigs, because they pack
| so tightly!
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReKKdeDpb8A
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zcBjI9N0rI
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8Ifaeff0mA
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| 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.
| marktangotango wrote:
| That's interesting, also a possible insight into what the X-37b
| mission is. Retrieving payloads, but what payloads?
| khuey wrote:
| 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.
| ridgeguy wrote:
| 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.
| kranke155 wrote:
| I'm really curious, do we have any idea whatsoever what the
| X-37 is being used for?
| euroderf wrote:
| It carries a negotiating table. Our telepresence on one
| side, the aliens['] on the other.
| jacquesm wrote:
| 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.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Wouldn't the mass change cause some kind of detectable
| change in the satellite's trajectory over time?
| dylan604 wrote:
| It would not need to be very big mine though would it? A
| grenade would probably be just fine to eliminate the
| satellite from being useful. Something that small means
| it could carry a lot of ammo
| ceejayoz wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| What if your satellite did some more manoeuvres for
| station keeping, wouldn't you notice the mass difference
| then?
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| There is value from the optionality of having a
| capability even if it isn't regularly used.
| fragmede wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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/htt
| p://www.de.afr...
|
| - Directed Energy Directorate home page during the years
| 2009-2016: https://web.archive.org/web/20160428181404/htt
| p://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://w
| ww.de.afr...
| nradov wrote:
| 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.
| joezydeco wrote:
| What if the X37B _was_ the imaging satellite?
| dylan604 wrote:
| Why would they build it to retrieve itself? That's very
| meta
| the_third_wave wrote:
| 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.boe
| ing...
| adolph wrote:
| 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
|
| 1. http://www.jamesoberg.com/sts-3A_B-DRM.PDF
| wkat4242 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| 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
| joezydeco wrote:
| 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...
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| I think you are thinking of KH-9 satellites. CORONA is
| just a tiny little thing.
| JonSchneider wrote:
| Believe it or not, they have an entire Titan IV on display:
| 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)
| euroderf wrote:
| As a teenager I tried to spec out a flying Titan III model
| using standard tube sizes from Estes. Never carried to
| fruition tho.
| daveslash wrote:
| 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
|
| [1]
| https://web.archive.org/web/20131001110918/http://arstechnic...
| sgt101 wrote:
| Buran was radically different - no internal rockets, just
| jets. Unmanned optionally.
|
| The most interesting thing is that the launcher (Energina)
| was actually also used to launch a space battlestation.
|
| No - I am not kidding.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyus_(spacecraft)
| [deleted]
| euroderf wrote:
| A specific case of the general idea of superpower
| convergence.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| "...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)
| daveslash wrote:
| " _This is preposterous! I never approved of anything
| like that!_ " ~ PM (fict)
|
| " _Our source was The New York Times._ " ~ AdS (fict)
| KerrAvon wrote:
| 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.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| 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-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]
| ck2 wrote:
| 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_...
|
| But gosh they screwed up by naming the one that would never go
| into space "Enterprise"
| jedberg wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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!
| codezero wrote:
| 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-year...
| consumer451 wrote:
| 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.
| dylan604 wrote:
| one of my favorite shuttle images was the one with the iPod on
| the dash while in orbit.
|
| https://news.softpedia.com/news/iPod-in-Space-81065.shtml
| vondur wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| zerocrates wrote:
| Stuff that goes inside the shuttle (as I assume a satellite
| in this case does) I don't know that I'd "count" in that
| sense. Like, obviously the humans riding inside various craft
| were routinely launched, landed and relaunched under that
| same kind of definition.
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