NASA Contractors Censoring Saturn V Info 583
cybrpnk2 writes "Get ready to surrender your data sheets, study reports and blueprints of the Saturn V to stay in compliance with ITAR. Armed guards are reportedly taking down and shredding old Saturn V posters from KSC office walls that show rough internal layouts of the vehicle, and a Web site that is a source for various digitized blueprints has been put on notice it may well be next. No word yet if the assignment of a Karl Rove protege high up in NASA has any connection."
Ballistis Missiles (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:This is why we're still in the Space Stone Age (Score:5, Interesting)
That doesn't stop me worshipping it
Re:So why mention it? (Score:1, Interesting)
how open should NASA be? (Score:2, Interesting)
Why do I get the feeling... (Score:0, Interesting)
The first thing most Slashdotters will have done is try to grab a copy of the Saturn V blueprints for themselves only to find that they're required to pay that site for them.
Has kdawson been manipulated yet again, or is it just another part of the
I don't know about this (Score:5, Interesting)
Idea: Nuttier than a fruitcake. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:WTF??? How do you take down? (Score:5, Interesting)
And no, I am not going to believe this "terrorists could use Saturn V to deliver nuclear warheads" crap. That argument is just plain ignorant.....
Re:This is why we're still in the Space Stone Age (Score:5, Interesting)
The more I read the ALSJ [nasa.gov] the more respect I have for the hardware. The Apollo CM would have survived both shuttle disasters. The Apollo 13 incident resulted in a more mature spacecraft with more redundancy. A similar incident on a shuttle would probably have killed the crew immediately. Building the system out of small modules meant that the architecture could accommodate expanded modules. Apollo serviced the lunar program, skylab and apollo-soyuz.
I just wish NASA had looked into an economical launcher to support it after the supply of Saturn Vs ran out.
No argument from me on that front.
Re:kdawson, stop (Score:3, Interesting)
But it takes kdawson a few seconds to deliberately choose THAT summary out of the hundreds that will get discarded today, including no doubt a dozen that refer to this exact article. The "Rove" comment is completely gratuitous, and you know it. It's an interesting topic, and raises questions about how wisely security people in a government agency are, or are not, interpreting policy regarding something that's going to be a bigger and bigger issue over the next few years (ICBMs made by, or used by people that talk loudly and frequently about which populations they want to see destroyed for religious reasons). Having a conversation about that, and how well or poorly the issue was repored, etc., doesn't require completely BS speculation about some Dr. Evil-esque secret poster-snatching scheme directed by the absurd comic-bookish portrayal of the left's favorite boogeyman. That's like saying that Clinton would approve the sale of missile technology to the Chinese military in exchange for back-door campaign cash. OK, maybe that's a bad example of total fiction.
True, and not well understood (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:WTF??? How do you take down? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Of course (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:This is why we're still in the Space Stone Age (Score:3, Interesting)
We need more of this attitude, not less! (Score:4, Interesting)
>to orbit designs, but they knew SSTO wouldn't be doable until the 90's, and the challange was to get there
>before 1970. It was a pure case of 'throw enough money at the problem and you'll get results'.
I recently toured the Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville. Here is how the progression of our space program appears from that visit:
V2: Badass
Mercury: More Badass
Gemini: More Badass
Apollo: More Badass
Space Shuttle: Cost Effective
We aren't good enough at space travel yet to be focusing on Cost Effective. We need more "Badass" in our space program.
Re:WTF??? How do you take down? (Score:3, Interesting)
Nor could we destroy one of their cities in just a few minutes... well, not unless we were able to fly some heavy bombers over and level it with conventional weapons. In any case, we had many enemies, and most of them were just as big and powerful as we were. Iran may not be weak, but they've got nothing on the full military might of the U.S. Ditto that for Korea, Syria, Pakistan, and the others. Besides, we still don't have enemies capable of leveling a city in a few minutes, because they're all just starting to maybe think about looking into developing their own ICBMs and even if they rip off old satellite plans it will take them years to synthesize the things all by themselves. We've got at least 5 years plus minutes with most of those guys, and that's assuming we don't spot their test prototypes and beat the shit out of them for even trying.
Realistically, the only ones who we have any right to be afraid of are the Chinese. They've not only got working nukes (which only one of the above are actually all that close to having, namely Pakistan), but are just about done putting the finishing touches on a delivery system. Definitely too late to hide anything so trivial as Saturn V blueprints from them. Plus they're big, really big, and they have plenty of industrial capital to stay armed and keep ammo in the boxes for a very long time. A handful of beards in caves just aren't that big a deal.
"Where do you see "cowardice" here?"
What else do you call attempting to hide behind a giant wall of technology from enemies who lack the ability to really harm you even without it? I'd say that fear of a fair fight is the very definition of cowardice.
Re:WTF??? How do you take down? (Score:2, Interesting)
Honest, I'm surprised you missed the news:
http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiapcf/10/08/korea
Because no matter how crazy you are you realize that if you actually ever use this type of technology in a strike, then you will quickly be hit with a US arsenal with > 550 land based ICBMs (most which are in europe/asia)
You grossly misunderestimate (hehe) our enemies. The Theocracy in charge of Iran is first a religious organization, and second a government. Perhaps you have been lucky enough to never meet anyone religious enough to actually want the apocolypse to happen. I have, and don't put the same trust in their ability to think rationally anymore. Moreover, Iran would be unlikely to attack us so long as their hatred is focused on Israel. Iran's president has said that he will wipe Israel from the map and that all it would take is one nuclear weapon.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/10/26/news/iran.
Do you share his anti-Semitism? Are you simply ignorant of Israel's tragic past? I would guess that you simply don't care or don't understand the situation.
So why do these countries want atomic weapons? Three reasons. First, to convey political power in your region, which is why Iran wants them. Second, to try to get communications lines established with the US. (North Korea) Third, to prevent any potential future invasion. (Iran, North Korea, India, and Pakistan)
Says who? You? Get real. Those may seem like great reasons to you. However you ignore a fourth reason: Iran denies Israel's right to exist. Let me repeat, the Iranian government would love to see every Jew in the middle east dead. Perhaps you missed this development:
http://www.iranholocaustdenial.com/ [iranholocaustdenial.com]
North Korea could have had normal communications with us 13 years ago when they signed and then promptly disregarded 1994 framework from nuclear disarmament. Contrary to your argument, North Korea's nuclear weapons program kept them from having normal relations. North Korea doesn't need nuclear weapons. Only its leaders do. Since 1994 millions of North Koreans have starved while its leaders squander a ridiculous 1/4 of GDP on military defense. Why? The Korean war ended long before the Vietnam war. Yet, today we do ample business with Vietnam and have almost zero relations with North Korea. Its them, not US.
Also, dont believe the argument of "they could give it to the terrorists and use a dirty bomb".
You're putting words in my mouth. I never said anything to that effect.
Name the last time Iran invaded any nation? Go ahead.. Ill wait...
You arrogance belies your ignorance. From my memory:
- Iran supported Hezbollah with money and weapons and people during the Israeli-Lebanon conflict less than a year ago.
- More recently, Iran crossed into international waters and attacked British troops, taking some hostage. That was in March.
- US forces have arrested a number of Iranian military units operating illegally within Iraq. Is sending troops into a country and invasion?
As I've said before, the Iranian president has declared his desire to wipe Israel off the map, and to bring an end to the Great White Satan (USA). We're talking about a regime that denies basic human rights to freedom of speech and freedom of religion. The support militant groups and sow violence. Their policies have decimated the Iranian economy, reduced the standard of living for all Iranians, and caused at least one war within recent history (Israel - Lebanon 2006).
Re:Protecting their IP? (Score:2, Interesting)
Although I think they should have gone with RP-1/LOX for the first stage... sure, hydrocarbons are less energetic, but you save a lot of tankage mass due to the higher density. In a perfect world we'd have a tripropellant motor that switches from LOX/RP-1 to LOX/LH and strap-on RP-1 tanks that can be jettisoned when empty which would possibly be a nice compromise.
Then again, designing a such an engine would likely result in tradeoffs such that neither fuel is burned very efficiently.
We WANT them to build ICBMs (Score:3, Interesting)
Furthermore we are talking about technology that is 40 years old now. Pretending that we can put that genie back in the bottle is exactly the sort of fantastic thinking that leads to terrible security.
Re:private sector (Score:5, Interesting)
That's what they said four years ago about the private sector in Iraq. And privatization turned out to be inferior there to socialism in every way, even as implemented by a buffoon like Saddam Hussein: Socialism 1, Privatization 0. That really opened my eyes to the intellectual bankruptcy of this decades-old canard, that the public sector needs dismantlement and the private sector deserves to be worshiped. They both share corruption as an Achilles heel.
Who the hell wants to watch Nike and Disney doing cross-marketing from a low Earth orbit anyway? Which they will have bought for pennies at a corrupt auction so they can launch billboards and crap into space? LEO has already been considered as a venue for obnoxious advertising, to the horror of astronomers- and once it becomes feasible, you can expect to see a lot of well-funded lobbying efforts to protect its feasibility for investment. I'd rather have our current system even if it occasionally launches drunks or psycho bitches into space.
Re:WTF??? How do you take down? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:WTF??? How do you take down? (Score:2, Interesting)
The CM and LM computers were designed by MIT and called AGC or Apollo Guidance Computer. They were entirely separate, save for a provision for the CM AGC to provide manually-generated take-over error signals to the FCC via the LVDA in the event of a LVDC failure in the third stage. The take-over was never used.
(I work on a project that is reverse-engineering Apollo as a GPLed software simulation, so I know way more than my fair share. My current project is reverse-engineering the Saturn LVDC, since the original source code was lost. I am watching this with great interest, since if this is true it means the last two years of my work will be a total waste.)
Re:private sector (Score:3, Interesting)
It's quite remarkable how indoctrinated Americans are against the public sector. I think it's a self-reinforcing cultural feature though; when you believe from the outset it won't and can't work, and that it must not be allowed to work, it won't. It takes quite a bit of civic pride and involvement, which takes a long time to cultivate. I'm from Europe and a lot of the American ideas about how things work (or don't work) here seem to be to be just ideologically motivated scaremongering that has very little to do with reality... fundamentally, a public-sector organization is just like any other organization, and thus is vulnerable to the same kind of problems. They are taken care of by transparency and good management, just like anywhere else.
Of course a public sector has other goals besides profit-maximization (which is in turn the private sector's role), but that's the whole point really, so it is not an inherent weakness. And to all of those who drool at the prospect of the imminent economic collapse of pinko Europe because it's all unaffordable (and would be even more so in the world's supposedly richest country, the USA)... well.. we're doing better than ever economically, the USD is toilet paper compared to the Euro, my stock market investments in Europe are doing remarkably well... and I have no intent to diversify to the US, as I'm just watching the slow-motion train wreck develop around your questionable debt-fueled bubble economy, which is going to SO sink your regular Joe and Jane Consumer who are then going to die agonizing deaths when they catch something nasty and can't afford to get treated for it. A brutal fate unimaginable here.
I really prefer a bit of Socialism in my society, thank you very much..