Author Archives: Gray Rinehart

Two Obscure Space Anniversaries

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Today we offer two space anniversaries that are a bit more obscure than usual:

Fifty years ago today — April 13, 1959 — the Discoverer-2 satellite launched from Vandenberg AFB on a Thor Agena rocket. Discoverer was the cover name for the CORONA photoreconnaissance program. Here’s a fascinating page about CORONA on the National Reconnaissance Office web site.

And thirty-five years ago today — April 13, 1974 — Westar-1, the first domestic communication satellite, launched from Cape Canaveral on a Delta rocket.

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My RavenCon Schedule

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Two weeks from today I’ll trek up to Richmond, VA, for RavenCon. The con chairman, Michael Pederson, asked me to come as a guest after we were on a panel together at ConCarolinas last year. How could I turn down his gracious invitation?

Of course, he is making me work while I’m there. Here’s my panel schedule, as I know it now:

  • Artificial Intelligence (moderator), Friday, 3:00 p.m., Cardinal Room
  • Blogging for Writers, Saturday, 1:00 p.m., Cardinal Room
  • Military SF/SF in Military (moderator), Saturday, 6:00 p.m., Dogwood Room
  • Alternative Fuels, Sunday, 1:00 p.m., Rappahanock Room

In addition, I’ll do a reading of Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Imp of the Perverse” on Saturday at 8:00 p.m. in the Rappahanock Room.

I look forward to it — it should be a good time.

(Meanwhile, if anyone has any suggested questions for me to ask as moderator on those two panels, send them my way.)

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Space History: Space Radar on the Shuttle

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Fifteen years ago today — April 9, 1994 — the Space Shuttle Endeavour launched from Kennedy Space Center on mission STS-59. Astronauts Sidney M. Gutierrez, Kevin P. Chilton,* Linda M. Godwin, Jerome “Jay” Apt, Michael R. Clifford, and Thomas D. Jones operated the Space Radar Laboratory (SRL-1) on this mission.

You would think, 15 years after it was demonstrated on a shuttle flight, that the U.S. would have a more robust space-based radar capability. Alas, no: when I was on active duty, serving on the Air Staff, the Air Force was still advocating for that program. (Here’s a 2005 Space Review article about it.) I doubt there will be any room for it in the Pentagon budget any time soon.

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*Now a USAF General. He commanded AF Space Command and is the current Commander of US Strategic Command.

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Challenger Launch, 25 Years Ago

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Twenty-five years ago today — April 6, 1984 — the Space Shuttle Challenger launched from the Kennedy Space Center on mission STS-41C. , 8:58 a.m., EST, KSC. Astronauts Robert L. Crippen, Francis R. Scobee, Terry J. Hart, George D. Nelson, and James Van Hoften launched the Long Duration Exposure Facility (LDEF)-1 launched and performed the first in-orbit spacecraft repair on the Solar Max satellite.


(NASA image of STS-41C launch.)

[BREAK, BREAK]

The past few days, I’ve seen a lot of space-related news stories — the North Korean launch failure, the possibility that Congress might start letting U.S. companies sell militarily critical space technology, etc. — so I posted some of them in the Space Warfare Forum for anyone who might be interested.

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50 Years Ago: The Dawn of Project Mercury

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Project Mercury was announced in 1958, but 50 years ago this month the astronauts were selected and presented to the public. I found two different selection dates — April 1st, according to this NASA page about the 40th anniversary, and April 2nd, according to this NASA list of anniversaries.*


(NASA publicity photo of the Mercury Seven)

All sources agree that the “Mercury Seven” astronauts were announced at a NASA press conference on April 9, 1959. They were Scott Carpenter, L. Gordon Cooper, Jr., John H. Glenn, Jr., Virgil I. “Gus” Grissom, Walter M. Schirra, Jr., Alan B. Shepard, Jr., and Donald K. “Deke” Slayton.

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*From which I get the space anniversaries I want to highlight here on the blog.

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Catching Up From a Busy Weekend, and a Near-Disaster Revealed

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I missed two space anniversaries this weekend, because I spent most of the time finishing a short story and most of the rest of the time either at church or preparing for the worship services. (Excuses, excuses.)

First, the space anniversaries I missed:

– Ten years ago Saturday — March 28, 1999 — Sea Launch launched their “DemoSat,” essentially a ballast-filled “dummy” spacecraft, from the Odyssey launch platform, a converted North Sea oil drilling platform. I had the pleasure of sailing on the Odyssey three years later for the launch of the Galaxy III-C spacecraft.

– Thirty-five years ago yesterday — March 29, 1974 — Mariner 10 made the first flyby of Mercury.

As for the near-disaster, Spaceflight Now ran a CBS News story Friday in which Robert “Hoot” Gibson recalled details of the damage sustained by the shuttle Atlantis on mission STS-27, which launched on December 2, 1988. The shuttle received more damage than on any other mission, and the crew worried that they might not survive re-entry. It’s a frightening story of miscommunication: the classified military mission was conducted under a communications blackout, so when the crew sent video of the damaged areas the encryption degraded the images so much that NASA engineers didn’t believe there was a real problem.

I checked into the mission a little more, and when I saw the mission patch this story became even more compelling to me. I didn’t realize it when I posted the space anniversary of the launch, but when Atlantis landed at Edwards AFB I was on duty as part of the AF Flight Test Center recovery team. We, of course, knew nothing about the damaged tiles or how close that shuttle came to not making it back at all.

(STS-27 mission patch. Click to enlarge.)

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Did General Cartwright Mean What He Said?

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According to Reuters, he said the words, but I wonder if he thought through what the words implied.

General James “Hoss” Cartwright, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was discussing the need to make “hard choices” with respect to funding different weapons systems when he said:

“Would you buy, in tough economic times, something that does one thing well or something that does a hundred things well?”

(The article is here.)

My first reaction to that statement was, to use the vernacular, DUH. Then I thought about it some more and wondered why the economic situation would matter to that decision: the statement seems to imply that the costs of the two “something”s are the same, so of course any fool would buy the one that does 99 more (extra?) things well.

But General Cartwright should know that no complex system that does 100 things well is going to cost the same as something that does only 1 thing well. In truly austere times, it may be necessary to forego most of those 99 extra features in order to afford the 1 feature that matters.

But I’m surprised that he would even imply that it’s possible to build a system that can do a large number (100 was surely hyperbole) of things as well as specialized systems. Trade-offs have to be made, and some amount of performance has to be sacrificed, to add bells and whistles — let alone to add real capabilities. It’s more likely that we would give up the 1 thing done very well to get 10 things done moderately well. That may end up being a real bargain, and he’s right that deciding on the 10 things out of the 100 possible things will involve difficult choices, but the real issue is whether the end result will be adequate to accomplish the mission.

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Today in Space History: Shuttle Delivery

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Thirty years ago today — March 24, 1979 — the Space Shuttle Columbia was transported to Kennedy Space Center, marking the first time a shuttle was delivered to the launch base. It was carried atop a modified Boeing 747 as shown in the attached image.*

(NASA Photo EC01-0055-1. Click to enlarge.)

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*The image is of a later flight, in March 2001.

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The World Owes Me Nothing

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Not too long ago I had a brief conversation on Twitter* about whether the world owes us anything. I say, the world owes me nothing.

I’ve heard people say, “I didn’t ask to be born,” and proceed to demand recompense from the world.

I say, the world didn’t ask for any of us to be born. We owe something for what we have, and get.

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*See http://twitter.com/GrayRinehart.

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