szabo@sequent.com (06/18/91)
In article <140789@unix.cis.pitt.edu> suzanne@unix.cis.pitt.edu (Suzanne Traub-Metlay) writes: >Actually, the "space race" began even earlier -- Perhaps some folks missed the point. Prior to 1958, over 90% of the government money spent on rocketry was for automated weapons, particularly IRBM's and ICBM's. Less than 10% was spent on rockets for space exploration and their payloads (there was a low-key suborbital research program after 1949). This 10% included Explorer, Sputnik and other IGY satellites themselves; they were done on a shoestring as a result of efforts by scientists and space explorers much like those in today's AGU. Among these was one of the greatest space explorers of them all, James Van Allen, who discovered and studied the Van Allen radiation belts around the Earth and several other planets, among other unprecedented accomplishments. Due to Sputnik there was a large scare, resulting in a status race to see who could launch the largest payloads the farthest. The U.S. launched nearly 2 dozen automated satellites before launching John Glenn into orbit in 1961. At this point, the bulk of NASA funding was for these automated programs. As the decade progresed these used technology developed for Earth-orbit automated exploration to venture deeper into space, resulting in automated planetary exploration (eg Mariners, Veneras, Pioneers, etc.) Robots looked at Venus, Mars, and Mercury before astronauts circled the Moon, and at a fraction of the cost. The first self-sufficient space industry, satellite communications, was started at this time. The first company to build a GEO satcom, Hughes, did so over the objections of NASA planners, who were trying to force the industry to go towards a fleet of satellites in LEO. This would have eliminated the small-scale users with simple antennae that provide the bulk of the current market's revenues. Fortuneately, the people with their own money invested at Hughes and Comsat ignored the NASA planners and put the satellites in GEO. Through most of the 1960's, about the same (large) amount of money was spent on civilian space and military long-range missiles and space efforts, due to the IGY satellite scare. As the decade progressed, more money was funnelled into Apollo. This was the first "slaughter of the innocents", as the Mariner and Pioneer programs were cut back, and Grand Tour cancelled. As Gemini started flying and Apollo was reaching flight readiness the U.S. public started turning against what they perceived as wasteful astronaut programs. After 1965 NASA funding started to decrease. After the first Moon flights in 1968 and 1969 the funding decreased sharply. The largest manned program of them all proved to be a severe drag on NASA's efforts to obtain funding. Worse, as described the NASA leadership focused its efforts on Apollo by cancelling automated solar system exploration projects. Meanwhile, fortuneately, the DoD realized that space stations and astronauts were far less useful than automated spy satellites, and cancelled the Manned Orbiting Laboratory. NASA also learned the lesson for a while -- in between the Apollo and Shuttle funding peaks, the Viking and Voyager projects managed to get funded. Voyager was a cut-down Grand Tour. The NASA leadership officially told the Voyager crew not to go beyond Saturn. Luckily, they disobeyed. On a shoestring, the capability to flexibly teleoperate Voyager was designed in, so that the instructions for flying towards, and doing exploration at, Uranus and Neptune could be uploaded and executed at a later date. The results of these missions, especially Voyager, were dramatic and unprecedented. They received overwhelming support from the American public. U.S. prestige was enhanced. We remain the only country that has ever explored the gas giant planets and their moons. We remain the only country that has sampled Mars, photographed it in detailed color, and tracked its weather. The two Voyager spacecraft cost less than a tenth of one Apollo flight. But soon, the astronaut crowd was at it again. To save NASA, the convential wisdom went, it needed a "focus". Despite the funding drops in reaction to Apollo, it was decided that this would be yet another astronaut program. But they didn't stop at developing a new launcher; they needed to force a monopoly. The NASA leadership caused severe damage by cancelling or attempting to cancel the existing automated launchers. Part of the strategy was making gross underestimates of Shuttle costs. It went from a $100/lb. promise in 1970 to the $82,000/lb. it costs today. Central planning won out over free competition. As predicted by RAND and others, NASA also cannibilized its own space exploration efforts, cancelling a once-in-a-lifetime chance to explore Comet Hally, and violating international agreements by cancelling the U.S. half of the Solar-Polar mission. Galileo and Hubble, among others, ended up severely delayed, overpriced, and handicapped by being forced onto the Shuttle. All of this destruction to fund a centralized launch industry to be dominated by astronauts. Fortuneately, two events occured in the 1980's: the rise of the European automated commercial launch service, and the Challenger disaster. For astronaut groupies, Challenger only turned heroes into martyrs, and more money went into making the Shuttle "safe". But the commercial and defense sectors reacted quickly and decisively. The Reagan Administration revived the U.S. automated launcher business by divorcing it from NASA; putting it in the private sector. The DoD started developing the automated Titan IV to launch Shuttle-sized and smaller payloads without the overhead of astronauts. Despite problems with NASA, the DoD's automated infrastructure was quite effective during this period, motivating large increases to the DoD space budget, including the ambitious SDI program to develop automated missiles and spacecraft to shoot down ICBM's. This infrastructure proved to be useful in several campains from Panama to Desert Storm. Perhaps most importantly of all, it was decisive to the START treaties to lower the numbers of nuclear weapons. Real space infrastructure was helping humans on Earth, and during this period the DoD space budget grew from a fraction of NASA's to twice NASA's. The myth that astronaut programs are needed to motivate NASA funding, and the resulting destruction caused to space science, continues to this day. The latest example is the crippling of CRAF, Cassinni, and other projects to fund the latest astronaut toy, Space Station "Freedom". Only when the U.S. space program sheds its political misconceptions and starts focusing on productive programs will we be able to move beyond the current dismal state of the public civilian program. Until we wake up to the political and economic reality of the 1990's, space science and exploration will struggle near death. -- Nick Szabo szabo@sequent.com Embrace Change... Keep the Values... Hold Dear the Laughter... These views are my own, and do not represent any organization.
jmc@DEC-Lite.Stanford.EDU (John McCarthy) (06/18/91)
There is a gap in Nick Szabo's account of the early space age. The President's Scientific Advisory Committee, which recommended the Explorer project, successfully recommended that Explorer use hardware developed entirely separately from military hardware. The explicit hope was that this would serve as an example of separating civilian from military use of space and would influence the Soviet Union to do likewise. This had several consequences. 1. It didn't influence the Soviet Union in the slightest, since it was based on a considerable misconception of what the Soviet Union was like. 2. It required forbidding the von Braun group at Redstone from launching a satellite based on the Jupiter IRBM rocket. The von Braun group was ready much earlier. 3. It made the Explorer project one of minimal capability - 18 pounds - as compared to 200 and 2000 pounds for Sputniks I and II. I'm not sure the reason for this was entirely budgetary; I suspect PSAC felt that any space activity would be regarded as science fictionary and wanted to be modest to preserve respectability. 4. The shoestring Explorer project experience long delays and then failed spectacularly twice two months after Sputnik. 5. The von Braun group was given the go-ahead after Sputnik and successfully launched a satellite before the first successful Explorer launch. 6. Purity was abandoned completely after Sputnik. In my opinion, the main reason for the decline in space funding during and after Apollo was a major change in the American media triggered by the Vietnam War. The expectation of NASA and the Kennedy Administration was that success with Apollo would result in public enthusiasm for further manned exploration. Von Braun published an article about an expedition to Mars. I think they were right. However, by the time of the first moon landing, the mood of the media had completely changed. For example, Life Magazine chose as their main writer about the effort Norman Mailer. He referred to himself as Aquarius, sneered at the project and the astronauts and chose as the butt of his ridicule a Redstone engineering manager named George Mueller who had come from Germany with von Braun. Recall that George McGovern said that if he were elected President in 1972 and if Apollo were launched in late December before he took office, there wouldn't be any aircraft carriers to pick up the astronauts after he took office. I think it was a joke. Fortunately, Nixon was re-elected. -- John McCarthy "The people of the antipodes, gazing at the moon when for us it is only a small crescent, remark, 'What a splendid brightness! It's nearly full moon'" - Stendhal, Memoirs of an Egotist
dsmith@hplabs.hpl.hp.com (David Smith) (06/18/91)
In article <JMC.91Jun17200833@DEC-Lite.Stanford.EDU> jmc@cs.Stanford.EDU writes: >2. It required forbidding the von Braun group at Redstone from >launching a satellite based on the Jupiter IRBM rocket. >The von Braun group was ready much earlier. The von Braun group's launcher was based on the Redstone, despite the fact that they called it Jupiter-C. >3. It made the Explorer project one of minimal capability - >18 pounds - as compared to 200 and 2000 pounds for Sputniks >... >4. The shoestring Explorer project experience long delays >and then failed spectacularly twice two months after Sputnik. You're thinking of Vanguard, not Explorer. >5. The von Braun group was given the go-ahead after Sputnik >and successfully launched a satellite before the first >successful Explorer launch. Their satellite *was* the first Explorer launch. -- David R. Smith, HP Labs | "There are two kinds of truth. dsmith@hplabs.hp.com | There are real truths, (415) 857-7898 | and there are made-up truths." | - Marion Barry (USN&WR 12/31/90 p18)
szabo@sequent.com (06/18/91)
In article <JMC.91Jun17200833@DEC-Lite.Stanford.EDU> jmc@cs.Stanford.EDU writes: >...The expectation of NASA and the >Kennedy Administration was that success with Apollo would >result in public enthusiasm for further manned exploration. Which turned out to be completely wrong, as the funding precipitously declined during Apollo. Did NASA learn the lesson? Sadly, no. >However, by the time of the first moon landing, the mood of the media >had completely changed. The media is part of the U.S. body politic, right? If you can't influence the media, you are going to have a much tougher time convincing the citizens. >For example, Life Magazine chose as their >main writer about the effort Norman Mailer. Who put out some of the most poetic prose ever written about space. Most of the stuff the astronauts said ("Gee, Earth looks beautiful from up here!") is downright silly by comparison. You forgot to mention David Bowie, who wrote "Space Oddity" around this time: For here I am Floating in a tin can Far above the world Planet Earth is blue And there's nothing I can do Bowie captured the essence of the uselessness of launching pilots in tin cans. This remains the most popular song about the 60's era spaceflights, and it is especially popular with intellectuals and opinion makers. The media, a good chunk of the American public, scientists, space explorers, space defense and commercial space industry understood. The NASA leadership still doesn't get it. >Recall that George McGovern said that if he were elected President in >1972 and if Apollo were launched in late December before he took >office, there wouldn't be any aircraft carriers to pick up the >astronauts after he took office. I think it was a joke. There is no doubt that McGovern, and the more popular politicians such as Humphrey, Proxmire, Mondale, et. al. would have trashed NASA completely as a response to the percieved waste of Apollo. When you spend billions on a highly visible government project, you become a target. -- Nick Szabo szabo@sequent.com Embrace Change... Keep the Values... Hold Dear the Laughter... These views are my own, and do not represent any organization.
jmc@DEC-Lite.Stanford.EDU (John McCarthy) (06/19/91)
I indeed errored in writing Explorer instead of Vanguard. The error was especially bad, since Explore was the name of the von Braun project. -- John McCarthy "The people of the antipodes, gazing at the moon when for us it is only a small crescent, remark, 'What a splendid brightness! It's nearly full moon'" - Stendhal, Memoirs of an Egotist
dodson@convex.COM (Dave Dodson) (06/19/91)
In article <JMC.91Jun17200833@DEC-Lite.Stanford.EDU> jmc@cs.Stanford.EDU writes: There is a major error in this article. Explorer was von Braun's satellite, launched aboard a Jupiter C rocket, which had a Redstone first stage and two solid fueled upper stages. The solid fuel rocket in the Explorer's body was the 4th stage. Jupiter C was developed to test reentry vehicles for ICBMs. If you are old enough, you may recall a 1956 or 1957 speech to the nation by President Eisenhower stating that the reentry problem had been solved, and displaying a reentry vehicle that had been launched aboard a Jupiter C. What is called Explorer here really was the Vanguard project. >There is a gap in Nick Szabo's account of the early space age. >The President's Scientific Advisory Committee, which recommended >the Explorer project, successfully recommended that Explorer use ^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^ Vanguard Vanguard >hardware developed entirely separately from military hardware. >The explicit hope was that this would serve as an example of >separating civilian from military use of space and would influence >the Soviet Union to do likewise. This had several consequences. > >1. It didn't influence the Soviet Union in the slightest, since it was >based on a considerable misconception of what the Soviet Union was >like. > >2. It required forbidding the von Braun group at Redstone from >launching a satellite based on the Jupiter IRBM rocket. >The von Braun group was ready much earlier. As mentioned above, it was the Jupiter C rocket, not the Jupiter IRBM. The Jupiter IRBM was the first stage later for the Juno rocket, which was used in 1959 to launch several payloads past the moon. >3. It made the Explorer project one of minimal capability - ^^^^^^^^ Vanguard >18 pounds - as compared to 200 and 2000 pounds for Sputniks >I and II. I'm not sure the reason for this was entirely >budgetary; I suspect PSAC felt that any space activity would >be regarded as science fictionary and wanted to be modest to >preserve respectability. > >4. The shoestring Explorer project experience long delays ^^^^^^^^ Vanguard >and then failed spectacularly twice two months after Sputnik. > >5. The von Braun group was given the go-ahead after Sputnik >and successfully launched a satellite before the first >successful Explorer launch. ^^^^^^^^ Vanguard Von Braun launched Explorer 1 on January 31, 1958, if I remember correctly. This was about 90 days after he had been given approval to proceed with an attempt to launch an earth satellite, and included the time to design, build, and test the satellite, as well as assemble the Jupiter C and wait for good weather. The launch occurred less than 4 months after Sputnik 1. >6. Purity was abandoned completely after Sputnik. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Dave Dodson dodson@convex.COM Convex Computer Corporation Richardson, Texas (214) 497-4234
szabo@sequent.com (06/19/91)
In article <1991Jun18.171337.4347@convex.com> dodson@convex.COM (Dave Dodson) writes: >There is a major error in this article. Explorer was von Braun's satellite, Explorer was a JPL satellite with James Van Allen's instruments. It was launched on Von Braun's Jupiter C. At that time both Huntsville and JPL were part of the U.S. Army. Huntsville's mission was building IRBM's and ICBM's. There is a famous photo of Von Braun, Van Allen, and William Pickering of JPL holding aloft a model of the first U.S. satellite in triumph. The teamwork between explorers and rocket builders has gone downhill since then.... -- Nick Szabo szabo@sequent.com Embrace Change... Keep the Values... Hold Dear the Laughter... These views are my own, and do not represent any organization.