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The Space Shuttle

The space shuttles should be scrapped anywqay. At a cost of 500mill to 1 bill per laucnh they are vary far from the "cheap, reliable, reusable" spacecrafts they were intended as. The russian Soyuz and Proton spacecraft are much much cheaper and very reliable. Nasa should just purchase the right to produce these spacecraft and they could launch many more spacecraft for a cheaper prize. After all I want humanity to travel into space as much a possible and cost is a big drawback.
 
Good points. I remember Thiokol getting raked over the coals. This wasn't the equipment, primarily. It was decision-making. Essentially it was the engineers versus the suits who pay their salaries. Suits can be pressured politically because that is mostly what upper management is all about. Engineers see only the numbers.

Painfully, this is how disasters tend to happen.
 
ETA: Mackey, you appear to be pretty good at SCIENCE, but looking over your last dozen or more posts directed at something I have said, you really could improve the way you address me...You appear to have that proverbial CHIP on a part of your anatomy. I know you TOUGH GUYS like to sound TOUGH. But it never causes any harm being POLITE you know! Try it for a day and maybe you'll see what I mean.

In psychology this trick is know as "projection."
 
R Mackey:

I think you need to do more research yourself old chap! Especially about the fate of the forward crew comparments in the Columbia vs. the Challenger disasters. This is key to what I am saying in case you didn't appreciate that..... And could you please show me YOUR calculations of the trajectory ... then we would have something to discuss!
Shifting the burden of proof.

ETA: Mackey, you appear to be pretty good at SCIENCE, but looking over your last dozen or more posts directed at something I have said, you really could improve the way you address me...You appear to have that proverbial CHIP on a part of your anatomy. I know you TOUGH GUYS like to sound TOUGH. But it never causes any harm being POLITE you know! Try it for a day and maybe you'll see what I mean.
Argument to emotion.

For anyone who is actually interested, Dr. Dimotakis described tracking of the first large fragment from aerodynamic arguments in a Caltech Watson Lecture in 2005. This link will allow you to see for yourself (lecture is about 70 minutes long, the period about 10:00 to 45:00 covers Columbia). While this piece landed in extremely remote and rugged terrain in southeast Nevada and has not been recovered, the calculations match FAA radar tracking data in time and space to better than 1% accuracy. As explained in the talk, the calculations depend on initial position information from the official Shuttle track correlated with amateur videos and parallax against known astronomical targets. Had the Shuttle re-entered off its track as Dr. Greening claims, these measurements would not match. The talk also covers other important and necessary elements of an accurate calculation, including cross-track variation, that are not included in Dr. Greening's back-of-envelope estimate. It is hardly surprising that he arrived at an inaccurate result.

What is surprising is that, rather than examine his grossly simplified calculation for sources of error, he jumped straight to accusing NASA of publishing false results, ostensibly to cover up improper operation of the Shuttle. Responsible scientists do not act in this manner. Dr. Greening, shame on you.
 
Yes, I agree. RMackey used to be so respectful of you. I think you might have upset him when he suffered the humiliation of trying to debunk you with your own work lol

This is, of course, completely ridiculous.

You can only be referring to the infamous Debate? What Debate! thread, started by Dr. Greening. Your analysis makes no sense because, if it were true, I would have always been "upset." My refutation of Dr. Greening with his own work was in my very first post to him.

There is no law of physics or logic that prevents me from using someone's words against him. Fact knows no ownership. If I discover something, that does not mean that I can carelessly ignore this fact in my future labors. Colloquially this tactic in discourse is known as making one eat one's own words or by the aphorism "turnabout is fair play."

You will also notice that I was among the first to discern that Apollo20 was Dr. Greening. You will further notice that I did not retract my statements thereafter -- because my logic was correct. The simple fact is that Dr. Greening, at different times and in different forums, presented two logically inconsistent positions. I described this clearly in this post.

Finally, later in the thread, after it had settled down a bit, I described to Dr. Greening why his summary of NIST was wrong, and he even acknowledged this. Therefore, I'm not sure what "humiliation" I am supposed to have suffered.

The reason I have, indeed, lost a great deal of respect for Dr. Greening is clearly outlined in this post. Since then, he's continued to make completely unfounded and irresponsible claims, about everything from Columbia to evolution. He's continued to ignore or resort to ad hominem baiting when corrected. How can you expect me to retain respect under those circumstances?
 
I am not sure if Rev is old enough to remember that thread (Pssst. He is only 15).

TAM:)
 
Hoo boy. You're sure you want this?

Try this thread at BAUT: http://www.bautforum.com/conspiracy-theories/61215-columbia-zapped-re-entry.html

This combines the "electric universe" woo with "NASA won't admit the real cause of the Columbia destruction."

Or this thread: http://www.bautforum.com/conspiracy-theories/61206-haarp-space-shuttle-columbia.html
wherein HAARPWP is blamed for destroying Columbia.

And here's one about Challenger: http://www.bautforum.com/conspiracy-theories/61078-another-challenger-conspiracy.html

ETA: BAUT is equivalent to JREF for astronomy-related CTs (also try the Against the Mainstream forum - some, um, interesting theories there); ApolloHoax is the equivalent for Apollo hoax believers.

Not any more it isn't, now it's more like BAUTs CT section, plenty of good debunkers in there
 
I am not sure if Rev is old enough to remember that thread (Pssst. He is only 15).

TAM:)

Nobody cares about what the 15yo troofer kid has to say, given that, oh, um, he has nothing of any substance to say, but "Apollo" is way beyond old enough to remember that thread, and he avoids it like the plague.

ETA: Note to Stundie, that's "plague", not "plaque".
 
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I do recall some years ago that they were having the damndest time working out problems fabricating, and then later installing, the heat shield tiles.

But then (cue the woo) they had an overnight breakthrough! As if a solution was just handed to them!

If the shuttle had been back-engineered from alien technology, would we really have so many problems with it? Maybe we just outsourced it to the wrong aliens.
Probably anticapitalistic aliens: The Killer Bug in the Space Shuttle by Steven Brockerman.

For the CT:ers, human stupidity will never be a good enough explanation.
 
Not any more it isn't, now it's more like BAUTs CT section, plenty of good debunkers in there
Perhaps my post was ambiguous. In both cases, I meant that the sites are where very knowledgeable debunkers hang out (I have lurked for some time on both forums, and have accounts on both now).

Check out some threads by 'rocky' at ApolloHoax. It's more or less the equivalent of threads by one Mr. Kirkman here - although Kirkman, lately, seems to have taken things to new, um, levels. (I'll leave it to the reader to decide if that's up or down.)
 
Not any more it isn't, now it's more like BAUTs CT section, plenty of good debunkers in there

AH has always been populated with BAUT regulars (and BBAB before the BABB and UTF merged into BAUT.) While it has a CT forum that covers other conspiracies such as 9/11 and JFK, the main forum is Apollo.
 
I was bummed out about Challenger, bummed about the school teacher specifically. Even having been exposed to some pretty evil German teachers I still get depressed. Wistfully depressed. Hey, I can't just casually let my (very justified) hatred spill on to the Challenger crew. That's missing the target.

Oh, and I know people in every branch of the service basically and theoretically could ask someone about space shuttles if someone really needs to know something. It is within the realm of possibility at any rate. I'd have to arrange some kind of lunch or other social engagement and seed my conversation with a few well placed querries.

Remember though, I'd never reveal to the general public anything I deemed to be something that would make Uncle Sammy feel exposed or embarassed or something. I sort of did that once by talking too much about my rich engineer Uncle. It was just a casual kind of joke, but it got round to him and he was displeased. Thank God I really don't know too much about his particular job, making the comment (I said, "Hey, maybe he did some stealth technology") null and void as far as credibility goes. No empiracle verification, not even a casual querry. I usually just talk to him about science fiction and passing the potatoes when we visit his gated community house.

Oh, and it's possible that I could see the President some time. I'd probably ask him, "Hey, do you think I could go to space??" but could also ask him something else if anyone has a suggestion. At this point, however, most people just say, "Ask him: how do you sleep at night?" so I suppose this whole paragraph is moot. Null and void. Lol.

My father played the trumpet for George Bush Jr., you see. He was six feet from the president, and was of course carefull not to point his trumpet directly at him because it would quite probably aggitate the secret service. After all, a wide variety of projectile weapons could have been concealed within the trumpet, and it was never inspected.

I go with father on his jobs frequently. We mostly play in military bars or military retirement homes here in San Diego. It's fun. Those guys are cool and I love to drink beer with 'em.

Peace.
 

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