For Questions That Don't Merit Their Own Thread

[magnemoe]

57 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Hubble is based on the spysat, the shuttle was developed for.

As I understand no KH-11 war ever recovered? Should be plausible except that you land it sideways, but the shuttle was an gentle landing craft. 
Now Hubble is modified with lots of extra cameras and stuff who might get damages. 

[kerbiloid]

https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/15094/what-satellites-did-the-shuttle-retrieve-from-orbit

Looks like the 10 t LDEF was the heaviest thing ever returned.

[kerbiloid]

Just a magnetic fun.

Spoiler

 

 

[wumpus]

2 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Hubble is based on the spysat, the shuttle was developed for.

That appears to be an overstatement.  Any input from the spysat people was *extremely* limited (although NASA does have a spare keyhole lens/mirror).  I remember a letter in the WashingtonPost from an alleged NRO (or whoever was in charge of the spysats in the late 1980s) whining that APL (who built/ran Hubble) didn't listen to suggestions  that differential heating might be a problem.  Note, apparently anything more was far to secret to tell them, and APL was only interested in real data.  So Hubble had this issue when it transitioned from sunlight to "night" (no idea of the long term effects).

You can certainly say that the Shuttle payload bay was sized to fit the spysats (KH-11) and Hubble was designed to fit the payload bay, so there are a lot of similarities.  If they used the real (at that time extremely secret, but anyone who know the size of KH-11 and a little physics new what they were up to) secret tech from the spysats they wouldn't have needed most of what Hubble could do.

[DDE]

I believe the Shuttle was designed for the much, much older KH-6. They had several onboard espionage packages in the conceptual stage.

[DDE]

A bit off-topic, but which caption is the more unbelievable:

or the completely serious explanation that they're T-80BVMs of the 200th brigade, 14th Army Corps of the Russian Navy?

[kerbiloid]

What's wrong?
Read the upper text carefully. The tanks are "ChallengeD". Nobody says, it's  ChallengeR.

So, the T-80BVMs of (etc.) suddenly missed the La Manche tunnel, could happen to everyone.

 

P.S.

Still can't get, how did they photo Scotland from Canberra, isn't it in Australia?

Or was  the Canberra spyplane flying so low?

Edited September 19, 2021 by kerbiloid

[DDE]

3 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Or was  the Canberra spyplane flying so low?

References to a Canberra are mandatory for RAF Luton.

[SunlitZelkova]

10 hours ago, DDE said:

the completely serious explanation that they're T-80BVMs of the 200th brigade, 14th Army Corps of the Russian Navy?

I don't think this is automatically weird, it depends on what the actual word in Russian is.

For example, people love to make fun of China's navy being called the "People's Liberation Army Navy" but the main problem is the way it got translated in English, not the name itself.

The "军" in "中国人民解放军海军" (Chinese PLA Navy) does not mean "army" in the English sense (ground forces), it is probably better translated as "force" (like the "Force" in "Air Force"). So in actuality the "People's Liberation Army" is probably better translated as "People's Liberation Force", while the "People's Liberation Army Navy" is "actually" the "People's Liberation Force Navy (Sea Arm? It might "feel" better, this is what the Israeli Defence Forces do)", and is not weird at all.

It is purely a matter of translation by the way, as there are no synonyms to exchange to make it "unique" in the same way the US Army can have "medics" and the USMC can have "corpsman". There actually might be, but it would be clunky and strange. After all, are the only reason English speaking nation's air forces have "wings" and so on opposed to divisions and regiments are because they wanted to feel unique, as opposed to having any real tangible operational impact?

The same thing can be found in Japanese. "航空隊" (Kokutai) has been used by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service and is used by the modern day Fleet Air Force of the Japan Maritime Self-Defence Force. Yet, in English, the WWII Kokutai is a "Naval Air Regiment" while the modern day Kokutai is a "Patrol Wing".

So the translators just need to get their things in order, but I don't think the non-English speaking militaries of the world (most of them) are doing anything wrong.

That said, I'm not sure whether this applies in this specific Russian case.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

A bit of interest from Scott Manley about one of the coolest places to visit once. 

 

 

 

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

More light reading about stuff we don't often think about:  The Stowaways that Made the First Space Station Stink (msn.com)

 

[kerbiloid]

Mir wasn't the first space station.

***
Anyway

Spoiler

 

 

P.S.
Anybody still doubts that ISS should be killed with fire in several years?
Before it gets sapient.

Edited September 21, 2021 by kerbiloid

[magnemoe]

4 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Mir wasn't the first space station.

***
Anyway

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

P.S.
Anybody still doubts that ISS should be killed with fire in several years?
Before it gets sapient.

Its an very high probability ISS will be deorbited within 5-10 years who will kill it with fire  
NASA want to lease space on an commercial space station there the operators do hotel and maintenance services. They expect the replacement station to host other companies and probably tourists. 

Now its an possibility that IIS get preserved to make it an museum at an later time, this require starship or similar lift it up to an high storage orbit after its has been mothballed. 
This likely put it and the microbes into the Van Allen belts who increase the mutation rate of microbes a lot  


 

[wumpus]

58 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

Its an very high probability ISS will be deorbited within 5-10 years who will kill it with fire  
NASA want to lease space on an commercial space station there the operators do hotel and maintenance services. They expect the replacement station to host other companies and probably tourists. 

Now its an possibility that IIS get preserved to make it an museum at an later time, this require starship or similar lift it up to an high storage orbit after its has been mothballed. 
This likely put it and the microbes into the Van Allen belts who increase the mutation rate of microbes a lot  


 

While the microbes may be mutating quickly, I'd also expect the ISS to leak to vacuum within  a year or so without supplemental air.  Between the Van Allen belts and the vacuum, I doubt the "new improved" microbes will avoid extinction.  I also can't imagine anyone bothering to lift it to significant orbit, or maintain its orbit until such is a possibility.  Although it might make an excellent test/demonstration of any high Isp thruster (I think that there was a dropped plan to add VASIMR a few years ago.  Perhaps it would be easier to stick them on an uncrewed ISS).

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

11 minutes ago, wumpus said:

I doubt the "new improved" microbes will avoid extinction

I would never bet against life finding a way to survive. 

[kerbiloid]

What can we learn from this Mir video?

When somebody blames you on something being unwashed, not cleaned, old pizza box on the window, just say him:

"I'm collecting environmental samples".

[K^2]

On 9/19/2021 at 2:44 AM, SunlitZelkova said:

I don't think this is automatically weird, it depends on what the actual word in Russian is.

It's not really a translation issue. It's purely historical. The 200th Brigade of the 14th Army Corps of the Russian Navy is part of the Coastal Troops arm of the Navy. That arm of the Navy has been formed relatively recently from parts of coastal defense artillery, motorized brigades, and naval infantry (marines), etc. Some of these forces traditionally belonged to the Red Army, including some of the motorized brigades, and so they have retained their Army organization style. Hence, the 200th Brigade is still included in an Army Corps.

[mikegarrison]

On 9/20/2021 at 12:40 PM, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

A bit of interest from Scott Manley about one of the coolest places to visit once. 

 

 

 

I flew in a circle around that. In a 737. We were in the area doing a test, and the pilot decided he wanted to fly around the crater a few times at low altitude (VFR). So he did. We all went to the side of the airplane and looked out the windows.

This was before 9/11. ATC is less keen on letting airliners just fly around at low altitude in VFR these days.

[kerbiloid]

5 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

We all went to the side of the airplane and looked out the windows.

The crater is kinda a mascon, dangerous for the planes.
It attracts the passengers, making them to gather at one side, move the plane CoM, and cause a roll turn.

[mikegarrison]

3 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

The crater is kinda a mascon, dangerous for the planes.
It attracts the passengers, making them to gather at one side, move the plane CoM, and cause a roll turn.

Was a test flight. Not too many of us on plane. Typing bad because wrist broken. Splint.

[AHHans]

4 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

It attracts the passengers, making them to gather at one side, move the plane CoM, and cause a roll turn.

[Trying to pull the discussion back on-topic :]
Is this actually a significant problem for airplanes in flight? I imagine that at reasonably normal airspeed a plane has enough control authority from the ailerons to compensate for all passengers moving to one side or the other, is that true? I think that everyone moving front or aft might be a bigger problem, but even that is probably controllable at cruise speeds.

Take off and landing - or other low-speed situations - are different. And so are ships, but they usually only have control surfaces to control them in yaw but not pitch or roll.

1 hour ago, mikegarrison said:

Typing bad because wrist broken. Splint.

Oerks! Get well soon.

[kerbiloid]

34 minutes ago, AHHans said:

Is this actually a significant problem for airplanes in flight? I imagine that at reasonably normal airspeed a plane has enough control authority from the ailerons to compensate for all passengers moving to one side or the other, is that true? I think that everyone moving front or aft might be a bigger problem, but even that is probably controllable at cruise speeds.

A whole "weight balance group" in the airport exists to calculate the plane CoM before every flight and provides the crew with a special datasheet.

 

150 pax * 80 kg = 12 t.

B-737 = 70 t

Tu-154 = 60 t

[SunlitZelkova]

I have asked some historical questions recently, here are the last three for now-

1. Could the very early spaceplane projects (X-20 Dyna-Soar, Myasishchev VKA-23, presumably there are others too) have been successfully built? Most of them had a projected first flight in the late 60s. The Space Shuttle is often described as having been plagued by problems because of how "new" the technology used in it was, and due to inherent safety issues 2 out of 5 orbiters were lost. Could a spaceplane built in the 60s successfully flown? Or were the problems with the Space Shuttle mainly management related and due to that specific design (the two 60s spaceplanes I mentioned were both intended to launch on top of boosters, not slung on the side like the shuttle) and the 60s spaceplanes would actually have not faced any major obstacles despite the limitations of the era's technology?

2. Assuming there was a will to develop it, to what extent were the possibilities of crewed spaceflights occurring in the 1950s? I ask as I am writing an alternate history in which the crewed V-2 project proposed by Tikhonravov was approved and actually built, and I wonder whether humanity would be stuck with suborbital flights for an entire decade despite the Space Age kicking off in the 1951 or if things could have gone as far as Gemini/early Soyuz/Voskhod level flights with the technology of the time and the will.

3. Could a crewed lunar landing expedition have been undertaken with 1950s technology? A number of alternate history works have a victorious pedant Germany landing the first man on the Moon in 1959 rather than '69, even ones that take into account the backwards aspects of the Third Reich's R&D complex.

[K^2]

38 minutes ago, AHHans said:

Is this actually a significant problem for airplanes in flight? I imagine that at reasonably normal airspeed a plane has enough control authority from the ailerons to compensate for all passengers moving to one side or the other, is that true? I think that everyone moving front or aft might be a bigger problem, but even that is probably controllable at cruise speeds.

Even during takeoff and landing there is enough authority to counteract rolling torques due to bad CoM. What you don't want is to have a lot of that torque already there in case of an engine failure, where you need extra authority to keep the single operating engine from flipping the plane over. So it's still very important to make sure your CoM is inside the envelope, but yeah, if people move side-to-side during cruise, it won't matter at all.

Back-and-forward is a major problem even in cruise, not because you wouldn't have authority, but because you loose dynamic stability. In particular, CoM shifting too far back can easily be catastrophic. It creates a pitch-up tendency, which only grows if not immediately corrected. A plane with CoM too far aft once stalled cannot be recovered. I'm not aware of any passenger planes going down because of that, but cargo planes with unsecured cargo that shifted in flight absolutely have.

5 minutes ago, SunlitZelkova said:

Could the very early spaceplane projects (X-20 Dyna-Soar, Myasishchev VKA-23, presumably there are others too) have been successfully built?

Given the state of understanding of hypersonic flight at the time? Very doubtful.

6 minutes ago, SunlitZelkova said:

Assuming there was a will to develop it, to what extent were the possibilities of crewed spaceflights occurring in the 1950s?

I mean, how early in the 50s? Sputnik 3 in '58 was already over a ton. That's more than enough for a manned flight to orbit. You just don't have the tonnage for an engine that brings you back.  If we are talking about early 50s, there was tech for suborbital flights, but engines you needed for orbital flight were still in development. As much as V2 has demonstrated the potential, the fundamental design is not scalable to an orbital rocket. A lot of the components had to be completely reimagined, and that takes time. Getting from V2 in '45 to Sputnik in '57 was already very fast.

13 minutes ago, SunlitZelkova said:

Could a crewed lunar landing expedition have been undertaken with 1950s technology?

Too many things lined up in the 60s tech-wise. Better understanding of hypersonic flows, better understanding of rocket engines, better materials, computers. Can't forget computers. Even if US didn't drag their feet early on and beaten USSR to first man in orbit, and even if Apollo 1 didn't go up in flames and luck was entirely on US side, it'd still be just a few years sooner.

[SOXBLOX]

On 9/18/2021 at 4:45 PM, DDE said:

or the completely serious explanation that they're T-80BVMs of the 200th brigade, 14th Army Corps of the Russian Navy?

LOL.

How about the People's Liberation Army Navy Air Force? Or the People's Liberation Army Navy Marine Corps? 

Now, if their Marines start flying aircraft...