🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1989Apr2.040541.28890@utzoo.uucp> henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes:
>In article <7806@pyr.gatech.EDU> ccoprmd@pyr.UUCP (Matthew T. DeLuca) writes:
>>Besides, I doubt that self-respecting aliens
>>would have as their sole criterion of civilization the number of cheap 
>>chemical rockets that could be sent up.  Quality versus quantity, I'd choose
>>quality every time.
>
>Yup, clearly the people who can fly an entirely unmanned shuttle mission
>with a crosswind landing and a launch in freezing weather, perfectly,
>the first time, are ahead on quality.  Same conclusion -- they'll go to
>Baikonur.
>
An unmanned shuttle landing...does this impress you, Henry?  I'm not         
particularly impressed.  Sure, it's a neat trick, but we (and the Russians)
have had microwave landing systems for aircraft for years, and adapting it to
a shuttle is no big deal.  The U.S. is fully capable of the same thing, but
why bother?  There's absolutely no use for an unmanned shuttle mission that
I can think of.  Incidentally, the U.S. shuttle is fully capable of landing 
automatically; all the pilot has to do is lower the wheels and step on the
brakes.  As for the launch, the Russian shuttle did not go up the first time,
nor the second, as far as I know.  And like it's American counterpart, it
was delayed numerous times throughout development, with both technical 
problems and political ones.  And it's not particularly superior in technology,
either.  I heard recently that the tiles are expectd to have to be replaced
every ten flights or so.  Like I said, I'm really not overly impressed.
I will grant, however, that the Soviets have no real problem with cold weather
launches.  Working from Florida, we never had to develop this capability, and
we paid dearly for it.  I just hope we learned a lesson.

>I think our hypothetical visitors would be more impressed by a pair of
>small, shabby space stations in orbit than by a pair of gleaming marvels
>of technology, one strewn in pieces over Australia and the other still on
>paper after nearly a decade of studies.
>
You might be right, here.  Of course, in five or six years, assuming no
development problems and no erosion of political will, the tables will be
turned.  Let's just hope the aliens wait that long.  :-)

>Or by a pair of ambitious, failed Mars probes against a complete absence
>of planetary missions for a decade.

Sure, they'll be impressed here.  Not only were these two probes failures,   
every other probe they've sent there has failed.  I'll put our planetary
exploration program up against the Russians any day.  Who has sent the only
successful probes to Mars?  Who has sent the only probes *period* to 
Mercury?  Jupiter?  Saturn?  Uranus?  And coming this August, Neptune?  For
that matter, who has sent the only manned missions to another celestial
body?  I will admit, we should have followed up the Apollo missions, but
let's face it, the Soviet planetary science program is nothing compared to
the U.S.  Assuming nothing goes wrong (fingers crossed), we'll be sending
new probes out to Venus, to get the highest quality maps of that planet ever,
and a followup mission to Jupiter, which will not only do extensive studies of
the moons, but will make the first penetration of the atmosphere of a gaseous
planet.  And these aren't just paper dreams; Magellan is ready to go, within
the month, and Galileo is just waiting for the launch window.

>
>Or by people who can build launchers that can go up on schedule twice a
>week, year after year, against people who can't seem to launch anything
>on schedule.
>
There's a difference between sending unmanned missions up on schedule and 
sending manned missions up.  There's a lot more to the manned mission.  We
launch our unmanned missions on schedule just fine.  The only delays here are
those caused by not enough boosters, which is the direct result of poor
policy-making with regard to expendable boosters in the Seventies.  And our
manned flights don't run that far behind, either.  

>Or, in general, by results in cheap black ink on newsprint, against
>glossy airbrushed four-color brochures full of broken promises.
>-- 
>Welcome to Mars!  Your         |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
>passport and visa, comrade?    | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
How are they going to ask for passports and visas?  They can't even get the 
customs station to work properly!



-- 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------Matthew DeLuca                      :
Georgia Institute of Technology     : Remember, wherever you go, there you are.
ARPA: ccoprmd@pyr.gatech.edu        :