Conference 7.286::space

I saw it a few years back, and while it certainly is far from the peak
of the cinematic art, I did find it entertaining.

    Its a fairly awful movie. If I recall, the probe 'Challenger II'
    looked a lot like Skylab.
    
    Later in the movie, a lot of people get doused in mud. Due to some
    special effects screw up while filming, the main actors really did
    get swamped in mud. Deservedly so.
    
    gary

        I saw it a month or two back, I had to laugh when the hero
        - Sean Connery walks up to their computer wiz, and asks what
        they are using. "360's" was the reply. But then it was a
        reasonably dated movie...
        

    Hi Bruce! I guess I was lucky. I was out in Bedford for a class
    and missed it. I'm sure they will run it again (and again and again
    ...). I hope I'm as lucky next time.

    	Although METEOR has a potentially possible (though unoriginal)
    theme - using nuclear weapons to stop Earth-targeted asteroids -
    it's major film flaw comes from being made by none other than the
    "king" of disasterous disaster movies, IRWIN ALLEN.  Once one realizes
    that this is the same man who brought the world Lost in Space, Voyage
    to the Bottom of the Sea, The Towering Inferno, The Poseidon Adventure,
    and When Time Ran Out, one can see why METEOR was so technically
    inaccurate.
    	Ironically though, it was probably this movie more than anything
    else which made the general public aware of the possibility of
    destruction by asteroid collision (the theory about the dinosaurs'
    demise must run at least a close second).
    
    	What METEOR did NOT divulge into - and which I think would make
    a good note topic by itself - is the possibility of relatively small
    asteroids being used as WEAPONS against targets on Earth!  
    	In the near future the human race will be mining asteroids;
    some will be small enough to manuever with attached rocket engines
    to get closer to earth to make mining easier.  Who is to say - since
    I do not believe human nature and politics will be radically changing
    all that soon - that some power couldn't direct an asteroid to hit
    an enemy power?  Large enough asteroids build up enough potential
    energy from their combined mass and speed to explode with more power
    than many nuclear bombs!  (Many lunar craters hundreds of kilometers
    across were created by hurtling asteroids only a few kilometers
    wide.)  They could be "disguised" as asteroids for mining purposes
    in Earth orbit until suddenly fired down on their targets; it would
    be too close for the target power to respond with any defenses quick
    enough, and the result would be widespread destruction without the
    use of any costly nuclear devices.  It might even be possible to
    make the asteroid collision look like an accident of nature, thus
    the enemy escaping blame.
    	What are some thoughts on this?
    
    	Larry
    

>    	What METEOR did NOT divulge into - and which I think would make
>    a good note topic by itself - is the possibility of relatively small
>    asteroids being used as WEAPONS against targets on Earth!

    This has been explored in several science fiction books where colonies
    on the moon simply hurl large objects at the Earth from a catpult.

>    They could be "disguised" as asteroids for mining purposes
>    in Earth orbit until suddenly fired down on their targets; it would
>    be too close for the target power to respond with any defenses quick
>    enough, and the result would be widespread destruction without the
>    use of any costly nuclear devices.

    I don't think that you could *suddenly* fire an asteroid down upon a
    target.  It takes an appreciable amount of time to accelerate a mass of
    that size to enter the atmosphere.  It would also take a good amount of
    planning to get a non-precision "spacecraft" to hit the correct target.
    I assume that if any asteroids were orbiting or heading towards Earth,
    they would be closely monitored and blasted if they looked like they
    were going to enter the atmosphere.

    ---Phil

    re:.6 re:.5
    
    For one such novel, try MILLENIUM by Ben Bova (n.b. *not* the book
    of the same title by John Varley --- though that is still recommended).
    
    --- jerry

        or "The Moon is a harsh Mistress" by R.A. Heinlein.
        
        q

    	I know this is a very late reply but in response to the phrase
    of "costly nuclear weapons" I just have to say that nuclear weapons
    are not costly, in fact they are (in relative terms) very cheap.
     It's the delivery and guidance systems which comprise of most of
    the cost and in this hypothesized situation these aspects  would
    still be present (too the delivery systems would have to be very
    large due to the increased bulk, many thousands of times larger
    than would be needed to deliver a 50 Megaton weapon (which I don't
    think has ever been built)). 
    
    Rich
    

Yes, "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress", by Heinlein.  Great book!

Quite amusing.

Near the beginning, someone is erroneously given a HUGE paycheck.
What's definite is that the computer is involved.

But it turns out NOT to be fraud.  And it turns out NOT to be a
"mistake".  It turns out to be...

Read it, you'll like it.

/Eric

    re: .9--I believe the USSR tested a 100 megaton nuclear bomb in
    the late 50s or early 60s.  Sorry I don't have more details--I
    only remember a newspaper story showing how several of our smaller
    bombs could do a more effective job on a city than one big Soviet
    bomb.
        John Sauter

    The Soviet Proton (D class) booster is thought to have been derived
    from a never deployed 'city buster' ICBM designed to carry 50-100
    megatons on a single warhead.
    
    gary

    re .9 re .11
    
    There is a big hole in Novi Zemlya from a 100 megaton blast prior
    to the ban on above ground testing. How typically Russian. 
    
    Have you every heard the Soviet Army chorus sing "Single Little
    Nightengal"?  If you listen to the record you can hear the *entire*
    Soviet Army sing to that poor little bird.
    

Article: 36871
From: [email protected] (Henry Spencer)
Newsgroups: sci.space
Subject: Re: Launch Vehicle Information
Date: 28 Oct 91 18:06:28 GMT
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
 
In article <[email protected]>
[email protected] (Wales Larrison) writes: 

>>>   And if you haven't done so, check out the Project "ICARUS" 
>>>project report from MIT Space System Lab circa about 1980 ...
>>    Mid-60s, actually (64 comes to mind, not certain)...
> 
>Hmm... must have been a different study.  I remember the MIT report 
>being the product of a Space Systems Design class - a term project 
>by the class.  But, doing some more thinking about it, it must have 
>been the mid-1970's, since I picked it up when I was either working 
>at JPL or in grad school in the 1975-1979 period.  The copy I had 
>had been published as a book, as it was the "companion" volume for 
>that terrible movie "Comet" ...
 
Oh boy, a chance to correct Wales!  (Doesn't happen very often...)
 
The study was done in the mid-60s, when Project Apollo was still ramping
up.  For example, it budgeted three Saturn Vs for flight testing (when
in fact only two were used) and specified that Complex 39 construction
be continued to include pad 39C (which in fact was never built).
 
It was republished some years ago as publicity for "Meteor", first put 
in theaters in 1979.
 
>While the performace calcs looked good and the trajectories 
>reasonable, the MIT class project used a Saturn 5 with a large cryo 
>upper stage to deliver a very large multi-megatons nuclear device as 
>an interceptor.  By the time the study was done, all of the Saturn-
>5's had been turned into Museum displays - they assumed they could 
>be flight readied in a matter of weeks, if I remember correctly.   
 
They used the Saturn V plus Apollo Service Module, with a bomb carrier
and instrument section above the SM.  When the study was done, the
Saturns were *not* museum pieces.  In fact, they assumed switching KSC
construction and Saturn V development immediately to round-the-clock
three-shift work to have any chance of being ready.  They estimated
impact on the Apollo program as a two-year delay in the first landing.
 
The basic plan was to use six Saturn Vs (out of nine assumed to be
available in time) as bomb carriers, each with a single 100MT bomb
(this being the largest that could confidently be built based on
existing experience, there being no time for a lengthy development
program).  Something smaller, Atlas-Centaur I think, would be used
to launch monitoring probes to observe the detonations and feed the
results into subsequent targeting.  The Apollo SM would be modified
for long-duration missions to carry the bombs.  The first would spend
several weeks in space to reach Icarus, although the last would be
detonated only hours before impact.  The biggest uncertainty in the
results was whether Icarus would hold together or break up.  They
calculated a near certainty of deflecting it safely if it stayed in
one piece, and a high probability of being able to deflect at least
the biggest fragments if not.
-- 
In operating-system code, log(quality)  | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
times quantity is a constant.           |  [email protected]  utzoo!henry