Posted on 07/17/2019 9:50:59 PM PDT by bitt
Also dump the Department of Energy.
Gotta admit I don’t know that one.
Back then I suppose we were hungry to find out true capabilities and if there were any weakness to exploit.
Cool link, looks like all the flotsam and jetsam from previous missions as well saw some rocket bodies etc
Only if someone cares enough to park one in geostationary orbit over your head. Otherwise no - even our government couldn’t keep Iraq or Afghanistan under constant observation with existing orbital resources, and we had a war on there.
Or alternately, put everything under overhead cover or underground and continue on.
Hacking only works if your hardware is networked or the hacker has physical access to each individual device. Nobody is going to be hacking the computerized M68 sights on rifles, for example. Or pretty much anything except the Blue Force Tracker on an Abrams tank, which is heavily computerized.
GPS based tech is simple and far more accurate than all but the most laborious hand calculations, which can take hours to figure out where you are. It works better for modern moving vehicles and better yet munitions. Have fun taking a star sight when you’re in terrain following mode in a supersonic bomber, for example.
I believe it did become SOP.
I think I read they used a “start cart” with these engines (don’t remember it being two of them, just one).
But this is all from my own recollection of things I read a long time ago.
Yes, 22,300 miles out is a loooooong way to be counting on cameras for ground detail.
We do have staring sensors out there. Shoot, I think there were even cameras (at least at one time).
But no way for ground detail. Ya need real-time close-up reconnaissance. Eventually it will be drone vs. drone.
The experimental ABL project was mounted in a 747. Its range through atmosphere against something like a solid fuel rocket was maybe 300km and even that was iffy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_YAL-1
The important parts: “The ABL did not burn through or disintegrate its target. It heated the missile skin, weakening it, causing failure from high speed flight stress.”
“The ABL was designed for use against tactical ballistic missiles (TBMs). These have a shorter range and fly more slowly than ICBMs. The MDA has recently suggested the ABL might be used against ICBMs during their boost phase.”
This means that these missiles would be attacked during their slowest flight phases. If using something like the ABL, it wouldn’t be terribly useful against AAMs if employed from orbit.
Gonna have to add a couple more Doppler “range gates” at the high end of the scale on the ‘ole Doppler Bistatic RADAR receiver ...
The original recon sats used actual film canisters that were ejected from the sat to re-enter. Needless to say we lost a lot of film - either to the re-entry itself or when the canister went off course and went god knows where.
Modern *commercial* satellites can’t quite read license plates from orbit but any object 10 inches or larger can be seen by them at current, FYI. One reason more than a few states (as in nations) don’t orbit their own reconnaissance satellites is because they can simply go rent time on commercial sats as needed at current and get better resolution than even top flight US military sats could provide 20 years ago.
re: “I’ve often wondered why so much of our navigation technology is GPS satellite based”
VOR, TACAN still work. There a few ADF/OMNI LW beacons left (one can also use an ADF receiver on an AM BC station too), and IN (Inertial Nav) has improved markedly (although not seen in many civilian applications) using solid state devices versus spinning mechanical gyros.
[is because they can simply go rent time on commercial sats as needed at current and get better resolution than even top flight US military sats could provide 20 years ago]
yep
Russia had hypersonic missiles long before Putin rose to power; they even sell them on the world arms market, so it’s not ‘a claim.’
Keep in mind that Russia has enormous titanium resources that the US does not have. Our first SR-71 was built with titanium covertly bought from Soviet sources, actually.
yep, looks like V-8’s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjdyQpEUYzI
(still pics with other audio overlaid)
That’s completely science fiction, alas. Something with a wing shape like that? Go look at how much space the SR-71 needed to launch - and then look at videos of the giant heat wake scorching the runway on launch. Even if you could catapault it off the deck, it’s going to set the carrier on fire.
Also look at the SIZE of the thing. You might fit one, maybe TWO SR-71 size craft in a Nimitz carrier, but nothing else and you’d have to make half the deck the elevator for it or deck park it.
This one shows a start up on the starboard engine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INEUCT1Z6gA
Ya can see the green TEB glow
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triethylborane#Applications
Mixed with 10–15% triethylaluminium, it was used before lift-off to ignite the F-1 engines on the Saturn V rocket.
Ooh, an F-1. Now that gets me excited...
Especially clustered on a Saturn V.
Thanks for the info
That’s not a plane, that’s an air - knife!
Mach 5? Guestimating for air temp and altitude, that would be 700 mph about. Thats 5 x 700 mph or 3500 mph!
We have to look a renaming these machines. They are beyond “planes.”
I would guess that much of the increased acceleration is due to the fact that as the launch progresses, the mass being accelerated is continuously being decelerated.
Once the missile has passed 18000’, it’s above about half of the atmosphere; at 36000’ the density of the air is roughly one-quarter of that at sea level.
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