when that happened the cold war was more or less over at least in terms of becoming hot.” mused RGO

You’d get a strong argument against that POV from the citizens of East Berlin, Poland, Prague circa 1968 and everybody lost aboard KAL-007. THe jig was up when th wall came down in ’89.

I’ll differ with you in the details.

First off, the first space age died when Mariner 4 definitively showed that Mars was not like the Earth. If you look at the activity levels, that was the specific point.

The second factor was that launch costs in the real world were much higher than space “enthusiasts” had hoped for in their fantasies, and the necesary payloads were larger.

In fact, at the start what von Braun had thought necessary was a re-usable 65 ton or so launcher. Roughly a Falcon Heavy or SLS baseline with re-usable LRBs.

From my point of view, which is currently not widely understood little less accepted, the key result of the first space race was the realization that impacts had occurred. I suppose for the time being I’ll just have to keep prattling on about the current paradigm shift until it becomes obvious to more people.

Finally, during the 1950’s and 1960’s the costs of space were seen as low enough to be done by one nation, under the existing international relationships. But even with lower launch costs any major projects in space are still so expensive as to require international co-operation.

The issue worked in the ’58 elections as well.

As far as the “missile gap” goes, it existed when Gardner broke with Eisenhower.

While I suppose this is ancient history nowadays in 2013, it is curious to see it being currently mistated rather constantly by those who don’t know it.

Where the hell is the Old Geezer’s Smile emoticon?

Thanks, and Thank G*d there is at least one other person here who knows their stuff.

There was a person working on a biography of Trevor Gardner, but now I do not know how that is going, or even if he, that historian, is still with us.

“In this argument, my motivation is to complete the survey of hazardous NEOs before wasting limited resources on objects that pose no threat to humanity.”

Then you agree that the search for Earth like planets around other stars has a much lower observation priority than the search for NEOs, and you agree that the search for interesting but distant nuclear phenomenon has a much lower observational priority than the search for NEOs. And so I can look forward to your future support in changing NASA’s observation priorities.

“Bully for your non-sequitor. Go persecute Griffin to your heart’s content. It has nothing to do with this discussion.”

Actually, this discussion is just a continuace of trying to rationalize evasion of responsibility, so it follows on Griffin’s actions very well. As far as persecution goes, I think that the NASA Administrator very deliberately ignoring the instructions of the Congress sets bad precedent, and would like to know who advised Griffin to do it. I would like to be certain that they are gone as well.

I had very high hopes for Griffin, and I am very sad at what occurred.

No, they won’t. A C-type, sub-7m, non-hazardous NEO is orders of magnitude fainter than the supra-140m, hazardous NEOs currently being search for.

“They are not mutually esclusive as you pretend.”

To a large degree they are. An object that is orders of magnitude fainter requires orders of magnitude more observing time to detect. Many more orders of magnitude of observing time if you’re going to precisely characterize them for a mission. That means your limited observational resources are spending way more time looking at a few, smaller pieces in the sky for faint, non-hazardous objects, instead of looking all over the sky for bright, hazardous objects.

You may still accidentally catch the occasional, bright, hazardous object while doing a narrow, deep search for and characterization of faint, non-hazardous objects. But your detection rate for the bright, hazardous objects will go way down because your observational resources are no longer being applied in the broad searches that are most efficient for finding bright, hazardous objects.

I don’t know how to make it any simpler for you. If you can’t understand that, then you need to read a book or take a course on basic observational astronomy. Or just stop commenting on topics outside your comprehension.

“And why you continue to try to insist that they are goes to your own motivations.”

In this argument, my motivation is to complete the survey of hazardous NEOs before wasting limited resources on objects that pose no threat to humanity. I’d rather we not get smacked by a hazardous object that we didn’t know about because our limited observational resoures were off staring at non-hazardous objects.

Again, you don’t police a tough neighborhood by investigating 6-year olds. From a planetary defense viewpoint, NASA’s proposal is a dumb, dumb, dumb strategy.

“And please tell us all again how many years ago was it that you worked on that cosmological telescope, DBN?”

I told you in an earlier thread. Put on your big boy pants and go find it. Grow up.

“As far as my thoughts on the priorities of the public goes, they have been expressed by legislation. I am very interested in exactly why Griffin acted in contempt of that legislation, and intentionally defied it.”

Bully for your non-sequitor. Go persecute Griffin to your heart’s content. It has nothing to do with this discussion.

What the???!! Are they now saying they may not deliver?
Don’t tell me they actually started this thing without having a clue that it was doable and that they’re only just now, deciding to develop some sort of plan to deal with their problems. Ye gods, and this is NASA and it’s a project that apparently reports directly to the NASA Administrator.
There was a lot of ‘luck’ involved in the Curiosity venture. Lots of stuff that wasn’t fully understood and that could have gone wrong. However JWST isn’t such a beast. They should be able to test out virtually everything and know that it’s going to work in space before launch. Alternatively the systems that they’ve built should be sufficiently robust to be able to manage a number of shall we say ‘breakages’ and still perform.
But it doesn’t look like it. Is this another Cx? Sure starting to look like it.
Just like MPCV is as well. And the odds given these programs, aren’t looking too good for SLS.
What does this say about NASA? Moving closer to irrelevance and oblivion or just an agency that everyone understands simply employees people but that no one expects anything of substance from? Lots of powerpoint and plans!
I for one, lack the vocab’ to sufficiently express my disappointment.

THe hero of Stalingrad was out in I think October of 64 and L. Brezhnev …

when that happened the cold war was more or less over at least in terms of becoming hot. I have always wondered if a leader in the US who was more secure then say Johnson could have made some “moves”

Ah well never know. Its about like wondering how the US is under President Gore…RGO

Given the Soviet propaganda successes on that front in that era, which continued well into the mid ’60s, it’s likely a second JFK administraton would have kept pace with Soviet space efforts simply as a matter of the administration’s Cold War policy. JFK’s brief trial balloon about ‘joint’ space efforts was quickly shot down by NK– within a day or so if memory serves. Their firsts were reaping high propaganda returns at the time as U.S. efforts played catch-up. Post the Leonov/White walks, it was Gemini that really began to even the ‘race’== a race the Soviets never really publcly acknowledged and was all but lost with the success of Apollo 8 in ’68. A ‘race’ only fully hard-evidenced- to the public anyway- after the USSR dissolved.