Re: Chinese manned space flight
On Thursday, October 16, 2003, at 07:41 pm, Dan Minette wrote: So, to get back to Damon's comments, let me ask a question. Why should a PR victory for a communist dictatorship elicit all that much interest? It proves they can do more than subcontract the manufacture of shoes and PC parts? -- William T Goodall Mail : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web : http://www.wtgab.demon.co.uk Blog : http://radio.weblogs.com/0111221/ I have always wished that my computer would be as easy to use as my telephone. My wish has come true. I no longer know how to use my telephone. - Bjarne Stroustrup ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Chinese manned space flight
Dan Minette wrote: Take Antarctica, for example. 90+ years after humans first reached the South Pole, it is still minimally inhabited. It is a vast continent, supporting life; but it still has very little commercial value. Further, there is no indication that 50 or 100 years from now, humans will have a massive South Pole presence. Maybe a better parallel was the explorarion of the _Seas_. 20,000 years after Man started sailing the seas, and there's still a ridiculously small number of people that live there. Alberto Monteiro ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Chinese manned space flight
The Chinese space agency just launched a man into Earth orbit. The agency should be congratulated! The taikonaut just returned Beijing safely. The entire process is very successful. This is good news, in that there may be more interesting crewed space exploration over the next generation. After the landing on the moon, the US and the Soviet Union stopped interesting crewed space exploration. In the upcoming decade, I am sure China will be quite active in the space exploration. The bad news is that the Chinese space agency choose the same expensive method for going into space as the US and the Soviet Union. To some extent, this makes sense as it is cheapest method. It is a follow up of the 1930s German experiments in `long range artillery without the gun barrel', and is known to work. Moreover, launching a human into space is difficult. Sadly, the cost of this method is always high. It is expensive to throw away a precision instrument, the rocket, after one use; and the energy densities of chemicals mean that rockets will carry small payloads. From a military point of view, cost does not matter, since the goal is to build a device that can destroy an enemy city. One rocket is cheaper than 1000 manned bombers, as were used for city raids in World War II. (In World War II, the US used flights of 500 to 1000 manned bombers to destroy 62 cities and two flights of one bomber each to destroy two more cities, using nuclear weapons.) However, for rockets, from a human travel point of view, the price has to come down. That means using air augmented rockets. With such rockets, oxygen is taken from the air for the first part of the trip. Because the rocket does not have to carry all its own oxidiser, the effective specific impulse doubles. (Nuclear thermal rockets built and tested on the ground in the US triple the effective specific impulse. However nuclear thermal rockets release fission products into their exhaust, and when launched, some will crash. So earth-to-orbit nuclear thermal rockets are a bad idea. In space nuclear rockets are a good idea; but the big issue is how to get from earth to orbit.) Unfortunately, air augmented rockets are more expensive and risky to develop than traditional rockets. No one has developed them, although the idea has been around since at least the 1950s. Also, I suspect that countries that have developed traditional long range rockets want to keep them expensive. The governments think of them mainly as a form of nuclear artillery, and don't want the equivalent of second-hand bombers being purchased by less rich foreign nations. If rocket flights were cheap, many rockets would be built. Eventually, they would be sold. There is no difference between a civilian freight and passenger carrying rocket and a military one. In both situations, the purpose is to carry mass into orbit. The mass could be civilian passengers or a re-entry vehicle with a warhead. At the current stage, I think the cost is not a big concern for space exploration, that will only become a factor to consider when we try to commercialize the space resource. Safe is the first priority to consider for the project. Anyhow, my hope is that the Chinese launch will lead to more interesting exploration over the next generation. I am sure it will be. Maybe free software can be applied in the future by the Taikonaut. Rgds, H. -- -* Hong Feng| Publisher, Free Software Magazine| Chairman, Chinese TeX User Group | [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.rons.net.cn/hongfeng.html | -* ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Chinese manned space flight
--- Russell Chapman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Robert J. Chassell wrote: I had no idea that the US used those sorts of numbers in their raids - was this only after Okinawa was taken? Most of the other airfields used in the island hopping campaign were barely able to support a squadron of B-17s or B-29s. The supply of bombs and fuel to the airfield(s) for each raid must have been an enormous undertaking. Funny how one stray bomb making an Iraqi orphan is a huge drama throughout the Western world, and yet less than 60 years ago we were carpet bombing entire cities into the ground with unguided iron bombs. Now we have to make sure the night watchman doesn't get hurt when we take out a specific room in an enemy building... Cheers Russell C. In the European theatre the 8th Air Force launched its first 1000+ bomber raid in, I believe, late 1942. After that they were fairly routine in Europe and, I would assume, in Japan as well. = Gautam Mukunda [EMAIL PROTECTED] Freedom is not free http://www.mukunda.blogspot.com __ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search http://shopping.yahoo.com ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Chinese manned space flight
In the European theatre the 8th Air Force launched its first 1000+ bomber raid in, I believe, late 1942. After that they were fairly routine in Europe and, I would assume, in Japan as well. I can't find my copy of Len Deighton's Bomber at the moment, or my other WWII books, so I can't look it up. I do not think such massive bomber raids were at all routine with regard to Japan, because the distances to fly were prohibitive. Tom Beck www.prydonians.org www.mercerjewishsingles.org I always knew I'd see the first man on the Moon. I never dreamed I'd see the last. - Dr Jerry Pournelle ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
RE: Chinese manned space flight
-Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Hong Feng Sent: Wednesday, October 15, 2003 07:11 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Chinese manned space flight The Chinese space agency just launched a man into Earth orbit. The agency should be congratulated! The taikonaut just returned Beijing safely. The entire process is very successful. This is SO exciting, but its not getting much coverage here at all :( In the upcoming decade, I am sure China will be quite active in the space exploration. Isn't India working on a probe to map the moon or something? -j- ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
RE: Chinese manned space flight
This is SO exciting, but its not getting much coverage here at all :( I wonder if that's because its a Chinese flight, or whether its an illustration of the public's (or the news media's) lack of interest in space exploration? :( Damon. = Damon Agretto [EMAIL PROTECTED] Qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum. http://www.geocities.com/garrand.geo/index.html Now Building: __ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search http://shopping.yahoo.com ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Chinese manned space flight
According to http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/ww2/A1057367 the first 1000 bomber raid occurred in may 1942. Damon. = Damon Agretto [EMAIL PROTECTED] Qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum. http://www.geocities.com/garrand.geo/index.html Now Building: __ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search http://shopping.yahoo.com ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Chinese manned space flight
- Original Message - From: Damon Agretto [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Killer Bs Discussion [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, October 16, 2003 12:34 PM Subject: RE: Chinese manned space flight This is SO exciting, but its not getting much coverage here at all :( I wonder if that's because its a Chinese flight, or whether its an illustration of the public's (or the news media's) lack of interest in space exploration? :( This might be a good point to interject something I've been thinking about for a while. Many folks have likened manned expeditions into space to the expeditions into the American West. But, there is really a significant difference. The American West was a land that had abundant resources for supporting human life. It was populated by people who survived fairly well using significantly inferior technology to that used by the citizens of the US. Fairly large civilizations had already existed in the US, many years before. Space does not support abundant life. There are not a number of people now living in space, using primitive technology. So, a much better metaphor for expeditions into space is the expeditions to the poles, roughly 100 years ago. Take Antarctica, for example. 90+ years after humans first reached the South Pole, it is still minimally inhabited. It is a vast continent, supporting life; but it still has very little commercial value. Further, there is no indication that 50 or 100 years from now, humans will have a massive South Pole presence. If we look at human exploration of space, we see parallels to this. Space is far more hostile to life than the South Pole, and 40 years after humans first went into space, there is still no practical reason for a manned space program. Further, there is no evidence that we will see the type of cost reduction that will allow tangible results that are in any sense cost effective (in tangible results I do include scientific results). A couple of weeks back I was accused of assuming y'all were idiots when I talked about only a 40% improvement over the present cost of human space flight if a top quality person had a clean slate and a good team to start over. My point was that, since practical manned space flight required orders of magnitude improvement in lift cost, a 40% improvement over the costs of the 25 year old shuttle really isn't all that impressive. Just like commercial fusion power, there's been talk about massive drops in lift costs just around the corner for decades now. Unfortunately, aerospace is exhibiting all the signs of a mature technology, with massive efforts required for incremental improvements. So, to get back to Damon's comments, let me ask a question. Why should a PR victory for a communist dictatorship elicit all that much interest? Dan M. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Chinese manned space flight
So, to get back to Damon's comments, let me ask a question. Why should a PR victory for a communist dictatorship elicit all that much interest? Well, not much from the west, I suppose, because there may very well be the idea of been there, done that. When you're sending shuttles into orbit almost monthly (at least pre Columbia; don't know what the rate is now) the idea that the Chinese can put a man in orbit is not that impressive. Of course its a HUGE victory for the CHinese people, and a national boost to morale and pride. This, I think, can be dangerous for the US in particular and the West in general. China may feel that it needs to prove something...that its as good as the West, that they have technology, or that they are deserving of being in the international spotlight. A burgeoning country with something to prove is something that must be watched... Damon. Dan M. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l = Damon Agretto [EMAIL PROTECTED] Qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum. http://www.geocities.com/garrand.geo/index.html Now Building: __ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search http://shopping.yahoo.com ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Chinese manned space flight (Spoilers for At the Core by Larry Niven
Dan wrote: So, to get back to Damon's comments, let me ask a question. Why should a PR victory for a communist dictatorship elicit all that much interest? Because now there is another major player, a potential rival of our country, that is capable of independently putting a human being in space. If they can put a human in space, they can build their own space station (which I believe is a stated goal of theirs), they can eventually lauch their own manned Mars mission if they choose to, and they could eventually become the world leader in terms of space exploration. How likely those things are to happen are open to much debate. But the potential is there, and therefore this event is newsworthy; maybe not front-page, dominating all news kind of newsworthy, but certainly worthy of being reported and noticed. As to the issue of whether having a human presence is space at all is important... just having a presence in orbit is an advantage because there are things at this point that we don't even know that we don't know. Without continuing to have people travelling into space on a regular basis, we have no idea what kinds of new information we won't have access to. And there have been (and will probably continue to be) practical scientific benefits. FREX, without a manned space program, the Hubble project would have been a bust; remember, it took a manned repair mission to fix some problems with Hubble that weren't discovered until it was already in orbit. There are other arguements for having a manned space program, even one that does science that is questionable at best, but I'll wait for your reply to my points so far and will also see if anyone else wants to dive into this issue. Reggie Bautista At The Core Maru _ Enjoy MSN 8 patented spam control and more with MSN 8 Dial-up Internet Service. Try it FREE for one month! http://join.msn.com/?page=dept/dialup ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Chinese manned space flight (Spoilers for At the Core byLarry Niven
I wrote: Subject: Re: Chinese manned space flight (Spoilers for At the Core byLarry Niven I swear, there really were spoilers for At the Core in the original draft of this email... :-) Reggie Bautista Changed Plans Maru _ Fretting that your Hotmail account may expire because you forgot to sign in enough? Get Hotmail Extra Storage today! http://join.msn.com/?PAGE=features/es ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Chinese manned space flight
(In World War II, the US used flights of 500 to 1000 manned bombers to destroy 62 cities [in Japan] and two [more] flights of one bomber each to destroy two more cities, using nuclear weapons.) Russell Chapman [EMAIL PROTECTED] responded: I had no idea that the US used those sorts of numbers in their raids - was this only after Okinawa was taken? No, the big raids started earlier, from one or more islands, further away; I cannot remember which ones (it has been 30 or more years since I read these histories). ... Most of the other airfields used in the island hopping campaign were barely able to support a squadron of B-17s or B-29s. Yes. That is why people started to say `The difficult we do immediately; the impossible takes a little longer.' ... The supply of bombs and fuel to the airfield(s) for each raid must have been an enormous undertaking. Yes, it was. The war, against both Germany and Japan, ended up taking about a half of US gross domestic product in 1944. It is thought that from an organizational point of view, one reason the generals wanted `1000 bomber' raids is because they knew the complexity of the organization would show how good they were for the US military. It is also why Yamomato was opposed to the war before it started; he knew how many resources the US could put into it, if the US decided not to accept a negotiated peace after a few months. Funny how one stray bomb making an Iraqi orphan is a huge drama throughout the Western world, and yet less than 60 years ago we were carpet bombing entire cities into the ground with unguided iron bombs. This is an example of new technology enabling people to be more concerned about killing civilians. But this new technology is much more recent than 60 years. Remember, people feared bomber and missle-carried nuclear weapons through much of the Cold war. Indeed, it is often said that one of the various reasons that motivated so many in the US to move to suburbs after WWII is that they understood that atomic weapons would destroy cities even more completely than conventional bombs. But by the mid or latter 1950s, possible military use of hydrogen bombs meant that even those who had moved to suburbs could expect to burn or be killed by a `hard rain' (i.e., radioactively hard fallout). So people just worried. Joan Baez composed the song, `A hard rain is gonna fall'. -- Robert J. Chassell Rattlesnake Enterprises http://www.rattlesnake.com GnuPG Key ID: 004B4AC8 http://www.teak.cc [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Chinese manned space flight (Spoilers for At the Core by Larry Niven
- Original Message - From: Reggie Bautista [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, October 16, 2003 2:44 PM Subject: Re: Chinese manned space flight (Spoilers for At the Core by Larry Niven Dan wrote: So, to get back to Damon's comments, let me ask a question. Why should a PR victory for a communist dictatorship elicit all that much interest? Because now there is another major player, a potential rival of our country, that is capable of independently putting a human being in space. If they can put a human in space, they can build their own space station (which I believe is a stated goal of theirs), they can eventually lauch their own manned Mars mission if they choose to, and they could eventually become the world leader in terms of space exploration. How likely those things are to happen are open to much debate. But the potential is there, and therefore this event is newsworthy; maybe not front-page, dominating all news kind of newsworthy, but certainly worthy of being reported and noticed. The potential has been there ever since they had launch capacity. Putting one person into orbit does require a certain level of sophistication, but we did achieve it 40 years ago. There is no doubt that France, Germany, the UK all have the potential to put a person into orbit rather quickly. Their declining to do so relates to their relative security in terms of national self image, IMHO. I think that Damon's point on an emerging self identity is valid, and that we do need to watch for it. However, I think that non-destructive demonstrations of national pride are more to be encouraged than worried about. The best part of the space program in the '60s is that it was a way of showing who had the best missle technology without hurting anyone. As to the issue of whether having a human presence is space at all is important... just having a presence in orbit is an advantage because there are things at this point that we don't even know that we don't know. Without continuing to have people travelling into space on a regular basis, we have no idea what kinds of new information we won't have access to. This relates to a question that I've often seen on sci.physics aren't scientists supposed to be open to all possibilities? I can understand the framework in which that seems valid. How can someone be a good scientist if they don't look into all possibilities? The problem with that logic is that there are an infinity of possibilities and finite resources to explore them. One needs to pick and chose the best possible candidates. And, manned spaceflight falls rather low on the bang for the buck list. You cite the one example during the last 30 years where having a manned mission was a real plus for science. I'll adress that singular example below. Compare the advancements in science that have come from experiments run by humans in space to those achieved without humans present. I'd argue that there are orders of magnitude of difference between what we've accomplished by machines working on their own vs. what we've accomplished by having humans in orbit working. Yet, the cost of the humans working has been higher than the cost of the unmanned programs. And there have been (and will probably continue to be) practical scientific benefits. FREX, without a manned space program, the Hubble project would have been a bust; remember, it took a manned repair mission to fix some problems with Hubble that weren't discovered until it was already in orbit. That is the one example that people continue to refer to. So, I'd argue that one could ask how cost effective a solution this is? How many months of shuttle operation would pay for the difference in cost between building and sending a second Hubble telecope and the cost of repairing the Hubble, as we did? (From the figure's I've seen, its less than 6 months.) Dan M. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Chinese manned space flight
- Original Message - From: Robert J. Chassell [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, October 16, 2003 4:03 PM Subject: Re: Chinese manned space flight (In World War II, the US used flights of 500 to 1000 manned bombers to destroy 62 cities [in Japan] and two [more] flights of one bomber each to destroy two more cities, using nuclear weapons.) Russell Chapman [EMAIL PROTECTED] responded: I had no idea that the US used those sorts of numbers in their raids - was this only after Okinawa was taken? No, the big raids started earlier, from one or more islands, further away; I cannot remember which ones (it has been 30 or more years since I read these histories). ... Most of the other airfields used in the island hopping campaign were barely able to support a squadron of B-17s or B-29s. Yes. That is why people started to say `The difficult we do immediately; the impossible takes a little longer.' ... The supply of bombs and fuel to the airfield(s) for each raid must have been an enormous undertaking. Yes, it was. The war, against both Germany and Japan, ended up taking about a half of US gross domestic product in 1944. It is thought that from an organizational point of view, one reason the generals wanted `1000 bomber' raids is because they knew the complexity of the organization would show how good they were for the US military. It is also why Yamomato was opposed to the war before it started; he knew how many resources the US could put into it, if the US decided not to accept a negotiated peace after a few months. Funny how one stray bomb making an Iraqi orphan is a huge drama throughout the Western world, and yet less than 60 years ago we were carpet bombing entire cities into the ground with unguided iron bombs. This is an example of new technology enabling people to be more concerned about killing civilians. But this new technology is much more recent than 60 years. Remember, people feared bomber and missle-carried nuclear weapons through much of the Cold war. Indeed, it is often said that one of the various reasons that motivated so many in the US to move to suburbs after WWII is that they understood that atomic weapons would destroy cities even more completely than conventional bombs. But by the mid or latter 1950s, possible military use of hydrogen bombs meant that even those who had moved to suburbs could expect to burn or be killed by a `hard rain' (i.e., radioactively hard fallout). So people just worried. Joan Baez composed the song, `A hard rain is gonna fall'. No, my home boy , who was named after a well known brin-l member, wrote that song. :-) Dan M. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Chinese manned space flight
My apologies; I confused who wrote A hard rain's a-gonna fall. Bob Dylan wrote A hard rain's a-gonna fall in 1963, not Joan Baez. However, I may well have heard her sing it, but maybe not. Oh, what'll you do now, my blue-eyed son? Oh, what'll you do now, my darling young one? I'm a-goin' back out 'fore the rain starts a-fallin', I'll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest, Where the people are many and their hands are all empty, Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters, Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison, Where the executioner's face is always well hidden, Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten, Where black is the color, where none is the number, And I'll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it, And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it, Then I'll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin', But I'll know my song well before I start singin', And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall. (A hard rain is what Valerie Plame was trying to stop; that is why former President Bush called the kind of people who revealed who she was the most insidious of traitors.) -- Robert J. Chassell Rattlesnake Enterprises http://www.rattlesnake.com GnuPG Key ID: 004B4AC8 http://www.teak.cc [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Chinese manned space flight
Gautam Mukunda wrote: In the European theatre the 8th Air Force launched its first 1000+ bomber raid in, I believe, late 1942. After that they were fairly routine in Europe and, I would assume, in Japan as well. They started before that, and were common (if not routine) throughout much of the war against Germany, but the logistics are completely different - setting off from an industrialised country with a long established bomber command, with nearby factories, maintenance facilities and deep water harbours, with readily available fighter support for much of the trip (these raids really came into their own with the introduction of the P-51 Mustang, which could travel with the bombers all the way into Germany). In the Pacific, once the Japanese had retreated out of range of Darwin and Townsville air bases, the logistics became a nightmare. PSP runways, coastal freighters to bring in fuel and munitions. The B-29 also reduced the need for such numbers with its greater capacity (in fact by March 1945 they stripped the armaments from the B-29s and increased payload over the standard 20,000lb) than the B-17 at 6,000lb. (ie 334 B-29s hit Tokyo on March 9th, 1945 - with a payload equivalent to 1,250 B-17s). Sorry - got a bit OT there... Cheers Russell C. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Chinese manned space flight
The Chinese space agency just launched a man into Earth orbit. The agency should be congratulated! This is good news, in that there may be more interesting crewed space exploration over the next generation. After the landing on the moon, the US and the Soviet Union stopped interesting crewed space exploration. The bad news is that the Chinese space agency choose the same expensive method for going into space as the US and the Soviet Union. To some extent, this makes sense as it is cheapest method. It is a follow up of the 1930s German experiments in `long range artillery without the gun barrel', and is known to work. Moreover, launching a human into space is difficult. Sadly, the cost of this method is always high. It is expensive to throw away a precision instrument, the rocket, after one use; and the energy densities of chemicals mean that rockets will carry small payloads. From a military point of view, cost does not matter, since the goal is to build a device that can destroy an enemy city. One rocket is cheaper than 1000 manned bombers, as were used for city raids in World War II. (In World War II, the US used flights of 500 to 1000 manned bombers to destroy 62 cities and two flights of one bomber each to destroy two more cities, using nuclear weapons.) However, for rockets, from a human travel point of view, the price has to come down. That means using air augmented rockets. With such rockets, oxygen is taken from the air for the first part of the trip. Because the rocket does not have to carry all its own oxidiser, the effective specific impulse doubles. (Nuclear thermal rockets built and tested on the ground in the US triple the effective specific impulse. However nuclear thermal rockets release fission products into their exhaust, and when launched, some will crash. So earth-to-orbit nuclear thermal rockets are a bad idea. In space nuclear rockets are a good idea; but the big issue is how to get from earth to orbit.) Unfortunately, air augmented rockets are more expensive and risky to develop than traditional rockets. No one has developed them, although the idea has been around since at least the 1950s. Also, I suspect that countries that have developed traditional long range rockets want to keep them expensive. The governments think of them mainly as a form of nuclear artillery, and don't want the equivalent of second-hand bombers being purchased by less rich foreign nations. If rocket flights were cheap, many rockets would be built. Eventually, they would be sold. There is no difference between a civilian freight and passenger carrying rocket and a military one. In both situations, the purpose is to carry mass into orbit. The mass could be civilian passengers or a re-entry vehicle with a warhead. Anyhow, my hope is that the Chinese launch will lead to more interesting exploration over the next generation. -- Robert J. Chassell Rattlesnake Enterprises http://www.rattlesnake.com GnuPG Key ID: 004B4AC8 http://www.teak.cc [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Chinese manned space flight
Addendum: I wrote (In World War II, the US used flights of 500 to 1000 manned bombers to destroy 62 cities and two flights of one bomber each to destroy two more cities, using nuclear weapons.) My apologies. I meant to say that the 64 cities were in Japan. I was not counting US attacks on Germany. I should have written ... to destroy 62 cities in Japan and two more flights -- Robert J. Chassell Rattlesnake Enterprises http://www.rattlesnake.com GnuPG Key ID: 004B4AC8 http://www.teak.cc [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Chinese manned space flight
Robert J. Chassell wrote: Addendum: I wrote (In World War II, the US used flights of 500 to 1000 manned bombers to destroy 62 cities and two flights of one bomber each to destroy two more cities, using nuclear weapons.) I had no idea that the US used those sorts of numbers in their raids - was this only after Okinawa was taken? Most of the other airfields used in the island hopping campaign were barely able to support a squadron of B-17s or B-29s. The supply of bombs and fuel to the airfield(s) for each raid must have been an enormous undertaking. Funny how one stray bomb making an Iraqi orphan is a huge drama throughout the Western world, and yet less than 60 years ago we were carpet bombing entire cities into the ground with unguided iron bombs. Now we have to make sure the night watchman doesn't get hurt when we take out a specific room in an enemy building... Cheers Russell C. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
