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RE: Late night shop drawings
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runner
Posts: 357
Joined: Dec. 5 2008
From: New Jersey USA
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 RE: Late night shop drawings (in reply to Richard Jernigan)
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Richard, thank you for your excellent post-- we are essentially in full agreement on this issue. Lest anyone think that manned space flight should never have been even begun, that is not my position. As the saying goes: That was Then; This is Now. Then, in the late 50s and early 60s, the Russian early lead was manifest; the Cold War was in high gear, and the USA was flush with cash--the Apollo program made a lot of sense and accomplished many good things, both in geopolitical and in technological terms.
But since then, the sophistication of remote sensing, robotics, miniaturization, computation, has evolved at an extraordinary pace, allowing us to do cutting edge science from Mercury to Saturn and now beyond, at a fraction of the cost of any conceivable manned alternative. Even now, various robotic rovers are wandering the surface of Mars, another robot observer sits on a comet, another craft approaches Pluto. Contrast this record with the sum total of ISS breakthroughs. We should upgrade our capacity to launch people into earth orbit and to access the moon, so as to have the best technology available--the shuttle gave us the opportunity both to insert the Hubble space telescope into orbit, but also to service it several times. Almost every astronomer will agree that Hubble has been one of the most revelatory and productive scientific instruments in the history of human inquiry, but this again shows that the best use of the dollars spent on manned space flight is to service, if required by people, robotic instruments in space.
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Date Mar. 7 2015 2:13:09
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3430
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: Late night shop drawings (in reply to runner)
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My brother told me about one little known episode that came near having an immediate impact on publicity.
When I arrived at his place in the Texas hill country a few years ago, he was on the telephone for several minutes. After he hung up, he apologized, saying he was part of a small group asked to go to NASA and give talks about the Apollo program. He was verifying his story with a former associate to make sure he had the facts straight.
The design, construction and operation of the Lunar Receiving Laboratory were part of his responsibility. There was concern (though believed to be improbable) that microbes brought back from the moon could cause a devastating epidemic. Each moon landing astronaut crew were quarantined for 30 days following their return to earth in a biological containment facility.
(My brother remained an expert in this area. Part of his last job was supervision of a Category 5 facility at the medical school, and employee health for the 3,000 employees of the associated hospital complex.)
The Lab had decent living facilities. A number of people were quarantined with the astronauts--not just medical staff, but people doing scientific investigations of geological samples brought back from the moon. My brother wanted to be quarantined with the Apollo 11 crew, but he was overruled by Gilruth. Didn't want the space medicine honcho getting sick from moon bugs. My brother got his chance four months later with Apollo 12.
The quarantine began on the flight deck of the aircraft carrier that picked up the astronauts from their splashdown in the Pacific Ocean. A small Airstream trailer was modified and fitted out for the purpose. (The trailer is now at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama.) It was made airtight so a partial vacuum could be maintained inside it. No bugs leaking out.
The trailer was on the flight deck of the USS Hornet with the astronauts and my brother inside just after the crew was picked up. The atmospheric pressure inside began to rise. My brother communicated with his engineer on the outside to help find the leak. The procedure said that when the pressure inside reached a certain point the entire flight deck of Hornet would be quarantined. It was within 1/10 PSI of that point when the engineer found the leak--and fixed it with duct tape. The pressure stabilized.
At that time the population of the flight deck included Richard Nixon, President of the United States.
(This photo is from Apollo 11--no leaks on that one.)
RNJ
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Date Mar. 7 2015 5:24:56
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runner
Posts: 357
Joined: Dec. 5 2008
From: New Jersey USA
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RE: Late night shop drawings (in reply to Richard Jernigan)
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Richard, a fine tale. A wonderful opportunity for Airstream to display its excellence of manufacture and of reputation. I have been impressed with the lengths to which NASA goes to ensure lack of contamination, though the likelihood of microbes surviving millions, nay billions of years of UV and other radiations on or near the lunar surface, is remote. I served a brief stint in my youth as a lab tech and health physics monitor at a major pharmaceutical company, working in its medical isotopes division. We used the same negative pressure techniques to keep the isotopes always contained within the work modules, but never achieved, nor strived to achieve, the standards that NASA applied to itself. The radioactive isotopes in question were compounded into an array of diagnostic and therapeutic agents, and sent to doctors all over, but I always questioned the degree of understanding, of care, and of proper usage on the part of many of the receiving physicians, when we would get enquiries from some asking "When does the radiation turn on?"
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Date Mar. 7 2015 14:07:28
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3430
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: Late night shop drawings (in reply to estebanana)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: estebanana
There must have been however many technologies that came out of this adventure. There was Tang for one.
Another sarcastic joke? A pretty good one...
I can think of two technologies that got a big boost, and another that was novel, but almost inevitable as computer technology advanced.
The Lunar Receiving Laboratory was a considerable step forward in biological containment facilities. But when I asked my brother how it compared to today's state of the art, he just smiled.
Remote sensing of the astronauts' vital signs was a first, as far as I know. That field has also progressed a lot. The medical school where my brother worked had a contract to do remote medicine for the people working in Antarctica. The Antarctica Physician's Assistant was trained and equipped to do some blood work. They wired up the patient, put them on a precursor of Skype. The U.S. physician interviewed and diagnosed the patient.
Finite element modeling of structures was a NASA development essential to designing and building a big rocket like the Saturn V. A big structure is modeled in the computer as an assembly of standardized small structural elements, given the properties of the proposed materials. The resulting model's response to shock and vibration is analyzed mathematically. Mainframe computers had just arrived at the stage where this was possible for big structures.
Nowadays big ships and airliners (among a host of other things) are designed by finite element modeling. Instead of a set of blueprints, a subcontractor gets a computer file.
Now if the part or subassembly isn't too big, you can feed the computer file into a 3-D printer to check out how the real thing will look. They even print buildings.
Finite element structural modeling led to finite element calculation of radar reflectivity, which led to stealth aircraft technology. The F-117 and the B-2 look so weird because the computers they were designed on were less capable than today's. The F-117 is so aerodynamically unstable that it is nearly certain to crash if the flight control computer conks out. The F-22 and F-35 look and fly a lot more like airplanes because the computers they were designed on ran faster and had more random access memory.
I'm sure NASA's publicity department could list a few more.
But the remarkable thing about the technology of Apollo was the speed with which it was developed, and the success of a very high risk approach to project planning. Not high risk in the sense that the equipment was designed to loose specifications. The specs were very tight and very conservative. The risk was in leaving out a lot of steps that would have been put into a more conservative, longer schedule, or making things concurrent that would have been sequential in an ordinary project.
The last time we were in Huntsville, Alabama, visiting friends, we went to the U.S. Space and Rocket Center.
http://tinyurl.com/lgejxvh
The Saturn V engine was developed at the nearby Redstone Arsenal by the team headed by Von Braun. One of the exhibits displayed the project plan and schedule. I was involved in a few multi-billion dollar projects. A couple of them even finished on schedule. One of them was pretty close to the original budget.
The rest went like most big engineering projects. There was a fair amount of "that was then, this is now" involved.
The concurrence and risk of the Saturn V project plan from the very start was breath taking. But they made it.
That's what impressed the Soviets, according to the few I talked to.
RNJ
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Date Mar. 9 2015 22:30:58
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estebanana
Posts: 9351
Joined: Oct. 16 2009
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RE: Late night shop drawings (in reply to Richard Jernigan)
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quote:
Finite element structural modeling led to finite element calculation of radar reflectivity, which led to stealth aircraft technology. The F-117 and the B-2 look so weird because the computers they was designed on were less capable than today's. The F-117 is so aerodynamically unstable that it is nearly certain to crash if the flight control computer conks out. The F-22 and F-35 look and fly a lot more like airplanes because the computers they were designed on ran faster and had more random access memory.
I was being sarcastic about Tang, yes. I remember When Anita Bryant was flogging Florida oranges on TV at the same time NASA and the company that made Tang flogged Tang. It was the real vs. the simulation on TV jowl to jowl....
I read about the design of the stealth aircraft at Skunkworks and how they in part based it on the flying wing bomber Northrup made post WWII. They used information from that design, which was also difficult to fly, and then radar proofed it making it impossible to fly. When I wrote my pathetic grad school thesis paper I corresponded with the Northrup PR office and they sent me information about the YB-47 frying (flying) wing. I wrote a portion of the thesis about how military development of technologies transforms into consumer goods and trickles into civilian applications that are more pedestrian and used everyday.
Thus my interest in Tang vs. Anita. I did not remember about how the Apollo work informed the design, but that must have been part of that book. Came out around '94 - 95' and gave the stories of Kelly Johnson's designs at Lockheed culminating with 117 and looked to further drone development. It also recounted how Kelly Johnson and other designers had to go through Curtis Le May to get projects through congress and the airforce funding route. It seems like if Le May liked the idea you were in, if not you were screwed. Apparently he was difficult to do an end run around. One of my "aunties" in the art world borrowed the book and never gave it back because she thought her artist filmmaker boyfriend should have the information. No one in my family would think I had put together a conceptual basis for or about making art that had seriousness so I was always dismissed. Like the Rodney Dangerfield of the art part of the family. They never thought to actually help me out, but at least I did the work.
I've been to Pixar studios, I was given a tour of the physical plant by the lead managing engineer for the heating and cooling systems. You can imagine they need a team just for that. He showed me the rooms, ah, massive separate area of the building where they keep the memory. It's like a James Bond film set. It is a level that requires a security clearance and pass to enter and it is low light level, looks like a library with dark painted duct work low over head everywhere, the cooling system is super quiet and each sub area has glass walls. And a technician here and there tending the rows of cabinets like grape vines. I've never been inside another systems memory storage area like that so I have nothing to compare it to, but it was impressive. Then nearby in another area is the air conditioning plant, they monitor is like the proverbial hawks. The lead environmental engineer has an enormous responsibility to keep that hardware cool.
EDIT:
http://www.amazon.com/Skunk-Works-Personal-Memoir-Lockheed/dp/0316743003
This one, next time I am in the states in a 2nd hand book store I'll scan it to see if it is worth reading again. Probably hopelessly outdated, but Ben Rich's telling of how the Century series fighters and the U-2 and A-11 were developed is very good. Also a nice story of how Skunkworks engineers met up with Mikoyan engineers after the Cold War and compared notes over dinners.
The first Gulf War was what got me interested in drones and this idea about how the 117 came into being, but I remember how it started and the day I found out about it. And why is was horrible to have been carried out, but also difficult to ignore the Iraq invasion of Kuwait or let continue to happen.
I was living in DC at the time not particularly paying attention to world events and I was at the coffee shop down the street. As I was walking back home I woman was sitting at a table outside the coffee shop and she was crying, an anguished crying. I ask if she needed medical attention or is she needed help. She said no thank you and then said "I can cannot go home." She was still crying but I sat as she explained how she was going to have to stay in Washington, but that she was Kuwaiti and that Iraq had just invaded crossing the border. She feared for her family and of course did not know how it would all come to an end. From that perspective it was difficult to see the war in other dimensions or perspectives for some time into the war.
_____________________________
https://www.stephenfaulkguitars.com
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Date Mar. 10 2015 0:52:23
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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RE: Late night shop drawings (in reply to estebanana)
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quote:
It also recounted how Kelly Johnson and other designers had to go through Curtis Le May to get projects through congress and the airforce funding route. It seems like if Le May liked the idea you were in, if not you were screwed. Apparently he was difficult to do an end run around.
General Curtis LeMay was to the Air Force as Admiral Hyman Rickover was to the nuclear Navy. Hyman Rickover spearheaded the early development of the nuclear powered Navy, and he oversaw the development of the nuclear submarine program. Rickover was a crusty sort who brooked no nonsense, and his absolute integrity and attention to detail is largely credited with the safety of the nuclear-powered U.S. Navy at a time when Soviet nuclear powered ships and subs were accident prone. Any advances, alterations, or new ideas for the nuclear submarine fleet had to pass muster with Rickover. And he personally interviewed each officer applying for submarine duty.
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."
--Rudyard Kipling
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Date Mar. 10 2015 8:53:03
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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RE: Late night shop drawings (in reply to BarkellWH)
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Further to General LeMay and Admiral Rickover. Both Curtis LeMay and Hyman Rickover are interesting examples of how men with forceful personalities can absolutely dominate a branch of the military. Each literally shaped the branch for which he was responsible: LeMay the Air Force and Strategic Air Command, and Rickover the nuclear Navy and submarine program.
I am not a wholesale subscriber to the "Great Man" theory of history, but I do think it has a lot to do with historical outcomes. Winston Churchill is the perfect example. In my opinion, Churchill should have been named Time Magazine's "Man of the Century" in 2000, although I have no quarrel with Einstein being named. Nevertheless, one can make the argument that Churchill saved Western Civilization by stiffening Britain's spine and holding on during the dark days of the blitz, when the Soviet Union and Germany were linked through the Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Pact (the Molotov-Ribbntrop Pact), and before the U.S. entered the war in December 1941. There was no one in Britain at the time who had Churchill's stature and spine, and as Britain stood alone against the Nazi juggernaut, it was Churchill with his great oratory who, as has been said, "marshalled the English language and sent it into battle."
I am certainly not comparing LeMay and Rickover to Churchill, but I doubt anyone at the time had the force of personality they possessed to move forward with programs the way they did in their respective realms. Likewise, with all his flaws, as well as his brilliance, I don't see how anyone but General Douglas MacArthur could have carried out the occupation of Japan and tamed it to the point where it became a respected member of the international community.
I think there are junctures when a man appears to move history forward (for better or worse--Napoleon, Hitler, Lenin, and Stalin also come to mind!), when others would leave a mediocre legacy. Some argue that history is made from the bottom up, but I think they miss a key point. What appears to be history being made from the bottom up usually entails a leader who channels the energy and efforts of the great mass into productive action.
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."
--Rudyard Kipling
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Date Mar. 10 2015 15:57:05
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3430
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: Late night shop drawings (in reply to BarkellWH)
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Rickover's and LeMay's influenced survived their departure from the organizations they shaped.
My work with the Navy Strategic Systems Program Office ("SP" in the Navy) began in 1975. Rickover was head of the Navy's Nuclear Reactors Branch, and was responsible for the development and deployment of nuclear power throughout the Navy. The first project was the development of the nuclear powered ballistic missile submarine, the Polaris Class. Rickover retained strong influence over the strategic submarine fleet, up through at least the Trident boats.
A friend, vice president of the sonar group of a defense contractor showed me a set of accommodation plans, the internal layout of the boat, from an early design iteration of the huge Trident class. The boats are 560 feet long, nearly the length of two American football fields. On the large sheet of drawings was the comment, in red ink, "S.O.B. will not sink--HGR." [S.O.B. = son of a bitch, HGR = Hyman G. Rickover]
Out of several government and military organizations I dealt with, SP was the most capable. The civilian engineers knew as well as their defense contractor counterparts how to design, build and operate submarines, submarine launched ballistic missiles, and nuclear warheads. The civilian and military components of SP were closely integrated, efficient and active in managing the civilian contractors they oversaw.
In my first experience with SP, I was a consultant on a Lockheed Missiles and Space Company Reentry Systems Division project. Financially it was a relatively small part of the overall Trident Missile development effort, but it was at the cutting edge of technology. The manager of one of the subprograms was replaced. The subprogram was one in which the subcontractors possessed the world's leading technical expertise, by a wide margin. The Lockheed subprogram manager's role was seen largely as a housekeeping job. The new man showed little interest in learning the technical details.
Within weeks of his appointment the subprogram manager was told to come to Washington DC to give a review to SP. He brought three people with him, including me. After the formal presentation the subprogram manager was bombarded with questions. He deferred the answer to every technical question to one of us. At the end of the meeting he was told to return to Washington the next week, alone.
I heard that at the next meeting he was again peppered with technical questions, which he flubbed. The following week he was reassigned by Lockheed to supervise buildings and grounds: literally the crews mowing lawns, trimming shrubbery and painting stripes on the parking lots.
The 3-star admiral leading SP had always been the skipper of both a Fleet Ballistic Missile Boat and an attack submarine. He always had advanced degrees in engineering. The first time I briefed the 3-star, he asked if I had time to stop by his office at lunch. Of course I did. I had briefed a computer simulation of a battle between U.S. strategic missile forces and the Soviet strategic missile defenses. The simulation ran to tens of thousands of lines of code.
In his office the admiral offered me a sandwich, and said, "A lot of people that do these simulations are really good on the details, and on their good qualities. I was wondering whether you could take ten minutes to describe the major strengths and weaknesses of your approach, then answer a few questions. He pulled a legal size envelope out of his pocket and passed it over to me. He expected me literally to put my summary on the back of an envelope.
Every naval officer and every civilian I ever talked to about it attributed SP's technical excellence and efficiency to the strong influence of Rickover. It was a pleasure to work with them.
LeMay was transferred from the 8th Air Force in Europe to the Pacific Theater to command the B-29 raids on the Japanese homeland from the Marianas Islands near Guam. The operation had not been particularly effective. LeMay had made a name for himself in the 8th Air Force, but he knew that if he didn't produce results in short order, he would be replaced as well.
LeMay tried a couple of strategies, before settling upon low altitude night time fire bombing. The fire bombing of Tokyo alone caused the most deaths of any bombing raid of WW II. A hundred thousand people died, almost as many as the combined totals from the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Fire bombing destroyed forty percent of the area of 67 cities. At least another 120,000 people died. Some put the total much higher.
My father never spoke about specific experiences during the time he served under LeMay, but he did say LeMay was the most effective combat leader of the Air Force.
LeMay began the operation of the Berlin Airlift in 1948, when the Soviets blocked land access to the city. My father served there after his time at the beginning of the Japanese Occupation.
My brother served as a flight surgeon in the Strategic Air Command (SAC) in the early 1960s, shortly after LeMay had moved on to other jobs. LeMay had taken SAC from a small not particularly effective force to being one of the two major U.S. strategic players in the Cold War. He combinied a massive force of long range heavy bombers with nuclear ballistic missiles. Training was constant and rigorous. Flight surgeons were periodically assigned to practice missions. My brother spoke of his first experience flying from Oklahoma to Morocco on a practice bombing run. He was impressed by the efficiency and esprit de corps of SAC, even after later having been a part of the Apollo program, which exhibited those qualities at the very highest level.
LeMay rose to be Chief of Staff of the Air Force. It eventually became public that during the Cuban Missile Crisis LeMay strongly clashed with President Kennedy, his brother Robert and Secretary of Defense McNamara. They were looking for a way to de-escalate the most dangerous crisis of the Cold War.
LeMay advocated bombing the Soviet missile installations. It later became clear that the installations had enough nuclear missiles, capable of reaching as far as Washington DC, to have killed millions of Americans. The Soviet high command had delegated launch authority to their missile commander in Cuba, the only such case. Even after the missiles were removed and the U.S.A had promised not to invade Cuba, LeMay strongly advocated invasion.
When I brought this up with my father, he paused for a while, then said, "LeMay showed good judgment when he got out of the Airlift and turned it over to a logistics expert. I thought he sometimes showed poor judgment. When he did, the determination and stubbornness that helped make him a great combat leader worked against him. He was a good man to go to war with. Not such a good man trying to keep one from getting started."
RNJ
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Date Mar. 10 2015 18:22:10
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3430
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: Late night shop drawings (in reply to guitarbuddha)
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My Japanese girlfriend went to Sacred Heart Academy, the same school as the present Empress. A Jesuit school, it accepted both Japanese and foreign students.
She referred to Catholicism as "white people voodoo." In one conversation she scoffed at Western preoccupation with guilt.
I brought up an earlier reference. "I thought that was a pretty strong instance of Japanese guilt."
"That wasn't guilt," she replied, a little heatedly, "that was shame!"
Remote sensing in a different sense from medical telemetry:
The Antiballistic Missile Treaty was the first arms limitation treaty between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. It specified that early warning radars had to be situated within a certain distance of a country's border. The U.S. DEW radars in Canada and the Soviet radars at Kiev and at Talinn, Estonia were "grandfathered."
The second generation of Soviet early warning radars were massive concrete buildings. The antenna arrays were the size of a football (soccer) field turned up on edge. When the Trident II missile boats became operational, they had sufficient range to attack the Soviet Union west of the Urals by launching from the Pacific. This exploited a large gap in the Soviet defenses. It would have been extremely expensive to fill the gap by building enough radars on the eastern periphery of Siberia.
Instead the Soviets responded by building a radar at a remote location norhtheast of Novosibirsk, just about in the center of the Russian landmass. The U.S. objected strenuously. The Soviets said, "Well, it's not a defense radar, it's for space tracking."
The U.S. adduced detailed satellite imagery (but not as detailed as in fact existed) of the construction of the radar. It showed it was identical to the others counted as part of the defense network.
Eventually the Soviets admitted their transgression and dismantled the radar.
What was not generally known at the time was that although the U.S. possessed detailed satellite imagery of just about every square meter of the entire Warsaw Pact, at high enough resolution to read a car's license plate, we had not noticed the gigantic radar until a human source cued us to its existence and location. We had too much data. The haystack was too big for us to find the needle.
Remind you of anything going on right now?
RNJ
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Date Mar. 10 2015 18:56:23
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3430
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: Late night shop drawings (in reply to guitarbuddha)
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My recollection, without looking up the history, was that the first bombing induced firestorm in Europe was unintentional, but noted carefully by the Allies.
A more secure recollection, having read a bit about it, was that the fire bombing of Dresden was proposed by the British Air Staff, in response to a query from Churchill about supporting the Soviet advance from the east. British experience at Coventry had taught that the general destruction of infrastructure could be far more damaging than targeted attacks on war industries.
U.S. bomber command objected on humanitarian and legal grounds. U.S. bombing strategy relied upon high altitude daylight "precision" bombing against industrial targets, using the new Norden precision bombsight. I put "precision" in quotes, because in order to hit their targets the U.S. raids had to drop massive loads of bombs on defined areas. The real high precision "smart bombs" didn't appear until the first Gulf War in the 1980s.
British strategy, up to that point had been low altitude night time raids, necessarily less precisely targeted. Some contend that the first bombing of a European populated area was by a British force who missed their designated target, due to night time confusion.
Eventually the U.S. was persuaded to participate in the Dresden raids. Officials U.S. assessment after the war was about 22,000 fatalities due to combined U.S. and British operations. Others put it much higher.
LeMay was under pressure to produce results in Japan where his predecessor had failed. He was well aware that Japanese cities were far more flammable than European ones. His first strategies were no more successful than his predecessor's. Firebombing produced the desired results.
LeMay notoriously said that if the U.S. had lost the war he would have been convicted of war crimes. But he defended the firebombing by saying it was justified if it had shortened the war by a single day.
Decisions taken in the heat of battle often generate a good deal of debate after the war is over.
Recently I said to my brother, "I have finally thought of some positive result that might come from extending the human lifespan to a couple of hundred years."
"What would that be?"
"More people might come to understand what Clausewitz meant when he said, 'The result in war is never final.' "
RNJ
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Date Mar. 10 2015 19:33:21
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runner
Posts: 357
Joined: Dec. 5 2008
From: New Jersey USA
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RE: Late night shop drawings (in reply to BarkellWH)
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Bill raises again the old question of how best to understand history--to what extent it is the Great Men who determine it, or to what extent the Zeitgeist--the working-through of all conceivable (and many unknown) forces--shapes the fabric that permits certain individuals to play out their roles. The Zeitgeist view is perhaps best articulated by Tolstoy in War and Peace; also by the psychohistorian Hari Seldon in Azimov's Foundation Trilogy. A case can be made that Great Men arise and are offered their opportunities to exercise enormous influence on populations and events only when an underlying stability in the social/economic/attitudinal fabric has been disrupted, fractured, overturned by other agencies. Only when the field has been prepared by a deep plowing can the Great Men find soil in which to prosper.
What sort of agencies can break up the soil structure? Certainly climatic change, the spread of pathogens, the introduction of novel technologies or necessities of life through trade, a host of other factors can come to the questing mind. If we look at the long periods of relative stasis throughout history, there are few sudden appearances of Great Men to set societies off on a new path. But if we look at events already in flux, then the Great Men come forward in much greater abundance. Let's take the long period of stasis, followed by slow decay, between the Early Empire of Augustus (a certified Great Man) and the advent of Constantine (another certified Great Man). Nobody, no Great Men, by force of authority or personal magnetism, abruptly disrupted the fabric of the Roman Empire from within or from without. It was, ironically, the slow infusion of the notions of early Christianity, as developed by Paul from the remembered utterances of a certain Yeshua bar Yosef, that transformed the empire into something quite different. Jesus himself, though, arose from and through the turmoil and chaos of the Roman conquest and occupation of Judea/Palestine. If we look at history, we find many, many examples of this same phenomenon--the advent of the Great Man or Men concurrent with or following on changes in the Zeitgeist. I think both schools are correct; they just require the proper synthesis.
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Date Mar. 10 2015 19:59:09
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guitarbuddha
Posts: 2970
Joined: Jan. 4 2007
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RE: Late night shop drawings (in reply to runner)
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I like that you brought up Asimov Runner. One of the few Sci-Fi writers to survive rereading in adulthood.
I particularly like his line 'Violence is the last resort of the incompetent' which if I recall he had Seldon say after diffusing threats bloodlessly.
By certain definitions a great man would have embraced the violence........ or be forgotten.
But not all such great men are unaware of the value of bloodless propagandas. After having slaughtered the majority of his immediate family Constantine chose to promote Christianity. With its focus on intangible reward in the hereafter and stoicism in the face of a grim lot chirstianity is a very patriarchal religion.
Constantine's motivation in promoting this hitherto obscure and (despite what you might think you know about persecution mostly ignored religion) hitherto largely ignored religion is pretty clear. It is about obediance and deference.
And here again Constantine is a contradiction for he is in this instance the man standing behind the man and pulling the strings, or in this case nails.
In every bookshop across the globe hiding in plain sight there is at least one copy of 'The Prince' yet no politician ever fears autodidacts, as Virginia Woolfe said of Joyce.
"a self-taught working man, and we all know how distressing they are, how egotistic, insistent, raw, striking, and ultimately nauseating. . . . I'm reminded all the time of some callow board school boy."
Yet (with the exception of the first clause) this is precisely how I myself view David Cameron and he is at great pains to put more weight on the natural superiority of wealth. Nary a sign is ever given of any actual learning just 'I'm right because I a spoiled and entitled'. He may be a great man yet, like Blair and Thatcher before him. I wonder if see if he will choose a hobbled foe or ride on the coattails of a more powerful ringleader, or maybe just stay with the tried and trusted divide and conquer at home.
D.
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Date Mar. 10 2015 21:06:13
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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RE: Late night shop drawings (in reply to runner)
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quote:
Bill raises again the old question of how best to understand history--to what extent it is the Great Men who determine it, or to what extent the Zeitgeist--the working-through of all conceivable (and many unknown) forces--shapes the fabric that permits certain individuals to play out their roles.
The two alternatives you mention are not mutually exclusive, in my opinion, Runner. In fact, I see them as complementary. The Second World War provided Winston Churchill the opportunity to display his greatness, in terms of his indomitable will, his oratorical skills, and his ability to make the British see themselves in ways they may not have without his commanding presence as their leader. That said, it took a Winston Churchill to pull it off. There was no one, absolutely no one, in the British establishment who could have come close to Churchill's ability as a wartime leader. Those who were not appeasers, like Chamberlain, were would-be appeasers like Halifax, who wanted to approach Mussolini to see if a deal could be made with Hitler.
I see this throughout history. Take the Arab Revolt and the Hejaz campaign of World War I. Without it, T.E. Lawrence would have been one more archaeologist-historian. Who knows where he would have ended up? But the Hejaz campaign allowed Lawrence to display his brilliance at desert guerrilla warfare. There were many other British officers involved in the Arab Revolt. Col. Stewart Newcombe was Prince Faisal's first British military advisor. There were Sir Ronald Storrs, Col. Wilson, and others. But it was Lawrence who possessed the critical mass of courage, daring, and above all imagination, that turned the tide. None of the others possessed the combination of attributes displayed by Lawrence. Again, while it took the circumstances of the Arab Revolt to allow a Lawrence to come forth, it was Lawrence, and no other, who did so.
As I read your quote, cited above, I think we are in agreement. Circumstances and the zeitgeist are important in shaping events, but it is the Great Man who establishes the leadership necessary to prevail. On the other hand, there are many examples in history of a lack of leadership leading to defeat and disaster.
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."
--Rudyard Kipling
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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Mar. 10 2015 21:42:56
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3430
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: Late night shop drawings (in reply to BarkellWH)
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Mention of the Messerschmitt factory prompts a recollection. I was visiting my college room mate Tom F. in Munich, Germany. Tom is a Texan, but he has lived in Munich since 1964, except for a break of a couple of years back in Texas.
Tom has been one of the pioneers of materials and technique in aircraft design and production. At the time of this visit he was an engineering vice president of Cyanamid International, specializing in non-metallic aircraft materials and design assistance. He put the carbon composite control surfaces on the Airbusses, the later Boeing 7xx series, and was instrumental in the high composite content in major structural elements of the Boeing 777 and the Airbus 380. He was a key player in the design of the French thermoplastic helicopter.
His second claim to fame as a young engineer in Texas before he moved to Europe was developing the materials and techniques for gluing helicopter rotor blades together in a clean room production line. All those thousands of Hueys you see in the Vietnam movies had Tom's rotor blades on them, except for the earliest production run with riveted blades.
To assuage his auto addiction, Tom mounted a successful campaign to convince Ferrari to go to carbon composite monocoque construction on their Formula 1 cars while the arch-conservative Commendatore was still in charge. If you have a carbon fiber tennis racket, carbon fiber skis, or a carbon fiber fishing rod, you have Tom to thank for it.
He drove his factory Porsche on the Gran Turismo circuit until he backed it into a tree at Florence doing 150 miles/hour (240 km/hr) and walked away with a cracked rib and a sprained wrist.
We were lazing around Tom's apartment in Munich on Saturday morning after a night on the town. Coming out of a bar the night before a guy had tried to buy our pants and footwear while we wore them. Levis and cowboy boots experienced a surge of fashion in Germany in the 1970s. Tom calmly hiked up my pants leg and spoke in his Texas accented German, telling him the Texas Stockmen's Association would come after him if he wore those boots with a registered cattle brand cut into the shanks.
As we drank our second cups of coffee, the phone rang. Tom talked briefly, then said, "Want to take a ride in the country?"
"Sure."
Out in the country in the Lamborghini Tom explained we were headed to the Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm factory in Donauworth. They were having a problem with a helicopter rotor manufacturing process he had licensed to them.
The factory is in the town where the WW II Messerschmitt aircraft plant was located. We arrived mid-morning, and went into a small conference room. The efficient Germans had all the data Tom requested by the time we got there. As the boss beckoned and dismissed with a raised index finger, engineers in white lab coats filed in and out of the conference room with clipboards and computer printouts while Tom read, asked questions and mulled things over.
Finally Tom announced that they had a classic "tolerance buildup" problem. Process requirements specified acceptable ranges for various parameters. A extremely unlikely event occurred. All the parameters were within the specified ranges, but enough of them were at the wrong extreme edge of their ranges to cause a few of the rotor assemblies to fail their verification testing. Tom prescribed a strategy to recover. We adjourned for a late lunch with the German managers at a local inn.
The inn boasted classic 19th century white plaster walls and ceilings, and dark ornate woodwork, but it seemed just that tiny bit "off" to me. Everything looked just a little too clean and neat. The walls were lined with black and white photos of the devastation the city had suffered under repeated pulverization from Allied bombing raids. The older engineers told how their predecessors had excavated tunnels and moved the whole factory underground.
Orienting myself by a couple of surviving church steeples on one photo, it looked to me like the place where we were eating lunch had been totally flattened to chunks of rubble no bigger than a meter in diameter, most of it a lot smaller. One of the Germans smiled at me.
I said, "How did this place survive all the bombings in such good shape?"
"It was utterly and completely destroyed. You were just now looking at the photo of the field of rubble."
"But what about all this?" I gestured at the surrounding Biedermeier elegance.
"Oh, the engineers used to eat here before all the bombing. They liked the place, so they built it back just as it was."
RNJ
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Date Mar. 11 2015 1:55:44
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runner
Posts: 357
Joined: Dec. 5 2008
From: New Jersey USA
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RE: Late night shop drawings (in reply to guitarbuddha)
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David, your comments about Cameron remind me that current British politics is Terra Incognita for me--perhaps you might start a thread to give us thumbnail sketches of Where Things Stand in England today. It's a bit simpler for us across the pond, as we have fewer, but more polarized, parties at play here, and so the terrain is somewhat less complex. Regarding Hari Seldon and psychohistory, the Nobel Prize economist Paul Krugman, of Princeton and the NY Times, said that the Asimov trilogy so fired his imagination in his youth that he wanted to become a psychohistorian like Hari Seldon, but turned instead to economics as the next-best thing when he discovered that psychohistory had yet to come into being. That in turn reminds me that another fantasist, Ayn Rand, has exerted a powerful influence on several other economists and assorted movers and shakers--former Fed chair Alan Greenspan comes to mind, as does also influential US Representative Paul Ryan and the current Chairman of ExxonMobil.
Regarding the phenomenon of Great Men arising out of a period of either stasis or obscurity, the example of Genghis Khan comes to mind. There had always been a sort of Brownian motion of desert tribes west of China, and so there seems nothing extraordinary in the conditions wherein Temujin began to exercise his enormous ability to harness and unify and motivate the Turco-Mongol tribes into the most formidable military machine of its time. It seems a case of a remarkable personality arising out of a void. There may be other such examples--Shaka Zulu perhaps. Some religious figures also spring to mind as arising out of relative quiescence--Mohammad, the Buddha, Akhenaten.....
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Date Mar. 11 2015 1:59:10
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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RE: Late night shop drawings (in reply to estebanana)
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quote:
But he said the P-51, as terrible as the war could be, was still a thrilling aircraft to behold.
The P-51 Mustang eventually became the most aerodynamically perfect, fuel efficient, single-engine, prop-driven fighter plane developed by the allies in World War II. It was originally built with a U.S. Alison engine that could not match the aerodynamic capacity of the aircraft. The story of how it eventually was built using a Rolls Royce Merlin engine is one involving bickering, intrigue, and sheer anti-British bias on the part of the U.S. Air Production Board. There were obstacles on the British side as well.
The U.S. was taking very heavy losses of bombers and airmen in daylight bombing raids over Germany because the P-47 Thunderbolts providing air cover had limited range. They would have to return home while the now defenseless bombers continued the run to their targets. The Luftwaffe was knocking them out of the sky like a turkey-shoot. What was needed was a fighter that could accompany the bombers and provide air cover all the way to Berlin and back to their East Anglia air fields.
Tommy Hitchcock, the Assistant Air Attache at the American Embassy in London, was scathing in his denunciation of the obstacles to the development of the P-51 with a Merlin engine. He wrote, "Sired by the English out of an American mother, the Mustang has had no parent in the Army Air Corps or at Wright Field to appreciate and push its good points....It does not satisfy important people on both sides of the Atlantic who seem more interested in pointing with pride to the development of a 100 percent national product than they are concerned with the very difficult problem of rapidly developing a fighter plane that will be superior to anything the Germans Have."
Ambassador to Britain John Winant, Averell Harriman, U.S. Assistant Air Attache Tommy Hitchcock, Winston Churchill, and above all, U.S. Assistant Secretary for Air Robert Lovett (who became Defense Secretary in the 1950s) combined to pressure the Air Production Board to produce the U.S.-British hybrid P-51, and they finally won out, over objections on both sides of the Atlantic. With the Rolls Royce Merlin engine, the use of fuel "drop tanks," and some other modifications, the P-51 reached its full capacity.
Fully-developed, the P-51, with its Rolls Royce Merlin, consumed far fewer gallons of fuel, took far fewer engine revs to reach maximum speed and distance, and could fly at all required altitudes. According to historian Paul Kennedy in his book "Engineers of Victory," aeronautical engineers at the time did not know why it was so aerodynamically perfect with such low drag. Later studies, based on wind tunnel experiments, pointed to the slightly inward turning curves of the of the P-51's sides as the reason.
In any case, now that the B-17 Flying Fortresses and B-24 Liberators had sufficient air cover, with the P-51s providing escort all the way and back, the allies finally attained air supremacy in bombing runs over Germany. Nevertheless, reflecting on the difficult battle to get the P-51 hybrid approved, official historians of the air campaign over Germany have written, "The story of the P-51 came close to representing the costliest mistake made by the AAF in World War II."
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."
--Rudyard Kipling
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Date Mar. 11 2015 16:36:22
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3430
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: Late night shop drawings (in reply to BarkellWH)
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I got a ride in a P-51 shortly after WW II ended. At Kelly field in San Antonio there were huge sales of surplus military equipment, including operational P-51s and P-38s--with the guns removed, of course.
"Uncle Bob" Weller, my Dad's pre-war business partner was denied enlistment. Though he was an expert pilot, one arm was shorter than the other, as a result of an aviation accident at some point.
As soon as the surplus equipment came on the market, Uncle Bob took advantage of the opportunity, bidding on various lots and often winning. I believe my father was probably a silent partner.
Among many other things they bought and sold for a profit, were more than one P-51 and a few P-38s. The armor that protected the P-51's pilot was removed to lighten the plane. On a visit to San Antonio shortly before he went back overseas, Dad took me for a hop in one of the P-51s. He was a bomber guy during the war. It was perhaps his second takeoff in a P-51. I remember his excited, somewhat colorful comment about the plane's reaction to the very high torque of the Merlin engine on the takeoff run.
His aerobatic skills were still intact from his pre-war barnstorming days putting on airshows at county fairs. He put the P-51 through its paces.
I really wanted a ride in a P-38, but it was not to be.
The planes were sold in Central and South America as toys for wealthy playboys.
Sometime in the early 1950s while we lived on Bolling Air Force Base, Dad was called to the phone at dinner time. At that time Washington National Airport, Anacostia Naval Air Station and Bolling all had active runways in close proximity along the banks of the Potomac. Bolling had crash rescue responsibility for anything that went into the river. Three fast 42-foot boats belonged to the crash rescue squadron.
A privately owned P-38 had sliced off the tail section of an airline Constellation. Both went into the river. I heard Dad on the phone saying,
"Do you have the P-38 pilot's name?"
We learned later that along with the name he was told that the P-38 pilot was almost certainly dead.
Though Dad nearly never swore, he had a hot temper. His reply was, "Good. I won't have to kill the son of a bitch myself." The pilot was one of the playboys who bought a plane from Uncle Bob, and presumably Dad.
All of the airline passengers and crew survived, with at most minor injuries, rescued by the Bolling crash boats.
Recently there was a post on the local historic aircraft club's web page about the collection of an aging wealthy rancher in west Texas. The planes had gathered dust for years in his hangar. Among them was an unmodified P-51, bought from a private owner in Central America. It may even be the one I got to ride in.
Of Uncle Bob's other purchases, the one that fascinated me most was a diesel railroad locomotive. Steam was still the dominant mode in 1946. I got a ride in the roaring big diesel as well, with Uncle Bob grinning at the throttle.
RNJ
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Date Mar. 11 2015 17:45:28
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3430
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: Late night shop drawings (in reply to Richard Jernigan)
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Perhaps a word of explanation is due. The P-51 is a single seater. After the removal of the armor plating there was room for me, at age 8 to sit in an improvised kiddie seat behind the pilot. There wasn't room for even a small boy in the P-38s.
I assume there are still some P-51s being flown today. Thirty years ago they were still popular for around-the-pylons air races, and generally for hobbyists who could afford the fuel and upkeep. Most that I have seen have been modified with counter-rotating propellors. One prop is mounted just behind the other, with a gearbox. One prop turns clockwise, the other counterclockwise to somewhat offset the huge torque of the Rolls-Royce Merlin engine.
The two Allison 1,600 horsepower (1,200 KW) V-12s of the P-38 were themselves counter-rotating. The differences between the clockwise and counterclockwise versions complicated the spare parts and maintenance situation for the contestants of tractor pull competitions who used the Allisons in their monstrous machines.
I was standing beside one of my south Texas cousins as he had a somewhat frustrating telephone conversation with one of the Confederate Air Force* mechanics at Harlingen.
Looking at his wrist watch, my cousin said, "Yes, I'm looking at it."
"..." the mechanic talking.
"It's a Rolex. And I know the difference between clockwise and counter-clockwise, dammit."
*The Confederate Air Force (now the Commemorative Air Force) collects, restores, exhibits and flies WW II aircraft. We used to gather for their annual show, an all-day major spectacle. By coincidence, it usually happened in the week of Dad's birthday.
Once we landed just before the airport was closed for the show. We had to park a long way from the reviewing stands and walk about a mile and a half. On the way I spotted a C-45 (Twin Beech), a small twin engine cargo plane. It was dirty, with oil streaks down the sides. Sitting in the shade under the wings were some men with long hair and beards. To my embarrassment, when they called out to me I recognized them as people I had known in Central America. Having heard they had turned to smuggling, I walked on silently, looking straight ahead.
With a slightly mischievous smile, Dad said, "Aren't you going to talk to your friends? They look kind of interesting."
Dad sent the rest of the group on ahead as we walked over to talk to the outlaws. Soon enough they were pumping him for sources of parts, tech manuals and the like, and he was enjoying answering their questions.
After a while he asked, "What do you boys haul in this plane, if you don't mind my asking?"
"We take stuff into Mexico," the leader answered. "Kitchen appliances, parts for expensive cars, that kind of thing. Stuff that's hard to get because of the import laws."
"You dead head [fly empty] on the way back?" asked Dad.
"Sometimes," was the reply.
One year Prince Philip, Elizabeth II's husband was at nearby Brownsville on the day of the show. A Canadian B-25 flew to Brownsville and picked him up. His schedule didn't permit landing and a meet-and-greet, so as they flew over the show ground at low altitude the B-25's radio was patched into the P.A. system on the ground.
Prince Philip was sworn in as a Colonel in the Confederate Air Force, repeating the oath which included a clause promising never to use his rank or uniform for personal gain or political advantage.
The ceremony concluded with a wave from Prince Philip from the port waist gunner's turret, and a victory roll by the B-25.
In the morning the Confederate Air Force would fly. The sky was filled with planes in staged mock battles. After lunch the professionals took over.
My reaction to the Navy's Blue Angels stunt team differed from Stephen's. Watching them one year I stood next to a friend, a woman who flew in the Powder Puff Derby transcontinental air races in the 1960s and 1970s. She had a Piper Cherokee Six, her husband flew a Stearman with high lift wings and a souped up engine for aerobatics. In the newspaper photo she is on the right. The other woman was her copilot in the last of the Powder Puff series in 1977. They placed 7th in a field of 140.
When the Blue Angels show was over she and I were pounding one another on the back, whooping and cheering. I was in my mid-forties, but I was exclaiming, "Where do we go to enlist in the Navy??!!"
At one of the shows we sat behind my parents, who were front and center in the reviewing stand. The Red Devils were (are?) a group of five fliers of Pitts Special miniature stunt biplanes. In formation on their takeoff roll they cut on the smoke. As soon as their wingtips could clear the ground in the maneuver, they snap rolled.
After they gained altitude they did some other death defying stunts. The woman sitting next to my mother, about the same age, leaned over and said, "I'm sure glad my husband is not up there with those fools."
After a brief pause and a glance at Dad, Mom replied, "I would like to be up there with them."
RNJ
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