From: skunk-works-digest-owner@mail.orst.edu To: skunk-works-digest@mail.orst.edu Subject: Skunk Works Digest V5 #632 Reply-To: skunk-works-digest@mail.orst.edu Errors-To: skunk-works-digest-owner@mail.orst.edu Precedence: Skunk Works Digest Thursday, 7 March 1996 Volume 05 : Number 632 In this issue: Challenger did not explode Near Miss over New Mexico (fwd) RE: Weekday WINGS Re: Nuclear rockets RE: Weekday WINGS RE: Weekday WINGS RE: Weekday WINGS Re: Can anybody help here? RE: Weekday WINGS Re: Can anybody help here? Re: Skunk Works Digest V5 #631 Re: Skunk Works Digest V5 #631 Re: Nuclear rockets RE: Weekday WINGS Correction: Re: Nuclear rockets Re: Near Miss over New Mexico (fwd) Re: C17 reborn.. See the end of the digest for information on subscribing to the skunk-works or skunk-works-digest mailing lists and on how to retrieve back issues. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Nick Barnes Date: Wed, 06 Mar 1996 10:52:56 +0000 Subject: Challenger did not explode > From: dadams@netcom.com (Dean Adams) > Date: Mon, 4 Mar 1996 03:21:53 -0800 (PST) > Subject: Re: Nevada Test Site EIS/hearing (secrets revealed!) > > > > Challenger did not explode. It burned. > > Hmmm.. it sure looked like an explosion to me... > > A strange bit of semantics it seems... I suppose one could > accurately say that Challenger itself did not "explode", it > was blown up when the ET exploded. The end result is pretty > much the same though. Further and further off-topic.... No. The ET did not explode. There is a very important distinction between an explosion (in which the flame front travels faster than the speed of sound) and a fire (in which it does not). Explosions cause massive shock waves and are far more damaging. The ET broke apart, and the hydrogen therein _burned_. If the ET had exploded, the orbiter would have been pulverised. As it was, most of the damage to the orbiter was caused by being pushed out into the hypersonic airstream in, shall we say, a non-optimal attitude. It's actually quite hard to get a LH2/LOX rocket to _explode_, because the LH2 won't do anything on its own; it needs to be combined with oxygen to liberate its energy. So if you've got a large volume of LH2, you need to disperse it in order for it to do anything. Explosives are self-contained (think monopropellants). Nick Barnes, speaking for himself ------------------------------ From: Dave.Tilbury@UK.Sun.COM (David Tilbury - Sun UK) Date: Wed, 6 Mar 1996 11:18:57 GMT Subject: Near Miss over New Mexico (fwd) Forwarded from IUFO mailing list, Dave - -------------------------- Greetings- Last night (March 3, 1996) in the early evening, Flight 573 of America West Airlines was making a routine flight from Dallas to Phoenix when it came very close to colliding with a very, very large triangle shaped craft over New Mexico at approximetely 30,000 feet. The craft, according to my source, was NOT see by FAA flight controllers, but WAS picked up by NORAD, due to what was described as a "doppler shift." The speed and direction of the "unknown" is not known at this time. The reason that I am making this public at this time is that it is my understanding that the crew has filed a flight record of the incident and have been interviewed by the media. It is my understanding that this incident is a legitimate "near miss" and that it was not a case of mistaken identification as has been alleged regarding the Korean Airlines sighting in Alaska. It will be interesting to see if it makes the national press. -Steve Jones- independent researcher * Origin: From the Ashes - 916-991-4105 (1:203/396) ------------------------------ From: BaDge Date: Wed, 6 Mar 1996 07:51:16 -0500 (EST) Subject: RE: Weekday WINGS I concur with Mark, EotS starts Sunday 2100 EST., according to my promos. Looks juicy! ;-) regards, ________ BaDge ------------------------------ From: "J. Pharabod" Date: Wed, 06 Mar 96 15:19:19 MET Subject: Re: Nuclear rockets >As for fears, this type of reactor would never explode. [..] >Charles E. Smith (Mon, 4 Mar 1996 03:59:17 PST) Does this mean that this type of nuclear reactor can't have a "nuclear excursion", i.e. a chain reaction triggered by prompt (also called immediate) neutrons, not by delayed ones ? AFAIK, this phenomenon already occurred three times (not in nuclear rockets !) (and not speaking of the program SPERT, Special Power Excursion Reactor Test, which I don't know very well). Experiment: July 22, 1954, Borax (Boiling Reactor Experiment), near Idaho Falls, USA. Debris climbed up to 75 feet and were scattered within a 300 feet radius. Accident: January 3, 1961, SL-1 (Stationary Low Power Reactor 1), near Idaho Falls, USA. 3 immediate deaths. Accident: April 26, 1986, Chernobyl (Soviet Union). 31 immediate or quasi-immediate deaths + an unknown (probably great) number of delayed deaths. Are the nuclear rocket reactors really different regarding this problem ? J. Pharabod ------------------------------ From: tcrobi@most.fw.hac.com (Tom Robison) Date: Wed, 6 Mar 1996 09:53:34 +0500 Subject: RE: Weekday WINGS >I thought I saw a promo tonight on Discovery that said this show was on >Sunday? I'm not sure. Also, the promo led me to believe it was the first in a >series of shows . .. . > Yes, I thought I heard that this was to be shown on Sunday, also, 8 p.m. eastern, I believe. Tom in Indiana tcrobi@most.fw.hac.com or TCRobi0648@aol.com ' (oo) - -------oOOO-()-OOOo-------- ------------------------------ From: ahanley@usace.mil Date: Wed, 6 Mar 96 9:09:50  Subject: RE: Weekday WINGS I also saw the Sunday promo for the sattellite show last night. I was wrong. Obviously, I can't read something printed clearly before me. Or, did the CIA have it changed to confuse us? Or, are the aliens just making us Think it's Sunday night??!!??? What if the Whole Show is a hoax??!! What if it's a plot and they plan to kidnap William Shatner and replace him with a mechanical-appearing robot (How would we be able to tell the difference?)!!?? Art "I'm in Trouble Now" Hanley Don't blame those who I work for, this is only me ------------------------------ From: BaDge Date: Wed, 6 Mar 1996 13:14:32 -0500 (EST) Subject: RE: Weekday WINGS On Wed, 6 Mar 1996 ahanley@usace.mil wrote: > I also saw the Sunday promo for the sattellite show last night. I was wrong. > Obviously, I can't read something printed clearly before me. Or, did the CIA > have it changed to confuse us? Or, are the aliens just making us Think it's > Sunday night??!!??? What if the Whole Show is a hoax??!! What if it's a plot Certainly this =can't= be the Real Art H. posting, since =he= knows how to spell satellite, and in addition, I believe they are going to eliminate Sunday, in favor of the six day week, to save on calendars, and appointment books, and just call it SMunday. ;-) regards, ________ BaDge ------------------------------ From: Mary Shafer Date: Wed, 6 Mar 1996 14:26:05 -0500 (EST) Subject: Re: Can anybody help here? If it's privately held material, rather than official material, even an FOIA request may not produce it. For example, I have a bunch of information on the F-8C stability and control derivatives that doesn't really exist officially. I have "private" copies of the data tapes, but the real tapes vanished long ago. If you did a FOIA request for this stuff, they'd never find it except by happenstance. The only way it would appear is if someone that they asked happened to remember that I was working on it and even then, I'd have to retrieve 14 boxes of stuff from document storage and dig through them. It seems likely that the sentimental retention of this material is private, not official, and the information may not exist officially. Besides, if it's really classified, FOIA won't produce it. It's not unlikely for the declassification process to take over a year, particularly if another agency was the original classifiying agency, as was the Air Force for the U-2C. You should have seen what we went through to get the SWERVE, X-15, and REENTRY F stuff declassified for our hypersonics paper. The only reason it happened in only a few months was that people inside all agencies involved very much wanted the paper to appear. Logic, in the fact that U-2Cs are gone and U-2Rs are much different, doesn't work on security officers, unfortunately. Have you done a literature search to find a restricted paper on U-2Cs that might have the information? What about Jane's and Flight and all the other wonderful British publications? I'd ask my contact to lean on Security a bit. Regards, Mary Mary Shafer DoD #0362 KotFR shafer@ursa-major.spdcc.com URL http://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/People/Shafer/mary.html Some days it don't come easy/And some days it don't come hard Some days it don't come at all/And these are the days that never end.... On Tue, 5 Mar 1996, David Lednicer wrote: > > One of my side interests is modeling and analyzing aircraft of > historical interest in the Computational Fluid Dynamics software that my > company develops and sells. Previously, I have looked at the Beech > Staggerwing, Gee Bee R-2, P-51 Mustang, Spitfire IX, Fw 190, etc. > Current projects are the Me 262, DC-3, Spirit of St. Louis and the U-2C. > > About a year ago, I made a request to NASA/Ames that they supply > me with the U-2C loft data. I was told that it had all been officially > thrown away, but people had saved copies for sentimental purposes. One > fellow there (a Lockheed engineer supporting the ER-2) offered to put it > through security review so that I could legally have the data. This was > a year ago, and he says that security is dragging their heels. My question: > does anybody know how I can go about filing a Freedom of Information Act > request to expedite this process? As all the U-2Cs are gone, and the > U-2R only bears passing resemblence, you would think that the data would be > no big deal (and covered by last year's Executive Order). > > ------------------------------------------------------------------- > David Lednicer | "Applied Computational Fluid Dynamics" > Analytical Methods, Inc. | email: dave@amiwest.com > 2133 152nd Ave NE | tel: (206) 643-9090 > Redmond, WA 98052 USA | fax: (206) 746-1299 > > ------------------------------ From: ahanley@usace.mil Date: Wed, 6 Mar 96 11:47:15  Subject: RE: Weekday WINGS Reply by : Art Hanley@IM@SPK Date : Wednesday, March 6, 1996 11:47:12 Reply to : , smtp@SPKSYS12@Servers[baj7d@galen.med.virginia.edu] Reply CC : internet[skunk-works@mail.orst.edu] Reply: Those Darn Aliens! Now they've even infiltrated my spelling checker! Art "or is it Really him?" Hanley Anyone (or any thing) that is watching this either electronically or from Out There can rest assured that these views are my own and do not represent those of my controllers (oops! I meant "employers"). P.S. Just in case, I want to state that I've Always believed that CIA personnel deserved more money -------------------------- [Original Message] ------------------------- To : Cc : From : BaDge Subject : RE: Weekday WINGS Date : Wednesday, March 6, 1996 at 5:14:32 am PST - ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ On Wed, 6 Mar 1996 ahanley@usace.mil wrote: > I also saw the Sunday promo for the sattellite show last night. I was wrong. > Obviously, I can't read something printed clearly before me. Or, did the CIA > have it changed to confuse us? Or, are the aliens just making us Think it's > Sunday night??!!??? What if the Whole Show is a hoax??!! What if it's a plot Certainly this =can't= be the Real Art H. posting, since =he= knows how to spell satellite, and in addition, I believe they are going to eliminate Sunday, in favor of the six day week, to save on calendars, and appointment books, and just call it SMunday. ;-) regards, ________ BaDge ------------------------------ From: larry@ichips.intel.com Date: Wed, 6 Mar 1996 11:54:44 -0800 Subject: Re: Can anybody help here? >One fellow there (a Lockheed engineer supporting the ER-2) offered to put >it through security review so that I could legally have the data. This was >a year ago, and he says that security is dragging their heels. > >As all the U-2Cs are gone, and the U-2R only bears passing resemblence, ... They're probably worried that someone might build one and use it against some country that can't afford the defensive measure. Or, the people that do the review are too busy doing other stuff. At least Lockheed is still around. Some of the old hypersonic stuff I'm interested in no longer has the luxury of having the vendor or the sponsoring agency still around to do the declassification (like some of the old Repbublic Aircraft stuff from the early 60's). It just sits there and guys who know the subject tell me that there's nothing in it that's still sensitive but they don't have the time to figure out how it should be declassified. Larry ------------------------------ From: dlonsi@www710.gsfc.nasa.gov.or.dosgood@proxima.gsfc.nasa.gov (Dean Osgood) Date: Wed, 6 Mar 1996 16:51:03 +0027 Subject: Re: Skunk Works Digest V5 #631 >From: jgregor@bitbucket.engr.sgi.com (John Gregor) >Date: Wed, 6 Mar 1996 01:17:54 -0800 >Subject: Aliens among us... >YOUR CO-WORKER COULD BE A SPACE ALIEN, SAY EXPERTS ... here's how you >can tell (by Michael Cassels of the "National Inquirer") > >Many Americans work side by side with space aliens who look human - but >you can spot these visitors by looking for certain tip-offs, say >experts. > >They listed 10 signs to watch for: > >1. Odd or mismatched clothes. "Often space aliens don't fully >understand the different styles, so they wear combinations that are in ....................... >10. Displays a change of mood or physical reaction when near certain >high-tech hardware. "An alien may experience a mood change when a >microwave oven is turned on," said Steiger. The experts pointed out >that a co-worker would have to display most if not all of these traits >before you can positively identify him as a space alien. WOW THESE ALL SOUND EXACTLY LIKE EVERYBODY I WORK WITH Hmmmm........... Dean Osgood Optical Testing and Integration of Spacecraft dosgood@proxima.gsfc.nasa.gov or dlonsi@WWW710.gsfc.nasa.gov ------------------------------ From: BaDge Date: Wed, 6 Mar 1996 17:27:54 -0500 (EST) Subject: Re: Skunk Works Digest V5 #631 >...sound like all the people i work with Hey, just remember, a dead giveaway: 'if they ask you if you need a tow, and you say, "thanks, I've already got 12...!?"' '...You MAY be - an alien.' ;-) [apologies to rednecks everywhere, who originally had dibs on this joke] regards, ________ BaDge ------------------------------ From: keller@eos.ncsu.edu Date: Wed, 06 Mar 96 15:31:14 EST Subject: Re: Nuclear rockets J. Pharabod shaped the electrons and holes to say... >>As for fears, this type of reactor would never explode. [..] >>Charles E. Smith (Mon, 4 Mar 1996 03:59:17 PST) >Does this mean that this type of nuclear reactor can't have a >"nuclear excursion", i.e. a chain reaction triggered by prompt- >(also called immediate) neutrons, not by delayed ones ? >AFAIK, this phenomenon already occurred three times (not in nuclear >rockets !) (and not speaking of the program SPERT, Special Power----> Nice >Excursion Reactor Test, which I don't know very well). | seeing | this... >Experiment: July 22, 1954, Borax (Boiling Reactor Experiment), near | >Idaho Falls, USA. Debris climbed up to 75 feet and were scattered | >within a 300 feet radius. | | >Accident: January 3, 1961, SL-1 (Stationary Low Power Reactor 1), | >near Idaho Falls, USA. 3 immediate deaths. | | >Accident: April 26, 1986, Chernobyl (Soviet Union). 31 immediate | alongside >or quasi-immediate deaths + an unknown (probably great) number<----- this... >of delayed deaths. ...'cuz the two are sort of related, and the Soviets apparent ignorance of the first played a major role in the occurence of the second. More below. >Are the nuclear rocket reactors really different regarding this >problem ? >J. Pharabod First of all, since I'm copying the list in response, there's something I need to explain first. J. Pharabod is obviously aware of it, but it's something the mostly non-nuclear engineer audience of skunk-works are probably not aware of, so please bear with me for a few sentences. About 99.5%, the exact percentage varying with reactor type, of the neutrons emitted in nuclear fission are emitted essentially instantaneously with the fission process. These are called prompt neutrons because they're emitted promptly with the fission process. They have a lifetime in the reactor, commonly called the prompt neutron generation time, which can range anywhere from about 1 millisecond in a big, graphite reactor like Chernobyl to around 10 nanoseconds in certain fast critical assemblies. The other roughly 0.5% of the neutrons are called delayed neutrons, because they're released as a result of the radioactive decay of some the fission products. The delay in emission ranges from milliseconds to several tens of seconds. These few delayed neutrons have a huge effect on the overall time response of a reactor. Under normal conditions, reactors are supposed to be operated in a condition where they're called prompt subcritical, that it, the prompt neutrons alone are not enough to sustain a chain reaction. If you ever get to a situation where the prompt neutrons are enough to sustain the chain reaction by themselves, you have what's called a prompt criticality (or supercriticality). In this case, the reactor power level will grow on a time scale on the order the prompt neutron generation time, which is usually microseconds, and, yes, what follows is a nuclear power excursion. Pardon the jargon but that's a quite accurate technical description of what happens. Whether or not this power excursion is destructive or not will depend on the reactor design. In all modern western reactor designs, the reactors are designed with natural negative feedback coefficients. That is, as the power levels increase, their own internal feedback mechanisms tend to decrease, and then ultimately shutdown the chain reaction. Designing reactors this way is pretty much just the result of a long tradition in nuclear safety, at least here in the west. This tradition, though, was rather reinforced by the SPERT experiments which J. Pharabod references above. Those were tests of reactors which had positive feedback characteristics, and thus were unstable. They couldn't be controlled, thus the lesson was, don't build unstable reactors with positive feedback characteristics. Modern western power reactors, including those in use in the US and France, are designed to withstand a hefty prompt critical excursion without sustaining damage, and they have, since I happen to know of at least one US test where this was done intentionally as a part of a test. Things worked as advertised, and there was no damage to the reactor, which still generates power for the Philadelphia Electric Company. I know of other unintentional incidents in the US and France where, if they didn't go prompt critical, they came real close. It's highly unlikely that any nuclear rocket engine would be designed with an unstable reactor core, although I've never seen any kinetics parameters for these reactors. They would be essentially impossible to control since the small size also makes the prompt neutron generation time quite short. I will have to wonder a bit about the safety standards which were followed in SDIO's Timberwind reactor, though. A few years ago I ran across a paper on it in a nuclear engineering journal. The paper said it had a specified startup ramp rate of 0 to 100% power in five seconds--awfully fast for a nuclear reactor, but it rather figures since the reactor has to be started up during a suborbital staging event, where, clearly, they can't waste any time or they'll at least lose a big part of their nuclear rocket advantage, or even have their rocket fall back to earth. As I wrote yesterday, once again, this a pretty dumb application for a nuclear rocket. As for the other events you cite, BORAX I've heard of, but don't recall much about it, and so can't comment. If people are interested, I could probably be persuaded to look over some of my old class materials, since I think I have some stuff on that event. SL1: This was an accident at an experimental reactor intended for the US Army that happened around 1960. The operators at the time were supposed to be preparing the reactor for startup, a procedure which required lifting each control rod slightly to connect it to it's drive shaft. The procedure specified that each control rod be slowly lifted no more than 4-5 inches. The subsequent analysis of the accident suggested that the excursion which destroyed the reactor would have taken a fast pull of around 20 inches. What was the operator doing? We don't know. He's dead. So are his two buddies, and the three together were the three fatalities, and the only people at the site at the time of the accident. It has been suggested that the operator reponsible for this event my have trying to commit suicide. I have note that SL-1 didn't meet current safety standards. It could be started up (taken critical) by pulling just a single control rod, with all others fully inserted. The current western standard is that the reactor has to remain safely shutdown with the most reactive control rod fully withdrawn, with the rest fully inserted. This is Adm. Rickover's response to the SL-1 event. Chernobyl: This type of reactor raises steam by boiling water in it's core. Any reactor which does this will have what's called a void reactivity feedback coefficient, which is simply the reactor's response to steam voids being formed in its core. Chernobyl had (and the remaining reactors there still do have) a positive void coefficient, making it highly unstable. This very much goes against western safety standards, which were partly learned at the SPERT tests noted above. I've never heard a good explanation for why the Soviets designed those reactors the way they did, since it certainly wasn't necessary. The only explanation I have heard was that they could get more plutonium out of them that way. This is true, but it's only a marginal increase over what they could have gotten with a safely negative void coefficient. Suffice to say, Chernobyl, IMNSHO, was an accident waiting to happen. A final word on things nuclear which blowup: If you look in an encyclopedia at the description of a nuclear weapon, it looks simple, right? Well, it isn't. As Andrei Sakharov said about fifteen years ago, "I could give you the plans, but you couldn't build it." Getting a bang out of any nuclear device isn't real easy. Whew, long response, but I thought an intelligent question deserved an intelligent answer. Paul Keller keller@eos.ncsu.edu My opinions, not my employer's. ------------------------------ From: Wei-Jen Su Date: Wed, 6 Mar 1996 18:44:42 -0500 (EST) Subject: RE: Weekday WINGS On Wed, 6 Mar 1996, Tom Robison wrote: > >I thought I saw a promo tonight on Discovery that said this show was on > >Sunday? I'm not sure. Also, the promo led me to believe it was the first in a > >series of shows . .. . > > > Yes, I thought I heard that this was to be shown on Sunday, also, 8 p.m. > eastern, I believe. > The show will be on Sunday March 10, 1996. It will be at 9:00 pm Eastern time. This is the correct data because I am a alien... ups... I mean because I check the Discovery WWW page... :) May the Force be with you Su Wei-Jen E-mail: wsu02@barney.poly.edu ------------------------------ From: keller@eos.ncsu.edu Date: Wed, 06 Mar 96 19:18:09 EST Subject: Correction: Re: Nuclear rockets Oops, after sending that last monster off I thought about things and realized that I had screwed things up with what all of the 1950s nuclear tests were all about. SPERT was just a fairly benign, but highly informative, series of tests on nuclear fuel rods and materials to test their ability to withstand power excursions. The results of those tests still form the basis for alot of nuclear regulations all over the western world today. BORAX, OTH, was the infamous test of the unstable reactor in Idaho which blew up, and which basically taught people...Don't do that, that is, build unstable reactors. Thus my lines in the quote really should extend from from the BORAX test to the Chernobyl accident. Too many 50s tests to keep straight in the business... Paul Keller ------------------------------ From: "Earl Needham, KD5XB, in Clcovis, NM" Date: Wed, 6 Mar 96 18:08 PST Subject: Re: Near Miss over New Mexico (fwd) At 11:18 AM 3/6/96 GMT, you wrote: >Forwarded from IUFO mailing list, > >Dave > >-------------------------- > >Greetings- > Last night (March 3, 1996) in the early evening, Flight 573 of America >West Airlines was making a routine flight from Dallas to Phoenix when it came >very close to colliding with a very, very large triangle shaped craft over New >Mexico at approximetely 30,000 feet. What part of the state did this take place in? - -- You mean you've jumped...ROUNDS??!! (Overheard at the Clovis, NM Parachute Club) (Of course, silly! Hasn't everyone?) Member Bonus Days Club since 1980 Ok, the above means PARACHUTES. NeedhamE@3lefties.com ------------------------------ From: "Stefan 'Stetson' Skoglund" Date: Thu, 7 Mar 1996 09:19:26 +0100 Subject: Re: C17 reborn.. >>>>> "ahanley" == ahanley writes: ahanley> best plane. However, the point he was asserting was that ahanley> we only need 50-60 C-17s to do that. The rest of the ahanley> mission, in his opinion, could be accomplished by How much will 50-60 C17s cost ?? Remember the R&D costs. ahanley> derivatives of commercial aircraft for less money (the ahanley> difference might be even more dramatic if we converted ahanley> existing older versions of current aircraft that are ahanley> available at bargain prices). He also made a key ahanley> recommendation: That the money saved be used to equip the ahanley> new and older airlift fleet with up to date avionics to ahanley> allow our airlifters to routinely operate in the kind of ahanley> weather that commercial airliners operate in. Which current a/c ?? AMC has big problem with age-related problems in C141. They would have to replace the whole C141 fleet with 747 or smaller a/c. The lack of all-wheather cap. in military a/c is a problem. ------------------------------ End of Skunk Works Digest V5 #632 ********************************* To subscribe to skunk-works-digest, send the command: subscribe skunk-works-digest in the body of a message to "majordomo@mail.orst.edu". 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