This system could provide excellent reconnaissance and surveillance...
Why go to all that "trouble" when satellites in Earth orbit can do the "job" better??
This system could provide excellent reconnaissance and surveillance...
How would this have been better, cheaper or more reliable in 1969 than just putting a network of satellites in earth orbit?
It was decades from the first launch of an earth-orbiting satellite before anyone successfully used force to bring one down.
Furthermore, why don't you answer any of the questions posed to you?
I got to speculating some about how the Apollo Program's activities may have included the instrumentation of the moon and space itself
For example, I read in Michael Muolo's SPACE HANDBOOK, A WAR FIGHTER'S GUIDE TO SPACE(pagees 12 and 13)...
...that using satellites for military navigational puposes was very much a real world/real life, not hypothetical, not experimental, activity very early on in the US ICBM Program development history.
The submarine launched Polaris missiles tracked the transmissions of the Transit 1A satellite much as the Polaris missiles would track starlight in their conventional celestial navigational mode.
Now that is pretty dang good accuracy wise given we are talking the early 60s for testing and deployment.
Why not put trackable emiters/artificial stars for ICBMs to orient themselves on the moon itself...
...and would be out of reach in terms of their vulnarability to being "taken out".
The placement of signaling devices to which the subs and their ICBMs could tune on the moon and at the libration/Lagrangian points only makes eminent sense, does it not?
Anyway, I am almost positive that as I go along, I shall find ample evidence for this type of "offensive" activity...
Polaris missiles tracked both stars and satellites I have learned. Why not have your satellite out of reach?
Jack by the hedge, the beauty of my instrumented moon plus instrumented libration point model is one can "listen in", and "see" all the way around the earth from the moon and libration points L3, L4, L5.
The former backside libration point being "unstable"...
but perhaps manageable, manageable by way of "adjusting" an instrument that had drifted a bit from L3...
...or manageable by way of L3 being a "point/position" one could "substitute for" with a small constellation of geosynchronous satellites.
This system [of artificial satellites] could provide excellent reconnaissance and surveillance, could provide for the relaying of signals, and, as just above, could provide an artificial star function to be used in position determination for both earth grounded objects and ICBMs of the Polaris variety that track stars as a component of their navigation mechanism.
Can't do this with your mars thing Jack by the hedge.
Neil Armstrong jumped ship............ Air Force? Civilian? Why during Apollo, he was perhaps more than anything else working for the US Navy Jack by the hedge.....
How would this have been better, cheaper or more reliable in 1969 than just putting a network of satellites in earth orbit?
It was decades from the first launch of an earth-orbiting satellite before anyone successfully used force to bring one down.
Furthermore, why don't you answer any of the questions posed to you?
Imagine it is 1970, and our ICBM early warning system has picked up on the more than startling and sobering fact that the Soviets have launched 300 ICBMs in a first strike effort. The red birds are coming, 15 score of them, very fast and very hard. We have 20 minutes to get our act together. The earth is turning turning turning. We must align the platforms of our own ICBMs in preparation for our response. It is the middle of the day here in the United States. How do we align the platforms of those 400 birds of our own, the nasty ends of which we would like very much to park in various Soviet strategic and scenic lots?
Why go to all that "trouble" when satellites in Earth orbit can do the "job" better??
On the other hand, in this asymmetric hypothetical, we, the USA, has assets on the moon and in libration points that cannot be taken out so readily. Go after those, and assuming you can find them, assuming they are not mobile, it will take days to reach them. A strategic war would be over by then.
So ... um ... what's the marginal cost of building one more nuclear missile to make up for the lack of navigational precision?
What's the marginal cost of building a slightly higher yield warhead to compensate for the mile or two navigational drift of inertial guidance?
What's the marginal cost of sending one more bomb by airplane or building one more land base which, being a fixed distance from its target, is easier to navigate from?
Now how does that compare to the costs of whatever the heck your plan is?
Which is why, if we created such assets, the Russians would have to attack them preemptively. It's exactly the same as letting Iran have a nuclear reactor. The danger to everyone is so great, nobody can afford to wait for war. We have to keep Iran from having the capability now, long before war.
The moment the US gets a decisive upper hand in a nuclear war is the moment the US attacks. So, the Soviets could never afford to let us gain that upper hand.
If the Soviets thought we could destroy their missile guidance systems while keeping our own, they would have to fight us immediately.
Nuclear strategy hasn't been about "winning" a nuclear war since the 1950's. If you read any of your sources honestly, you would know that.
One flat out could not align the platforms with the requisite accuracy without the aforementioned system in place...
They must go up and get a star sighting, native/authentic star or artificial
And, my system as described has post first strike survivablility inherent in its logistics.
Your alternative "solution" Loss Leader is noted as a valiant attempt to save NASA's credibility...
...but I must reject it for these all too obvious reasons.
At first you tried to argue that the Moon alone was sufficient. Now you're trying to tell us that yes, you need other spacecraft in other positions to make up for the shortcomings of the Moon. That's a step in the right direction. And perhaps if you stop resisting the facts and start listening to the experts, you'll realize why further steps in the right direction lead you to where everyone else is standing.
No, not "unstable" -- just unstable. You don't get to pretend the constraints of the problem are something they are not.
ROFLMAO! You have absolutely no idea why those Lagrange points are unstable, do you?
Drive a stake into the ground and round off the apex. Now balance a basketball on top of it without any other assistance. See how long it takes for the basketball to "drift" away from the apex.
The Lagrange point as "place where the gravity and orbital forces cancel" does not equate to "place where I can put a spacecraft." You mean you managed to get a "maths" degree without studying the properties of tensor fields?
The Moon has line-of-sight problems and orbital-period problems, hence cannot be used as an instrument platform. So you augment them with the Lagrange points.
But the Lagrange points have stability problems (even the stable ones). So you augment them with a constellation of artificial satellites.
Indeed. And that's exactly the system that is in place and has worked fine for decades.
But you concede that you can't do it with the Moon and/or the Lagrange points either. You concede that you'd need to augment the system with artificial satellites. And when you realize that you need artificial satellites to make your idea work, you realize that artificial satellites are all you need to make your idea work. They themselves are the answer, not the Moon mumbo jumbo.
And then you can see how we came up with those ideas decades ago and built them, and that's what your authors are talking about -- not some silly, physically doomed plan to instrument the Moon.
Neil Armstrong was a civilian during Apollo. So here again, all the evidence says one thing, but you decide to believe something else. Surprise, surprise.
The subs themselves would be submerged when the order for launch came through. They must go up and get a star sighting, native/authentic star or artificial.
A moon plus libration position constellation of artificial stars should be viewed not instead of, but as a complement to more "conventional" lower flying satellites.
They, the more distant artificial stars, offer great great advantages.
Again, please see my posts above for details.
Of course my "theory" will become more complete Jay as I learn more....
I find it sort of silly that you object to my "adding" the libration points as obvious posts for military equipment planting.
I had not even known about these until I read about them recently...
...some authors suggesting how ideal they would be as sites for communications satellites.
I have only been at this 6 months or so.
In a year, my theory will look of course similar in general outline Jay, as it is as you know, quite on target in terms of its broad perspective.
That said, many details will have been filled in by then...
Why put anything electronic on the moon? If you are going to use stars as your guides then just use the moon as well, we know where it will be at any given time just like the stars.
SLBM's inertial navigation system is aligned to the ship's inertial navigation system, this includes heading, roll, pitch, depth, latitude, longitude, and speed data. A missile must know which way it is pointing if it is going to fly to its target. The star-tracker is used once the missile is above the atmosphere.
I operated numerous inertial navigation systems and fed missiles this data while I was in the Navy (SINS, ESGN, RLGN).
Of course my "theory" will become more complete Jay as I learn more....