I found the Soviet Union's alleged theory explaining the American space shuttle to their own leadership[1] to be quite interesting. According to some documents submitted to the central committee by the head of the fledgling Keldysh institute (famous for it's faculty - Israel Gelfand and Alexey Lyapunov among others), the shuttle could theoretically launch in a trajectory from Vandenburg, CA south towards and over Antarctica and northwards over the Indian Ocean towards Moscow, with several nuclear weapons aboard, as a kind of hypersonic dive bomber.
This would, in a nuclear exchange, bring the mean time from initial detection of an American attack to the first nuclear strike on Moscow down from seven minutes (UGM-73 missiles on a depressed trajectory launched from the North Sea near Denmark)[2] to a little over three minutes.
Fears of this, according to the theory, led to several of the design specifications for the Buran shuttle. I find the extensive concerns about, and optimizing of strategy around, minimizing warning time in a nuclear exchange to be fascinating.
>the shuttle could theoretically launch in a trajectory from Vandenburg, CA south towards and over Antarctica
Having spent time at the South Pole, the ice runway at the South Pole Station was sized and built and in part funded by NASA to handle the scenario in which a shuttle on a trajectory that took it over the pole found itself in need of an emergency divert runway.
That was one model. I sure hope it’s correct. If there’s one lesson I’ve learned over 30 years of following this topic, it’s that things very rarely break in our favor.
After reading endless books from the 70s/80s spreading the fear of entering a new ice age, going through acid rain and a hole in the ozone layer you would be surprised by how quickly important things change.
Acid rain was an enormous problem, and is no longer because a large number of countries passed emissions regulations to curb emissions that caused it. Places like London used to have so much air pollution, going outside on a rainy day was hazardous to your health because the fog was toxic.
The hole in the ozone layer is repaired because a large number of countries passed regulations prohibiting many uses of ozone-depleting substances, and consumers voted with their wallets as well.
Unfortunately, we're not seeing anywhere near the commitment required to slash CO2 emissions, and a huge amount of damage is already done.
It's not just climate change, but in the last fifty years, something like 2/3rds of wildlife has disappeared. In barely one generation we've wiped out two thirds of wildlife. That is mind boggling and if it doesn't count as a mass extinction, I don't know what does.
We’re above 1 degree C and heading towards 1.5 very quickly, with rising methane levels from multiple sources. This isn’t the ozone hole. I wish it was.
Sorry, but that is ridiculous; the diversion airport for a Vandenberg launch (the equivalent of the TAL abort mode) was Easter Island, which NASA had to upgrade at huge cost. Past that there would be enough energy for an abort to orbit. There was no 'land 1/3 of the way across the planet' shuttle abort mode and no way to get the thing home if it had.
I can't tell you why NASA funded it or on the basis of what calculations, only that they did. Large bureaucracies frequently do things that look irrational from the outside, as do those looking to prevent or win geopolitical conflicts (including possibly negotiations involving the cost of operating the Easter Island runway you mention, negotiations that might have been significantly advanced by being able to say "we have an alternate landing site under construction").
NASA does lots of stuff in lots of places, so maybe they spent some money on a South Pole airfield. The only thing I can tell you for sure is that it had no connection to the Space Shuttle.
It looks like I was at Pole about 15-20 years before your earliest trips, back in the days when the Cold War was still a thing (technically just having ended, but still having been a major part of all of our lives). There were a lot of old timers in those days whose era extended back to the early days of the shuttle (and at least one who went back to the Apollo days, but that's a different story). I'm guessing most of those folks retired long ago and those bits of cultural history likely faded away with them.
I'll also ask out of curiosity if the pair of guys that constituted the Naval outpost that operated the Ground Controlled Approach radar system at the South Pole runway is still there and still as stand-off-ish from the civilian station as they were back in the day, or whether that was a cold-war-era phenomenon (I always assumed that role was reserved for those individuals who managed to piss off an Admiral in a particularly impressive manner, as it seemed to be an incredibly isolated existence for them, hiking out to and back from the radar station and otherwise pretty much not interacting with anyone).
I wonder if that is the same thing as the radome installation I visited in 2010 or so. It was a long, long (cold!) hike almost to the other end of the skiway, and the installation was fascinating. I have to say I remember the people who showed us around being super nice... but it was also thoroughly a civilian operation, distinct from the New York Air Guard crews who would cycle through (and who I also had only good experiences with). Different times, I'm guessing! :-)
Nuclear capability explains the “single polar orbit with a large crossrange” requirement. How was the shuttle capable of such a large crossrange? Maneuverability in the atmosphere?
The large delta wings on the space shuttle are what allow the large cross-range, by letting it "turn" on the way down. The single polar orbit was to allow rapid, stealthy insertion of a reconnaissance satellite into polar orbit. According to the space shuttle engineers, there was never any contemplation of arming the shuttle, though the DoD did set many requirements (including payload bay size and cross-range).
I assume the details are highly-classified, but I'm curious if a similar cross-range capability is part of what the DOD's been experimenting with via the X-37B.
Basically, although the space shuttle has the worst glide ratio of any aerospace vehicle I am aware of. To simulate landing the shuttle, they used a businessjet with the engines in reverse…
Cool, interesting bit about how it actually simulated the flight characteristics that I didn't know before:
> To match the descent rate and drag profile of the real Shuttle at 37,000 feet (11,300 m), the main landing gear of the C-11A was lowered (the nose gear stayed retracted due to wind load constraints) and engine thrust was reversed. Its flaps could deflect upwards to decrease lift as well as downwards to increase lift.
This would, in a nuclear exchange, bring the mean time from initial detection of an American attack to the first nuclear strike on Moscow down from seven minutes (UGM-73 missiles on a depressed trajectory launched from the North Sea near Denmark)[2] to a little over three minutes.
Fears of this, according to the theory, led to several of the design specifications for the Buran shuttle. I find the extensive concerns about, and optimizing of strategy around, minimizing warning time in a nuclear exchange to be fascinating.
[1]https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3855/1 [2]https://www.scienceandglobalsecurity.org/archive/sgs03gronlu... (PDF)