LinuxCon: Dragons and penguins in space [LWN.net]

LinuxCon: Dragons and penguins in space

Posted Sep 20, 2012 1:52 UTC (Thu) by smoogen (subscriber, #97)
Parent article: LinuxCon: Dragons and penguins in space

Rockets and avionics gets a lot of oversight from everything from the State Department, the Department of Defence, FAA, etc. It comes under all of them in one part or another (since the rocket will fly and land over non-US territory it comes under the State Departments perview).

However, none of those are probably the reason for the lack of detail. The main issue will be lawyers and risk taking. If the US government launches a rocket it is covered by various indemnities that Congress has laid out to make sure that lawyers can't sue anymore because the rocket might have caused someone's eggs 10 states away to go bad (either from etheric vibrations or that the rocket landed in said eggs.) When a private company does a launch it is completely different scheme and anything that comes under the words "problem" becomes a lawyers meat and potatoes. So every lawyer from NASA to SpaceX and inbetween is probably exercising the almighty red-pen on what is going on... just to make sure that they don't end up in a multi billion to trillion dollar lawsuit [The amount estimated what could have been sued for the Columbia disaester was in the low trillion dollar state.. if the US government had allowed itself to be sued.]

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LinuxCon: Dragons and penguins in space

Posted Sep 20, 2012 11:11 UTC (Thu) by Yorick (guest, #19241) [Link] (3 responses)

Quite true. In addition, advanced rocketry is one of the essential parts of a long-distance nuclear ballistic missile, and not necessarily the least difficult one. There are good reasons to err on the side of caution for non-proliferation reasons if nothing else.

Of course, it would be nice if the SpaceX boffins be allowed to discuss technicalities about selected topics, as argued in the article.

LinuxCon: Dragons and penguins in space

Posted Sep 20, 2012 14:34 UTC (Thu) by msbrown (guest, #38262) [Link] (2 responses)

Correct. Almost all of the techniques necessary to getting an object into space and guiding it on an orbital mission are also techniques necessary for missiles.

This was the subtext for the '60s "space race", which rarely gets acknowledged. We were learning how to make better ICBMs as well as getting people to the Moon.

LinuxCon: Dragons and penguins in space

Posted Sep 22, 2012 12:32 UTC (Sat) by madhatter (subscriber, #4665) [Link] (1 responses)

> Almost all of the techniques necessary to getting an object into space
> and guiding it on an orbital mission are also techniques necessary
> for missiles.

Arguably, it's the other way around; to quote Neal Stephenson (Lock-In, 2011):

"Biz Dev guy: we could make a preposterous amount of money from communications satellites.

Engineer: It will be expensive to build those, but even so, nothing compared to the cost of building the machines needed to launch them into orbit.

Biz Dev guy: Funny you should mention that. It so happens that our government has already put $4 trillion into building the rockets and supporting technology we need. There's only one catch.

Engineer: Okay, I'll bite. What's the catch?

Biz Dev guy: Your communications satellite has to be the size, shape and weight of a hydrogen bomb."

LinuxCon: Dragons and penguins in space

Posted Sep 22, 2012 19:03 UTC (Sat) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

LOL. ICMBs and space expeditions are intrinsically linked, but this story is more convoluted.

USSR won [the early] space race because government paid for it's development because it started development. Of course it was under impression that it pays for ICMBs development, but they started before they even knew how much hydrogen bomb will weight! First hydrogen bomb had weight in excess of 7 metric tons and it was clear that such a large mass can not be hauled to space or between continents (with the use of technology possible back then). Korolev decided to build rocket specifically to send human to the orbit - and then hope that guys who develop the hydrogen bomb will be able to shrink it enough. The ploy worked beautifully: descendants of that some rockets are still the most most frequently used launch vehicle in the world!

So yes, we have only reached space because government gave money to develop the ICBMs, but it does not mean that ICMBs were designed to deliver the hydrogen bomb.

LinuxCon: Dragons and penguins in space

Posted Sep 20, 2012 19:55 UTC (Thu) by Klavs (guest, #10563) [Link] (1 responses)

secrecy my ...

Building rockets/ballistic missiles, is something the "bad guys" already know how to do, so I seriously see no reason why the Linux part of that should be any secret.

f.ex. the Danish Open Source project "Copenhagen Suborbitals" - which are hard working at building rockets, and have launched a few already, publish documents, detailing how they've build the different rocket types they built - it's all available for download right here: http://www.copenhagensuborbitals.com/

It's sad they felt the need for such IMHO unneeded secrecy, and about Linux even - which has NOTHING to do with the ballistic missile part, which isn't even a secret either.

LinuxCon: Dragons and penguins in space

Posted Sep 20, 2012 19:57 UTC (Thu) by Klavs (guest, #10563) [Link]

oops. This was not meant to be a reply to another comment. Missing that edit button ;)