Moonraker: a Technical Analysis of the 1979 James Bond Film. Louis Shalako.

The structure is typical for the era, shiny and mostly bullshit...

 

Louis Shalako

In the James Bond film Moonraker, in the opening scenes, a space shuttle is stolen off the back of a Boeing 747. 

You may remember the scene, where a couple of guys sneak out of the broom closet or the pantry or somewhere. They fire up the engines, and take off, with the blast destroying the plane. 

(Yeah, piss-poor security, eh. - ed).

The empty weight of the shuttle would be about 165,000 lbs. It was transported on the back of a 747. That part is real. It really did happen, sort of. There would be no payload, obviously, what is really interesting is that there would be no fuel either. That is because the engines were fueled from the massive central tank system, additional boost coming from the solid-fuel rockets strapped onto that. So the entire premise of the film is bogus from scene one. Further criticisms are sort of redundant, and yet I plan on doing it anyways...

(That's our Louis. - ed.)

I could mention that the aircraft crashes in northern Canada and Drax’s shuttle base is in South America, or at least somewhere with some really big fucking snakes.

You simply can’t get there from here. There is no reason for the onboard tank, which would be located behind the cargo bay and ahead of the engines, to have any fuel at all in such a scenario. 

It is true, that the shuttle was glide-tested, and landings were conducted in order to gain the knowledge necessary to fly and land the thing. That was one reason for the whole 747-rig, that and transport between assembly and launch pad. Landing gear might get a lot of assistance from gravity, but they do have to contend with aerodynamic forces, and you want them to fully deploy and to lock into position. This implies some sort of powered system. You want to see three green lights on your dashboard. Two greens and one red would be real bad news—

It’s not rocket science, ladies and gentlemen—

It's not rocket science, Mister Bond...

#snork

You don’t use reaction control in the atmosphere, not when you have rudder, ailerons, elevators, all of which could run on battery-powered electric servo-motors. You don’t use reaction control to run the pumps and compressors for the hydraulic landing gear system, for example. All you need are batteries, in fact otherwise powerless aircraft have been saved by deploying a wind-turbine into the slipstream in order to generate minimal electrical power. With electrical power, temperature is less of a consideration, you don’t want an air tank or a fluid, hydraulic system to freeze up just when you need it most. And if you want to trickle a little bit of heat to any such system, you still need a battery.

Drax's shuttles do have external tanks, and solid boosters, and their cargo bays are full of people. They did that much research, they checked that many facts. Once that central tank is dropped, minimal fuel is aboard the shuttle, that is for maneuvering and re-entry, otherwise you're kind of stuck up there. The big problem there, is that the blast from all engines popping off at once in an enclosed space, would surely destroy the shuttles, all of them, as they were built as lightly as possible…also, there is no way in hell Bond and Doctor Goodhead could ever outrun the blast, directed as it is down, in an enclosed space, with ducts and tubes and all of that. Even so, Bond and Doctor Goodhead seem to be blasting along in Drax's personal Shuttle Five all right, trying to shoot down the pods that are to dispense the bug-juice, thereby destroying the human race…right? Those lasers run on electrical power from one source or another...

Oh, James...

As you know, in the actual shuttle flights, the solid boosters dropped off first, the shuttle riding the tank up a little higher, but of course it's the bottom part of that equation that takes most of the energy—going from zero miles per hour, at the bottom of that gravity well. The force of gravity varies inversely to (or with), the square of the distance, as we recall from our elementary school exercises, ladies and gentlemen. The higher you get, the less the force of gravity upon your 'body', organic, celestial, or man-made machine. The force of gravity would be an accelerating (or decelerating) curve, the further you get away from Earth.

Bearing in mind Drax's space station has a 'radar jamming system', even if it worked, (and not just putting out a strong signal in the sky, over a large band of frequencies, which could hardly be missed), such a large object would be visible due to simple reflected sunlight. You can see the ISS, (International Space Station) on any clear night, (even when it's dark out), and you can even track it online so you know where and when to look. The only thing more predictable than an orbit, is a geosynchronous orbit, if I may submit. That's because it ain't actually going anywheres, it just sits there in one spot all the fucking time. It's not really clear what Drax's station is doing from the available information, probably nothing if you ask me...

The ISS is a lot smaller than Drax's space station. I won't worry you with the artificial gravity, although with that central area allegedly 'horizontal', and the station rotating in the vertical axis, there are so many technical problems with this film that it isn't even funny. It has been said the series became, over time, a parody of itself. As for the actual structure, this thing is hardly designed for stealth.

The best part of this film is when Bond comes in the front door of the glass works in Venice. That girl—yeah, that one right there, that one interests me. She makes a lot of other women look like boys...

As for an amphibious gondola, coming up out of the water and zooming off through the square by what is presumably St. Mark's Cathedral, that one is just plain ridiculous. Everyone likes ‘Q’, the scenes where they ride across the pampas to the theme from The Magnificent Seven are cute. Just cute. Fight scenes in a glass museum, tossing a guy out through an antique clock, well, they’re always fun and satisfying for the audience.

Everyone loves me...'Q'.

***

I took my girlfriend to this film when it first came out. It was a thing, these were popular films and the truth is, we had a good time. These films are, first and foremost, entertainment.

I’ve mentioned fight scenes on top of cable-cars in a previous blogpost.

Stealing a parachute in mid-fall is of course hopeless…boat chases and runaway aircraft appear in other Bond films, in fact they reprise themselves surprisingly often. There are hang-gliding scenes in this film and in Live and Let Die, then there is the gyrocopter in You Only Live Twice, the jet-pack scene in Goldfinger and the car-plane in The Man With the Golden Gun. The battle in space, forces conveniently colour-coded, reprises the underwater scene in Thunderball and the ninjas-dropping-from-above of You Only Live Twice.

Right?

There were reasons why this series sort of fell away for a while and in fact it was Timothy Dalton that sort of breathed new life into it. It was still bad, in many ways, but it was at least watchable. Timothy Dalton is not gay, which puts his performance in The Lion in Winter, (Peter O'Toole, Katherine Hepburn, Anthony Hopkins), into its proper perspective and all the more impressive because of that...

 

#technical_stuff

 

END

 

Images. Stolen from the internet.

Louis has books and stories available from Amazon.

See his works on Fine Art America.

Check out this story on the #superdough blog.

 

Thank you for reading.

 

 

 

From the Earth to Mars and Back Again.

Strap motors on it and send it off to Mars.

Louis Shalako

It was recently announced that Russia is no longer interested in supporting the International Space Station, preferring to focus on paying launches perhaps. There’s little doubt it is a pressure tactic in the political arena, where the U.S. and Russia stand poised on the brink of another cynical and not-very-friendly non-war.

(Talks are back on again. – ed.)

If the U.S. and its partners can’t find additional funding, the station could be abandoned (or at least no longer under development) by the year 2020. Every such system or machine has its natural life. It can’t stay up there forever in any case.

Big question then is; what do they do with it?

My suggestion is to strap motors on it, slap on a couple of bipropellant fuel tanks, and shoot it off to Mars orbit using both autonomous and telemetric control systems.

Four small steerable motors, off-the-shelf if possible, are enough for a slow acceleration as well as steering and control. The rickety old thing isn’t designed to take a lot of gees, and in fact some systems, like the solar panels, will probably have to be demounted and rigged for safe storage. If it takes all day to get her up to a plausible ‘X’ m/s Delta-V, no big deal. Using a simple Hohman transfer at opposition, it’s not necessary to make the shortest possible trip because it’s un-manned. We don’t have to worry about a human crew, considering the long-term effects of zero gravity, cosmic rays and solar flares, and including ‘social and psychological factors.’ Psychological factors come into play on extended, multi-year missions.

But, it basically represents an exercise in getting a large package into a stable Mars orbit, and it represents assets in situ for a series of eventual manned Mars surface missions.*

It represents a livable habitat where stores, life-support and backup systems are already operative. You don't have to land on the Martian surface and start setting things up. It’s a place to mount the latest in cameras and sensors, and other equipment. It’s an LMO observatory. In the meantime, waiting for a human crew, NASA is constantly monitoring the system and its components. Changes in the Martian surface can be monitored over the long term. This includes weather observation, one of the keys to a successful surface landing and return.

The next phase of the mission is to send off further habitat modules, oxygen and fuel tanks, a simple pair of highly-upgraded, new type of landers, additional resources, and other necessary equipment (including nuclear power generators) to orbit the planet separately in a planned configuration, one designed for easy recovery. Each of these assets would retain some small reserve fuel/maneuvering capacity aboard the transit package. They have the ability to maneuver in orbit for eventual rendezvous and recovery. The landers, once unleashed from their transit cocoons, would use autonomic systems to dock with the space station for eventual use. Even the cocoons** could be reusable, if nothing else as a supply of refined metal for on the spot fabrications.

The landers themselves, unlike the Lunar lander, would be more versatile in that they could deliver a tracked robotic vehicle to the surface just as well as a human crew. In the Lunar phase, only the manned pod left the surface. The new landers are also a return vehicle, and have a desirable ability to return on their own as reusable machines. They’re not abandoned on the surface, but then they don’t have to be—there’s a surplus of fuel a hundred and forty or so kilometres above the surface in the Mars Station stocks. The landers are designed to go back and forth. The surplus fuel stocks are the Delta-V budget for exploration.

Manned missions from Earth to the Mars station would carry the minimum of supplies and equipment, which means less mass. Less mass per mission/shot means more fuel available for speed, i.e. shorter transit times. This is only possible if a multi-year supply of oxygen, water, food, batteries and bulbs, materials, tools and wrenches, socks and underwear, everything our astronauts might need, is already waiting in Mars orbit. 

The top stage of a large rocket could take our crew from Earth to Mars orbit in about six months, and they would have something like the volume of a modern house-trailer to hang out in while they are in transit. Three or four-person crews would be plenty.

It might take fifteen years to build up the orbiting base, but it’s all waiting in Mars orbit for their arrival. This brings up the next point. Other than the International Space Station itself, all of these cargos would be launched from Earth. Everything is built in a factory, and not in orbit.

They would use tried and tested, existing technologies, except for the upper stage manned package which is specially designed for the Mars flight. Yet we’ve put packages onto the Martian surface, coming within a few kilometres of the target, and putting a package in orbit is much easier. This system requires building up flexible launch capabilities over the long haul.

An option is to bring the manned mission package to LEO via old-fashioned shuttle technology, which implies the building of a fleet of new shuttles. Then the Mars mission is essentially launched from the cargo bay of a much larger shuttle than the one we are familiar with.

The problem of using the present shuttle technology for flight to Mars is of course the problem of duration. If no other cargo is carried, the ship is still not very efficient in terms of life support, storage, and viability over a period of months or years with humans aboard. The present design is not adaptable.

This is in spite of the cargo bay in the back, however, if shuttles could rendezvous with and acquire additional tankage in LEO, then the problem is relatively well-solved without attempting to build Battlestar Galactica-type ships on orbit, with all the attendant problems of manpower, supervision, housing, supply and quality control. And again, the crew has so much space and mass allotted to food, water and life support that the interior space really isn’t that large. For the flight between Earth orbit and Mars orbit, aerodynamics are of no consequence. It doesn't matter what the package looks like.

In order to escape an orbit, simply add power. (Peo. Wiki.)

Simply put, rather than send one big ship to Mars with everything in it, all in one go, we send a bunch of little cargos to Mars on missions that are unmanned.

Rather than assemble our dream spaceship in LEO, and then shoot it off to Mars and hope for the best, shoot a bunch of little cargos off to Mars. The first crew to the new Mars station begins further, more flexible assembly. The first mission studies the planet’s surface for the best place to situate the first scientific colony as fresh cargos and fresh crews are already in transit from Earth. Each manned mission retains capability for two-way flight, at much lower cost than a large, fully-contained mission. Each mission deposits some surplus of resources on our new Mars station…

When a crew arrives in Mars orbit, some reserve of food, water and life support onboard their machine would be necessary, (10 to 20 % of overall figures) but unused supplies go into the base reserve for future demands. When planning a Mars-to-Earth return flight, the machine could be designed to rendezvous in LEO with a shuttle. It could re-enter, and make a water recovery, or glide down using lifting body technology, speed brakes and sturdy landing skids with a drag 'chute for utter simplicity of design. Allowing a ten percent reserve for maneuvering on this return flight, it seems almost inevitable that most missions would actually transfer excess fuels to the station before departure. In the event, a ship could reasonably be topped up if necessary and circumstances arose.

Space station facts and figures.

Orbital transfer. (AndrewBuck. Wiki.)

Notes:

*You need a motor at the back to get it going, and one at the front to slow it down. The other two are back-ups.

Every component of the space station has survived high-gee lift from Earth to LEO, however, once bolted together, various angular moments come into play when thrust is introduced to the configuration. Without study, the Space Station is presently an unknown quantity in structural terms.

Components that survived high-gee compression forces might not have equal tensile qualities or torsion resistance.

In the Lunar landings, crews descended to the surface aboard a landing module while a pilot stayed behind in an orbital module. When returning to orbit and rendezvous, the actual landing gear remained behind. Only a small pod blasted off from the top of the lander, carrying two crew members after a relatively short stay on the surface. Considering the ships were built by men and women using slide-rules and paper drawings, it was a remarkable achievement.

However, when descending to the surface of Mars from the Mars Station, an unmanned lander can descend by remote or autonomous control. The following crew lands near a spare lander, which in some degree is a distinct tribute to Robert Zubrin, author of The Case for Mars and his multiple redundancies.

**the cocoons are basically just streamlining. They protect assets from Earth’s atmosphere during launch, and offer some protection from micro-meteors and the consequences of direct heating by the sun during transit on components, including those all-important fuel tanks. Cocoon shells may be useful for little more than additional shielding from cosmic rays and solar flares once on-site. This alone is not really enough reason to transport them all the way to Mars. Slightly modified, they might act as unpressurized storage bins for bulky and non-essential stores or waste/scrap materials, containers, tools, etc.

The planet Mars has about 0.38 the mass of Earth and is correspondingly quite a bit smaller in diameter.

Shuttle fleet grounded. 

NASA's latest launch systems.

If we must dream, let us dream in technicolour.

***