Transterrestrial Musings

Comments

The link is to a Dear Colleague letter about the space transport bill.

Posted by Jeff D. at November 20, 2004 08:36 AM

Interesting. There's some more information on Polyus at http://www.astronautix.com/craft/polyus.htm, including some material which suggests that it may have been designed as a countermeasure to SDI.

Posted by Jeff D. at November 20, 2004 08:45 AM

One can only imagine what might have been if Polyus had achieved orbit. Can you imagine the outcry!

I remember during the movie "Space Cowboys" (with its many technical problems) ripped off the polyus for its soviet-era battle station.

Posted by Mike Puckett at November 20, 2004 08:54 AM

No doubt the nuclear-freeze movement would have said, "Gosh, what does America expect when we threaten the Soviet Union?"

Posted by Andrew at November 20, 2004 09:04 AM

Andrew has said it spot on!!! How long before we hear that it was Mr. Reagans fault that the C.C.C.P. was "forced" into defending itself and its "allied" states. Not long I expect.

The flip side of this would be that the general public may NEVER hear of this Soviet project so Mr. Reagan can still be referred to as the Space Cowboy. If no one knows we needed Star Wars it makes him look bad, and thats been the MSM task since he announced he was running for president.

Posted by Steve at November 20, 2004 09:49 AM

Why would the consequences be "dreadful"? We know now that the CCCP was only a couple of years from collapse. Is the idea that a new "space arms race" would cause them to lash out at the end instead of just letting go? (Of course, if the CIA had been doing their job, we'd have known the collapse was immenent, and the response to a success might have been "so what.")

Posted by Raoul Ortega at November 20, 2004 11:44 AM

Can any Russian-readers offer a translation of the captions in the last two images (line drawings of the launch events and of the vehicle itself)?

Posted by T.L. James at November 20, 2004 11:59 AM

Raoul,
you have forgotten that old saying about wounded Bears being the most dangerous?

What if, in a political death throw, knowing they were about to implode anyway, the C.C.C.P. would have launched an offensive to take over part of the U.S. ? Or all of Canada to get their wheat belt? Or just tried to destroy enough of the U.S. military bases to take over Europe, or part of Asia? Didn't you ever play Risk?

It seems, with what we know "NOW" of the down fall of the Soviets, that it would not have happened. But back then, we just didn't know.

Posted by Steve at November 20, 2004 12:51 PM

Oh, yes. The "don't provoke a response,'cause that'll only make things worse" excuse. Better to let tyrants alone because they MIGHT do something nasty, as if they aren't already nasty enough to deserve a response. Of course, the tyrant's action is never provocative, no matter what they might do. They never have to worry about provking us because we've ceded all iniatiave to them, and become not just totally reactive, but timid, too.

In other words, standard Democrat Foreign Policy.

Posted by Raoul Ortega at November 20, 2004 07:48 PM

The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force.

Posted by David Ross at November 20, 2004 07:59 PM

The description of this thing over at astronautix makes it sound like a first strike weapon. A huge platform carrying lots of nukes that it can de-orbit and drop anywhere under its path. Its surface was black and probably radar absorbing so it'd be very hard to spot, and it was built to allow visual communication with the ground (by laser, mostly) so we wouldn't pick up telemetry. If you were a Soviet military hardliner and the American President was crippling your already weak economy by forcing you to match their spending -- something you knew your country couldn't do -- a very stealthy first strike followed by an SS-18 barrage might have seemed like a chance worth taking.

Posted by Kelly at November 20, 2004 08:44 PM

Orbital diagram, in order of events (i.e. along the trajectory):

Polyus nose cone dropped

Polyus separates from the booster

Tail cover dropped

Polyus rotates [engine is in the nose]

Polyus engine ignition (short thick arrow)

Solar panels open

Second engine ignition (second short thick arrow)

Three sections of the trajectory are labeled "Energiya's active section", "Transfer ellipse" and "Service orbit"

Labels on Polyus' schematic I can not translate because they are in Russian engineering jargon I am not familiar with. I know the words, but they make no sense. The only ones I understand are "tail cover" (at the very bottom) and "engine section" (at the very top). The view on the left has only one label pointing to what looks like a multiple rocket pod, and says "depolyable targets." Decoys?

Posted by Ilya at November 20, 2004 08:45 PM

Follow up: the same info is posted on Energia's website: http://k26.com/buran/Info/Polyus/polyus-energia.html

Posted by Kelly at November 20, 2004 08:47 PM

Thanks, Ilya!

Posted by T.L. James at November 21, 2004 12:33 AM

I'm getting this mental picture of the American Left doing Jimmy Durante's line in 'Jumbo' - "What elephant?"

But, hey, the Soviets were never racing us to the Moon either.

Posted by Dick Eagleson at November 21, 2004 06:01 AM

Former Reagan defense official Thomas C. Reed, a Cold Warrior from the early 60s who worked on many technical and political aspects of the US nuclear forces, has argued that Reagan's SDI accelerated the collapse of the USSR precisely because it provoked an arms race in missile defense weaponry, a race which the Soviet economy could not support.

Which is to say, Mr. Oberg in his e-mail to RS is perfectly correct when he says that a Star Wars space military race would have "dreadful" consequences. It did. For the Soviets.

Posted by Carl Pham at November 21, 2004 11:58 AM

One can only imagine what might have been if Polyus had achieved orbit.

You mean, if it had become generally known that Polyus had achieved orbit.

One of the most disquieting things about the Cold War is that some of the most profoundly important events were never generally known. For example, it was not generally known that the Eisenhower Administration sent flights of nuclear-armed bombers over the Soviet Union during the 1950s on more than one occasion. These flights were of course attacked by Soviet air defenses, including Soviet fighter aircraft. Their purpose was in part espionage, in part intimidation, in part a test of Soviet air defenses to ensure that nuclear attack by bomber remained a credible national defense for the United States.

Neither side admitted to the existence of these overflights, for excellent domestic reasons in both cases. But their existence casts a whole new light on Soviet paranoia in the early 1960s, not to mention the Soviet passion for missiles including Sputnik et seq.

Posted by Carl Pham at November 21, 2004 12:13 PM

For what it's worth, my read on the Astronautix article is that Polyus wouldn't have been an operational system- while some of the text seems to indicate that it would have carried some kind of orbital nuclear weapons system, it also seems to have been intended as a testbed for a variety of different technologies, including some pretty exotic beam weapon stuff. The attempts to target it from the ground also sound like experiments in low probability of intercept telemetry, and possibly in seeing how well they could conceal satellites from American ASAT weapons. (Granted, we didn't have any, but that would have changed in a hurry if there had been any kind of movement to put nuclear weapons in orbit)

My read is that it doesn't look like an operational system to me. Makes you wonder how far it would have gone if the USSR had managed to hold on for a few more years.

Posted by Jeff D. at November 21, 2004 03:10 PM

Fully operational or not, it was a clear declaration of intent, that thing wasn't going to be confused with an orbital Tastee-Freeze! It would have been a Katie bar the door moment to rival sputnik.

It could have been used by the guys in the Pentagon to argue for vast increases in SDI funding.

We might be doing VSE with a Timberwind today if Polyus had achieved orbit

Posted by Mike Puckett at November 21, 2004 03:54 PM

Carl Pham wrote:
"For example, it was not generally known that the Eisenhower Administration sent flights of nuclear-armed bombers over the Soviet Union during the 1950s on more than one occasion. These flights were of course attacked by Soviet air defenses, including Soviet fighter aircraft. Their purpose was in part espionage, in part intimidation, in part a test of Soviet air defenses to ensure that nuclear attack by bomber remained a credible national defense for the United States."

This is not true. It did not happen. There were a few pentration overflights by RB-45s and RB-47s, as well as shallow penetration flights by reconnaissance fighters. This activity ceased by 1956. They did not carry nuclear weapons, only cameras. There were 24 overflights by U-2 aircraft between 1956 and 1960.

Source: "Early Cold War Overflights" by Cargill Hall.

There were also balloon overflights in the 1950s, and I have recently discovered that there were balloon overflights in the 1960s as well. But there is no evidence of "nuclear-armed" bombers overflying the USSR during the Cold War.

Carl Pham also wrote:
"Former Reagan defense official Thomas C. Reed, a Cold Warrior from the early 60s who worked on many technical and political aspects of the US nuclear forces, has argued that Reagan's SDI accelerated the collapse of the USSR precisely because it provoked an arms race in missile defense weaponry, a race which the Soviet economy could not support."

Reed claims this, as have a few others. However, there is not really any good evidence to support it. For starters, we don't know how much the Soviets spent responding to SDI, so claims that it "accelerated the collapse" are hard to make. Others have claimed that the US encouraged the Saudis to lower their oil price, which really undercut the Soviet oil export industry. That might have been more important.

And beyond that, one should not forget the inherent flaws in the Soviet economy. It was pretty crippled to begin with.

Kelly wrote:
"The description of this thing over at astronautix makes it sound like a first strike weapon."

You should take claims on the Astronautix website with a big grain of salt. I have been told that the Soviet/Russian stuff has many problems due to translation errors. For instance, in one case a "nuclear-tipped" missile is mistranslated as a "nuclear-propelled" missile. My problem is that often projects which were reall only studies are portrayed as more than they really were. There are some exaggerated claims there.

Posted by Dwayne Day at November 22, 2004 07:25 AM

[b]"...Reagan's SDI accelerated the collapse of the USSR precisely because it provoked an arms race in missile defense weaponry, a race which the Soviet economy could not support."

Reed claims this, as have a few others. However, there is not really any good evidence to support it.[/b]

The best evidence is the testimony of the Soviets themselves. Describing Soviet apprehension about the Strategic Defense Initiative, KGB general Nikolai Leonov remarked in a BBC documentary that "the concept underlined our technological backwardness. It underlined the need for an immediate review of our place in world technological progress." Leonov's collegue, General Sergei Kondrashev, admitted that SDI "influenced the situation in the country to such an extent that it made the necessity of seeking an understanding with the West very acute." Recollections like these are as common as they are invaluable.

Posted by at November 23, 2004 09:02 AM

Oops - I did not put my name in the previous post. Also, put square brackets instead of pointy ones :)

Posted by Ilya at November 23, 2004 09:04 AM

This is not true. It did not happen. There were a few pentration overflights by RB-45s and RB-47s, as well as shallow penetration flights by reconnaissance fighters. . . .They did not carry nuclear weapons, only cameras.

You quibble. Suppose just for the sake of argument the U.S. government in fact sent nuclear bombers with only cameras on board, as opposed to nuclear bombers with actual nuclear bombs on board. How would the Soviets know the difference? You don't suppose the pilots kept in contact with Soviet air traffic control, do you?

The point is that any penetration of Soviet airspace by a flight of nuclear-capable military aircraft is ipso facto an act of war. The fact that the U.S. did it, and the Soviets allowed it, and both kept quiet about it for forty years, throws a fascinating light on the delicate dance that was the Cold War.

Reed claims this, as have a few others. However, there is not really any good evidence to support it. . .

Oh. Perhaps you should pass your insight on to the former Secretary of the Air Force so he can correct his ignorance, too.

And beyond that, one should not forget the inherent flaws in the Soviet economy. It was pretty crippled to begin with.

No doubt. But the argument is that SDI accelerated the collapse of the socia1ist's economy. The interesting question is: by how much? Those who would deny Reagan, Thatcher and Bush #1 much credit in bringing the Cold War to an end will argue that the USSR would have collapsed anyway and only a few years later. But why not a few decades later?

Given the fact that many of these same people were arguing before Reagan that the Soviets would be around for centuries more (so we might as well learn to get along with them), I can perhaps be forgiven the suspicion that their reasoning is designed to fit their conclusions, instead of vice versa.

Posted by Carl Pham at November 23, 2004 04:20 PM

Hey, why did that payload say "MNP-2" or "Mir-2" on it? Were those pictures of a Mir assembly launch?

Posted by Astrosmith at November 24, 2004 10:59 AM

Carl Pham wrote:
"You quibble."

To paraphrase Samuel Clemens, the difference between the right word and the almost-right word is the difference between a lightning bug and lightning.

Simply put, you were wrong. You stated: "For example, it was not generally known that the Eisenhower Administration sent flights of nuclear-armed bombers over the Soviet Union during the 1950s on more than one occasion."

The reason why this "was not generally known" is that it is false. No evidence to support it. It is also a ridiculous claim to make. Why would the United States Air Force send bombers equipped with nuclear bombs (which is what "nuclear-armed"--your words--means) somewhere where they could possibly fall into enemy hands? They wouldn't and they didn't. So now you call it a "quibble," but "quibble" is an inappropriate word to use when discussing nuclear weapons. There were no nuclear weapons in American aircraft overflying the Soviet Union.

The aircraft even had designations such as RB-47 and RB-45. The "R" stood for "reconnaissance" and these aircraft were in fact modified in such a way that they could not carry nuclear weapons. They carried cameras.

Carl Pham also wrote:
"Their purpose was in part espionage, in part intimidation, in part a test of Soviet air defenses to ensure that nuclear attack by bomber remained a credible national defense for the United States."

No, this is also wrong. Their purpose was solely espionage. I'm not sure where you have gotten your information, but I assume that it is probably one of two sources, either Richard Rhodes' book Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb, or Paul Lashmar's Spy Flights of the Cold War. Rhodes' book is pretty good on the history of the H-bomb (although there are some who have big problems with it), but his assertions about the Air Force's "Project Control" are poorly-sourced and badly misinterpreted. Lashmar's book is pretty good on its subject, but also gets the "Project Control" stuff wrong. (To answer the inevitable question, "Project Control" was a proposed Air Force policy that would involve sending Air Force bombers over enemy territory to assert control, without necessarily dropping any bombs. But it was solely a paper study, not actual policy. There have been a few people who have actually conducted historical research on it and gone through the records and confirmed that it was never anything other than a paper study. Rhodes and Lashmar both drew a connection between this study and the actual overflights of the Soviet Union by Air Force reconnaissance aircraft. But the big problem with drawing this connection is that there is no proof of it. Project Control was initiated in one part of the Air Force--a part that tended to be ignored by the Air Staff, by the way. The reconnaissance overflights were initiated in another part of the Air Force. There is pretty good documentation for both of these efforts, although far less on the reconnaissance operations for the simple fact that they were so highly classified that the people in charge deliberately did not write things down.)

There are newer and better sources. I suggest Cargill Hall's chapter in the book I edited, Eye in the Sky (which is primarily about satellite reconnaissance, but touches on the stuff that preceded it). But better sources are Cargill Hall's booklet "The 14 April 1956 Overflight of Noril'sk, USSR," available from the National Reconnaissance Office. Also try "The Truth About Overflights," from Military History Quarterly, Spring 1997. Cargill wrote that as a direct response to the Rhodes and Lashmar claims. But the best overall source is Early Cold War Overflights, the conference proceedings edited by Cargill Hall and Clayton Laurie. It should be available from the Government Printing Office, but if they don't have it, I can sell you a copy as I have extras.

Carl Pham also wrote:
"Oh. Perhaps you should pass your insight on to the former Secretary of the Air Force so he can correct his ignorance, too."

Sarcasm. Not terribly useful in this argument.

I will assume that you already are aware of this, but it is necessary for me to state the obvious in order to reply: government officials can be wrong; government officials can also embellish, and occasionally even lie. Just because a former Secretary of the Air Force said something is true does not make it true. For starters, there are other people of former high rank who do not say it is true. So why would you bow to Reed's authority but not to someone else's? In addition, Reed cannot be considered a disinterested party. He wants to justify past actions. He has an inherent motive to interpret the story in a certain way. Also, memories fade over time and memoirs (what we are referencing here is Reed's memoir) have a tendency to be not only self-serving, but also history as the memoirist wishes it had been, not as it actually happened. I once asked Dwight Eisenhower's staff secretary, General Andrew Goodpaster (former supreme commander, SHAPE), why he had never written a memoir. He said that he thought that every memoir ever written could have the same title: "I was right!"

Carl Pham also wrote:
"No doubt. But the argument is that SDI accelerated the collapse of the socia1ist's economy. The interesting question is: by how much?"

No, that question can only be properly asked once you have proven that SDI had an effect in the first place. And a few people saying that it did does not prove that it did.

In fact, there were a lot of actions during the 1980s that precipitated the Soviet collapse, and sorting out which ones were the most important is not easy. This is social science, not Newtonian physics. Data is scarce and open to interpretation. The laws of interaction are maleable and poorly understood.

Was the availability of cheap oil more important than the Reagan defense buildup? What role did the war in Afghanistan play? (One could argue that it sucked far more money out of the Soviet economy than SDI ever did.) Would the Soviet Union still have collapsed if a hard-liner and not Gorbachev was in power? Some have even ascribed the Chernobyl nuclear disaster with considerable impact: it cost a lot of money, it eroded Soviet faith in their own technology, and it created schisms within Soviet society that grew larger over time.

These issues are still not fully understood. Not everybody who was involved has talked. Many documents on both sides remain classified. And some people are trying to spin the history in certain directions, just as John F. Kennedy's advisors sought to create the myth of Camelot. You yourself have noted that some aspects of the Cold War were relatively unknown until recently, and yet you are willing to claim that this issue is known and inarguable? History does not work that way.

Posted by Dwayne A. Day at November 24, 2004 08:22 PM

Simply put, you were wrong.

That could be. But if so, you're still quibbling, because I'd be wrong in detail and not in essence.

As I said in my second post, the important fact to me (and to the Soviets) is that the U.S. sent military aircraft through Soviet airspace that the Soviets could not responsibly fail to assume were armed with nuclear weapons. Whether there were actually bombs on board is as unimportant as whether the gun that a young man points at a policeman is actually loaded.

I don't understand why you suggest one government official (Reed) is untrustworthy and so I should turn to another (Hall). All that you suggest about why I should distrust Reed applies equally to Hall, or to any ECWO conference participant, or to you. Indeed, your argument seems to reduce to: people will slant the truth to suit their agendas. Um, so what else is new?

I have to judge each account on the basis of internal consistency, and consistency with my own general knowledge, and with what I remember (post 1975) or what older people I know remember (post 1950). When I do that, I find Reed persuasive. So far you've given me no reason to think differently other than a vague warning about hidden agendas (which could apply to anyone), and an assertion that you know better (and I'm too old and ornery to be impressed by Arguments From Authority).

But I do thank you for the references. I didn't know about Rhodes' or Lashmar's book, nor about the ECWO conference proceedings. I would probably find the last interesting, and I'll look for it.

No, that question can only be properly asked once you have proven that SDI had an effect in the first place.

Nonsense. To deny that SDI had any effect at all is absurd. So the important question is, as I said: how much of an effect did it have? As you say, opinions vary. I assert no more.

Posted by Carl Pham at November 25, 2004 11:46 PM

Carl Pham wrote:
"(and I'm too old and ornery to be impressed by Arguments From Authority)."

Writes the person who insisted that Reed's argument is legit because he was Secretary of the Air Force.

Carl Pham wrote:
"I don't understand why you suggest one government official (Reed) is untrustworthy and so I should turn to another (Hall)."

As I already explained, memoirs have inherent biases. The person is trying to explain why they were justified in doing what they were doing. There is rarely any attempt at objectivity. Indeed, one could argue that it is not possible when the person was directly involved in events.

Since you admit that you have not done much reading on this subject, in addition to the previous references that I cited, I will suggest a few additional sources to look at:

David E. Hoffman, "Hastening an End to the Cold War," The Washington Post, June 6, 2004, p. A1 (concerning Reagan's legacy).

James G. Hershberg, "The Reagan Effect," The Washington Post, June 27, 2004.

See also: James G. Hershberg's on-line discussion on The Washington Post, "Outlook: The Reagan Effect," June 28, 2004.

Posted by Dwayne A. Day at November 26, 2004 09:13 AM

Writes the person who insisted that Reed's argument is legit because he was Secretary of the Air Force.

I expressed myself poorly. I meant to say I'm unimpressed by an Argument From Asserted Authority. Had you presented credentials of personal involvement equal to Reed's, I'd certainly be equally inclined to credit your bare assertions. Without those credentials, something more than bare assertion is needed.

Nor do I accept even Reed's arguments just because of his long personal involvement with the events in question. As I said above, I also consider his internal consistency, and his consistency with what I know from other sources. It is all these things together that makes Reed convincing to me. His credentials play an important but not determinative role.

As I already explained. . .

It is not your argument for mistrusting sources that I fail to understand, but rather why you apply it selectively, to Reed but not to Hall, for example.

Since you admit that you have not done much reading on this subject. . .

I admit no such thing. I have only said I did not read the three books you mentioned. Let us also not overlook the possibility that I rely in part on sources other than books.

I will suggest a few additional sources to look at:

With respect, I find these of less interest. Professor Hershberg was not an original participant, and as a member of an academy that was notoriously wrong about the true nature of the Soviet Union, apparently through ideological blindness, he has a steep hill to climb to gain my trust. I don't say he can't, but he won't via a few articles in the popular press. But I do admire his stewardship of the CWIHP and I find their bulletins of significant interest.

Mr. Hoffman's opinion is of no interest at all. My confidence in the integrity of a journalist employed by the Washington Post is such that were he to publish an assertion that the Sun rises in the East I would need to look out the window to check for myself.

Posted by Carl Pham at November 26, 2004 07:21 PM

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