This is cool but it just makes me think the Shuttle was absurdly inefficient across the board. Why waste not just the launch weight but the engineering work on making such a specialized printer? Aren’t we talking about the late 70s/ early 80s? Surely there were commercially available printers that could have been substituted that would weigh less and wouldn’t have the overheating issues. Having unlimited government money is ultimately a curse for efficiency and performance.
Space Shuttle teleprinter reverse engineering
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Re: Space Shuttle teleprinter reverse engineering
#22This is cool but it just makes me think the Shuttle was absurdly inefficient across the board. Why waste not just the launch weight but the engineering work on making such a specialized printer? Aren’t we talking about the late 70s/ early 80s? Surely there were commercially available printers that could have been substituted that would weigh less and wouldn’t have the overheating issues. Having unlimited government m…
It's overkill for normal office use but the space shuttle is going to have some massive vibration and mechanical shock during launch. All systems have to be ruggedized to withstand the environment. A commercial unit might not survive the trip up and building some sort of vibration damping system for it might take up more space. If the manufacturer can't guarantee the uptime for the commercial unit, they might need a spare aboard as well also in its own special dampener case. Sometimes it just makes sense to do a custom design that meets your needs instead of trying to make a square peg fit a round hole. Also the related systems have to be considered. The Shuttle had a power bus of 28VDC, were there any commercial printers that took 28VDC and had proper EMI filtering? Were commercial printers compatible with the types of data signals expected on the Shuttle? You may need to build some sort of adapter to make a commercial printer work with the data and power systems. You may end up with something just as heavy and bulky and still not as reliable.
Re: Space Shuttle teleprinter reverse engineering
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
The thing that immediately jumped into my head is coded military use. Especially since they mention the printer being based on a military design. It's still rather obscure, if not still secret, just to what extent we were actually using the shuttles in their intended military capacity. But when designed, the military use was expected to be much much higher than what panned out. This printer would be high on the list…
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what a useless post and your last sentence is just made up from thin air. if you believe any of that, you probably think the earth is flat, the moon landing was shot on a film stage in hollywood.
a simple web search will show the actual reasons for the shuttle disasters.
Re: Space Shuttle teleprinter reverse engineering
#24This is cool but it just makes me think the Shuttle was absurdly inefficient across the board. Why waste not just the launch weight but the engineering work on making such a specialized printer? Aren’t we talking about the late 70s/ early 80s? Surely there were commercially available printers that could have been substituted that would weigh less and wouldn’t have the overheating issues. Having unlimited government m…
I have doubts a commercial printer back then would handle the 3G acceleration and vibrations during launch and reentry well. There's also the issue of materials from the safety of them for fire risks to potential off gassing you wouldn't notice in an office but could cause issues in the enclosed recycled atmosphere of the shuttle.
A lot of the cost for space bound items are from R&D being concentrated in a few items but others are because it costs a lot to make sure they're not going fail or kill someone. Using this behemoth saves some of the time by reusing a military line printer that was likely already tested for shock resistance if it was used on ships and for fire safety for similar reasons.
There's also the potential military uses of the Shuttle which informed a lot of it's design. Military printer already has the decoding infrastructure if it needs to be built in with known key management etc you'd have to build seprately for a commercial printer.
Re: Space Shuttle teleprinter reverse engineering
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
The thing that immediately jumped into my head is coded military use. Especially since they mention the printer being based on a military design. It's still rather obscure, if not still secret, just to what extent we were actually using the shuttles in their intended military capacity. But when designed, the military use was expected to be much much higher than what panned out. This printer would be high on the list…
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> I think Challenger was sabotage
Mind explaining your reasoning? As someone not very familiar with the details, I'm curious
Re: Space Shuttle teleprinter reverse engineering
#26This is cool but it just makes me think the Shuttle was absurdly inefficient across the board. Why waste not just the launch weight but the engineering work on making such a specialized printer? Aren’t we talking about the late 70s/ early 80s? Surely there were commercially available printers that could have been substituted that would weigh less and wouldn’t have the overheating issues. Having unlimited government m…
Its unlikely that it was special-built for the Space Shuttle. Obviously this is speculation, but it most likely was already special-designed for a military application and just re-used in the shuttle. All of those strategic nuclear bombers that used to fly on standby 24/7 needed communications, too.
Re: Space Shuttle teleprinter reverse engineering
#27X (twitter) is useless for threads unless you're logged in. How can I read this thread?
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Re: Space Shuttle teleprinter reverse engineering
#28Wait, do normal printers need gravity to work? If I were to find one and flip it upside-down, would it continue functioning normally?
Normal printers probably wouldn't handle the shaking of launches and the extra G forces during that which for shuttle were ~3Gs.
Re: Space Shuttle teleprinter reverse engineering
#29There's a much simpler version of a communications 'printer' called Hellschreiber
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellschreiber
Some old specimens still work, some new reproductions have been made, and it can also be simulated in software with various popular ham-radio programs.
...also, it's used by at least a few dozen hams every now and then :)
Re: Space Shuttle teleprinter reverse engineering
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
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> I think Challenger was sabotage Mind explaining your reasoning? As someone not very familiar with the details, I'm curious
As much as Dylan wants to denegrate my post:
I have always believed the Shuttle was sabotaged. I watched it live when it happened when I was a kid and followed all aspect from the lead up (we voted for Kristy in my school IIRC) -- but there has always been a lot of weird strangeness about the shuttle and the demise of its occupants.
Ant to Dylan - relax - I can speculatively hold dystopian-sci-fi what-ifs without your other slanders.
Its a fun and more entertaining topic than most movies.
I said I do not know what happened, I said I believe the challenger was sabotaged, with my disclaimer that I do not know.
The theories about the astronauts being alive are silly but well crafted fiction. Dylan got triggered a bit to hard by my comments.
--
The reason I feel the challenger was sabotaged is also backed up by CIA documents:
https://i.imgur.com/ylDBcDH.png
https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP88B00443R0019044...
But Ill let Dylan do his own research.
>Plus "do his own research" is awfully adjacent to the Q-unacy.
That was the joke, jeasus. as he is the one accusing me of being flat-earth moon denier.
Read the linked PDF from the CIA FFS. Its a fun theory and that has multiple articles linked from the 80s.
So a "simple web search" of shit that went down in the decades before the internet isnt as simple, nor reliable as one would hope.
However - I am sure Dylan Called Google and knows all about it.