Lebanon's forgotten space programme | Hacker News Reader

Lebanon's forgotten space programme

bbc.co.uk

114 pointsjdmitch29 comments

This is a very heart-warming story from this little country that I am from. Lebanese have long shown their ability to innovate and excel in the face of adversity. Sadly, today, we are at the mercy of politicians and religious extremists who just don't get it. Lebanon will always overcome.

It is a goddamn shame what happened to that country over the years and I really do hope it will bounce back. My pet theory is that it is inevitable because of the internet.

Do Lebanese nerds have an English hangout somewhere to conspire with nerds from elsewhere?

There's an English tech-forum here: http://lebgeeks.com

Leb geeks is a nice forum however it's very local.

What happened in Lebanon is part of a demographic pattern that has played out repeatedly in the middle east. By many accounts Syria was a lovely and peaceful place not so long ago. Before Cairo was the pit of poverty it is now it was by many accounts a very pleasant place.

That's pretty much what you get when colonist powers(France and Britain at the time) divide up the area between themselves without any regard for local sectarian differences[1]. The same pattern also played out in Africa.

In Lebanon as in Syria(I'm Lebanese but have lived in Syria for an extended period of time in the past) the population is extremely heterogenous with racist feelings and ideology being a very common thing. To arbitrarily divide up the area while disregarding this is either an extremely foolish thing to do, or likelier a ploy by the then colonialist powers to retain long-term control of the area by keeping its population ever-divided.

It doesn't exactly help, that into this already explosive mix was implanted the nation-state of Israel which as been in a state of perpetual war with its neighbours ever since.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sykes–Picot_Agreement

The borders and all that stuff is relevant, but the essential problem has been dysgenics, as I have heard it. Highly fertile, poor hicks came to demographically overwhelm the middle class in these places over multi-decade periods.

I think he is referring to Hezbollah. Secretarian violence along racial lines is an issue but not a given, what really makes things explosive is religion.

I'm Israeli btw and terrified of high birth rates amongst the ultra religious here. It seems we might escape this problem as things stand but it sure does garner a lot of empathy with me.

I hope you are right but I have my doubts. I am a Lebanese who’s trying to Love Lebanon. The Lebanese ability to innovate is motivated by personal gains regardless of (and sometimes at the expense of) the benefit to the country as a whole. And that’s because there has rarely been a sense of unity in this country since its inception by the west (even during the so called “Paris of the middle east” era). The first mention of the term Lebanese in books was in the 40’s according to Ngram viewer. http://goo.gl/6T8jhp. Before that the area was comprised of diverse clans and tribes loosely held together by the Ottoman Empire. I doubt that Lebanese from diverse backgrounds would have been able to do anything useful before fighting each other on who’s the boss!! BTW the university and guys mentioned in the article are of Armenian origins.

I've worked with many Lebanese, and found them to be very intelligent and resourceful. The country had a huge brain drain to France and elsewhere during their civil war.

Not just during the war. It's been on-going ever since. I usually tell foreigners that our prime export is young engineers.

It is very rare for young and talented programmers to stay here. If they have the means to leave for the states or Europe and study and then work there, very few give it a second thought.

It was certainly true that in the US and the Soviet Union that the space program's primary "customer" was the military. It is an acceptable cover story to be "exploring space" when you are working on technologies that make for better ICBMs. And that was one of the interesting things about SpaceX to me, here was a company that didn't have some defense "minder" in the back rooms somewhere calling the shots.

The other thing that this reminded me of was that the history of the Arab world early on is one of excellent science and discovery. It would be nice to get back to that and away from what passes for state craft in the middle east. Sadly that seems like a harder problem than sending someone to the moon.

> It was certainly true that in the US and the Soviet Union that the space program's primary "customer" was the military.

Not just in the US and Soviets, France's Diamant[0] was derived from its military "gemstones" sounding rockets program, the UK's Black Arrow originates from the Blue Streak MRBM program[1].

> It is an acceptable cover story to be "exploring space" when you are working on technologies that make for better ICBMs. And that was one of the interesting things about SpaceX to me

I don't believe that's been the case for ISAS (now part of JAXA), it's unlikely the WWII peace treaty would have allowed for japanese ICBM development.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamant

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Streak_missile

There is some thought that the Epsilon [1] development was primarily a launch vehicle that could strike back at the PRK should they decide to do something. That thinking was motivated by the design criteria of 'solid fuel' (easy to store in a bunker, no delay in fueling it in responding) and 'minimal crew' (not like you can station 20 or 40 people at a missile bunker). Of course I have no insight into whether or not that was their thinking but folks I know who are part of the 'establishment' seem to think that is the rationale Japan used.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epsilon_%28rocket%29

Epsilon is a very recent project though, Japan has had rocket programs since the 60s (the Mu-1 sub-orbital test flight was in 1966)

While I'm not a historian of NASA (but see: http://history.nasa.gov/factsheet.htm), I think your summary in the first paragraph is way off. It's more accurate to say that the military had rockets in development, and they were pressed into service for the new space agency.

From 1945 to 1957, the US military (Army, and later, Air Force) was sponsoring rocket development, e.g. von Braun's team in Huntsville. But after NASA was created in 1958 following Sputnik, it was made a civilian agency, and the crossover with the military was much less.

NASA doesn't have a genuine connection to ICBMs. There's a lot more to space technology than rocketry, so there's little overlap between an ICBM (at the whole system level) and an earth-orbiter (again, considered as a system). For instance, one of the main ICBM design issues is target accuracy -- there's no such counterpart for an orbiter.

Additionally, divergence between NASA goals and military goals is great enough that, even when prompted from above, the technology does not mix well. I'm thinking of the notion that the Shuttle would be used for military/intelligence satellite launch, and the NPOESS combined NOAA/NASA/DoD earth-observing satellite.

The notion that there is a DoD "minder" in the back room seems kind of fanciful. In the late 1950s, maybe, but by the mid-60s -- I really doubt it -- except for some of the basic rocket engine technology.

The military's interest in rockets was not limited to lobbing warheads, they took a very early interest in using rockets to put things into orbit.

The first US satellite, the Explorer 1, was kicked off by the Army and the first stage of the Juno rocket that launched it was a modified Redstone, an Army ballistic missile (not an ICBM).

Skipping forward to manned flight, the first two US manned Mercury missions (1961) used extended Redstones again for sub-orbital launches. The next four Mercury missions (1962-1963) used modified Atlas rockets (Atlas LV-3B's specifically, which were man-rated Atlas D's) These Atlas rockets were America's first ICBMs. Atlas rockets continued to be used for space launches for several more years, launching target vehicles for docking with during Gemini, launching a few space probes, etc. Literally dozens of Atlas D ICBMs were used as launch vehicles for damn near half a century. Some of the first GPS satellites were put up on Atlas rockets.

The Gemini missions (1965-1966) continued this tradition, all using man-rated Titan IIs (ICBMs, but with more redundancy for reliability). In the years that followed, the Titan II continued to be used for satellite launches, and like the Atlas, spawned a successful line of derivative launch vehicles.

The point that I am making here is that ICBMs worked swimmingly as launch vehicles, and weren't just pushed onto NASA for a task that they weren't fit to perform. Slap a Centaur/Agena/etc on top and they can do a hell of a lot, and with a few added redundancies, they got men into space brilliantly. Redstones/Atlas's/Titan IIs made quality launch vehicles. We are by no means talking "minimal overlap".

It wasn't until 1968, less than a year before putting a man on the moon, that NASA used a non-ICBM derived launch vehicle for a manned mission (The Saturn 1B, with Apollo 7, and a few short months later with the famous Saturn V, for Apollo 8).

> The point that I am making here is that ICBMs worked swimmingly as launch vehicles, and weren't just pushed onto NASA for a task that they weren't fit to perform.

Since the task of an ICBM and the task of an orbital launch vehicle are virtually indistinguishable, that shouldn't be all that surprising. It's the same task, just with a different payload.

Exactly. An ICBM getting something up there and moving sideways fast is doing the same thing as a launch vehicle getting something up there and moving sideways fast. ICBM technology is rocket technology, rocket technology is ICBM technology.

The place where they really start to differentiate is the return vehicles. ICBM reentry vehicles have different requirements than other sort of reentry vehicles (basically they should have properties that make them harder to track and shoot down) but even then the physics is all the same physics.

My main point is that a space exploration capability is more than just rocketry. You are right, the rocket boosters were originally military-developed, and even today, many launch vehicles have heritage in the military. But, as we move past the first phase of the space program (demonstration orbiters), and NASA started to design capsules for astronauts and complex remote sensing instruments, rocketry became a smaller piece of the technology pie.

I tried to amplify this point by noting examples where NASA-DoD partnerships have fizzled, mainly due to cultural/technology mismatches.

The reason I replied to the comment is that it referred to SpaceX not having a DoD minder, as if that distinguishes SpaceX from today's NASA. There is no DoD minder calling the shots at NASA, so this struck me as a weird thing to say.

(I have worked at JPL for many years...not on rockets. ;-)

The connection has always been primarily in the contractors. Two agencies (NASA, DOD) sharing the same contractor (Martin Marietta, for example). It is a classic dual use scenario where both uses give value to the country (space exploration and space domination :-) which lead my neighbor (who worked at Lockheed in Sunnyvale to remark "win-win means we can sell it to both civilians and the military."

«It was certainly true that in the US and the Soviet Union that the space program's primary "customer" was the military. It is an acceptable cover story to be "exploring space" when you are working on technologies that make for better ICBMs.»

...but that may only cover LEO at most. How about the programs involving the Moon and the other planets?

> During the 1960s, the US and the Soviet Union competed for supremacy in space. But there was another contestant in the race - the Lebanese Rocket Society

Ignoring the France[0], Japan[1], the UK[2] and China[3], that is.

Kind of a weird hook.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamant

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mu_(rocket_family)

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Arrow

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_March_1

Don't forget the ONSP: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6xJzAYYrX8

Like a lot of early-stage technologies, it was easy to get in and do novel things when it was in its infancy. The early U.S. work had the same amateur characteristics as in TFA:

http://www.space.com/13463-nasa-jet-propulsion-lab-rocket-te...

Sand bags to hide behind, fuel lines strung up on sticks, and a case of Crisco. What more could you want?

There is also an interview with Manoug Manougian, the founder of the rocket club, here:

https://now.mmedia.me/lb/en/10questions/10-questions-with-ma...

apparently this year is the first time he has been back to Lebanon since he left in 1966.

He sounds like a lovely guy.

I think nothing shows how big the space race really was than the fact that so many countries poured resources into building a national space program

See the case of Argentina: http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en-419&sl=auto&tl=e...

Another case worth mentioning is a forerunner of SpaceX the West German company OTRAG https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OTRAG

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