Background The Apollo program was a human spaceflight program undertaken by NASA during the years 1961-1975 with the goal of conducting manned moon landing missions. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy announced a goal of landing a man on the moon by the end of the decade. It was accomplished on July 20, 1969 by the landing of astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, with Michael Collins orbiting above during the Apollo 11 mission. Five other Apollo missions also landed astronauts on the Moon, the last one in 1972. Document Archive Apollo Experience Report – Protection Against Radiation, March 1973 [19…
Author: John Greenewald
The Background This fictitious plan was created by junior military officers undergoing training related to the Department of Defense’s Joint Operational Planning and Execution System (JOPES), the formalized process by which the Department conducts all contingency planning and execution. In an effort to learn the JOPES process, and to do so in a more interesting way, the students were assigned this completely fictitious scenario and directed to use JOPES to develop a written contingency plan. Using this fictitious scenario avoided concerns over the use of classified information, it resolved sensitivity to using real-world nations or scenarios, and it better engaged…
Background This document was discovered as a reference in another government records. I then filed a FOIA request for the report, and it took more than 5 years to track down the office that had it. It has now been reviewed and released to The Black Vault. You can download it below. Excerpt The objective of this analysis is to define and assess the vulnerabilities that might exist in prospective Soviet Charged Particle Beam Weapon (CPBW) systems. This analysts will then establish the technological base required before countermeasure efforts can be pursued to negate such new weapon systems. Of primary concern in this effort is…
Background The following document is an interesting find, written in 1981. It was about ethics and values of being a professional soldier, and in one of the examples about a sample conversation, is on the belief in UFOs. Abstract A rule of thumb governing polite conversation is to avoid topics, such as religion and politics, that deal with personal values since the resulting arguments are usually inconclusive and sometimes volatile. But that such discussions frequently bog down is not evidence that rational inquiry in this field is impossible. Reasoned analysis about personal and professional values can help us to be…
Wikipedia defines “artificial intelligence” as: Artificial intelligence (AI) is the intelligence exhibited by machines or software. It is also the name of the academic field of study which studies how to create computers and computer software that are capable of intelligent behavior. Major AI researchers and textbooks define this field as “the study and design of intelligent agents”, in which an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its chances of success. John McCarthy, who coined the term in 1955, defines it as “the science and engineering of making intelligent machines”. The following…