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I would recommend anyone here check out the Encyclopedia Astronautica. They have a page dedicated to NASA's design studies for future Saturn V variants: http://www.astronautix.com/lvfam/saturnv.htm

And the Saturn V that would be used as a booster for an Orion-drive spacecraft: http://www.astronautix.com/lvfam/orion.htm

Because it's so small.

Building a complete multistage rocket and expending the energy to leave the atmosphere just to launch a small single-person capsule would be a huge economic waste.

A six-person capsule would be more reasonable. For transfer purposes, you could probably use a capsule smaller than Apollo. Here is an example of what I'm assuming. This would require a tiny fraction of the heat shield of the shuttle.

More info here.

Just try to imagine a Soyuz-based mission to fix the Hubble.

I don't see any problems here at all. What specifically makes you say it can't be done? The Soyuz can be brought to the same orbital plane as Hubble. The Soyuz can maneuver in space - and if you think it doesn't have enough fuel, just send a Progress ship to dock with Soyuz. The Soyuz has airlock. The Soyuz can fly with two people onboard, and extra cargo, needed for repairs, can be taken along.

Best of all, all of that was already successfully tried. Soyuz-4 and Soyuz-5 have docked in space in 1969. Progress was used to boost the orbit of another ship, ISS in this case. The Soyuz' airlock is the orbital module. Soyuz have flown with two people on board. Soyuz was actually used to repair a station in space, when all the control was lost.

Sealaunch uses Zenit for the first stage in their launcher. They wre originally designed as a quick launch ICBM by the Soviets.

Zenit is definitely not an ICBM; it was designed as more powerful replacement for Soyuz. Zenit first stage was also used as Energia strap-on.

Back in the 60s, Ukrainian manufacturer of Zenit stared rocket production with UR-100, which is the rail-transportable container-stored quick-launch encapsulated storable liquid propellant missile, the world's biggest production run ICBM.

Sealaunch uses Zenit for the first stage in their launcher. They wre originally designed as a quick launch ICBM by the Soviets.

Zenit is definitely not an ICBM; it was designed as more powerful replacement for Soyuz. Zenit first stage was also used as Energia strap-on.

Back in the 60s, Ukrainian manufacturer of Zenit stared rocket production with UR-100, which is the rail-transportable container-stored quick-launch encapsulated storable liquid propellant missile, the world's biggest production run ICBM.

Both the US and the former-Soviets have programs to dispose of ICBMs through commercial-use conversions. The US turns Peacekeeper ICBMs into Taurus launch vehicles. Stanford University launched a bunch of picosats on the first Minotaur - a hybrid of the Minuteman ICBM and Pegasus upper stages. The DNEPR has launched a couple of small satellites already, and has a number of Cubesats on-deck. You can coordinate getting a Cubesat on a DNEPR launch through OSSS or TransOrbital.

Energia

LEO Payload: 88,000 kg. to: 200 km Orbit

Saturn V:

LEO Payload: 118,000 kg. to: 185 km Orbit

Delta IV Heavy

LEO Payload: 25,800 kg. to: 185 km Orbit

Something tells me that would be cheaper than the shuttle, and get more done, and be more adaptable.

Yes John Young is some old retired *guy*. But he's a reminder of a generation of real acheivers. Forget the awards and look at what he has actually done:

Born in depression era America he graduated from Georgia Tech in Aero class of '52, (for all you pre college persons - it's one of the harder enginering courses), while his armed service combat record only mentions service in Korea on DD-558, Young flew Crusader and Phantom test pilot missions evaluating weapons systems, breaking speed records at 3000 and 25,000 ft. He retired as a Caption after 25 yrs Navy service in '76.

Youngs Nasa career started in '62, flying Gemini 3 missions in '65 with Gus Grissom (remember Grissom, Commander of Apollo 1 which tragically burnt on the PAD), Gemini 10 in '66, CMMP on Apollo 10 in '69 (test run for Apollo 11 in - so thats around the Moon), Apollo 16 in '72 (with Ken Mattingly who missed his ride with Apollo 13 - so he has worked on the lunar surface for his day job), Commander of STS-1 (that the first shuttle flight) in '81, Commander of STS-9 Spacelab in '83. Was backup in Gemini 6, Apollo1, Apollo 7, 13, 17.

In summary 15,000 hrs training, 15100 hrs in flight hours and 835 hrs in 6 space flights.

He's some *retired guy* all right. He is one of only 12 people who have walked, worked and lived on the moon. That give him a unique insight into this area. He has seen how puny Earth is from space and realises how human existance is not something to be taken for granted. You can read more about his bio here.

Great! Kliper is about 14.5 tons in launch configuration, and Ariane 5G can launch 16 tons to LEO. Ariane 5G was designed for the Hermes space plane, so it should be feasible to man-rate it.
Let's hope that there will be a close cooperation between Europe and Russia. Rumours about Russia joining ESA already surface now and then. AFAIK the main prolem (next to authoritarian, non-democratic tendencies in Russia) is that the cuurent ESA treaty requires every member to pay a share of the common space projects. The treaty would have to be altered to allow Russia to pay it's share in hardware and services.
Nevertheless, this seems as a promising opportunity to me. Especially as a the article on russianspaceweb.com states that a major portion of the 10 bn. Rubel development costs is for the Onega booster, which wouldn't be required if Ariane 5 could be used.

Dude, the Saturn V Plans aren't lost, it's just incredibly pointless to try and build one at this point. It's an awfully tired myth at this point.

And it doesn't matter because you can launch a mars shot in two or three launches of a shuttle derived booster anyway.

FTA: The Kliper itself was a reduced-sized version of an earlier unique design envisioned for launch on the Angara or Zenit launch vehicles in the 1990's (see Energia Spaceplane 1990's). This was larger and had the re-entry vehicle mounted nose-down in the launch vehicle.

I got interested in the launch vehicles and found this site very informative, it has illustrations and information on various Russian launch vehicles. Its amazing how much smaller the Zenit is compared to some of the others, specifically the RLA-150 and Vulkan.

My heart still goes with the Saturn V though.

NASA tried to develop a robot to do jobs like servicing the Hubble. The Flight Telerobotic Servicer project cost $288 million and produced zilch. Then there was the Robotic Satellite Servicer, NASA's second try at the same idea and another flop. Now they're trying to get their nose in the trough again and go for failure #3.

If we're going to have robotic repair, we should get it working here on Earth first, get it thoroughly debugged, use it for real applications, and then build space-qualified versions of the hardware for the occasional space job. Trying to do robotic repair in space when we can't do it on the ground is guaranteed to fail.

Also annoying to us in robotics is that NASA tries to claim credit for anything in which they had the vaguest involvement. They even have an arrangement with the USPTO so that if you patent something in robotics, the USPTO sends you a form under which you're supposed to declare any NASA involvement, so they can take credit.

I recently had an invitation to speak at NASA Ames. I told them to fuck off.

NASA tried to develop a robot to do jobs like servicing the Hubble. The Flight Telerobotic Servicer project cost $288 million and produced zilch. Then there was the Robotic Satellite Servicer, NASA's second try at the same idea and another flop. Now they're trying to get their nose in the trough again and go for failure #3.

If we're going to have robotic repair, we should get it working here on Earth first, get it thoroughly debugged, use it for real applications, and then build space-qualified versions of the hardware for the occasional space job. Trying to do robotic repair in space when we can't do it on the ground is guaranteed to fail.

Also annoying to us in robotics is that NASA tries to claim credit for anything in which they had the vaguest involvement. They even have an arrangement with the USPTO so that if you patent something in robotics, the USPTO sends you a form under which you're supposed to declare any NASA involvement, so they can take credit.

I recently had an invitation to speak at NASA Ames. I told them to fuck off.

the radioactive elements within the nuke can be detected via non invasive tests.

One of the worst nightmares of the cold war was the possibility of building a fusion bomb without a fission bomb to act as a primer for the fusion element, because such a bomb would have been virtually undetectable.
Think "diplomatic luggage " here. We're talking about the possible decapitation of a government, simply by detonating such a device in the capital city. Luckily it seems that such a device was never proofed.

Going back to the main topic, I always thought that Fractional Orbit Bombing system had been outlawed by the SALT treaties.

A previous poster mentioned a large rocket prototype exploding on the launchpad and killing 150 people. That rocket was supposed to do the same job as the saturn rocket, but failed due to vibration problems ( I think it had 11 engines ).

This On 24 October 1960 the first R-16 prototype was fuelled and on the pad, awaiting launch. An electrical problem developed, leading to a hold. Marshal Nedelin, commander of the Strategic Rocket Forces, ordered the engineers and technicians to fix the problem without the long delay of defuelling and refurbishing the missile. He personally had a deck chair brought out to the pad so he could watch the work first-hand. At 18:45 local time a spurious radio signal ordered the second stage of the rocket to fire while workers swarmed around the missile in its gantry. The missile exploded, killing a good part of the Soviet Union's rocket engineering and management talent. Among the dead were Nedelin, Konopalev (designer of the missile's guidance system), Grishin (deputy chairman of GKOT), Nosov (chief of launch command at Baikonur), and OKB-586 engineers Kontsevsky and Lev Berlin. 74 people were killed immediately, and 48 died in the ensuing weeks from burns or contact with the toxic and corrosive propellants. The total included 38 civilian engineers and 84 officers and enlisted rocket technicians.

Kornilov then goes on to declare that because of this rush Polyus was created by combining components from several current projects. The interface between Polyus and the Energia booster was adapted from the Buran Space Shuttle. The central module was adapted from a module for the Mir 2 Space Station.

The idea I've mostly seen tossed around isn't to use the ET as a debris shield, but to actually turn it into a (very large) space station module.

In the 80s David Brin wrote a great short story, "Tank Farm Dynamo" (available online), which talks about a near-future space station using the technologies of external tank modules and electrodynamic tether propulsion. He assumed that electrodynamic tethers were a pretty "out there" idea and that external tank modules were a straight-forward no-brainer. Ironically, we've flown prototypes of the tethers on the space station and absolutely no development has been done towards external tank modules.

> you need some kind of boost inbetween what a
> jet engine can do, and scramjet ignition

It's called a ramjet.

Of course, you can always go from zero to mach >5 in the barrel of a gigantic gun. ;) And before you say that it wouldn't work with a scramjet, you might want to think again

Also, when you said "a tin can", were you referring to a flameholder? Scramjets don't use flameholders; they either use hyperglolics (like silane) or just simple heat and pressure of high velocity compression for ignition (like a diesel engine). Flameholders (of which the can-type is no longer considered to be a very effective model) are generally only viable in subsonic flows.

You've never read about Project HARP before, have you?

The CZ-2F has three stages.

Has anybody signed such a treaty? There are still a couple of dozen fission reactors (not RTGs) from Soviet military radar satellites mothballed in parking orbits that will decay in a few hundred years.

References:

• Wikipedia DC-X page
• Astronautix DC-X page
• Astronautix DC-Y page
• Armadillo Aerospace's DC-X page (with videos)

References:

• Wikipedia DC-X page
• Astronautix DC-X page
• Astronautix DC-Y page
• Armadillo Aerospace's DC-X page (with videos)

PLUS, IF ALL OUR MIL-IND COMPANIES ARE BUSY WORKING TO PUT US IN SPACE, WE"RE NOT FOMETING IDIOTIC, WASTEFUL FOREIGN WARS TO KEEP THEM BUSY. Think of it as UN resolution 35397, "The US Aerospace full employment act so they stop bombing the rest of us" act.

19 July 1963 X-15 Flight 90

22 August 1963 X-15 Flight 91.
Both those flights were after Cooper, so there was one other American who went into space alone (both flights were by Joseph Walker).

In addition, there were 10 other flights which were awarded wings under the USAF definition, but not under the FAI definition of 100km.

The X Prize contestants are, in Newton's words, standing on the shoulders of giants.

And those giants stood on the shoulders of the Devil. Redstone, which sent the first Mercury astronauts on suborbital flights, was a direct descendant of the V2, fondly remembered by Londoners.

a quote from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scaled_Composites_Spa ceShipOne "Although impressive, the achievements of SpaceShipOne are not comparable with the Space Shuttle. The energy requirements of true orbital space flight are in the order of 33 times as much as a SpaceShipOne ascent."

SpaceShipOne is great and all, but for my money, i wouldnt go for a "3-minute high" (pun!).. I'd rather wait for an orbital craft that can stay there as long as we like it to (@ about 500 km height).. this Buran Spiral Orbital Program website and another one about the MIG 105-11 (aka "teh wooden shoe") talks about several orbital aircraft designs..

I am Korben Dallas and this is my hot wife Lilu Dallas!!

1) Sanger Amerika Bomber (~1938)
2) DynaSoar aka X20 (~1960) book about it here
3) Soviet Equivalents (~1960)
4) Numerous "black" projects here
5) Ever wondered who paid for the Space Shuttle ?

There are sure to have been many projects between 1 & 2.

Finding information on the rest of the above is left as an exercise for the reader ;-)

As long as there has been transportation sytems there have been military applications.

K

They've worked on it before...

Encyclopedia Astronautica has some good info on both the US and Soviet military space programs.

The soviets even had a military space station with a modified AA canon that was tested for its effectiveness in destroying satelites.

When it was being built, the space shuttle played a signifigant role in US military planning, but as it became more cost effective to launch satelites with conventional rockets, the military dropped the shuttle as a launch platform...

It would be a shame to award the prize to some old technology that doesn't build on the inherent economies of the reusable first stages being developed by the Ansari X-Prize contenstants.

As Robert Truax told me, people keep studying what the optimal number of stages for an orbital launch vehicle should be and they keep discovering the answer is "2". The first stage is always lower exhaust velocity and cheap per kg. The second stage is always higher exhaust velocity and more expensive per kg.

The ideal first stage derived from the Ansari X-Prize entrants would be one that is cheap to:

1. scale up
2. refuel
3. relaunch

Rutan's technology doesn't really fill the bill here because fabricating hybrid rockeet motors is expensive compared to refueling. Also its unlikely his aerodynamic body scales up as cheaply as does simple tankage with vertical takeoff.

As it turns out, John Carmack just reported his team has reached probably the most critical milestone for such a first stage by demonstrating a scaled up version of their methanol/H2O2(50%) mixed monoprop engine.

This could be the really big deal -- not just for manned spaceflight but for cheap access to space generally.

I was skeptical of Rutan's true goal (ooo, black sky), but after hearing rumors, I think he and others are going to do what NASA couldn't; bring cheap space access to the masses.

I can't find Hercules, but this early design, RLA-150, would have done 250 tons. If it had got off the ground, that is... I can't feel confident about ALL that many boosters working to plan.

The spin-off from Energia that frightens me, though, is Polyus. If that thing hadn't crashed... well, the word 'pwn3d' springs to mind.

I can't find Hercules, but this early design, RLA-150, would have done 250 tons. If it had got off the ground, that is... I can't feel confident about ALL that many boosters working to plan.

The spin-off from Energia that frightens me, though, is Polyus. If that thing hadn't crashed... well, the word 'pwn3d' springs to mind.

I can't find Hercules, but this early design, RLA-150, would have done 250 tons. If it had got off the ground, that is... I can't feel confident about ALL that many boosters working to plan.

The spin-off from Energia that frightens me, though, is Polyus. If that thing hadn't crashed... well, the word 'pwn3d' springs to mind.

I can't find Hercules, but this early design, RLA-150, would have done 250 tons. If it had got off the ground, that is... I can't feel confident about ALL that many boosters working to plan.

The spin-off from Energia that frightens me, though, is Polyus. If that thing hadn't crashed... well, the word 'pwn3d' springs to mind.

Nobody necessarily "talked". Buran was developed partly from publicly available information about the Shuttle. For example, the film Moonraker has very, very accurate Shuttles shown in it, including the launch sequence (from the blockhouse) which is very close to the actual procedures that were used in the real program. The film was released in 1979 or so, meaning it was worked on during the Approach and Landing Test program during which no actual missions were flown by space-qualified orbiters. Yet, it is very, very accurate (including the white External Tank, which was painted for STS-1 and STS-2 but not for subsequent missions). The US has never hidden information about its shuttle program. The Soviet philosophy, on the other hand, is "hide it unless and until it works".

You're just seeing, in this case, an example of those different philosophies. The F-15/MiG and Concorde/Tu-144 similarities, however, probably actually are indeed due to industrial espionage. The Soviets have a very long history when it comes to copying Western technology; they aren't good at coming up with things on their own but are very good at imitation and adaptation.

More on how all this happened:

Buran - In Depth History

It looks similar for several reasons:

1. The work was based in part on non-classified US shuttle information that was publicly available.

2. The US design was already tried, tested, and known to work. Why do something new when you can duplicate? The Soviets were very good at this; e.g. quickly copying the jet engines they were given during the 1950s, even going so far as to secretly collect metal shavings dropped on the floor by machining tools at the engine factory in England to find out what thte turbine blades were made from.

3. Convergence. This is an evolutionary principle which states that often, recurring similar solutions will arise spontaneously when two different organisms evolve to fill the same niche or accomplish the same goals, even if they evolved in separate parts of the world with no genetic exchange taking place. In other words, what engineers find works for a given goal in country/company A will also often come up as the best solution selected by engineers in country/company B. The principles of science and nature are absolutes the world over.

More on the history of Buran:

Buran - In Depth History

The Soviet system places the main engines on the Energia booster because the system is powerful enough to do this. That reduces some complexity in the orbiter due to it not having to carry the main propulsion system and it also increases the maximum payload capacity. The Buran orbiter only carries the engines required for achieving the final orbit, on-orbit maneuvering, and retrofire (for the US system, these are the OMS and RCS engines -- two OMS engines and 44 RCS jets.)

See Buran - In Depth History for more info.

And yes, this name was indeed selected because of the Soviet shuttle. Whenever I am asked about it, I point people here:

Buran

Shuttle Buran - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

....to the fifties and sixties, when the US was building prototype lifting bodies, primarily for the military aspect: http://www.astronautix.com/project/nasgbody.htm.

see also this: http://www.astronautix.com/craft/dynasoar.htm.
by the time the soviet union was developing the buran, these designs were well known in their basic terms; they might as well have obtained some classified data by the usual avenues.

THe key issue tough, and one that plagues the shuttle as well to this day, is the thermal shock of reentry and the cumbersome combination of tiles that covers the whole surface. in the article, it is stated that this, apart from the sensor tecnhology required, was the major anticipated obstacle to a full development of the Dynasoar military lifting body.

....to the fifties and sixties, when the US was building prototype lifting bodies, primarily for the military aspect: http://www.astronautix.com/project/nasgbody.htm.

see also this: http://www.astronautix.com/craft/dynasoar.htm.
by the time the soviet union was developing the buran, these designs were well known in their basic terms; they might as well have obtained some classified data by the usual avenues.

THe key issue tough, and one that plagues the shuttle as well to this day, is the thermal shock of reentry and the cumbersome combination of tiles that covers the whole surface. in the article, it is stated that this, apart from the sensor tecnhology required, was the major anticipated obstacle to a full development of the Dynasoar military lifting body.

This page would tend to indicate that the rumours are not true. If they were, I'm sure by now the truth would have come out.

This find is likely similar to the STS structural test article vehicle--an engineering-exact duplicate of an Orbiter vehicle used for tests in the early days of the Space Shuttle program in America. The Russians needed something similar, obviously.

Our STA, STA-099, was retrofitted after it was clear that retrofitting the test Orbiter Enterprise would be too costly. So, STA-099 become OV-099, Challenger. There might have been much gnashing of teeth to have seen Enterprise destroyed on that cold January day in 1986 for some fanboys than Challenger, I would think--not to belittle that death of a vehicle or its crew would seem any more or less important based on its name.

Everything you want to know about the Buran program in Russian, amongst many other space information, can be found at this popular and comprehensive web site.

I read with great interest the history of Buran on astronautix.com. Man, once I found that site I burned several hours reading about the N1 program, Buran, just tons of Soviet-era information that I had no idea was out there. Amazing that the N1 engines were bought by an American company and will end up being used; great story about how they were squirreled away after being ordered destroyed.

I was amazed to learn that Buran flew into space completely by remote control. Kudos to the Russians for this feat.

- Leo

Just FYI, you don't have to have all shuttles in a belly to belly configuration - Hermes was intended to be lauched purched on top of Ariane because side-by-side mounting caused all sorts of aerodynamics issues. The first picture I could find showing this clearly is here.

High altitude bombers had similar accuracy, and it usually took countless thousands of bombs per raid to effectively destroy major targets. Each large bomber raid carried more explosive power than the all V2s combined delivered over the entire life of the program.

Moreover, submarine-based launches would have lacked the frame-of-reference required to accurately aim the missiles even if they had perfect guidance.

We've had smaller nukes than that since the late 1950's. Our AIM-26A and AIR-2A air to air missiles typically had 1.5 nuclear warheads. Some of these had the even smaller 0.25 KT warheads.

More Info:

http://www.milnet.com/aamtab.htm

http://www.wpafb.af.mil/museum/arm/arm16.htm

http://www.hill.af.mil/museum/photos/coldwar/genie .htm

Technically you're right, it wasn't dumb. Energia had a very nice throttleable engine, but Energia was not quite reusable. The strapons it used were pretty much exactly the same as Zenit stage 1, and the core engine was basically a 10 use SSME that no one trusted to actually be reusable. Tests since then have shown it could probably be reused at least once, but there were no known plans to at the time of Buran's launch. In fact, while the strapons were planned to be eventually reusable (parachute return) during the lifetime of the base Energia configuration, the only one actually tested, a reusable core was only planned for implementation if a design variant (Energia-2) was picked up for use.

Lot of reliable info on Energia at astronautix. Also, Energia (the design bureau) retains some pages on Energia (the rocket) at their Energia page.

So, while you are correct that it was throttleable, it was not reusable. It was designed to be possible, but it was not used in that fashion at the time of its only launch.