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You seem to be taking my ramblings way too serious. Let me tell you that I consider lateralscience.co.uk to be arm chair chemistry for entertainment purposes only. The freedom over safety statement the original poster came up with wasn't meant to mean total lack of safety and disregard of human life/health. I just couldn't help it though, and had to make fun of it.

All that being said, fluorine has at least been considered as an oxidizer.

http://www.friends-partners.org/partners/mwade/props/floosene.htm

I'm really curious whether people actually test fired it.
 

The whole thing sounds a little too much like other regions attempting to attract attention through unwarranted space programs. I hope Nova Scotia will be more successful than Zaire.

And so the seeds of space piracy and "independent traders" are sown...

Recipe for telling the state go suck bricks through a thin straw sideways:

1. Buy an old oil platform
2. Refurbish
3. Reregister under the flag of a tiny pacific island which is not a signee to the treaty (optional)
4. Tow outside territorial waters (bonus points for launching from near the equator to save fuel).
5. Launch... And potentially Profit...

Example: http://www.boeing.com/special/sea-launch/why_sea_launch.htm. Surprise who are the usual suspects - the darlings of the USA defence industry - Boeing and the darlings of the russian defence industry - Energia. Cousying in the same bed. Nicely and quietly while the USA and Russia politicians rattle the sabres in the name of a new Cold War.

Alternative recipe

1. Buy or hire an Il-76, An-124 or Mriya. The last is difficult, for the rest call this chap: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/6991487.stm. He is rumoured to be good. Alternatively, get your hand on a White Swan or a Concorde (that may be quite difficult, but as our Bulgarian friends say "What cannot be bought with money can be bought with a A LOT of money").
2. Reregister it under a suitable nation in the middle of Africa or Oceania (optional).
3. Load a launch vehicle on it. Two under development - Shtil-3A and RIF-MA. Both are rumoured to work. To buy - call the same chap. Or build your own.
4. Fly outside the airspace of all nations signing the treaty (again - bonus points for equatorial launch)
5. Launch... and potentially Profit...

Example: http://www.friends-partners.org/partners/mwade/lvs/shtil3a.htm and http://www.friends-partners.org/partners/mwade/lvs/rifma.htm. Actually the last 5 on the right will all do nicely: http://www.friends-partners.org/partners/mwade/graphics/n/newlv640.jpg.

Alternatively (if you manage to get your hands on a White Swan or manage to get the French to sell you a Concnorde as a launch vehicle): http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/burlak.htm

And so the seeds of space piracy and "independent traders" are sown...

Recipe for telling the state go suck bricks through a thin straw sideways:

1. Buy an old oil platform
2. Refurbish
3. Reregister under the flag of a tiny pacific island which is not a signee to the treaty (optional)
4. Tow outside territorial waters (bonus points for launching from near the equator to save fuel).
5. Launch... And potentially Profit...

Example: http://www.boeing.com/special/sea-launch/why_sea_launch.htm. Surprise who are the usual suspects - the darlings of the USA defence industry - Boeing and the darlings of the russian defence industry - Energia. Cousying in the same bed. Nicely and quietly while the USA and Russia politicians rattle the sabres in the name of a new Cold War.

Alternative recipe

1. Buy or hire an Il-76, An-124 or Mriya. The last is difficult, for the rest call this chap: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/6991487.stm. He is rumoured to be good. Alternatively, get your hand on a White Swan or a Concorde (that may be quite difficult, but as our Bulgarian friends say "What cannot be bought with money can be bought with a A LOT of money").
2. Reregister it under a suitable nation in the middle of Africa or Oceania (optional).
3. Load a launch vehicle on it. Two under development - Shtil-3A and RIF-MA. Both are rumoured to work. To buy - call the same chap. Or build your own.
4. Fly outside the airspace of all nations signing the treaty (again - bonus points for equatorial launch)
5. Launch... and potentially Profit...

Example: http://www.friends-partners.org/partners/mwade/lvs/shtil3a.htm and http://www.friends-partners.org/partners/mwade/lvs/rifma.htm. Actually the last 5 on the right will all do nicely: http://www.friends-partners.org/partners/mwade/graphics/n/newlv640.jpg.

Alternatively (if you manage to get your hands on a White Swan or manage to get the French to sell you a Concnorde as a launch vehicle): http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/burlak.htm

And so the seeds of space piracy and "independent traders" are sown...

Recipe for telling the state go suck bricks through a thin straw sideways:

1. Buy an old oil platform
2. Refurbish
3. Reregister under the flag of a tiny pacific island which is not a signee to the treaty (optional)
4. Tow outside territorial waters (bonus points for launching from near the equator to save fuel).
5. Launch... And potentially Profit...

Example: http://www.boeing.com/special/sea-launch/why_sea_launch.htm. Surprise who are the usual suspects - the darlings of the USA defence industry - Boeing and the darlings of the russian defence industry - Energia. Cousying in the same bed. Nicely and quietly while the USA and Russia politicians rattle the sabres in the name of a new Cold War.

Alternative recipe

1. Buy or hire an Il-76, An-124 or Mriya. The last is difficult, for the rest call this chap: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/6991487.stm. He is rumoured to be good. Alternatively, get your hand on a White Swan or a Concorde (that may be quite difficult, but as our Bulgarian friends say "What cannot be bought with money can be bought with a A LOT of money").
2. Reregister it under a suitable nation in the middle of Africa or Oceania (optional).
3. Load a launch vehicle on it. Two under development - Shtil-3A and RIF-MA. Both are rumoured to work. To buy - call the same chap. Or build your own.
4. Fly outside the airspace of all nations signing the treaty (again - bonus points for equatorial launch)
5. Launch... and potentially Profit...

Example: http://www.friends-partners.org/partners/mwade/lvs/shtil3a.htm and http://www.friends-partners.org/partners/mwade/lvs/rifma.htm. Actually the last 5 on the right will all do nicely: http://www.friends-partners.org/partners/mwade/graphics/n/newlv640.jpg.

Alternatively (if you manage to get your hands on a White Swan or manage to get the French to sell you a Concnorde as a launch vehicle): http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/burlak.htm

Hadn't thought about the requirement to keep two lines going. But they were doing it anyway. And they could have used the savings on the moon program to put Saturn Vs into other productive use.

Skylab CSMs took off which half the fuel load. Exactly my point. A lunar CSM could take off with that fuel load, then refuel once in orbit.

I do see my error on Apollo 5, though. It didn't have a 'real' CSM.

From everyone's favorite source, Wikipedia:

Earth Orbit CSM: 14,781 kg (per Apollo 7,)
Partly fueled LEM: 13,941 kg (per Apollo 10.)
Total for non-fully fueled: 28,722 kg

Saturn Ib payload is uncertain by Wikipedia. In one place, it says only 15,300 kg to LEO, but then it goes on to mention a 20,000kg+ Apollo (Skylab) module. So we'll assume that each lunar mission needed 2 Ib launches, one fo rthe CSM, one for the LEM.

According to http://www.friends-partners.org/partners/mwade/lvs /saturnib.htm and http://www.friends-partners.org/partners/mwade/lvs /saturnv.htm, a Saturn V launch was $431 million, and a Saturn Ib launch was $107 million. That's 4 Ib launches per V launch. Even if you had to launch two Ibs to get the CSM and LEM up separately, it would STILL have been cheaper. The V had a payload of 118,000 kg to LEO. That would have been more than enough for a fueling 'depot' that would have fueled the entire planned 11 landings. And the V would then not have to have been man-rated, saving development costs.

There were 10 Saturn V manned launches, with another 3 in the works. That's 13*$431m=$5.6 billion, plus the one manned Ib's $107m, $5.7 bil. Two Vs for refueling depots, plus 26 Ibs (two in place of each V launch, except the one V launch didn't have a LEM, so it would only use up one Ib, plus the one actual manned Ib launch,) is $862m for the 2 Vs, and $2.4b for the Ibs. Total $3.3 billion. A savings of $2.4 billion. That savings could have paid for a lot more programs. Possibly Skylab could have been truly fully developed, Space Shuttle developed sooner (although the STS ended up a boondoggle in the end due to design compromises,) or even a permanent moon settlement, like planned now, could have started in the 1970s. And if they had managed to get LEO-only CSM/LEM pair to launch together on a Ib, that would cut the number of Ib flights almost in half, saving an extra $1.2 bil.

Hadn't thought about the requirement to keep two lines going. But they were doing it anyway. And they could have used the savings on the moon program to put Saturn Vs into other productive use.

Skylab CSMs took off which half the fuel load. Exactly my point. A lunar CSM could take off with that fuel load, then refuel once in orbit.

I do see my error on Apollo 5, though. It didn't have a 'real' CSM.

From everyone's favorite source, Wikipedia:

Earth Orbit CSM: 14,781 kg (per Apollo 7,)
Partly fueled LEM: 13,941 kg (per Apollo 10.)
Total for non-fully fueled: 28,722 kg

Saturn Ib payload is uncertain by Wikipedia. In one place, it says only 15,300 kg to LEO, but then it goes on to mention a 20,000kg+ Apollo (Skylab) module. So we'll assume that each lunar mission needed 2 Ib launches, one fo rthe CSM, one for the LEM.

According to http://www.friends-partners.org/partners/mwade/lvs /saturnib.htm and http://www.friends-partners.org/partners/mwade/lvs /saturnv.htm, a Saturn V launch was $431 million, and a Saturn Ib launch was $107 million. That's 4 Ib launches per V launch. Even if you had to launch two Ibs to get the CSM and LEM up separately, it would STILL have been cheaper. The V had a payload of 118,000 kg to LEO. That would have been more than enough for a fueling 'depot' that would have fueled the entire planned 11 landings. And the V would then not have to have been man-rated, saving development costs.

There were 10 Saturn V manned launches, with another 3 in the works. That's 13*$431m=$5.6 billion, plus the one manned Ib's $107m, $5.7 bil. Two Vs for refueling depots, plus 26 Ibs (two in place of each V launch, except the one V launch didn't have a LEM, so it would only use up one Ib, plus the one actual manned Ib launch,) is $862m for the 2 Vs, and $2.4b for the Ibs. Total $3.3 billion. A savings of $2.4 billion. That savings could have paid for a lot more programs. Possibly Skylab could have been truly fully developed, Space Shuttle developed sooner (although the STS ended up a boondoggle in the end due to design compromises,) or even a permanent moon settlement, like planned now, could have started in the 1970s. And if they had managed to get LEO-only CSM/LEM pair to launch together on a Ib, that would cut the number of Ib flights almost in half, saving an extra $1.2 bil.

Here's the complete text of War and Peace

Try printing that out and see if he doesn't notice.

...Cyrillic has a, e, o, p, c, y, x, and s...

True, except the 's'. There is no such a thing in Cyrillic, unless you mean the Old Churh Slavonic

The old USSR already did deploy weapons in space.
The USSR deployed a network of anti Satellite weapons.
The USSR deployed a Fractional Orbital Bombardment System.
One of the Some of the Soviet manned missions where military missions.
The Soviets tried to launch a space battle station it failed to make it to orbit.
http://www.friends-partners.org/partners/mwade/art icles/sovtion3.htm

NASA won't let anyone else develop privately created technologies so how do you think Bigelow was supposed to get his hands on the inflatable space station technology?

NASA has to give token support to companies like Bigelowe's and companies like Bigelowe's have to maintain a friendly relationship with NASA. But when NASA gets a chance to stab them in the back due to widespread corrupt views such as you espouse here -- eg: characterizing those who point out ethical conflicts of interest and actual lapses among the powerful and unaccountable as "conspiracy theorists" (connotation: insane) -- they very likely do it. You don't understand that the effect of this likelihood is to drive private capital out since it is already dealing with enough technical risk and any addition political risk renders the investment nonviable. Or perhaps you do understand and you are working for NASA.

[The Shuttle] is extremely risky for the crews who fly it because, while its mission reliability is no worse than other launch vehicles, there is seldom any possibility of crew escape in the event of an anomaly.

http://www.spaceandtech.com/spacedata/engines/rd12 0_sum.shtml http://www.spaceandtech.com/spacedata/engines/rd18 0_sum.shtml http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0412/22atlas5n ro/ http://www.friends-partners.org/partners/mwade/lvs /atlasv.htm http://www.asi.org/adb/04/03/09/01/npo-energomash. html and: http://www.friends-partners.ru/partners/mwade/lvfa m/energia.htm Sorry for the inconvenience in the previous post.

Actually, the Energia is quoted as being able to lift 100 tons to LEO, and 32 tons into a lunar trajectory.
Saturn V could put 118 tons into LEO, and 47 tons into a lunar trajectory.

James Van Allen did this back in 1953. Not carrying humans, but his "rockoons" got instruments relatively high up in the atmosphere for not much money.

By the way, contrary to popular assumption Dr. Van Allen is still alive and still working at the University of Iowa as a professor emeritus. His autobiography is here

The main difference from the STS being that the shuttle has its main engine on the spacecraft, while Buran was lifted entirely by Energia rocket and attached liquid rocket boosters (i.e. spacecraft did not do any lifting of its own).

Now, as far as I know, nobody else including NASA has anything like this. While Energia design could be relatively easily used for lifting cargo other than Buran, I'm not sure the Shuttle main engine could be that easily ported or even comparable in power.

Energiya RD-0120: vacuum thrust 200,000 kgf (roughly 440,000 lbf)

Rocketdyne SSME: vacuum thrust 512,950 lbf

The major difference between Energiya/Buran and Shuttle is the choice of configuration; an Energiya can carry anything within certain size/mass/CG constraints because the cargo is just cargo, while Shuttle can only fly with the Orbiter because the hydrogen engines are attached to it. This does not mean that it would be overly difficult to bolt a bunch of SSME's onto a different airframe so that we could fly 100 tons of cargo instead of 20 tons of cargo inside 80 tons of obsolete spaceplane; on the contrary, putting a new vehicle together would probably be cheaper than keeping the Shuttle program going until 2008.

Could we use Shuttle components to put together a rocket that would launch 660 tons? If we scale from the 3-engine, 100-ton Shuttle we'd need to cluster 20 SSMEs for such a thing. I don't think this is within the realm of practicality, but 200 tons looks fairly reasonable from my relatively in-expert point of view. (Goodness knows what you'd do for the boosters to get the thing off the ground; clustering so many solid rockets would have a very high probability of failure.)

While putting people in orbit is tricky and expensive, there is a way to put food and water into space very cheaply: Superguns!

What parent wrote is not true because Jefferson wrote it or because the idea is 200 years old. No, it's true because it is logical, ethical and natural, as argued by Jefferson in this letter and many other people in many other documents. And whether the ideas are still relevant is found out by checking the reasoning and applying it to the present. If the logic still works, then the ideas are relevant. The last time I checked the ideas still could be freely copied, so I guess, the ideas are still relevant.

What he wrote about ideas does not apply 100% to the movies, but the general principle applies. Society (as in "people", not "corporations") decides what incentive to give to the producers if any and it also decides when to take it back. I don't know if it's in American Consitution somewhere, but in my country it's said in the Chapter 1, Article 3.1 of the Constitution that "The multinational people of the Russian Federation shall be the vehicle of sovereignty and the only source of power in the Russian Federation." You see, the only source of power. It seems that the US Consitution says something along the lines of "the corporations, and lobbysts and the Bush family and also the people (if the first three groups have no objections) should be the sources of power" or even simplier "the money should be the only source of power in the United States"...

Vox populi, vox Dei. If people decide "no more money for MPAA/RIAA", then no more money for MPAA/RIAA.

"even though they had a better shuttle design than NASA"

How do you figure? The Buran seems to be inherently more expensive to operate than the STS. With the STS, all engines (both the STS main engines and the SRBs) are recoverable and resuable, and all you have to do is refuel the SRBs and make a new external tank. With the Buran, you have to build a new Engeria booster for every launch, and the Buran had no engines of its own.

"Does anyone have any idea how Buran got transported?"

From this article, it looks like they mostly used the An-225.

The Buran shuttle was indeed transported like the NASA shuttle, atop a massive An-225 Mriya carrier aircraft with 6 jet engines(!).
There is some info here

Also, a couple interesting Buran info sites:
http://www.buran.ru/htm/molniya5.htm
http://k26.com/buran/Info/A_Quick_Look/a_quick_loo k.html

Regarding nukes in space... the Soviet Union, under Khrushchev, did plan to build a space station that would hold and launch nuclear weapons. You are correct in that an ICBM could already hit any target that a space-based platform could target. The space platform, however, could launch with significantly less warning. Defensive systems are designed to detect the launch of ICBMs, they would not detect a space-based launch. There are, of course, significant drawbacks. A space-based platform is easily tracked and would likely be an easy target in case of war (assuming it wasn't used for a nuclear first-strike).

...Almost. At least two Soyuz capsules have experienced catastrophic failure. The first one was due to a rushed timeline, the second to (I can only assume) a manufacturing error - though the description given in the following link suggests design problems as well.

Soyuz 1: Komarov
Soyuz 11: Dobrovolsky, Patsayev, Volkov

...Almost. At least two Soyuz capsules have experienced catastrophic failure. The first one was due to a rushed timeline, the second to (I can only assume) a manufacturing error - though the description given in the following link suggests design problems as well.

Soyuz 1: Komarov
Soyuz 11: Dobrovolsky, Patsayev, Volkov

The US considered this as well, during Project Orion. They even did some tests with high explosives and small scale devices.

Yeah, solid fuel is definately preferable, but still, the L-1011's lands at 120-150 knots... What are the chances that the friction from the ground is going to generate enough heat to ignite something? (I don't know).

I found this neat picture of the rocket attached to the underbelly in flight... the site also has a pretty complete history.

Chinese Manned Space Program: Behind Closed Doors is a very interesting read. It details not only a large chunk of the history of the Chinese space research, but also describes the secrecy that has shrouded most of it.

They did pratically invent space travel

*cough* Sure they did.

Courtney Stadd took over the Office of Commercial Space at the Department of Commerce shortly after Malcolm Baldridge, then Secretary of Commerce, died after a fall from a horse. Stadd had previously been working at NASA.

Baldridge had established the Office of Commercial Space in response to difficulties he had with NASA accepting private overtures at a Commercially Developed Space Facility (CDSF) aka the Industrial Space Facility (ISF) -- a man-tended orbital laboratory, entirely financed by private capital -- which would have been in orbit in the late 1980s if NASA had merely signed on as an "anchor tenant" -- procuring space on the laboratory as a customer -- as would have been allowed by Reagan policy and later law.

If you notice at this link another individual with close association to Stadd is Scott Pace. Scott Pace has involvement in this story of the Baldridge-era Office of Space Commerce as well.

The CDSF era was a time of misguided political activism on my part (I now know direct technology development to be far more revolutionary and threatening to the would-be "powers that be"), and I had sent a letter to the National Space Society's "Space World" editor. The letter concerned the appropriate division between private sector and public sector responsiblities. I made reference to patent law's distinction between technology (patentable) and science (unpatentable) as a guideline. Courtney Stadd had recently hired Scott Pace to work under him at the Office of Commercial Space. As someone who watched the tragic demise of the CDSF at the hands of NASA interests in teh wake of Baldridge's death, and who had actively supported the ISF, I complained to the Secretary of Commerce that I Pace should not be retained due to the potential conflict of interest represented by his participation with the various organizations surrounding the National Space Society. According to verbal reports to me, the letter of mine on patent-law-guided space commerce policy was being submitted for final publication when Pace appeared in the offices of the NSS where the editors of the NSS's "Space World" were making their deliberations. Pace rather boldly asserted that they shoudl not publish my letter and spoke of the fact that I was trying to get him fired in the same context -- as though that were somehow justification.

In this light, it is interesting that Courtney Stadd is now in line to become Goldin's successor:

Intrigue Swirls Around NASA Chief Goldin, Possible Successor

By Steven Siceloff, FLORIDA TODAY posted: 11:10 am ET, 04 October 2001

NASA Chief Rallies Troops After Terrorist Attacks

NASA Spells Out its Space Commerce Agenda

CAPE CANAVERAL - Two NASA memos issued last week look for the most part like any of the dozens that have flowed from the agency. But NASA Chief of Staff Courtney Stadd signed them instead of Administrator Dan Goldin.

It is unusual for sweeping directives such as the travel restrictions released last week to carry anyone's name other than the administrator's. The incidental change offers a glimpse into the intrigue that has swirled around Goldin since last November's election.

Agency observers and White House officials have long seen Stadd as an administrator candidate.

Those views gained intensity in late August and September. Then the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 pushed the government into a war footing. NASA issues plunged to the depths of the White House's to-do list.

Stadd holds considerable sway over NASA since he was appointed by the Bush administration, said Federation of American Scientists analyst Charles Vick.

"I think a lot of responsibility is falling on his shoulders," Vick said. "This administration doesn't give a blast about NASA now, and didn't before the events of Sept. 11."

Howard McCurdy, a space policy professor at American University in Washington, D.C., said Goldin faces an unusual situation: plural leadership of a federal agency.

Instead of a single man at the helm, the White House has Goldin and Stadd to run NASA together. "This is a 70-year-old technique in Washington," McCurdy said.

Vice President Al Gore was sufficiently interested in space during the previous presidency that a deputy NASA administrator was not necessary, McCurdy suggested.

While not dismissing McCurdy's suggestion, Goldin press secretary Glenn Mahone said that Stadd's Chief of Staff position is next in line after the vacant Deputy Administrator slot.

The new initiatives are not a sign of a power shift at NASA, but rather a sign that Stadd is comfortable with the agency and the role he has held in it since January, Mahone said.

"It isn't any signal," Mahone said. "Courtney now has his footing in the agency. It's a growing process."

But other NASA watchers said leadership at NASA has been diluted for lack of interest.

"There is a growing perception that Dan is going to be an administrator for life," said John Pike, director of the Alexandria, Va.-based thinktank Globalsecurity.org. "This should have been taken care of in the spring. It's indicative of the unusually low priority that NASA has been accorded. Now it is even further from the front of the stove."

The White House plucked Stadd from his commercial space business as a liaison between Clinton Administration holdover Goldin and Bush's staff. "There's certainly been a view that Courtney was providing the adult supervision during the transition to a new administrator," Pike said.

Uncertainty is something agency employees have had to deal with for months. It faces a $4.8 billion cost overrun in the International Space Station program and shortfalls in the space shuttle program. The agency also must find a new director at Johnson Space Center in Houston and a new administrator.

The Me 162 was actually not the first rocket plane. From Black Powder Solid Propellants:

"In early June 1927, rocket and space enthusiasts in Germany founded the Verein fuer Raumschiffahrt (Society for Space Travel). Some members experimented with black powder rockets.

Automobile manufacturer Fritz von Opel piloted his own rocket glider, Opel Rak.1, in tests near Frankfurt on 30 September 1928. Its 16 rockets, each producing 50 pounds of thrust, were build by Friedrich Sander a pyrotechnics specialist. The propulsion system combining high-thrust, fast-burning powder rockets for initial acceleration with lower-thrust, slower-burning rockets to sustain velocity.

Opel approached Alexander M. Lippisch, a young designer working at the Rhon-Rossitten-Gesellschaft, who had already displayed a penchant for the unorthodox in airplane configuration, with the proposal that he, too, design a glider for rocket power.

Max Valier and Alexander Sander also succeeded in arousing enthusiasm for rocket propulsion in a twenty- seven-year-old aircraft designer, Gottlop Espenlaub. His E 15 tail-less design was of interest as a rocketplane.

On 11 June, Fritz Stamer effected the first rocket- propelled flight in Lippish's glider. The glider had been dubbed Ente, or Duck. That lead later to the Lippish's Komet - the Messerschmitt Me 163, liquid rocket manned interceptor."

Opel Rak.1 picture here

Wouldn't bulk raw material be easier to push into orbit? Sounds like a job for a rail gun to me. Gas Gun or NASA rail gun

Judging by the size of the mini space station core in the MirCorp picture, the module seems to be of the same class as the gamma free flying spacecraft, first proposed back in 1965 or so.
This craft would be small, weighing about 7 1/2 metric tonnes, and therefore light enough to be launched on one of the cheaper Soyuz family of rockets (as opposed to Proton). Habitable volume would be quite small though, about 4 meters long by 2.2 meters diameter

Yes I agree with you. After thinking about it some more I just had to find the name of the gun I was thinking of so I did some more research and found it. The gun was part of HARP (High Altitude Research Project). It achieved about 1/3 of escape velocity. I found a site talking about this and other large guns here and a page talking about Gerald Bull. I just remembered the part about the escape velocity wrong.

You forgot three who died on the pad with Apollo 7. The loss of Gus Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee hit hard. That's the American side.

On the Soviet side, you missed no fewer than 170 deaths:
Komarov: 1967
Testers of Baikonur (you've probably seen the film of the explosion)
Gagarin and test-pilot Seryogin, lost in air flight in 1968)
Georgi Dobrovolksy, Vladislav Volkov, Viktor Patsayev, Soyuz 11, June 6, 1971 (died during re-entry)

Science is expensive, and pure research even more so. "Pure research" is the attempt to find out something without any other goal than the knowledge itself. That means there's no expected profits. Universities used to be the primary resource for this, but the way things have been the past couple decades, most research is done on behalf of a corporate sponsor, which means that 1) if you can't show a profitable motive for the intended result, you ain't doing it; and 2) If what you find upsets the sponsor, the plug is pulled quickly.

NASA has been incredibly successful, despite having both arms tied behind its back, one leg hobbled, the other knee immobilised, and forced to wear an eye patch AND headphones blaring N-SYNC and Shitney Spears 24/7.

The people who have died through their direct involvement in space programs all knew there were risks involved and were willing to take those risks. We can split hairs and say that no one told Krista McAuliffe that the Challenger was really a 1.5 million pound bomb, or that Apollo 7 wouldn't have burned if NASA read the label and followed the manufacturer's instructions, but they were still better informed than their Soviet counterparts.

Science ain't cheap, but when's the last time you thought about the price of ignorance?

woof.

"Eppur si muove" ("Nevertheless, it moves") -- supposedly said by Galileo after his recanting of his book.

The project began in 1950, the design of the ICBM version was frozen in 1954, and the first flight occured in 1956. As of last year over 1,628 had been launched with a success rate of 97.5% for production models, pretty remarkable for a booster design nearing fifty years of service this decade.

The R7 and its derivatives use plain old kerosene and liquid oxygen, so the exhaust would be mostly H2O and CO2. I'm not sure what gas generator fuel it uses for its turbopumps, but that would be the only other exhaust that could possibly be toxic. I'm supposing it uses kerosene and LOX, but it may be using H2O2. In either case the exhaust products are quite benign.

If you are interested in finding out more about boosters and spacecraft of the world, check out astronautix.com.

-RLN

The project began in 1950, the design of the ICBM version was frozen in 1954, and the first flight occured in 1956. As of last year over 1,628 had been launched with a success rate of 97.5% for production models, pretty remarkable for a booster design nearing fifty years of service this decade.

The R7 and its derivatives use plain old kerosene and liquid oxygen, so the exhaust would be mostly H2O and CO2. I'm not sure what gas generator fuel it uses for its turbopumps, but that would be the only other exhaust that could possibly be toxic. I'm supposing it uses kerosene and LOX, but it may be using H2O2. In either case the exhaust products are quite benign.

If you are interested in finding out more about boosters and spacecraft of the world, check out astronautix.com.

-RLN

http://www.friends-partners.org/mwade/craft/buran. htm

Note, several launchers were built.

Buran was basically a 2/3 scale copy of the American space shuttle...

If you use google, you will find sites with information about Buran. Larger capacity than the American shuttles. It borrowed some elements from the American shuttle. The Soviets made some changes, like liquid fueled boosters and ejections seats for the cockpit crew.

http://www.friends-partners.org/mwade/craft/buran. htm

The Russians did have their own space shuttle. I don't remember the Russian name, but it translates as Blizzard in English.

Someone else posted this link, which points to a detailed description of the Soviet shuttle, here, just a few days ago. It did fly one unmanned mission to Mir.

It was equipped with ejection seats for the four cabin crew (none for any additional mission specialists though). The article doesn't say whether the Challenger astronauts could have been saved if the American shuttles had had a similar system.

http://www.friends-partners.org/mwade/craft/buran. htm

"Notice how the military is no longer using the shuttle for its missions... it proved too expensive for the one-shot launches more suited to USAF missions."

To this day, the military has not specified what that payload was, though I speculate that it was likely a KH-12 spy satellite or a similar vehicle, which is reportedly very similar to the overall design of the Hubble telescope but optimised for looking back at the Earth instead of toward the stars. Using different sensors, of course; Hubble would be blinded if it pointed at the Moon or Earth. Hubble, incidentally, is one of the few payloads to even come close to filling the entire payload bay. Hubble filled nearly all of it; the emptiest shuttle mission ever was the first flight, STS-1 -- carried out in April of 1981 -- that carried no payload whatsoever.

"... the USAF doesnt really like to work with NASA any more since they were hoodwinked into paying for part of the Shuttle ...

The Shuttle fleet is too busy right now to accept a military mission in any case, however, since three of the four shuttles are constantly flying to the space station and the fourth, Columbia, has not reentered service after its last Orbiter Maintenance Down Period (OMDP). Columbia is too heavy to reach the ISS, so she will be flying science missions as the shuttle did for years before the ISS began assembly in 1998.

The shuttle has a max altitude of about 400 kilometres, which is a lot less than 400 miles.

http://www.friends-partners.org/mwade/lvs/shuttle. htm

From Yahoo: A key aspect of the GSLV is its Russian engine that uses liquid oxygen as a fuel that helps place the satellite in orbit as high as 36,000 km in space.

It's hydrogen. Oxygen is oxidizer. Hydrogen is fuel.

GSLV uses hodgepodge of technologies: the L40 strap-ons and second stage L37.5 are from Ariane heritage, first solid stage S125 is Indian, the third stage C12 "cryo-12" is Russian KRB 12 "Kryogenic Rocket Block, 12 ton".

The vehicle has interesting flight profile: the core first stage burns out first at 100 seconds, and strap-ons are going until 160 sec., hauling an empty steel cylinger for a whole minute before stage separation.

From Yahoo: A key aspect of the GSLV is its Russian engine that uses liquid oxygen as a fuel that helps place the satellite in orbit as high as 36,000 km in space.

It's hydrogen. Oxygen is oxidizer. Hydrogen is fuel.

GSLV uses hodgepodge of technologies: the L40 strap-ons and second stage L37.5 are from Ariane heritage, first solid stage S125 is Indian, the third stage C12 "cryo-12" is Russian KRB 12 "Kryogenic Rocket Block, 12 ton".

The vehicle has interesting flight profile: the core first stage burns out first at 100 seconds, and strap-ons are going until 160 sec., hauling an empty steel cylinger for a whole minute before stage separation.

Even if you include the nuclear programs of both countries in the death toll, I'm still pretty sure the US would have a hard time matching the Soviet death toll.

They wouldn't need to. Unlike the USA or former USSR, the Chinese don't have observation stations all around the Earth to keep in contact with their taikonauts when they're not over China. In order to compensate, they have a few specialized frigates (or are they cruisers?) with communications gear that's only useful for talking with spacecraft. Whenever these ships leave port, you can bet foreign spy satellites (even the commercial ones) take note of it.

Even more damning is the way their launches fly right into NORAD territory.

"Or would they wait and see if it were successful first?"

I'm not sure when the People's Daily is allowed to publish information on Shenzhou launches, but the pattern seems to be that Chinese launches are all over the US press either right before or right after launch.

They could try denying that somebody was aboard, but anybody with a decent radio would be able to find out the truth.

"anyone know what the Chinese version of astronaut/cosmonaut would be?)"

The Chinese government refers to them as "yuhangyuan," but the Western press has taken to calling them "taikonauts."

"kick the USA into being more ambitious about the manned space program? "

Probably not until they do something that seems to intrude on US pride, like, say, that lunar landing they say they can achieve by 2005. Yeah, that 2005 deadline is probably too ambitious, but not as ambitious as you might think. The Encyclopedia Astronautica has this interesting article on their lunar plans.

In short, instead of building a super-heavy lifter (Saturn V, N1), they intend to launch the taikonauts and lunar landing equipment on two different rockets, to meet up together in orbit. Whether they can figure out docking in orbit is another question entirely...

About noon on Sunday, May 15, we were walking downhill through the park surrounding the castle that dominates Vilno. We encountered a group of six or eight Red Army cadets. Foreigners are a great curiosity in Vilno. Almost no tourists go there. So they stopped and we chatted, myself through our guide and my wife directly, in Russian.

Shortly one of the cadets asked us what we thought of their new manned rocket. We answered that we had had no news lately -- what was it and when did it happen? He told us, with the other cadets listening and agreeing, that the rocket had gone up that very day, and at that very moment a Russian astronaut was in orbit around the earth -- and what did we think of that?

I congratulated them on this wonderous achievement but, privately, felt a dull sickness. The Soviet Union had beaten us to the punch again. But later that day our guide looked us up and carefully corrected the story: The cadet had been mistaken, the rocket was not manned.

That evening we tried to purchase Pravda. No copies were available in Vilno. Later we heard from other Americans that Pravda was not available in other cities in the USSR that evening -- this part is hearsay, of course. We tried also to listen to the Voice of America. It was jammed. We listened to some Soviet radio stations but heard no mention of the rocket.

This is the rocket the Soviets tried to recover and later admitted they had had some trouble with the retrojets; they had fired while the rocket was in the wrong attitude.

So what is the answer? Did that rocket contain only a dummy, as the pravda now claims? Or is there a dead Russian revolving in space? an Orwellian "unperson," once it was realized that he could not be recovered.

I am sure of this: At noon on May 15 a group of Red Army cadets were unanimously positive that the rocket was manned. That pravda did not change until later that afternoon.

The experts pretty much agree that it's very very unlikely that the russians could have mounted a suborbital program.

I personally am inclined to agree with them. They would have turned up a body by now. I suspect that the engineer is looking for cash.

X-33 References

The Delta Clipper (DC-X) program which MD had proposed for NASA's X-33 effort competed with several other projects, including Lockheed's Venture Star. But the Clipper had a distinct advantage: a working prototype.

A collection of DC-X images

It's a shame Clinton, Gore, and NASA decided to go with the flash and dazzle promised by Lockheed instead of investing the time and energy in a simpler project that was much further along.

Well I am sure the timing of this publicity has something to do with the auspicious date - 40th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's flight into space.

Celebrate Yuri's Night near you!

Want to count the number of dead?

OK, HERE WE GO:

Russians:

Soyuz 1: 1 guy. His parachute failed to open, and in the time between the failure and the splat, he loudly cursed the people who rushed that spacecraft into production. Hey! Take a look at the splat. Poor Komarov, may he RIP.

Soyuz 11: oops! no air! 3 guys dead.

Total: 4 in the air.

Americans:

Challenger: kaboom, 7 killed.

Total: 7 in the air.

--- on the ground---

Russians:

1960: Nedelin disaster. General Nedelin and 200 other rocket experts killed on the ground when the rocket blew up.

Total: 201 on the ground

Americans:

Apollo 1: Test goes bad when fire kills three astronauts inside the capsule.

Total: 3 on the ground.

---

So there you go. The Russian space program is STILL worse when you consider the safety record.

Thought I'd point out a few corrections to the thread...

1. The US has landed probes on venus. But the russians still have the best record.
2. Considering Jupiter is a Gas Giant, as you go deeper into it's atmosphere the pressure and temperature get higher and higher. Any probe you send burns up. The "solid" part of the planet is under such extreme pressure/temperature conditions that it is not yet possible to build a probe that will survive to this point.
3. The offical Near Page is http://near.jhuapl.edu/
4. The point of the landing is to get as near as possible to the Eros while still taking usefull data. They have mentioned before it's not an attempt to land, just a practice in which they are hoping to gain useful data. How many of us remember pioneer-venus's and magellan's end of life atmosphere probing? Led the way to our areo-braking efforts on Mars. Or the Lunar Prospector end of life experiment with the moon. Interesting gamble to find water...
5. Someone mentioned valentines day, I remember they had targeted Feb. 14 as the touch down date. Why it changed, I don't know. Also, for the last V day they snapped a wonderful valentines day photo of Eros, http://near.jhuapl.edu/iod/20000213b/index.html