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These stories where all hoaxes. For more information I suggest you read this which explains the origins/myths of the so-called 'phantom cosmonauts'

Wow - how astute of you to come up with such commentary!

Oh, btw; the greatest single achievement of mankind - man landing on the moon - was fueled and driven by political motivation. It also gave us the technology to produce Integrated Circuits, Fuel Cells that will (eventually) replace the Internal Combustion Engine for cars (and have water as it's only major byproduct), and the "Space Race" also was a major part of the further development of ARPANet.

Soviet missiles, ever since the Vostok launchers, have always used multiple rocket motors/engines of smaller size to provide the needed thrust versus the F-1 engines used in the Saturn V. The images that you see on the BBC site show (1) the tail-end of the N1, which housed the 30 smaller engines, and the 2nd image is also just the tail-end housing of the N1 and not the exhaust nozzles. The nozzles for the N1 engines ranged from about 3 feet to 1 foot in diameter. The overall diameter of the tail-end of the N1 is greater than the Saturn V, because they had to fit 30 of the smaller, less-efficient engines instead of the 5 vastly more efficient F-1 engines used in the Saturn V.

Some links to some photos and illustrations:

Line-up Illustration of size differences of engines used for the Apollo missions (The RL-10's were used in the Descent and Acsent engines of the LEM, the H-1 served the Command & Service Modules, the J-2 for the 3rd Stage (single engine) and for the 2nd Stage (5-engine cluster), and the F-1 for the 1st Stage of the Saturn V stack))

The N1 Story - Part 1

At the time that the N1 was in the planning stages, the most powerful rocket engines produced only 40 tons of thrust, and the N1 required engines that produced (at most) 150 tons of thrust each, in comparison to the massive F-1 engines used in the Saturn V, which produced ~680 tons of thrust each. The lack of sophistication in Soviet designs called for many more engines in the N1 than in the Saturn V, proving to be a systems-management nightmare (the more engines/systems you have, the larger the "point-of-failure" boundaries, which negates any kind of planned redundancy.). Engines to equal the F-1 were almost impossible for them to build, due to the technology gap between the USSR and the USA.

Additionally, You'd be suprised at how many botched launches of various launch vehicles happened at Cape Canaveral/Kenedy; the "Mercury Seven" were about ready to voluntarily drop-out of the Mercury program when they learned that the proposed launch vehicle was the Atlas - one of the most disaster-plagued launch vehicles the USA ever had - hence, the "Spam in a can" comments from the Astronauts to illustrate what would happen to them if the Atlas malfunctioned. Several different designs of the Saturn launch vehicle blew-up or were ordered to self-destruct when early guidance system designs failed and caused the rocket stack to "end-over" several times.

Rocket Science IS "Rocket Science"

Also remember that the technological state of the Soviet Union was about 10 years behind the USA - but they made up for it by pouring huge financial backing from the Soviet government into producing quantity and not quality - which partially led to the financial collapse of the Soviet Union and it's enevitable disintegration.

So much for your ignorant comments. Learn something instead of parroting some obscure Liberalist doctrine. If you didn't have "...political motivation behind scientific achievement...", we wouldn't have the Internet and we'd all still be chatting and swapping files on BBS systems.

ScottKin - who was a NASA-junkie at the ripe, old age of 7.

That picture was just of the skirt at the base of the rocket. The individual engines were tiny, just like the ones used for the Proton booster.

Mark Wade's site has more information on the N1.

Encyclopedia Astronautica is a great, and I mean the best, site on the internet for rocketry info. Here are some of their links to the N-1, and reasons why they built it the way they did:

THe N-1 StoryMore technical than the bbc article

Soviet space history, broken down by year

great site with a ton of content if you want to waste a few hours.. =)

Encyclopedia Astronautica is a great, and I mean the best, site on the internet for rocketry info. Here are some of their links to the N-1, and reasons why they built it the way they did:

THe N-1 StoryMore technical than the bbc article

Soviet space history, broken down by year

great site with a ton of content if you want to waste a few hours.. =)

Encyclopedia Astronautica is a great, and I mean the best, site on the internet for rocketry info. Here are some of their links to the N-1, and reasons why they built it the way they did:

THe N-1 StoryMore technical than the bbc article

Soviet space history, broken down by year

great site with a ton of content if you want to waste a few hours.. =)

Not a physical reason why you shouldn't do this but an economic one.

The whole point of a space elevator is to get out of Earth's 'gravity well' cheaply. Nothing, and I mean nothing (well besides transporters) is as cheap as a space elevator (once you recoup building costs that is). Also, nothing is as safe as a space elevator (relatively speaking - as long as it doesn't come down on you).

Now for your scheme to build a 60-80km high tower consider how much money you would save. Virtually none. The platform isn't high enough to seriously affect a 'planes' carrying weight (at least not any more than a spacecraft or a Scram/Ram - jet powered spaceplane.

Simply put the benefits in a tower of that size can be more easily realized with two-stage to orbit spaceplanes or Scram or Ram jets.
Various Soviet Spaceplanets

Not a physical reason why you shouldn't do this but an economic one.

The whole point of a space elevator is to get out of Earth's 'gravity well' cheaply. Nothing, and I mean nothing (well besides transporters) is as cheap as a space elevator (once you recoup building costs that is). Also, nothing is as safe as a space elevator (relatively speaking - as long as it doesn't come down on you).

Now for your scheme to build a 60-80km high tower consider how much money you would save. Virtually none. The platform isn't high enough to seriously affect a 'planes' carrying weight (at least not any more than a spacecraft or a Scram/Ram - jet powered spaceplane.

Simply put the benefits in a tower of that size can be more easily realized with two-stage to orbit spaceplanes or Scram or Ram jets.
Various Soviet Spaceplanets

Not a physical reason why you shouldn't do this but an economic one.

The whole point of a space elevator is to get out of Earth's 'gravity well' cheaply. Nothing, and I mean nothing (well besides transporters) is as cheap as a space elevator (once you recoup building costs that is). Also, nothing is as safe as a space elevator (relatively speaking - as long as it doesn't come down on you).

Now for your scheme to build a 60-80km high tower consider how much money you would save. Virtually none. The platform isn't high enough to seriously affect a 'planes' carrying weight (at least not any more than a spacecraft or a Scram/Ram - jet powered spaceplane.

Simply put the benefits in a tower of that size can be more easily realized with two-stage to orbit spaceplanes or Scram or Ram jets.
Various Soviet Spaceplanets

Informative comment:

Russians have been building this design for a long time. They just dont have the money to launch it.

More design info here.

Site of the space station builders :

Insightful comment:

Russia had a very successfull space program, and has always been a step ahead of America. It has always amazed me that a land of communists, dictators and gulags could produce such enterprising science programmes.

Troll :

GOTO [Insightful Comment].

Moronic Comment:

Can u imagine a fscking Beowulf cluster of fscking Mir2 space stations ?

Flamebait :

Those Russian bfstards cant launch off a paper rocket any more, unless the US gives them a dime.

Funny Comment:

But does it run Linux?

Some of the concepts of them were nothing more than a small solid rocket to give the delta-V to come home and a small aeroshell to shield the astronaut until he got low and slow enough to use a regular parachute.

For the physics-challenged: jumping from a stationary balloon means you fall straight down. Going 1000 miles per hour through the stratosphere is not fast enough to generate dangerous heat. Coming down from low earth orbit, however, (at 17,000 miles per hour) is an entirely different thing.
--

Some of the concepts of them were nothing more than a small solid rocket to give the delta-V to come home and a small aeroshell to shield the astronaut until he got low and slow enough to use a regular parachute.

For the physics-challenged: jumping from a stationary balloon means you fall straight down. Going 1000 miles per hour through the stratosphere is not fast enough to generate dangerous heat. Coming down from low earth orbit, however, (at 17,000 miles per hour) is an entirely different thing.
--

Somebody modded this up and I've got karma to burn. I saw this moronic post and just have to flame the living shit out of it.

Flame to all of you idiot moderators that gave this guy points. Jet engines? Do any of you possibly have any idea about the differences in the amount of thrust that comes out of a rocket engine versus a jet engine? Let me spell it out for you:

Take the Saturn V...

06 April 1961 - 1,640 million pounds of thrust achieved in static- firing of the F-1 engine.

Now, there are 5 F-1 engines on a Saturn V's first stage. Say we assume that liquid oxygen is 70% of the rocket's weight (it's not, but that's for another discussion). That leaves only the need for one F-1 rocket engine delivering 1.6 million pounds of thrust.

Math:

Let's use an F-16 engine for comparison. It is considerably smaller than the large powerplants on, say, a 747, but could be clustered into less space than such engines, but I digress...

F-16C/D:
one Pratt and Whitney F100-PW-200/220/229 or
one General Electric F110-GE-100/129

Produces:

F-16C/D, 27,000 pounds(12,150 kilograms) of thrust.

Even giving the rounding errors to the jet engine we arrive at:

1,600,000 / 27,000 = 59.259blahblahblah

So, to equal the thrust of one F-1 rocket engine on the Saturn V, we would need to strap roughly 60 F-16 engines (Of the present day...mind you) to the launch vehicle.

Toss aside the fact that 60 of these engines are going to weigh much more than one F-1 engine, nevermind the extremely complicated fuel systems necessary to pump the volume of fuel that they would consume at full afterburner. I therefore deduce that you all are idiots because this is soooooo obvious!!! Duh?

My only regret is that this is an old story and hardly anyone is going to read my tirade.

For everyone who can't/won't do a google search themselves. ;-)

Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL)
www.google.com/search?q =Air+Force+MOL+&num=10&lc=www
www.airspacemag.com/ ASM/Mag/Index/1998/JJ/Contents.html
www.farhills.org/s/lees/space/air force.htm


Dyna Soar
www.google.com/search?q=dynasoar&lc= www
www.google.com/search?q=dyna+soar+%2Bsmithsonian&n um=10&lc=www&btnG=Google+Search BR> www.arnold.af.mil/aedc/systems/60- 933.htm
www.nasm.edu/galle ries/gal114/SpaceRace/sec500/sec540.htm
www.hq.nasa.gov/offi ce/pao/History/Timeline/1961-4.html

Blue Gemini
www.google.com/search?q=Bl ue+Gemini&num=10&lc=www
student.uq.edu.au/~s373901/land /coldwar.htm
www.hq.nasa.gov/office/ pao/History/SP-4203/ch6-2.htm

LK Lander
www.google.com/search? q=%2BLK+%2BLander&num=10&lc=www
www.interaxs.net/pub/spacey/lk1.htm
www.ninfinger.org/~sven/mode ls/sovietsp/lk.html

Spiral
www.google.com /search?q=%2BSpiral+%2Bspacecraft&num=10&lc=www
www.mcs.net/~rusaerog/spiral/spiral .html

General Spacecraft info
www.rocketry.com/mwade/spaceflt.htm Encyclopedia Astronautica