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Soviet Moon Rocket
TestBoy writes "There is a decent article about the Soviet Union's moon rocket and why it was doomed to fail. From one of the pictures on the website, you realize how large just one of its multiple engines were."
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From the University of Texas website:
N-1 Stages
30 NK-33 LOX/kerosene engines; 10.1 million lb. total thrust.
8 NK-43 LOX/kerosene engines; 3.1 million lb. total thrust.
4 NK-39 engines; 360,800 lb. total thrust.
1 NK-31 engine; 90,200 lb. thrust; trans-lunar boost stage.
1 engine; 19,200 lb. thrust; lunar orbit insertion & initial lunar descent stage.
Why didn't they use fewer, but more powerful engines? Was it a matter of money, or engineering?
It said a few still exist in working order. They should update them so they don't blow up (i.e. no 'catastrophic failure') and use them as payload rockets to launch unmanned supplies to, and pieces of, the international space station. Since they are already built, it will save quite a bit of money instead of the space shuttle doing most of the work. As it is, the space shuttle has been forced way beyond its original retirement date.
Check out this site for a detailed history of the Soviet N1 development effort.
-- We don't understand software, and sometimes we don't understand hardware, but we can *see* the blinking lights
I recently saw a program on the Discovery Channel called "Cosmodrome" which covered this really well. They didn't reach the moon before the americans did, but the closed-cycle NK-33 rocket engines built for the Soviet moon programme (scrapped in 1974) beat all other rocket engines hands down when they were brought out from storage and tested by an american company in the mid-'90s...
:)
Apparently, american rocket scientists had earlier claimed that closed-cycle rocket engines were "impossible". But when has that ever stopped the russians from trying?
They did blow up about 5 of their moon rockets before the moon programme was stopped though
From one of the pictures on the website, you realize how large just one of its multiple engines were
The photo shows the base of the N1, inside which were housed 30 smaller motors. The Soviet philosophy for building large rocket boosters was to take existing stuff that worked and cluster them together, rather than to invent whole new, larger motors as the US did. This worked well - up to a point, as they discovered with the N1. Even today, most Russian space boosters are variations on the old Vostok booster that put Sputnik and Gagarin into orbit in the early 60's. The US tends to invent whole new technologies but even today tried-and-true designs from the early part of the Cold War are still in widespread use: American Atlas and Titan boosters originated as missiles and the Delta booster has been around forever.
Rocketboy
A few years back, PBS ran a series named the "Red Files", and Episode 3 dealt with the Soviet's Korolev Lunar Lander.
If I recall correctly, they interviewed a NASA engineer who was able to take a tour of the lunar lander and compared it to a "flying garbage can". It really was awful, there were analog gauges and whatnot littering the interior - basically one step shy of having Cosmonauts just jump out of the orbiter and hope for the best!
I'm a 2000 man.
Although they lost interest in landing on the moon after Apollo 11, along with the N-1 failure, but they still managed to land the first automated rovers I saw a backup Lunokhod 2 rover last weekend. it looked like a tractor, but was still pretty impressive for early 1970's technology.
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.
Sanity.html - Error 404 not found
In short, it was a tortoise and hare race. In terms of the space race, the US took a nap after WWII and the USSR got to work. Once the hare woke up it was just a question of how much of a head start the hare had. For the moon race, it wasn't enough of a head start.
Still, don't think I'm disrepecting the USSR space effort. They did great things and I hope Russians today are proud when they think of the Soviet space program.
-Miko
Miko O'Sullivan
Apparently the Soviets could not afford to develop a few powerful engines (AKA the Saturn V).
Instead they decided to use lots of cheap(er) engines, for their time these engines were revolutionary (something to do with the way the fuel and oxygen were mixed). After the break up of the soviet union some of these engines were takn to the US and tested. It turns out they out performed modern NASA Equivalents.
As for the explosions that they had during launch. Apparently this was a part of test program with each test ironing out the bugs in the system. For example one of the launches was wrecked by debris getting into the engines.
Apparently they reckoned that they would need 11 launches before they got everything ironed out.
I call these guys real engineers, if you have limitless funds like NASA did in those days you could do almost anything. But to do things on a tight budget and limited resources takes brains
The decline of NASA started with the moon landings. After that, NASA could not justify itself to the public, because the Russians had been beaten, and the race was over.
Thus NASA had to become more "cost effective" (the moon landing was done by crash-program techniques such as paying for several alternatives and selecting the best one after it is developed). So NASA sold the concept of the Space Shuttle as an inexpensive way to get mass into orbit. In order to justify it, they also had to make it the launcher for military payloads, so they connived to force the military into fitting their payloads into the shuttle, and defunding their own launch capabilities.
The problem with the shuttle is that is far more expensive that projected (big surprise). A primary reasonis that it is man-rated, which greatly adds to cost.
In order to continue to justify their existence, NASA needed a mission. The environmental movement came along just in time for them - they could devote their resources to studying the environment, and get government bucks to put up space-borne systems to do that. But, to justify continuing the shuttle, they needed a big, manned project... and thus was born the International Space Station.
But the ISS caused NASA to put almost all of their money into one bucket, leaving little else for other research. And ISS is not a particularly good way of doing most things - because most things don't need a manned space station, they can get by with a much less expensive non-manned launch.
Furthermore, NASA did its best to quash competition in the space launch business - again to keep justifying the money for the shuttle. After the Challenger disaster and subsequent grounding, NASA had to allow the military to use its own launchers for critical payloads, but they still have not been nice to little guys.
As a result, we have a small fleet of aging shuttles, that launch at an average cost of $500,000 per mission, at a mission rate a fraction of what they were supposed to be able to do.
One solution is not to give more money to NASA. It is to create incentives for private enterprise to get into the game.
As an example, what would happen if there was a $30 billion prize to the first company to land humans on mars and bring them back successfully? Hopefully, it would lead to some pretty innovative work.
Another approach that might work is to stimulate the public with some historic vision (like Kennedy did with the moon landing) and get public support for a truly imaginative leap.
The only good weather is bad weather.
-- Tom Hanks, Apollo 13
I remain hopeful that one day we will "decide to go" yet again. Among other things, the Moon is an important waystation on the road to the rest of the Solar System. If the reports of ice deposits on the Moon are accurate, that's a very valuable resource; ice can be electrolyzed, using readily available solar power, into hydrogen and oxygen, which can then be burned as rocket fuel, or run through fuel cells to produce water, electricity, and heat, three essential commodities for any spacecraft. In addition, the Moon could become an important construction base for ships designed to fly further out, as well as for space stations...and the back side of the Moon would be an excellent place for radio astronomy, as the antennas there would be shielded from terrestrial interference.
There's nothing stopping us. We've just gotta decide to go.
"I look up at the Moon, and I wonder: When will we be going back? And who will that be?"
-- Ibid.
Eric
Be who you are...and be it in style!
The Soviets had the home-grown Korolev, who was probably as good as von Braun. Remember that the Soviets beat us to orbit both with sats and people.
Korolev, unfortunately, was badly mistreated by the Soviet government, and worked under horrendous conditions. It's sad, really: imagine what he could have done working for a sane Russian government. Of course, that would mean that all of those controls on the lunar lander would be labelled in Russian . . .
Kistler had a project underway to create a re-usable launch vehicle. I thought it had gone belly-up, but according to the Kistler Aerospace web site, they expect to begin commercial operations next year (2003). It looks like maybe they got an infusion of NASA money, which is itself drying up, so their schedule might take a hit.
I've been watching Kistler with some interest for years now, and I continue to wish them all the best. Unlike some of the cranks and profiteers, they seem to be serious about making money in space.
Korolev, the "Grand Designer" of the Soviet space program, was easily the equal of Von Braun. With his ability and the fact that the Russians got all the German V2 production lines and factories and, many of the people who operated them during WWII, also gave the Soviets a huge boost.
And the US *DID* use the V2 scientists to the best of their abilities, but initially only for military projects. The doomed satelite launches made in response to Sputnik (Vanguard) were on not-ready-for-prime-time civilian launch vehicles, not military rockets. In fact, the military already had proven technology on the shelf that could put a satellite in orbit, but Von Braun was expressly forbidden by the President from using 'military hardware' for such a purpose.
Eventually, Von Braun was allowed to put the first American satellite (Explorer 1) in orbit with his Jupiter C rocket.
(NOTE: Jupiter C was a slightly modified Jupiter missle, which was designed during Von Braun's 'satellite ban' for a 'special nose-cone' test. After the initial testing, Von Braun kept a few Jupiter C's in storage for a 'certain time' and a 'certain nose-cone test'. Later it was obvious that the 'nose-cone test' was his plan to put a satellite in orbit.)
Anyway, I picked all this up last weekend at the Kansas Cosmosphere. Very neat place, and the current home of the Odyssey command module from Apollo 13.
The R&D efforts always have commercial spinoffs. Lightweight plastics with scratch resistant coatings an example that I've always heard about. Some companies even advertise their products are the result of NASA research (whether it's true or a gimmick, I don't know). The people bitching about NASA probably don't think about how communications or weather satellites effect their lives, but at some point it was cutting edge technology that was developed at NASA or other agencies like it around the world. It is a PR problem because most people don't know what is being worked on that will change how they live in the future. Unfortunately, NASA's failures get more attention than their successes. Do you want to farm everything out to the ESA? Why abandon another area? I find it embarrassing that the US car manufacturers have pretty much given up on trying to produce efficient cars (unless they get govt grants to squander on experimental cars that will never be built) and have left that to the Europeans, Japanese and Koreans.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
All this money wasted on these rockets brings to mind the book
The Ghost of the Executed Engineer is a great history as told by a Soviet engineer of a number of different massive engineering failures that occurred under central planning. I.E The Building of the white sea canal in which 200,000 people died and the resulting canal was much less usefull than the railroad that was proposed by engineers before the commencement of construction that would have cost less to build in terms of lives and capital.
BTW, the greatest technological failure of all time was a series of dam collapes in China in 1975 that caused the deaths of more than 85,000 people and as many as 200,000 if you count the resulting disease epidemics set off.. Story here. Which is why everyone has been so warry of the Three Gorges Dam project.
Add to that
1st Picture of the far side of the moon.
1st Soft moon landing and picture from the lunar surface
1st Picture from the surface of Venus
1st Soft landing on Mars.
1st Spacewalk
"Challenger" did not have such system. So who is careing about the crew safety more?
As far as the quality goes - high tech does not always equals quality - more often the opposite is true. Why would you think American were so keen on getting russian to build the central life support module of the ISS? Cared enough, to tolerate financing caused delays, and pay big bucks for the expertise. Guess NASA does not care for lifesupport system for its astranaughts on ISS? Quite the contrary - they wanted the proven, quality system for this.
<^>_<(ô ô)>_<^>
Like all the times they beat us in the space race. Satelites. Probes. Rovers. Etc.
Ask the Nazis what they thought of Soviet central planning. It did not seem to matter that the Red Army lost personnel and material in quantities that would have decimated any other form of government. The will to fight came from a very stubborn center. The /entire/ /country/ was doing nothing but producing weapons scientists, weapons factories, and soldiers. After Germany lost their first campaign, it was all over. The Soviets produced effective tanks and planes with single-minded dedication in quantities Germany could never hope to match.
Centralized planning can be very good for a small number of projects that need to be rushed.
Lies about crimes
I forget where (probably on Discovery Channel or something), but someone was asked what would have to be done if we wanted to go to Mars.
They said something like..."Well, first we'ld have to go back to the moon"...and the question was raised..."But how"...
They then proceded to explain how, if we ever decided to return to the moon, the most likely thing we could really do is dust off the old Saturn V Plans...because it's the only tried and tested equipment to do it.
Those are probably in an archive somewhere and I think there are a few remaining parts rusting away somewhere in a museum, but the most difficult part would be producing new parts.
Some of the many changes that the companies made durring Apollo were not exactly documented (nothing extremely important), but it's not easy to look at a 20 year old part and the schematics and say "Why is this jumper here".
To make it worse, most of the companies who manufactured the parts for the systems on the Saturn V are now bankrupt or have changed completely...I think the one example of that was that the company who produced the life support system is now manufacturing air conditioners.
But, until then, NASA and the US Govt. has proven that they are perfectly fine with "dicking around in low earth orbit". There are certainly things that would make us go back. The most obvious is going to be when the chinese finally make it up there.
Then again, if one of those Near Earth Asteroids decides to take a hunk out of the landscape, someone might come up with an idea for tracking the things from the far side of the moon (at least the ones in that general direction).
First launch: ``Within a minute, the fire spread to the cabling and propellant lines for other engines. The KORD system shut down the entire first stage, and triggered the firing of emergency escape rockets that carried the L3S (unmanned L3) payload away from the booster as if it had been manned. The booster followed its suborbital trajectory to a point 45 km (30 mi) from the pad and crashed into the ground.''
Second launch: `` Within ten seconds of launch, all engines were commanded to stop, yet one continued to burn. The remaining engine merely spun the rocket about its axis as it collapsed back onto the pad. The explosive impact destroyed the N1, the pad, and ground support equipment, as well as damaging a neighboring pad and a second N1 booster. Only the unmanned L3S spacecraft survived, carried to safety by its escape rocket.''
Catastrophic failure, but the emergency system seems to work (although the site does not go in to detail as to what happened on the 3rd and 4th launches).
Pushin' 'n dealin', shovin' 'n stealin'
/me sighs
.vs pencil" research was *very* valid - the last thing you want floating around in microgravity/zero-gravity are pencil shavings and lead powder (which, in the case of lead poweder, can cause short circuits in switches if the powder is of sufficient concentration);however, it did not cost NASA "millions" to develop it, since Parker Pens already had developed a pen that could write at any angle using a pressurized ink cartridge.
First off; the notion that "political motivation" is some kind of arcane, evil-thing. Without such "political motivation" there would be no Parliment, no PM, and Great Britan would still be a total and complete Monarchy. Without "political motivation", the colonists in America would not have had the desire to tell King George where he can put his tea and tax stamps. The "Space Race" was politically motivated, as was ARPANet.
Obviously, you missed my entire section on the failures that the USA experienced in the "Space Race" - not to mention the death of 3 Apollo Astronauts in the Apollo 1 fire - which showed several deadly design flaws in the Command Module (a hatch that didn't allow for emergency escape when the CM was pressurized, pressurizing the CM with pure oxygen, and faulty wiring in the power buss panel.). Or the Apollo 13 mission, which nearly cost 3 more lives that were saved by impromptu engineering to build a CO2 scrubber from scratch, and how to use the systems on-board the Aquarius (lunar module) to provide life support for a crew of 3 versus a crew of 2. America's technical prowess can not be denied, but we've made some monumental cock-ups in the past like anyone has.
To correct you; Tim Berners-Lee had nothing to do with the development and/or of the physical design and creation of the Internet - however, he was the creator of the World Wide Web...which is just a part of the Internet.
Another correction: All Government work is politically motivated, to some extent. Political motivation is not limited to campaigns for political office. ARPANet was designed as a communications network between Government facilities that would allow for information sharing and network redundancy in the case of nuclear attack. It was extended to include Universities and other such institutions that were directly related to Government-funded research (LBL/LLL/Sandia/Los Alamos/Dryden/NASA/Purdue/Cornell/MIT/SRI/Xerox PARC, etc).
Interestingly enough, the "pen
Yes, the USSR used different approaches in spaceflight; however, those approaches cost them many more lives than those that were lost in the NASA programs. Nothing like having your return capsule's retros fail when you're making a hard landing in the Siberian tundra (Soviet/Russian capsules do not "splash-down" into a body of water - their passengers either eject using rocket-powered ejection seats or hard-land using huge parachutes and retro-rockets that fire at the last moment to soften the impact), or to have your return capsule explosively de-pressurize at 90,000 ft.
The Salyut series of spacecraft and modules were nothing more than re-furbished Soyuz & Zond capsules connected in a row. MIR was almost the same design, and plagued with technical problems throughout it's service-life (including a near-tragic fire which could have killed all of the crew on-board at that time - if they had not put out the fire in time, MIR would be an expensive space-born Memorial to the Soviet/Russian Space effort).
In short: Technology shortcuts when involving human life are usually tragic in their consequences.
ScottKin
I don't give a rat's behind about "karma" here or anywhere else. Don't like what I have to say here? Deal with it!