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."

Comments

It just goes to show...

[Lonath]

Size doesn't matter, it's how you use it. I get told that all the time, so it must be true.

Re:It just goes to show...

[56ker]

that people never learn...

The giant rocket was launched just four times; each one was a disaster ending in abrupt and catastrophic failure.

You'd think at least after the second time it ended in disaster they'd think it was time to go back to the drawing board. However I suppose this is the kind of thing that happens when they are political motivations behind scientific achievements - shortcuts are made.

Re:It just goes to show...

[Lonath]

Nope. I'm just whoring for karma with an obvious and peurile joke that I think is about the level of what the average /.er thinks is funny.

Re:It just goes to show...

[(outer-limits)]

Hang on, the basic design was the problem, not politics. Read the article, they could never get the multiple engines under adequate control. Now think of the size and cost of those things, it had to be a major commitment to even get the first one built. To get a project that big, cancelled, is a disaster in any ideology.

Lets not forget the US disasters, which also seem to be engineering based. The idea of having a pure oxygen atmosphere, had to be dropped in the end, despite the fact that it meant going back to the drawing board.

Why does so much of discussion about subjects like this have to come down to politics? They are people too, who make good and bad design desicions and try to live their lives the best they can in the given constraints.

Lets not forget, the ISS is a long way behind schedule, over budget, and experiencing plenty of its own teething problems. The so-called CMM level 5 NASA hadn't even tested the robotic arm on the space shuttle to see if it could turn a full circle. The USSR was first to put a man in space and a satellite in space.

Re:It just goes to show...

[56ker]

Perhaps you misunderstood what I wrote - I did read the article. I agree with you that the basic design was the problem - however what I meant was that had it not been a race to see who got to the moon first - there would've been plenty of time for the USSR to try out different types of rocket and see which one was successful first. Rather than putting all their eggs in one basket with the multi rocket design - and then things being a complete disaster when they can't fix the inherent design problems with that solution.

Both Russia & the USA tried out pure oxygen atmospheres - both with catastrophic results ending in loss of life. Without the loss of life involved in the tests I doubt there would have been the impetus to "go back to the drawing board".

Lets take the Challenger disaster - after that NASAs budget was cut & various future missions were shelved. Politics does enter into it because the politicians decide on the budget each year.

The ISS is behind schedule because of a variety of factors - it's the first ever space station not built by one nation - it's not built on previously designed and tested technology - and the plans for it have been drastically altered from the original specifications as the projected cost spiralled higher and higher.

I agree with what you say about the USSR - they managed to do a lot on a fraction of the budget the Americans did by innovating. However America & the CIS are not the only countries/ regions with plans for space now.

Anyway I've said my 2 cents & I'll let you reply

Re:It just goes to show...

[ScottKin]

You'd think at least after the second time it ended in disaster they'd think it was time to go back to the drawing board. However I suppose this is the kind of thing that happens when they are political motivations behind scientific achievements - shortcuts are made.

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.

Re:It just goes to show...

[56ker]

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

*blushes*

Exactly what "ignorant comments" are you referring to? I'm not "parroting" some obscure Liberalist doctrine - if in summarising what I think into a concise sentence it has lost some of its original meaning I apologise. As to your comment of Also remember that the technological state of the Soviet Union was about 10 years behind the USA - the Russians from an engineering perspective in many cases found much more elegant (and simpler) solutions. While the Americans would spend millions researching a pen that works in zero gravity - they just used pencils. If the Russians were as far behind as you state they wouldn't have had the first man in space & the first space station. As to the Internet depending on how far back you're going it either had it's roots in ARPANET (a military project) - or CERN where Tim Berners-Lee wanted to network different computers - neither of which were in anyway politically motivated.

I find (like a lot of Americans) your view of the world is that America is the best and anyone who doesn't agree with you must be crazy so:

1) Please tell me which comments of mine according to you are ignorant.

2) Provide a link to the "obscure Liberalist doctrine" you refer to.

Re:It just goes to show...

[ScottKin]

/me sighs

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 .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.

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

Re:It just goes to show...

[mikerich]

There was a problem in the former Soviet Union with building large engine engine chambers so they had to use a cluster of smaller engines (albeit of a very advanced design).

In fact the N1 launches clearly show that the Soviets were debugging the design bit by bit. They never had the funds to establish a fixed test platform so they had to go with live launches.

It must be remembered that the N1 was never just a Moon rocket, Korolev had always forseen it as a general purpose heavy lift rocket, only one mission would have been the Soviet Moon programme. As such it was probably a bit of a camel - not ideal for anything, but better than nothing. That there were a multitude of different designs (including ones with nuclear upper stages) did not help.

Additionally, the Soviets never spent as much on their Moon programme as the US - and then they spent much of it in competing projects, N1 was just one of at least three alternatives. We might think of the Soviet Union as a monolith, but it really had many design bureaux squabbling over money and political access. When Korolev died, the N1 was very much an unloved child and his rivals quickly moved in.

The first launch was scrubbed in mid 1968 when the booster developed cracks on the pad (this was a recurring problem with Soviet rockets), the whole stack was dismantled.

Launch 1 (February 1969) was destroyed after a complex fire. Metal particles entered a turbine on one of the engines. The turbine began to shake, weakening fuel lines and allowing fuel to burn inside the rocket. The rocket's KORD engine management system detected the fire, but incorrectly order all engines to be shut down. The rocket crashed.

The second launch (July 1969) used a modified system. The KORD was reasoned to have failed because of extreme temperatures and was moved away from the engine compartment. However this launch was even more disastrous. A metal particle (again!), possibly slag from a weld entered a pump causing an explosion and fire less than a second after launch. Again KORD detected the fire and began to shut down engines. So many engines were closed down the rocket crashed back down on to the pad, utterly destroying the facility.

This was such a profound failure that the Soviets began a massive redesign of the engines. That and the loss of the pad meant it was two years before they tried again. There were three main modifications - firstly, filters were installed on the intakes to prevent particle ingestion, secondly the KORD was redesigned to prevent unnecessary shutdowns, and thirdly, the rocket would steer away from the pad. During this time the Soviets moved away from an Apollo style Moon landing to the establishment of a lunar base.

The third launch was in June 1971. The rocket was launched successfully, but the new maneuvre caused the rocket to roll. As it accelerated, the stresses caused the N1 to go out of control. It was destroyed about 50 seconds into the flight. HOWEVER - there were no mechanical failings.

The fourth launch (November 1972) was a very near success. The rocket fired successfully and was within seven seconds of first stage separation when another failue occurred. The first stage engines were shut down in stages, immediately after the first engines were stopped there was an explosion. The rocket was destroyed from the ground. The cause of the failure was never determined.

There were plans to launch a fifth N1, but the Politburo intervened first, Vasily Mishin was removed as the head of the space programme and with him went the last champion of the N1.

In short, the Soviets knew they were dealing with a complex system and did their best to fix problems as they arose. This is what we expect of engineers. Had they been better resourced they would have done more ground testing and probably had a better history of launches.

The N1 was a better general purpose rocket than Saturn V - BUT it could never have beaten Saturn to the Moon, even if the resources had been available.

Best wishes,
Mike.

Re:It just goes to show...

[56ker]

I am sighing back - a lot now. In answer to your comments:
First off; the notion that "political motivation" is some kind of arcane, evil-thing. I didn't say that! I just pointed out one instance in which I felt political justifications had put pressure on science resulting in things happening at a faster rate than they would have normally.

Without such "political motivation" there would be no Parliment, no PM, and Great Britan would still be a total and complete Monarchy. Well you've got a problem there because I happen to live in Great Britain. The reason we have a parliament is because of a civil war. Technically we are still a monarchy too - if you check a U.K. passport it says its holder is a subject (or at least used to - as they're renewed every ten years I'm not sure if that's out of date). As to the American revolution & Boston tea party - that was the result of the European powers putting increasingly higher taxes on certain goods (in this case tea). Therefore it was about economics really and not politics (although I'll agree with you that economics & politics are part of the same thing). As to missing your whole middle section - I didn't - I just didn't comment on it that's all. As to Tim Berners-Lee - to the common public there isn't any difference between the world wide web & the internet - without the W3 specification the world wide web would be still very basic - similar to the old BBS days.

As to your comment All Government work is politically motivated, to some extent. - it isn't - many things that the government does eg health, education etc are wanted by all political parties - the political part comes in as to how they're done - how much they'll cost - how many votes they'll get etc. As ARPAnet was classified it would have just come under the general military budget - although there is a committee of politicians that deal with such projects - they have to have security clearance first & their proceeedings aren't published.

As to Political motivation is not limited to campaigns for political office. - when did I say it was? Politicians tend to start worrying about votes when the next election is looming - not all the time.

Re: pen/pencil - I very much doubt that using a pencil in zero gravity results in pencil shavings & lead powder flying everywhere. Even in 0g things still have molecular cohesion. As to your comment about Parker Pens - discounting first the cost of licensing the technology from Parker Pens it still costs a very large amount of money to test any technology before it is used in space - that was what I was referring to really - not the initial research cost.

Well I'd have to agree with you over Mir problems - although if you remember it was only designed for (correct me if I'm wrong) - ten years but was in operation far longer than that. Nobody else (yet) has tried a space station - so criticising the problems of the first one (there are always problems with the first of anything) is a bit rich when you've got nothing to compare it to.

The size of those engines!

[Doctor Fishboy]

Wow, helluva barbeque opportunity missed there...

Re:The size of those engines!

[Thud457]

Sadly, no.

That model was involved in one of the worst disaters of the Soviet space program. And given their track record, that speaks a lot.

Re:The size of those engines!

[shayera]

Erhm, no.. that wasn't it.
The N1 was tested, with disastous results, much
later in the 60's, whereas the disaster you reference, was a 2 stage ICBM that blew up on the ramp. As far as I remember to have read, the major losses due to N1's blowing up, was launchpad hardware (and finances ofcourse)

Trouble

[Drachemorder]

I don't know why they had so much trouble getting the thing to work. This isn't rocket sci.... oh. Never mind.

Re:Trouble

[Jupiter9]

Everybody thinks they're a comedian.
Did you ever stop to think that perhaps your joke wasn't as funny as you thought it was? Get over you're hang-ups my friend...

Re:Trouble

[Marx_Mrvelous]

It's not a question of comedy. If one joke is off topic, aren't *all* jokes? Ah I don't even know why I bother, I've just decided to speak my mind, burn all my karma, and stop contributing to /. It's been going down the tubes for years, anyways.

Space Race

[qurob]

First the space race

Second the Cold War

Good thing they're all out of money :)

Lots of engines

[TrollMan 5000]

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?

Re:Lots of engines

[AlexDeGruven]

That's what I was thinking. Why try to control 30 different engines, which, by the nature of manufacturing, are going to work just slightly different from each other, when you can work with maybe 10 larger ones.

It's much easier to juggle 3 balls than it is 4 or 5... etc

Re:Lots of engines

[Buran]

Mishin, Sergei Korolev's successor, was not an experienced engineer. This was a major factor in the failure of the N-1 program.

Korolev, on the other hand, was very successful -- a rocket sharing the same basic design as the one that launched Sputnik 1 was rolled to the launch pad in support of a Progress freighter launch to the ISS. When?

This morning.

Re:Lots of engines

[Dave500]

All the 30 first stage motors are identical Kuznetsov Design Bureau NK-33's generating 154 metric ton's of thrust each.

There is a lot of debate about why the Soviets chose this approach, but for me its a combination of three reasons:-

a) Previous Soviet Rockets were also based on the "many small engines" approach - they worked fine. (Even if it was not the most efficient approach)

b) A key reason the the N-1 ended up with 30 NK-33 engines instead of something more manageable was political infighting. The Soviet chief engine disigner Glushko had an intense argument over fuel choice with the N1 designer Korolov and ended up taking experience to the Soviet military with the UK-500 and 700 boosters. That left Korolov with no engine designer and in the end the N-1 had it's engines designed from existing templates.

c) At the time there were real doubts over the feasibility of combistion stability in engines with large injector surfaces. (Ie - large engines). It took Rocketdyne many, many tests to get the F-1 to work. The Soviets felt that developing these large engines was simply too risky (and expensive), despite the obvious efficiency gains.

Re:Lots of engines

[ender81b]

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.. =)

Re:Lots of engines

[Russ Moerland]

There were a lot of reasons for the failure of the N-1. Mishin's competence as an engineer had nothing to do with it. Korolov was successful because he had the ear of Kruschev and was good at motivating his people. When Kruschev was removed from power in 64, some would argue that the drive behind the N-1 went with him, though the last launch wouldn't be until late 1972. There were also the issue of multiple design bureaus getting money to build rockets capable of getting to the moon (Chelomei and Yangel are two that come to mind).

Korolov, like von Braun, made things happen more because of his personality and management skills than engineering prowess.

Jim Harford wrote an excellent book titled Korolov, which presents an excellent picture of his life from childhood to death. There's also quite a bit of information on what happened at his design bureau after his death.

Re:Lots of engines

[Russ Moerland]

Just to clarify a few things.

The NK-15 was actually used on the N-1. The NK-33 are the modified NK-15 engines sold to Kistler. The NK-15 is based off the design for the NK-9.

The engines in the R-7, the RD-107/108, were single turbopumps (one for fuel and one for oxidizer) driving four combustion chambers. The reason for four combustion chambers was to deal with acoustic problems inside the chamber. The F-1 had similar acoustic problems, but they were solved with baffles inside the chamber. The RD-170/171/180 are also multiple chambers driven by single fuel and oxidizer turbopumps.

Glushko's bureau did the N2O4-hydrazine engines for the UR-500 (Proton). The UR-700 was never built.

Re:Lots of engines

[jafac]

I thought that the multiple-engines approach was for fault-tolerance. (since their engines have a high failure rate). However, that may have just been American propaganda. . .

Re:Lots of engines

[Dolly_Llama]

a rocket sharing the same basic design as the one that launched Sputnik 1

What do you mean by sharing the same basic design? Pointy end up - Fiery end down?

Re:Lots of engines

[Amazing Quantum Man]

Slightly OT, but what the hell...

It took Rocketdyne many, many tests to get the F-1 to work

If you're in L.A., you can see an F-1 (I think it's an F-1, might be a J-1) engine at the Boeing Rocketdyne facility in Canoga Park. It's in the front parking lot, on Canoga Ave.

Re:Lots of engines

[Alex Belits]

The large number of nozzles was a design decision to allow balancing/controlling the rocket in flight by controlling multiple nozzles.

Re:Lots of engines

[Russ Moerland]

I was under the impression that Glushko's designs to produce the same thrust and Isp with a single chamber would have reslted in serious acoustic instabilities. The simple solution was to drive four smaller chambers off a single set of turbopumps. We solved the same problem in the F-1 with baffles. I think that was in Harford's book on Korolov.

Re:Lots of engines

[tchristney]

In addition to the other reasons given, smaller engines with more combustion chambers (the cones on the engine) means much lower pressures in the combustion chambers. Lowering the pressures in the combustion chambers allows the chambers themselves to be made much cheaper. This can significantly reduce the cost of the rocket, provided that you don't blow too many up during development. As with any cost considerations in engineering, YMMV.

Re:Lots of engines

[BigFire]

Hey, I drove by there every single week. So that's what it's called. Boeing now owns the place, having bought up the Rockwell/Rocketdyne properity.

Re:Lots of engines

[RayChuang]

I think if Sergei P. Korolev had lived past early 1966, he would have have the people skills to get the N-1 rocket to actually work correctly in the first place.

Very likely, the N-1 would be flying successfully by the middle of 1968 at latest, and I wouldn't have been surprised if the Russians were well on its way to a moon mission by the late summer of 1969.

Re:Lots of engines

[oldays]

It's really Korolev. The best way to approximate the sound with latin letters is "Korolyov", in russian that sound is designated with an 'e' with two dots above it. It's called a "short e", in literal translation.

Re:Lots of engines

[mike_sucks]

I don't know if it was the cause, or the effect, but the N1's controlled yaw, pitch and roll by reducing or bosting thrust to particular engines. There were no additonal engines other than the main ones at the base of each stage.

The engines were grouped in pairs of three, with one burning straight down, one off by a few degrees in one direction and the third off by the same amount in another direction. Because the diameter of the base was so large, even small amounts of differential force could effect a large change.

Perhaps getting this right (it seems overly complex to me) was one of the causes of the N1's failure, but hey, IANARS[0].

Mike.

[0] - I Am Not A Rocket Scientist.

Re:Lots of engines

[ScottKin]

I had the extreme pleasure to take the 4-hour drive from Dallas to Houston when I was in Dallas on business for two weeks, and went to the Johnson Space Center - for someone who has followed the Space Program for as long as I have (ever since John Glenn's first mission - I was a baby then...), to visit that place was pure heaven!

Tours of the Mission Control Center for the Shuttle and the ISS...

Seeing the X-38 (Crew Return Vehicle) being built...

See the places where Astronauts are trained...

A peek at the fully preserved but access-restricted Mission Control Center for the Gemini & Apollo missions...

You can even walk right up to a full Saturn V stack laid-down on the ground and taken care of quite nicely - it's the stack they were going to use for Apollo 18, which was cancelled when funding for further Apollo / Lunar missions was cut in favor of the Space Shuttle / STS.

ScottKin

Re:Lots of engines

[Russ Moerland]

Yes, you are correct. I should have remembered that from Harford's book.

Kerosene?

[kkkalen]

The American Saturn V booster uses liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen.

Liquid hydrogen is much more efficient in terms of energy/unit weight than kerosene.

It's cleaner burning, as well.

Re:Kerosene?

[GMontag]

Nooo, the first stage of the Saturn V used Kerosene and LOX too. Despite the higher power offered by liquid hydrogen, Koelle's studies indicated that little would be gained by using it in the first stage also, where it would have needed disproportionately large tanks. (Liquid hydrogen is only one twelfth as dense as kerosene, so a much larger tank volume would have been required.)

Re:Kerosene?

[slackster]

Saturn Vs used LH2 only in the upper stages. The first stage's F1 engines burned kerosene and liquid oxygen. That's why you see 800+ ft. of yellow flame from Saturn Vs taking off, vs. small faint blue diamonds from the space shuttle's LH2/LO2-burning engines (not the boosters).

Re:Kerosene?

[AJWM]

Nope, sorry, but thanks for trying.

To clarify, the name "Saturn V" refers to an assembly of several stages: the S-IC, S-II, and S-IVB. The first and biggest stage, the S-IC, was a pure LOX-kerosene stage. Its F-1 engines (1.5 million pounds thrust each) burned kerosene, only the upper stages burned hydrogen.

This makes a lot of sense -- "efficiency" (in terms of Isp) is only one figure of merit in rocket engines. It's more relevant when the engine no longer has to lift the mass of the vehicle against gravity. For lifting power (as with a first stage), you care about thrust, which is proportional to the mass of the exhaust products (and thus the mass of the fuel). Hydrogen is just too light to generate useful thrust except at very high exhaust velocities, which means very high engine pressures, which means heavy engines, etc, etc. (Also, because of LH2's low density, you need bigger fuel tanks, which weigh more, etc, etc.)

Case in point, the three Shuttle SSMEs together (which burn LO2/LH2) have barely more thrust than a single F-1 engine, and run at a much higher chamber pressure.

There's a reason the Shuttle uses those god-awful, low Isp solid boosters -- to create enough thrust to get off the pad!

Re:Kerosene?

[kkkalen]

Well, I must be....well, dense!

Looks like I learned something today.

For the record, though, the upper stages of the rocket are indeed hydrogen/O2 fuelled.

Re:Kerosene?

[GungaDan]

"the first stage of the Saturn V used Kerosene and LOX too."

And I thought that stuff was only good on a bagel...

Froydian Engine Sizes

[citizenc]

Wow. That's a pretty big rocket engine. It makes you wonder if the engineers who designed it were compensating for something..

An obvious joke, I know, but SOMEBODY had to make it!

Re:Froydian Engine Sizes

[curunir]

"Is that an N1 rocket in your pants or are you just really, really, really, really, really happy to see me?"

Re:Froydian Engine Sizes

[cube farmer]

Wow. That's a pretty big rocket engine. It makes you wonder if the engineers who designed it were compensating for something..

Uh... Gravity and inertia?

Re:Froydian Engine Sizes

[thopkins]

You mean Freudian, as Froyd never existed. Well maybe some guy named Froyd but not THE Freud.

Re:Froydian Engine Sizes

[evilviper]

Umm, well, you don't really compensate for inertia do you? When braking perhaps...

Compensating for Gravity, & Friction caused by air resistance is more like it.

What has been done with them?

[nullard]

From the article:
In 1997, 94 leftover N1 engines were sold to the American company Kistler for refurbishment and incorporation into a new rocket.

So what did Kristler do with them?

Re:What has been done with them?

[Anonymous Coward]

Moonraker.

Re:What has been done with them?

[Anonymous Coward]

In 1997, 94 leftover N1 engines were sold to the American company Kistler for refurbishment and incorporation into a new rocket. So what did Kristler do with them? --Actually the company was Chrysler, not Kristler and they were used in the construction of the Prowler.

Re:What has been done with them?

[Scurrilous Knave]

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.

In a way..

[xtermz]

..It is kind of depressing to ponder the rise and fall of the soviet space exploration empire. Crippled by the fall of communism, and lack of money, a once great competitor to NASA is now a laughing stock.

Now a point to ponder, how long will it be before NASA becomes a laughing stock. Countless articles continually point out that NASA cant get proper funding, etc etc.

The sad thing is, if only Russia's space agency could of survived after the berlin wall came down, we would probably still have a thriving space race and maybe even more public interest.

Re:In a way..

[First Person]

The sad thing is, if only Russia's space agency could of survived after the berlin wall came down, we would probably still have a thriving space race and maybe even more public interest.

The problem is that space exploration isn't a commercially viable enterprise. It is more likely that the large sums invested in their space agency accelerated Russia's evolution (or collapse).

On the other hand, the engineering expertise and proud tradition have inspired Russia to take the lead in space tourism. When I compare this to the conservative not-invented-here attitute found at US NASA, I can only cheer: "Go Russia! Go!" We should be embarassed that Russia is teaching the US and Europe lessons in capitalism.

Re:In a way..

[mesocyclone]

NASA is a classic government bureaucracy (see Laws of Bureaucracy ). As such, it is spending way more money than required to achieve the wrong goals.

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.

Re:In a way..

[Waffle Iron]

that launch at an average cost of $500,000 per mission,

I think you forgot a few zeros. It's more like $500,000,000 per mission. It's really sad; for that kind of money you can send a small probe to any planet in the solar system and learn something totally new. Instead, they blow half a gigabuck every time they need to fix a toilet on the ISS.

Re:In a way..

[ksheff]

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.

Re:In a way..

[CrazyDwarf]

I was told long ago (of course this was in school, which as we know is not a place of learning, but a place of indoctrination) that the space program led to so many new technologies and techniques that the result was a rise in unemployment. I really wish I hadn't gone to public school.

Re:In a way..

[mesocyclone]

Oops! MY BAD! Of course you are right. It is half a bill per mission. AT half-a-mill, it would be a good deal! Thanks

Re:In a way..

[gorilla]

You can have communication & weather satellites without NASA. The shuttle is an awful launch platform, as the launch bay is too small, too weight constrained, and too expensive. A disposible heavy rocket manufacturing line instead of the shuttle would have reduced the cost to a tiny fraction to what it is.

Re:In a way..

[MaxVlast]

The attentive history student will note that newcomers to capitalism often appear to do it better than the established states/economies (US/Europe). The attentive student will then notice all of the downsides of capitalism that come with all of the gung-ho attitude. We've done a pretty good job of moderating the problems that inevitably arise (Russian mob, wanton smuggling, profound human misery.)

Re:In a way..

[Amazing Quantum Man]

Frankly, it shouldn't matter how many commercial spinoffs NASA creates. NASA provides the reach to exceed our grasp... As Robert Burns put it, "A man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?"

Now, I'm not going metaphysical on you, but in this case, the journey itself is the ends, not the means!

Re:In a way..

[drank]

The R&D efforts always have commercial spinoffs

This is always trotted out when NASA's budget needs defending, but it's a really weak argument. Basically it asks you to justify NASA's actions based on their accidental consequences. In other words, "we completely failed at the task of building a cost-effective, reliable, reuasble launch vehicle, but hey, look at the cool stuff we paid for along the way!"

You might ask yourself two questions about spinoffs:
1) If the technology in question has genuine commercial potential, do you really believe its maker won't bring it to market without a NASA subsidy?

2) If you heard this justification in any other field of endeavor ("ok Mr. Customer, we didn't succeed in building your ecommerce site, but we did manage to spin off a very impressive server farm and some really cool animated graphics"), would you consider the money well spent?

Re:In a way..

[Jmstuckman]

Fourth, would the American people actually want to pay for such a thing? There's never enough money to do everything that we want, and space isn't large enough of a priority in anyone's mind to spend billions on one mission!

Re:In a way..

[isaac]

I don't know much about shuttle payload space constraints, but IIRC the shuttle is still the only way to lift 30+ tons into orbit; the soviet replacement for the proton is supposed to be good for 30 metric tons, but hasn't yet entered service.

Agreed on your other points though. Expendable, non-man-rated rockets in mass production is the way to go - see the success of the ESA with Arianne.

-Isaac

Re:In a way..

[mesocyclone]

I agree there are difficulties, but NASA sure isn't going anywhere fast.

Issues: short sightedness of corporations. This is true and not true - it depends on how the accounting works. If you make an investment that is written off over many years, its impact on any current year isn't as much. For example, big logging companies plant huge forests that will not be harvestable for decades. That is hardly short-sighted.

It doesn't have to be one corporation. Subcontracting is how you do it. After all, NASA doesn't have the expertise and resources either - it subcontracts most of it.

The risk is an interesting issue. There may be better ways of incentivization.

Actually, we should put more money into NASA and all other kinds of science, and ALSO incentivize the private industry. Take the money from the bloated welfare and farm support programs. It would hardly make a dent! In the US, the department of HHS has almost twice the budget of the Defense Department, and over 30 times the budget of NASA (more or less - this is from memory).

Re:In a way..

[(outer-limits)]

Hang on, how much do we spend on NASA every year, and how much do we spend on cigarettes, arms, lawyers, advertising, SUVs, drugs, spin doctors, consultants, (the list never ends). I can just imagine a cost accountant terminating funding for the laser beam because there appeared to be no use for it.

Re:In a way..

[ksheff]

That depends if the companies in question have the capital in order to do all the R&D and if the management decides that rate of return on that capital is sufficient for them to invest in it. What NASA initially gets may not be commericially viable, but in the process much is learned and with a few iterations it does become viable. Many companies don't want to or can't wait a couple iterations for something to become viable. The standard answer that many have is that for every $1 spent on NASA, $7 is generated due to commercial spinoffs. It's the same reason for any sort of research funded by the Govt. Or do you think the DARPA guys should have just sat back and took the position of "Well, if interconnecting diverse computers over a large geographical distance with a common protocol has genuine commercial potential, let's just wait until the vendors develop something on their own and drop it on our doorstep."?

As far as your second point, actually yes. Companies always have projects that don't work the way that they're supposed to. The key thing is what is learned and how what was completed can be put to good use (ie turning lemons into lemonade). In your example, those servers can always be used for something else (renderfarm, database cluster, etc.). I also wouldn't consider the Shuttle a complete failure. It's expensive compared to some other alternatives, but it's still very useful.

Re:In a way..

[ksheff]

I didn't say anything about the shuttle. Who paid for a good chunk of the R&D that went into developing those disposable rockets? The military and NASA. Having a line of rockets powered by the Saturn V's engines would be better at launching the commodity type payloads. NASA pretty much put all its eggs in one basket (the Shuttle) in the 70s, but was it due to budget constrains or politics? I don't know.

Re:In a way..

[gorilla]

The soviets could still build some more protons if they wanted, the designs are still current. However, how many times is there a requirement to launch 30 tonnes? Not very often at all. The most common launch requirement is to GEO, and that's something that the shuttle is really bad at.

Re:In a way..

[isaac]

The soviets could still build some more protons if they wanted, the designs are still current.

The proton is still in service - but it can't lift anything close to 30 tons. My point was that the highest-capacity version of the proton replacement (the angara) will supposedly lift 30 tons to LEO or 6 tons to GEO (naturally the latter spec is the important one).

-Isaac

Use it if you got it.

[guamman]

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.

Re:Use it if you got it.

[Mondrames]

Actually they did - if you had continued reading the article:

"In 1997, 94 leftover N1 engines were sold to the American company Kistler for refurbishment and incorporation into a new rocket."

Re:Use it if you got it.

[guamman]

You are correct, but when i did a cursory search for information on what happened to the rockets afterwards, all I could find pointed to the fact that the plans never when through. This means that these giant rockets are still somewhere in existance, but unused. Thus my suggestion.

Re:Use it if you got it.

[bpb213]

As stated in the article, these rockets dont lift right cause they cant balance the power of the engines. So it would take a lot of man hours to figure out how to balance all 30 or so engines, and then more hours and equipment costs to make them flight ready.
Rather, punch a couple of holes in the fuel lines and sell them to afganistan >:)

Re:Use it if you got it.

[AJWM]

The article does say that, but the article is wrong. The N-1 actually had a pretty ingenious system for balancing the thrust of those engines, with engines on opposite sides of the vehicle linked together in terms of fuel feed and control. If one shut down, its mate on the opposite side automatically shut down to balance the thrust. (The Saturn V had similar control logic.) Although the number of engines made it a bit of a plumbing nightmare.

The real problem with the N-1 was (probably) pogo oscillation, which is the result of a feedback loop between engine thrust and rate at which fuel flows into the engine (influence by acceleration). The Saturn V was plagued with this in its early development too, since it's a problem that only shows up in flight.

Re:Use it if you got it.

[Russ Moerland]

Wasn't it the engine control system, that caused one of the N-1 boosters to crash back into the pad?

Re:Use it if you got it.

[gorilla]

The American program had a bit of an advantage, because they had seen pogo before, on Titan II launches for the Gemini program. Aerospace corporation solved it on the Titan II by changing the plumbing around.

Re:Use it if you got it.

[Chairboy]

> If one shut down, its mate on the opposite side automatically shut down to balance the thrust. (The Saturn V had similar control logic.)

Incorrect.

The KORD engine control system on the N1 would shut off the engine on the opposite side because the engines were non gimballing. The N1 only had a handful of gimballed engines in the center.

The Saturn V only had 5 engines on the first stage and could not afford to lose 2 engines. If one engine was shut down, the control system would gimbal all of the other engines to keep the thrust along the center of mass.

Re:Use it if you got it.

[AJWM]

Depends where it was in the flight profile. The center engine of the S-V did not gimbal (the opposite layout of the N-1).

A single engine failure shortly after launch meant the S-V would just be too heavy to control and they'd abort the launch. Ditto a two engine failure of two engines on the same side of the vehicle -- that meant an automatic cutoff of all outboard engines before the vehicle tilted too far. If they'd burned enough fuel at that point for the center engine alone to lift the vehicle they kept on going, otherwise they'd abort at that point. At some points of the flight they could tolerate two opposite engines out (balanced thrust) but a single engine out would require changing the angle of the vehicle to the point where dynamic loads on the side would threaten to break it up.

About 68 seconds into the flight (first stage burn was about 160 seconds) it had burned enough propellant (about 2 million pounds) that it could keep going on three engines, for the first about 13 seconds it was still too heavy to fly on four engines, so yes there's about a 55 second window where it could fly on four -- but that's also the time where dynamic pressure is increasing so you really don't want to be presenting too much of an angle of attack. (Not to say that there isn't a window in there where it'd be okay to fly on the centre plus three outboard engines.)

(BTW, look at those times again, and recall that it took quite a few seconds to clear the tower. Basically if you lost an engine after hold-down release and before clearing the tower, you'd get a really big BANG a few seconds later as the rocket "settled" back down. That's one reason the launch control room was a couple of miles from the pad and had blast shutters over the windows.)

Looks like someone was moonlighting

[schwatoo]

"The N1 rocket, picture courtesy Edwin N Cameron, former US Department of Defense Analyst/Instructor". Guess this DoD analyst has been supplementing his income a little.

How much rocket fuel?

[niftyeric]

Does anyone know how much rocket fuel the thing was supossed to hold? I'm also interested in a comparision between that and the Saturn 5 rocket?

Any good websites that Google may not be turning up?

Re:How much rocket fuel?

[jonerik]

Everything you've ever wanted to know about the Saturn V.

Re:How much rocket fuel?

[word munger]

Looking at this picture it looks like the Saturn V was about the same size.

Re:Failed?

[Anonymous Coward]

"dark side of the moon"
"physicsgenius"
umm. ok. whatever.

"Moon Rocket?"

[cjpez]

Come on, at least make it "destruktor-module 7" or something. Then again, I suppose ours wasn't really that great.

(okay, so I just wanted to try out my new .sig . . .)

Re:"Moon Rocket?"

[Amazing Quantum Man]

Come on, at least make it "destruktor-module 7" or something. Then again, I suppose ours wasn't really that great.

No, if you're going to name it that way, it *HAS* to be "Eludium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator"!!!!!

Re:"Moon Rocket?"

[cjpez]

Right, see? Two posts on the subject and already we're reaching naming perfection. And they probably spent whole days coming up with names!

This reminds me of our Solar System's Image Upgrade . . .

Could it be because

[ch-chuck]

after WWII the US got the better German V2 rocket scientists like Wernher Von Braun, instead of the USSR? Certainly the US didn't have the will to fully use their experience and talents, however, untill after Sputnik.

Re:Could it be because

[ptrourke]

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 . . .

Re:Could it be because

[John Fulmer]

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.

Re:Could it be because

[tigga]

Interesting enough the Soviets employed
German team in their rocket program.

It was kept high secret at the time, well as almost everything ;) in USSR. Germans was repatriated in early 50's.

Re:Could it be because

[s20451]

The doomed satelite launches made in response to Sputnik (Vanguard) were on not-ready-for-prime-time civilian launch vehicles, not military rockets.

The Soviets suffered their own failures, but managed to keep them secret - the successful Sputnik launch was preceeded by at least two failed launches, while the Americans had to do everything under the glare of the world's media. Also, the Vanguard was not civillian, it was a Navy launcher, while von Braun's Jupiter was an Army project. Anyway, von Braun was instrumental to the Saturn project.

Don't say that he's hypocritical,
Say rather that he's apolitical.
"Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?
That's not my department," says Wernher von Braun.
- Tom Lehrer

Re:Could it be because

[glassware]

Reminds me of an excellent joke (I read it in Mad Magazine, one of the old issues where they spoofed The Right Stuff). It went something like this:

Eisenhower: The Soviets launched Sputnik and our rocket crashed?!? What are we doing wrong? We're using German Scientists, and the Russians are using German Scientists!

Secretary of State: The difference is, here, our German Scientists work forty hours a week! In Russia, the German Scientists work forty hours a day!

Okay, so maybe it isn't the greatest joke in the world, and sure Mad Magazine retreaded it thoroughly in the Return of the Jedi spoof (picture Darth Vader and the Emperor replacing Eisenhower and John Foster Dulles). Anyway, I thought it was cute.

Re:Could it be because

[duct_tape_n_wd40]

"after WWII the US got the better German V2 rocket scientists "

"My name is Wernher Von Braun. I reach for the stars, but sometimes I hit London..."

Re:Could it be because

[Chris Y Taylor]

After the 1st V2 raid on London, Von Braun is reputed to have said to a fellow German scientist "They worked perfectly... they just hit the wrong planet.

Re:Could it be because

[reallocate]

Correction: The Jupiter-C was based on the Redstone, not the Jupiter.

Re:Could it be because

[John Fulmer]

You are correct (my bad), but it was 'officially' a part of the Jupiter project. It was named Jupiter C to get through the budgeting process, since anything with 'Jupiter' attached to it was almost automatically approved.

Officially, it was a variation of the Jupiter. Actually, it was much, much closer to the origional Redstone...

The Mishin Mission

[Caractacus Potts]

Here's a link to some cool drawings of the N1's. Of course, these drawings mean nothing. My theory is that the Soviet moon mission was as faked as the US one. Here's photographic proof that the N1's were only about 15 ft tall! Seeing is believing. You do believe me, don't you?

Re:The Mishin Mission

[dfenstrate]

Looks like a big model rocket to me, not an attempt at faking a moon landing.

Unless you think that the russians had 2000 model year mazda pickups in the 1970's, cause that's whats in the background.

You must be kidding, because no one is that dumb.

Re:The Mishin Mission

[downix]

A few flaws with that theory:

1) the 1999 Mazda pickup truck in the background
2) the mountain in the background is located in Utah

Re:The Mishin Mission

[bryan1945]

Either great subtle sarcasm, or a flaming idiot. Roswell really DID have aliens, also?

Re:Principle of Engineering

[aengblom]

ha

Don't you remember that show. neither worked. They both just rammed the wall with their trucks. ;-). Keep it even simpler

Re:Failed?

[encino]

Of course they'd publicize it. And we would've too - the fact that we beat them. Unless you think the US would have somehow missed a huge rocket taking off from the USSR heading for the moon. Don't get me started on your Mendelism quote (I'm a molecular biologist)...

Re:Principle of Engineering

[CrackElf]

I want to see a junkyard wars where they try to build a manned rocket. No, really, I do!

More N1 Details

[zardor]

Check out this site for a detailed history of the Soviet N1 development effort.

Discovery covered this in an excellent program

[Anonymous Coward]

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 :)

That picture wasn't an engine

[Rocketboy]

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

Re:That picture wasn't an engine

[AJWM]

The Delta also started as a missile, the Thor IRBM. Granted there were a lot more changes from Thor to the first Delta launch vehicles than from Atlas or Titan to the first LV versions of those.

Re:That picture wasn't an engine

[Buran]

Multi-engine rockets are still used by Russia today. These photos are dated today -- and this particular rocket design is very, very successful.

Photo of base of the Soyuz rocket (20 main engines and 12 smaller auxiliary engines)

The same rocket rolling to the pad

On the pad (probably the same one that launched Sputnik 1!)

But, as you say, the N-1 just took the concept too far, and the Soviets had invested so much into it by that point that the N-1's failure forced the entire lunar program to be cancelled. The only other booster that could do the job at the time (nothing exists now that could, though the Shuttle could launch a moon ship) was the Saturn V.

Re:That picture wasn't an engine

[Russ Moerland]

The soyuz rocket doesn't actually have 20 engines. It's actually five engines (five pairs of fuel and oxidizer turbopumps) each with four combustion chambers. The RD-171 used to power the Zenit is designed the same way. Or for that matter, the RD-180 that will power the Atlas 5 is little more than a RD-171 minus two of the combustion chambers.

Re:That picture wasn't an engine

[MaxVlast]

Those are great pictures. Does anyone know what kind of locomotive is in the middle one? It looks like a US Dash 9, but it's probably some sort of russian one.

Re:That picture wasn't an engine

[sean23007]

Oh boy, another thread where Beowolf cluster comments aren't totally offtopic! Maybe if their rocket controllers were running Linux, the 30 rockets could be controlled as if they were just one big rocket 30x the size.

:D

Re:That picture wasn't an engine

[Schaffner]

I think it's a TEM-7, the latest in a line descended from some Alco MRS-1's the Soviets got during WWII. It uses a knock of the Alco 539 engine.

Re:Ah yes.

[NecrosisLabs]

Well, gone to the moon, for one thing. The Soviets listing of space records is nothing to sneeze at, and it was the pressure to best them. I'm a big fan of the U.S. space program, but let's give credit where it is due.

Re:Failed?

[Alien54]

Nine or ten N1's were built at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The giant rocket was launched just four times; each one was a disaster ending in abrupt and catastrophic failure.

When things go BOOM, this is technically not a good thing.

Here is a summary of the Russian lunar launches. Here is the data from 1969

Jan. 20, 1969 7K-L1/ 13L - Circumlunar UR-500 Launch failure
Feb. 19, 1969 E-8 - Lunar rover 8K82K (UR-500) Failed to reach orbit
Feb. 21, 1969 7K-L1S - Circumlunar N-1 / L3 Exploded during launch
June 14, 1969 E-8-5 #402 - Sample return UR-500 Failed to reach orbit
July 3, 1969 7K-L1S - Circumlunar N-1 / 5L Exploded at launch
July 13, 1969 E-8-5 Luna-15 Sample return UR-500 Crashed on lunar surface
Aug. 8, 1969 7K-L1 Zond-7 Circumlunar UR-500 Flew around the Moon
Sept. 23, 1969 E-8-5 Cosmos-300 Sample return UR-500 Failed to leave Earth orbit
Oct. 22, 1969 E-8-5 Cosmos-305 Sample return UR-500 Failed to leave Earth orbit

Give them points for effort.

Re:Western "great powers" shown to be fools yet ag

[myamid]

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for free speach and you're intitled to your opinion.
What I'm baffled by Is why this isn't (yet...) labled as a troll or a flamebait! I don't have the time nor the will to plow through your lousy and baseless argumentation, I just hope someone else does! (especially since this thread has little to do with the main subject...)

It just goes to show...

[FissileDog]

You must be a "nice guy" as well.

PBS gave a glimpse

[eples]

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!

Re:PBS gave a glimpse

[jonerik]

It really was awful, there were analog gauges and whatnot littering the interior

It was built the late '60s. What else would they have been using?

basically one step shy of having Cosmonauts just jump out of the orbiter and hope for the best!

Actually, this isn't too far off the mark. If memory serves, the Soviet lunar missions were planned for two-man crews, as opposed to the three-man crews of the Apollo program. In the Soviet missions one cosmonaut would have stayed with the orbiter - same as the US flights - and the other would have spacewalked to and from the lander, rather the orbiter first docking with the lander. Soviet lunar landings and explorations would have been accomplished by one man, at least early on.

Re:PBS gave a glimpse

[eples]

It was built the late '60s. What else would they have been using?

Until you see it you'll just have to believe my disbelief at the total lack of electronics on board.

Really - the Apollo lander looked like a Cray supercomputer next to this thing. Which is not to say that their other engineering was not impressive, I am sure it was - just the lander was a complete joke.

Re:PBS gave a glimpse

[sphealey]

compared it to a "flying garbage can". It really was awful, there were analog gauges and whatnot littering the interior

Analog gauges are superior to digital readouts for many applications - particularly when it is necessary to scan many data inputs rapidly to detect deviations from expected. Note that most automobile cockpits have been re-re-designed since the 1980's to remove the digital gauges and put the analog needles back.

Of course, today those needles are mostly driven by D/A converters from the control computer, rather than being direct "analog" instruments, but that is another discussion.

sPh

Re:PBS gave a glimpse

[The Finn]

It was built the late '60s. What else would they have been using?

isn't it obvious? Nixie Tubes of course!

Some useful links

[chenyu]

http://www.astronautix.com/ has more than you ever wanted to know about the N1 at http://www.astronautix.com/articles/thepart1.htm

Don't sell the Soviet space program short...

[John Fulmer]

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.

Sorry, wrong

[mikosullivan]

The official Soviet line was that they never were really trying to land a person on the moon. That was the best line they could come up with when they weren't able to beat the U.S. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Cosmonauts from the 60's, such as Leonov, made it quite clear that the USSR was in fact trying to land a person on the moon, and do it first.

If your point is that the Soviet space program was, on the whole, a success not a failure, I completely agree. Their space programs was one of the few things the Communist world could be truly proud of.

-Miko

Details on the N1...

[Ryan_Terry]

Here ya go (For those who like BluePrints more than cute pics)

http://members.aol.com/Satrnpress/samprotw.htm

robotic mission

[orcldba]

As far as I know - robotic mission to the moon was complete success though. It is interesting to observe mass media in the West time after time to concentrate on areas where US were ahead and never opposite. Venus landing of a robotic craft and photographs from the surface is an example of another success of soviet space programm and I am sure there are many others not well known in the West.

Re:Failed?

[Kesha]

Well, he may be a bit trollish, but I think you misunderstand. He was pointing out that the N1 was not the only moon project that USSR had.

Here is a link to the NASA web page that describes all of USSR lunar missions:

http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/lunar/lunarus sr.html

Easy to scoff until you remember...

[Rogerborg]

... what have we done recently that's so hot? Shuttle launches still cost a billion bucks a pop (yeah, we're always learning how to save money on the next generation), and all we do is either dick around in low earth orbit or lob probes out.

Maybe I just OD'd on space opera, but to me "space exploration" means letting real people go out there and take real risks, not because it is easy, but because it is hard.

One of those little throwaway comments that stuck in my mind was Buzz Aldrin commenting that we're in for a shock when (if) we do try and go back to the moon, because we're going to find out just how hard it was. Sure, we know how to do it, but do we still have the knowhow?

Re:Easy to scoff until you remember...

[Erbo]

"From now on we're living in a world where men have walked on the moon. But it wasn't a miracle; we just decided to go."
-- 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

Re:Easy to scoff until you remember...

[frank_adrian314159]

In addition, the Moon could become an important construction base for ships designed to fly further out, as well as for space stations...

The moon might be a useful source of raw materials, but why the heck would you use it for ship construction? Why get out of one gravity well just to dump yourself into another? Just build the damn thing in orbit.

Re:Easy to scoff until you remember...

[RollingThunder]

Because if you can get the raw materials refined on the moon, you fight a smaller gravity well to boost them up.

It's also easier to do certain things in gravity. Ever tried painting in zero-g? (hypothetically speaking)

Re:Easy to scoff until you remember...

[OneFix]

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).

Re:Easy to scoff until you remember...

[Erbo]

Sure, build ships in orbit. In orbit around the Moon, that is. At only one-sixth gravity, it's easier to get materials up than from the Earth...and you might even be able to use a cheap way of doing so, such as mass drivers, that wouldn't necessarily work on Earth, or wouldn't work well.

Supplies that just had to be hauled from Earth wouldn't have to go all the way down to the lunar surface, either. It's easier to get into orbit around the Moon than to land on it...

Finally, if your construction site is in circumlunar orbit, it's not taking up space in an Earth orbit that could be used for a space station, communications satellites, or what have you.

Eric

Re:Easy to scoff until you remember...

[sql*kitten]

The moon might be a useful source of raw materials, but why the heck would you use it for ship construction?

I don't know whether this is true or not, but I suspect it's easier to build things where there is at least some gravity. Just little things like being able to put your screwdriver down and pick up another one without needing to attach it to something. The question is really whether the benefits of weightlessness (not masslessness, hmm, what an odd looking word) outweigh the difficulties. The moon is a good compromise, lower gravity, but still some.

Why get out of one gravity well just to dump yourself into another? Just build the damn thing in orbit

If the moon can be a source of raw materials, the optimal scenario may well be to do initial construction on the lunar surface before lifting the components to lunar orbit and assembling them there.

It was made by someone else

[Kizzle]

The moon rocket was actualy made by these people and stolen by the soviets.

That wasn't an individual engine

[jtseng]

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.

Re:That wasn't an individual engine

[x1l]

The individual engines were tiny

I don't know if tiny is the right way to describe the engines. I tend not to describe something bigger than me as "tiny"

Its funny our attitude about success...

[ACK!!]

Listen the Americans beat the USSR in the race to get to the moon but that is absolutely it.

They got:

1st satellite.
1st man in orbit.
1st woman in orbit.
1st lunar rover.
1st space station.
1st long term space station.

The US my country that I love so well got to the moon first.

The Soviet's took us down in every other first. It terms of keeping people in space for long periods of time they had it down while we had lost interest after seeing some guys hope around on the moon.

________________________________________________ __

Re:Its funny our attitude about success...

[jkujawa]

A lot more people have died in the Soviet space program than the US one. It's easy to be first if you don't care about quality and safety.

Re:Its funny our attitude about success...

[PhxBlue]

First long-term space station? Was I just imagining Skylab?

Re:Its funny our attitude about success...

[Anonymous Coward]

you are wrong!

USSR:
1st lander on Mars
1st lander on Venus

Re:Its funny our attitude about success...

[pohl]

No, you're just imagining Skylab's longevity.

Re:Its funny our attitude about success...

[Catmeat]

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

Re:Its funny our attitude about success...

[Amazing Quantum Man]

Salyuts were launched before Skylab, and had longer lifespans, but were still considered "short term". The first "long term" station was Mir.

Re:Its funny our attitude about success...

[istartedi]

They got:

1st people to die in space.

However, there might be some dispute about whether or not they were actually in space. At any rate, the capsule was high enough so that when a faulty valve caused them to lose presure, there was not enough oxygen to sustain life.

Then there was the sheer scale of some of their disasters. You think the Apollo-1 disaster and the shuttle were the result of arrogance? Picture a senior engineer and dozens of workers gathered around a rocket loaded with fuel known to be dangerous. Naturally it exploded, killed all, and devestated the program. Many of those gathered 'round faced an agonizing decision: risk the explosion, or risk being labeled as cowards and possibly being purged.

Re:Its funny our attitude about success...

[J23SE]

Because as we all know our beloved United States of America would publish every gruesome detail about the deaths of its astronauts in testing, as it has been perfectly truthful and trustworthy in the past.

Re:Its funny our attitude about success...

[Performer Guy]

It always amuses me when someone puts up the first woman in orbit as some king of technical accomplishment. It is not, the engineering challendges are identical. It is a non event.

And the US got first, second, third, fourth, fifth etc. etc. man on the moon, and then brought them all back alive. As an accomplishment it is fair to say it dwarfs all the others. The US also has numerous firsts in planetary missions (the Soviets got a few too).

The US also hadthe first reusable space vehicle that's more than a tin can and did not lose interest, the US has been launching shuttle missions and planetary missions spending billions for decades.

Your problem is you are very selective about what you cound and chose to stop counting after the moon shot, the US did not stop.

Maybe the Chinese can shoot for first woman on the moon.

Re:Its funny our attitude about success...

[NaturePhotog]

Don't forget Laika, 1st dog in space. I guess that would be an orbital 'Rover' :-)

Sadly, Laika, aka "Muttnik" either died when life support gave out, or as was reported later, burned up on reentry. Sputnik 2 was quick-and-dirty followup to Sputnik 1, and was designed as a one-way trip from the start.

Re:Its funny our attitude about success...

[kaiidth]

The whole 'Soviets considered human life unimportant' myth really doesn't have that much grounding in reality. It's quite true, on the other hand, that their technology has always tended towards the functional rather than the hi-tech frilly electronics preferred by the US.

For an example of this in action, take a look at this link. It's a description of the events at Le Bourget airshow, Paris, a few years back, when a prototype Sukhoi SU-30mk crashed pretty much due to pilot error (too low altitude, full-power descent)... I mention it because, despite the fact that they were at an extremely low altitude and unable to gain height prior to the crash, the pilots were able to eject safely - rather amazing, in the circumstances, and utterly down to the same Soviet technology that a lot of people here are happy to ignore (amazingly well-designed safety mechanisms).

In fact, there's another page on that site discussing the Soviet airforce's opinions on safety in the 1960s (versus the US's) which concludes that While the Soviet Air Force postulated demanding requirements for the ejection seats, the US Air Force for some reasons did not do likewise. This determined the Russian advantage in ejection seat technologies.

So I would say that on the whole, the Soviets could see the value of preserving the lives of their (highly trained) pilots, and probably felt the same about their astronauts. Yes, there seem to have been a number of fatal accidents, but hey, it's not like the US didn't accidentally fry a few pilots - and interestingly, there's a lot of opposing opinion as to just how many fatalities there were in the Soviet space program. It's just propaganda. Don't perpetuate it.

Re:Its funny our attitude about success...

[kruczkowski]

You also have to understand the Eastern European mentality. Do it once and call it quits.

Look at the Russian Space shuttle, or notice that the worlds largest aircraft is Russian, but has flown very few times (the US C5's are flying daily) Or how about the Russian Concorde. I heard the story that they made 3, put people on the test flights and they crashed, the 3rd they kept. I don't think that story is true, but it just shows you the mentality. BTW, they have an original in a German museum.

Re:Its funny our attitude about success...

[timster]

The space pen was not developed by NASA. It was designed by Fisher and offered to NASA for free (for marketing reasons of course). It is also used by the Russian space program. The "space pen vs. pencil" thing is a joke.

Re:Its funny our attitude about success...

[oldays]

I don't think that story is true, but it just shows you the mentality.

Yeah, stories that aren't true always show mentality. That's what they're made up for.

Re:Its funny our attitude about success...

[Pussy Is Money]

A lot more people have died in the Soviet space program than the US one. It's easy to be first if you don't care about quality and safety.

If you are alluding to brutality under communist Soviet regime then you have a point. But consider this (a link somebody posted a few comments above, mod it up, it's a good link). It describes the N1 in more detail. In particular, it describes the 4 ill-fated launch attempts. Look at these snippets:

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).

Re:Its funny our attitude about success...

[Anonymous Coward]

The main difference between a dead astronaut and a dead kosmonaut seems to be that the astronaut is considered a hero whereas the kosmonaut is considered a victim.

Re:Its funny our attitude about success...

[avmich]

You also have to understand the Eastern European mentality. Do it once and call it quits.

You can probably meet this attitude equally well on both sides of Atlantic - or former Berlin Wall.

Look at the Russian Space shuttle

Two reasons Buran flew only once: 1) lack of goal 2) money. Do you know what Russia looked like in late 80s?

notice that the worlds largest aircraft is Russian, but has flown very few times

Flew very few times, true, then finances dried out. A few years afterwards, howewer, the investmens were found, so Mriya is flying again.

Or how about the Russian Concorde

Tu-144 was considered too dangerous. It had the bad flight long before British-French Concorde had its own, though.

Re:Its funny our attitude about success...

[SEE]

As far as I'm concerned, there are only the following worthwhile standards:

1. First unmanned mission to leave Earth's atmosphere (USSR, Sputnik)
   
2. First manned mission to leave Earth's atmosphere (USSR, Vostok I)
   
3. First permanent manned station beyond Earth's atmosphere (unachieved)
   
4. First unmanned mission to leave Earth orbit (USSR, Luna 2)
   
5. First manned mission to leave Earth orbit (USA, Apollo 11)
   
6. First permanent manned station beyond Earth's orbit (unachieved)
   
7. First unmanned mission to leave Earth-Lunar space (USA, Mariner 2)
   
8. First manned mission to leave Earth-Lunar space (unachieved)
   
9. First permanent manned station beyond Earth-Lunar space (unachieved)
   
10. First unmanned mission to leave solar system (USA, Pioneer 10)
    
11. First manned mission to leave solar system (unachieved)
    
12. First permanent manned station beyond the Solar System (unachieved)
    
13. First unmanned mission to leave Milky Way (unachieved)
    
14. First manned mission to leave Milky Way (unachieved)
    
15. First permanent manned station beyond Milky Way (unachieved)
    
16. First unmanned mission to leave local supergroup of galaxies (unachieved)
    
17. First manned mission to leave local supergroup of galaxies (unachieved)
    
18. First permanent manned station beyond local supergroup of galaxies (unachieved)
    

Everything else is fluff. Temporary space stations mean as much as the Roanoke colony.

Re:Its funny our attitude about success...

[CrystalFalcon]

Just nitpicking facts - Apollo 11 was not the first Apollo mission to leave Earth orbit. As part of the Apollo program, they had manned missions orbit the moon first, without landing.

Don't remember the flight sequence number though.

(Also, I'm not sure that there is a meaningful distinction between "permanent station" and "permanent manned station" once we reach the level of technology needed to achieve this.)

Re:Its funny our attitude about success...

[mikerich]

Err actually it was the Tu-144 that was redesigned.

There was a long gap between the test flights and the Tu-144 appearing in the West. The reason? It was essentially rebuilt along Concorde lines.

Originally its engines were mounted in a single belly box, but they didn't provide enough differential thrust so they were moved away from the centre-line (like Concorde).

The Tu-144 was also retro-fitted with canards to help lift during take-off and landing. (These were never fitted to Concorde, but the French were very keen to find out about them. So much so, that there are allegations that a French fighter, spying on the Tu-144 was the cause of the Paris Air crash)

It still retained the double-delta wings which made it much less efficient at lower speeds than Concorde.

Handsome plane though.

Best wishes,

Mike.

Re:Its funny our attitude about success...

[mikerich]

Actually the Tu-144 went into service on internal flights to Kazakhstan. It never did Trans-Atlantic service probably because it would have required refuelling en-route thanks to some very thirsty engines.

There were apparently negotiations at one point to offer Concorde services to Japan via a refuelling stop in the Soviet Union. Simulators were built to train Concorde pilots for the route, but it all came to naught.

The remaining Tu-144s are either rotting or one has been assigned to NASA for high speed flight testing.

Best wishes,
Mike.

Soviets were never really far ahead

[mikosullivan]

The only reason the Soviets ever appeared to be significantly ahead of the US during the moon race era was that the Soviets started sooner and were willing to take higher risks. Keep in mind that the US's Explorer went into orbit only a few months after Sputnik. Granted, Sputnik was more advanced, but the difference was mostly due to a lack of motivation on the part of the US. Once the US got motivated, we surged ahead. By the time of Apollo it was barely a contest at all, in terms of "firsts": the US was far closer to the moon.

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

Re:Soviets were never really far ahead

[BarryHaworth]

The real Soviet advantage was bigger boosters, which was a result of poorer bomb technology. After WW2 the Soviets developed nuclear bombs like the US, but for both they were large - too large to "deliver" (love that military speak) with existing rockets. The Soviets developed bigger rockets. The US developed smaller bombs.

Re:Soviets were never really far ahead

[jayrtfm]

>>Keep in mind that the US's Explorer went into orbit only a few months after Sputnik [nasa.gov]. Granted, Sputnik was more advanced [space.com], but the difference was mostly due to a lack of motivation on the part of the US.

Actually, the US *waited* for the USSR to launch a satallite first. This was part of the cold war, to let the USSR establish the precedent of allowing orbital overflight of any country. If we had gone first, they could have claimed we were violating their airspace just like we did with the U2.

Re:Western "great powers" shown to be fools yet ag

[thelizman]

That's absolutely not true...we would'nt destroy the WHOLE planet, just the parts we're not using and anything upwind : P

Re:Failed?

[Kesha]

Wow, you make it sound as though USSR had no successfull lunar missions at all. Here is a link to the NASA web page with details on the USSR lunar missions: http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/lunar/lunarus sr.html

My favorites are the Lunokhod missions:

http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/tmp/1970-095A.html
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/tmp/1973-001A.html

And a few other cool looking unmanned landers:

http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/tmp/1976-081A.html
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/tmp/1970-072A.html
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/tmp/1966-006A.html

Don't Knock it

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Modern Russian Rockets

[cthrall]

Now that you've read all the posts about how the Russian space program is done, read this Wired article (http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.12/rd-180.ht ml) that describes how US companies are launching their payloads using Russian propulsion.

Here's a quote: "They build the thing and test the shit out of it. This engine cost $10 million and produces almost 1 million pounds of thrust. You can't do that with an American-made engine."

Re:Modern Russian Rockets

[roalt]

Some weeks ago on Discovery Channel there was a documentary about the NK-33 and the old russian attempt to reach the moon. In fact, this RD-180 engine is based upon the NK-33 engine because the technology (after more than 20 years) was superior over american engines. I believe a launch was made with a American Delta rocket with one RD-180 engine instead of 4-5 american engines.

magnetism and rockets

[happyclam]

Clearly, the Soviet space program was hamstrung by the fact that during the cold war, magnetic north was in the territory of the west. Without free access to the actual magnetic North Pole (though Lech Walesa was a pretty magnetic Pole), they obviously had a hard time navigating, as their most sophisticated navigational equipment (besides the sextant) was a souvenir compass obtained from an East German high school science fair.

Too bad they don't have the budget to pursue the moon again now that magnetic north will actually be in their own territory. They would have a distinct advantage over Nasa if they could make Nasa pay for access to magnetic north, maybe on a subscription basis or using micropayments.

All this rocket stuff is so confusing!

Re:Failed?

[GregWebb]

Yuri Gagarin died in a plane crash on March 27, 1968, over a year before Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon, or a secret TV studio if you believe the above...

Yet another massive failure of central planning

[TheNarrator]

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.

Re:Yet another massive failure of central planning

[NixterAg]

Somebody watched television this weekend didn't they? The dam problem in China was the #1 technological mishap of all time on one of those TLC top 10 shows.

Re:Yet another massive failure of central planning

[TheNarrator]

The white sea canal was probably worse as far as number of people killed total. Not that it was badly built and that caused the damage but that the use of convict labor in the winter using wheel barrows and shovels, waist deep in freezing cold water was a work place engineering disaster of extrordinary proportions. Of course they were all gulag prisoner's anyway which made their lives worth nothing. In a way Stalin was kind of like a Pharoh of Egypt that way, having used large amounts of slave labor to build massive and impractical specticals as monuments to his power.

Re:Yet another massive failure of central planning

[Smack]

Cool book. Thanks for the tip.

When are we going back?

[QuantumG]

Why has no-one been to the moon since 1972? For those who cant count, that's 30 years. There are not even plans to go back even though we've (debatably) found ice up there (perfect for a settlement). I guess the next people to go will be from the private sector. Seems like a long way out though.

Re:Brave!

[T5]

You misunderstand the USSR. Bravery has nothing to do with it. You did what you were told or ended up in the Gulag.

Re:Western "great powers" shown to be fools yet ag

[chazzf]

Interesting that the US is the only country that has never been successfully invaded....

Technically you're correct, but the British did raise considerable havoc during the War of 1812.

Yes

[mikosullivan]

I noticed that after I'd submitted. :-(

-Miko

A true testament to...

[Zenjive]

Soviet progress before logic. Man, these guys were hard up. I mean, kerosene and LOX? On 30 engines!?!?!?

Re:A true testament to...

[MaxVlast]

The attentive reader will note that the Saturn V also used kerosine. It produces more pounds of thrust than does liquid H2.

Re:A true testament to...

[Zenjive]

Hmm, didn't know that. I thought Saturn V was LOX/LH2 all the way, my bad.

I was also under the impression that kerosine was too heavy for use in large rockets, i.e. large quantities of fuel > thrust.

The post-modern look at Russian Space Program

[Yurka]

Can't help plugging my own work. Check out my translation of a short novel by one of the best young Russian-language writers, dealing exactly with the subject being discussed.
http://lib.ru/lat/PELEWIN/omon_engl.tx t

Money Slangers

[virg_mattes]

Hey, in the U.S. at least, half a bill is $50.00. In American, you say half a bil. If, however, you're talking in British, you need to say half a milliard.

Virg

Re:Money Slangers

[snake_dad]

Hey, this is slashdot! Just say half a gig :)

Re:Money Slangers

[mesocyclone]

Darn, I just can't win. I was born in the US and lived all my life here except a few weeks in Europe from time to time and a few months in Paris. I must have gotten linguistically contaminated in my travels. Sigh.

Re:Principle of Engineering

[jafac]

It was called "Salvage 1" - - don't bother.

soviets never did anything small in those days...

[r00tyroot]

I guess the K.I.S.S. (keep it simple, stupid) acronym never made it to the russian engineers

Lack of testing

[Latent Heat]

The Russians could have pulled it off, but they lacked test stands where they could have seen if the darned thing ran before trying to fly it. Let this be a lesson to software developers.

That's how they test & develop them

[DABANSHEE]

It even goes back to the war when Russia would test prototype fighters in the field on the front.

Re:The Mishin Mission - I'm joking

[Caractacus Potts]

Yes. It's a picture of a model rocket based on the N1, and those are late model US trucks, and the locale is in the USA. I bet that ladder even came from Sears. I thought it was cool enough to mention, posed as a joke. My hat's off to the one guy who actually suspected I might be kidding.

But look how afraid the US is of war casualties

[DABANSHEE]

Someone blows up a USMC base in Lebanon they run home with their tails between they're legs.

Same again in Somalia.

Look at the Kosovan campaign where servicemen weren't allowevdbelow 30000 feet & where the Apaches were barred from crossing the border because they were afraid of even risking casualties.

Really the best thing that could happen to the US in Afghanistan is for the US to have lots of battle casualties & then stick it out to the end. That show 'em.

Re:Testboy needs a life...

[TestBoy]

The early bird gets the post. If you were up before 2 pm every day, you might be able to post something. Maybe the problem is that slashdot is your homepage, and you don't know how to type new addresses in the address bar. Sorry to hear you have no skill.

Re:Failed?

[Alien54]

Wow, you make it sound as though USSR had no successfull lunar missions at all

Well, not in 1969. I note from your links that the successful ones were 1 in 1966, 2 in 1970, 1 in 1973, 1 in 1976.

I just didn't feel like posting the complete list, which you can see in the original link I provided.

http://www.russianspaceweb.com/spacecraft_planetar y_lunar.html
has a comprehensive list.

out of 59 launches from 1958 to 1976, there were apparently 18 successful missions.

1969 was a really bad year.

over all, looks like about half (?) exploded or never left earth orbit, etc. or otherwise had other problems. Since the original post nattered about a mission about the time of the first American Moon landing (1969) quoting the stats from 1969 seemed relevant.

Re:Testboy needs a life...

[Glove d'OJ]

Actually, the early bird generally makes a page-widening post, shouts "FP! FP! FP!" and references goatse.cx.

WWJD? JWRTFM!

Yep..

[Axe]

..And russians launch such boosters one after another with no problems - if not for dumb U.S. export restriction they will be thriving..

Success

[virg_mattes]

Well, the N-1 was supposed to be a Moon-shot rocket, and this is a story about the N-1, so discussing our success in that particular regard seems appropriate. You are, however, missing a few points, most importantly (to my way of thinking) exploration of the outer planets. Although there is much to be proud of in the Russian space heritage, there are also many "firsts" in the U.S. program.

Virg

Of course it was huge

[Sabalon]

After all, when your country strands you on the moon and has no way of getting you back down, of course you will need tons of room for all the supplies.

Damn...that must have been one huge beast if that just held all the rockets.

Wonder what Steve Buscemi's Armageddon character would have to say about that :)

They have another one..

[Axe]

..It is called Energia, can lift 100 tons - used to lift russian space shuttle ("Buran") that has no engines of its own. It does not blow up (expt for the failed upper stage on the first launch (of the classified payload).

The problem is - they can not get paying customers to justify it. Telecommunications are happy with Proton's 20 ton payload - about the same as the shuttle, or Zenit 3 ("Sea launch") 6 tons. Sending multiple sattelites is too risky. There is simply no commercial use for such a big booster, but it does exist and in working order.. Cheaper then the shuttle...

Re:They have another one..

[Axe]

> It will probably be easier to create a launcher of similar proportions from scratch than try to resurrect the Energiya.

Of, cause, nobody will just keep a vehicle - in working order - for yeears with no use for it. But I would bet the Russians are having a much better chance of doing just that, if needed, then Americans making a Saturn V equivalent. Atlas 5 got russian engine. Delta 3 failed two launches out of 3, and who knows what Delta 4 record would be - and delta 4 justs matches Proton payload in its biggest, most expensive variantions.. And it would be hard for them to match Proton relliability.. There only chance is protectionism of U.S. geovernment - to compete against Arian and Proton..

Remember Delta 3?

[Axe]

When americans had, what like 4 crashes of Delta's and Titan in a row. A $bil per Titan launch loss..

The reason Delta 3 crashed was that stabilizer was hooked/controlled in wrong order and the system run out of hydrolic fluids (no recurculation).. Sounds like a control problem to me.. ;)

Hmm..

[not_cub]

Designed to lift the Soviet moon lander into space, the N1 was a titanic feat of engineering
Titanic in more ways than one. Maybe this is a reflection on the bigger is better mentality. Or maybe a (un)lucky choice of words.

not_cub

Shameless Website Plug

[dscottj]

My dad ran the mobile launch vehicle system for NASA throughout the apollo era. He has a ton of stories, all of them funny, some of them are probably true. It was a real cowboy era, and the contractors were too busy getting the thing working than to worry about beauracratic gobbledygook. I post about one story a month. You can check them out in the archives of my site. Enjoy!

Bull..

[Axe]

..That's bullshit.

Case in point: All russian launchers have emergency crew evacuation systems - once it worked well to save the crew when the booster exploded on the launchpad.

Space shuttle does not have such system - that's why 7 people died in the Challenger.

So who cares about life of the crew?

Re:Bull..

[prisoner]

ah bull, haven't you seen that space shuttle movie with James Garner? They've got that little pipe that shoots outta the side of the shuttle on which they slide out in case of trouble....:)

Wouldn't it be nice...

[prisoner-of-enigma]

Although I must applaud the "rivalry" between the U.S. and the former Soviet Union during the Space Race (because had their been no race it's doubtful the moon shot would've ever taken place due to costs, risks, etc.), wouldn't it be nice if we could move beyond "We did it first" and the countering "No, WE did it first" type of comments. Imagine something like:

Human Race:
1st satellite
1st human in orbit
1st moon landing
1st Mars probe
etc.

to be followed by:
1st permanent Lunar colony
1st manned mission to Mars
1st permanent Mars colony
1st manned mission to Europa
1st asteroidal mining colony
1st Mercury-based solar powered antimatter generation facility (for antimatter-powered thrusters).

Sadly, even though I'm 29, it's higly doubtful I'll see more than a token manned mission to Mars in my lifetime. My children will see my grandparents's dreams come true, albeit about 80 years too late.

Re:They didn't have gimbals like the s5 did

[lugonn]

The reason the Russians use so many engines is because they don't have gimbals to balance the rocket's thrust during takeoff. They change the thrust output of the engines on opposite sides of eachother, to achieve balance. It's not very efficent, but is cheaper to manufacture. Basically, the Russians need at least 4 engines(per stage) to steer a rocket and the Americans need 1 (gimbal mounted of course)

Since they had to use so many engines to produce thrust in the 1st stage, they could not achieve the proper thrust ratios to keep the sucker balanced and aloft at the same time. The engines were simply too small.

The Saturn V, on the other hand, had 5 engines on the 1st stage that were gimbal mounted. They could produce the same thrust ratio to eachother while balancing the rocket as well. Efficent but expensive. Gimbal technology is akin to balancing a broomstick on a table without touching the table.


See You Space Cowboy

You are wrong.

[Axe]

Each russian manned launcher did have an emergency esape system - worked well enough to save crew, when the booster exploded on the launch pad.

"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.

If you read and understand this article..

[Axe]

..This one you will hear that quite the opposite is true - from the american engineers evaluation, no less..

You, sir, is quite arrogant, making such statements..

Quote from the article: The Russians devised a number of other simple but ingenious strategies to increase reliability and keep costs down. They applied special coatings to internal machine parts to protect them from extreme heat, and routed kerosene around hot rocket nozzles to cool them down. More important, they emphasized what's known as "producibility," handing off designs early in the process to the engineers who were actually going to be building the stuff. "It's a European design philosophy," Ford explains. "Over there, engineers are trained to produce things that work."

Or You Could Look At The Successes

[hotsauce]

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.

Well..

[Axe]

..American program has several fails in a row jsut recently.. Delta 3, Titan 4 (two in a row) - what is supposed to be a debugged program..

Our satellite launch on a Delta 2 had 18 (!) aborted attempts.

No sir, this shit IS complecated..

BTW -good article here: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.12/rd-180.htm l

Re:Well..

[The Evil Beaver]

It's not that complicated! It's not brain surgery! :)

Re:Kerosene and history of technology

[jerryasher]

As I recall from my reading (about fifteen years ago) of Stages to Saturn, part of the reason the F-1 burned kerosene was that hydrogen rocket technology was just a lot newer, a lot more untested, and a lot riskier when building the Saturn V.

One memorable anecdote: workers on the third stage had to worry about hydrogen leaks causing invisible and undetectable hydrogen fires. They would walk along the stage holding wooden brooms out ahead of them. If the end of the broom caught fire ....

Dogs, Eisenhower and the US

[popsocial]

You guys are all missing the point! The USSR got the first living creature in orbit. Laika, a dog, was put in orbit in the Sputnik 2 on 2 January 1959. Of course, with the state of Soviet human and animal rights they also got the first dead creature in orbit.

Also, this head start business re: the Soviets winning the race into space. The only reason the Soviets beat the Americans into space was because Einsenhower was reluctant to escalate the Cold War. The Americans has the capacity, but he felt that the Soviets, as insecure little commies, would be threatened by an American satellite that passed over them. Think U2 incident and you will see how right Einshower was.

Then again all the Americans did was outspend the Soviets. You can be as proud of this as you want.

Re:Dogs, Eisenhower and the US

[kaiidth]

Granted, Laika died. On the other hand, Belka, Strelka, Kometa, Shutka, Chernushka, and Zvezdochka all made it back ;-)

Talking about insecurity, I happened to read the other day in a totally unrelated book about hill figures, the white horses (and other patterns) cut into chalk hillsides in the UK - yeah, I know, whatever - about a 'hill panda'. Some bunch of students from the University College of South Wales decided to cut the design of a panda onto a piece of common ground visible from the road, and did, without bothering to mention it to anybody first.

Result? Local panic, since it was 1969 at the time and everybody assumed that it must be some sort of homing device for Soviet satellites.

Strange, but true.

Re:Dogs, Eisenhower and the US

[danro]

The Americans has the capacity, but he felt that the Soviets, as insecure little commies, would be threatened by an American satellite that passed over them. Think U2 incident and you will see how right Einshower was.

And you mean that the US didn't act like "insecure little capitalists" when sputnik flew by?
Pot. Kettle. Black. It was the cold war you know.
I agree about the outspending though, capitalism generates more resources per capita, and with both sides having equally smart guys money will decide the outcome. (Think Sid Meyer's Civilization.)

Re:Dogs, Eisenhower and the US

[popsocial]

They sure did act like "insecure little capitalists" but "insecure little capitalists" are predictable, they whine (I prove it thus!) whereas who knew what the Soviets would do. I am sure the reverse it quite valid (the Soviets certainly didn't understand the "insecure little capitalists") but the fact remains that Eisenhower didn't launch.

Other russian firsts

[XNormal]

First spacewalk, although it nearly ended in disaster because the spacesuit was pretty primitive and, seriously limited Leonov's movements.

First near rendezvour - but this was only a publicity stunt. No real orbital maneouvers were performed, just timed launching of two spaceships to the same orbit.

Venus landing...

[jawtheshark]

Wow...that's impressive! I thought we only had pics of Venus from satellites. You would have been nice to give a link :-)
Google is your friend, so here is one :-)

Re:Easy to scoff until your member...

[Perdition]

It's good to know that the assimilated aspirations of 5 billion people striving for identity in an increasingly callous species and putting aside their differences to establish themselves among the stars as true heirs of the future can still be placed conveniently on the scale of the male erection. I sure hope NASA knows precisely when you have an erection. Maybe that's the timer they use for major interplanetary launches.

"I boldly went where no man had gone before, and wow! You shoulda seen the women." - James T. Kirk

Re:soviets never did anything small in those days.

[child_of_mercy]

It's a question of where you introduce the simplicity and complexity.

Having built simple and effective rocket engines they tried to bundle them together to make a huge rocket.

That created complexity.

The Americans built more complex gimballed rocket engines, which allowed them to build a simpler overall rocket (Saturn V) with fewer engines.

So the russians created complexity by combining many simple components

Where the americans had a simpler design of more complex components.

I think the moral is that elegance and efficiency of design is important throughout any significant engineering project.

At least...

[carlhirsch]

At least they made it to Solaris!

What's half a Bill?

[runlvl0]

40 Billion dollars, or Larry Ellison?

Re:Fry's can blow me

[lugonn]

I bought a cheap DVD-ROM from them, got it home, and it always crashes 1/2 through any DVD you put in it. I tried to take it back 4 days later and get a different model, but they would not let me exchange it because I didn't have my reciept. They looked up some 'records' in their 'database' and told me no one had bought that model drive for over 2 months. Guess my money doesn't count as a transaction.

SO FUCK FRY'S AND THEIR DRACONIAN RETURN POLICY I'll never buy from them again. Everyone I know has complaints about them anyway. Like, the shit you buy from them doesn't work half the time.

The DVD I bought seems to alter the tracks on a DVD-ROM as well. Don't ask me how you can re-write tracks on a pressed disc, all I know is that I borrowed a DVD from a friend, and now he can't make 'back-up copies' of it. He could before I borrowed it, and now he can't. I still plays fine in a set-top DVD though, just not PC or PS2 drives. Anyone know why?

Re:The Mishin Mission - I'm joking

[xornor]

I got the joke man, i don't know what was funnier your sarcasm or the fact that those idiots thought you were serious! jesus christ!

Engineering and heat

[Eric Green]

The larger the engine, the more heat is produced. Keeping the nozzle from melting down requires more and more exotic materials the bigger the engine gets. The Soviets had trouble coming up with materials that would withstand the heat, and thus could not have increased their engine sizes to Saturn V proportions even if they'd had Werner Von Braun as their chief designer, rather than the squabbling herd of non-entitities that were in charge after "the" Chief Designer died.

The same basic considerations are why the jet engines used in the very successful Su-27 class fighters are more fuel-thirsty for the same thrust as an F-15 class fighter (the two are roughly equivalent). The hotter you can get, the more expansion you can get. If you don't have the expansion, the only way to get the same thrust is to pour more fuel into the nozzle. The Russian designers are confident that their newest engines for the Su-30 class follow-ons to the Su-27 are every bit as good as current Western engines -- but they have not had the money to actually build the things.

There is also, of course, the Russian tendency to improve existing designs rather than embark upon all-new designs. For example, the next-generation Russian air superiority fighter, the Su-34/Su-35, is basically an Su-27 improved with the latest in materials to decrease weight, increase strength, and improve payload and maneuverability (not to mention better engines). The Su-34/Su-35 aren't going to be built because Russia cannot afford them, but show what Russian designers prefer to do rather than embark upon all-new aircraft like the U.S. designers like to do. The N-1 engines were similar in design to other engines used by the Soviets, and thus preferable, in the eyes of Russian designers, to all-new (risky) engine designs.

-E

Re:Engineering and heat

[avmich]

The larger the engine, the more heat is produced.

Not true. One of the biggest engines recently in works was from Beal Aerospace, for the first stage of their rocket. It would be ranged third by its thrust, after Russian RD-170 and American F-1, among liquid fuel engines. Howewer, the fuel/oxidizer are kerosine and hydrogen peroxide, the chamber pressure is just a couple of MPa (comparing to more than ten for most modern engines), and the heat isn't that intensive either.

Keeping the nozzle from melting down requires more and more exotic materials the bigger the engine gets.

There are other means of keeping nozzles from melting than just using exotic materials: regenerative cooling and ablation are two examples.

The Soviets had trouble coming up with materials that would withstand the heat

No.

thus could not have increased their engine sizes to Saturn V proportions

You're correct, at least not at the time, otherwise they'd do it. The "first" among engine makers, Glushko, wasn't agreeing with Korolev, so Korolev went to Kuznetsov, which only had smaller engines, and no time to make a bigger one. Hence the design with 30 engines.

even if they'd had Werner Von Braun as their chief designer, rather than the squabbling herd of non-entitities that were in charge after "the" Chief Designer died

Von Braun wouldn't probably help much - the decision was made by Korolev, and there was no time to change it after Korolev died. Besides Korolev, there were many brilliant engineers in Russian space program, just remember Energiya-Buran or space stations, so it's unfair to call them so.

There is also, of course, the Russian tendency to improve existing designs rather than embark upon all-new designs.

It's usually attributed to capitalistic systems - squeeze all possible outcome from an investment, and don't change while it still works. That's a reason, for example, why DOS is still widely used in US, and even Shuttle keeps being upgraded rather than replaced. Yes, it's expensive to replace the Shuttle - but it's long overdue; US could fly manned missions on expendable rockets while allocating funds for something better - than Shuttle.

For some 20 years US didn't create a new liquid rocket engine; only recently the process started again. The reason? Older, proven, engines are preferable, in the eyes of American managers, to all-new (risky) engine designs.

Re:In a way..This is Embarrasing

[reallocate]

As someone who came of age in the 1960's -- and certainly a tad older than the mainstream ./ reader -- I am of the conviction that the our nascent attempts to move into space represent one of the very few things the human race can be proud about in the 20th century. The rest of the century was a dismal war-ridden bloodbath that culminated in a (so far) narrow escape from global nuclear suicide.

Space is where we live. We shouldn't be afraid to leave the house.

Re:In a way..This is Embarrasing

[mesocyclone]

Yep. I agree. And BTW... I am probably about the same age (graduated high school 1965).

Re:It just goes to show... that people never learn

[56ker]

Sometimes people just don't know when they've being wound up! I wrote this However I suppose this is the kind of thing that happens when they are political motivations behind scientific achievements - shortcuts are made. not because it was true - but to elicit an emotional response - and it sure did that!

But it did fly .....

[taniwha]

check out moonrace2001.org (well sort of)

Re:But it did fly .....

[taniwha]

bah - I mean moonrace2001.org

Oh please ....

[Edmund Blackadder]

The cold war is over there is no need to keep repeating the bs propaganda stories.

The US was never asleep on in the space race. After ww2 they brought in all the nazi rocket scientists they could get their hands on (as did the russians).

The US was working hard on a satelite while the russians were working on sputnik. But as opposed to Sputnik it was meant to be a secret venture - the satelite was supposed to be a spy satelite.

So no the americans did not start late.

Final

[Anonymous Coward]

IIRC correctly the Soviets lost a total of four cosmonauts in flight (all after re-entry) and, it appears, one on the ground in an oxygen fire similar to Apollo 1 but much earlier. (There are urban myths about cosmonauts stranded in space that are comprehensively demolished on Mark Wade's site). Note that the Zond spacecraft *could* have carried two cosmonauts around the moon before Apollo 8, but the vehicle was judged insufficiently reliable to risk cosmonauts in at that stage.

Meanwhile the US lost three astronauts on the ground in Apollo 1. As for flight, how many Americans were lost when the Challenger blew up? Can you say "NASA = Need Another Seven Astronauts?". How good an example of caring about quality and safety was that launch? (done for PR reasons over the vehement protests of the engineers).

AFAICC that makes the Russian safety record better...

Interesting to see how the Chinese appear to be hastening slowly with their manned program, to make sure it is safe and successful rather than reaching an arbitrary target date.

Damn right!

[ZigMonty]

Yeah, to me the most important milestones are the first two:
1)send an unmanned craft into space.
2)send a manned craft into space.

America loves to hype up the moon landings and how they won the space race, but to me the Soviets had it won when Yuri Gagarin was launched. The later stuff, while difficult, was just exploring, the Soviets opened up the space. Who's more important: the Wright Brothers or the guy who first crossed the Atlantic?

GRAVITY DOESN'T JUST STOP MATE

[DickScratcher]

"It's more relevant when the engine no longer has to lift the mass of the vehicle against gravity."

The force of gravity at low earth orbit is practically the same as on the ground:

International Space Station altitude = 393 Km
Mean Earth radius = 6371 Km

gravitational field at low earth orbit:
(6371^2 / (393 + 6371)^2)^0.5 g = 0.94 g

What you mean is escaping the atmospheric drag at low altitude.

Congress controls the money

[starbuck5250]

Spare me the tired homily about how NASA could not cost justify itself to the public. That's Hollywood's job, not NASAs. NASA is an R&D organisation.

And spare me the madatory NASA-bashing about how they had to get in bed with the military. Here's a hint: Congress controls the budget. Congress told the Air Force and NASA to get together on the Shuttle program. Neither NASA nor the Air Force are enamoured of the demand.

By the bye, NASA's charter includes 'manned missions.' They MUST pursue those missions as well as the aircraft R&D that nobody ever seems to mention.

One more repetition of the obligatory "private business could do it much better" speech and I'll barf. If they could, why aren't they? After all there's a thriving satellite launch business, or has that gone unnoticed?

NASA quashed private enterprise? Huh? NASA has several co-operative ventures with business; they specifically reach out to private enterprise. And there's always the aforementioned satellite launch business.

The military never wanted the Shuttle; they had their arm twisted by Congress. Challenger was the excuse the Air Force wanted all along to get away from the civilian agency.

The reason we have a small fleet of aging Shuttles is that Congress doesn't want to spend the money.

It isn't a coincidence that before 11 September, the Immigration and Naturalisation service had a mediocre budget and were charged mostly with keeping Mexicans in Mexico. Oddly enough Congress had a fire lit under their collective butts and opened the spigots. In a year their fickle minds will have flitted on to the next crisis du jour.

Which is exactly what happened to NASA in 1970.

Re:Congress controls the money

[mesocyclone]

So if NASA is so wonderful IRG the shuttle, why did they destroy ALL of the plans to the Saturn V? And yes, congress is no better. But, NASA is not just an R&D organization, it is a government bureaucracy. That means it has a big interest in justifying itself to the public, it has a big PR operation, and it works very hard at justifying itself. If you don't think government agencies have to justify themselves in order to get funding, you are extremely naive. And if you don't think that doesn't skew their behavior, often is screwy ways, you are also naive. After all, the public interest (or, more accurately, a weighted sum of the polls and the lobbyists) is what drives the congress. NASA has always known that. Look at the games they played in the early '60s with the Astronaut PR tours. That was NASA, not congress, doing that. As far as Nasa quashing private business... they held a total monopoly on space launches until the Challenger disaster woke everyone up to how dependent the country was on one bureaucracy. You seem to have forgotten that. So private industry has only had 15 years to even get going, and it still has to compete with NASA and other government funded space launch outfits (Arianne, China, Russia). BTW... I have worked as a NASA consultant, my father has worked as a scientist with NASA for almost 40 years, and we both can tell you lots of experiences with their internal bureaucracy and how "wonderful" it is. Private business *could* do it better, if there were suitable incentives. Private business, today, is doing a lot of the work for NASA today, and always has been.

_NO_ pencils in space

[Peter Lake]

This is an urban (or 'cosmic'?) legend.

Russians did not use pencils in space, they used 'Kosmos'-pens, which were designed for zero-gravity. Kosmos-pen looked like a pencil, but did not contain graphite and did not need sharpening.

There's a very good reason not to use pencils in space:

Can you imagine what happens when you write with a pencil in zero-gravity? When you scratch paper with the graphite point you get particles of graphite floating around in your ship. As this dust is condunctive, nasty things can happen when it floats into your electronics. Things get even worse when you sharpen your pencil. (OK, you could design a zero-grav pencil-sharpener, but that's not the point). So next time you go to orbit, don't take your pencil with you.

Kosmos-pen was not flawless either, IIRC you had to lick it's point to write, which wasn't a very good idea as it was poisonous (it contained Cd, IIRC again).

Anyone ever used a Kosmos-pen? Correct me if I'm wrong.