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US & Russia Show Off New Rocket Designs
jonerik writes "Following up on today's story on the Soviet Union's massive N1 rocket are these two articles on the latest US and Russian rocket designs. Space.com covers the American side of things, with a story on Lockheed Martin's Atlas 5 and Boeing's Delta 4 boosters. The Associated Press has this article on the Russians' Rokot booster, originally built in the '70s as the SS-19 ICBM and converted to civilian use in the mid-'90s. The Rokot was in the news this past weekend when it successfully launched a pair of US-German satellites - dubbed Tom and Jerry - into orbit to map the Earth's gravitational field and 'chart large-scale movements of water around Earth.'"
Our private sector isn't taking off as many expected and NASA is...well NASA(this is coming from a former employee). We should covertly help China and Russia with their space and rocketry programs in order to kickstart congressional butts(read $$moolah) into action. Mars is a waste of time(radiation, gullies caused by CO2 not water, etc etc) The Space Station needs fiscal help Europa and Pluto missions are up in the air. something really needs to be done.
Our good friends in the Eastern hemisphere have had a hell of a century from which they're still recovering. Lately, however, I'm hearing quite a bit of good things about Russia's space program. While it may have started out rocky and dangerous due to the influence of the communist party, this is the same space program that gave humanity both the longest-working manned space station in the form of MIR and the Progress supply frieghter rocket, which supplies the ISS right now. Say what you will about these two, but in terms of space programs, the Americans have always striven to become 'doers of deeds' while the Russians have been 'completers of tasks'. Think about which one of those pays off in the long run.
Recently, more and more of Russia's space program seems geared to provide access to space for both commercial and scientific work. Space Tourism in ISS, anyone? I would be willing to bet that if they become even a little more efficient at this, their costs will quickly drop because they will be the less expensive option when compared to the U.S. space program. Perhaps space could be a growth industry for Russia, the same way information technology has been for the United States.
Anyone agree, disagree with me?
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In this instance, the russians have the right idea, their Rokot booster follows the market to a tea. As a general rule, private companies have used for smaller and therefore cheaper rockets with up to a 20 ton cargo capacity. It is this private investment that will make space travle feasible. The governemnts of the world cannot simply fund a continuing space progam to the fullest extent and other sources must be sought. Big rockets may be better for space travel to Mars and the like, but the demand now is for smaller ones and that may be how Russia gets its feet off the ground (literally).
Until people stop thinking about rockets as though they were religious icons and start thinking about them like dragsters, we will get nowhere fast in space.
Seastead this.
It was pretty, though. Doesn't that count for anything? Prettiest crushing failure since 1986. MS should put wallpaper on their BSODs.
Former Astronaut Buzz Aldrin is planning a chain of "orbiting hotels" cruising perpetually between the Earth and Mars. [...] The main trick to the operation is to have the main ships in a constant regular solar orbit so that no fuel is ever needed to keep going, just enough for boosters, manuvering, etc. The estimated trip time between the Earth and Mars is 8 Months.
(more links in the original story)
Maybe he might want to pick up some of the surplus items?
[smile]
There has to be a use for a lot of this surplus stuff for business.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Note that the Atlas V is not powered by an American engine, it's powered by a closed-cycle Russian engine - the type Americans could never manage to work out how to build..
It's interesting to see 1960s Russian tech comfortably beating American tech, despite the sizable difference in available resources.
Rockets, at least in my opinion, are dying out or at least should be. Reusable fixed wing craft are what we need if we want to continue to make progress in the future. We should spend the money on space exploration and not wait for another national crisis to get the president to order us to "get to the moon" before another country. Space is a vast frontier that we can learn a lot from.
The ISS is a good example of how each country has screwed up. First, most of the cost of the ISS was underestimated (intentionally) by the US just so they could get something into orbit. Then, the bankrupt Russian Space program couldn't get their modules into orbit quickly enough, thus increasing the burden on the US to use their (very expensive) mechanism of delivery, the Space Shuttle.
The Russians have the right idea with using expendable rockets & modules like the progress to deliver supplies; let's hope the US is trying to do that as well.
--- There is a man in a smiling bag.
You know, that actually makes a lot of sense. I mean, I know they would never go for it, but look at the way things went down. US builds X, russia says "we need those" and copies it and the copy is better. Like the MiG-29 is a copy of the F-15, only it's better.
A big part of the cold war was Mutually Assured Destruction, right? Like if USA had nuked USSR in the early 50s they might not have been obliterated in turn, but after that it was accepted that no one side would nuke the other because they'd just get nuked back. (Now it's all crazy with terrorists and missing warheads and US will nuke first, but hey we live in different times now. Except that most of the guys in the Bush administration are from the cold war era...)
I think there are a few reasons why consolidated warfare development wouldn't work, but they are all political. To some it would be unPatriotic to go this route. Others would see a loss of American jobs which would of course be Bad.
But from a economics standpoint, it seems a very workable model. Do we really need X number of countries producing fighter jets in state-sanctioned monopolies?
The way things are going I expect to see this issue come before the WTO in the next five years. China will start submitting bids for U.S. defense contracts. Who knows maybe in 10 years the USAF will be flying Saabs.
It sounds ridiculous to me (as an american) but not too many countries see the value in producing from scratch their own jet fighters when the US will grant you the foreign aid money to buy the American product.
The new Delta uses a novel technique called friction stir welding. They weld the tanks and fuselage using this method, and also weld the tanks TO the fuselage this way.
Friction stir welding uses a spinning mandrel's friction to heat the materials to be welded, and can make lighter-weight products because no extra thickness in the weld area is required.
More information on the technique is here.
Not to start anything here, but literacy is really not one of the things Americans should be cocky about. Wealth on the other hand? Right on!!
sic transit gloria mundi
You got things the wrong way arround.
The MiG-29 is the Russian answer to the F18, while the Su-27 was their answer to the F15 & the Su-33 is the Russian answer to the F14.
& the Su-32/Su-34 is the Russian answer to the F15D Strike Eagle.
Its a generational thing, each side takes turns being on top
Impulse drive. Impulse drive will send us to the moon, mars, and as far as we can get till we have working warp drive.
Anyone know what's happened to the Rotary Rocket Company? The website is unavailable. Have they folded? I hope not, as it was one of the coolest SSTO vehicles I've seen.
So when the Russians are thrifty and practical there's no end to the praise they get, but if an American company chooses to be thrifty and practical (by using a pre-existing engine, why re-invent the wheel?) then suddenly the whole U.S. is forty years behind Russia when it comes to rocketry? Sure.
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
Aren't Russians and the other ex-communist countries against America and the capitalist way of life? Don't they hold spite against these people who were their enemies or do they completely forgive Americans and have no loyalty to communism?
Pretty much all of the folks from eastern Europe who I've talked to were thrilled to be rid of the Russians and communism. There are few who would say that the transition was easy or that capitalism doesn't have its own set of problems, and some countries (Poland, the Czech Republic, East Germany) have done better for themselves than others (Yugoslavia, Albania), but in many of the countries you'd be hard-pressed to find many people who'd be up for turning back the clock.
The Russians are another matter. Clearly, they've had a hard time of it, and I doubt they'll ever again be half as powerful as they were as part of the U.S.S.R. There's certainly some bitterness in some quarters, as well as a nostalgia for the communist era when the country was powerful. You know, "Communism beat the nazis, communism took us to space, and communism very nearly made us masters of the world!"
Would Russia ever go back to communism? At this point I'd be surprised, particularly since communist nostalgia means less and less to Russia's young as the years go by. But bitterness and nationalism? Yeah, that's there.
The US could afford to start a Mars program (or go to the Moon, or land a whole bunch of probes on Europa) any time it wanted and wouldn't notice the cost. It's just that priorities lie elsewhere right now.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
It's nice to see old I.C.B.M. designs used as satelite launch vehicles and not the other way around. I say this because a lot of ICBM testing was done with the cover story of being failed sattelite launches. If a craft is launched and falls apart in suborbit, and the people who launched it say it was a failed satelite shot, it's easy to miss when the mock warhead comes down in the middle of the pacific to be picked up by a ship for telemetry download. So perhaps times are really changing now. Or maybe the lies have changed.
I like replies better than Karma, even if they are flames, because that tells me I got someone thinking.
Didn't the USN or USAF fly SAAB Viggen for disssimilar air combat training a while back under lease ?
You're probably thinking of the Israeli Kfir, an unlicensed copy (using American engines) of France's Mirage III. 25 were leased by Israel to the US in the late '80s, redesignated as the F-21A, and used by US Navy and USMC aggressor squadrons. The Kfir resembles the Viggen.
If you think any of these agencies is going to put a private citizen into orbit for less than $5 million in the next ten years, you are deluding yourself. Recreational space travel has absolutely nothing to do with people who aren't extremely wealthy, at least for the next ten years.
I am surpised in this politically correct day and age that a German satelliete would be called "Jerry" :) Of course I don't even want to go into what Tom implies.