Slashdot Mirror
ISS Crew Returns in Soyuz Capsule
physicsnerd writes "According to CNN the Soyuz capsule from the International Space Station has landed in Kazakhstan. This is the first time US Astronauts have ever landed outside of the US."
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
Before the shuttle program, as I recall, they always landed outside the US.
The astronauts were not the first Americans to land on foreign soil after a trip in space because U.S. tycoon Dennis Tito beat them to that distinction.
Because landing in a Soyuz is generally bumpier than in a shuttle, Ken Bowersox, Don Pettit and cosmonaut Nikolai Budarin were seated in the Soyuz on custom-built recliners designed to fit their bodies, NASA said.
This is fantastic. I bet the astronauts were complaining about everything.
My chair is too hard, The in flight meal is too dry, Nikolai kept kicking my seat. You wouldn't get this kind of service on a good old Shuttle.
Mouse powered Chips, Open source Processors and Lego
Um, I think you'll find that most of the Pacific Ocean is outside the USA, and that's where most of the early US astronauts came down.
Quidquid Latine dictum sit, altum videtur (anything said in Latin sounds important)
And Russians, with their space tourism program, proved that econom-class is ok not only for semi-military educated cosmonauts, but even also for space tourists (including US citizens!).
I hope Europians and Japaneese will cooperate with Russians more, heliping to keep their space program. I doubt NASA will keep cooperating with Russians as in US everything is related to politics and Russians joined to Germany and France club, it means US decline trade operations and cooperation with them after they denied to help with Iraq occupation.
Less is more !
Slashdot monitor for your Mozilla sidebar or Active Desktop.
The Russian soyuz spacecraft has been the longest-lived, most adaptable, and most successful manned spacecraft design. In production for forty years, more than 230 have been built and flown on a wide range of missions.
The fundamental concept of the design can easily be summarised as obtaining minimum overall vehicle mass for the mission. This is accomplished by minimising the mass of the re-entry vehicle. This was achived by putting all the systems not needed for re-entry outside the re-entry vehicle in a jetisonable 'livingsection'*, and by having a re-entry vehicle with the highest possible volumetric efficency**.
Compare this to the US capsules of the sixties (in which almost everything that went up came down, and the volumetric efficency was poor) and todays twenty year old shuttle system. Basicly, by finding a good design, keeping things simple and not fixing that which isn't broken, the soviets and later the russians has keept what is basicly the same design flying for the better part of half a century. And in a way, it's a design more optimised to building large spacestations than the shuttle are - just leave your livingmodule on the station as you detach your capsule, and you have just increased the size of the station. The only thing the shuttle has going for it when it comes to stationbuilding is the canadarm (isn't there one mounted at the ISS already?) and the fact that the shuttle could, theoreticly, bring modules down for repair.
Oh well, anotehr victory for KISS - Keep It Simple Stupid. While the shuttle has it's uses, for most everyday stuff in space a simple capsule is safer, simpler and possible cheaper.
*) As a rule of thumb, every gram saved this way saves two grams in overall spacecraft mass, as you don't have to support it with parachutes, protected by heatshields and braked on landing.
**) In theory this is a sphere, as the earlier vostok, but as the Soyuz was originaly planned to be used on lunar missions it was required to bank a little, generate lift and 'fly' a bit to reduce the G-loads on the crew - just like the Apollo was. The optimum shape was found to be the classic headlightshape the soyuz have had for it's entire life.
Most information in this post is taken from the linked websites, even if I've barely scraped the surface. I stronlge recomend following the links to learn more of this four decades old design.
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
Russian: ~ 1 billion dollars per year.
American: ~ 15 billion dollars per year.
Of the 1 billion dollars a year, only 20% is paid by the Russian government, the rest is commercial enterprise. That's a fantastically tax efficient space programme for Russia. Can America get even a single shuttle launch for $200million?
Perhaps the US government should outsource the management of their space programme to the Russians. They have a better heavy lift capability more reliable launch vehicles and are many many times cheaper.
They actually missed their landing point and landed in the Kazakhstan desert: over 400km from their intended destination!!
BBC News: story
http://blog.grcm.net/
isn't that what the word "international" means?
must... stay... awake...
>That could have easily have gone very horribly wrong - imagine them coming down on the side of a steep mountain-face.
That's why they aim for Kazakh steppe - it's about as hard to miss as the Pacific ocean.
Above post = troll (matrix spoiler in 2nd last paragraph)
This troll has elements of a reasonable idea, but tries to support them with mistakes and misinterpretations:
>> the ISS (which is an utter joke compared to Skylab or Mir) was placed into a rapidly-decaying orbit...
"Utter joke"? It's reasonable to ask what ISS can do that Skylab or Mir couldn't, but making unbuttressed assertions isn't reasonable.
ISS is not in a "rapidly-decaying orbit". As a satellite in low-Earth-orbit, ISS requires occasional use of onboard thrusters to maintain the correct orbit. This is common.
>> Most of the satellites that are "launched" by the shuttle suffer from the design constraint that they have to fit into the friggin' bay AND have room for the accompanying boosters that will put them into their real orbit once the shuttle lets them out. Again, the shuttle can't go high enough for real deployment.
Height has nothing to do with it. Orbit is achieved by virtue of velocity. While it can be argued that some satellites didn't need to be launched via the shuttle, it is silly to argue that satellites have been compromised by being ddiesinged to fit in the shuttle's cargo bay. All satellites must be designed to fit in the craft that launches them, whether a shuttle or an expendable booster.
>> The safety record sucks.
It is naive to expect spacce travel to have a safety record that even approaches that of commercial air travel. This is risky and experimental work, and we should accept that. A safety record that approximates that of the X-series of manned experimental aircraft would be more than acceptable.
>> Scrap the silly "space-plane"...
The purpose of putting wings on a spacecraft is recovery and reuse. Otherwise, they're more trouble than they are worth.
The real problem with the U.S. space effort is that it has lacked a clearly defined mission since the Nixon administration told NASA it had to cut its funding, following the initial lunar missions, from about 3% to 1% of GDP. That played havoc with NASA'a scheduled remaining lunar missions, with its plans to return to the moon for long durations and possible permanent basing, and for logical and incremental increase of low-Earth-orbit and trans-lunar infrastrcture. Hence, the space station and the shuttle, and none of the rest happened.
Here's what we need:
1. A clearly defined mission -- the President needs to direct NASA and the nation to reach a specific target within a specific timeframe. E.g, permanent manned Lunar presence, manned asteroid flyby and return, a manned Mars mission. The target is less important than the fact that it exists, thereby providing reason to build and use the infrastructure needed to get there.
2. Recognize that the purpose of getting to orbit is to buld and construct equiment to accomplish the assigned mission. (Yes, you can do scientific research there, but that is only incidentakl to the primary purpose. Trying to justify manned presence in Earth orbit as "reasearch" is tantamount to justifying the 747 as an airborne laboratory.
3. Build boosters than get the most stuff to orbit at the least cost. Don't fixate on reuse. If that's cheaper, fine, but don't build over-complex hardware simply to ahere to the mantra of reuse. If that means building contemporay versions of the Saturn and Nova booster, so be it.
4. Ditto for hauling people to low-Earth orbit. Once you're there, how you got there is not important. Use big, cheap capsules.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
The custom bit of the seats is a padded liner that fits into the framework of the seat, the actual frames are all the same size. The station crew bring their custom seat liners up with them on the shuttle, then swap them with the ones for the old crew. Same happens when they swap out a Soyuz, the delivery crew move their seat liners from the new Soyuz to the old one, and the station crew move theirs from the old to the new
Anthony
You should perhaps check out some these websites more closely yourself.
The only US manned spacecraft "in which almost everything that went up came down" was the tiny one-man Mercury capsule. And unlike the first Soviet Vostoks, all US manned capsules have had some aerodynamic steering capability, even the Mercury capsule. Ironically, the steerable blunt-body design was actually originally researched and developed for use on ICBM warheads.
The fundamental design charcteristic of ANY spacecraft launched with a chemically-fueled rocket is "minimizing the overall vehicle mass", I'd hardly say that was a great satori of the Russians. Read anything about the Apollo lunar module and you will see the immense lengths gone through to limit the mass of the lander, including having a skin so thin you could stick a pencil through it.
Both the Gemini and Apollo spececraft had jettisonable service modules.
Apollo:
Command Module Total mass: 5,806 kg
Service Module Total mass: 24,523 kg
Lunar Module Total mass: 14,696 kg
Reentry mass % of total orbital assembly: 13%
Gemini:
Reentry module Total mass: 1,982 kg (2-person)
Retro module Total mass: 591 kg
Equipment module Total mass: 1,278 kg
(Total jettisoned mass prior to entry: 1,869 kg)
Reentry mass % of total orbital assembly: 51%
Soyuz (original design):
Orbital Module Total mass: 1,200 kg
Descent Module Total mass: 2,850 kg
Service Module Total mass: 2,700 kg
(Total jettisoned mass prior to entry: 5,550 kg)
Reentry mass % of total orbital assembly: 18%
The fact is that the vehicles are all optimized for different mission profiles and constraints, so it's really incorrect to generalize based on any one characteristic. The Shuttle for example, is a massive re-rentry object, but it can launch and return a crew of seven and a 14,000 kg Spacelab module. It's all based on what you want to do and how you want to do it.
All that said, I think that the Soyuz is an excellent design, and obeys one of the most fundamental tenets of engineering - refine a basic design. The Soyuz incorporates all of those years of operational experience and the Soyuz is definitely the most proven manned space vehicle design available.
But was it a successful design? According to its original mission, it's hard to say. It never carried a Hero of Socialist Labor to the lunar surface and back because the Soviets couldn't get the N-1 to work, so it never attempted its design mission.
from reading this and other articles about the Russian re-entry:
1. The subtle undercurrent of U.S. space program elitism, that is, the Russians run a barebones operation and the U.S. astronauts were incredibly lucky to return alive in such a piece of junk space capsule. Numerous posts have spoken to the incredibly reliable and effective Russian space program, so I won't belabor the point.
2. The absurd notion, much inferred, that since the space shuttle disintigrated on re-entry that a similar disaster will befall the Russian Soyuz. Somewhere out there someone was waiting to say, "Look, I told you so! Space is dangerous!", as if they had divined the second coming. Space is dangerous, expensive and in the opinion of many, not worth the effort.
There is a benefit to mankind in exploration that often does not come without planning, foresight and much trial and error.
Just my thoughts.
The Orbiter has wings so it can land and fly again. Sounds great re: reuse, but getting it ready to fly again takes months of effort and millions of dollars. The external tank burns up on re-entry and is a comlete loss. The solid fuel strapons are recoverable, after bobbing around in the Atlantic.
In other words, the Shuttle is "reused" only in the broadest meaning of that word, and only after significant, expensive and timeconsuming work is done on the Orbiter.
The shuttle achieves its limited degree of reuse only by virture of a complexity that drives up cost. Vehicles that repeatedly can make the trip to low-Earth orbit and return do not necessarily need wings. What's wrong with using large, 'dumb" capsules? As early as the mid-sixties, designs were afoot to build an expanded Gemini vehicle to carry several passengers, or equivalent cargo capacity, to orbit. The craft returned to land at Edwards AFB on skids. Similiar proposals were made vis-a-vis Apollo. Absent the heat shield (which would need replacement), is there a technological reason why -- 40 years later -- we can design and build fully recoverable and reusable versions of these proposed capsules?
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"