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Energiya Pushes For A 6-Person Space Capsule
voss writes "Apparently the Russians want to build their own reusable capsule called the Clipper that can be used up to 25 times and can fit 6 people. They also say they can build their ship in 5 years. The key here is if they can get the funding. The shuttle will be retired in 2010 and with no credible replacement on the horizon...why doesn't NASA give the Russians a chance?"
Maybe now NASA will stop dilly-dallying around and get some new technology other than the outdated space shuttle. We've really been slacking ever since we stopped going to the moon, and maybe international involvement will help us get back on track.
Accepting someone elses design is almost admitting that a under funded agency can bring up better plans than NASA.
And what makes you think NASA does not have a better one on their plans.
http://almostsmart.com
Zelenshchikov said Energiya engineers were also working on a huge spaceship for a flight to Mars, set to weigh 660 tons, the Interfax news agency reporte
660 tons? Wow. That's a lot of hard currency at work there. You think maybe the Chinese have put a back-order in for a ship to beat the US to the red planet?
First off, I was really pissed off at NASA and the media outlets for the scant coverage of the mission results concerning water on mars. All we got was a 4 minute introduction and one panelist into the release and it was back to the CNN/FOX 30 minute cycle of endless Pro-Bush news bits and Iraq coverage. Luckily, I have the NASA TV channel on satellite, so I was able to flip over -- but for the >95% of americans without NASA tv, they missed out on an hour's worth of enlightening details of Mars, straight from scientists and not tabloid writers with no understanding of science.
Now, this release isn't even going to be televised. The only initial outlet is a conference call for reporters only.
I'm ashamed of NASA and I am ashamed of our media coverage of science. When I was a kid, every space shuttle launch was televised. Taking 10-30 minutes of time out of my day to watch the occasional launch helped inspire me to think above the quagmire I was born into, to know there was something greater. Kids today get MTV and 24 hour news spin channels in 30 minute loops.
But hey, at least they get a nice, fast Internet and ~225 national channels of garbage via satellite.
Would you really want to be the guy using it the 25th time?
-- If it aint broke, fix it till it is. --
WHy don't they use that?
"Out of the 14 people who have been killed inflight in Spacecraft, all 14 died in Shuttle accidents"
Sorry, wrong. In 1971 a Soyuz crew was lost when it depressurized too early, asphyxiating the astronauts inside. Soyuz 1 also killed it's occupant when it's main and reserve parachutes failed.
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
OK, if it is designed to be used 25 times...I sure wouldn't want to be on flight 25.
I've seen a lot of figures that show how the space race in the 60's helped grow the economy here. Personally I think we should take the time to help ourselves. If we don't and we all starve to death, you can be sure that no one is going to help us.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
A nice picture and more information on the plan are in astronautix.com.
The 14.5 tonne reusable lifting body would be used as a space station ferry and lifeboat, or could operate independently to shuttle tourists to space.
This is mainly based on proven technology, so there is a chance it may actually be built. Space tourism is also getting quite hot lately. They are planning to use another Russian designed spacecraft.
Auferre trucidare rapere falsis nominibus imperium, atque ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
Who went there on Russian spacecraft. I am not talking about who is in space. I am talking about who sends them there. Now who's the troll?
Indefinitely Detained US Citizen
Shamelessly ripping off the Wikipedia Space Race page:
- first artificial satellite - Sputnik 1 (1957, USSR)
- first animal in orbit - Laika - Sputnik 2 (1957, USSR)
- first spacecraft on moon - Luna 2 (1959, USSR)
- first human in space - Yuri Gagarin, Vostok 1 (1961, USSR)
- first orbital flight - Vostok 1 (as above)
- first dual flight (1962, USSR)
- first woman in space - Valentina Tereshkova (1963, USSR)
- first flight with more than one crew member - Voskhod 1 (1964, USSR)
- first spacewalk - Aleksei Leonov on Voskhod 2 (1965, USSR)
- first space rendezvous - Gemini 6/Gemini 7 (1965, USA)
- first space docking - Gemini 8 (1966, USA)
- first human orbital flight of moon - Apollo 8 (1968, USA)
- first human landing on moon - Apollo 11 (1969, USA)
- first space station - Salyut 1 (1971, USSR)
Depends what you mean by space and race.
The Russians are a smart people, they are the only country that are flying( Yeah China are flying but 1 flight ) and have contuined no matter what the public think of them or what weather condictions are like.. -40oC and a snow storms had not stop the Soyuz from being launched in to orbit. The country has always lacked the funding for its space program, they have beaten all other countrys in a number of races ( frist satellite, animal, man and woman. ) also they are the only country to have a long term presence in space, the Mir space station comes to mind. I beleave that they have proved themselves over the years. I am not saying they should revice full funding from NASA or anyother country.. but certnely a few bucks in the right direction would help, even to a design stage.
To per it in perspective, the statue of liberty is 225 tons I believe. The best argument for lunar orbit recovery was the amount of fuel required would blow up the cape if there was an accident.
The Saturn I's empty weight is about 85 tons, about 650 tons fueled... with a payload capasity of 120 tons into earth orbit, 45 tons to the moon.
While I'm all for a Mars mission... I'd rather that such a launch vehicel were to rendezvous with a space station, tank up, then launch.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
tell the government where their money should go? It's not related to Energiya, or whatever, just a general thought. I'd happily contribute $1K out of my yearly taxes to space exploration. It's a much wiser investment than $500 (average among tax paying americans) I indirectly spent last year on Iraq war.
Imagine what kind of amazing technology could NASA put out if they were getting $100B budget each year. We'd be all over the place in Solar system already and shuttle would be the most reliable thing in the world. Of course they will fail if you run them for decades!
Because NASA will probably be busy developing their own Crew Exploration Vehicle. I think that a partnership between ESA and Russia could work out well in this case. It will help the russians build a new spaceship, and it might help speed up ESA's Aurora programme.
Actually, Russian treasury is relatively full of money, and they had positive budget for several years. That is, in fact, not very good (limits investments), and the new government is being assembled now that knows how to spend. The previous government was stuffed with ex-bankers who, from all arithmetics, only knew how to add and multiply :-) These bankers fixed the economy, and now it's time to use that money. Space is as good technology investment as any, if not better (because it affects many areas of science at once.)
Regarding the generalizations for strength/weaknesses in Russian and American aerospace products, particularly aircraft:
Russian airframes, landing gear, gearboxes... built tought to work in shitty conditions.
Russian turbojets, great while they work, but need to be rebuilt every few hundred flight hours.
Russian avionics/radar: relatively primitive and prone to crapping out.
American airframes: finely engineered and can take a licking. Landing gear: engineered for whatever a particular design's expected environment, pick one: candy-ass smooth USAF tarmac, a carrier deck, dirt strip.
American engines: reliable, last long time, 1000's hours between rebuilds.
American avionics/radar: used to crap out regularly, even if not as often as Russian... until Hughes and Westinghouse got their digital h/w worked out in the 80's, now tough as nuts and runs for weeks w/o swapping out.
Just as an example, ask the Royal Malaysian Air Force. They fly F-18 and MiG-29. Sure, the 29's were about a quarter the price of the 18's, but it's the 18's that are flight-ready almost 24x7.
Luke, help me take this mask off
Such a mass can be trivially [now] assembled from many pieces sent up separately. And the spacecraft, once launched and assembled, will stay up there forever (as long as you care to maintain it), and can travel wherever you want, as long as it has enough fuel (which you are free to send up from Earth, or gather anywhere else, technology permitting.)
Well I'd hate to be on the crew for mission 25. "Hey guys, this is the last mission before your ship wears out and has to be scrapped! Who wants to fly her one last time?" No thanks, I'll take one with fewer miles on the clock!
Why would they design something which has to be 100% safe and say it will only last 25 times?
Watch my YouTube atheist video blog (user NickGisburne2000) for arguments against religion
Unfortunatly, I think the US, Russia, China and India are all going to get tied up in a "Vaporware" space race. That is the country that can draw the best plans and PR will win.
I have no faith that manned space flight will ever get passed LEO in my lifetime
Moon work is very pretty, and makes for both nice media events (even if some of the publicity shots were faked), impressive golfing drives and much applause ... however space station work, (and consequently man hours in space experience), is a more valuable field if you're planning to go anywhere that will take more that a couple of weeks.
Notice that of the ten space stations that humanity has lifted into orbit, the ruskies put up eight (Salyut 1 through 7 and Mir), and one was put up jointly by an international consortium that including the Ruskies.
(Not to diss Skylab, but there was only ever one of it, and the USAsians seemed to think a couple of months was a long stay)
So, "We haven't yet caught up in the space race" could also be argued.
Just like a bridge engineer would design a bridge for 30 tons and rate it for loads up to 20 tons.
The owls are not what they seem
I would not be too concerned about seals. In low-G environment, and with low thrust, you get very low acceleration - and low vibration. Your washing machine probably has more stress on its pipes than a zero-G rocket engine.
A properly constructed rocket engine, which stays at 50-100K all the time, will be fine for many years. Satellites also have small engines for orbit correction, and they seem to be OK. All modern rockets (incl. Shuttle) have cryogenic fuel, experience thermal shock of 300 degrees C during fueling, and still work fine.
A U.S. law known as the Iran Nonproliferation Act prohibits NASA from making cash payments to the Russians unless the president certifies to Congress that Russia is not providing missile or other sensitive technology to other countries(=Iran).
This site - which I highly recommend - may describle something similar to this Mars ship:
http://www.astronautix.com/craft/marpost.htm
To quote a little from this site:
In December 2000 Leonid Gorshkov of RKK Energia proposed a manned Mars orbital expedition as an alternative to Russian participation in the International Space Station. The expedition would also provide the means for reviving Russian ascendancy in space.
The Marpost (Mars Piloted Orbital Station) spacecraft would have a total mass of 400 tonnes and be assembled in low earth orbit from components assembled in four launches of a revived Energia launch vehicle. As in the 1989 Energia Mars design, it would be powered to and from Mars by matrices of hundreds of solar-powered ion thrusters using xenon as propellant.
ESA and RKA did partner up in the early nineties to do exactly that. After the Europeans had shifted their efforts away from Hermes (the European mini-shuttle), the Russians bailed out due to economic concerns and left Europe nowhere.
I can understand why ESA would be a little reluctant to try that stunt again.
Yes, 3 persons killed in soyuz 11 and 3 persons killed in the soyuz 1.
There have been more than 800 soyuz flights (source: http://www.starsem.com/soyuz/introduction.htm).
If we assume on average ~2 (I believe its higher) cosmonauts for each soyuz, that means that ~ 1600 has travelled in a soyuz. Out of these 1600, 6 have died. => death ratio on: 6/1600 = 0.00375.
The space shuttle has had a total of 111 missions:
Challenger: 10
Columbia: 28
Atlantis: 26
Discovery: 30
Endeavour: 17
In these missions we assume an average of 6. (I believe its lower though). This makes the total of shuttle-astronauts: 666. With 14 dead this makes a death-ratio on: 14/666 = 0.0210.
(or about 5.6 times higher).
Now these figures are on "per traveller". But the risks are more associated with launches. On this front the soyuz has 2 failed missions in 800 and the shuttle has 2 failed missions in 111.
Then, of course, we have the costs. A soyuz-launch cost about 20 million dollars. A shuttle launch, on the other hand, cost about 500 million dollars (source: wikipedia).
BUT! What everyone is forgetting is that these 2 ships are not compareable. The soyuz is a human-crew only capsule and the space shuttle is a reusable crew & equipment lifter. However, the conclusions one can draw is that it might be more efficient and safer to launch humans in human capsules (reusable or not) and launch the equipment on a separate booster earlier. (This is how the russians have constructed their space stations in the past - which has worked). There is very little need in sending up the equipment and humans at the same time - unless you are in a hurry.
Yeah, it's new alright... From the linked page:
As for your other claims:
Topol-M: It's wobbling. Big deal. It's not as if the US has a functioning ABM defense.
Sunburn: It's nuclear, who cares if it slams into the deck or the side?
Shkval: We already know how they work.
Schmel: So what? An RPG with a fuel-air grenade, not exactly rocket science.
"Total destruction the only solution" - Bob Marley
Ion engine is indeed useless for a planetary launch. However it is kinda possibly OK for a long haul. All depends on what you want to accomplish. It is quite efficient, since its reaction mass is thrown away with a very high speed. But probably it is still too weak for any meaningful flight to Mars. I'd say, H2+O2 would be the best choice, especially if you can refuel on Mars, and because planetary landers can also use this fuel.
Challenger never had a problem with cryogenic pipes. The part that failed was designed for room temperature, and it was used in an engine (solid fuel) that won't be used on an interplanetary craft. Generally, you rarely get a fault where you expect it (and prepare for it.)
The correct number of _manned_ soyuz flights is ~87. This includes soyuz, soyuz-t, soyuz-tm and soyuz-tma flights.
So, the reliability of _manned_ flights is statistically approx. equal between sts and soyuz.
Ofcourse, soyuz hasn't had a serious accident since the seventies.
For example, a friend of mine was on a mining job in Uzbekistan. They had taken over a mine and substantially upgraded the equipment with the latest western stuff. After a while, some major items (pumps) were switched back to the Russian models because although they broke down more often, the downtime and running cost was much less than the Swiss models.
Back to combat operations, this was one of the successful aspects of the Red Army during WW2. The Germans were living on the edge of an extended logistical supply pipeline and even though the Russians were local, the fqctories were often a long way away (Stalin moved his production as far away from the advancing Germans as possible) so easy maintenance was very important.
I don't know enough about modern military aircraft, but it would be interesting to put in a total picture including maintenance costs and logistics (part inventories and so on). I have an acquaintance that flies the big Antonovs, and swears by them (even though they too are forever engine swapping).
The official site of RS-84 does not mention it but it seems to be true. I saw the announcement in usenet .
The Russians [former Soviets] have the largest flying object in the world - the Antonov-225. I once witnessed its smaller cousin the Antonov-124 land with over 100 SUV size vehicles and extra crago. It was an amazing sight. Even the airport staff who see aircraft of all sizes and types of craft were amazed. This aircraft handled itself and took off in just 90 minutes! For any person who saw the amount of cargo it put on tarmac, they could not believe it. I understand its wheel alone weighed in at more than 180Kg! Russians are amazing people. I also once had them as class mates, but they always produced better and more efficient code even compared to the lecturer's code. I have always respected them. But the problem, they are not good at PR.
Cb..
Cute joke, but not true.
cavitating torpedoes? All high speed torpedoes cavitate.
Cavitate - ablade moving through the water creates a low pressure area on the trailing edge. If the blade moves too fast for the water to close in, an air bubble forms. The noise of cavitation is the bubble collapsing. The screw on a submarine will do this if accellerated too fast, caising a chirp that any half assed sonar tech can hear.
Formerly on the USS Silversides SSN 679 during the bad old days of the late 70's.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
while Russia is now a democracy, they are still communist
That's a good one; they're actually neither. They're rapidly morphing into the same kind of post-capitalist information oligarchy that everybody else is heading towards, wherein a veneer of democracy and free markets thinly disguises the fact that whoever controls the mass media has all the power.
Consider: China is heading towards free markets and (local) elections but keeps a tight grip on its media. In Italy the media czar is also the president, and brazenly changes laws so as to evade corruption charges. Across the Anglo-Saxon world, virtually all the mass media are in the hands of only a half-dozen moguls, and religiously toe the government line.
This new game is played by smart people, they've all read the sign of the times. It's the post-capitalist feedback loop of money and power: the media shape public opinion, public opinion elects politicians, the politicians decide where the money goes, the money buys control of the media. Welcome to the information society.
Be faithful to your obsessions. Identify them and be faithful to them, let them guide you like a sleepwalker. JG Ballard
When I started writing this post, I was going to show how the Russian approach care less about the lives of the astronauts, treating them like expendable components, and thus wasn't suitable for a country like the US that puts more of premium on human life.
Then I did the math.
They've done about twice as many manned launches as we have, but lost only 4 people, while we've lost 14 so far. (Not counting Apollo 1.)
Maybe we should be looking more closely at their approach.
First, in 1965 the national budget did not include much money for certain programs which have exploded since then (for example, most of the Great Society stuff like Medicare). Comparing fractions of the budget without adjusting for huge changes in the portion of GNP which goes through the government makes any comparison suspect.
Second, the economy is several times as big now as it was then. Is something less important if you allocate 1% of 4*x to it instead of 4% of x?
Third, we have already solved many of the technical and engineering problems required to do the things we want to do in space (I think we should put a permanent population on Mars, others may differ). For instance, we already know how to maintain people in space for months at a time. We know how to handle ultra-cryogens such as liquid hydrogen; we now use them routinely in rocket boosters and other applications. We don't need to spend money to re-invent these wheels.
What NASA really needs is a mission and a reform of its bureaucratic mentality so that it can pursue it properly. It doesn't need more money, it needs to shed the albatross of the enormously expensive and obsolete Shuttle program so that the money can do something more useful than paying for an army of government contractors.
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Perhaps thats why it's called the NATIONAL Aeronautics and Space Administration. Sure we've worked with other nations before, seeing as how ISS is basically stuck out there. Should we continue with this? ps: save the Hubble
Get up!
Uh, because the people who hold the purse strings (congress) don't like the money going to people who don't vote for them.
Mix the failings of Usenet with the shortcomings of the World Wide Web and the result is slashdot.
The previous government was stuffed with ex-bankers who, from all arithmetics, only knew how to add and multiply :-)
<wistful>I wish Our Glorious Leader in the US could at least manage the same...</wistful>
May we never see th
Excuse me, but "give them a chance"? What is this, the lottery?
How is it 'free trade' if companies ship all the decent jobs overseas, but unfair if someone with an advantage technically/militarily (the US) doesn't want to let others catch up?
Makes a lot of sense.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Not one person has been killed during a manned Soyuz launch since 1971. I believe the last fatality related to the space program over there was some ground crew when one of their unmanned rockets exploded on the launch pad last year.
I'd take their modern safety record over NASA's any day.
The Russians don't get fancy. They figured out what works and stuck with the same design with only very slight evolution over the decades. That helps eliminate the variables. No foam or O-rings or other nonsense.
Even when things do go wrong like it did with the ballistic descent of the Soyuz coming back from the ISS, it only resulted in minor injury for the capsule crew.
I think it would take quite a dramatic mishap for a Soyuz to actually disintegrate on re-entry the way Columbia did.
Let's remember that the Russions almost killed the ISS due to cost overruns and overly optimistic projections. NASA had to bail them out again and again with U.S. taxpayer dollars.
Besides, even if this were feasible (and it isn't) it would be insane for the US to spend US tax dollars on this kind of R&D in another country. If the Russians can do it let them spend their own cash on it and persuade the Russian government to fund it.
Let's remember people that the space program is a gigantic job creation scheme, it takes money from us and uses it to fund jobs and development domestically. When it starts spending that money abroad we're all thoroughly screwed.
Eventhough the cold war is long over it looks like some people at the Kremlin still want to match the White House for irresponsible spending. There are many worthy things for *people* sorely lacking funds in the US while Bush has had one of the biggest budget deficits of all time....AND he wants to build moon bases, missions to mars. Not to be outdone, Putin, who can't get a flagship submarine to launch a missle during a high profile photo-op.......with Russia in *tatters* is deciding to build a reusable space capsule? Last I heard the Russian space program was financing itself by giving joy rides to rich Americans. No wonder Bush and Putin get along. They have no concept of basic fiscal management.
It's an example of "galloping irony" that the Russkies have chosen "Clipper" as the name or their proposed next generation spacecraft. Reason is that we already used that name for a 1/3-scale demo singe-stage-to-orbit vehicle in the 90s. It was called the DC-X or "Delta-Clipper", and it was made by McDonnell-Douglas under the direction of McD VP Pete Conrad, the former astronaut. You can read about it at: http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/x-33/dc- xa.htm
There's also an interesting "first-person" account of the first publicly-viewed flight of this vehicle at:
http://media.armadilloaerospace.com/DCX/
A little later on, when NASA let a contract for a demo vehicle for a replacement for the Shuttle, the contract went to Lockheed-Martin in Marietta, GA. The fact that Bill Clinton needed to win GA in the 1996 election is said not to have anything to do with the fact that Lockheed got the contract, despite the fact that they had a paper vehicle, and McDonnell-Douglas had an already-flying vehicle! The Lockheed-Martin program never did anything but squander our money, and was later cancelled.
Rather than pay the Russians to build their vehicle, we ought to have a crash program to build the next generation version of the DC-X!