Soyuz To The Moon?

colonist writes "The Americans won the first race, but the Russians might beat them back to the moon. The reliable Soyuz, currently the only means of transport to the International Space Station, may send tourists on a voyage around the moon (gallery of illustrations). Constellation Services International's plans call for the Soyuz spacecraft to dock with a logistics module and an upper stage. The upper stage fires to send the Soyuz on a free-return circumlunar trajectory."

Comments

subtle joke

[Anonymous Coward]

Timothy posted this as "from the alice-ducks department"

If you didn't get it, google for "the honeymooners" and "to the moon".

Classic stuff

Space Race

[tpgp]

The Americans won the first race

Which first race?

Do you mean: (from Wikipedia's space race page)

The first artificial satellite?
The first animal in space?
The first fly by moon?
The first spacecraft on moon?
The first human in space?

They were the earliest space achievements - and all 'won' by the USSR.

The American's won the race to get the first man on the moon - no more, no less.

America did not win the space race.

America did not win the 'first' race.

Re:Space Race

[r00zky]

Exactly what i was about to post, these americans are falling to their own propaganda... from 50 years ago too easily.

In the first phase the CCCPians totally pwn3d j00.

Another hits were first woman in space in 1963, and first space station. Not bad at all for the "losing" team.

Re:Space Race

[shadowbearer]

America did not win the space race.

America did not win the 'first' race.

Hmmm.

Some other firsts:

First *guided* and piloted (as opposed to launched on similar orbits passing somewhat close at 4k mph) rendezvous in space: America, Gemini 6/7, which achieved rendezvous via onboard thrusters, computers, and radar.

First men around the moon, first men *on* the moon: America (Apollos 8 and 11) - if anyone thinks that wasn't a win, you don't know what you are talking about - the Soviets simply couldn't match our determination and engineering)

First human in space to move around with a device made for the purpose: Ed White, America ( the Soviet space walk was tethered and non-propelled; we developed something to allow him to move around and attempt the first useful work in orbit)

First serious use of Geosynch communications sats: America; also first "spy" sats that could transmit via encrypted video and not rely on de-orbited film canisters.

First unmanned docking with a booster which was used to boost our manned spacecraft into higher orbits: America (Gemini, with the Agena)

First Human-guided landing on the moon: America (Neil piloting the LM down after the guidance computers failed - also, mind you, we essentially *boasted* that we'd land a man on the moon within ten years, and we did it - the Russians did not and still haven't. )

First space "station": Skylab (yeah, not permanently manned, but it was the first, and very profitable knowledge-wise.) The Sovs profited a lot from the knowledge we gained from Skylab. Note that they didn't launch Mir for many years afterward.

First reusable orbital vehicle that could deliver cargo: America - the space shuttle (yeah, it's a clusterfuck now - but blame the funders, not the engineers, at least not the original ones. We could do better, if the idiots in the many layers of "oversight" had got the hell out of the way in the 70s. )

The Soviets won a lot of the unmanned contests back then, and some of the manned. We passed them by in the mid 60s and went higher and a *lot* further. (Yeah, we stagnated after that. But that's politics for ya; thanks for nothing, Nixon; despite your public support for the space program, you did doodly to stop it getting shafted by Congress.)

What it comes down to, tho, is that the Soviets had no "firsts" in space after Leonov's space walk; and despite starting way behind them, we passed them and beat them hands down in the "space race". It wasn't until Mir that they did something we hadn't done - and if we'd taken advantage of the infrastructure we had at the point of Apollo 11, they'd not even done that.

SB
(apologies, I've just finished reading Chris Kraft's excellent book "Flight", and I recommend it highly.)

Re:Space Race

[shadowbearer]

Von Braun did a lot; but he was also somewhat of an obstructionist. His (and his team's) greatest contribution, late in the program, was the Saturn 1B and 5 rockets. Before that he was pretty well out of the picture, somewhat during Mercury, and totally out during Gemini and Apollo, other than his contribution to the launch platform.

Von Braun was often described as someone who'd work for anyone, and had no allegiance to any country. I find that simultaneously despicable and admirable. The guy was one helluva engineer, and knew how to drive brilliant people to accomplish things.

You should really read Kraft's book. There were many things in it that were an eye-opener.

You should also think on how hard it is to work for someone you detest - Braun detested the Nazis, but he had little choice during WWII. We're just damned lucky that the Soviets didn't capture him first (IIRC he and his team *chose* to be captured by the Americans. THINK on that) .

SB

Re:503

[ronnieroller]

Seems like these 503 errors started when they had that upgrade awhile back

Re:Atlantis tragedy made economicly possible?...

[StarWynd]

we lost a shuttle and crew due to old systems breaking down

Actually, the old systems have been pretty reliable. In the two shuttle disasters we've had, neither has been the result of equipment breaking down because of age. NASA took very good care of the shuttle, but the culprit of one disaster was a design flaw and the other disaster was caused by an accident. There's a big difference between a piece of foam damaging the leading edge of wing on take-off and a wing not working correctly because of lack of maintenance and care.

Re:Radiation

[cmowire]

It's no more or less shielded than Apollo.

Basicly, the radiation dosage is small enough that you can do it once without any major side effects.

Crap.

[FrankieBoy]

"The Americans won the first race"

First satellite in space: USSR Sputnik

First Dog in space: USSR Laika

First Man in space: USSR Yuri Gagarin

First Woman in space: USSR Valentina Tereshkova

First Space Station: USSR Salyut

First Earth Orbit by a human: USSR Yuri Gagarin

First Space Walk: USSR Alexei Leonov

First Woman Space Walk: USSR Svetlana Savitskaya

Who won?

Re:Crap.

[yeremein]

First Earth-orbit rendezvous: USA, Gemini VI/VII, 1965
First Earth-orbit docking: USA, Gemini VIII, 1966
First lunar soft-landing: USA, Surveyor 1, 1966
First manned circumlunar flight: USA, Apollo 8, 1968
First lunar-orbit docking: USA, Apollo 10, 1969
First manned lunar landing: USA, Apollo 11, 1969

The USSR made an impressive first showing, no doubt, but they fell short when it came to reaching the moon...

Re:Crap.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, from wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_race

first soft landing on the Moon - Luna 9 (February 3, 1966, USSR)

Re:Recycling spacecraft

[Aardpig]

One problem I can think of is that L1 isn't stable; any spacecraft parked there will go off station over a timescale of around 20 days, unless it receives corrections to its orbit around the sun. Having to put an orbital control system on each piece of hardware you park there would make the cost unattractive.

Besides, the L1 is already used for scientific purposes -- amongst others, SOHO and ACE are in halo orbits around the Lagrange point, and I'm sure the scientists who rely on them (including some of my work colleagues) wouldn't welcome L1 becoming a junk yard.

Get your facts straight, moron

[Anonymous Coward]

The first manned Space Station was Salyut in 1971, sent up by the Soviets.

Blame the funders for the Space Shuttle? Are you kidding? As Lincoln said "Don't waste your time arguing with and idiot." Idiot.

Re:Not a stretch, the Proton is made for this

[gloth]

It wouldn't be free, but it would certainly be cheaper then developing a new heavy lift rocket or buying Titan IVB, the only other rocket in use with equivalent throw.

The Ariane 5 can easily compete with a Titan 4B in terms of throw, as you put it...

Re:The rules are simple...

[pyrrhonist]

The Soviets didn't want to send a manned mission to the moon, it was too much expense for far too little return, they were content to let the US go there and plant a silly little flag instead.

This is complete bullshit. Kamanin's diaries prove this is untrue.

The Soviet Union had two huge secret projects designed to win the moon race. The L1 project would send a Soviet crew around the moon before the Americans, using a stripped-down Soyuz spacecraft launched by a Proton rocket. The L3 project would beat the American Apollo program to the lunar surface. The Soviets lost both races. In the case of being the first to send a man around the moon, that loss was measured in days or weeks.

The Space Station is in the wrong orbit

[fname]

Simply put, ISS is in the wrong orbit as a stopping point for cargo or people on the way to the moon. I stole this from an article on SpaceReview,

For the ISS, its lack of usefulness as a base for lunar exploration is due to the fact that it is in the wrong orbit. In order to make the station accessible from both Cape Canaveral and Baikonur, it is in a skewed orbit, suitable for doing useful earth observation but not for much else. The Clinton administration saw it as a symbol of US-Russian friendship and for keeping the large aerospace contractors happy, but that was about it.

The article goes on to say it's feasible if ISS is moved to an equatorial orbit, which simply won't happen unless it occurs 50 years from now.

The reason it's not useful as a lunar stop-over base is the same reason that Columbia could not have docked at ISS. Changing from one orbit to another is extremely costly (in terms of fuel), and any lunar mission has to be essentially on the equatorial plane.

Of course, the idea could still work, but the Soyuz would have to be launched to an equatorial orbit from a suitable launchsite.

Earth-Moon L-1? Riiiiight

[GileadGreene]

Interesting to note that in this slide they allude to the possibility of making some kind of permament "depot" at the Earth-Moon L-1. Which makes great PR, but also leads me to wonder just how much real analysis has gone into their mission concepts.

Libration point mission are hard. Manned libration point missions - if we ever do one - would be harder, since they tend to be much more susceptible to last-minute changes in trajectory. Then add the complications of trying to do proximity maneuvers, let alone rendezvous-and-docking, in such a complex dynamic environment (the cutting edge in L-point research right now is formation flying - not close maneuvers, but just trying to maintain any kind of coordinated trajectory between multiple spacecraft). Finally, throw in the fact that the Earth-Moon libration points are tenuous at best, with dynamics that are seriously warped by the Sun's gravity (libration "points" are an artifact of three-body dynamics, such as Earth-Moon-Spacecraft), and you have a recipe for a severe difficulties or a serious cost explosion. Not to mention the propellant costs incurred by attempting to station-keep for any appreciable period of time in the vicinity of their "depot". As I said, it makes me wonder about the quality and/or depth of their analysis...

Re:Unspecified Fee

[red floyd]

I know it was a joke, but it's a free-return trajectory. Similar to what Apollo 8 and 10-12 used. That is, if they needed to abort, they would return to Earth with no burn needed at Luna. Apollo 13 (and later) didn't use such a trajectory, giving them a larger selection of landing points. Because 13 didn't use such a trajectory, they needed to do some burns with the LEM main engines to get into one.

Re:Short Memories

[Richard_at_work]

On to the an interesting piece of history, the Cold War. First, the US saved West Berlin. Without the massive airlift effort in the face of the Soviet blockade, the people of West Berlin would have had the option of starving to death or surrendering to the Soviets. Zooming back a little further, it should be realized that the US spent the entire Cold War acting in the defense of democracy. It is naïve to think that the rest of Europe could have held back the Soviet Union on its own. Hell, half of Europe was already taken, and you can be certain they at least wanted the rest of Germany.

Yay, American distortion of the truth yet again. During the Berlin Airlift, flights were flown from 9 airfields into Berlin (mainly landing at Templehoff airport and Gatow RAF airfield - I lived at the latter in the 1980s). 6 of those airfields were in the British sector of western germany, dispatching mainly British aircraft carrying mainly British supplies. The US made up just slightly less than half of the effort right up until the last few months of the effort, when Truman authorised a 200% increase in the effort on the American side, right before the Soviets capitulated and reopened supply routes.

Also something to think about is the fact that the US was NOT 'protecting' Europe out of altruistic feelings, it simply saw that a Soviet occupied Europe would pose a huge and imminent threat to the US if the Soviets ever decided to attack. Thus the effort and monetory value put into 'protecting' Europe made sense because it was infact protecting the US. Its interesting to note that if you look at history from the late 1940s to now with a objective eye, the US comes out as more aggressive than the USSR. It was the US hatred of the Soviet way of life that fueled the cold war. Fair enough, Soviet Russia may not have been a non evil country, but the arms race was born more out of the US view of the Soviet thinking than of Soviet aggression.

Re:Chinese Moon shot on hold...

[narl]

That's interesting, because Space Daily is reporting today that "China starts development of its first lunar exploration craft".

"China has started developing its first unmanned lunar exploration craft in order to meet its own tight timetable of reaching the moon before 2007, state media said Tuesday.

Work on the craft, named "Chang'e 1" after a moon traveler of ancient legend, is going smoothly, making members of the moon program confident the launch will go ahead as planned, the Xinhua news agency reported."

Re:Unspecified Fee

[georgewilliamherbert]

The mission is a complete lunacy. Their booster stage docks to Soyuz on its front and acceleration commences with the austronaughts hanging on the belts in their seats in the direction opposite to the normal. Even if the spacecraft survives, you will not. You will have your neck broken even prior to the "Return to Earth" phase.

How could anyone be so ignorant about human G tolerance?

People routinely survive 50-100 G impacts in the same direction as they're proposing. Car crashes, after all, usually result in you being flung forwards into your seatbelt (and on newer cars, airbag). Severe G load and G onset rate injuries start in the middle of that range, but people in good shape are expected to survive 100 G impacts in that axis.

Any textbook on human physiological tolerance, or any of the human spaceflight references, will show you people's tolerance for sustained Gs in the -Z axis. Which are significant, and better than head-to-foot and visa versa, if I recall (books are all at home at the moment).

John Carmack was planning on using this orientation on an earlier version of Armadillo Aerospace's X-prize rocket, the one with the crushable nosecone.