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

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

[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: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: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.