Slashdot Mirror
The Story of Baikonur, Russia's Space City
eldavojohn writes "There's an article up on Physorg about Russian space launch city Baikonur, rented by Russia from Kazakhstan. Although it is essentially the same as it was in the 60's and 70's, it is amazingly efficient and still operational. 'Even the technology hasn't changed much. The Soyuz spacecraft designed in the mid-1960s is still in service, somewhat modified. It can only be used once, but costs just $25 million. The newest Endeavor space shuttle cost $2 billion, but is reusable. Life and work in Baikonur and its cosmodrome are also pretty much what they were in the Soviet era. The town of 70,000 - unbearably hot in summer, freezing cold in winter and dusty year round - is isolated by hundreds of miles of scrubland.'" We last discussed Baikonur back in 2005.
I am #1 cosmonaut in all of Kazakstan!
I'm sure someone can come up with a better joke.
This Nasa space shuttle faq lists endeavour's cost at 1.7 billion. Maybe they just rounded off, but a third of a billion seems significant to me.
It also lists the launch costs for a shuttle at about $450 million. I don't know if that's just the launch itself or if that includes the turn around costs. Of course - the article doesn't list similar numbers for the Soyuz - but it seems that while reusable - the shuttle still is exponentially more expensive. Although - I don't know of anything else that can get as much weight to orbit as the shuttle.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
It's just the sticker price. Then they hit you with the optional features like power steering and oxygen.
http://twitter.com/OLDTELEGRAM
I know this may be a little controversial, but can we just skip all the "In Soviet Russia..." jokes? Regulars don't find them funny. They're only modded up by people who've just got mod points for the first time and want to fit in. Come on, be original!
Slashdot fit you!
Just off the top of my head...
If the shuttle costs $2 billion, and a Soyuz is only $25 million, we could send up 80 Soyuz launches for that same $2 billion.
And if we expand it to cover that there have been 5 shuttles built, that becomes 400 Soyuz flights.
To put that in to perspective, there has only been 119 shuttle launches thus far, and 2 of those $2 billion dollar shuttles came back in little pieces parts. Plus, it doesn't even figure in launch expenses, just the price of the shuttles themselves. Hard to believe that way back when the shuttles were designed, they were expected to each be launched 100 times.
At those rates, it doesn't matter that a Soyuz isn't reusable.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
"The Soyuz spacecraft designed in the mid-1960s is still in service, somewhat modified. It can only be used once, but costs just $25 million. The newest Endeavor space shuttle cost $2 billion, but is reusable"
Each shuttle mission costs a half-billion to launch. So many systems have to be rebuilt and retested that it would be cheaper to make them throw-away.
For example, by the time the shuttle engines are on the launch pad, they've been rebuilt pretty much from scratch and retested, which takes up almost 90% of their rated lifetime. Like a race car engine that has to be rebuilt every 750 miles, but is test for 675 miles before the race ...
Saying the shuttle is re-usable without looking at the real costs is ignoring reality.
can we just skip all the "In Soviet Russia..." jokes? Regulars don't find them funny
Ok, but only once
"unbearably hot in summer, freezing cold in winter and dusty year round"
I wonder if having to design for these adversities has helped make launch vehicles more reliable ours seem to be. Instead of spending a bunch of bucks for clean rooms we should be designing our stuff to just work!
It seems rather fashionable to knock the Space Shuttle - it's expensive, it was overhyped, putting the thing on the side of the tank is a design mistake, and the tiles are a maintenance nightmare. It's easy to knock the Shuttle and demand a retreat to older style systems, and I've done it. But the more and more I think about it, the more I think, junking the shuttle and the approach of the orbital space plane is a huge mistake.
We are all aware of the negatives of the shuttle, but let's look at some of the positives of this system. First and foremost, the interior of the space shuttle is -huge- compared to the interior of a Soyuz, or for that matter, any other manned space craft. The Soyuz can bring up 2 or 3 astronauts, while shuttle missions with 6 or 7 are not uncommon. The Soyuz, the Apollo and the nascent Orion are essentially ballistic nosecones with people stuffed in it. The space shuttle has a habital volume, for its crew compartment alone, of over 70 cubic meters. The soyuz, on the other hand, has a habital volume of just 7 cubic meters. Astronauts in these capsules basically sit in their chairs, but in the shuttle they can get up, move around, and do things. The space shuttle is practically a space station in its own right.
The space shuttle has a cargo bay, and, thanks to the Canadians, has a really cool mechanical arm. The cargo bay can be pressurized for even more space, or it can contain additional research facilities. Have we forgotten that the European Space Agency has flown a science station in the space shuttle cargo bay already? Have we forgotten about the repairs made to Hubble? The Space Shuttle can and has repaired other satellites, and right now, is the ONLY SYSTEM that can bring them back a largish cargo from space to earth.
Everyone seems to like knocking NASA, cheering on the likes of Burt Rutan and the X-Prize in hopes for some private sector miracle, but I've not seen any private sector initiative, from scratch, put so much as a suitcase into orbit, certainly not a man, and nothing like the space shuttle. Those fancy suborbital flights are a joke - 3000mph requires a fraction of the total kinetic energy to attain the orbital velocity of over 17000mph. Let me know when anyone, really, anyone builds something as cool as the shuttle...and the thing is, when we're back to tiny capsules for manned space flight, when the naysayers win and the shuttles are tossed off to museums, everyone is going to compare the capsule to the shuttle and say geez, by far, the shuttle was the cooler thing, and the capsule is a step backwards, not forward, and that our next space ship should have been a newer version of the shuttle, not a rehashed capsule.
This is my sig.
I'm appalled and impressed: I've always liked the design philosophy of the Soviet-cum-Russian space program. Keeps a licking and keeps on ticking!
Bruce Sterling noted on Nightline some years ago that NASA was a command economy. Overall the Russian space program seems to have adapted better. Oh, the irony.
Next up: China.
So, the Endeavor pays for itself after...80 flights?
Anybody want my mod points?
What you and the other fucktards have ignored is volume of the cargo compartment. The lifting capacity for dense objects leaves the shuttle lacking, even when you add in 2 more launches to get the astronauts up there too. (6 v.s. 3, I think, for soyez). However, the cargo compartment on the shuttle is much larger then that of the araine or soviet rockets. If you want a big open space (like, say, an ISS module or spy satellite) in orbit, the shuttle is *the* way to go. How big is the shuttle? Just barely big enough to carry a keyhole satellite. Why don't we trash it? Because we need to be able to replace the satellites when the Chinese decide to start shooting them down.
It's pretty much the same thing.
One thing not mentioned in the article (but is mentioned in the 2005 article) is the problems between the Kazakh and Russian governments.They are still debating over problems (especially money) due to failed rocket launches, most recently in September. The Kazakh government keeps suspending and then unsuspending Russian operations at the base.
See this article from EurasiaNet: http://eurasianet.org/resource/kazakhstan/hypermail/news/0011.shtml
I'm sorry, but who says they're not funny? Have you canvassed the regulars yourself? And as another poster pointed out, In Soviet Russia was voted as the best meme, which invalidates your assertion. Speaking of regulars, how does someone with a 1,000,000+ userid qualify as someone who speaks for the majority anyways? You'll be welcome back on my lawn when you can at least grow a beard. As to your call to be original, the trick to making an In Soviet Russia joke funny *is* to make it original.
Calling a tired old joke a "meme" is pretentious crap. The word comes from Richard Dawkins's theory that some ideas are to culture what genes are to biology. I think that's an overrated theory, but even if I took it seriously (especially if I took seriously) I'd be irritated at people who think that telling the same joke over and over to the same audience is somehow spreading an idea. It's more like a social earworm. Mindworm?
So basically what you are saying is that the Russians have the Soyuz, which is inexpensive but small-- kind of like sending a Mini Cooper into space. But we could never stand for that in America, so we have the Shuttle, which is more like a launching tractor-trailer into orbit. Right?
That's the only big technical thing I see that the shuttle can do that the other alternatives can't.
;).
Grab "big" stuff and bring it down without it burning up.
However, if I made spy sats I'd make sure I could blow them up. It doesn't take very much explosive to make it too dangerous to grab with the shuttle. I bet shuttles are more expensive than spy sats, and it's more expensive to have the spy sat not blow up and be captured
So I suppose it'll only be useful if you were grabbing your own sats, or trying to get a number of people down at once from a space station.
(NASA's) Answer. The average cost to launch a Space Shuttle is about $450 million per mission.
In other words, the whole shuttle program had been a big waste of money that set the American space exploration back by several decades. The whole thing should have been canned after the Challenger disaster. At that point it was already so damn obvious that the program failed MOST of its original goals. This situation is so bad that Russians can indeed successfully compete with us even though they're using decades old technology and at a fraction of our costs.
So, to answer your question, I do not know. I do know that it will be a LOT cheaper very soon. Spacex has set the bar on that at about 5 million to launch a person. And the other launch systems will have to come close or beat it.
BTW, good to see you around again. You still in asia (thailand?)?
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
the real difference is that the shuttle can bring things back to earth.
We don't hear about that ability being used, but it certainly is. It has military significance, too.
It would be a hell of a lot cheaper if the manned vessel and the cargo vessel were different ships, though.
Sooner or later, either the DOD or NASA will get smart and push to have a tug up there. It will be a system that can stay in space for a long time, but can then maneuver to hook up with a number of crafts. I suspect that it will have a canada arm on the front of it. When that happens, I think that we will see space dev jump in there with a system that uses their hybrid rocket engine. In fact, I would not be surprised to see bigelow order up one or more of these.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
because a soyuz costs a great deal more than 25 million. it WAS ~20 million per person. For example, see here. THe funny thing is that every runs around thinking that the soyuz costs that little, but it never has.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Absofuckinglutely!
I second both IWannaBeAnAC and aliquis on this one, they are giving it to you straight up.
Also, I would consider insurance no matter what the source of my hardware for a 'Space Operation'....there are so many things that can fail and cause catastrophic failure.
As an American I hate to admit it (yes, I'm old enough to remember McCarthy, and having every public access gov't. building having to have a bomb shelter), but as far as heavy lift solutions, they are at the top of the heap. Effeciency, cost, capibility,reliability-they have it all...best orbital 'bang for the buck' solutions at this time.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
In fact, the Buran design was superior - it had no lift engines of its own and could ride on top of the real rocket. This simplifies the loads on the main rocket, allow for more cargo and makes the vehicle immune to insulation damage.
Actually, most pictures of Buran clearly show the rocket riding alongside the Energia booster, just like the Shuttle rides alongside the fuel tank.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buran_program
So, Buran would have had the same problems as the Shuttle, re: chunks of stuff from supercool tank falling off and bashing the ship.
This is my sig.
I always thought that the idea was.. let's say you get on a new 747 plane and go to england. Then you get off and you see it's carted off to a dump where they break it up and there's a line of other planes waiting to be scrapped. And they tell you, that's ok, we got a dozen of new-built ones waiting to take you back. Now obviously that wouldn't work too good even though one 747 is only about 150mil. The plane keeps flying and flying. That's why tickets are cheap. Now we want the same thing, for for space. Obviously with Soyuz and same type of vehicles, even if soyuz launch is only $25m, it will always be much too expensive. With shuttle.. at first glance you'd think it may be much cheaper. But it doesn't fly up like an airplane.
... .
That was my first thought immediately the first time I've ever seen shuttle. Of course it should fly up from a runway just like a 747!!! Then, when it's high enough, half way there, it can switch to rocket engines and get into the orbit. You will save on fuel and it will be reusable.
Of course, if it was that easy that's what they'd do, but instead the shuttle is so expensive; it's the opposite of what the advantage of reusability should have brought.
It was a terrible blunder. NASA does not have all the money in the world, it has very little, relatively. There's two possible things to do in space right now: try to make a human settlement either on orbit, on the moon or on mars; or send tons of robot probes to experiment and explore.
It's pretty damn obvious that we can't send many people up there now; we can't have a real settlement, just a few people for trials. At the same time it's really expensive.
IMHO this is a wrong choice. We need to invent a new way of getting stuff up in orbit, 20x to 100x cheaper than Soyuz or Proton-M. That's what we should invest in AND also robot probes.
It's dumb to send a couple of people there and all the life support, food, oxygen,
This has always been too much of a technological masturbation, the US made a blunder when they spent too much
money to get to the moon quickly; the whole thing wasn't necessary and was pointless, but shuttle was an even
bigger blunder.
Right now ISS is a mistake, too, imho. Launches are too expensive. You can experiment remotely from earth. Send
more probes out there.
With the money that was spent we could: 1. establish a permanent robotic station on mars and on venus 2. send
tons more probes to other planets, satellites, asteroids. 3. know MUCH more about solar system 4. send perhaps
a probe to closest star 5. advance much farther in research on making truly cheap launches, perhaps an orbital
bridge using nanotubes?
Instead, we got: 1. 2 blown up shuttles 2. (1) flag on the moon 3. Half of ISS 4. too few probes to other planets 5. no stations on mars or venus and nothing for a long time predicted
Russia did much better, although it might have been just because they didn't have money to spend in a dumb way.
They used the most economic way to launch. They are waiting for a better ways to be found. They did a fairly
cheap little Mir to do some research. They sent a lot of probes for cheap.
Another thing.. miniaturization! Make smaller & more effective and complex robots that can be sent up with
little expense. Perhaps a half-kilo robot can be flown up to stratosphere in a regular plane and then launched
from there?
...the "In Soviet Russia..." jokes?
All physorg does is reprint articles from news feeds and press releases, and they ALWAYS remove all links and online references from the original story. It's a "link tarpit".
In this particular case the story doesn't seem to have had much to wipe, but a little googling would have gotten you versions that didn't promote physorg.
http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/tech/2007/oct/21/102106464.html
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/world/5232431.html
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071021/ap_on_sc/russia_s_gateway_to_space
The problem with the shuttle is simple, it was never supposed to be like this. The basic idea started when funding for the space program was still high, and the current shuttle design was supposed to be a trial for a new SET of tools for NASA. The space shuttle as it currently exists was never meant to be. Instead the original vision saw a need for a small craft to ferry personal to and from space, combined with a heavy cargo lifter. The current space shuttle was a support vehicle for that, mostly designed to deal with repairing and recovering satelites. It was to be used when you want the cargo and the people together and you don't need much cargo. (The space shuttle will ALWAYS be limited because it has to carry the cargo inside)
As funding was cut the space shuttle was lumbered with more and more tasks (the shuttle was never meant to be a lab, a permenant space station was supposed to be the lab) and was used for far longer then it was designed to be. In fact it came to replace everything else.
The russians on the other hand simply kept the same design, a small rocket for personell, and a big one for cargo and have them meet up in space. Practical.
IF the americans had kept up the original vision they would have had an amazing fleet of spacecraft and owned space by now, but reagonomics and a loss of will just never made that vision come true and so the russian method of cheap and reliable proved more effective.
The americans ended up with a people carrier for commuting, too big for one person, too small to move house in. THe russians got an old truck and an old motorcycle, excellent for moving house and commuting at a fraction of the costs.
Basically the space shuttle just never got the missions it was designed for, recovering and repairing sattelites. Remember that story about the satelite that went to the sun and then crashed? THAT was a space shuttle mission, pick the thing up in orbit and land it softly. IF space production had ever taken off, that would have been a space shuttle mission, get your goods back home in one piece.
It was NEVER meant to be a heavy lifter OR a personal transport. Oh, and it was never meant to serve this long.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I'm a european and it means that media isn't used to get money for science funds. The same counts for russia, and as a result of media we allways are made believe that amercians are better in hardware. This is however a missunderstanding, in technical design Russia is ahead, especialy in design of technology hardware. Example turbo charged rocket engines design credits go to them Amazed about the (german design based WOII) American flying wings, well take a look at the earodynamics of a mig 29 it can tilt backwards in flight. And how about sikorski Oh and their space airplane first space flight was radio controlled inlcuded the landing. Imagine the space shuttle did no human no risk cargo shipping, hmmmm.....
I know you're out there. I can feel you now. I know that you're afraid. You're afraid of us. You're afraid of change.
Before 7 years ago, 1/3 Billion of US$, was worth more than 1/2 B of £. These days, with our monster trade and federal deficits, it is amazing that it is as high as it is. The funny thing, is that China still has their money pegged to the dollar (via a fake basket), and sooner or later, they will have to allow these to float free. When it does, it will cause all their $s to plummet. It will make the wild times of the 70's seem positively minor (and those were caused by the untieing of the dollar to the franc and marc (as well as the oil embargo).
First, The Energia has not been launched since the days of the Soviet Union. It is in the same boat as the Saturn V. That is, it is DEAD. Russia has openly come out and said that it will not launch again. But if you are going to do sad comparisons, then please compare the Engeria to the Saturn. After all they are truly in the same classes. And 60 million for an Energia launch? Maybe in the 90's during the Soviets, but not today.
Finally, trying to compare the costs of 2 soyuz (developed in the 60's and holds 3 guys, and little else), to the shuttle has to be the true joke. Based on that, then you should compare the apollo capsule costs against the soyuz. Worse, you play games with comparing the original costs vs. a launch costs.
You picked a good nick.
the most important reason for keeping the shuttle program going. If we don't have the shuttle, Bruce Willis can't destroy the asteroids/comets that are trying to destroy us all. Not even the mighty Bruno can land one of those BDB (big dumb boosters) on an icy rock in space, plant a bomb, and then take off again. Think of the children!
My other sig is a knife wound.
"And the Shuttle, unlike the Energia payload, is rather unlikely to make it to Mars or Venus."
Well, since the Energia isn't produced anymore, I'd say the likelihood of it making it to Mars is currently pretty low.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energia
"Production of Energia rockets ended with the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Buran shuttle project."
Why are you blathering on about the technical qualities of a rocket that was discontinued?
I only go to buffets for the unlimited soft serve.
Well written article, but not a single picture anywhere in sight. How can you write an article about anything to do with space, and not post a picture?
You're right, but only Proton launches usually get suspended since these spacetrucks just keep blowing up and polluting the place down here. Also, the last one fell less than 100 miles away from the place where Kazakh president was at the moment which I think made the guy angry.
Now, finally, when someone sees a Pontiac GTO on the street and asks me what in hell "GTO" stands for, I can give them a definitive answer: Geostationary Transfer Orbit.
Thanks!
Russians: lets build a space station together!
US: YEAH! Lets!
Russians: OK, so we'll supply our knowledge about orbital flights, how to construct heavy orbital stations, the Progress and Soyuz delivery vehicles... a bunch of other stuff... Well, hmmm... remind us, why exactly do we need you again?
US: Umm.... hmmmm... well, you could use our Shuttle dumptruck to haul your stuff up there...
Russians: but it's no better than a freaking 5 MPG SUV!
US: Well okay... we'll pay for our own gas!
Russians: Okay sistah, you said it!
The $25 million figure in the article is wrong. I would guess it's either a very outdated cost, or is the price of the Soyuz spacecraft only, not of a complete Soyuz launch. Or perhaps they were reporting the cost of flying to the ISS as a tourist on a Soyuz, which is most definitely not the launch cost.
Last I heard, a Soyuz launch to the ISS costs about $70 million, but Russian launch prices have been skyrocketing lately (no pun intended) due to demand and the improving Russian economy.
There's quite a few ways to calculate the cost of a shuttle launch. The direct costs incidental to launch add up to only around $60 million, but there's a lot of facility and periodic maintenance costs that must be accounted for, and if you include the development costs, a shuttle launch is somewhere around $1.3 billion. The fairest figure I've heard estimates what it would cost to add additional shuttle launches to the manifest and is around the $450 million the parent cited.
But it's still an apples to oranges comparison. The Soyuz is a no-frills people transporter. The Shuttle is a somewhat over-featured cargo/personal transporter that can on its own serve as an orbital laboratory and work platform and even return large cargos to earth.
The difference is well illustrated in this picture. In fact, the space shuttle could carry an entire, fully fueled and crewed Soyuz spacecraft in its payload bay, with quite a bit of room and literally tons of mass to spare, in addition to its regular 7-man crew.
Yes, you use the funds to pay idle farmers.
Like these?
Only a fool would suggest that a Mig 29 makes anything but a fine target for a front line American fighter.
The shuttle is capable of flying completely automated. Rumor has it that Buran fly with 4 tons of lead acid car batteries because the Russians could not master H2 fuel cells. If Buran was so good, why did it fly once?
an ill wind that blows no good
Ha, moderated down, Uncle Vladimir is up to his old tricks of suppressing criticism.
A cosmonaut named Vladimir,
Kept a cageful of gerbils on Mir.
With cardboard tubes and some twine,
He used them one at a time-
An experiment he called 'Richard's Gear'
.
- aqk
F U
yeah, kistler has lost the contract. They are going to appeal, but that would be like charles manson's appeal; it ain't going to happen. The reason is that they pissed off NASA, after NASA bent over backwards for them (it was an inside job (all of them were ex-DOD and NASA) rather than being won on performance). In fact, out of ALL of the choices, Kistler was universally regarded as the LAST choice. Kistler's top ppl acted like NASA had screwed them royal, even though they had burned 25 million good dollars and produced NOTHING (typical DOD operation; it does not get results until the real money flows).
Scaled has a 2 part craft; White Knight and SS[123]. The white knight was scaled up (so to speak), and is carrying more loads than just SS#. In particular, NASA and the DOD are now using it to launch their test crafts. NASA had an old B-52 for that, but it was far too expensive to keep up and run. WK is far cheaper, flies higher, is faster, and was designed for just this job. T/Space is also contracting to use it. IOW, if T/space wins the NASA contract, it will be used just to fund the drop craft which will be equivilant to the SS3.
WRT COTS, there were something like 8 companies vieing for the award. 2 of them won; spacex for ~ 300M and kistler for ~200M. Now that kistler has lost this, the other 6 will have something like 30 days to present their current progress. As I said, my bet is on spacedevs, BUT I do not know where everybody is at, and who the players are. The truth is that t/space will stand a chance for the exact same reason as kistler; insiders. Hopefully this time griffin's ppl will not be so stupid, and will instead pick a winner based on performance. The reason why I say that spacedev stands the best chance is that they have already lined up to use both spacex AND boeing/lmarts rockets, have a proven rocket, and have picked a well tested design (the H-20). By using United Launch Alliance (boeing and lmart) delta, they can be up in orbit by mid 2009 IFF they have been busy. And they are like spaceX, needing to not just win this contract, but also have some of the ISS business. In fact, this is an easy win for these 2. The reason is that if America has personal and cargo access via another much cheaper method, the shuttle would be stopped today. Griffin would stop it instantly and throw all the resources into building Ares I and probably IV or V. One interesting area that SpaceDev could get into quickly is building a tug. I suspect that if they win the NASA contract, they will also elect to use the backend of their dreamchaser for a tug (think of it as a relatively dumb frontend with a candiarm). With that combo, it will be hard for NASA to say no.
One good place to look for this, would be google and wikipedia. What I have been doing is checking the news section of google for spacex and bigelow (as well as eestor) sorted by most recent. Look for kistler stuff around oct 17th. It will also talk about why they lost it and what is going to happen now.
Hope this helps.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I just read some of your other posts. You almost certainly had a clue about the stuff that I just laid out for you. I am sorry if I bored.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.