Slashdot Mirror
Russia to Build New Spacecraft by 2020
Tech.Luver passed us the word that Russia is now working on a new generation of spacecraft, presumably to help fuel its renewed space exploration ambitions. The Space-based industry is still one of the few areas in which Russia is intentionally competitive, and they intend to exploit that in the coming years. Even still, the new technologies are not expected to see use until 2020. ""A tender to design a new booster and spaceship has been announced," Itar-Tass news agency quoted Roskosmos chief Anatoly Perminov as saying ... Perminov did not give further details of the tender, but said TsSKB-Progress from the Volga city of Samara is likely to bid with its Soyuz-3 design of spacecraft, as well as Moscow's Khrunichev centre with Angara 3P and Angara 5P. The United States beat the Soviet Union in developing multiple-use Space Shuttle rockets, which form its current fleet of manned spacecraft. Russian space officials have said single-use spacecraft like the Soyuz-TM currently used are cheaper and more practical."
The United States beat the Soviet Union in developing multiple-use Space Shuttle rockets, which form its current fleet of manned spacecraft.
Which areas is Russia UN-intentionally competitive?
"Comrade, production is too high! You must reduce performance to the planned levels or we will succeed."
Yes, and you always use a 16-wheeler to drive your kids to school, right?
The vast majority of space launches which currently use the shuttle, transport people or regular vital supplies (food, water, etc) to the ISS. The shuttle was not designed for, and cannot do any missions other than low-earth orbit (ISS, Hubble, etc).
In those cases where you really need large cargo (such as lifting components of the ISS), you can use other rockets, such as Delta V or the upcoming Ares-IV (which, by the way, intends to replace the unreliable shuttle in the first place).
The shuttle was nothing but an attempt to appease the moronic treehuggers by creating the illusion of "recycleable" craft, even though (1) the difference in price between launching a shuttle and a light rocket could pay for reducing emissions in other areas that would bring much greater net benefit to the ecology, and (2) consuming the fuckton of fuel to launch a heavy-ass shuttle that carries two people negates any "cleanliness" achieved by just throwing 75% of the shuttle (boosters go, remember?) instead of the ~95% when rocket goes, capsule comes. In an effort to appease the same treehuggers we were periodically stuck with forced solar panels on rovers instead of nuclear power, which among other things forces our Mars rovers to hibernate through the winter instead of working as usual. Thank God that with New Horizons and further nuclear-powered missions we finally got over the yoke.
If they want to be practical about getting to space, the old X-15 program had it down pat. Three vehicles, 200 flights in less than 10 years. One fatal crash. You launched the thing from a plane or a balloon. No waste, no fuss. And because you're not constantly throwing something the size of a young apartment building into orbit, a single accident doesn't effectively knock you out of space for years. It couldn't carry much more than the pilot, but only an idiot would doubt that by the third generation (the original RFP's went out in the mid-50's) it would have carried a reasonable payload.
I think it all started to go wrong for NASA when politicians were allowed to their poke their long, ratlike noses into the business of scientists and engineers. If not for the damned shuttle program, there'd be a crew drinking beer on Mars by now.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Though to be fair, NASA still wins in the ideas department with advanced Saturn models, the NERVA rockets, and especially the completely reusable 500 ton Sea Dragon Rocket (which had a full design study). Hopefully the latter two ideas will be looked at again when the different space agencies consider building a spacecraft to travel to Mars.
The Ariane 5G can lift 17.6 tons into LEO for a cost of about $165 million
While not mentioned in TFA, the Soyuz 3 would be able to put 17.8 tons into LEO. If they can get the price comparable to the Ariane, they'll have a winner.
Don't count the Russians out of the race just yet.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
In which areas is Russia unintentionally competitive exactly?
The Ariane 5G can lift 17.6 tons into LEO for a cost of about $165 million
While not mentioned in TFA, the Soyuz 3 would be able to put 17.8 tons into LEO. If they can get the price comparable to the Ariane, they'll have a winner.
Your numbers for the Space Shuttle are misleading in comparison to the others. The Shuttle Cargo Bay can carry 22.7 tons. The orbiter itself weighs about 70 tons. Thus the total mass you are putting up can be up to around 100 tons. If you wanted to do a fair comparison (for example with the Soyuz launch vehicle) you would have noted that the Soyuz Spacecraft weighs around 15 tons without additional cargo.Don't count the Russians out of the race just yet.
In which areas is Russia unintentionally competitive exactly?
Spam comes to mind.
to read Russian space-tech related forums, you'll be pretty sure that Angara is a scam. They won the tender(many years ago) with one design, replaced it later with another (probably the only common thing for both designs is that they're rocket designs) and did nothing to implement either of those designs. This: Russian space officials have said single-use spacecraft like the Soyuz-TM currently used are cheaper and more practical still indicates that Russian space agency has not gone haywire yet, and may be capable of producing something useful in the future, but Angara is very unlikely to be one of those useful things
So where are all the soviet russia jokes? Or may be its soviet China now?
The Russians need to stay focused on modernizing their economy and political system. Russia still has considerable poverty, and the money wasted on the space race would be better spent on welfare programs and the education system. At the same stage of development, the Japanese did not waste money on either a space race or a massive weapons program.
Unfortunately, the Russians have become obsessed with nationalism since Vladimir Putin came to power. Big, impressive national projects have become more important than simply improving the quality of life for the poorest segments of the population.
The Russians have a lot to learn from the Poles. The latter are not wasting money on either a space race or a massive weapons program.
The most important lesson that the Russians can learn from the West is that the greatness of a nation is not measured by the size of the weaponry or the speed of the space ship. Rather, the greatness is measured by the quality of life for the average person.
The Soviet Union had awesome weapons and space vehicles, yet was the Soviet Union a great nation?
Roskosmos chief Anatoly Perminov will soon be in charge of Gundam. Take that Japanese agriculture ministry!
Thank God for the Russians!
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
"The United States beat the Soviet Union in developing multiple-use Space Shuttle rockets, which form its current fleet of manned spacecraft."
The United States (together with Europe) have also beaten the Soviet Union in wasting countless billion of dollars on an International Space Station of very limited research value. Basically they just trying to try to stay alive up there and do 30 minutes of research projects per day. The Shuttle is currently also just a pork-barrel project. Those funds need to be spent in different ways (such as next generation planetary rovers).
The Russians have managed to keep their total costs for development and launches lower over the decades, by having at least some sort of "mass production" economies of scale.
Their MIR space station managed to get along for years against increadible odds, for a fraction of NASA money.
The Russians have very good and practical aerospace engineers. This illustrates the difference nicely: during the space race NASA spent money and effort in developing a pen which could work in weightlessness. The russian astronauts instead of pens used pencils in space.
Yeah... And in the mean time, NASA will continue working on the Ares V, which can put 145.0 tons into LEO.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Another attempt to blame a bunch of rare and disorganised hippies with no political power at all at the time for some dubious political decisions mostly about spreading the pork. The shuttle design is most likely a lot older than the poster and "moronic treehuggers" don't even have the political clout to get Kyoto signed now let alone sabotage a space program decades ago.
90% of shuttle missions and space are pointless and only begun to stay ahead of competing nations. Look at the international space station, for instance. A pointless waste of money that could have done a thousand more useful things. We need to think space exploration through a little more before we send so many zeros after a dollar sign into the sky.
1. heavy: the size of one that would be of use is so great that rover must be made huge, and expensive / impossible to launch to Mars. NASA's choice was solar, I guess they know better.
2. dangerous: in case of bad launch someone has to find damn thing, or its peaces. Solar panels are safe to be left where they are...
100 tons to LEO is nice, it's a pity 70% of it is useless.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Don't be a dipshit. The comparison of the GP was for spacecraft. Saying that the Space Shuttle costs $450 million to put 22 tons into space while the super advanced European and Russian rockets can do it for hundreds of millions is misleading at best. A better comparison would have been something like a Delta IV rocket or an Atlas V rocket. Using the Space Shuttle as a comparison was done simply to make it look like NASA couldn't figure out how to put 20 tons into space without spending half a billion dollars. The GP was trying to intentionally mislead people and you know it.
Manned spacecraft don't have a high cargo/total weight ratio. The Soyuz craft has basically a zero ratio. The Shuttle comes in at about 1/4. This is how manned spacecraft work. You may think that the Shuttle is a waste of money and that it is not worth it to put so many support systems into the spacecraft as well as trying to make it reusable and able to operate in space for weeks at a time (and I do as well), but it is intentionally misleading to compare it to a cargo craft. It is not a cargo craft. That is just one of its many abilities.
Egads people..... The shuttle has a long list of problems and shortcomings. It's expensive and it isn't as reliable as the designers had hoped, NASA and the politicos who control the purse strings have finally come to a consensus on this point. Can we finally stop beating a dead horse? Every space-craft that we've launched -and by "we" I mean the human race, not just Americans- has had strengths and weaknesses. It's early in the game here people: a good analogy would be that the Europeans are just realizing that Columbus found a "new world" and not a shortcut to the far East. There have been a lot of people who have realized the right way of doing things for a long time, but like those early Europeans coming to the new world, it takes time to convince the people who have the money. There was a lot of begging for money, saying "I've got a plan that will work." Furthermore, there were a lot of failed starts in the new world: settlements that collapsed and vanished or packed up and left... This is not the time to say that spending money on manned space exploration is a waste so let's give up: of course it's wasteful right now, we're still figuring out the best way to go about it! There are those in Russia that have come to realize that someday the economic health of good ol' terra firma will depend on what we do in space, and they hope to be on the leading edge and therefore profit from it: I say good luck to them, the world needs their efforts. There are those in the USA, Germany, China, Japan, India (the list goes on) who agree and want their contries to be on that leading edge too: good luck to them as well. There are going to be a lot of false starts and a lot of wasted money, but in the end, we will find the best way by trial and error and forge ahead until space becomes the next economic powerhouse, the powerhouse that takes the world into new prosperity and health.
Like military invasions?!
If every dollar George spent in Iraq had gone to space instead, we'd all be better off.
Wrong. The Delta IV heavy can carry a max of 25,800 kg to LEO to the Space Shuttle's max of 24,400 kg. The Ariane 5-ECA can carry 21,000 kg. The Proton can carry 22,000 kg.
There are plenty of cheaper, expendable rockets that can lift larger or similar payloads as the Space Shuttle.
The space pen bullshit's already been refuted so many times in slashdot that it needs its own FAQ entry.
They've hardly gone unused over the decades.
Uh, the MSL (Mars Science Laboratory, though if you needed the clarification, wtf are you doing posting in this thread?) is likely to use RTGs, it is considerably larger than the current rovers, but far from impossible. :)
RTGs have a small amount of radioactive material and it's very well encased, and it's not such a big deal if one gets lost, it has happened before. It's not like there aren't natural sources of radiation, not to mention natural fission reactors (yes, look it up).
Stupid treehuggers are to blame for this and the fear of everything nucular. Smart treehuggers are in favour of nuclear power, of course
That's hilarious! Blaming environmentalists for the Space Shuttle! I think I can see the thought process ... "space shuttle bad... reusable... sounds like hippies... the hippies made the space shuttle!". Knee connected directly to mouth?
The drivers for making a reusable space launcher were economic, engineering idealism, the desire for a big fancy "proper" spaceship, and in the background a large expensive project to fund lots of aerospace work. I doubt environmental considerations were even mentioned except in an offhand manner after some PR person thought of it.
For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert. - Arthur C. Clarke
...but will there be any Russians left to build them? Demographics aren't looking very positive for Mother Russia.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
In Soviet Russia the Spacecraft builds you... omg there goes the karma :(
The Russians are developing a new generation of spacecraft? Again? Shouldn't they finish the last 'next generation' craft they proposed first?
Seriously folks, I suspect that this is just latest in a long line of paper spacecraft created by the Russians.
One wonders what happened to the Kliper? It was touted as being practical and reliable. Russian space architecture seems confused.
an ill wind that blows no good
Correct me if I'm wrong, terminal velocity in Earth atmosphere is high, say 200+ kmph so, what happens when RTG's case hits solid rock? It's not like there aren't natural sources of radiation, not to mention natural fission reactors (yes, look it up). Well it's quite cold here, I'd like to have one natural please. WTF are You talking about? All natural fission reactions are deep underground far away from surface. Stupid treehuggers are to blame for this and the fear of everything nuclear. Smart treehuggers are in favour of nuclear power, of course
Enough feeding nuclear trolls...
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
How are they going to "design" a new shuttle when the US hasn't developed a new shuttle for them to copy from?
Ahhh... Spoken like a TRUE AMERICAN!
You keep that stars`n`stripes lapel-pin polished, boy!
- Ecsad Essemal
The Hexadecimal TV-REMOTE!
The giant boosters are one-off and needing them kinda makes the shuttle's own thrusters redundant. The Soviets very cleverly didn't have these at all in their Buran, which inherently made it a safer vehicle as well as simpler and cheaper.
Remembering the early descriptions of the shuttle while under development, it was presented as a "Space Truck" - the rough equivalent of an 18 wheeler for space. Lifting ability is only half of it. It's also got a crew of workers with living quarters, a big crane to pull payloads out of the back, manipulate objects outside or place workers at a job site. It even has the ability to recover a satellite or part of the ISS and bring it back if necessary. You can fly it around a target and position it for whatever the mission requires. What booster is going to do any of that?
Now, if you just want to hurl stuff into space, a booster is fine for that. When the shuttle delivers something to space, there are probably dozens of other things going on in the payload bay that come back to earth.
Most of the stuff on
Exactly right. The big advantage of the shuttle is that it can grab a satellite and bring it back to Earth. Unfortunately, in the entire life of the shuttle, there has not been a single mission of this nature (to the best of my knowledge, I'm sure someone will quickly correct me if I'm wrong). So, yes, the shuttle is better than a rocket, except for all of the missions that the shuttle has been used for.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
"The shuttle was nothing but an attempt to appease the moronic treehuggers by creating the illusion of "recycleable" craft, even though (1) the difference in price between launching a shuttle and a light rocket could pay for reducing emissions in other areas that would bring much greater net benefit to the ecology, and (2) consuming the fuckton of fuel to launch a heavy-ass shuttle that carries two people negates any "cleanliness" achieved by just throwing 75% of the shuttle (boosters go, remember?) instead of the ~95% when rocket goes, capsule comes."
No you are totally wrong.
The idea behind the shuttle was that it would be cheaper to fly a craft over and over than two throw it away. You don't throw away a ship when it gets to port and you don't throw away an airliner when you get to your airport. You load it back up with fuel and you fly it again.
The original designs for the shuttle might have actually pulled that off but where too expensive to develop. The Shuttle might have be a premature jump from the conestoga wagon mentality to the DC-3 but it wasn't inspired by "moronic tree huggers"
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.