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Russia To Build an Orbital Construction Plant
jamax writes "Russia plans to build an orbital plant for the production of spacecraft (link to sketchy Google translation of the Russian original) that are too big to build planetside, or are just too bulky to fire into orbit once built. Presumably these are the ships we would fly to the Moon and Mars. Plans seem to be rather sparse at the moment, with the tentative construction date set for 2020, after the ISS is scheduled for decommissioning."
I hope that the Russians are *not* looking at flying to the Moon or Mars. The NEAs make much more interesting destinations where their expertise in micro-gravity environments can be best put to use.
How we know is more important than what we know.
This will be impressive if the project is successful. I admit that I'll be a bit disappointed that we didn't do it first, though.
Of course, it's going to be a while off, either way. Maybe our space program will have a renaissance in the meantime.
This would be a great step forward for space exploration, and hopefully it will kick start the rest of the world into launching their own if/when this proves to be a success. Something this big really needs governments to support it, it is too big for the nascent private space industry at the moment.
they don't call it "The Federation" for nothing in Star Trek
It sounds like Captain Pirk has definitely arrived in our time...
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Building anything in space is horrendously complex and expensive. The USA will be broke for the next few years so I cant see anything coming from that direction other than some toy like commercial projects (Virgin) that will die once the handful of billionaires who can afford it have taken a ride. Even though Russia is rolling in cash right now I don't think they will have enough money and expertise to pull this off in the long run. Really this needs to be a global affair with its own "standards body" so everyone can take part and a really nasty bit of work in charge to bang peoples heads together when they start arguing over bolt sizes or the colour of toilet seat lid.
Plain and simple. there is a long list of russian projects announced in boom times (like 1995 and now) but abandoned when the rubber met the road.
This is not to say that the Russians aren't advancing the state of the art in space--they are. They are also excellent builders of launch vehicles and spacecraft. BUT. That doesn't mean that proclamations like this are to be accepted without a huge dose of skepticism.
I would be much more willing to believe that Russians would fund a new launch site, a SSTO or similar projects. This smacks of unreality.
2020?? This sucks. We're all going to be geezers before domestic space travel comes around
The biggest question currently facing /. readers -- how will this play out against the NCC-1701 under construction teaser trailer (http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramount/startrek/)?
geek. lawyer.
A big spacecraft build in orbit because it is impossible to launch as a whole? This is nothing more than a plan for the follow-up for the ISS.
The only new thing about it is the idea that a (set of) module(s) could detach and make a trip to another planet.
As I recall there was talk 15-20 years ago of doing this in the US at a cost of $400-500 billion. Seems to be a tad too expensive for Russia, in fact for anyone. Its much cheaper to send up everything you need for one mission. The biggest cost is putting things into Earth orbit, so unless they have a plan to get raw materials to the assembly station without launching them off Earth first, it seems like they just want to build a giant space station for the hell of it when there is a cheaper way of doing things. I doubt this ever gets past the planning stage.
Well you can't very well build a giant steel planet with an energy weapon capable of destroying other planets in a warehouse.
The plans describe something that looks just like pie...
...but I can't afford it.
I didn't think the Russian economy had quite reached the point where orbital contruction factories were a consideration.
Would love to see it happen, but not holding my breath.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
they plan to send a manned mission to Jupiter in 2100? How about a mission to alpha centauri while their at it?
Notice how people come up with fantastic plans to do space stuff in the year 2020? Bush did a similar thing with his plan to go back to the moon.
Whatever date it is, it's a date that the current people in office, will no longer be in office, or if they are, no one will remember what the plans are.
This is just an attempt by politicians to make themselves look "visionary" while actually doing nothing. If, 70 years from now when someone actually gets around to going to mars, no one is going to remember what kind of plans a bunch of jokers with no intention of providing funding pulled out of the ass in 2008.
1) I wouldn't put too much faith into what this website (ie. lenta.ru) posts (they are known to post rumors as actual news) 2) The average age of members of the Russian Academy of Sciences is over 70 (which is a miracle in itself since the life expectancy for males is 59). People who could've been developing space projects like this have been choosing to work for private companies for the last 20 years or so. Space programs have always been monopolized by the government and these jobs don't pay well enough to attract recent graduates. Whatever projects the Russian Space agency claims to have in the pipeline (if indeed they do) will never be realized b/c of lack of qualified professionals in the field (those 70-year olds working for the government right now are not gonna be there forever [unfortunately]). Whatever press releases they put out there are just merely for show so that NASA and the rest of the world will think that the Russian Space Program is not stagnant. Unfortunately, claiming that something revolutionary (and not so revolutionary) is being actively worked on when in fact it's not the case has become a trend in Russia.
One reason that the US doesn't have a plan for an orbital assembly infrastructure is that NASA is working towards a "heavy lift vehicle", the Ares V which will lift somewhere in the order of 130 tons to low Earth orbit. The things NASA has in mind take only 1-3 launches of the Ares V to put up. So the only assembly one would need under those circumstances is docking.
Now my opinion on the matter is that Russia has a superior approach. NASA's Ares V is planned to launch around 2-4 times a year, but it has high fixed costs, and as far as I know, there are no plans to increase the launch rate of the Ares V significantly. That means there are unexploited economies of scale. An orbital assembly station is a cleverer approach in that it means one can use a smaller rocket to launch the material. They can either use existing rockets like Proton or Soyuz or future designs like Angora (which is intended to launch up to 25 tons into orbit, assuming they build it). That means the Russians can substitute frequent launches of a smaller vehicle to build things of comparable size (OTOH, I've been unable to determine how much mass or volume this station would be able to manage at once). My take is that the Russian approach, all else being equal including labor and ground-based infrastructure costs, will result in a lower cost per kilogram of payload. That is the primary metric for the cost of a launch vehicle.
There are tradeoffs between the two approaches. The Ares V has high operation costs and high costs per launch. The Russian approach will result (IMHO) in lower launch costs, but then one must add in assembly costs and R&D costs to make space equipment that can be assembled in space. I hope the Russians are serious about this assembly station and make it happen. If it works, it'll open up space in a way that larger launch vehicles cannot.
makes sense...
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For the last decade, Russia has announced LOADS of plans for space but does not want to pay for them (even though they are very cash positive). The only way this will happen is if America or EU backs it. As to not flying to the moon ot mars, that is absolutely their goal.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Perhaps they will buy the decomissioned ISS, fix it up a bit, and just use that as a starting point.
I doubt any of this will be possible without Canadian engineering. McDonald, Detweiller and associates created the Canadarm and Dexter, and Russia will probably require technology like this to make this possible. Canada is becoming a great hand in the space industry. McDonald, Detweiller and associates are really putting Canada in the news around the world. It's an excellent thing that they weren't sold.
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We have talked about building power plants in space. If it is cheaper to bring up the raw material and process it, then I suspect that we MIGHT do it. Of course, that remains to be seen.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
After all, regulations specify thrusters only while in space dock!
When they get that built, they'll be able to build and launch the Project Orion spacecraft without getting all that fallout into the atmosphere. Whee!
Sometimes the "writing on the wall" is blood spatter...
They should model it after DS9 for space tourists. I for one would look forward to playing Dabo at Quark's bar. I mean Russian's got to have a bar on that place.
I'm glad. That money meant that scientists and engineers from one of the foremost space powers in the world didn't starve or move to Iran. It meant that the AMAZING corporate memory at Krushnev and Energia (among many, many others) could be maintained when the country's ruling elite wrecked the place.
It meant that US companies and European companies could see lower costs to orbit for their products and that means that people in the US would face lower costs on things that required satellites in the first place.
It meant that the US got to get an official window into russian rocketry and that two former enemies could develop close ties between professionals and organizations.
It meant that for about 1/100th of the price of the Iraq war, we got all that, and a functioning Space Station to boot.
It meant that SOMEONE can get into space and push the species forward, who cares what language they speak when they get there.
"...and the missiles are coming out of the factories like sausages!"
Russians are good at hyperbole and Americans are good at falling for it.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
All that is OK. What would have been better would have been if the US taxpayers weren't stuck with that ISS boondoggle, while Russia literally rockets past us. We didn't exactly get a "functioning space station". If we'd made a better deal, this new Russian "Orbital Construction Plant" could have been shared more with the US, instead of us just creating our own competition and trying to compete with a worse tool.
I'm all for human advancement. I just don't like being the one to pay for the other humans to advance, while we lag behind.
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I could see Musk, Bigelow, and either Carmack or Bezos getting together just to get a small NEA or put us on the moon and then send material back to earth orbit. If some sort of assembly is started in orbit, than I could see these guys starting a small manufacturing plant that produces solar cells for space.
......
Of course, the question is, can it make money? At first glance I want to say not a chance. But I think that combine a carbon tax AND the military (US and NATO) needing quick easily movable power, could make this very profitable. But
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I think you might be overestimating the russian space industry. they aren't "rocketing past" anyone, this press release is probably the same fluff as their manned flight to mars 10 years ago. As I posted elsewhere, this is a statement of national pride in a time of economic ease for Russia.
So all in all, we paid for them to keep their slight edge in some areas (launch vehicles, payload integration, manned space flight--although that is arguable) and paid for them not to drop too far behind in others.
As someone who knows it firsthand, technological prowess of Soviets/Russians are _greatly_ overstated. How about building a car that does not utterly suck first?
Many people in USofA may not realize it but modern Russian state is build upon premise of alleged supremacy over decadent West/third world East (don't laugh) and hot air like this press release is only internal propaganda tool not inteded for external consumption.
Besides, it's published on Lenta.ru (jokingly called Lenta.vru - ribbon.lie)
and on top of what else I said, you aren't paying very much. Out of your income taxes this year NASA (and other net transfers to russia or the ESA) probably comprised less than 50 dollars. That's the whole of NASA. What was paid to the russians is probably on the order of 2-5 dollars per year over 10 years or so.
I'm not saying that stuff is a good use of taxpayer dollars just because it doesn't use that many taxpayer dollars. I'm just saying stuff needs to be kept in perspective.
Now I'm wondering whether the original article's translation was just a fluke of good luck, or if actually the errors are coincidentally all adding in the same direction to produce a nearly grammatically correct article about something completely different than what we think it is about. For all we non-Russians know, "orbital construction plant" could be a mistranslation of "crop circle maker".
The Russians couldn't even afford to foot their end of the bill for their ISS commitments. I don't think that diverting funds will pay for their grandiose dreams.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Well, it's hard to know, because Russia's state capitalism ("fascism") is rolling in petrorubles, and finances quite a lot of secret space science and industry.
Russia also financed a successful laser-sail project into the outer Solar System while it was saving that money on the ISS (but getting the science to repurpose for its private agenda).
Again, what I would prefer would just have been a better deal. I think the cooperation is the best part, partly because it kept that engineering out of the hands of other, less manageable threats, like the states developing missile systems that are strong marketing for more Star Wars boondoggle. But the US should have gotten a lot more for its money.
For example, we could have paid Russia for its extra nukes to dismantle (and take custody of their explosive cores), and let them use the money to pay their share of the ISS (and the rest). There have been lots of better strategic deals, better for the both of us (and the rest of the world), though not for Putin's scary agenda.
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It;s that last part that I'm saying, too. I never said we're paying too much in absolute dollars for our space budgets. We're spending way too little. We should reverse the budgets of the Pentagon and NASA (and leave the Pentagon and the CIA/NSA/etc to fund their own military/spook space programs). But as is implicit in your statement, the saving grace in our bad deals is only that they're relatively small. That's small consolation. So I'd rather see much bigger deals that are a lot better for us (and everyone else, by not funding bad buys).
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But the Russian's aren't the bad guys. That is part of what I am saying.
Also, to be fair, part of those dollar transfers and contracts were for launch services that the US could not offer. In other words, Arianaspace (spelling), Lockheed and Boeing (and NASA, w/ the shuttle) couldn't fit a launch window, so we paid the russians to do it.
I think it's great to see a country make a bold step like this. The US is really behind the game in terms of Space exploration efforts, and it seems like they will only slide further back at this point. Hopefully this action by Russia will get other nations jump onto the bandwagon and get more competitive (or collaborative even!). Why must the superpower nations blow all their $$$ on their military when there is such a vast space for us to explore. We are sitting here watching the parade go by when there's so much to explore out there and it's a shame beyond words.
> There's no mention of the Moon or Mars in the translated article
The original article starts with -
"Interfax reports that Russia is going to construct a spaceship assembly factory to service Moon and Mars flights. This has been announced by Anatoly Perminov, the head of RosCosmos agency"
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Oh, well if you are going to argue that the Russians should have been more faithful with our money and we should have negotiated a better deal then we are in agreement. However, I can only offer you my word as someone with some 2nd hand experience on the subject that those results were close to as good as we were going to get. We could spent much more time and effort negotiating a slightly better deal, but it would not have been significantly better.
And unfortunately, none of the NASA deals could have stopped putin from coming to power on top of a lake of oil and natural gas. That was outside the scope. Perhaps if we hadn't shilled so hard for Yeltsin all those years (check the Time Magazine cover article about it ca. Summer 1996, it is a sobering story. If we found out that Russians had as much influence on our elections as we did on theirs, we would be pissed) we would be in a better spot. But we were scared about the communists taking over...or whatever.
To be fair, the United States isn't exactly on the bleeding edge of technology when it comes to car design. Besides, the whole idea of a national automobile industry is sort of quaint and outdated in the modern era, where multinational conglomerates with engineers drawn from all over the world dominate.
Perhaps space exploration and rocket science are unrelated to engineering of personal conveyances?
Sure the release is - obviously - making promises that will likely not be kept, however, anything that awakens in the body politic a rediscovery of the virtue of funding space research will be welcomed. I think we can agree that, unlike the automotive industry, the aerospace industry - outside of communications satellites and military hardware - suffers from a lack of funding, particularly in pure research and space exploration.
Well, I don't think just taking advantage of the US and getting a better deal makes them the "bad guys" (except that it's bad for me and my country). The payments for launch services aren't really what I'm complaining about, either. It's how the US paid the Russians' share of the ISS as a direct subsidy, while the Russians blatantly blew off their engineering contributions to it (like whole module components delivered way late and faulty). Meanwhile, the Russians were launching their own private laser sail projects and others, with the money they saved, but without sharing their results with us.
Again, a bad deal at my expense (in both money and in opportunity cost).
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Well, Putin coming to power isn't the fault of our bad space program deals. Though they're of course related, as the KGB and space launches are part of the same industry in Russia.
Putin's succession after Yeltsin was in fact really due the KGB concocting the Chechen war to discredit Yeltsin (and democracy with him). It's documented quite explicitly and in great detail in Alexander "Polonium 210" Litvinenko's report _Blowing Up Russia_ (published right after he died from the KGB polonium poisoning). But that is tangential to the Russian giveaway space deals with first Clinton and then Bush.
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According to Interfax, Russia shall build an orbital factory for construction of space vessels for flights to Moon and Mars. Such announcement was made by Anatoly Perminov, head of Ruscosmos.
According to Perminov, Roscosmos suggested to create a manned assembling complex on near-earth orbit. 11 April it was approved on security counsel by government. Complex can be used to assembly space crafts that are too heavy to to be assembled on Earth.
These plans can only start after end of use of ISS in 2020. A more precise date was not discussed.
Perminov also reported that spaceport Vostochny in Amur region will be ready in 2015, and the first manned launch from it is scheduled in 2018.
.. "a citation needed", especially for the "does not want to pay for them" part.
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I would be very happy if entire red soviet Russia would be transferred to the Moon or (better) red Mars, making their orbital Kremlin and orbital Red Square available for their citizens.
after which history of course comes to an
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I am not 100% certain, but I think that the tension is caused by W. forcing us to be apart. In particular, he is opposed to our working closely with ESA, let alone RSA. I am not certain, but I suspect that W. wants a little less transparency on our space program.
But the other major issue is private enterprise. It has the ability to change EVERYTHING for USA. I think that bigelow has designs to be on the moon by 2015 (long before USA even has a rocket to get there). Obviously, musk wants us there ASAP, since they will have the cheapest launch going. and want scale by numbers.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
And then the P-Fleet can finally be born!
Pirk's cunning strikes again!
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Real advance in space research will be possible only after great concentration of money in one pair of hands, who won't be dependent on the popular vote to decide what to do with this money. That's because that type of research is w/ very delayed practical outcome (dissemination of human race) and politicians in traditional democracies will lose. When popular vote will be ready for that because of clear evidence of overpopulation that might be too late.
Clear concentration of money in one pair of hands is possible only in undemocratic non-capitalistic (possibly "state capitalism") economy. We know from the history that type of economy is inferior to the free (or more free) economy. That is why it is not possible to have it in one separate country (that, by the way, is a cardinal difference between Marx and Lenin).
But it is possible to have it when there is no competition between economies, that is when there is only one global government. That situation, predicted by Marx as a result of development of imperialism, is possible. And that situation could give a rise to transformation (degradation) of that economy under the absence of competition into less democratic, less free market state with more concentration of power in one hands and less dependence of popular vote.
And that future state is the only entity that will be able to pull the giant leap (w/ immense spending without any immediate relief to the population) to the dissemination project.
Disclaimer: I hate Soviet communism, and I know what it was.
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> Russia To Build an Orbital Construction Plant
Yikes, that's a mistake. Their tech level may be right, but their industrial base is no way near large enough to accomplish such a thing.
They'll have to get a hell of a lot more peons mining crystals and chopping trees before they can dream of jamming their tech tree advancement way up that far. They don't even have enough huts for the peons they have now!
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In our world though the situation is quite the opposite: Russia's industrial base is sufficient to saturate the orbit with plants like that in copious numbers. What is lacking is the tech level required to build something really useful. And the problem here is not in Russia but in the simple fact that the tech in question doesn't exist anywhere on this planet yet.