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Russia Botches Another Rocket Launch
astroengine writes "Three hours before a new crew arrived at the International Space Station on Friday, bringing the outpost back up to full staff for the first time in months, Russia racked up its fifth launch accident within a year. A Soyuz-2 rocket carrying a military communications satellite failed to reach orbit after blastoff from the Plesetsk space center in northern Russia. The botched launch is again due to an upper-stage engine problem."
The Soyuz-2 is also not particularly unsuccessful, with 1 failure and 1 "partial failure" out of 17 launches.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
If by "whining about" you mean "taking time to fully investigate what went wrong and correct errors" and by "giving up" you mean "trying again when ready" then sure. Two shuttle losses in 30 years and 135 missions. The American's "giving up and whining about" seems to be working for them.
Meanwhile, Russia's strategy, which you seem to like, has resulted in 5 fuckups in a single year.
They build rockets better when their drunk!
Whose drunk?
Every end has half a stick.
The actual total cost of the shuttle program through 2011, adjusted for inflation, is $196 billion.[5] The exact breakdown into non-recurring and recurring costs is not available, but, according to NASA, the average cost to launch a Space Shuttle as of 2011 is about $450 million per mission.
And here: http://www.nasa.gov/centers/kennedy/about/information/shuttle_faq.html#10
Q. How much does it cost to launch a Space Shuttle? A. The average cost to launch a Space Shuttle is about $450 million per mission.
In other words this five year agreement costs about as much as three Shuttle launches.
Personally i though Gerald Bull had the right idea for launching unmanned payloads when he came up with the idea of using something similar to HAARP as a "space gun" but he simply didn't have the technology to make it work. Now that we have both rail and coil guns it should be easier to accomplish and ultimately lower the cost of putting objects into space. you could build the barrel on the side of one of those South Pacific islands we've had since WWII, build a small reactor to power the thing, maybe even use a small rocket for the final push after the energy from the firing has been expended so you won't have to build as big a gun.
The atmosphere is the problem with cannon-style launches as Bull proposed. The higher up you can position the muzzle of your launcher, the less muzzle velocity you need, and therefore the less energy you need, and the less accelleration the payload must endure, and the less heat the projectile must resist. So an island at sea level is the very worst place to position your laucher (save perhaps for Death Valley).
Inside a mountain in the Himalayas or Rockies would be a far better choice, with the muzzle emerging at the peak which is already halfway out of the atmosphere (and completely out of the dense, dusty, insect-filled, and humid part of the atmosphere).
The launch accelleration is a more serious constraint than probably any other aspect of the project.
FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE