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Russia Abandons Super-Rocket Designed To Compete With SLS
schwit1 writes Russia has decided to abandon an expensive attempt to build an SLS-like super-rocket and will instead focus on incremental development of its smaller but less costly Angara rocket. "Facing significant budgetary pressures, the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, has indefinitely postponed its ambitious effort to develop a super-heavy rocket to rival NASA's next-generation Space Launch System, SLS. Instead, Russia will focus on radical upgrades of its brand-new but smaller Angara-5 rocket which had its inaugural flight in Dec. 2014, the agency's Scientific and Technical Council, NTS, decided on Thursday, March 12." For Russia's space industry, it appears that these budgetary pressures have been a blessing in disguise. Rather than waste billions on an inefficient rocket for which there is no commercial demand — as NASA is doing with SLS (under orders from a wasteful Congress) — they will instead work on further upgrades of Angara, much like SpaceX has done with its Falcon family of rockets. This will cost far less, is very efficient, and provides them a better chance to compete for commercial launches that can help pay for it all. And best of all, it offers them the least costly path to future interplanetary missions, which means they might actually be able to make those missions happen. To quote the article again: "By switching upper stages of the existing Angara from kerosene to the more potent hydrogen fuel, engineers might be able to boost the rocket's payload from current 25 tons to 35 tons for missions to the low Earth orbit. According to Roscosmos, Angara-A5V could be used for piloted missions to the vicinity of the Moon and to its surface." In a sense, the race is now on between Angara-A5V and Falcon Heavy.
The government should not be run for profit. The government should be an alternative to markets, provide a safe haven for those who want to do things because they're interested in advancing knowledge, not selling something. Space exploration is in the General Welfare, not only for the 1%.
Hydrogen, even used chemically, could be quite useful (especially with detonation based rockets (constant volume combustion)) for large interplanetary spacecrafts once you have them in orbit. But NOT until we have them. For a launch vehicle? That doesn't make much sense. The tankage size and T/W requirements (pumping power proportional to pV!) speak against it.
Ezekiel 23:20
The gov't could at least lose less money if it issued its own currency (beyond just coins) instead of borrowing its money supply from privately owned banks.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
The "space truck" was actually a complete space station. It had living space for seven people, airlocks for EVAs, a shower and a toilet as well as having 20 tonnes of cargo space in the back of the "truck" and a payload arm/manipulator.
The Shuttle had considerable cross-range capability once in orbit with up to 18 tonnes of manoeuvering fuel (twice the total payload of a current Falcon 9) and could stay in orbit for up to a month if needed with a reduced crew. It did most of the heavy lifting of the construction of the ISS in orbit and carried out multiple Hubble repair and upgrade missions. At the end it came back down to Earth and landed on a runway.
The Dragon capsule is purely for canned monkeys with no toilet, no shower, no airlocks and no EVA capability. It has no cargo capacity, no manipulator arm, limited cross-range capacity in orbit and limited endurance and it certainly can't be used to carry out maintenance flights to the Hubble or its successors.
At about 10m15s in this press conference, Elon calls hydrogen a "pernicious molecule" while fielding a question about fuel cells. He also mentions some other drawbacks, such as its being odorless and invisible (so you can't smell when it's leaking), and it's extremely flammable... and burns with an invisible flame.
Hydrogen is very efficient as a rocket fuel, which is why it's used. But liquid methane is pretty good too, and has a lot fewer "issues" to deal with.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
This "four booter rocket" configuration is not new to the russians. It was introduced by Sergei Korlev http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S... already in the 50:s, with the R7 line of rockets http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R... . In fact, it was one such R7 carrier rocket (8K71PS) that launched Sputnik-1 (and -2) into orbit. The detachment of the booster rockts were such a common sight, that it got its own name: Korolev cross https://www.google.se/search?q....
The Shuttle never lived up to what it was sold as -- cheap, reliable access to space. The most damning evidence of that is that the only major sponsor/user besides NASA, the US Air Force, abandoned it as soon as its actual operational limitations became clear. The Air Force went to the expense of developing new large expendable launch vehicles rather than try to stick with the Shuttle. For the last few years the Shuttle had only one mission -- support the ISS, every other mission had been taken from it. And, the US had a perfectly viable space station program without the Shuttle -- Skylab, and for that matter, so did the Russians. Speaking of the Russians -- they figured out pretty quickly that the Space Shuttle concept was operationally a loser and abandoned their Buran version after one flight. So, the Shuttle looked good in the marketing slides from the 70's and early '80s, but has to be judged an operational failure by the standards set for its justifications to be built. The Shuttle could do things that no other vehicle can do, but those capabilities, such as its huge cross range landing capability, just turned out to be not very useful and not worth the cost.
As opposed to what? Private power companies that stage brownouts to drive up their own prices?
False dichotomy. Government monopolies and private monopolies are not the only alternatives. What seems to work best is to separate ownership of the grid (which is a natural monopoly) from power generation (which is not). Whether the grid is owned by the government or by a regulated private utility doesn't much matter. The grid owner charges a fee, which can vary with load, for transporting power from producer to consumer. But the production of power can be done by anyone that can meet the technical requirements of feeding power into the grid, including individual homeowners with extra solar power or residential micro-cogeneration.
The Dragon doesn't need any of those things. Its purpose is to take a few people into orbit and back and not to weigh too much in the process of doing so. The idea to put the things you mention onto something that has to be launched every time at a significant cost, and equipped with increased reentry facilities (which also have to be launched) to return all those things afterwards is preposterous. Shuttle's half-tonne arm alone has subtracted almost 60 tonnes of total payload from all the Shuttle flights (an equivalent of $3B). And the reason why you don't see the budget for anything beyond the Shuttle was formerly the effing Shuttle and now is the efffing SLS. The Shuttle completely killed most of the research in that particular area for decades. Today, the SLS is killing research in anything beyond refurbishing the Shuttle infrastructure. Smart move indeed!
Ezekiel 23:20
LOL!! The Fed may be independent of gov't but it's not independent of corporate plutocracy. Indeed, this is the crucial struggle of our times, wresting control of our politics and our economy from these fat-cat SOBs.
Get thee hence to Wolf-PAC.com and pitch in to help save our democracy from these blood-suckers.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC