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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.
SpaceX found that hydrogen fuel is not an improvement over methane when you include all the extra complexity (and weight) of dealing with super cold and very small atoms, both resulting in brittle metals. SpaceX does intend to switch to methane, which is a small improvement over kerosene, and unlike kerosene does not leave difficult to clean residue in pipes and engine parts.
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%.
There may be no current commercial need for the SLS, but you can bet that it will appear once the system launches successfully a few times.
At a total cost of way over $1B per flight (unless it flies more than once or twice per year, which is highly unlikely), you can be sure that even the 130 mt version of SLS will be in much smaller demand than a $100M semi-reusable Falcon Heavy with a ~40 mt capacity, or even the expendable ~$150M, ~55 mt version.
Ezekiel 23:20
while Russia is stuck with shitty Space-X sized rockets that only has commercial appeal.
Russia regularly launches Proton-M, which has a Shuttle-like LEO payload capability. With the exception of Apollo, it should have been able to launch any of those things, and at a much lower cost. The problem for the Russians is that they hoped that Angara would be cheaper than the Proton-M. In retrospect, achieving that turns out to be quite problematic. Angara's saving grace is that it is - yet again - a military rocket, and unlike Energia, it's a military rocket for which they have no replacement (at least not after the Proton gets retired). It could have commercial appeal, but if Falcon Heavy works out well, which is very, very likely, few people are going to bother with Angara. Between ITAR, costs, transportation issues, general shunning of doing business with Russia these day, etc., I'm not sure there's a lot of potential. It may very well end up just launching scores of spy sats.
Ezekiel 23:20
Well considering that we wasted a couple decades on a "space truck" that actually met NONE of its original goals, not weight carrying, not turn around, and not cost per load, and was designed more for passing pork than anything else (just like the new one, which is why so much shuttle shit is included despite the boosters being what killed Challenger) while the Soviets were able to build the most dependable rocket family in history with Soyuz?
Frankly I give them better odds than I do the USA as it seems the only projects NASA has been able to get done has been the ones that are small enough Senator Porkus and Congressman Bribaton haven't gotten a whiff of. With the amount of money being shat into SLS? It will end up with each widget being built in a different state (and some states having a widget per district) so you end up with a bloated whale that when it comes together will probably leak like a sieve and be only good for blasting money into space.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I'm not sure exactly what commercial uses there are for really heavy launches.
Economy of scale? But that's only worthwhile as long as the heavier launcher won't hit low launch frequencies and unsustainable infrastructure costs. Which is definitely the problem that the SLS will hit.
Comms and science do not need to be so large
Circular logic. Right, they don't need to be so large because we've learned to make them smaller...and we've learned to make them smaller because we had no choice, large rockets were prohibitively expensive. But that doesn't mean that, e.g., science couldn't use more capable vehicles. Science can always use more capable vehicles. Missions could be much easier with them (or even possible in the first place), and a cheaper larger launcher could make even the mission itself cheaper (besides launch costs).
Galileo would have gotten to Jupiter almost four years faster with Centaur-G instead of the less-capable solid stage it was forced to use. That meant extra four years of running (and paying) the mission team without results, and also four years less of hardware lifetime once the probe got to its destination. The Mars Science Laboratory wouldn't have had to use a working but convoluted and custom-designed landing system. In a few years, a payload of this size (or even somewhat larger) would simply use a "marsified" Dragon-derived lander with no parachute and just a longer segment of propulsive landing. It might weigh almost twice as much, but who cares?
You could use serially manufactured components instead of custom designs if you weren't forced to shave every kilogram.
Ezekiel 23:20
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.
See state owned power utilities regulated by the state that owns them for an example - eg. price rises of around 500% over 8 years and no alternative other than putting a solar panel on your roof.
As opposed to what? Private power companies that stage brownouts to drive up their own prices?
At least state owned power utilities have to face a public board of inquiry before they can raise their rates, and the state regulates how much of their income has to go to keeping their own services repaired. Unlike telecoms letting wired phone service wither because they can make more money on cellular.
Yeah, the private market has always been such an example of fairness and customer service. *eye roll*
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.
I forget which scientist was asked by a general if it had "military use, if it could protect America?" and he replied "no, but it will make America worth protecting."
This is the reason we should do things. Not for profit, for material gain, for defense, or any other flimsy reason. It should be done because it is beneficial to us all, because it advances us all as humans.