Energia-Buran

[KAL 9000]

4 hours ago, Nibb31 said:

Because it doesn't make any economical sense. It was only used a handful of times to recover failed satellits, and each time it would have been cheaper to simply replace the broken bird with a new one. Developing the EVA procedures and chartering a mission for that sole purpose was expensive, and with hindsight, dangerous.

It was quite obvious from the beginning that the military and space-station tending missions that were envisioned for the Shuttle were simply not feasible economically. For most of its life, It was left to work as a mini-station (Spacelab/Spacehab) or to deliver commercial and government satellites, which was a waste of resources, and finally to build the ISS.

As I said, the whole point of the US Shuttle was to bring back those engines for reuse. Without that capability, you'd be better off with a manned capsule and a disposable cargo bay below it, or even better, launch cargo and crew on separate vehicles. 

Which is what they thought the Americans had a military use for. They knew that it didn't make any sense economically.

The Shuttle actually flew mostly on autopilot. It only really needed a pilot to deploy the landing gear. Reentry wouldn't have even been possible manually.

For any real Shuttle mission, flying unmanned was rather pointless anywat, since the main point of a manned vehicle is to bring back the crew. For cargo missions, you don't need a Shuttle. 

They were wrong in trying to copy the Shuttle's downmass capability, as it turned out to not be very useful at all. The only thing of value that Buran could have brought back was the crew, and you don't need an 80 ton spaceplane for that. They should have stuck with their more affordable BOR/Spiral design.

 

The one case where it made sense to send up a Shuttle repair mission was with HST. Basically: Hey, it costs a billion dollars and only the Shuttle can launch it! Why don't we get the Shuttle to fix it without a billion more dollars down the drain!

[fredinno]

43 minutes ago, KAL 9000 said:

The one case where it made sense to send up a Shuttle repair mission was with HST. Basically: Hey, it costs a billion dollars and only the Shuttle can launch it! Why don't we get the Shuttle to fix it without a billion more dollars down the drain!

Except launching another Hubble cost about the same amount.

Quote

From its original total cost estimate of about US$400 million, the telescope had by now cost over $2.5 billion to construct.

Quote

Cost per launch	US$ 450 million (2011)

$450 Million + 5 servicing missions= 2.2 Billion, excluding mission operations and replacement parts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_Space_Telescope

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle

Edited April 20, 2016 by fredinno

[fredinno]

5 hours ago, Nibb31 said:

They were wrong in trying to copy the Shuttle's downmass capability, as it turned out to not be very useful at all. The only thing of value that Buran could have brought back was the crew, and you don't need an 80 ton spaceplane for that. They should have stuck with their more affordable BOR/Spiral design.

The Shuttle's downmass would have been great for asteroid mining, or large space stations (over 30 people).

Neither happened.  

[ProximaCentauri12]

On 4/18/2016 at 9:56 AM, Blackhog said:

Why did the Angara win against the Energia M?

Because the Energia is not a commercially competitive vehicle, and is far beyond Roscosmos's ability to fund.

[DECQ]

Thank you pages the author, this is what I have repeatedly tried to say here that this project could replace all the rocket in the world, because he could take out any cargo, enjoy the size and weight, can be partially or fully reusable, able to display large spaceships almost any shape and weight. The most underrated Rocket, I do not know but other than Buran on this forum almost no one knows about this system.
Do not forget about a series of rocket Deitron based Energia , which could display and tons of 20/40/50, on the same basis of the Groza Rocket, which could output 60 tons, in fact cleaned two side block and all the same infrastructure for virtually all these rocket, with the exception of The Zenit, and Vulkan.
About Ukrainian The Zenit, CCCP trouble was that no one knew about the imminent collapse ...

[Kryten]

We know about the system, there's just not much point actually talking about it. It didn't actually  do much of anything, and the intermittent reports of it's revival are not credible.

[Emperor of the Titan Squid]

Does anybody here know what the first Energiia payload was? it was an orbital battle station, with machine guns and lasers.

[A35K]

On 4/19/2016 at 11:48 AM, Nibb31 said:

Baikonur Cosmodrome belongs to Kazahkstan, not Russia

Except Russia leases it from Kazakhstan, so that land is still owned by Russia...

5 minutes ago, WildLynx said:

Without machine-guns and with non-functioning laser. And it ended with failure.

It was intended to be orbital laser weapon, but they failed to finish it before they need to launch something on Energia, so they launched it as-is.

Wasn't there a Soviet space station, the Salyut 3, that had a gun which they fired? I think it is the only weapon to be fired in space (that we know of).

[Nibb31]

The Polyus payload is still rather secretive and was part of the Soviet response to Reagan's SDI ("Star Wars"). The lasers were designed to destroy US SDI satellites.

The Polyus spacecraft was mounted upside down on the Energia rocket, so it was supposed to rotate 180° after separation to circularize its orbit, but due to a software bug, it rotated 180° twice and deorbited itself. Typical Kerbal error.

Edited May 1, 2016 by Nibb31

[A35K]

4 minutes ago, WildLynx said:

Baikonur belongs to Kazakhstan, it's only rented by Russia.

One of the Salyut station had a an aircraft cannon, and they fired it once, when no one was aboard.

Polus was failed attempt to build a laser weapon.

Ok, it is technically owned by Kazakhstan, but it is managed by Russia.

[YNM]

On 4/18/2016 at 9:39 PM, Blackhog said:

So I was reading stuff about the Energia rocket and the Buran.

... And I am sitting here, and thinking that the Russians built a rocket 30 years ago, that was basically the Falcon Heavy, the SLS, the Space Shuttle,*Ariane V and the Atlas V all in one. ...

... Other than economic ones of course, Is there reason at all, Why the Energia is nothing more than a forgotten relic?

Unluckily, the world relies on economy. There's a reason why we have trades, and economy is something that stems out directly from trades.

And, to be honest, Falcon is a better idea - the recovered tin-can boosters are basically free to be directly taken and re-disposed. In another rocket launch. And you can couple some of them to make even stronger, faster, better LV. Not to mention if the "free launch" boosters are recovered again... cheaper than Shuttle and Buran, or even the whole Energia.

[Emperor of the Titan Squid]

On 5/1/2016 at 10:17 AM, A35K said:

Except Russia leases it from Kazakhstan, so that land is still owned by Russia...

Wasn't there a Soviet space station, the Salyut 3, that had a gun which they fired? I think it is the only weapon to be fired in space (that we know of).

Yes, there was,

 

On 5/1/2016 at 10:09 AM, WildLynx said:

Without machine-guns and with non-functioning laser. And it ended with failure.

It was intended to be orbital laser weapon, but they failed to finish it before they need to launch something on Energia, so they launched it as-is.

I know, it spun  out of control when it reached orbit, and reentred.

[DDE]

On ‎18‎.‎04‎.‎2016 at 6:05 PM, Nibb31 said:

The Energia variants that you mention were never more than paper rockets, which are always better than real ones.

* cough cough * The Soviets still wasted a lot of time carting this around:

On ‎03‎.‎05‎.‎2016 at 1:07 AM, WildLynx said:

Polus was dysfunctional form the start - it was lacking some major components needed to be operational.

Like the, uh, laser cannon. Actually, it was initially supposed to be just a concrete slab, but it rapidly turned into an assembly of experimental and off-the-shelf systems.

[Nibb31]

That looks more like a mockup than a real rocket.

[DDE]

8 hours ago, Nibb31 said:

That looks more like a mockup than a real rocket.

Correct, but at least it shows they were serious about the project. They similarly rated the facilities to handle the eight-booster Vulkan.

[PB666]

15 hours ago, DDE said:

* cough cough * The Soviets still wasted a lot of time carting this around:

Like the, uh, laser cannon. Actually, it was initially supposed to be just a concrete slab, but it rapidly turned into an assembly of experimental and off-the-shelf systems.

We should care about this because?

[wumpus]

 

 

On 4/20/2016 at 7:59 AM, Nibb31 said:

Because it doesn't make any economical sense. It was only used a handful of times to recover failed satellits, and each time it would have been cheaper to simply replace the broken bird with a new one. Developing the EVA procedures and chartering a mission for that sole purpose was expensive, and with hindsight, dangerous.

It was quite obvious from the beginning that the military and space-station tending missions that were envisioned for the Shuttle were simply not feasible economically. For most of its life, It was left to work as a mini-station (Spacelab/Spacehab) or to deliver commercial and government satellites, which was a waste of resources, and finally to build the ISS.

As I said, the whole point of the US Shuttle was to bring back those engines for reuse. Without that capability, you'd be better off with a manned capsule and a disposable cargo bay below it, or even better, launch cargo and crew on separate vehicles. 

Which is what they thought the Americans had a military use for. They knew that it didn't make any sense economically.

The Shuttle actually flew mostly on autopilot. It only really needed a pilot to deploy the landing gear. Reentry wouldn't have even been possible manually.

For any real Shuttle mission, flying unmanned was rather pointless anywat, since the main point of a manned vehicle is to bring back the crew. For cargo missions, you don't need a Shuttle. 

They were wrong in trying to copy the Shuttle's downmass capability, as it turned out to not be very useful at all. The only thing of value that Buran could have brought back was the crew, and you don't need an 80 ton spaceplane for that. They should have stuck with their more affordable BOR/Spiral design.

I was under the impression that an automatic pilot was available for some shuttles (it was a kludge that would take up most of the seating space.  All it presumably did was use a servo on one side to flick some switches on the other), but not the doomed Columbia (had they been able to launch a rescue, which they really couldn't).

One thing to remember was that NASA simply wouldn't launch things into space any other way.  Military and commercial launches were possible, but NASA missions (such as to other planets and other scientific missions) would put 7 lives in danger just to fire up the space truck.  I understand that lead scientists lost a lot of sleep worrying about this (not to mention anybody connected with the two lost shuttles).

And while shuttle downmass might sound useful for mining, I'd hate to think what the end price/pound of shuttle-delivered downmass would be.  Adding a heatshield, fairing, and some balancing weights could make asteroid mining possible (assuming an ion-drive hauled the thing into Earth capture), I can't see a shuttle covering the costs.  Obviously a well packed (with the inevitable chance of killing 30 or so at once) shuttle to a space station would make sense, but building the ISS was still a large project for the shuttle and a ~6 person ISS was about all it could build (perhaps a Saturn-launched space station with Skylab-sized parts would be different.  But a lot would have been different with Saturn, much like Energia).

[PB666]

what a bunckmof bunk.

[Northstar1989]

On 4/20/2016 at 7:59 AM, Nibb31 said:

Because it doesn't make any economical sense. It was only used a handful of times to recover failed satellits, and each time it would have been cheaper to simply replace the broken bird with a new one. Developing the EVA procedures and chartering a mission for that sole purpose was expensive, and with hindsight, dangerous.

It was quite obvious from the beginning that the military and space-station tending missions that were envisioned for the Shuttle were simply not feasible economically. For most of its life, It was left to work as a mini-station (Spacelab/Spacehab) or to deliver commercial and government satellites, which was a waste of resources, and finally to build the ISS.

As I said, the whole point of the US Shuttle was to bring back those engines for reuse. Without that capability, you'd be better off with a manned capsule and a disposable cargo bay below it, or even better, launch cargo and crew on separate vehicles. 

Which is what they thought the Americans had a military use for. They knew that it didn't make any sense economically.

The Shuttle actually flew mostly on autopilot. It only really needed a pilot to deploy the landing gear. Reentry wouldn't have even been possible manually.

For any real Shuttle mission, flying unmanned was rather pointless anywat, since the main point of a manned vehicle is to bring back the crew. For cargo missions, you don't need a Shuttle. 

They were wrong in trying to copy the Shuttle's downmass capability, as it turned out to not be very useful at all. The only thing of value that Buran could have brought back was the crew, and you don't need an 80 ton spaceplane for that. They should have stuck with their more affordable BOR/Spiral design.

 

The downmass capabilities would have been economically worthwhile it the Shuttle's originally envisioned role- as the linchpin of an entire NETWORK of space transportation systems- in fact that's why the Shuttle was called STS (short for Space Transportation System)- because it was originally part of a vision for an entire SYSTEM of getting things around the Solar System and Earth orbit that included not only the Shuttle, but also a network of stations (starting with an ISS-like station, but eventually expanding to include many more), a Nuclear Thermal Tug for orbit-to-orbit operations, and much more...

If the Shuttle had come at the eve of an era of heavy space exploitation, we might have found an economical use for it.  Asteroid-mining recovery operations for one: there are Near-Earth asteroids which are RICH in valuable elements including Platinum and far more valuable elements still than even that.  If we have started asteroid mining in the 1970's, the shuttle could have carried down the separated metals (since it wouldn't make sense to bring down from orbit useless tons of rock- you would just want to carry down the purified elements) in quite considerable quantities on each mission, for instance.

Sadly, Nixon slashed most of the STS plans and we never made it further than the Moon.  We didn't develop the huge network of space infrastructure that was expected after the Apollo era, and thus the Shuttle didn't make real economic sense, and couldn't have even if it had been built and developed in a more efficient matter (and made use of simpler, lower-performance engines that would have been much cheaper to refurbish).

The Shuttle's development process and the manufacture of its components also became a political process, "gold-plated" to hear the engineers write in their memo's years later...  The components of the shuttle were developed and manufactured all over the country, not where it made sense but where important congressional districts were located or represented by a powerful politician, in an inefficient process designed to create high-paying jobs and not a cost-effective product, and then had to be shipped from all over the country to be assembled with no thought to cost-efficiency in the manufacture.  If the Shuttle development, manufacturing, and refurbishing had been optimized for cost and centralized in the kind of way SpaceX optimizes and centralizes its production of Falcon 9 rockets, then it would have been a much more economical system...

 

A final note- the Buran Shuttle could fly entirely on autopilot, but this doesn't mean it wouldn't have carried crew, as you implied.  In fact the Buran Shuttle had a much larger crew-capacity than STS (and none of them had to be trained pilots- which meant they could send up more scientists in their place!  Think of the equivalent in KSP- a manned ship controlled by a probe core rather than a pilot to save mass or increase crew capacity), as well as a larger cargo bay that could hold more payload than STS too.  This was, as I stated, the result of removing the engines from the reusable spaceplane and putting larger, lower-performing, cheaper ones on the disposable boosters (although it is true, the Russians also had plans to try and recover the boosters on later missions- in a system more similar to SpaceX's booster recovery or the re-use of the American Shuttle SSRB's than the much more costly and less efficient spaceplane landings of the American Shuttle...)

 

Best Regards,

Northstar

Edited June 28, 2016 by Northstar1989

[viktor19]

5 hours ago, Northstar1989 said:

If the Shuttle had come at the eve of an era of heavy space exploitation, we might have found an economical use for it.  Asteroid-mining recovery operations for one: there are Near-Earth asteroids which are RICH in valuable elements including Platinum and far more valuable elements still than even that.  If we have started asteroid mining in the 1970's, the shuttle could have carried down the separated metals (since it wouldn't make sense to bring down from orbit useless tons of rock- you would just want to carry down the purified elements) in quite considerable quantities on each mission, for instance.

It's important to distinguish the original (STS, 1969) Shuttle from the final (1972) design of Shuttle. The original Shuttle was supposed to be a small spaceplane with payload capacity of 5,000 kg and crew capacity of 10 (maybe, can't find the source).

IMHO 1969 Shuttle wouldn't make sense to ferry (just 5 tons of) metals to surface, and 1972 Shuttle was, of course, unbelievably expensive.  

[wumpus]

53 minutes ago, viktor19 said:

It's important to distinguish the original (STS, 1969) Shuttle from the final (1972) design of Shuttle. The original Shuttle was supposed to be a small spaceplane with payload capacity of 5,000 kg and crew capacity of 10 (maybe, can't find the source).

IMHO 1969 Shuttle wouldn't make sense to ferry (just 5 tons of) metals to surface, and 1972 Shuttle was, of course, unbelievably expensive.  

Paper spacecraft are always better than real spacecraft.  STS (1972) made 100+ flights.  Being unbelievably expensive meant that Congress would face a huge "sunk cost fallacy" in trying to kill it (and probably lead to all those flights).  Be it politics or marketing, getting people to pay for things changes how things get done in weird ways.

[viktor19]

1 hour ago, wumpus said:

Paper spacecraft are always better than real spacecraft.  STS (1972) made 100+ flights.  Being unbelievably expensive meant that Congress would face a huge "sunk cost fallacy" in trying to kill it (and probably lead to all those flights).  Be it politics or marketing, getting people to pay for things changes how things get done in weird ways.

Akin's laws proving themselves once more...

http://spacecraft.ssl.umd.edu/akins_laws.html