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SunlitZelkova

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Everything posted by SunlitZelkova

  1. The company my dad works for has inventory at the Port of Baltimore. Their business will be impacted by the collapse of the bridge… it will be pretty bad
  2. I think the designs were certainly feasible, they just would have been super expensive and at a total disadvantage compared to expendable rockets of the era. Zero point in reusability. When I was researching my “The Quest For Rapid Reusability” thread I found that the fly back booster for the DC-3 was planned to use the same TPS as the Shuttle. The booster was huge, if the IRL Shuttle took months to service to be ready to fly again, the booster would take even longer. So even with dangerous testing set aside, such proposals would not be economical. As I said in another thread; the discussion about how the Soviets could never have landed on the Moon ahead of the US, I believe that both in the USSR and US spaceflight proposals were completely out of touch with the economics of the time. Despite being the world’s two superpowers, they were still not developed enough to be able to support extensive, sustained space exploration. Maybe reusable spacecraft that actually are competitive with or better than expendable rockets could have been achieved by the 1980s, for example using my proposal in the Quest thread: just build so many vehicles you can have one ready to fly every week even if that means 20 are in processing at all times. But to support and sustain that architecture you’d need to somehow take the national economy from the 1970s into 21st century levels in the span of a decade. Otherwise there would not be enough to build and maintain so many spacecraft.
  3. TIL. Reading more on Wikipedia led me to these too similarly shocking incidents- Pinnacle Airlines Flight 3701, where the pilots took it to an unsafe altitude for fun (to join the “club” of pilots who had done so), and Aeroflot Flight 6502, where the captain bet he could do an instrument only landing and thus closed the blinds of the aircraft. No passengers were onboard in the first incident, but both crew were killed. 63 passengers died in the second one and seven more in hospitals. The co-pilot had a heart attack shortly afterward but the captain survived and was sentenced to 15 years in prison, but it was reduced to 6. All that brings to mind the 684th Guards Fighter Aviation Regiment, which was actually disbanded in 1989 because of an accident in July 1988 that killed civilians in Tiraspol. I don’t know the details but it must have been pretty serious to warrant such action.
  4. Say what you want about old space but they were totally justified in knocking down this proposal. Shuttle showed that reusability with 1970s technology was not what it was cracked up to be. X-33 went on to show 80s and 90s tech wasn’t up to the task either. If Ariane group had tried to get state funding for this, I don’t think we would have gotten a European module for Space Station Freedom/ISS. EDIT- When it comes to quite a few decisions I think it’s fine to say, “Gee, would have been nice if it would be this way,” but to say that the people who made the decisions were dumb is to judge them with hindsight, which is unfair. Even everyone (ULA, Ariane… whoever else was looking to build a next gen rocket)’s decision to forgo reusability in the late 2000s and early 2010s even as Falcon 9 reusability dev was ongoing were justified IMO. Unfortunate, but made with reasoning that was sound at the time.
  5. @sevenperforce, in the SpaceX thread you said fusion propulsion could be done with the political will to do so. Two questions- 1. Are there any good articles you know of that can introduce a laymen to this particular type of propulsion? 2. About how long has this been feasible? That is, what’s the earliest date we could have started working on it had the political will been there? Asking for my alternate history where there is more dedication to spaceflight in the 20th century and the political will might be there by the 2000s or 2010s.
  6. https://x.com/isro/status/1770998585003512045?s=46&t=Jd73T2beq0JLNtwTy1uR5A Indian test vehicle “Pushpak” undergoes more successful tests. India will soon join the club and both China and the US currently have small, unmanned space planes on orbit right now. We’re waiting for you Russia! Also, I bet if Japan was more militarily independent, we might have seen the HOPE-X spaceplane demonstrators evolve into an X-37B style platform.
  7. Not necessarily. Back in the 80s planners were considering 400 mile expeditions using pressurized rovers. I think they will treat the rover as a spacecraft- just like in space, if your spacecraft fails you’re done, if the rover fails you’re done. But you don’t do pseudo-suborbital flights just for safety reasons instead of going to full orbit, and you don’t limit a rover’s travel range because of safety reasons either. The only reason Apollo had to remain with walking distance with their rover was because it wasn’t pressurized. Thus the endurance of the suit was the main limiting factor. The whole point of a pressurized rover is to basically have a spacecraft or base on wheels, so you can go as far as you want. Maybe in the early missions they would stay within walking distance for tests, but eventually they would expand to multi-day 100+ mile expeditions.
  8. Lack of interest in doing things you usually enjoy can be a symptom of it though. On the other hand, watching mindless content and doing nothing are pretty normal methods of filling empty time.
  9. I'd be wary of treating any sci-fi as having had "predicted the future." It could birth a habit of believing present day sci-fi works can "predict the future," thus leading to them becoming self-fulfilling prophecies. There's too much fatalism in the world. The future is in our hands, if we stop falling for dogmas and work together to fix problems instead of putting band aids over them.
  10. That thing was cancelled. Japan will be developing a new pressurized rover with Toyota.
  11. If it succeeded they'd be forced to use it a little bit, but by cancelling it before it could have a successful flight they could write off the program as hopeless. It was probably a good thing though, because if N1 succeeded there might not have been Mir, only more failed lunar flights. I see what your thinking. Wasn't the R-7 mass produced though? There were like a thousand launches in the 70s because of that satellite mapping program I forget the name of. I think this is feasible if Stalin died a little earlier, and wasn't able to sign the decree authorizing the development of the R-6. Maybe Chelomei wouldn't have lost his bureau then too.
  12. Thank you for the informative post. Good point. I think most of their plans were feasible in theory but matched up with neither the political commitment or economic feasibility, along with underlying issues with Soviet technology. I didn't know that, that's interesting to know. The N1 was mainly cancelled because the CPSU and military did not care for it after the Americans beat them. Three days before Mishin was even dismissed, Grechko signed an order forbidding further launches. Glushko also desired to spite Korolyov's work because of his bad relationship with him. Actual questions of whether it was useful played little role in deciding to cancel it. Former VPK head Smirnov said in 1991 that the leadership was afraid it would succeed, and that's why they cancelled it. Saturn rockets were so expensive they had to be cancelled, I think Delta would be a better example of industrialism. Even Titan wasn't launched that often. UR series is an example of industrialism, but we'll never know if Energia could have been because there wasn't a healthy economy to fund it. We'll never know if N1 was industrial or not. It was crafted in segments in Kuybyshev and then shipped to Baikonur for assembly. But they never really had a regular production line like Saturn did, instead producing a couple rockets at a time only. 15 Saturn Vs were ordered and all were built between 1965 and 1968, but 16 of the N1 were ordered and only three were on hand after 1966-1969, and then one at a time over the next couple years. The 10th one wasn't even complete by 1974. If it worked they would have used it for something, and the upgrades with better upper stages were viable. Blok SR could take 24 tons to the Moon. It still would require a docking though. Like I said, the 60s was barnyard rocketry. Saturn V, N1, Vulkan were all too ahead of their time. The economy wasn't there to support such a large program. Apollo and L3 might as well have been the GIRD-09s of the 1960s. They weren't feasible in the long term. Vulkan was a crazy proposal on Glushko's part considering he just cancelled a lunar base program. Even Energia was questionable for lunar missions. The Energia based Moon mission still had a separate LOK and LK, just like L3M, that needed to dock in orbit around the Moon. On the other hand, there was more experience with dockings from Salyut by that time, so maybe it wouldn't be as dangerous.
  13. That’s difficult when you yourself have brought up political topics like how much a government can intervene in a family’s right to choose when and the debate on capitalism, which are literally politics. This has nothing to do with science or spaceflight.
  14. I was gonna hold off on replying but I feel like this could be a fun discussion. So, Successful flight of the N1 might not have allowed a lunar landing (apparently all of the ones that flew but the last one did not even have a throw weight high enough to even carry both the LOK and LK), especially considering that given the L1 had all the problems it did with solar panels, who knows how many issues the LOK would have had with its fuel cells. On the other hand the LK was tested in LEO in 1971 and worked perfectly. But anyways, what a successful N1 flight would allow would be the launch of MKBS, the modular space station made of roughly two Skylab sized modules. So stations would not have slowed down, especially considering a number of DOS and OPS failed during or shortly after launch in the 70s. They had plans for the L3M complex, launched on a variant of the N1 with a hydrogen upper stage. Because of the death of Isayev and potential problems with fuel cells, it probably wouldn’t have succeeded, but in theory, the N1 could be upgraded. The 60s was basically barn yard rocketry anyways. Saturn V was never meant to be sustainable and neither would N1 be. They were both way ahead of their time. It’s very possible that even if the N1 did have a successful flight, say around 1971, it would have been cancelled anyway like the Saturn V was. So my 80s Moon base tale at the end of the post was a fantasy. But it’s fun to dream.
  15. https://x.com/cnspaceflight/status/1770252121784701029?s=46&t=Jd73T2beq0JLNtwTy1uR5A Queqiao-2 lunar relay satellite lifts off on a Long March 8 from Wenchang. Chang’e 6 lunar sample return mission to the South Pole will follow soon! The various parts of the Long March 5 have already arrived at Hainan for assembly.
  16. I feel like that was just a ploy for media attention. ”Beating Elon to Mars” is so vague it could mean anything. *FH launches probe to Mars* “Um, actually we meant humans.” *Starship launches humans to Mars* “Um, actually we meant building a base or colony.” *SpaceX builds small outpost on Mars* “Um, actually we were talking about how we already beat them to Mars by holding shares in ULA which launched Perseverance before Starship even flew lolololo.”
  17. Apparently not a MAX, but an Alaska 737, also in the Portland area, arrived with at the airport cracked windshield. https://www.koin.com/news/portland/alaska-airlines-flight-cracked-windshield-safe-landing/
  18. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5ef8124031cfcf448b11db32/t/5f1c3d55d311d6348af232b6/1595686238201/Siddiqi+What+if+Korolev+Had+Lived+2019.pdf Article from Quest magazine by leading American historian of the Soviet space program Dr. Asif Siddiqi. He paints a picture of what he thinks would have happened if Korolyov lived (For All Mankind's premise) based on his years of research. Even if he survived the surgery, he probably would have only lived for a few months. But for the sake of the scenario he assumed he lives 2 to 3 years longer. 1. Voskhod-3 and Voskhod-4 fly, with Voskhod-3 having two crew and breaking the spaceflight duration record again and Voskhod-4 having an all female crew. 2. There is an attempt to launch a 7K-L1 (Zond) with a crew in early December 1968 ahead of Apollo, but it would probably fail because historically the booster that would have been used had issues and failed to launch the payload it had IRL. 3. The N1 might have flown in 1968 on schedule due to better quality control under Korolyov's management, but it would still explode anyways, the only difference is when. At a "maniacal pace of work" the N1 might have had a successful flight by the end of 1969 but not in time to beat Apollo. That assumes a lot of luck, something the Soviets didn't have much of. IIRC both the Soyuz-1 and Soyuz-11 disasters' investigations stated the circumstances that allowed the accident to happen were almost inexplicable. This might have been a way of saving the workers responsible for the spacecraft, but the details do make it seem that way. (The following is my speculation) It's a cool scenario though, because if the N1 succeeded, it probably would have continued development despite not allowing them to be first, leading to a three man Soviet lunar landing around 1974 or a little later. The Soviets then might build their own lunar base instead of embarking on the pointless Buran project, prompting the Americans to return to the Moon in the 1980s or 1990s.
  19. https://www.lpi.usra.edu/publications/books/sovietReach/index.pdf A brief history of the Soviet Moonshot project, for anyone uninitiated and interested.
  20. Do we know if it was in the predetermined spots though? What is the possibility there wasn't enough control (and clearly was not enough control of Starship during reentry) that it went outside the designated landing/impact zones?
  21. You would be mistaken because none of that is different from any other social media app. Facebook asks for access to my contacts all the time, among other things. I have also granted it access to my location to make tagging local businesses easy when I post. I agree it is a security threat, but I don't think banning it is the best course. For one thing it echoes what China does to its own people with X and other Western social media apps, second, if it's a problem for government employees and journalists, government employees and journalists just need to not use it. Are they that stupid that the government has to outlaw something that is a danger to them instead of being able to handle it on their own? What's next? Outlawing relationships for government employees and journalists because both romantic partners and friends could compromise them?
  22. So I’m assuming when I write some space alternate histories I can take liberties with the way some celestial events happen. For example, I assume asteroids bouncing around the solar system during its early era was so chaotic, an asteroid or comet (I can’t remember which I was told it would be off the top of my head) could have hit Mars and given it the thick atmosphere needed for the 1950s glider missions to succeed. But what about solar activity? Is that pretty random (like how weather can be plausibly altered in alternate history) or is it something you can expect to happen no matter what? Kinda like how the isthmus of Panama was always going to form, and you can’t really write it away without going into fantasy territory when it comes to tectonics. I ask because there was a big CME in 1973, which would have ruined the Apollo Manned Venus Flyby project. I’m wondering if an alternate history in which it succeeds would be more realistic writing away the CME or just having the astronauts all die.
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