Codraroll

Dragon scales. You need 16 of them to craft a Dragon Spacecraft.

Capturing a picture of a person from 400 km away is impressive enough in its own right. But when that distance is straight up, and the person moves sideways 7.6 kilometers per second, it's really mind-blowing.

Really cool to see how SpaceX has evolved in the past decade or so. From a fledgling launch provider around 2010, to surpassing Roscosmos for the first time in 2017, to leaving it in the dust in recent years. If launches continue at the same pace for the remaining two thirds of 2022, Roscosmos is slated for 21 launches while SpaceX might surpass 50. Roscosmos, meanwhile, seems to be fairly stable around 20-25 launches per year until now (a number that might be affected by the unmentionable, it's too early to tell how much). Rogozin's plan to increase the number of launches beyond 40 after 2019 seems not to have come into fruition. I think the years ahead will be exciting, one way or the other.

In addition to what has previously been mentioned, it's also a matter of exposure time. If you just flew fast enough by the rocket plume (although not necessarily through it, as it would involve a rather painful collision with the ejected matter), you might survive to go much closer than you would if you approached it at walking pace. Then the question partially becomes a matter of how fast you can survive gliding through the air at atmospheric pressure, before the addition of exposure to a rocket plume makes things unsurvivable. I'm pretty sure this can be calculated somehow, but it is probably the kind of calculation that would involve your WolframAlpha account being soft banned.

This close to midnight (on the side where the distance keeps increasing), I forget where I heard it, but Starship can really be a game changer for Moon exploration. Mass constraints and a very high launch cost makes the space programs go to greath lengths to shave off a little bit of mass. It means custom-machined titanium parts, assembled by hand, to the tune of several tens of thousands of dollars, if it makes the equipment a few hundred grams lighter. All worth it because you only get to launch so many kilograms, at such a high cost, which means you get to do more stuff if you can fit more parts within the mass limit. And the high launch cost means that optimizing your equipment to do two things will almost always be cheaper than sending two different sets of equipment. But if Starship lets you launch a few tons to the moon in one go, for a comparably low price, then suddenly it makes less sense to spend a fortune on the hardware. No need to make a Moon excavator from scratch using custom-machined titanium parts, just modify some Caterpillar equipment off the shelf. If it doesn't work, buy another (cheap) and send it up (also cheap). Well, cheaper than doing it all from scratch yourself. Best thing is, Caterpillar itself might be capable of building it for you. Several terrestrial machine manufacturers already make equipment rated for extremely harsh conditions. Bores for deep-underground mines at boiling temperatures, rovers that inspect pools of corrosive chemicals, devices that poke into nuclear storage sites to collect practically-glowing debris, swimming robots that traverse thermal vents on the seafloor, extinguisher robots that crawl into hydrocarbon fires, injection pumps for oil wells rated to push soap into porous rock underneath a kilometer of salt water ... The Moon may be a harsh mistress, but there are some fiendishly tough environments on Earth as well, and we build equipment that work just fine in them. Building for the Moon wouldn't be an insurmountable challenge, if mass isn't a concern. The problem with space equipment at the moment is that payloads are built to match the limitations of the launch vehicles, and they have to be optimized around those limitations to give the greatest bang for the (considerable) buck it takes to buy a launch. But make it all cheaper, and suddenly the limits for what can be a payload changes dramatically. That makes payload manufacturing a lot more accessible, and it opens up space for a host of new ventures.

Problem is, none of them presently have the technology to send people to the Moon. It will have to be developed first. And by the current rate of development, it won't be Russia that develops all that technology. I think it's even a fair assumption that the Russian equipment will be the same in ten years as it is today (which is to say, pretty much the same as in 1980), if they even retain the knowledge about how to build it. A Moon project will be a Chinese solo run. What would they then need Russia for? (or to be even more sinister: what do they need Russia for at all, that they can't just waltz in and take for themselves?) My point is, the total funds and industrial capacity available to current Russia is less than what was available to the Soviet Union, in absolute and relative terms. It is a smaller country and economy these days, less self-sufficient (in a world with lesser opportunities for self-sufficiency for any countries, really), without the same option to commandeer the best and brightest to work in the sectors where the state needed people. These days, the good engineers go to the oil industry, or move abroad. It also seems to me that the Soviets didn't waste such large fractions of their space budget on, er, lets-be-generous-and-call-it-"management" (the aforementioned sports cars and offshore property). The space program is coasting on inherited wealth, designs, and know-how from much richer days, and all they can do is to maintain it. But it seems Russia does not have the necessary funds or skill base to take it out of stagnation. Not planning the funeral yet, but I'm curious to see what way forward could possibly cause matters to improve. Russia can't turn back into the Soviet Union, and reach a similarly dominant position. It's smaller on its own this time 'round, with less international support, and its peers have evolved. The government strategy of "we'll appoint my good buddy to this well-paid position and let his underlings sort out the practical details, how hard can it be?" is unlikely to change under the current government, and a new government might not have superficial national pride so high on the priority list that they will continue to fund such a luxury endeavour as a space program that can't keep up with its peers. I don't think there's any way I could respond to this while staying within the forum rules.

Bold of Rogozin to assume there will be funds to run Roscosmos for even a year from now in the first place. Jokes(?) aside, I really wonder how Russia's space program will be affected long-term by the ongoing unmentionable. It was not in a good shape before, and it was always questionable whether Russia would have the economy to sustain a domestic space program in the face of competition from the East and the West (especially considering how funds had a certain tendency to shrink along the way between the budget office and the launchpad). I think it wouldn't be too controversial to say that the Russian space program has not managed to innovate at a competitive rate. The Soyuz, while reliable, doesn't quite have the capabilities or the economic efficiency to give it an edge over comparable systems in the US or China. The development of successors has been troubled, to say the least. The global launch market is too small for Roscosmos to sustain itself on the crumbs left over when those two have finished gobbling up their shares. And now several customers have shut it out entirely (Europe), build their own systems instead (India), or they give too little business to provide much revenue anyway (the rest of the world). There has always been some discrepancy between how expensive a space program is and how small Russia's economy is (approximately the same GDP as Spain - before the unmentionable, now it's roughly on par with the Netherlands, but with nine times as many people to provide for). The Soviet Union could afford it, because they had a huge economy. Russia itself, on the other hand? It will have to be done on a shoestring budget, and you can't compete on a shoestring budget, especially when the management takes half the shoestring away to buy sports cars and offshore property.

Gotta wonder if the Russians will switch to metric artillery calibers eventually too. Due to the ongoing hullaballoo, Ukraine is running out of 152 mm shells, and the neighbouring ex-Soviet countries are emptying their stores to support Ukraine. But now everyone is running out of those, and NATO is re-supplying with 155 mm artillery ammo (and by necessity, guns) instead. Effectively, 152 mm ammo is phased out all over Europe, which means Russia is left having to maintain a supply chain for 152 mm ammo only for their own use, or make the switch themselves as well. There are a few other countries that still use 152 mm artillery, but those are being phased out all over the place too. 155 mm is emerging as the global standard, and recent events only serve to accelerate it.

More like a fanfic extension of Breaking Bad where the characters sample their goods a bit too generously and get the bright idea of expanding their organization to Mars.

Then what does it need an Orion for? Such a device would be a vastly superior propulsion system to the heavy and clunky Orion drive. You seem to have a strange fixation for trying to fit the Orion-shaped peg into any hole no matter the size. Also, the answer to your question: two missiles attacking simultaneously from different directions.

You could also turn that argument on its head, however, by noting that post-USSR Russia never came anywhere close to developing a space station or a reusable spacecraft or a heavy-lift rocket even when the economy was doing reasonably well. A lot of money went into ICBMs, though, but one can question whether it all got to be used for its intended purpose.

But you can't get a space station built in three months, though ...

Yes, but will it work at a time when the government itself is out of cash to give, the entire military is screaming for their share of what scant funds are left, and foreign components can't be sourced anymore? Unless the exchange above ends with the government handing Rogozin more than a shoe string, the space station won't get any closer to reality. They will probably reveal some grandiose plans and pretty drawings, but it doesn't help if there isn't any money to actually make a flight.

According to Wikipedia, Tu-141 were produced between 1979 and 1989, so by definition it would seem correct to call it Soviet-made.

Russia's future ability to construct and operate a space station.

As always, one can't fault Rogozin's optimism, at least.

The theory was that the drone is pre-programmed with waypoint coordinates. Whoever input the coordinates didn't want to spend several minutes looking it up on paper maps, but pulled out their phone and simply googled "coordinates of _____", and didn't notice they had looked up the wrong Jarun by mistake.

To quote somebody from another forum: Plausible? I don't know.

Infinite energy from every atomic reaction, that is. Depending on whether the "infinite" value of c is to be taken literally or just that it's really, really high, your cell metabolism would burn you to a crisp or even totally destroy the planet. That is, the planet would probably be destroyed by any number of other chemical reactions anyway, so total barbecue would be on the agenda regardless.

Trying not to break any forum rules, but let's just pretend there is a long-winded and colourfully worded rant below, saying how I don't really appreciate what's currently going on. Thanks for imagining.

That'd be a great way to ensure that absolutely nobody will let them cooperate on its successor. He's just making the usual bluster due to politics.

Back in the 1980s, nuclear power was becoming a serious competitor to fossil power. The fossil fuel companies poured millions into the anti-nuclear lobby and eagerly promoted a solar- and wind-powered future, because they knew this future would be decades away and fossil fuels would have free reign in the meantime. Now, solar and wind are here, so the pendulum swings the other way. The fossil companies have broken the nuclear lobby, to the point that they know it would take years of discussion, planning, and construction for nuclear plants to be built at a large scale again. Yet more years of uninterrupted, competition-free reign for fossil fuel power. So funding for nuclear enthusiasm is quietly raised a bit, while retaining some funds for the anti-nuclear crowd to slow things down to an appreciable pace. They will always try to promote the future that's 20 years away, because that gives them freedom to act with impunity in the meantime. It's a matter of dragging out the status quo for as long as possible.

Gonna guess the combustion suddenly got very engine rich during those tests.

The value of "it" has changed a bit, though. At first it was "achieving nuclear fusion", then it was "sustaining nuclear fusion", then it was "produce more energy than was used to start the reaction", and then "achieve a net energy production over time", and so on. The milestones seem to be always ten years away, but they also seem to arrive roughly every ten years as well. Granted, the number of steps between the next milestone and commercial utilization always seems to stay the same, though. And again, each step takes ten years.

It looks a bit promising, but it also contains one of the most disheartening sentences I've ever seen in a purportedly optimistic report on fusion technology: