kerbiloid Posted February 26, 2020 Share Posted February 26, 2020 A long launch lunch. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sh1pman Posted March 1, 2020 Share Posted March 1, 2020 We could have a fully reusable rocket with payload to LEO similar to Starship 30 years ago. Was too good to be true, I guess... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kerbiloid Posted March 2, 2020 Share Posted March 2, 2020 Two days ago the Assembly & Command Ship of the Sea Launch started from Long Beach to Slavyanka. ETA = March, 16. The launch platform Odyssey is loaded on Xin Guang Hua cargo ship and probably is still waiting in Long Beach. https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=ru&sl=ru&tl=en&u=https://www.rbc.ru/rbcfreenews/5e5a2fcc9a794729b8058e83 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted March 2, 2020 Share Posted March 2, 2020 21 hours ago, sh1pman said: We could have a fully reusable rocket with payload to LEO similar to Starship 30 years ago. Was too good to be true, I guess... Uragan, while a really nice idea, was a winged rocket, and would have had cost problems similar to Space Shuttle. Musk's innovation was landing rockets vertically, something very much infeasible at this scale 30 years ago. That's the reason the Baikal boosters have wings and the Zenit boosters for Energia would've used a combination of parachutes and solid braking motors. If the Russians could have landed them on their tail instead, they would have gone with that. Energia was already very expensive (especially for a Soviet design), and Uragan would've been more so. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sh1pman Posted March 2, 2020 Share Posted March 2, 2020 1 hour ago, Dragon01 said: Uragan, while a really nice idea, was a winged rocket, and would have had cost problems similar to Space Shuttle. Musk's innovation was landing rockets vertically, something very much infeasible at this scale 30 years ago. That's the reason the Baikal boosters have wings and the Zenit boosters for Energia would've used a combination of parachutes and solid braking motors. If the Russians could have landed them on their tail instead, they would have gone with that. Energia was already very expensive (especially for a Soviet design), and Uragan would've been more so. It was very expensive, true, but it’s the reason why they wanted to make it reusable. The boosters wouldn’t need much refurbishment before another launch as they’d only accelerate to ~3 km/s. It’s only the central hydrolox core that would need to have its heat shield checked and/or restored after every flight, similarly to Shuttle and Buran. Launch cost would go down significantly if both stages could survive many flights. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted March 2, 2020 Share Posted March 2, 2020 TPS alone was a major cost driver for the Shuttle. For Uragan, it would be much worse, since the thing was just that big. That's basically an entire ET covered with tiles, plus large wings. Flyback boosters, admittedly, were a cool idea, but compared to Space-X solution, had a lot of overhead in form of wings, wheeled landing gear and jet engines. Also, RD-170 was an oxidizer-rich staged combustion engine, and while the Russians are good at making those, refurbishing something that had hot oxygen pumped through it would not have been straightforward, especially since it's 90s tech made with 90s materials. This likely would have cut costs, but not nearly as much as it might seem, and probably not to Space-X levels. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sh1pman Posted March 2, 2020 Share Posted March 2, 2020 1 hour ago, Dragon01 said: TPS alone was a major cost driver for the Shuttle. For Uragan, it would be much worse, since the thing was just that big. That's basically an entire ET covered with tiles, plus large wings. Flyback boosters, admittedly, were a cool idea, but compared to Space-X solution, had a lot of overhead in form of wings, wheeled landing gear and jet engines. True. But they would need less fuel reserves than F9 boosters, since jet engines have ISP in high thousands. No grid fins and landing legs either. So I’m not sure which solution is worse for payload mass. 1 hour ago, Dragon01 said: Also, RD-170 was an oxidizer-rich staged combustion engine, and while the Russians are good at making those, refurbishing something that had hot oxygen pumped through it would not have been straightforward, especially since it's 90s tech made with 90s materials. Wiki says RD-170s were designed to be used for up to 10 flights each, but, obviously, there’s no data to support that. Maybe they did figure out how to reuse oxygen-rich stage combustion engines multiple times. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted March 2, 2020 Share Posted March 2, 2020 I'm not saying it's impossible, in fact, it was very much designed for reuse from the outset, and if the booster landing system had been installed, they likely would have been. I'm saying that it would have been more expensive than refurbishing SSMEs was. As for the rest, instead of grid fins and landing legs, you get control surfaces and wheeled landing gear. Same thing, just with a different mass distribution. You have to control it somehow, and you have to land on something. Might have been cheaper to develop, being familiar airplane tech, but don't expect major mass savings here. As for the jet engine, the sheer weight of the thing would cancel out any savings you'd get from not having to save fuel up for retroburn, and remember that they do need some fuel, too. Also, you lose the ability to switch the flight profile to disposable if you need the extra performance, unless, of course, you have a separate non-reusable booster variant (which, admittedly, they would have had, in form of Energia-M boosters). What Space-X does had been enabled recently, by advances in materials science, electronics and engineering that simply weren't there when the Soviets designed Uragan. As good as they were at these things, progress in all three areas (and many others, as well) had been very significant in recent years. It could have been done with the 90s tech, but at a much higher cost. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DDE Posted March 3, 2020 Share Posted March 3, 2020 Residents of Kaluga get their first close look at a tall Gagarin monument in decades... are shocked It's not clear when or how this happened, because it's not a camera issue, and his face did not use to look like that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dirkidirk Posted March 4, 2020 Share Posted March 4, 2020 2 hours ago, DDE said: Residents of Kaluga get their first close look at a tall Gagarin monument in decades... are shocked It's not clear when or how this happened, because it's not a camera issue, and his face did not use to look like that. what are you talking about? it looks just like him! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tater Posted March 4, 2020 Author Share Posted March 4, 2020 On 8/9/2019 at 2:53 PM, sh1pman said: I’m starting to think that ExoMars missions are cursed. The Curse of Rapid Involuntary Lithobraking. You may be right: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sh1pman Posted March 4, 2020 Share Posted March 4, 2020 20 hours ago, Dirkidirk said: what are you talking about? it looks just like him! It looks like a rock troll. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DDE Posted March 13, 2020 Share Posted March 13, 2020 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kerbiloid Posted March 14, 2020 Share Posted March 14, 2020 Spoiler On 3/4/2020 at 1:03 AM, DDE said: It's not clear when or how this happened, because it's not a camera issue, and his face did not use to look like that. At least, he's visible, unlike it was in Belgrad. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DDE Posted March 14, 2020 Share Posted March 14, 2020 ILS (the old Proton sales front) receives US State Department permission to promote Soyuz launch services (both the rocket and the ship). https://tass.ru/kosmos/7955389 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Codraroll Posted March 14, 2020 Share Posted March 14, 2020 4 hours ago, kerbiloid said: At least, he's visible, unlike it was in Belgrad. Yikes, that's the kind of statue you design when you have zero faith in your sculpting skills. Or just very little time to work, I guess. "Yes, it meets all your specifications. It's three meters tall, Gagarin's on it, and I got room for all the text for the plaque. Well, it's not really a plaque anymore..." Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kerbiloid Posted March 14, 2020 Share Posted March 14, 2020 6 minutes ago, Codraroll said: Yikes, that's the kind of statue you design when you have zero faith in your sculpting skills. Or just very little time to work, I guess. "Yes, it meets all your specifications. It's three meters tall, Gagarin's on it, and I got room for all the text for the plaque. Well, it's not really a plaque anymore..." Or they couldn't decide if the "3.5 m high monument" includes the "3 m high pedestal". Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DDE Posted March 17, 2020 Share Posted March 17, 2020 Luna-25 to launch October 1 2021 https://ria.ru/20200317/1568701598.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kerbiloid Posted March 17, 2020 Share Posted March 17, 2020 Spoiler Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DDE Posted March 17, 2020 Share Posted March 17, 2020 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DDE Posted March 17, 2020 Share Posted March 17, 2020 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DDE Posted March 18, 2020 Share Posted March 18, 2020 (edited) *Levitan voice engage!* ON THIS DAY 55 YEARS AGO ALEXEI LEONOV CONDUCTED THE FIRST EVA Bonus content: captain's log! https://www.roscosmos.ru/media/files/history/voshod2/1965-03-18_bort-jourmal.pdf Edited March 18, 2020 by DDE Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
XB-70A Posted March 20, 2020 Share Posted March 20, 2020 T-38 hours before the launch of OneWeb LSB2 1-to-34. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kerbiloid Posted March 20, 2020 Share Posted March 20, 2020 It's gray. Roscosmos prefers Tantares. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tater Posted March 21, 2020 Author Share Posted March 21, 2020 In a little over an hour. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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