totm dec 2019 Russian Launch and Mission Thread

[kerbiloid]

10 minutes ago, sh1pman said:

At which point will you agree that it’s a proven project? Orbital flight?

I guess, as it's supposed to be a LEO cargo launch vehicle, so at least a flight as a LEO cargo launch vehicle?

Edited June 20, 2021 by kerbiloid

[tater]

 

[YNM]

Manned Soyuz launch from Kourou ?

I mean it'll be really interesting if it works that way, ESA would have to be involved as well...

[DDE]

1 hour ago, YNM said:

ESA would have to be involved as well...

This may be the bigger half of the motivation for the plan - to get ESA indirectly involved with supporting Tiangong, the prime target of the Wolfe amendment. Would also be an icebreaker for any minor space programs cooperating with CNSA.

I think it's a non-starter.

[SunlitZelkova]

2 hours ago, YNM said:

Manned Soyuz launch from Kourou ?

I mean it'll be really interesting if it works that way, ESA would have to be involved as well...

Some ESA astronauts have already conducted training in China so it would not be an issue. *Italy* (not ESA) has proposed a module for the CSS.

[YNM]

4 hours ago, DDE said:

This may be the bigger half of the motivation for the plan - to get ESA indirectly involved with supporting Tiangong

If they do that'd be great honestly. ESA (or the member states' programmes, so CNES, DLR and ASI as the largest ones) have history of not necessarily aligning with US-imposed restrictions so it's good news for those who wish for co-operation.

3 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

*Italy* (not ESA) has proposed a module for the CSS.

Heh, circumventing ITAR again...

 

Though I suppose this means some modules/Progress spacecraft that'd feature the chinese docking system ? Or are they just going to put in the orbital module of Shenzou on top of a Progress, and would be the base of any sort of modules others would probably send ?

[kerbiloid]

6 hours ago, YNM said:

Manned Soyuz launch from Kourou ?

What for? Great efforts to visit a foreign Mir-derived station? While saving money on visiting the existing ISS?
Excessive delta-V to rotate the orbit plne before deorbiting to land on the domestic territory? Or dependency on another one's co-operation if land on the foreign one?
Unlikely. They just investigate a theoretical possibility of what-if.

6 hours ago, YNM said:

ESA would have to be involved as well...

If ESA has enough money for two space station programs at once. As the American one is an obvious priority from any pov.

3 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

Some ESA astronauts have already conducted training in China so it would not be an issue.

Some of them had flown to Salyuts. 

3 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

*Italy* (not ESA) has proposed a module for the CSS.

To be owned by whom?

A more realistic step: instead, China builds a new module using Italian technologies. Italy gets thanked.

27 minutes ago, YNM said:

not necessarily aligning with US-imposed restrictions

The restrictions stay, the manufacturer still needs the future American projects more than a single experiment instead.

[SunlitZelkova]

4 hours ago, YNM said:

If they do that'd be great honestly. ESA (or the member states' programmes, so CNES, DLR and ASI as the largest ones) have history of not necessarily aligning with US-imposed restrictions so it's good news for those who wish for co-operation.

Heh, circumventing ITAR again...

 

Though I suppose this means some modules/Progress spacecraft that'd feature the chinese docking system ? Or are they just going to put in the orbital module of Shenzou on top of a Progress, and would be the base of any sort of modules others would probably send ?

It would probably be easier just to build a Soyuz/Progress with the Chinese docking system. Despite the similarity and the fact that Shenzhou was developed with the aid of Soyuz technology directly from Russia, it still isn't entirely compatible.

3 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

What for? Great efforts to visit a foreign Mir-derived station? While saving money on visiting the existing ISS?
Excessive delta-V to rotate the orbit plne before deorbiting to land on the domestic territory? Or dependency on another one's co-operation if land on the foreign one?
Unlikely. They just investigate a theoretical possibility of what-if.

If ESA has enough money for two space station programs at once. As the American one is an obvious priority from any pov.

Some of them had flown to Salyuts. 

To be owned by whom?

A more realistic step: instead, China builds a new module using Italian technologies. Italy gets thanked.

The restrictions stay, the manufacturer still needs the future American projects more than a single experiment instead.

Looking back at the proposal, it is indeed a joint Chinese-Italian module. Whether it would actually be owned by Italy or not is unclear. It is still limited to a power point. As I said, it is just a proposal, no concrete plan ("we will" declarations) yet.

The thing with the potential ESA collaboration on CSS is that ISS will not be there forever, and even if the station is commercialized by Axiom, the European modules themselves are just old. So eventually it will go down. And if relations with Russia are shaky and the US flips back to quasi-isolationism in 2024 (along with the potential iffy-ness of the Axiom commercialization), it might be more favorable to collaborate with China. Especially if LEO science is just a sideshow anyways, with ESA of course being part of Artemis and all, and the module being a joint one with China, it would be fairly cheap and allow a continuation of Europeans in LEO doing science.

And of course, if *Europe* or the majority of ESA members choose a more independent/neutral path in the "great power competition" that has begun (at least, neutral towards China), it helps keep relations cool with China despite joining the US in condemning things like crackdown in Hong Kong.

As for Roscosmos, it is quite strange they are discussing that/looking at it. If there is going to be a Russian station in the future anyways (as has been declared) what is the point of flying to the CSS?

[YNM]

4 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

What for? Great efforts to visit a foreign Mir-derived station? While saving money on visiting the existing ISS?
Excessive delta-V to rotate the orbit plne before deorbiting to land on the domestic territory? Or dependency on another one's co-operation if land on the foreign one?
Unlikely. They just investigate a theoretical possibility of what-if.

idk - we'll have to see how it turns out.

4 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

If ESA has enough money for two space station programs at once.

Oh, they actually have enough funds as long as it's for science (looking at CERN and ESO here). They only can't divide the pork very well, which is what an add-onto an existing program actually solves things a lot better than one where they have to build it from scratch.

Edited June 25, 2021 by YNM

[kerbiloid]

30 minutes ago, SunlitZelkova said:

As for Roscosmos, it is quite strange they are discussing that/looking at it. If there is going to be a Russian station in the future anyways (as has been declared) what is the point of flying to the CSS?

The discussion itself? Yet nobody flies.

32 minutes ago, SunlitZelkova said:

And if relations with Russia are shaky and the US flips back to quasi-isolationism in 2024 (along with the potential iffy-ness of the Axiom commercialization), it might be more favorable to collaborate with China

Collaborate in what?  The CSS  has room for 3, and is 2/3 of Mir. Even the Axiom is larger, together with the remain of ISS.
While the Mir's Quantum-2 was a life support extension module, including the restroom which didn't fit the Mir base module, the CSS radial modules as we can see in video, are storehouses for equipment.
So, unlikely it's purposed to be a guest cabin.

What ESA can get from China, is money. What China can gain from ESA/Italy is tech.
It's usually called "to buy the technologies to produce something on the customer's own".

30 minutes ago, YNM said:

Oh, they actually have enough funds as long as it's for science (looking at CERN and ESO here).

As we can read in the LOP-G/Artemis/SLS threads, currently USA pays for the banquet.
So, though they have funds, these funds look useful for other things, say for scientific tools, rather than crewed habitats.

So, of course CSS can be a platform for ESA telescope, but also a satellite, ISS/Axiom, and ROSS are able, too, and were for decades.
Say, Soviet probes and stations were traditionally equipped with French scientific tools among others.

And they have to report why do they need funds for a second station when they have LOP-G.

 

[SunlitZelkova]

12 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

The discussion itself? Yet nobody flies.

Collaborate in what?  The CSS  has room for 3, and is 2/3 of Mir. Even the Axiom is larger, together with the remain of ISS.
While the Mir's Quantum-2 was a life support extension module, including the restroom which didn't fit the Mir base module, the CSS radial modules as we can see in video, are storehouses for equipment.
So, unlikely it's purposed to be a guest cabin.

What ESA can get from China, is money. What China can gain from ESA/Italy is tech.
It's usually called "to buy the technologies to produce something on the customer's own".

As we can read in the LOP-G/Artemis/SLS threads, currently USA pays for the banquet.
So, though they have funds, these funds look useful for other things, say for scientific tools, rather than crewed habitats.

So, of course CSS can be a platform for ESA telescope, but also a satellite, ISS/Axiom, and ROSS are able, too, and were for decades.
Say, Soviet probes and stations were traditionally equipped with French scientific tools among others.

And they have to report why do they need funds for a second station when they have LOP-G.

 

"Why discuss it at all if it is such an unneeded plan (for Roscosmos)?" is what I was wondering.

The Italian module will not be launched until phase 2 of the CSS, which involves launching the backup Tianhe core to create room for six. By that time, the Next Generation Crewed Spacecraft should be flying, which will have a capacity for seven maximum, so there shouldn't be problems with crew space.

Gateway might not be good, because it cannot be crewed long term due to radiation. The main purpose is supposed to be as a refueling point for a reusable lander anyways, and if the only way to access it is Orion, the science that can be done would be limited to 30 day stays a year, but possibly not even that as I think the entire Orion crew is supposed to go down to the surface anyways.

I should have been more clear. The proposed Chinese-Italian module is called HERD (High Energy cosmic-Ray Detection), specialized for dark energy detection and studying cosmic rays. It is not just Columbus 2.0 or an analogue of a Gateway module.

It may be beneficial to use CSS because China already (that is, in 2021, as of this post) welcomes the cooperation (for technology as you said), and China is going to pay for part of it. Versus building a new module for ISS or ROSS, which would require either the construction of a complete module on their own or new negotiations to build one jointly. If it is an ESA-only module, they would also need to build some kind of FSM-like delivery spacecraft, because there is no Space Shuttle.

The CSS also has space, whereas the American section of the ISS is packed.

How is the relationship between ESA and Roscosmos doing in regards to human spaceflight (with stuff like Nauka and the ERM)? Would they be up for building a joint module for ROSS? The CSS module that has been proposed is only Italy-China, no ESA involvement. In fact even ESA astronauts to CSS at any time in the future is hypothetical, the module, even if it is partially Italian built, may be operated solely by taikonauts.

[YNM]

1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

As we can read in the LOP-G/Artemis/SLS threads, currently USA pays for the banquet.
So, though they have funds, these funds look useful for other things, say for scientific tools, rather than crewed habitats.

So, of course CSS can be a platform for ESA telescope, but also a satellite, ISS/Axiom, and ROSS are able, too, and were for decades.
Say, Soviet probes and stations were traditionally equipped with French scientific tools among others.

And they have to report why do they need funds for a second station when they have LOP-G.

I imagine sending stuff to LOP-G/Gateway is a bit more expensive... And you don't need to be a full partner, you can just get some research up where otherwise they won't be up until later.

ISS/Axiom... the premise lies on having something that will keep the stationkeeping. So until they have a replacement for Zvezda I think it'll be a while (for sure just locking out ROS is an option that'd keep the air leak down while letting it control the station). Also if you look at the other agencies seems like they're pulling out funding from ISS in general, so if Axiom doesn't happen then that's it, that's the end of the ISS.

Like I said - ESA and EU (+ UK) in general is all for more science as that means paying their scientist. If they could accomplish it without having to figure out who gets the contracts then they're much easier to be agreed on compared to where you need to divide contracts etc. - like see how long it has taken them to do Ariane 6, that's because they couldn't settle on who's going to build everything.

 

And in relation to Roscosmos ? I'm sure they're more than happy to have more company, they're not that hard ideologically IMO. Sure yes they're concerned with the whole stuff at the "EU border" but if keeping it cool means keeping things connected rather than fractured then so be it. The only one who have any desire is the US really.

Edited June 25, 2021 by YNM

[kerbiloid]

There will be the Starship very soon, don't you forget?

It's bigger than any hypothetical  CSS-2 module (let alone that CSS-2 is only in plans).

It's many times bigger. 9 m vs 4 m.

Why bother with these small toyboxes, except for LOP-G which is anyway planned.

[YNM]

11 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

There will be the Starship very soon, don't you forget?

It's bigger than any hypothetical  CSS-2 module (let alone that CSS-2 is only in plans).

It's many times bigger. 9 m vs 4 m.

Why bother with these small toyboxes, except for LOP-G which is anyway planned.

Because it's not going to be manned for the foreseeable future that the CSS and LOP-G timeline is in ? CSS is literally up now, LOP-G is fingers crossed whenever they launch it.

Wet/Dry Workshop LSS is sure a possibility, but like I said they don't like the wait really. They have the funds, they just want it straight to their scientist and immediate payloads, minimum dev.

 

ofc if and when that (Wet/Dry Workshop LSS and/or Axiom) happens, and they're more than happy to take scientific payloads onboard rather than either fully private or only for tourism, I'm sure they'll find something to do on it. Not even necessarily backed by ESA at that (individual unis or even member agencies like DLR, CNES, ISA does these sort of stuff already).

 

No idea for Roscosmos ofc. We'll just have to wait and see what will they launch and where will they launch it (or if they'd even launch anything).

Edited June 26, 2021 by YNM

[SunlitZelkova]

14 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

There will be the Starship very soon, don't you forget?

It's bigger than any hypothetical  CSS-2 module (let alone that CSS-2 is only in plans).

It's many times bigger. 9 m vs 4 m.

Why bother with these small toyboxes, except for LOP-G which is anyway planned.

There is no CSS-2. They will expand the current station to be larger than now, but there are no plans for either deorbit of the current station or construction of a new one right now.

No one will invest in Starship until it has actually flown a cargo flight. It is too risky as it is unproven.

[DDE]

Better late than never. Finally a new RORSAT.

 

[tater]

Live in 90 min. They usually start way before launch though.

[tater]

1 hour til launch

 

[tater]

Pretty launch

 

ROSCOSMOS has really upped their coverage game.

[Briso]

 

[kerbiloid]

https://www.interfax.ru/russia/775926

Nauka is returned to the Energy Corp. VAB to fix a reported issue.

[CatastrophicFailure]

34 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

https://www.interfax.ru/russia/775926

Nauka is returned to the Energy Corp. VAB to fix a reported issue.

 

 

oof.

 

[DDE]

That's why Roscosmos hasn't been able to find an insurer.

[kerbiloid]

Look at the bright side. Now we know where are the IR and star sensors on Nauka for modelling.

And they still have several months, maybe even a year, until Tom Cruise tries.

So, a small delay is not critical.

Edited July 1, 2021 by kerbiloid

[DDE]

17 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Look at the bright side.

But how can I look on the bright side if the sensors that indicate where the bright side is got fried?