totm dec 2019 Russian Launch and Mission Thread

[kerbiloid]

Mentioned as a real video from the board camera.

Edited November 1, 2018 by kerbiloid

[Ultimate Steve]

1 hour ago, MinimumSky5 said:

The video is quite low quality, so I can't tell if it was a CG animation, or real recovered footage from the fairing. Did Roscosmos say which it was? 

It looks real to me, but I don't know what RC said.

[sh1pman]

 

[Ultimate Steve]

15 minutes ago, sh1pman said:

 

I wish they had included an object for scale!

[kerbiloid]

A banana for scale.

[Ultimate Steve]

If you zoom in on this picture, you can see some more images, including what appears to be one of the stages on the ground.

[RedKraken]

Korolev would have been very disappointed with that sep.

Its cool that soyuz can fail and still save the crew.

Edited November 1, 2018 by RedKraken
vid link already posted by kerbiloid

[MaverickSawyer]

4 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Video from Roscosmos

 

Whoa. That didn't mess around with tumbling after the strike!

Edited November 1, 2018 by MaverickSawyer
Stupid mobile interface doublepost...

[CatastrophicFailure]

Quote

AND HERE IS THE CULPRIT!

...you had one job... 

2 hours ago, Ultimate Steve said:

It looks real to me, but I don't know what RC said.

Looks real, but would help if it wasn’t already sped up to view the thing that happened really fast. It’s like one minute the booster is skeejawed, and the next everything is all tumbly. 

[kerbiloid]

The next crewed Soyuz will start on 03 Dec.

https://translate.google.com.tr/translate?sl=ru&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=ru&ie=UTF-8&u=https://www.interfax.ru/russia/636178&edit-text=

[Teilnehmer]

5 hours ago, MinimumSky5 said:

The video is quite low quality, so I can't tell if it was a CG animation, or real recovered footage from the fairing. Did Roscosmos say which it was? 

 As far  as I understand, here,
https://youtu.be/PzLBGGsOOps?t=617
 Aleksandr Medvedev says it’s a fragment of on-board cam footage:
 

Quote

 We had a great amount of telemetry data including the footage shown today by Oleg [Skorobogatov]…

 

[DDE]

On ‎11‎/‎1‎/‎2018 at 5:28 PM, Ultimate Steve said:

If you zoom in on this picture, you can see some more images, including what appears to be one of the stages on the ground.

That's SOP.

No reuse, all recycling.

[kerbiloid]

VTHL

[CatastrophicFailure]

2 hours ago, DDE said:

No reuse, all recycling.

 Now with 25% less squashed peasants than those other guys! 

[Serpens Solidus]

3 hours ago, DDE said:

No reuse, all recycling.

It would be fun to actually try to reuse that thing.

[tater]

How cool would it be for Soyuz to start reusing side boosters?

Pretty %$#@ing cool. FH RTLS x2.

[kerbiloid]

5 hours ago, Serpens Solidus said:

It would be fun to actually try to reuse that thing.

It's more important to stop the local dwellers from its reusing.

(Unplanned rapid disassembling as is).

2 hours ago, tater said:

How cool would it be for Soyuz to start reusing side boosters?

About -200°C cool.
LOx after all..

Edited November 3, 2018 by kerbiloid

[DDE]

21 hours ago, Serpens Solidus said:

It would be fun to actually try to reuse that thing.

18 hours ago, tater said:

How cool would it be for Soyuz to start reusing side boosters?

Pretty %$#@ing cool. FH RTLS x2.

Korolev didn't get there. But Glushko did!

[Ultimate Steve]

Speaking of the Energia, I think they had all that equipment installed for the only two flights according to memory and the pictures... Is there any information about any recovery attempts?

[XB-70A]

7 hours ago, Ultimate Steve said:

Speaking of the Energia, I think they had all that equipment installed for the only two flights according to memory and the pictures... Is there any information about any recovery attempts?

None, alas. Although apparent, the extensions did not carry their "legs" but sensors and measuring equipment. 

Too bad, but the specifications were twisted for the time, with 10 reuses wanted for each block of the first stage. This only for the structure, the blocks' flight controls and systems were studied for 15 flights, and the RD-170s should have been good for... 27 reuses.

[kerbiloid]

18 hours ago, DDE said:

But Glushko did!

According to buran.ru, Glushko wanted to did. But iirc irl they faced problems with both stages.

18 hours ago, Ultimate Steve said:

Speaking of the Energia, I think they had all that equipment installed for the only two flights according to memory and the pictures... Is there any information about any recovery attempts?

According to "World Manned Cosmonautics":
Glushko, 1974: "I know exactly what we won't do. We won't copy Space Shuttle".
Glushko, early 1980s: "Let's return to our (starting point). How is it made in Space Shuttle?".

Briefly from several sources.

***

Originally there were 3 competing lunar rocket projects (except light versions like Proton fly-by and so on): Korolev's N-1, Chelomei's UR-700, Yangel's R-56.
(And the trio of general constructors was in "it's complicated" status with each other. _{H8! H8! H8!} )
Historically Glushko, Yangel, and Chelomei were adepts of hypergolic engines, while Korolev's bureau was avoiding them as could.

Korolev asked Glushko to make a quick-and-dirty medium-sized kerolox engine, counting on that if one or two engines fail on launch, Mechjeb Throttle Controlled Aviomics Davon Throttle Control System ... ah!.. KORD will stabilize the rocket and everything will be nice.
Glushko (who had much less experience with cryo- than with hyper-) rejected this venture, and their collaboration was broken.
Instead Korolev asked Kuznetsov whose bureau was mostly specialized in turbojets, and he agreed.
The result was quick-and-dirty NK-15. The next result was 4 blasted N-1 and cancelled lunar program.
Later Kuznetsov's bureau has upgraded NK-15 to NK-33 and they are happily used as we know.

***

Meanwhile Glushko was making a super-heavy hypergolic RD-270 for Yangel's R-56 lunar rocket.
After R-56 faced problems (and then was cancelled) Glushko came to Chelomei with "UR-1000" suggestion.
(Chelomei's  set of projects named "UR" contained UR-100. UR-200, UR-500, so the "UR-1000" was like "make it moar").
The "UR-1000" suggestion resulted into a set of projects and finally into UR-700 lunar rocket project with Chelomei's UR-500 rocket bodies, Glushko's coming RD-270 engines, and launchpads of N-1.
UR-700 was not just an idea, it was officially designed and so on.

Meanwhile Glushko almost finished RD-270, but "almost" not "finally".
The hypergolic super-engine (640 tf, like 90% of F-1 thrust and ~80% in size) was successfully tested several tens times, but in fact was never doing 100% of thrust longer than 2 s.
RD-270 turbopump was pushing both fuel and oxidizer in gaseous phase, i.e. "gas-gas", otherwise it was impossible to provide such great thrust.
So it had two turbopumps instead of one. And at full throttle this caused vibrations which were killing the engine.

Meanwhile when Brezhnev had replaced Khrushchev, Chelomei was disgraced from the favorites, and Korolev put efforts to cancel UR-500 Proton and UR-700 projects in favor of N-1 and N-1-derived family of rockets.
As RD-270 still required several hundreds more planned test engines, UR-700 multi-body scheme was complicated from pov of stability computing, and its upper stage was requiring exotic and dangerous fluorine-ammonia pair, UR-700 project has been cancelled.
As a result, RD-270 has been cancelled, too.

So, N-1 became the only lunar rocket project.
As a result, when N-1 fireworks have finished, and Kubrick has finished filming Apollos have landed on the Moon., the N-1 has been cancelled and it was declared that like "we never really wanted that your moon".

***

But that also was the end of Saturn-Apollo program, and NASA was feverishly looking for a purpose of life and a new theme to pump out budget money as much as possible at least for food.
At last they contacted with Pentagon and at last happily contracted Space Shuttle.
That costed putting the military-lovely SRB instead of liquid-fuel first stage and 2000 km side maneuver capabilities useless for a civil ship, and so on.

So the words "military", "take sats from orbit", "put secret payloads into orbit" have been said and heard.
As well they were heard across the ocean and resulted into the conclusion: "they are making a space shuttle to put orbital weapons and steal our sats".

Did it result into "we want a shuttle killah"?
No. It resulted into "we want a shuttle, too".
(As shuttle killaz were in order anyway, no matter is there a shuttle or no).

***

Meanwhile a Spiral project was tested as scaled down mockups BOR.
A Spiral itself was a 1-seat space plane with ~2 t payload, 1-2 turns of flight time, with either a recon equipment or a pair of anti-surface (anti-ship?) nukerockets.

It was to be fueled with fluorine fuel, be launched from a supersonic aircraft as a two-stage rocket+spaceplane itself.
So,  the level of the project viability looks obvious...
Also there was no launcher aircraft for it.

Later they suggested to launch Spirals with Proton. But this in turn turns a mostly reusable system into mostly non-reusable.
(Also later Chelomei was designing his own spaceplane LKS to be launched by a super-Proton UR-530, with much better characteristics.)

So, Spiral resulted into several BOR test crafts but unlikely had any future as something bigger.

***

After Korolev's death and N-1 failure, all heavy rocket projects were given to Glushko.
Glushko immediately put efforts to eliminate that freaking shame any traces of the infamous N-1 which killed any Soviet lunar project at all and hurted him personally. _{"H888888!!!!1111oneoneone!"}
All N-1 documentation was discarded, the remains of N-1 were bulldozered.

Instead Glushko put up his plan of a lunar revenge:  ok, let Americans be happy with their first lunar landing, but we will build the first lunar base.

He presented a set of cryo-rockets to be built:
RLA-120 (2 side boosters, 30 t) (kinda a Proton-killah);
RLA-135 (4 side boosters, 100 t) (later known as Energy) for Moon; 
RLA-150 (8 side boosters, 250 t) (later known as Volcano) for Mars, 
also orbital stations using their hulls.

MoD Ustinov made him also start a Soviet shuttle project as well.
Glushko was disliking this idea as it took away time and efforts, but there is a word "you must".
So, he adopted the spaceplane program, too, even without pleasure.

In 1974 Glushko's bureau started designing the set of heavy rockets and lunar base modules.
In 1975 the R&D council forced him to put the spaceplane as priority.

Between a small/medium/large spaceplanes they chose the large one.
First because anyway the problems are similar.
Second because it should be not worse than Americans'.

So the splaceplane should be ~100 t heavy with 30 t of payload.

***

Meanwhile Chelomei was suggesting a 36 t super-Proton UR-530 and LKS spaceplane.
As he unlikely could ask for new engines from Glushko, it used the already mass-produced  2 and 3 stages of UR-500 and a bunch (1 inside and 6 around) of 1 stage of already mass-produced UR-100N ICBM.

So, UR-530 required no new components and could be mass-produced just now.

It could launch an upgraded OPS Almaz with extended VA with crew of 5.

LKS was a 30 t plane finally looking like a mini-shuttle, with crew of 2 (in ejection seats) and 5-6 t of payload in cargo bay.
So, a 36 t UR-530 could launch it into polar orbits.

This resulted into Chelomei's proposal of combined global defence-assault system including 350 LKS equpped with anti-ICBM lasers orbiting around the Earth.

But by various reasons UR-530 was cancelled.
Partially for personal reasons, partially because of coming Glushko's RLA cryo-rockets.

***

If we have a look at Mir station, which has been put in orbit with usual 20 t UR-500K Protons, we can see that:
- Once constructed, the core module had been overweighted for several tons, so they had to remove some devices from the core module and put them into Quantum-1 and -2.
- Modules of 37 series (Quantum-1) included 10 t TKS FGB as a tug, This made to use 4m wide but twice shorter hull.
- Modules of 77 series (all others) were based on TKS FGB, This made to use 3m wide narrow hull with a lot of heavy propulsion&navigation stuff useless for the station.

So, we can fantasize that with a 36 t UR-530 rocket the core module could be just bigger with everything inside, while other modules could be Harmony-like but self-propelled like Quantum-1 with a single-use FGB tug.

It's very pity that they didn't make UR-530.
They anyway couldn't launch a laser fleet, but Mir could be much better.

***

Once Glushko became the only highlander left, his RLA-135 rocket (proto-Energy) became the base of the further space program.

Both spaceplane and lunar base strictly required a reusable cryo-rocket.
Also as unlike UR-500 it used much more complicated and expensive engines, the engines wanted to be reused, too.

So, they planned to make both stages of Energy as reusable as possible.
The side blocks (1st stage) were to be landed on parachutes and landing legs.

*

The central block (reaching the orbit) was to be landed in some other way.
They tried to make it a spaceplane, too. Added Buran's heat protection and wings from one side.
But the huge and thin hull was too huge and thin to survive the airbraking even with heat protection.

So, they came to idea of a telescopic hull.
After getting to LEO and releasing the payload, the stage should retract and get much shorter buth thicker. Then deorbit and land as a plane.

On this optimistic note they abandoned this sci-fi and left the second stage single-use.

*

The side blocks should use parachutes to slow down and RCS for rotation and stabilization.
Closer to  the ground the stage should reposition the parachutes attach node, get horizontal and land on retractable legs.

Those two square-looking containers should contain this.

But at last they realized that this landing system becomes too heavy.
And the stage itself should be heavy to be enough strong to withstand the side kicks of parachuting and vertical landing on two ends in horizontal position.

So, they postponed the reusability of 1st stage, too.
And filled the useless reusability boxes with telemetric tools.

As a result in fact Energy stayed a single-use rocket like Saturn.

***

Buran was being designed for a decade since 1975 and at last became a copy of Shuttle with no main engines.
Originally there were two designs of Buran: a Shuttle-like VTHL (with 2nd stage engines inside) and DC-like VTVL.

As the spaceplane was mostly wished by miltaries, the have chosen the Shuttle-like VTHL variant.
As they were not sure if hydrolox engines will be ready soon, they left the 2nd stage engines in the rocket.

Also the lunar program and mass orbital building required a heavy rocket reusable itself while didn't require a 100 t spaceplane at all.
So, unlike Shuttle, Buran should have no deal with launch engines at all.

Originally Buran should have scaled up Spiral-looking lifting body (suggestion of the Spiral developers to save their project).
But in 1976 R&D council made them do this like Shuttle. But with two turbojets to fly in atmosphere.

***

If Energy was actually reusable this would be wise and cheap.
But as Energy stayed non-reusable, this meant that an oversized spaceplane should spend for every flight a signle-use rocket costing afaik 270 Soyuz launches.
So, this economically eliminated the Buran purpose as well.
Instead of a nice additional bonus to a reusable rocket Buran would be a money-sucking abyss if the rocket is expendable.

So, after a single we-did-it flight Buran was cancelled.

***

Is Space Shuttle better than Energy/Buran? 
Space Shuttle is a 2500 t  Energy-sized system delivering to orbit 1.5 payloads of Proton or 1/3 of Energy payload.

So, Space Shuttle was just alternative way to waste money, and Buran is definitely much better than Space Shuttle because it did it only once.

***

On another hand, the RLA family gave a by-product: LV Zenith.
It is a single side block of Energy with an upper stage.

It has been used many times (not even close as many as Proton and Soyuz, but as many as some Ariane mods).

***

Zenith payload is 14-15 t, so instead of Buran Glushko's bureau designed a 15 t reusable capsule ship Zarya (Dawn) with crew of up to 8.

It was to be used for with Mir-based and Glushko's heavy orbital station.

It should have internal rocket engines and use rocket landing.
So, it's like a hybrid of Dragon, CST-100, Orion, or a self-propelled standalone Space Shuttle crew cabin. 

This looks much wiser than a 100 t spaceplane with 30 t payload.
Though the rocket landing makes this to look as not viable as the original Dragon.

So, when Zarya project was cancelled as well as Energy, Zenith lost its main benefit: unification with mass-production crafts and became just another one rocket.
For obvious political reasons unlikely it had any future.

***

Khrunichev Center's (i.e. Chelomei's ancestry) Angara is a further development of URM (Universal Rocket Module) born in UR-700 project, but with cryofuel and another engine.

***

P.S.
Btw the pictures of the first Energy launch with Polyus with written "полюс" word are incorrect.
There was no "полюс" word along.  There was "мир-2" across, to fool the 'Muricans.

Edited November 4, 2018 by kerbiloid

[Scotius]

This reads like a plot of a soap opera - with twists, recastings half-season and people hating each onther both as  played characters and privately

[DDE]

4 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

The central block (reaching the orbit) was to be landed in some other way.
They tried to make it a spaceplane, too. Added Buran's heat protection and wings from one side.
But the huge and thin hull was too huge and thin to survive the airbraking even with heat protection.

So, they came to idea of a telescopic hull.
After getting to LEO and releasing the payload, the stage should retract and get much shorter buth thicker. Then deorbit and land as a plane.

Somebody didn't fetch a picture.

In a way it's a mini-proto-BFR. For bonus points, the payload would be released by the payload bay simply retracting onto the lOx tank.

Alright, somebody's getting lazy.

No wonder some people get the impression that it's one disaster after the next.

[Nightside]

 @kerbiloid, that was incredible!

That would make a great historical comic series. Can you draw?

[kerbiloid]

29 minutes ago, Nightside said:

Can you draw?

Only straight lines with a ruler.