Russian freight launch to ISS fails to orbit

[Andras]

http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/08/24/nasa-russian-report-problems-with-space-freighter/

Russia's mission control has reported an abnormal situation with a space freighter that launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome bound for the International Space Station, NASA said Wednesday.

The rocket is carrying 2.9 ton of food, fuel and supplies, NASA said, but has no passengers on board.

The Progress 44 cargo craft, which launched at 7 p.m. Kazakhstan time, is due to dock with the ISS on Friday.

Mission Control Houston said it had received a report of an 'off-nominal situation' during the rocket's third and final stage, at five minutes and 50 seconds after launch.

NASA spokesman Rob Navias, at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, told CNN that contact with the space craft had been lost about three minutes before it was to reach orbit.

Note the typo in the photo caption.

[Capt'n Skunky]

That's too funny! Great typo. Someone needs to screen shot that before it's corrected.

Arrr!

Capt'n Skunky

[Keyes777]

Glad no one was in that thing. ISS crew will just have to cut down on the meal portions :'(

[Paul Drye]

Glad no one was in that thing. ISS crew will just have to cut down on the meal portions :'(

According to NASA the last shuttle delivered a year's worth of supplies last month, and the next European Jules Verne craft (which can carry a similar amount) is going up early in 2012.

[Andras]

Jeb's not happy

[Keyes777]

Ah good then. The report mentioned this would have no effect on the ISS operations so I was being a bit facetious. It’s still unfortunate to lose all those supplies. What sort of oxygen supply do they have up there? I'd imagine that is a much greater concern.

[DoctorEvo]

Ah good then. The report mentioned this would have no effect on the ISS operations so I was being a bit facetious. It’s still unfortunate to lose all those supplies. What sort of oxygen supply do they have up there? I'd imagine that is a much greater concern.

The ISS makes its own oxygen. Unless something important breaks, their first concern is water supply.

[sneakeypete]

Media coverage of this makes me want to tear my hair out.

'Russia's aging rockets'.

Each rocket is assembled brand new. the design might be 30 years old but that doesn't mean the rocket works worse than it would have 30 years ago!

[McLuv]

Media coverage of this makes me want to tear my hair out.

'Russia's aging rockets'.

Each rocket is assembled brand new. the design might be 30 years old but that doesn't mean the rocket works worse than it would have 30 years ago!

Yup, the only vehicles that were capable of 'aging' were the shuttles. It's just an attempt to blame those reds for all our problems.

The one sad thing that went with the USSR was a failsafe scapegoat

[DoctorEvo]

Media coverage of this makes me want to tear my hair out.

'Russia's aging rockets'.

Each rocket is assembled brand new. the design might be 30 years old

More like 50, though I suppose the design of the stage that failed is *only* 45 years old... ;P

but that doesn't mean the rocket works worse than it would have 30 years ago!

No, it works about the same...

They might be trying to suggest that the design is outdated, but that's pretty disputable. Korolev knew his stuff...

[sneakeypete]

But agian, even if the design is outdated, that only means that its not going to work as good as some newer high tech designs*, not that it's going to work worse than as designed.

*that being said, a new design isn't always what's needed, you can get a lot of extra performance just by going back and redesigning components, eg with new materials or something to reduce weight in some cases. Not all cases, but some.

[rdfox]

The current Proton and Soyuz boosters are vastly improved over the originals, through the regular R&D upgrade process used to 'simplify and add lightness,' as Colin Chapman used to say.

And I know Proton was a Glushko design--wasn't the Soyuz booster, too?

(...god, I just imagined what could have been done if von Braun, Korolev, and Glushko had all been able to work together--without personality conflicts--under Mueller and Lowe, without political budget restraints cutting them off at the knees in 1970...)

[DoctorEvo]

The current Proton and Soyuz boosters are vastly improved over the originals, through the regular R&D upgrade process used to 'simplify and add lightness,' as Colin Chapman used to say.

It really hasn't evolved much at all... The biggest developments have been changing the engines, and development of Fregat as an upper stage. Oh, and I guess the change of fuels in Soyuz-U2 was pretty significant as well, but they still reverted back to RP-1 anyways.

And I know Proton was a Glushko design--wasn't the Soyuz booster, too?

To suggest that any rocket derived from the almighty R-7 would be a disgrace to Korolev's name.

And where the heck did you get the idea that Glushko designed the Proton? That's like saying Von Braun designed Atlas, or that Thiel designed the V-2. Glushko didn't really design any rockets himself - though he did build some marvelous engines for them.

(...god, I just imagined what could have been done if von Braun, Korolev, and Glushko had all been able to work together--without personality conflicts--under Mueller and Lowe, without political budget restraints cutting them off at the knees in 1970...)

Probably... nah, I'm sorry, but that's just TOO absurd of a scenario for me to even imagine. And it's not that Western and Russian rocket scientists working together with a near-unlimited budget that sets it off... it's the idea that they could cooperate that I find impossible to believe. They all had their own sticking points, and clashes were simply inevitable.

[rdfox]

It really hasn't evolved much at all... The biggest developments have been changing the engines, and development of Fregat as an upper stage. Oh, and I guess the change of fuels in Soyuz-U2 was pretty significant as well, but they still reverted back to RP-1 anyways.

That's the sort of thing I meant by 'evolutionary' changes. Taking the basic design and just incrementally upgrading it to improve performance, without major changes. Like the planned second order of the Saturn V that would have used uprated first-stage engines (with about a 10-foot stretch, done by just plugging an extra five feet or so into the RP-1 and LOX tanks) and dropped the fins. Same basic rocket, better performance due to minor tweaks instead of complete redesign.

To suggest that any rocket derived from the almighty R-7 would be a disgrace to Korolev's name.

And where the heck did you get the idea that Glushko designed the Proton? That's like saying Von Braun designed Atlas, or that Thiel designed the V-2. Glushko didn't really design any rockets himself - though he did build some marvelous engines for them.

My apologies. It was a result of posting too early in the morning after spending the previous day driving. (Helping a stepbrother move from Virginia to Michigan. Loooong drive.) I was blanking on whether Soyuz was R-7-based, or Proton-based.

And I meant 'a Glushko design' in that it was his team that did the work, towards his preferred design *concept*, much like how von Braun would set his general concept and layout and then get to work on the engines while the rest of his team did the engineering work to make the concept work.

Probably... nah, I'm sorry, but that's just TOO absurd of a scenario for me to even imagine. And it's not that Western and Russian rocket scientists working together with a near-unlimited budget that sets it off... it's the idea that they could cooperate that I find impossible to believe. They all had their own sticking points, and clashes were simply inevitable.

Yeah, sadly. I just was fantasizing about what they *could* have done, if they'd been able to cooperate... each man really did know his stuff, and the cross-fertilization possibilities would have been amazing. (I don't know as much about Korolev and Glushko on personalities, but I know that von Braun was conservative--it took a long time to get him to agree with LH2 in the S-IV and S-IVB--but once he was sold on a new idea, he was all-in on it. Apparently, the LH2 advocates only intended to use it in the S-IVB and fuel the S-II with RP-1, but when they sold von Braun on LH2 for the third stage, he pointed out there wasn't any reason not to use it in the second...)

But you're right. It's much more likely that it would have ended with a literal knife fight, with two men dead and the third mortally wounded. :'(

[sneakeypete]

Knife fight? we're talking about rocket engineers here, i'd assume some kind of explosives would be involved

[millsw]

Knife fight? we're talking about rocket engineers here, i'd assume some kind of explosives would be involved

Jeb would have to fly in on a booster and seperate them before they ALL died!

[DoctorEvo]

That's the sort of thing I meant by 'evolutionary' changes. Taking the basic design and just incrementally upgrading it to improve performance, without major changes. Like the planned second order of the Saturn V that would have used uprated first-stage engines (with about a 10-foot stretch, done by just plugging an extra five feet or so into the RP-1 and LOX tanks) and dropped the fins. Same basic rocket, better performance due to minor tweaks instead of complete redesign.

Yeah... But if you look at any Western rocket family and compare it to the R-7 family, the difference is night and day. To the West, the rocket doesn't deserve to be renamed until it's had a complete ground-up redesign. The diversity within the R-7 family is on-par with (and even that's being overly fair) the diversity amongst the different variants of the original SM-65-based Atlas rockets (ignoring the later Atlas I-V redesigns).

My apologies. It was a result of posting too early in the morning after spending the previous day driving. (Helping a stepbrother move from Virginia to Michigan. Loooong drive.) I was blanking on whether Soyuz was R-7-based, or Proton-based.

Yeah, the Russian's haven't fully man-rated a single rocket that wasn't based on the R-7.

And I meant 'a Glushko design' in that it was his team that did the work, towards his preferred design *concept*, much like how von Braun would set his general concept and layout and then get to work on the engines while the rest of his team did the engineering work to make the concept work.

No, Korolev was still in charge during the design process of Soyuz. He died before Soyuz-1 though, and in some ways it seems like everything suddenly fell apart in his absence.

Yeah, sadly. I just was fantasizing about what they *could* have done, if they'd been able to cooperate... each man really did know his stuff, and the cross-fertilization possibilities would have been amazing. (I don't know as much about Korolev and Glushko on personalities, but I know that von Braun was conservative--it took a long time to get him to agree with LH2 in the S-IV and S-IVB--but once he was sold on a new idea, he was all-in on it. Apparently, the LH2 advocates only intended to use it in the S-IVB and fuel the S-II with RP-1, but when they sold von Braun on LH2 for the third stage, he pointed out there wasn't any reason not to use it in the second...)

Yeah... honestly, I think Korolev was by far the better rocket designer. Von Braun's conservatism was almost crippling during the Sputnik era... he just didn't want to let go of Redstone and accept the developments of other American and paperclip'd rocket scientists. Korolev was all over ideas like trying alternative fuels and the radical new engines Glushko was cranking out.

Glushko was brilliant, but he was in some ways the most hard-headed and defiant of the three. He was insistent that hypergols were the greatest thing on planet Earth, and refused to accept LH2 as a viable propellant until the end of his days. This single issue was enough to tear their Moon project to pieces.

But you're right. It's much more likely that it would have ended with a literal knife fight, with two men dead and the third mortally wounded. :'(

Korolev, with his gulag-weakened body, would've been the first to go. But from then on, the battle between Von Braun and Glushko - between a former Nazi who used to run a slave camp; and a cold, ruthless Russian who willingly denounced his co-workers and competitors as counterrevolutionaries - would be quite fierce indeed.

[rdfox]

As a note, I realized recently that mentally, I was conflating Glushko *and* Chelomei into a single person; thus my comments about Proton being a 'Glushko design.'

On a second note, I could actually see Korolev and von Braun probably working together successfully, much like the Glushko/Chelomei combination. They wouldn't have had the same level of philosophical differences on propellants that Korolev and Glushko had, for one thing...

[DoctorEvo]

As a note, I realized recently that mentally, I was conflating Glushko *and* Chelomei into a single person; thus my comments about Proton being a 'Glushko design.'

On a second note, I could actually see Korolev and von Braun probably working together successfully, much like the Glushko/Chelomei combination. They wouldn't have had the same level of philosophical differences on propellants that Korolev and Glushko had, for one thing...

Yes, but they had THE SAME EXACT JOB, which in a way makes it ten times worse. At least Glushko and Korolev needed eachother's services to finish their own respective jobs rather than being in direct competition...

Actually, I kinda feel like Glushko would be more agreeable under Von Braun than he was under Korolev. Von Braun was a lot more charismatic than Korolev, and seemed to be much better at getting what he wanted out of his colleagues. Also, Von Braun was more pragmatic and conservative (as opposed to Korolev's idealistic and bold innovation), and in a way that would help keep Glushko (an ambitious and proud innovator) from developing the inferiority complex that eventually led him to sabotage Korolev the way he did.

Also, Glushko never got Von Braun thrown in a gulag.

[rdfox]

Quite possible. For some reason, I was thinking von Braun was more interested in the engineering of the engines themselves, rather than project management, in which case it might have worked.

I think we can agree, though, that, while the UR design did end up working out pretty well in Proton form, Chelomei may have been the worst thing to happen to the Soviet space program, since his 'dual-use' Universal Rocket concept was highly attractive to the military, which ended up being an enabler for Glushko's fetish for hypergolics--thus siphoning funding away from Korolev's much more practical space launch vehicles, and allowing Glushko to not be *forced* to work with Korolev. (No offense to Kuznetzov; they've designed some of the world's greatest engines, but their relative inexperience with large engines in the 60s probably precluded any chance of the Soviets winning the lunar race.)

Simultaneously, given what they did to the Apollo Applications program and most of the Space Transportation System program, I think we can say Nixon and Agnew were probably the worst things to ever happen to the AMERICAN space program. (Apollo Applications would have had the US essentially match the Soviet/Russian program for space station experience through the 70s, while funding the *full* STS proposal would have kept us from having the Space Shuttle spend the first half of its lifespan before the first time it flew the mission it was originally designed for...)

[DoctorEvo]

Quite possible. For some reason, I was thinking von Braun was more interested in the engineering of the engines themselves, rather than project management, in which case it might have worked.

Really? Because if anything, I get the OPPOSITE feeling. Heck, even when he was at his most hands-on during and prior to WWII, he STILL had someone else (mostly Thiel) do most of the engineering for him. I feel like Von Braun was a visionary, an idea man; and a great team leader, and not much more than that.

I think we can agree, though, that, while the UR design did end up working out pretty well in Proton form, Chelomei may have been the worst thing to happen to the Soviet space program, since his 'dual-use' Universal Rocket concept was highly attractive to the military, which ended up being an enabler for Glushko's fetish for hypergolics--thus siphoning funding away from Korolev's much more practical space launch vehicles, and allowing Glushko to not be *forced* to work with Korolev. (No offense to Kuznetzov; they've designed some of the world's greatest engines, but their relative inexperience with large engines in the 60s probably precluded any chance of the Soviets winning the lunar race.)

Oh, I dunno. Any ambitious project such as a space program needs both idealists AND pragmatists. Chelomei was much more pragmatic than Korolev, and this is a large part of why the Proton became so much more successful. I tend to view dual-use technology as a good thing, since it better-economizes development costs of various technologies, often being the very thing which makes these megaprojects possible in the first place. In a way, I feel like the divergence of military missile technology from space launcher technology was a large part of the reason the space race came to a halt.

Besides, I kinda feel like the military applications of UR-500 were doomed from the start. By that time, warheads were ALREADY getting smaller and lighter, response times were becoming ever more urgent, and it was pretty clear that solids were soon becoming the preferred propulsion method.

Simultaneously, given what they did to the Apollo Applications program and most of the Space Transportation System program, I think we can say Nixon and Agnew were probably the worst things to ever happen to the AMERICAN space program. (Apollo Applications would have had the US essentially match the Soviet/Russian program for space station experience through the 70s, while funding the *full* STS proposal would have kept us from having the Space Shuttle spend the first half of its lifespan before the first time it flew the mission it was originally designed for...)

Again, I think it was largely a sign of the times. Manned spaceflight is expensive and risky, and since it was no longer a matter of national pride, it got dropped in favor of more practical projects. The Shuttle was intended to make manned spaceflight useful and inexpensive so that it'd be a worthwhile investment again, but the tremendous reaction to the Challenger disaster utterly crushed both those notions.

[rdfox]

Really? Because if anything, I get the OPPOSITE feeling. Heck, even when he was at his most hands-on during and prior to WWII, he STILL had someone else (mostly Thiel) do most of the engineering for him. I feel like Von Braun was a visionary, an idea man; and a great team leader, and not much more than that.

I need to do more looking into the man's history. I'm surprised that, despite all I've watched and read over the years, I have a better handle on who Gunter Wendt was as a person than I do Werner von Braun...

Oh, I dunno. Any ambitious project such as a space program needs both idealists AND pragmatists. Chelomei was much more pragmatic than Korolev, and this is a large part of why the Proton became so much more successful. I tend to view dual-use technology as a good thing, since it better-economizes development costs of various technologies, often being the very thing which makes these megaprojects possible in the first place. In a way, I feel like the divergence of military missile technology from space launcher technology was a large part of the reason the space race came to a halt.

Besides, I kinda feel like the military applications of UR-500 were doomed from the start. By that time, warheads were ALREADY getting smaller and lighter, response times were becoming ever more urgent, and it was pretty clear that solids were soon becoming the preferred propulsion method.

Well, storable hypergols were just fine for rapid response times--look at how long Titan stayed on duty, and most Russian land-based ICBMs today are still hypergolic--but my big point was that Chelomei, trying to create dual-use rockets after their time had passed, with space launchers needing higher performance propellants and ICBMs needing storable propellant with an instant response time, was still able to draw the support of the military, and thus take funding that Korolev/Mishin could have desperately used away from them.

Ironically, one could say that the SOVIET space program, with three competing design bureaus (Mishin originally concentrating solely on military development until Korolev's death saw Korolev's bureau added to his own) each trying to get funding with competing designs and little to no shared work that resulted in massive amounts of duplicated effort, was more 'capitalist' than the US space program's single centralized setup of the time. There were plenty of other reasons that the Soviets lost the lunar race, of course--starting later (because they didn't realize Kennedy was serious, and then had no funding in the current Five-Year Plan when they did realize), not being able to conduct *any* ground testing of the N1, Brezhnev's brilliant : idea of having Korolev's bureau be in charge of the lunar landing program while having Chelomei's in charge of the lunar *flyby* program, the personality conflicts, etc.--but I think the big one is that they allowed competing proposals to continue rather than select a single one in the early phases and just concentrate all effort on that.

Again, I think it was largely a sign of the times. Manned spaceflight is expensive and risky, and since it was no longer a matter of national pride, it got dropped in favor of more practical projects. The Shuttle was intended to make manned spaceflight useful and inexpensive so that it'd be a worthwhile investment again, but the tremendous reaction to the Challenger disaster utterly crushed both those notions.

Oh, I know that the Mars mission was a pipe dream when it came to getting funding. But still, the Apollo Applications program could have been conducted at relatively little cost (no new development cost was required, so it was just the incremental cost of boosters, spacecraft, and crews to fly each mission, and that's the cheap part), it would have let the US keep up with the Soviets, and it would have given the Space Shuttle someplace to shuttle people and things *to* instead of having to rely on a steady stream of payloads that needed to go to LEO. (It also would have allowed the Shuttle to remain a small 'crew van' design like NASA originally planned, since the Air Force would have been able to use expendable boosters, either Saturn-derived or derived from Thor, Atlas, and Titan, for its launches. The massive crossrange requirement would have remained, but not the need to lift 60,000 pounds to LEO in a reusable vehicle that's going, by its very nature, to be much heavier than the payload it can carry.) That's the real tragedy of Nixon and Agnew's 'is there anything cheaper we can do?' memo--the savings from canceling Apollo Applications were minimal, and the gains would have been huge.

[DoctorEvo]

Ironically, one could say that the SOVIET space program, with three competing design bureaus (Mishin originally concentrating solely on military development until Korolev's death saw Korolev's bureau added to his own) each trying to get funding with competing designs and little to no shared work that resulted in massive amounts of duplicated effort, was more 'capitalist' than the US space program's single centralized setup of the time.

Not really. The only REALLY centralized American rocket projects that didn't see a large amount of competition were the Apollo-Saturn, and to a lesser extent the Shuttle. All the ballistic missile development was highly competitive on both sides of the curtain, but on the US side this competition spilled over into the space launch business as well. Convair, Martin, Douglas, and Von Braun's ABMA with Chrysler all eagerly threw their hat in the ring for the chance at these high-dollar rocket contracts.

And really, it DID show. The Russians had all of ONE operational manned rocket design (the R-7 family) throughout the space race and even to today, and that very same launch system gripped a large portion of the Russian unmanned launch industry as well, with only Kosmos and Proton really even coming close. Meanwhile, the Americans put astronauts on Redstone, Atlas, Titan, Saturn rockets and the Shuttle, and launched satellites on all of these (or derivatives) as well as Vanguard, Scout, Thor/Delta, and several others.

There were plenty of other reasons that the Soviets lost the lunar race, of course--starting later (because they didn't realize Kennedy was serious, and then had no funding in the current Five-Year Plan when they did realize), not being able to conduct *any* ground testing of the N1, Brezhnev's brilliant : idea of having Korolev's bureau be in charge of the lunar landing program while having Chelomei's in charge of the lunar *flyby* program, the personality conflicts, etc.--but I think the big one is that they allowed competing proposals to continue rather than select a single one in the early phases and just concentrate all effort on that.

Chelomei's flyby proposal and Korolev's landing were BOTH batted around a bit, but eventually Korolev's route WAS selected. And really, I don't think having OKB-52 contribute to the N-1 project would've helped them win at all. It MIGHT have helped things go smoother after Korolev's death and perhaps keep the project from getting cancelled after Apollo's victory, since Chelomei would've been there to take charge, but that might have backfired as well if Chelomei was as bitter as Glushko seemed to be (I don't know enough about the man to make that judgement).

Now, the other way around, having OKB-1 help out with the more modest flyby proposal... now THAT probably would've worked out, and they probably would've beaten the Americans to it there.

Oh, I know that the Mars mission was a pipe dream when it came to getting funding. But still, the Apollo Applications program could have been conducted at relatively little cost (no new development cost was required, so it was just the incremental cost of boosters, spacecraft, and crews to fly each mission, and that's the cheap part)

I don't think Saturn was nearly as cheap as you think it was. It was a finicky design that required an order of magnitude more manpower to build than contemporary missile-derived launch vehicles. It could not be elevated whole, and thus required vertical assembly which again requires more labor to work on. It relied on several different manufacturers, and if you've ever been to the Boeing Everett plant and looked at the 787 production line vs. the 747 line, you can easily see why this can be extremely problematic for large-scale production.

And of course, there's always the chance that it would end up going the route that the Shuttle did, with some fatal disaster occurring SOMEWHERE down the line (which is sorta bound to happen after you start racking up dozens upon dozens of launches), resulting in a big hearing and a whole slew of expensive and unrelated safety measures that drive your per-mission costs through the roof, and also inflicts a prolonged period of downtime as well.

[rdfox]

Not really. The only REALLY centralized American rocket projects that didn't see a large amount of competition were the Apollo-Saturn, and to a lesser extent the Shuttle. All the ballistic missile development was highly competitive on both sides of the curtain, but on the US side this competition spilled over into the space launch business as well. Convair, Martin, Douglas, and Von Braun's ABMA with Chrysler all eagerly threw their hat in the ring for the chance at these high-dollar rocket contracts.

And really, it DID show. The Russians had all of ONE operational manned rocket design (the R-7 family) throughout the space race and even to today, and that very same launch system gripped a large portion of the Russian unmanned launch industry as well, with only Kosmos and Proton really even coming close. Meanwhile, the Americans put astronauts on Redstone, Atlas, Titan, Saturn rockets and the Shuttle, and launched satellites on all of these (or derivatives) as well as Vanguard, Scout, Thor/Delta, and several others.

I always took the wider number of US boosters to have started out as a case of the US engaging in parallel development of 'low-risk' and 'high-risk' designs for the same requirement, as most clearly seen in the parallel development of the 'low-risk' Atlas and the 'high-risk' Titan I (which, ironically, was more conservative in most ways--but it did require that airstart worked!), then gradually turned into a case of having this wide range of boosters available, so smaller payloads would get launched on the smaller boosters designed for shorter-range work, because they cost less.

I know I'm oversimplifying; it's just a case where it's interesting that in many ways, the Soviets had competition going for their space launch program to a great degree more than the US one that was dominated by von Braun. Perhaps part of the reason for that perception was the relative openness of the US program, where contractors knew what their competitors were doing, so they wouldn't keep developing their design after someone else got the contract?

Chelomei's flyby proposal and Korolev's landing were BOTH batted around a bit, but eventually Korolev's route WAS selected. And really, I don't think having OKB-52 contribute to the N-1 project would've helped them win at all. It MIGHT have helped things go smoother after Korolev's death and perhaps keep the project from getting cancelled after Apollo's victory, since Chelomei would've been there to take charge, but that might have backfired as well if Chelomei was as bitter as Glushko seemed to be (I don't know enough about the man to make that judgement).

Now, the other way around, having OKB-1 help out with the more modest flyby proposal... now THAT probably would've worked out, and they probably would've beaten the Americans to it there.

That was true; Brezhnev's *initial* solution to the problem was to give the flyby to Chelomei and the landing to Korolev, which qualifies as the sort of clusterfuck decision that only a government can make. Of course, the decision to pull the plug on Chelomei's flyby mission wasn't made until 1968, after they'd completed several unmanned Zond flybys. (And it was probably the right call, given that Zond was a modified Voshkod, and Voshkod was a deathtrap that they got VERY lucky with for the three flights before they ran away.)

Ironically, even if the Soviets had put everything behind the flyby proposal and completed that first, the US would still have claimed victory, since Kennedy's challenge wasn't to fly by the moon, but to *land*, and the Soviets wouldn't have completed that. Honestly, the only way that I really thought OKB-52 *directly* working on the landing program would have helped was having a bit more manpower to throw at the engineering, and maybe forcing Glushko to work with Korolev despite the personality conflicts. My meaning was more that the mere presence of OKB-52 divided the Soviet program's focus and funding; if not for OKB-52, it's entirely possible that Korolev would have been able to get some test stands built for the N1 and gotten ground testing in so that Mishin wouldn't have been having to try to beg Brezhnev not to cancel the project after each in-flight failure that *should* have been solved in ground testing, for example.

I don't think Saturn was nearly as cheap as you think it was. It was a finicky design that required an order of magnitude more manpower to build than contemporary missile-derived launch vehicles. It could not be elevated whole, and thus required vertical assembly which again requires more labor to work on. It relied on several different manufacturers, and if you've ever been to the Boeing Everett plant and looked at the 787 production line vs. the 747 line, you can easily see why this can be extremely problematic for large-scale production.

Well, I meant in a relative sense; the R&D cost and tooling costs had been paid, so now it was just incremental costs, the actual direct cost of building and flying the booster, as the overhead had been paid by the Apollo program. Not cancelling Apollo Applications would have also meant we wouldn't have put all our eggs in the Shuttle basket, meaning that we wouldn't have lost about fifteen years of development of expendable boosters that were going to be more affordable than the Shuttle as a heavy lifter. (Irony, the only time I've been to the Everett plant was when it was closed for the night, and it was back when the 777 was still just entering revenue service.)

Additionally, Apollo Applications was intended to have most of its missions on either the Saturn IB or the Saturn INT-20, using the INT-21 stack just for lofting the Dry Workshop and Wet Workshop stations to LEO and one of the Lagrange points, reducing cost compared to using the full Saturn V stack, particularly given modifications intended to make the second order of Saturns less expensive than the first, like the flyback S-IC. (The thinking on the INT-20 was that the use of the three-engine version of the S-IC as a first stage would have allowed them to shut down the S-IB production line and gain increased economies of scale by using the same line for both the heavy-lift and medium-lift Saturns.)

And of course, there's always the chance that it would end up going the route that the Shuttle did, with some fatal disaster occurring SOMEWHERE down the line (which is sorta bound to happen after you start racking up dozens upon dozens of launches), resulting in a big hearing and a whole slew of expensive and unrelated safety measures that drive your per-mission costs through the roof, and also inflicts a prolonged period of downtime as well.

Oh, that would have happened, for certain. But that will happen in any major manned space program when you fly huge numbers of flights, just like how the only way to make sure that no airliners will ever crash is to ban them from flying at all, and it's entirely possible that it would have resulted in *less* disruption if we'd had two separate manned vehicles available instead of relying entirely on a single option. (Yes, Shuttle would have to stand down for a review after an Apollo disaster, and vice-versa, but presumably, it wouldn't need to sit there for the redesign period of the other vehicle's 'get-well' program, allowing it to resume flying much sooner.)

I don't know. Maybe it's just a little bit of inner anger at the US having been ballsy enough to go to the moon before the technology was actually up to the task, and then spent the next forty-five years slowly retreating from manned space exploration; it really burns me up that we stopped just when we were getting GOOD at it...

[DoctorEvo]

I always took the wider number of US boosters to have started out as a case of the US engaging in parallel development of 'low-risk' and 'high-risk' designs for the same requirement, as most clearly seen in the parallel development of the 'low-risk' Atlas and the 'high-risk' Titan I (which, ironically, was more conservative in most ways--but it did require that airstart worked!), then gradually turned into a case of having this wide range of boosters available, so smaller payloads would get launched on the smaller boosters designed for shorter-range work, because they cost less.

How is requesting that multiple different proposals of widely-varying design be developed NOT competitive?!

The Air Force was, quite literally, putting Martin and Convair head-to-head not only during the preliminary proposal process but all the way to full-scale deployment. Convair, having much more experience under their belt with extensive postwar studies into ICBM concepts (see MX-774), was much quicker to the punch and had Atlas ready within MONTHS of the R-7's first test; and on those grounds, they 'won' unchallenged business from the Air Force (eager to avoid a 'missile gap') for nearly two years. Then Martin finished the Titan, late to the game but with a product much better-suited for the deterrence role, and gradually took the lead as the Air Force phased the larger, much more survivable, and faster-responding Titan into service.

I dunno about you, but that seems like competition to me.

I know I'm oversimplifying; it's just a case where it's interesting that in many ways, the Soviets had competition going for their space launch program to a great degree more than the US one that was dominated by von Braun. Perhaps part of the reason for that perception was the relative openness of the US program, where contractors knew what their competitors were doing, so they wouldn't keep developing their design after someone else got the contract?

Yeah, well I hardly think the comparison of Nova and UR with Apollo-Saturn is representative of the norm. Both were exceptions to the rule - the Soviets' caused by hesitant and indecisive leadership by the bureaucrats that were responsible for the central planning, and the US's caused by a wide variety of reasons, but mostly that no single contractor was willing to take on the massive development costs of such a large project by themselves (and with good reason). Pretty much the ONLY solution, it seemed, was to try and use existing hardware as much as possible, from multiple manufacturers. Of course, ABMA was the only team that was interested in or capable of organizing and heading-up such a project. Thus, the Saturn family was born.

And, while the Russians WERE secretive about their space program, I think the development teams themselves were all pretty well-informed what other bureaus were up to.

That was true; Brezhnev's *initial* solution to the problem was to give the flyby to Chelomei and the landing to Korolev, which qualifies as the sort of clusterfuck decision that only a government can make. Of course, the decision to pull the plug on Chelomei's flyby mission wasn't made until 1968, after they'd completed several unmanned Zond flybys. (And it was probably the right call, given that Zond was a modified Voshkod, and Voshkod was a deathtrap that they got VERY lucky with for the three flights before they ran away.)

How could a spacecraft with braking rockets attached to its parachute lines POSSIBLY be a deathtrap?

Well, I meant in a relative sense; the R&D cost and tooling costs had been paid, so now it was just incremental costs, the actual direct cost of building and flying the booster, as the overhead had been paid by the Apollo program. Not cancelling Apollo Applications would have also meant we wouldn't have put all our eggs in the Shuttle basket, meaning that we wouldn't have lost about fifteen years of development of expendable boosters that were going to be more affordable than the Shuttle as a heavy lifter. (Irony, the only time I've been to the Everett plant was when it was closed for the night, and it was back when the 777 was still just entering revenue service.)

Well, there IS something to be said for having options. But Saturn was not the right rocket to be using for frequent launch services. Keeping it around for occasional heavy launches (much like the way Proton is used) might not be unreasonable, but even still, a Saturn IB would easily cost several times what a Proton does simply because its design is NOT well-suited to high-volume production. In general, scrubbing Saturn in favor of a more modest and flexible rocket would've been the most sensible answer - for instance, taking advantage of the massive groundwork laid by the cancelled MOL project and using evolved Titan rockets as an interim solution.

And I still hold the opinion that the Shuttle COULD have crushed expendable boosters in terms of per-launch costs if it hadn't been crippled by expensive and constricting post-Challenger safety measures.

Additionally, Apollo Applications was intended to have most of its missions on either the Saturn IB or the Saturn INT-20, using the INT-21 stack just for lofting the Dry Workshop and Wet Workshop stations to LEO and one of the Lagrange points, reducing cost compared to using the full Saturn V stack, particularly given modifications intended to make the second order of Saturns less expensive than the first, like the flyback S-IC. (The thinking on the INT-20 was that the use of the three-engine version of the S-IC as a first stage would have allowed them to shut down the S-IB production line and gain increased economies of scale by using the same line for both the heavy-lift and medium-lift Saturns.)

The very nature of the Saturn rocket's design made it horribly suited for a proper assembly line (unlike, say, Soyuz or Proton or pretty much anything that was a missile once upon a time). Again, think of the Boeing plants. They churn out one 737 EVERY DAY out of Renton at a bargain price of around $30-40 million apiece from two parallel assembly lines. Over at Everett, they're shipping in fuselage sections and all sorts of other components from different manufacturers all over the world, bringing them in and trying to fit them all together on a slow, makeshift non-moving assembly line. They get roughly two out per MONTH, for about $200 million apiece. This is very closely analogous to what you're looking at when you compare Saturn's complex production scheme with any single-manufacturer, horizontally-assembled rocket. There's just no comparison.

Retrofitting Saturn for partial reuse would be an interesting (and probably expensive) prospect. Overall, I think launches of Saturn V would not be frequent enough to warrant it all by itself. If INT-21 somehow did replace Saturn IB outright (which, contrary to what you claim, does NOT seem to be the intention of the study), then I could see it possibly being worth investing in. Then again, maybe a reusable S-IB would make more sense if the ultimate goal is cost savings.

I don't know. Maybe it's just a little bit of inner anger at the US having been ballsy enough to go to the moon before the technology was actually up to the task, and then spent the next forty-five years slowly retreating from manned space exploration; it really burns me up that we stopped just when we were getting GOOD at it...

The technology was fine. The industry wasn't.

Now I don't KNOW if some big industry player such as ULA or Krunichev or even an up-and-comer like Space-X could pull it off nowadays on their own if a space agency offered them a contract, but it's certainly conceivable. I saw a write-up on a blog where some guy judged it'd be possible for a solo astronaut to ride a Space-X Dragon atop a Falcon-9 Heavy through a free-return trajectory using mostly-existing equipment. Perhaps the industry IS finally prepared to continue such bold endeavors.