soyuz the underappreciated workhorse?

[GeneCash]

All I can say is I'd fly either one in a heartbeat, but given my druthers, I'd rather fly on a SpaceX Dragon. I'm not picky, and I'll sweep floors for a spaceflight!

Anyway, the true loss with the Shuttle is NASA stuck with the Model-T design, instead of learning from it and designing a second generation vehicle with lessons learned from the first. They could have had a 100% reusable flyback booster and improvements in the heatshield, which would have addressed both issues that killed astronauts. I have a Shuttle tile, and that sucka is FRAGILE.

Unfortunately, Congress keeps NASA's budget in a constant flux, and there's no stability in which to plan and build large technological systems. Look at what's happened with Constellation/SLS/Orion/Ares/whatever-its-called-this-fiscal-quarter.

[BlackBicycle]

tons of old equipment to be refurbished, science experiments and personal affects of crew members... And now there is at least one space suit and probably a broken coolant pump waiting up there for the next dragon to arrive to ferry them back.

Right... Of course!! Let's bring the old junk back and fix it... and ferry it back up. Are you being serious??

As for experiments that need to be landed, until now I haven't heard of experiments that would weigh more than a kilogram (the part that needs to be returned). I might be wrong of course, I haven't checked the scene for a while, but I doubt any school sent an elephant up there recently.

Edited December 27, 2013 by BlackBicycle

[Tiberion]

Right... Of course!! Let's bring the old junk back and fix it... and ferry it back up. Are you being serious??

As for experiments that need to be landed, until now I haven't heard of experiments that would weigh more than a kilogram (the part that needs to be returned). I might be wrong of course, I haven't checked the scene recently, but I doubt any school sent an elephant up there recently.

Don't be pedantic, they bring them back to study them and improve the design. I'm not making it up dude, they bring stuff back all the time. They have limited room up there, and what they don't want they toss in a Progress or ATV and let it burn up. So when they bring it back, they really want it.

The Shuttle had the ability to bring back 100% of its payload in all but the cases where the payload was at the very maximum. so if one of the many satellites they took up and failed to deploy they could have made it safe (probably drop its booster section) and brought it back, rather than leaving 50 or 100 millions of dollars of spacejunk up there. As far as I know, they never needed to do it, but that changes nothing.

Are you seriously trying to claim that bringing home payload isn't useful?

[ZetaX]

Well you very clearly haven't studied the shuttle very much then. Many of its missions carried science experiment racks into orbit in the bay, where the astronauts performed them and then packed them up to bring them home again.

The first sentence is just offensive and shows that you haven't really thought about my comment at all. Just think about how much of the experiments really need bringing back in full instead of just bringing back the date and some (not heavy!) material samples. The cost of that equipment is very minor compared to over a billion per shuttle launch, so you could essentially just throw it out of the window (yeah, not literally, obviously, for several reasons).

Edit cause of newer post: obviously bringing back stuff is useful, but most of the bringing back is not needed and just convenient; it often does not at all outweight the higher cost of the shuttle.

[BlackBicycle]

they bring them back to study them and improve the design.

The Shuttle had the ability to bring back 100% of its payload... so if one of the many satellites they took up and failed to deploy they could ... brought it back, rather than leaving 50 or 100 millions of dollars of spacejunk up there.

I think bringing back satellites is a ridiculous idea. That thing is not worth much after it has been deployed and failed. Especially if you have to arrange a special mission to rendezvous the shuttle with the thing, pull it in and land. It is much cheaper to rebuild the thing back home and launch another one. That is common practice for as long as space exploration has been about, in fact.

And as a general note, I have to remind you, the shuttle was built for a purpose. Namely, its role in a cold war was to launch satellites to replace those that have been destroyed in space warfare during WW3. Hence its 10 days relaunch capability, reusability, high cost of launching payload. It was a war machine. And as such, it was quite good at what it was planned for.

So there. I might be a bit patriotic here about the Soyuz (a former Soviet is always a Soviet hehe), but I am doing my best to stay non-biased : )

Edited December 27, 2013 by BlackBicycle

[UnthinkableThinker]

What we need to have in our minds is that nothing is perfect, and it will always eventually fail, no matter how good the engineering or the preparation was.

The Soyuz has a completely different design when comparing to the shuttle, and I can say it is like comparing a motorcycle to a car.

Yes, both (Soyuz/Shuttle) take people to space, but both were made with different things in mind. This doesn't stop Russia from making a shuttle-like craft, neither the US making a rocket "Soyuz-like". So I believe this argument will pretty much get anywhere, since they are two completely different projects. Once both countries make a craft that have similar designs, then the conversation will change.

Edited December 27, 2013 by UnthinkableThinker

[lajoswinkler]

and if you asked in Russia it'd be the reverse. Except the Shuttle would be mentioned as an example of the failures of Imperialist American Capitalism.

Russia is way more socially connected to the "global village" than for example China. Russian people are heavily influenced by Western media. Knowing about the existence of space shuttles is common knowledge, it's a pop-culture thing.

Knowing about Soyuz, not really. I doubt many Russians would give you a blank stare if you asked about it, like a typical American would, but I find hard to believe they would not know what a space shuttle is.

[Kryten]

It'd at least be in the news a lot more in Russia; from what I've been able to gather, coverage of foreign spaceflight in the US is minimal at best.

[BlackBicycle]

Thinker, I agree this is comparing apples and oranges. The original question is semi-legitimate though: we started off comparing safety records (though with craft so different we can't really compare even that). Again, the roles were so different at the time the stuff was designed...

As of Russia building the shuttle-like craft... well, I researched the topic extensively (watching interviews with the participants of the project, watching conversations with russian cosmonauts on the topic, and one personal conversation with Mr. Kubasov). My general conclusion is that Buran was a copycat for no reason. Or maybe there was a reason: to "show them we can do it too". Shame, really.

And as for US building "regular" capsule-return craft... well, that's the natural way of doing it, no? In terms of efficiency so far that is.

[Tiberion]

I think bringing back satellites is a ridiculous idea. That thing is not worth much after it has been deployed and failed. Especially if you have to arrange a special mission to rendezvous the shuttle with the thing, pull it in and land. It is much cheaper to rebuild the thing back home and launch another one. That is common practice for as long as space exploration has been about, in fact.

And as a general note, I have to remind you, the shuttle was built for a purpose. Namely, its role in a cold war was to launch satellites to replace those that have been destroyed in space warfare during WW3. Hence its 10 days relaunch capability, reusability, high cost of launching payload. It was a war machine. And as such, it was quite good at what it was planned for.

So there. I might be a bit patriotic here about the Soyuz (a former Soviet is always a Soviet hehe), but I am doing my best to stay non-biased : )

No, you mis-understood. They launched them FROM the shuttle bay, and could recapture them in case of failure. (obviously if the failure came later after it had been boosted by the PAM they could not have done anything)

If you don't think a satellite manufacturer would like to get its hardware back, replace a faulty chip or valve or whatever and be able to process it for launch again instead of spending 50 million on another set of hardware, you're crazy

Anyway, we're ignoring the actual white elephant in the room - Buran. The Soviets clearly liked the system enough to almost wholly replicate it and the changes they did make solved very few of the actual issues the NASA program had. Not safer or significantly cheaper. They were even spending money developing a reusable Energia.

So if the Russians really were laughing at the "Imperialists" wasteful program, I'm sure they were really amused by their own government's folly. Well, in private anyway.

Edit: Okay, so you're claiming they did Buran 'just because' rather than because it offered capabilities they were interested in acquiring?

Yeah, I think I'm done wasting time.

Edited December 27, 2013 by Tiberion

[Camacha]

I think the Soyuz is brilliant. It is a perfect example of something that was pretty good being perfected over time. By now, it can do something terribly difficult reliably and with apparent ease. Little fuss or thrills, just business.

The space shuttle was a valuable experiment, but it was less than perfect in many ways. One of the problems was that its reusability stood in the way of improvements and development. I think it served space flight and development in general well, but was never going to be what it should. Maybe some future iteration can fulfil the promises the space shuttle made.

Even though I am fond of the space shuttle as a pop icon, I think I would pick the Soyuz if I would have to choose. I think it offers the best chances of going on an adventure and returning home alive.

Edited December 27, 2013 by Camacha

[BlackBicycle]

Yeah, I think I'm done wasting time.

Now, that's one graceful way to leave a discussion :s

P.S. Camacha, like I said, the shuttle was a military unit, with a very particular purpose. And it did what it was supposed to do, and excelled in that. Too bad it was never tested in battle conditions (or maybe it's good : ?)

Edited December 27, 2013 by BlackBicycle

[ZetaX]

If you don't think a satellite manufacturer would like to get its hardware back, replace a faulty chip or valve or whatever and be able to process it for launch again instead of spending 50 million on another set of hardware, you're crazy

It is way more crazy to spend three times the amount of money on getting your satellite into orbit than necessary just to have the option of aborting the deploy and bring it back. Unless you assume a rather high probability of failure that is detectable while the object is still close enough to the shuttle, this is not worth it at all. Launching it and building it seem to be in a similiar price range for e.g. broadcasting satellites, so you would need a chance of at least 10% (already if calculated very optimistically towards your claim) to have an error in your satellite that is not detectable/present pre-launch, but detectable before final deployment from the shuttle into an orbit; this seems not to be the case, so I conclude your point to be moot.

[Brethern]

Considering the fact that soyuz hasn't been retired I'd say it's fairly obvious what the better craft is.

From what I read about soyuz it's the Cadillac of spacecraft, everything else pales in comparison.

[Spartwo]

I'd say more the Toyota Hilux of spacecraft.

[TheCanadianVendingMachine]

Well, you see. The space shuttle was very useful. Not the orbiter, however. The space shuttle was the external tank and the SRB's, so in that case the shuttle was way more reliable than Soyuz

[Skyrunner27]

I think I have a comparison who can bring this argument to a close. The shuttle will be the model airplane and the Soyuz a paper airplane. The paper airplane has had nummerous irritation and is cheaper than the model airplane but can not carry as much cargo. It has had two failures near the beginnig of you making it but you have perfected your design and have made a cheap expendable glider. The model airplane while more expensive it offers more features than the paper airplane. It also had two failures but its failures where more expensive. The model airplane is also capable of carrying cargo.

On another note using the failure argument is basically like saying that Apollo was the worst spacecraft in history.

[SFJackBauer]

As for experiments that need to be landed, until now I haven't heard of experiments that would weigh more than a kilogram (the part that needs to be returned)

The LDEF weighed 9 tons. Other space exposure experiments and satellites were deployed and then retrieved back to Earth.

Spacelab weighed 14 tons.

Also, the SRTM, the most accurate Earth topography model, with 30m resolution, used worldwide in GIS applications, was performed in a Shuttle mission, which gathered 8 terabytes of data.

From the shuttle were also launched the Galileo, Ulysses and Magellan probes, the Hubble telescope, the Chandra X-ray observatory, the Compton Gamma-ray observatory. And also several hours of the most beautiful images of Earth orbit in high-definition IMAX were recorded (bear in mind the IMAX equipment weighs hundreds of kilos).

Really, I think that even some posts in this thread are borderline disrespectful - with the scientists, with the people that worked on the ground, with the astronauts, even with the people that died doing their duty. The success or failure of a program of this magnitude cannot be explained on one factor only. Hell, I'm not even american, nor russian, and I harbor the utmost respect for both sides, for their work was and is unique, extremely risky, but above everything, inspirational.

[ZetaX]

Almost none of the things given by you require anything to be brought back (Hubble, the probes, etc.), and those that do only are exactly as BlackBicycle says: at most a couple of kilograms. None of the things you mentioned would have been impossible otherwise. And the "being disrespectful" part is, if anything, disrepectful by similiar reasons if you want so (ever dared to check how many lives could be saved with the money wasted on the shuttle¿), or actually, that concept makes no sense at all: Just because some guys put lots of effort or money into something does not make them exempt from criticism, nor does it make it great; and those that actually did a great job, e.g. those scientists, indeed deserve respect for their execution of it, but that does not imply the shuttle as a whole does. They did their job well, but the job itself was at least a bit wrong to begin with.

[SFJackBauer]

Almost none of the things given by you require anything to be brought back (Hubble, the probes, etc.), and those that do only are exactly as BlackBicycle says: at most a couple of kilograms.

Again, the LDEF and the Spacelab weighed a bit more than a couple of kilograms.

None of the things you mentioned would have been impossible otherwise.

I don't like being fanciful about "what-if" scenarios. But I agree that the satellite and probe launches could be done better by unmanned launches - perhaps.

And the "being disrespectful" part is, if anything, disrepectful by similiar reasons if you want so (ever dared to check how many lives could be saved with the money wasted on the shuttle¿)

How many lives could have been saved by not spending on any rockets at all? How many lives could have been saved by not building stadiums for hockey, football or golf courses? How can this kind of argument even persist on today's world? And what guarantee you give that by not having the shuttle, lives would be saved?

As for the disrespectful comments, don't you think that:

So still would rather ride in the soyuz, better to return with broken bones than to return as vaporised molecules.

Is disrespectful for those who have lost their lives both on Soyuz and the Shuttle program? We are talking about people here.

Just because some guys put lots of effort or money into something does not make them exempt from criticism, nor does it make it great; and those that actually did a great job, e.g. those scientists, indeed deserve respect for their execution of it, but that does not imply the shuttle as a whole does. They did their job well, but the job itself was at least a bit wrong to begin with.

Your last phrase indicates we agree on something. And I completely agree that the Shuttle program was far, very far from being perfect. But a critique have to have some foundation, otherwise it's just dissing someone's else work. When you have the effort in understanding deeply how something was designed, what were the constraints, the mindset, the original goals, and why some decisions were made, then you are in position to criticize. Just as a wild example, could you give me your opinion on whether IBM's effort on System/360 back in the 60's was worth the effort or just wasted money?

[astropapi1]

...and is the only remaing human orbital capable spacecraft thats even been copied succesfully by china.

Shots fired.

[DaveofDefeat]

My model rocket is the most awesome rocket ever.

[Brethern]

I'd say more the Toyota Hilux of spacecraft.

I have no problems with this analogy either.

[AlamoVampire]

if you do not mind using a space craft that was designed in the 60s.

[Kerbin Dallas Multipass]

I think the fact that USA operates ~half a space station but is unable to launch humans into space shows that the shuttle was a wrong step, wrong idea, wrong concept. America got bored of manned spaceflight after playing golf on the moon so they needed something that looked awesome and futuristic and made spaceflight look like a commute - and scare the evil communists a bit.

The fact that Soyuz is still flying is also quite outrageous. 1960s foolproof minimum design that somehow survived the collapse of the soviet system. Hey, nice job, but isnt it a shame that this AK47 design is the state of the art of rocket science in 2014?

I don't think the shuttle is good, I don't think Soyuz is good.

USA could have done better, USSR/Russia did OK if you consider the circumstances. I do not doubt that either space agency could have come up with much better solutions given proper decisions and sustained funding.