I wonder why the Russians stopped their lunar program?

[Kryten]

And i am saying they did'nt lost it, there is just no one willing to pay for. It's the same story like everywhere. Russia is no more a communist country they have capitalism now and things in capitalism work like everywhere else where there is capitalism. If there's no money for it it won't be done.

The Russians did pay for Mars-96 and Phobos-Grunt. They failed miserably. They're paying for Luna-24-27 and Venera-D, and they're being delayed roughly a year a year. They're paying out of the nose for PTK-NP and the SHLV project, they just aren't going anywhere. The problems are structural and technical, not financial.

[Sky_walker]

You've pretty much reached the limits of the crewed platform. Why do you think things like Foton or Bion exists? Human presence ruins most experiments sensitive enough to have to be put into space in the first place.

Yea, I'm sure gecko s.ex experiment would be spoiled by human presence.

The Gecko sat was an ancient Vostok-based design, and Spektr-R was literally designed 30 years ago. I'm not saying they don't have the capability they have, I'm saying they've lost the ability to build on it.

They build them just, fine all of the mentioned projects, both - these failed that you focus on, and these hugely successful that you so quickly dismiss, like Soyuz. If anything - they lost a design capacity.

CCDEV is still on track for 2017/early 2018.

Driving motor of the CCDev is a private, majority of scientists working on a project are hired by a private entities, major part of the CCDev success is that it stayed away from NASA as much as possible (looks like after upcoming stage we'll have one project staying on it's own, moving even further away from NASA).

The problems are structural and technical, not financial.

Which is why they're restructuring their space sector.

It also served to gather lots of useful practical data with regards to he operation resusable spacecraft (including data on what can fail ... especially thanks to the columbia and challenger disasters)

US build 6 shuttles. 1 never flew in space, 2 ended up in flames. Average launch cost was $1.5 billion with lower payload capacity than Delta IV Heavy, Delta IV Heavy which launch cost is is $375 million according to the Wikipedia. Yes, different eras, but even if we triple the cost of Delta IV - it's still super-attractive comparing to the space shuttle.

Sorry, but this data could be just as well obtained using cheaper and more efficient methods, withouth leading to the death of 14 people (ie. smaller robotic spaceplanes similar to the IXV/PRIDE - Buran was the first spaceplane to make a fully automated flight, so it could be done just fine back in a day).

Space Shuttle programme was mostly a PR win for NASA. In terms of scientific return per dollar spent - it was a miserable misunderstanding. I hardly can think of other NASA project that would have such a poor return and could be replaced by much more elegant, practical and cheaper solution.

Edited September 4, 2014 by Sky_walker

[Kryten]

Yea, I'm sure gecko ... experiment would be spoiled by human presence.

The researchers seem to think so, otherwise it'd be on the ISS. In that case it's more likely an expense issue than anything else. The rest of the payloads are the exact kind of materials science studies the ISS was supposed to do in the 80s but wasn't capable of due to issues such as vibration.

They build them just fine all of the mentioned projects, including Bion-M are newly build. If anything - they lost a design capacity.

That's what I meant. 'Build on' is a metaphor for expand, expanded capabilities require new designs.

Driving motor of the CCDev is a private, majority of scientists working on a project are hired by a private entities, major part of the CCDev success is that it stayed away from NASA as much as possible (looks like after upcoming stage we'll have one project staying on it's own, moving even further away from NASA).

The driving motor is NASA; it's their project and their money. Almost all scientists working on Orion are LM employees, almost all workers on Apollo were MD employees, and so on for the rest of the projects. NASA sometimes works as a systems integrator, but it has no manufacturing or detailed design capability.

EDIT:

Which is why they're restructuring their space sector.

Indeed, but their strategy (buy up anything not majority state-owned, place under centralised integrator) is rather dubious. It will either destroy the program entirely or allow them to regain ground, but it this point it's impossible to tell which.

DOUBLE EDIT:

Oh who am I kidding, it's Rogozin, of course it'll be a disaster.

Edited September 4, 2014 by Kryten

[Sky_walker]

The researchers seem to think so, otherwise it'd be on the ISS. In that case it's more likely an expense issue than anything else. The rest of the payloads are the exact kind of materials science studies the ISS was supposed to do in the 80s but wasn't capable of due to issues such as vibration.

Researchers do different stuff for different reasons. Objectives of this mission went beyond just studying geckos ... behaviour - they also wanted to test hardware (came out it was far from perfect) and reentry technologies. Geckos were only a side-effect of a project.

That's what I meant. 'Build on' is a metaphor for expand, expanded capabilities require new designs.

What I meant is that they know how to expand capabilities of existing ships - see: Soyuz TMA-M build on TMA variant managed to score a new record for a quickest docking of a manned ship to the ISS, however they still got a problem with designing new stuff or resurrecting old.

I won't argue about the rest, I think it's clear enough what's the opinion of each side.

DOUBLE EDIT:

Oh who am I kidding, it's Rogozin, of course it'll be a disaster.

Hahahahaha

[rtxoff]

The Russians did pay for Mars-96 and Phobos-Grunt. They failed miserably. They're paying for Luna-24-27 and Venera-D, and they're being delayed roughly a year a year. They're paying out of the nose for PTK-NP and the SHLV project, they just aren't going anywhere. The problems are structural and technical, not financial.

Exactly they failed and they learned from it and right now they won't be any additional starts because they are no funds, i have no doubt they could get it done, however nobody will pay it because there is no reason for. The problems may be structual or technical but nothing money could'nt repair.

[Kryten]

Exactly they failed and they learned from it and right now they won't be any additional starts because they are no funds, i have no doubt they could get it done, however nobody will pay it because there is no reason for. The problems may be structual or technical but nothing money could'nt repair.

Again, Luna-24 through 27 are funded.

[rhoark]

The lunar program stopped because N1 failed. N1 failed because the acoustics and fluid dynamics involved in clustering 30 engines was way beyond the state of the art at the time. The accident that caused a lot of deaths was the Nedelin disaster involving an ICBM, not the N1.

[Nibb31]

The failure of the N1 wasn't due to the clustering of engines. It was more due to logistics, management, and the lack of ground testing.

Baikonur was far from the Soviet Union's manufacturing facilities, so parts had to be transported by train and assembled on site in rather rudimentary conditions. This is why the N1 used spherical tanks, because they didn't have the capacity to locally build cylindrical tanks. This was the main driving factor for the N1's suboptimal conical design

Also Stages were never test fired individually because Baikonur lacked a test facility. This meant that the most of the problems were only discovered during each flight.

Of course, these problems arose because the program was under sever pressure. The Kremlin wanted launches, not tests, and didn't care much about the logistics.

[NASAFanboy]

Also, the contractors for the engine was a jet engine manufacturer and had no experience with rocket engines.