For Questions That Don't Merit Their Own Thread

[kerbiloid]

17 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

the fate of bomber development was decided even before Gary Powers

On B-36 who was the only bomber enough capable to carry a heavy thermonuke, but it was piston-engined, so its 400 km/h speed didn't allow it to escape from its explosion.

I mean that when you have designed B-1/Tu-160/Tu-22-like bombers, you just extend their engines and aerodynamics on the fighters, too.

Edited July 25, 2022 by kerbiloid

[magnemoe]

11 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

American and British viewers of the Arab-Israeli and other proxy wars using Western vs Soviet tanks noted 'design flaws'... we weren't particularly interested in convincing them we were correct.  This really is one of those 'they just didn't know how to tank' things, IMO.  Institutional blindness.  Every Soviet Tankboi I've run into in WOT has argued vehemently that there's 'nothing wrong with T-72...80...90 + variants, and they're inherently better than all others'.

Don't get me wrong; they're capable tanks.  And the Soviet philosophy was always 'good enough, cheap enough and in enough quantity'.  They just weren't as good as they believed.  

Re: BMP-1... it was kind of a prototype.  Ripe for improvements based on its first fielding, and the lessons learned when the specialist crew (meaning trained, not conscript cargo) were killed.

During the cold war it was an interest in the west  to keep the Soviet forces look strong, they had the numbers so even if they tanks tended to pop their turrets it was always 10 more.
On the other hand Russia lost way more tanks in their minor wars than Israel and US, but training is likely an major factor here to. 

[DDE]

43 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

On the other hand Russia lost way more tanks in their minor wars than Israel and US, but training is likely an major factor here to. 

As well as the resilience of the opposing side. The Russian leadership spent much time agonizing why the New Years' Eve assault on Grozny turned into an embarassing bloodbath while the superficially similar "thunder run" on Baghdad met ineffectual resistance and ended in a stunning victory.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

1 hour ago, magnemoe said:

During the cold war it was an interest in the west  to keep the Soviet forces look strong, they had the numbers so even if they tanks tended to pop their turrets it was always 10 more.
On the other hand Russia lost way more tanks in their minor wars than Israel and US, but training is likely an major factor here to. 

I think there was real sense of parity running up to '91.  The US changes in force structure and use after Grenada, the effective integration of Combined Arms, Command and Control and ultimately, Logistics changed things dramatically.  The introduction of the Abrams was a game changer for ground forces, sure, but it's the whole package.  Let's not forget how dramatically the first Iraq war shocked everyone.  3d largest army going up against 4th largest army.  In the aftermath, we like to look at weapons systems - but if we are honest... yeah they were good, but the way they were used and integrated made the difference.

We can argue all day about US vs Iraq not really being a good proxy for how a US/Soviet non-nuclear contest would have panned out, but I think its safe to say that any contest in the 90s would have been shocking to the Soviets.  Eventually, they'd have had to rely on numbers and depth.

Thing is... It's never safe to count the Russians out.  They have (like the US, frankly) a history of not doing well in the beginning of a conflict - but adapting thereafter.

I honestly thought that their adventure in Syria would have been more informative, but you've also got to contend with Inertia.

14 minutes ago, DDE said:

"thunder run" on Baghdad

I would never expect another success like that again.

Edit: @kerbiloid pointed this out in his response.  The US has never, since 91, fought any war without absolute air superiority.  Complete air dominance.  That cannot be overlooked.

It's also clear that the US and RU forces still fight wars very differently.  As someone who's been to combat... I wouldn't want to fight against them WITHOUT air dominance.  Because their 'fires' doctrine is brutal.

Edited July 24, 2022 by JoeSchmuckatelli

[DDE]

47 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

I honestly thought that their adventure in Syria would have been more informative, but you've also got to contend with Inertia.

To give more Chechnya examples, someone dug up a quote from circa 1995 that went "If only we had those hovering scout robots I saw at an arms expo..." Inertia can get pretty terrifying, especially when one sets themselves up for the "not invented here" syndrome, and operates on a disproportionately small budget. That last bit really incentivizes R&D (where no expense is spared) over mass production (where profit margins can be kept painfully low), and an excessive focus on frontline systems at the expense of things that aren't obvious (like freight handling - all that colossal amount of fires is supplied by hand, without standard-issue forklifts and palettes).

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

"The line between disorder and order lies in logistics…"
- Sun Tzu
 

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

I mentioned Syria and my expectation that it would have proved to be a 'testing ground' for new ideas (for RU).  In many ways, it seems it was.

However, I also note the heavy reliance upon Wagner during those days.

It dawns on me that there may be 'communication lag' in addition to inertia.  Specifically, that people 'in the system' (professional RU military officers) don't have that high of a regard for their Mercenary compadres (a not uncommon feeling).  Further - I wonder if Wagner held something back.

HashtagPureSpeculation

[SunlitZelkova]

And another one- do we have any idea why the crew of Soyuz 9 came back with contracted hearts and were hospitalized, while the crew of Gemini 7 was somewhat fine?

Does +3 days make that much of a difference?

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

45 minutes ago, SunlitZelkova said:

And another one- do we have any idea why the crew of Soyuz 9 came back with contracted hearts and were hospitalized, while the crew of Gemini 7 was somewhat fine?

Does +3 days make that much of a difference?

guessing:

 

Quote

 

 Too much CO2 in the blood can indicate a variety of conditions including:

• Lung diseases
• Cushing’s syndrome, a disorder of the adrenal glands. Your adrenal glands are located above your kidneys. They help control heart rate, blood pressure, and other body functions. In Cushing’s syndrome, these glands make too much of a hormone called cortisol. It causes a variety of symptoms, including muscle weakness, vision problems, and high blood pressure.
• Hormonal disorders
• Kidney disorders
• Alkalosis, a condition in which you have too much base in your blood

Too little CO2 in the blood may indicate:

• Addison's disease, another disorder of the adrenal glands. In Addison's disease, the glands don't produce enough of certain types of hormones, including cortisol. The condition can cause a variety of symptoms, including weakness, dizziness, weight loss, and dehydration.
• Acidosis, a condition in which you have too much acid in your blood
• Ketoacidosis, a complication of type 1 and type 2 diabetes
• Shock
• Kidney disorders

 

•  

[DDE]

1 hour ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

I mentioned Syria and my expectation that it would have proved to be a 'testing ground' for new ideas (for RU).  In many ways, it seems it was.

Yeah, but those ideas took form of 40 minutes from detection to arrival of artillery shells and two Orlans per brigade being viewed as an achievement. It seems the US are far more able and willing to thoroughly autopsy even smaller conflicts, and drive force-wide reform.

1 hour ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

However, I also note the heavy reliance upon Wagner during those days.

It dawns on me that there may be 'communication lag' in addition to inertia.  Specifically, that people 'in the system' (professional RU military officers) don't have that high of a regard for their Mercenary compadres (a not uncommon feeling).  Further - I wonder if Wagner held something back.

HashtagPureSpeculation

I hear a similar distate has developed among US SOF and their PMC counterparts, who basically use the standing military as their unpaid training division.

Also, Wagner has transformed quite dramatically since Syria. It's unambiguous that they have their own Su-25s now (one of them was flown by a major-general dishonorably discharged for wrecking a fighter), and they've come completely out of the shadows to take credit for assaults on specific strongholds. They may have some influence on tactics, but they're hardly the only major vector for development - they weren't present at Mariupol, for example, nor do they have the influence on artillery duels.

Anyway, given the sound of heavily loaded Iranian Il-76s overhead last night... we might be getting a new datapoint on adaptability.

[DDE]

59 minutes ago, SunlitZelkova said:

And another one- do we have any idea why the crew of Soyuz 9 came back with contracted hearts and were hospitalized, while the crew of Gemini 7 was somewhat fine?

Does +3 days make that much of a difference?

Well, one source has an "ironclad" explanation: Mercury, Gemini and Apollo alike were all fake, partly because of the aforementioned discrepancy in symptoms, and the Shuttle was the first US spaceship.

And the only other source (who I imagine you relied on) is Anatoly Zak, who references Mishin's diaries without specifying a page. It's going to take a bit of time to sift through them...

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

18 minutes ago, DDE said:

use the standing military as their unpaid training division

There is a significant difference between doing something as service vs doing it for money. 

All the intangibles. 

I don't have any experience as a merc, nor serving in any other country - although I have trained with both conscripted and volunteer forces from other nations.  But I do think that there is an element of restraint that professionals in service have that may not be present with the for profit folks.  Similarly, I think that the concept of Duty is higher in the service group than the profiteer. Then there is the whole legality thing. 

Onlookers and outsiders may not recognize the differences I allude to - but I guarantee that the American Officer and SNCO classes do. It's something you can feel rather than articulate. 

Edited July 24, 2022 by JoeSchmuckatelli

[DDE]

6 minutes ago, DDE said:

Well, one source has an "ironclad" explanation: Mercury, Gemini and Apollo alike were all fake, partly because of the aforementioned discrepancy in symptoms, and the Shuttle was the first US spaceship.

And the only other source (who I imagine you relied on) is Anatoly Zak, who references Mishin's diaries without specifying a page. It's going to take a bit of time to sift through them...

Interesting development: I've found a counter-hoaxer post that contests the gravuty of claims about the conditions of the Soyuz-9 crew. After all, footage of them exists.

https://zen.yandex.ru/media/id/5dfc8be9d4f07a00b03092c5/soiuz9-sovetskii-dokumentalnyi-film-protiv-konspirologicheskih-mifov-60a165fc4b8d81065b732c00

4 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

There is a significant difference between doing something as service vs doing it for money. 

All the intangibles. 

I don't have any experience as a merc, nor serving in any other country - although I have trained with both conscripted and volunteer forces from other nations.  But I do think that there is an element of restraint that professionals in service have that may not be present with the for profit folks.  Similarly, I think that the concept of Duty is higher in the service group than the profiteer. Then there is the whole legality thing. 

Onlookers and outsiders may not recognize the differences I allude to - but I guarantee that the American Officer and SNCO classes do. It's something you can feel rather than articulate. 

Wagner are an interesting bunch precisely because, while the financial motivation is clear, they don't just put up a show of their patriotism but get treated to full government accolades. That includes both the aforementioned merc pilot and Evgeny Prigozhin himself getting a Golden star.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

20 minutes ago, DDE said:

ull government accolades

Yeah, that's just weird. 

(Note: reading into this a whole heap of scorn for the practice is the correct interpretation of the sentiment expressed) 

[SunlitZelkova]

1 hour ago, DDE said:

And the only other source (who I imagine you relied on) is Anatoly Zak, who references Mishin's diaries without specifying a page. It's going to take a bit of time to sift through them...

Yikes. That’s bad. This kind of makes me call into question his work as a whole.

Looking at Asif Siddiqi’s Challenge to Apollo… which I own but did not think to check *facepalm*… it does mention them being in a rather poor state, but nothing of contracted hearts.

Apparently both cosmonauts had to be carried- in contrast, the Gemini 7 crews both got themselves into the hoist to be lifted to the helicopter and walked across the carrier deck on their own- but it doesn’t make clear if this was required or if it was a precaution.

On the other hand though, the astronauts were unable to get out of their suits on their own and did require assistance.

Here is a description of the state of the Gemini 7 astronauts from MSC Medical Director Charles Berry, extracted from the official NASA account of the Gemini program-

"The most miraculous thing was when they could get out of the spacecraft and not flop on their faces; and they could go up into the helicopter and get out on the carrier deck and walk pretty well. They were in better physiologic shape than the V crew. Initially, their tilt-table responses were not as bad and did not last as long. It looked more like four-day responses, by far, than eight-day. The calcium loss was the same way. Amazingly, they maintained their total blood volume. They didn't get any decrease, but they did it in a peculiar way. They lost the red-cell mass still, but they replaced the plasma - they put more fluid in. Apparently, there had been enough time for an adaptive phenomenon to take place."

Now, here is the state of the Soyuz 9 crew from “one [Soviet] journalist”- “They were pale, and their faces furrowed with wrinkles. They tried to carry on a lively conversation and even make jokes; but they tired rapidly, and there were frequent lapses.” Source cited is Riabchikov, Russians in Space, page 282.

It took roughly 12 days for the cosmonaut’s heath problems to completely subside. I haven’t found anything about the state of the astronauts past the immediate days after the landing.

1 hour ago, DDE said:

Well, one source has an "ironclad" explanation: Mercury, Gemini and Apollo alike were all fake, partly because of the aforementioned discrepancy in symptoms, and the Shuttle was the first US spaceship.

I was thinking this position was a thing 

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

Could part of it be positional?  Sure microgravity, but also the extreme cramped compartments? 

[DDE]

4 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Could part of it be positional?  Sure microgravity, but also the extreme cramped compartments? 

Doesn't work out. Soyuz is a lot better in that regard than Gemini, which basically just had two pilots' seats.

5 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

Yikes. That’s bad. This kind of makes me call into question his work as a whole.

From my own critical observations of Zak, he seems to have benefitted from insider access to old hardware, but I don't think it's the first time I've seen him fall flat.

5 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

Apparently both cosmonauts had to be carried- in contrast, the Gemini 7 crews both got themselves into the hoist to be lifted to the helicopter and walked across the carrier deck on their own

Footage of Soyuz-9 capsule exit

They were up and walking, shakily, in three hours.

Edited July 25, 2022 by DDE

[kerbiloid]

6 hours ago, DDE said:

footage of them exists.

https://zen.yandex.ru/media/id/5dfc8be9d4f07a00b03092c5/soiuz9-sovetskii-dokumentalnyi-film-protiv-konspirologicheskih-mifov-60a165fc4b8d81065b732c00

A Soviet 1970 motivational film as a proof? Seriously? Why not cartoons?

Such "footage" could be filmed any time before and after, and even unrelated to.

39:20 Isn't nobody puzzled by this crowd of collective farmers and farmeresses around the secret ship instead of military rescue team?

The value of this footage is below zero. I would prefer to believe Kamanin and MPK.

***

Two infarctions in the first year after landing for a 40 y old cosmonaut, and five in total.

https://zen-yandex-ru.translate.goog/media/murzilkinspace/skrytye-opasnosti-kosmosa-borba-andriiana-nikolaeva-za-jizn-na-zemle-5dbc160e98930900b0c5cef1?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=ru

***

And as all went ok with Korolyov's 2 m wide design (and he was going to build a whole modular station from Soyuz-like modules), after Soyuz-9 they immediately summoned the Minister of Defense (both personally hating Chelomei) and stole Almaz hulls from OKB-52 just to attach tha rear part of Soyuz and quickly made equipment (even not properly testing the docking port for Soyuz-10), and stopped the tiny ship autonomous flights, replacing them with Salyut?

***

The flight was performed after the previous, 5 day long flight, without intermediate medical studies.

It's known that they were performing an artificial gravity experiment on Soyuz-9, in hope to let the crew feel better.

The ship had been rotated around its CoM (i.e. rotation radius ~2.5 m). 
As both crewmen were suffering from vestibular problems after the return, probably this made a contribution, too. Maybe even the main part.

[DDE]

Just now, kerbiloid said:

The ship had been rotated around its CoM (i.e. rotation radius ~2.5 m). 
As both crewmen were suffering from vestibular problems after the return, probably this made a contribution, too. Maybe even the main part.

Yeah, I ran across that in a third source.

Then a fourth made claims that there hospitalization was part of developing a post-lunar quarantine protocol...

7 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

And as all went ok with Korolyov's 2 m wide design (and he was going to build a whole modular station from Soyuz-like modules), after Soyuz-9 they immediately summoned the Minister of Defense (both personally hating Chelomei) and stole Almaz hulls from OKB-52 just to attach tha rear part of Soyuz and quickly made equipment (even not properly testing the docking port for Soyuz-10), and stopped the tiny ship autonomous flights, replacing them with Salyut?

And that's precisely the kind of stories why studies of the Soviet space program are a minefield...

Note that I'm not contesting the symptoms, but their magnitude.

[SunlitZelkova]

5 minutes ago, DDE said:

Then a fourth made claims that there hospitalization was part of developing a post-lunar quarantine protocol...

Yes. Even if they had been able to walk they would have been in the hospital/quarantined anyways.

This actually makes determining their physical condition more difficult.

[kerbiloid]

6 minutes ago, DDE said:

Then a fourth made claims that there hospitalization was part of developing a post-lunar quarantine protocol...

Infarctions included.

[DDE]

4 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Infarctions included.

Yeah, I'm staring at the MK article that mentions he died from his fifth stroke. Two from the flight, one from divorcing Tereshkova? The math doesn't add up anyway.

[kerbiloid]

6 minutes ago, DDE said:

Yeah, I'm staring at the MK article that mentions he died from his fifth stroke. Two from the flight, one from divorcing Tereshkova? The math doesn't add up anyway.

1 divorce = 1 spaceflight, 1 as 2.

P.S.
I start worrying for Bill and Bob.

Jeb is a lonely wolf since the very beginning.

Who's Val's of these two?

[SunlitZelkova]

Could a spacecraft launching 2-3 weeks behind another toward Mars catch up with or surpass the one ahead?

Or if their launches are separated by a matter of days?

Let’s imagine these hypothetical spacecraft have a decent amount of spare delta v.

I’d assume the answer is no based on my experiences with KSP but I want to make sure.

[Pixophir]

Certainly, but they'd be on different trajectories, e.g. one on a Hohmann transfer, the other on a brachistochrone.

Ignoring engineering challenges for the latter, just a hypothetical example.

And not having done calculations. Of course there's always a point for two such given spaceships, where the first becomes uncatchable by the second, depending on orbits and technical data.

Edited July 29, 2022 by Pixophir