Photos of Soyuz descent module crash (touchdown)

[jakee 1,271]

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How long we they in space? I see they can't stand up!

Captions indicate nearly 6 months, april through september.

Do you want to have an ideagasm?

[champu 1]

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>but they are effectively stuck in the same-ol-mission of the 1970s of
>ferrying people and cargo to LEO.

Once you get to LEO you're halfway to anywhere; get to LEO and getting to the moon is a fraction of the effort, for example. LEO itself is a pretty attractive destination for science and industry.

True, and I suppose Soyuz/Progress could indefinitely continue as ferries to and from a "construction site" in LEO to build more elaborate science or industrial facilities or to go elsewhere. My comment about feeling somewhat stagnant in the 1970s is probably more applicable to their DOS-based station design. I'm not sure how adaptable it is to future applications and I actually don't know how much work has been done to build the "next" thing.

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>Now that we have a facility like ISS in LEO, we really don't need to keep
>lugging robotics, airlocks, fuel cells, payload bays, etc to and from orbit.

Well, we didn't even need the STS to do that. The wet-workshop concept would have gotten it built at a fraction of the cost. But we had the STS, so we figured we'd use it.

Agreed there. Like I said it was built to try and do everything and then when we decided, "hey let's do these couple things," we used it for those things instead of approaching them as individual problems.

[PiLFy 0]

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Funny....you would think there would be some sort of "slider" to slow the opening of the thing?
Less of a shock to the system?

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/structure/elements/soyuz/landing.html

[NickDG 23]

Well, the Air Force just came clean on the X-37B which was secretly launched last April. And is on orbit now. I doubt they would have said anything but those guys who love nothing better than tracking space vehicles from their backyards spotted it.

Julia had something about it on her laptop last year and when I noticed it walking by she slammed the laptop closed. I know there's somethings she can't tell me so I didn't press her.

The X-37B is a robotic reusable winged space vehicle and something the Air Force would have probably had years ago if they had continued the plane into space programs of the 50s and 60s. But when "beat the Russians to the moon at all costs" became the order of the day all the funding switched from the X-planes and went into the ballistic rocket\splashhdown vehicles.

There's an article in this months Aerospace Magazine about the X-37B and one thing was damn funny. They are using a new insulating material to protect the craft on re-entry. And this has to be a case where the acronym came before the actual name. The material is called Toughened Unipiece Fibrous Reinforced Oxidation-resistant Composite, or TUFROC!

NickD

[airtwardo 6]

But when "beat the Russians to the moon at all costs" became the order of the day all the funding switched from the X-planes and went into the ballistic rocket\splashhdown vehicles.

I'd always heard it was the other way around, they spent the money on space travel because in the midst of the cold war, the super-powers kind of agreed having quickly deployed ground launch bombers in space might be a bad thing.

I remember Crossfield commenting in a lecture once that the X-15 'never did' what it was both designed for and fully capable of doing...fly into space. "or did it"

There was a long standing 'rumor' in some of the conspiracy theory ranks that the Russians 'took a hasty shot' at the moon within weeks or days of the 1st landing and that it didn't work out so well...it's been said both that they smashed into the cheese and didn't survive, or that they 'missed it buy that much', and are still going south.

When we went to Russia about 15 years ago, we stayed with a couple in Moscow for a while that my wife knows. He's an aircraft designer that had once worked on their moon station plans...I saw a copy of his blue prints (rolled up and stuffed in a closet of their flat) and it was quite impressive!

I asked him about the 'rumors' regarding losses in space...I'll never forget how he looked me dead in the eyes and said to the effect 'through out history many ships leave port never to return'.

Who knows?

~ If you choke a Smurf, what color does it turn? ~

[lawrocket 3]

Yeah. Back in the 50's and 60's, the USAF was workign on its own space program. The X-20 Dyna-Soar was much like the Space Shuttle - a reusable spacecraft/aircraft hybrid whose experimental data was used on the Space Shuttle.

The USAF even had its Manned Orbiting Laboratory program that progressed to the point of naming its own astronauts. Some of the MOL Astronauts who were selected were Richard Truly, Bob Crippen, Bo Bobko, Gordon Fullerton and Hank Hartsfield - who all went on to careers as NASA astronauts. There were others, too, whose names presently escape me...

The X-37B seems to be just the next step in the development.

My wife is hotter than your wife.

[NickDG 23]

>>I'd always heard it was the other way around, they spent the money on space travel because in the midst of the cold war, the super-powers kind of agreed having quickly deployed ground launch bombers in space might be a bad thing.
Not quite following that (what else is new) LOL . . .

So I went looking for some back up, read this:

http://www.acepilots.com/planes/x15.html

NickD

[billvon 2,464]

>the super-powers kind of agreed having quickly deployed ground launch
>bombers in space might be a bad thing.

The "skip bomber" was actually a WWII idea, and Peenemunde was working on it at the end of the war. Good thing it ended when it did.

>I remember Crossfield commenting in a lecture once that the X-15 'never
>did' what it was both designed for and fully capable of doing...fly into space.

Well, it couldn't in the last implementation that flew - but it was indeed a significant step along the way.

[NickDG 23]

I was kinda hoping, before the shuttle program ended, they would have sent up Chuck Yeager. Of all the publicity stunt launches involving John Glenn, Senator Cranston, or Christa McCuliff, Yeager, I think, deserved a ticket to ride more than most.

I'm not sure how old he is now, or if he's still flight qualified but up in Cal City in 1997 I saw him flying around in an F-15. He had another pilot in the plane with him but he re-broke the sound barrier, that day, 50 years after he was the very first man to do so.

"There's a demon lurking out there!"

NickD

[airtwardo 6]

perhaps most famously the X-20 Dyna-Soar project in the US, which would have used a Silbervogel-esque flight profile for global strike or surveillance missions

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/22/boost_glide_arclight/print.html









http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_GcjJ71Tc4
This series is kinda interesting, reading between the lines it appears there was something other than simple research being planned.

~ If you choke a Smurf, what color does it turn? ~

[lawrocket 3]

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I remember Crossfield commenting in a lecture once that the X-15 'never did' what it was both designed for and fully capable of doing...fly into space. "or did it"

It DID. Joe Walker took it above 100 km twice.

I don't know about its "flying in space" capabilities outside of Walker's flights. It couldn't have withstood reentry. Pete Knight's flight demonstrated what friction could to - the plane's skin was burned off in places and that was at 4500 mph and 190k feet.

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the Russians 'took a hasty shot' at the moon within weeks or days of the 1st landing

Yeah. The Russians opted for a huge rocket - the N-1. THis was necessary for a direct ascent - going straight at the moon (NASA opted for lunar orbit rendezvous, which did not require as massive of a rocket). The Russians also didn't have anything like the F-1 Rocket engine that the Saturn V used - 1.5 million pounds of thrust each. So the N-1 had to use 30 NK-15 engines - each one putting out about 300k pounds of thrust.

As one can guess, it's much more difficult to get 30 engines operating together than five. And the NASA's use of hydrogen instead of kerosene lowered the fuel weight dramatically.

So the N-1 Rocket always blew up. The Russians tried to launch an N-1 a couple of weeks before the Apollo 11 launch. It launched and cleared the tower. 20 seconds later the rockets shut down and 5 million pounds of kerosene and oxygen exploded. The Americans founds out about it because satellite recon photos showed there to be a blown up launch complex where previous photos showed a functional one.

My wife is hotter than your wife.

[NickDG 23]

Of course there was. It was then Vice President Johnson who said, "I for one, don't want to go to sleep at night by the light of a Russian Moon!"

Everything we did back then had a military application. Hell, people in my neighborhood in the 1960s were installing bomb shelters in their backyards. As a kid I helped dig a few.

NickD

[airtwardo 6]

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Of course there was. It was then Vice President Johnson who said, "I for one, don't want to go to sleep at night by the light of a Russian Moon!"

Everything we did back then had a military application. Hell, people in my neighborhood in the 1960s were installing bomb shelters in their backyards. As a kid I helped dig a few.

NickD

1963 December 10 - .
•Cancellation of the X-20 DynaSoar project and start of the MOL project - . Nation: USA. Related Persons: McNamara. Spacecraft: Dynasoar; MOL. Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara announced cancellation of the X-20 Dyna Soar project at a news briefing at the Pentagon. McNamara stated that fiscal resources thereby saved would be channeled into broader research on the problems and potential value of manned military operations in space, chiefly the Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL) project. These decisions on the X-20 and MOL had been discussed and coordinated with NASA, and, although the Air Force received responsibility for the MOL project, NASA would continue to provide technical support. By the end of 1963 $410 million had been spent on Dynasoar, with another $373 million needed through the first flight. It was decided to complete re-entry testing of the Asset subscale unmanned vehicle, at a cost of $ 41 million.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.astronautix.com/craft/dynasoar.htm


There's some interesting reading...you're right EVERYTHING was!

~ If you choke a Smurf, what color does it turn? ~

[JerryBaumchen 1,075]

Hi rocket,

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It DID. Joe Walker took it above 100 km twice.

I may be wrong ( nothing new there ) but I thought that Maj. Bob White was the only guy outside of the space program to get astronaut wings by flying the X-15 into outer space.

IIRC, Maj. White died not too long ago.

I was fortunate to be at Edwards when the X-15 was going strong ( Jul 60 - Aug 61 ) and actually saw it flying once.

JerryBaumchen

[lawrocket 3]

I think White got Air Force Astronaut wings (over 50 miles). Mike Adams got those on his fatal flight. I also know Joe Engle got Air Force astronaut wings (over 50 miles) and then got NASA Gold Wings on STS-2. I think Bill Dana and a couple of other guys did, as well.

But Joe Wlker was the only one who met the international criteria.

My wife is hotter than your wife.

[NickDG 23]

I actually knew Bill Dana. He lived in an apartment next door to us in New York City when I was kid. But he was the other Bill Dana, the comedian, ("My Name Jose Jimenez") who was a favorite of the early astronauts. My mom used to feed him a few times a week when he was dead broke and still trying to break into show business. Then he got his big break on the Ed Sullivan show. He still sends my family a Christmas card every year . . .

NickD

[champu 1]

I wonder what the designation of the X-37B will be if it goes into "production" (loose use of the term)

MQS-37B maybe?

[lawrocket 3]

"You're on your way Jose." - Slayton to Shepard at lift-off.

My wife is hotter than your wife.

[pchapman 262]

Over the past couple decades there's been a tremendous amount of interesting stuff revealed about the Soviet space programs, that wasn't well known or properly understood, or that fills in a lot of technical details.

Like the N-1 moon rocket, and their little moon lander. Or the Almaz military space station with guns and a big telescope. Or the Nedelin disaster. Or debunking of some of the rumours of other disasters with 'lost cosmonauts' dead in space.

[MikeJD 0]

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Has anyone landed on the sub sized Soyuz reserve canopy?

You can do it, but you need mad skillz.

[BobMoore 0]

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And this has to be a case where the acronym came before the actual name. The material is called Toughened Unipiece Fibrous Reinforced Oxidation-resistant Composite, or TUFROC!

NickD

Did you hear the name of the treadmill they sent to the space station? It is the "Combined Operational Load-Bearing External Resistance Treadmill", definitely a case where the acronym comes before the actual name.

"For you see, an airplane is an airplane. A landing area is a landing area. But a dropzone... a dropzone is the people."

[NickDG 23]

COLBERT, LOL!

NickD

[kkeenan 13]

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...NASA's use of hydrogen instead of kerosene lowered the fuel weight dramatically.

Actually, the F-1 engines in the Saturn V first stage (S-IC) burned RP-1 fuel (Kerosene). The J-2 engines in the S-II second stage burned cryogenic liquid hydrogen fuel. Both used liquid oxygen.

I read that the CIA analysts who first saw satellite photos of the launch pad damage from the N-1 explosion thought that they were seeing damage from a nuclear blast.

Kevin K.

[Beerlight 0]

Here's some off-center trivia on their program.

Russians will not drink any fluids during an EVA, no matter the length. Go figure.

[Amazon 7]

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Here's some off-center trivia on their program.

Russians will not drink any fluids during an EVA, no matter the length. Go figure.

Perhaps someone just has better diapers and does not need to worry about the non existant trees to water