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First Images of Russian-European Manned Spacecraft
Posted by
timothy
on Wed Jul 23, 2008 08:47 AM
from the space-porn dept.
from the space-porn dept.
oliderid writes "The first official image of a Russian-European manned spacecraft has been unveiled.
It is designed to replace the Soyuz vehicle currently in use by Russia and will allow Europe to participate directly in crew transportation.The reusable ship was conceived to carry four people towards the Moon, rivaling the US Ares/Orion system. This project is the Plan A for the European Space agency. The plan B is an evolution of the ATV proposed by a consortium of European companies led by Astrium."
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Go Europe! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Go Europe! (Score:4, Funny)
They can go visit the Moon, but the US has already claimed it with the cunning use of flags.
Yeah they claimed it, but we're going to take it! Muhahaha!!!!! :-P
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Re:Go Europe! (Score:5, Insightful)
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All the conspiracy theorists would blieve us anyway
You mean all the 0.003% of the population they represent? Hmmm.. indeed, you don't want that...
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The world sometimes *is* a scary place...
Re:Go Europe! (Score:4, Funny)
People voting against Bush and Obama
Oh, I hadn't realized Obama had chosen his running mate...
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Is there any way we can look through a telescope from Earth and see the flag on the moon? That's something I've always wondered.
It would shut a lot of people up pretty quickly.
Well that, or talk about how we just tied the thing to a missile and shot it at the moon like a javelin...
Rover? (Score:5, Funny)
Is there any way we can look through a telescope from Earth and see the flag on the moon?
Well, our esteemed Houston (Democrat) Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee suggested that the Mars Pathfinder could do that for us [nationalreview.com].
But I guess then they'd claim Pathfinder [nasa.gov] was fake.
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Re:Go Europe! (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Go Europe! (Score:5, Informative)
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the hell? (Score:4, Insightful)
Looks like a goddamn iCapsule. Damn you, Jobs!
Anyone else getting depressed with the space race? We've been at it for decades and the latest and greatest the Ruskies and Americans come up with looks like pretty much the same shit we've been doing for years, or in America's case, a 30 year wasted effort and then we come back to capsules. Repackaging the same old shit, up the price and call it a new version for the future, where have I seen this before? Oh, right, Microsoft. Apollo would be something along the lines of Win9x, better than what came before but not great. The shuttle would be like WinMil, we skipped XP and went straight to Vista with this Constellation debacle, and once that fails the next next shuttle successor will be something like Windows 7, a looming future failure.
*sigh*
Re:the hell? (Score:5, Insightful)
The main problem is: chemical rockets suck.
There's just no way to cheaply lift payload to orbit using our current rockets. That's why there's no revolutions in spacecraft-building.
We need something like space-plane, launch loops or space elevator for new space revolution.
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Re:the hell? (Score:5, Funny)
I thought they pushed -- opposite and equal reaction and all that
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Re:the hell? (Score:4, Funny)
The main problem is: chemical rockets suck.
I thought they pushed -- opposite and equal reaction and all that
They blow.
Reminds me of the woman at HP Germany where I gave a training many years ago. When we talked about a cooling fan, she asked: "Does it suck or blow?" Yes I was able to control my face, but it was hard.
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Re:the hell? (Score:5, Interesting)
The main problem is: chemical rockets suck.
There's just no way to cheaply lift payload to orbit using our current rockets. That's why there's no revolutions in spacecraft-building.
We need something like space-plane, launch loops or space elevator for new space revolution.
Indeed. I always thought space elevators seemed so fantastic as to be beyond belief but damned if that might become practical before the seemingly less-challenging Buck Rogers rockets.
I always liked the idea for the old Orion drive ships. "We're not going to be building these things like dainty tinfoil creations, they'll be welded together in drydocks like navy destroyers and weigh about as much. Float 'em out to see, light off the a-bombs, they can handle the weight." Now I don't think even Dick Cheney could go along with the idea of a bomb-powered ship but I wonder if anti-matter would be a suitable replacement charge? Aside from the issue of not being able to manufacture it in any sort of significant quantity, I'm wondering how bad the gamma flashes would be. Would it be safe if we towed launch vehicles out in the middle of the ocean? How much ocean water would it take to block the rays? Would there be any ionizing radiation to produce fallout?
I've heard some other crazy ideas for non-chemical rockets. One design has pellets of deuterium dropped into a chamber where they are precisely hit by multiple lasers and causes a tiny fusion explosion that is forced out the bottom of the ship, giving a far better bang for the buck than conventional propellants.
It just seems like we're rehashing the way things were done before instead of coming up with something new. Is it that the technology is so bleedin' difficult to invent, is it a lack of money and political will, or would the danger of the technology be so great that there's no way in hell anyone would sign off on it? I mean, we could have built Orion in the 50's, we could crash-build one of those things in the event of some planetary emergency (i.e. needing to get Bruce Willis up to an asteroid to blow up), but nothing short of that would convince people to use nukes for go-juice.
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Re: (Score:2)
"I've heard some other crazy ideas for non-chemical rockets. One design has pellets of deuterium dropped into a chamber where they are precisely hit by multiple lasers and causes a tiny fusion explosion that is forced out the bottom of the ship, giving a far better bang for the buck than conventional propellants."
Isn't that the description for the Enterprise's impulse drive?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
yup, eight engines and the same firing order as a small block chevy engine.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Uh, I always thought that the Orion system was intended to be used in space (where fallout isn't exactly a problem), rather than for getting the vehicle off the ground. That said, and I digress here, it would actually be a decent answer to the whole nuclear proliferation problem:
1. US and Russia draw up specs for nuke-pro
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
4. BOOM. (Yeah, I know, in space, nobody can hear you detonate your nuclear weapons. Bear with me here.) Ship is now traveling very fast away from point of detonation.
a. it would be inefficient, as only a small portion of the blast would be used to actually propel the craft, the rest would just go off into space.
...
b. it could only be used for non-fragile payloads (i.e. water, food) due to the sudden acceleration.
c. how do you control direction ?
then there's the political issues
Re:the hell? (Score:5, Informative)
The blast is deceptive, it is generated by the released gamma radiation being absorbed by surrounding matter rather than by the contents of the bomb absorbing energy. On Earth nuclear explosions have a big blast because their is plenty of atmosphere to absorb the gamma, radiate less energetic photons, and expand, a nuclear burst in the water is much less effective blast-wise than an airburst and a in-ground blast is down-right disappointing. In space there is no practically atmosphere so there is little to expand due to the energy release except for the ablative coatings in the engines themselves. Eventually we'll be pushing asteroids around by detonating nuc's near them which will vaporize the surface facing the release and generating the expanding reaction mass.
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Aside from the issue of not being able to manufacture it in any sort of significant quantity,
Yeah, other than that, magic pixie dust would be even better
Would it be safe if we towed launch vehicles out in the middle of the ocean?
In summary yes as it would be far less polluting than the numerous above ground nuclear tests that were done.
Would there be any ionizing radiation to produce fallout?
Mostly no. The components would probably not be heavy metals that fission into terribly radioactive substances. Why use anti-uranium when anti-hydrogen is probably easier to deal with. Also nukes throw tons of neutrons out making massive neutron activated fallout problems whereas the antimatter reaction throws out lots of gammas which ar
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem is the fallout from the bombs of course. But if you take that radiation in perspective it does make you wonder if that would be a show-stopper for an important enough mission.
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Orion is not feasible in the current political situation. Risk of hijacking of a space vessel fueled by _nuclear_ _bombs_ is too high.
Also, I don't really care about "important missions". I want a sustainable continuos space program.
There are projects of nuclear rockets (where a nuclear reactor heats gas to very high temperature), however. Maybe one day something will come out of them.
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Um, no. It costs $20 per pound delivered to orbit for rocket propellant. Since only, say, 1/4 of that is payload, say the true cost of propellant is $80 per pound of payload in orbit.
The vast majority of rocket launch expense is human salaries. The next largest expense is the expendable hardware. The propellant costs are down in the noise, approximately the same price as the celebration pizza party.
If you want to lower the cost of space access, don't bother with the engine technology - launch more often
Re:the hell? (Score:5, Interesting)
Obviously, you have never designed a rocket. Fortunately I have!
Here are the real equations:
delta-v = 9.8 * Isp * ln(launch_mass/orbit_mass)
delta-v to orbit is about 9000 m/s
Isp is an engine parameter. Simple Lox/Kerosene engines come in around 350s, complex lox/hydrogen engines come in around 450s. (Rocket engines do not run stochiometric, they run fuel rich - the reasons are complex, but essentially hydrogen is better at converting heat into thrust than water.)
OK, so let's do some numbers:
9000 = 9.8 * 350 * ln(launch_mass/orbit_mass)
ln(launch_mass/orbit_mass) = 2.62
launch_mass/orbit_mass = 14
So you need 14 pounds of propellant for every pound of orbited mass. of that 14 pounds of propellant, about 3/4 are LOX - which is essentially free (pennies per pound in large quantities). So really you are paying for 10 pounds of kerosene, about $5 or so.
Now, for real rockets it ends up closer to $20 per pound, because 1) rockets tend to use more expensive liquid hydrogen, and 2) rockets stage, which is slightly fuel inefficient.
But my original numbers are correct. Yours are wrong - or at least misrepresented. 5.5 kg of propellant, 3/4 of which is LOX would not get you to orbit, but would cost about $1.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
"Spaceship" 1 is garbage. It's not even close to orbital speed (its maximum speed was 3518km/h while you need about 29000km/h to enter the LEO).
The whole "two stage" system is also mostly junk it just gives an extra 1000km/h which is totally lost when compared with the orbital speed.
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I wouldn't expect it to look like anything else. Like airliners or submarines the design is driven mainly by aerodynamics (hydrodynamics) and engineering constraints, not by the need to 'look' different in order to be fashionable or meet the expectations of someone who expects it to look.. I don't know, modern? Science fiction-y?
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Actually, I think it bears an uncanny resemblance to E.V.E. [google.com]
Lunar? (Score:3, Interesting)
The choice of words "towards the moon" is very well done. Article states this is capable of bring six people into Terran orbit, and four into Lunar orbit. I understand the difficulty in getting down to the moon and back up, but if you're capable of getting there and back with four people, odds are you can get down to the surface. Why not just go for broke? At the very least it'd be a huge PR coup.
Re:Lunar? (Score:5, Informative)
Not a bit of it. It's a question of fuel.
Having reached the Moon, you have to fire engines to slow down into orbit. Otherwise you loop around the back and head straight back to Earth like Apollo 13. So you need to carry fuel for this.
So now you're circling the Moon like Apollo 8. Good. To come home, you need to fire engines again to speed back up. More fuel.
But wait, you want to visit the surface? Then you need a lander. Those things are heavy. And it needs fuel: fuel to land, and fuel to take off again.
That's the trouble with spaceflight. It's all about fuel. Every manoeuvre burns fuel. Every kilogram of fuel means you need even more fuel at the start, just to carry that fuel into space with you. It's why the Saturn V rocket was the size of a skyscraper, but only carried something the size of a minibus to the moon, and brought only a tiny capsule home to Earth. All the rest? Fuel tanks.
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Re:Lunar? (Score:4, Informative)
Saturn V got Apollo to the Moon, with the fuel and equipment necessary to stop and land there and to come home again.
Let's see: the service module, the lunar excursion module, all the fuel for both of them... that's got to be three or four times the mass of the command module, which was all that got back to Earth (I haven't looked it up so this is probably well off). A rocket whose sole purpose was to send a crew around the Moon, but not to land, could have been a whole lot smaller than Saturn V.
Look at it this way: suppose that bringing along a lander and fuel supplies for a Moon landing doubles the mass of your spacecraft at the Moon. Then clearly, that must require that you at least double the size of the rocket on the pad.
I don't actually know what the plan would be for a Moon landing with this vehicle. The fact that it has its own thrusters for landing suggests to me that it might have a direct-ascent mission profile: no separate lander, just bring down the whole ship. NASA considered this approach when planning Apollo: it has the benefit of simplicity, but would have needed a more powerful rocket even than Saturn V to bring enough fuel. Perhaps with modern materials and engineering it could be done this way: but as the article says, no rocket powerful enough currently exists.
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Re:Lunar? (Score:4, Insightful)
And can't do now.
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Yeah, well, ten years ago I proved I can see my toes. Doesn't mean I can now.
Its going to land how? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm not sure I'd be too happy if I was being put in that, the booster landing thing sounds like its asking for trouble if you get low on fuel, or they get knocked out of alignment or a floating point error messes up their servo controllers....
At least with a parachute or wings you know that so long as they are they they will work. Also I imagine that it will require a huge amount of fuel to turn it around and then slow it.
Or have I got the wrong idea and they're going to parachute in and then just use these at the end at which point again you have to ask - why bother?
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Re:Its going to land how? (Score:5, Informative)
I'd guess the thrusters are used only during final touchdown to soften the landing...JUST LIKE SOYUZ DOES (and if they fail, the touchdown will simply be a little rough...JUST LIKE IN SOYUZ)
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Why thrusters? (Score:2, Interesting)
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Re: The Summary (Score:5, Funny)
Apparently the ESA / Russia are ushering in a new age of "close enough" space exploration.
News Report, 2021:Today astronauts from the ESA will begin a new chapter of space exploration by first going up really high, and then kinda drifting off in sort of a that way direction. The mission captain was interviewed recently concerning the importance of today's historic flight.
"We are confident that the up portion of the mission will go smoothly. We then plan to transfer to the next stage where, God willing, we will be the among the first humans to end up somewhere over toward the Moon." He commented, waving vaguely off toward the sky.
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The worst thing about this is that, given our trust in gouverment and media, by 2021 we expect to see that kind of vague information...
Same shit.... (Score:2)
Okay, it looks cool, I'll give you that. An it is much better design than that repackaged Apollo wanna be that nasa is going to put up. But you know what? It's still dead end technology. It's the same crap we've been doing for the last 40 years, just in a shinny new package. The landing thrusters are something new, I'll give you that.
But it's the 21 century now. Time to do something new. Why don't we build a fucking space ship? Not capsules or orbiters but a honest to god ship. We've got most o
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It's not that cool. If they named it Plan 9 for outer space, that would be cool.
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They forgot to mention that there isn't any rocket capable of sending that capsule to Moon orbit.
Unless you count the part that says, "But if the agencies want a manned craft capable of reaching the Moon, they will need to develop new, more powerful rockets than those on the drawing board today."
Re:Towards the Moon (Score:4, Informative)
The lack of a Saturn-class booster does pretty much kill the idea though. Neither Arianespace nor Energiya are going to fund the development of that kind of monster, not when there's no commercial use for it and no guarantee of continued political backing for manned Moonshots.
Hence the first related story linked from TFA [bbc.co.uk], which discusses the prospect of an ATV-derived spacecraft to launch on an Ariane 5. Much cheaper, and using existing kit. Funding for it might require political change in Britain, however, which has so far refused to get involved in manned projects.
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Re:What's the flippin' point? (Score:5, Insightful)
You might as well ask what the point of new music is? We've already got tons of it, more than enough to go around for a lifetime, so why don't we just close up shop, and put all that money, which happens to be more than is invested in manned space exploration, into poverty relief?
It's human nature to see something you can't do and then try to do it. Why bother scaling Everest? It served no purpose, but it was there and we did it. There should be no area of human existence where we refuse to advance ourselves - whether poverty relief, musical innovation, or space exploration. Mankind needs to do more, it needs to search higher. Knowing more about the universe is never a bad thing, and while cost-analysis should be taken into consideration, it borders on inhumane to deny our basic instincts for discovery.
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You might as well ask what the point of new music is? We've already got tons of it, more than enough to go around for a lifetime, so why don't we just close up shop, and put all that money, which happens to be more than is invested in manned space exploration, into poverty relief?
A much better question is what's the point of yet another anti-human space exploration rant, when there's already too many uncreative ones whining for yet more money for programs that are already recognized as miserable failures, more than enough for a lifetime of reading. So, why not close up shop, stop posting anti-human space exploration rants, and redirect all that effort into poverty relief?
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Ok.
1) Permanent Moonbase, with benefits of
a) Research opportunities in microgravity (I know ISS has this but you could do bigger scope projects on the moon).
b) Mining. Finding rare minerals would be key.
c) Platform base for building missions to other planets. Sure going to Mars can be done without going to the moon. But it might be a good launching platform for missions to Jupiter, Saturn, etc. Also the aforementioned atomic methods could be usable from teh moon.
d) Expand Scientific knowledge of the moo
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But Soyuz DOES include thrusters for softer touchdown... (which is simply a little rough when they fail)
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Actually the Russians are the de facto masters of hybrid parachute-thruster technology, not only do they use it for their spacecraft their military use the same technic for parachuting heavy cargo in military airdrops.