Russia To Build an Orbital Construction Plant

jamax writes "Russia plans to build an orbital plant for the production of spacecraft (link to sketchy Google translation of the Russian original) that are too big to build planetside, or are just too bulky to fire into orbit once built. Presumably these are the ships we would fly to the Moon and Mars. Plans seem to be rather sparse at the moment, with the tentative construction date set for 2020, after the ISS is scheduled for decommissioning."

Re:on-orbit assembly, finally

[dlanod]

There's no mention of the Moon or Mars in the translated article, so that is purely speculation in the summary. It's very much pie in the sky (pun intended) at the moment, with reporting just saying "it was proposed" and "The government's Security Council supported the idea". Nothing about funding or plans at this point in time.

Re:on-orbit assembly, finally

[egr]

Actually there is, in both, short version and full version Russian version [interfax.ru] and translated version [google.com]

Re:those Russians

[Protonk]

Except the ISS wasn't a factory. It was a space laboratory and docking facility. the purpose of the ISS was to maintain a manned presence in space, not to serve as a serious jumping off point for exploration. Those who said that it would are speaking figuratively.

I'm not arguing that this is a real flesh and blood project (I think it is a case of the russians making a statement of national pride when they are flush with cash), but it certainly wouldn't be the ISS 2.

Re:Well, lets get real.

[Cassius Corodes]

With the increase in state funds due to the rising resource prices, the russians have a bit of cash to spare, and with putin being keen to show his countrymen that they are a superpower again it doesn't seem outrageous that they might try something in space - which has always had major propaganda value. The budget for the Russian Federal Space Agency has been increasing every year (but is still a fraction of nasa).

Re:Impressive...If It Works

[earthforce_1]

Sadly the US probably won't - It looks like Obama will be the next president, and his is planning to gut NASA's manned space program:
http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/obamas_nasa_plan_gets_little_p.php [cjr.org]

It looks like the Russians or Chinese are our last best hope to find a way off this rock.

Re:Implies they aren't depending on "heavy lift"

[tftp]

future designs like Angora

Angora [wikipedia.org] is a breed of cat. Angara [wikipedia.org] is a river. The latter is the name for the rocket [wikipedia.org] :-) Though I like cats more than rivers.

proper human translation

[aerton]

According to Interfax, Russia shall build an orbital factory for construction of space vessels for flights to Moon and Mars. Such announcement was made by Anatoly Perminov, head of Ruscosmos.

According to Perminov, Roscosmos suggested to create a manned assembling complex on near-earth orbit. 11 April it was approved on security counsel by government. Complex can be used to assembly space crafts that are too heavy to to be assembled on Earth.

These plans can only start after end of use of ISS in 2020. A more precise date was not discussed.

Perminov also reported that spaceport Vostochny in Amur region will be ready in 2015, and the first manned launch from it is scheduled in 2018.

Re:Impressive...If It Works

[AKAImBatman]

Second: We greatly underestimated the challenges we face. Here was an underestimation made by the public but not by the engineers. We saw that we went from heavier than air flight to being on the moon in inside 70 years and assumed that continued progress would follow the same track. As a matter of fact it couldn't (not least because of diminishing marginal returns but also because of the huge change in challenges between getting to LEO and getting to the moon). Once we got to the moon we realized that the next step wasn't right around the corner. This happened to coincide with a number of social changes that demystified the space race and caused people to be less inclined to pay for large government projects.

Actually, the engineers were far more on the ball than this. They really did envision a grand space program with colonies across the solar system. To make it happen, they designed quite a few incredible machines. The Saturn V was only the herald of many amazing advancements in spaceflight that were to come. Artificial gravity, Single-Stage to Orbit, Nuclear Pulse Propulsion, Nuclear Thermal Engines, and other amazing designs were drawn up, prototyped, and in some cases even built.

Rockets were going to diversify into craft that were smaller and cheaper for manned space flight as well as craft that were larger and similarly cheaper for launching massive payloads like space stations, moon base supplies, interplanetary craft, raw materials, foundries, whatever you could imagine.

So what really happened? Well, there's no question in that respect. The space race was 98% politically motivated. The US and the USSR couldn't lob nukes at each other due to that pesky MAD thing, so they lobbed space technology breakthroughs at each other in the biggest pissing contest in history. Both sides developed incredibly expensive crash programs to bring advanced space technology to fruition. The result was the development of new materials, new engines, new electronics, new physics, new logistics, just about every area of science and technology was pushed to the limit of what these post-WWII economies could muster. (Which was quite a bit given the breakneck pace of WWII technological development and modernization.)

Each side tried to out-muster the other, with the USSR handily keeping one step ahead of the US in every development. So the US set its sights on an incredible goal: Landing a man on the moon. The USSR tried to beat the US to the punch on this task, but when they failed, they didn't take the loss lightly. Rather than admit defeat, the USSR buried any information on the fact that they had even tried. The official line to the public was, the USSR was not in a race to the moon.

Where did that leave the US? Ultimately, with a very expensive space program that had outlived its political usefulness. Lunar missions were scaled back and eventually canceled. The SkyLab station was put in a parking orbit and eventually allowed to reenter and burn up. The grand plans for a small space shuttle, a large Saturn V, a "jumping off" space station, a moon base, and interplanetary mini-Orion missions were scaled back to a single spacecraft. President Nixon demanded that both NASA and the military fly one craft, and one craft only. So they hatched a grand plan for the future, put all their eggs in one basket, and asked the impossible of their engineers: They wanted the Space Shuttle.

Now there's an interesting economic issue with trying to create a machine that is everything to everyone. Unless you have a strong history of both successes and failures from which to understand every nuance required to design and build the all-in-one wonder, you are almost guaranteed to produce a machine that is jack-of-all-trades and master-of-none. Which is exactly what happened with the Space Shuttle.

* Cargo capability was too small for military sats
* Launch cost was too high for commercial sats
* Satellite return capability was unnecessary
* Extreme cro

Re:on-orbit assembly, finally

[dlanod]

At risk of replying to my own post, following the links right through to a far more detailed article [209.85.135.104] reveals that Mars was specifically mentioned by the Director of the Space Research Institute but left out of the article linked in the summary. The above article is a much more informative and interesting read on the plans for the Russian space industry.

Re:SEI/Space Station Freedom anyone?

[DerekLyons]

The Russian space program typically does things for millions that would cost the US billions..

No, the Russians typically do a fraction of what the US does and thus unsurprisingly pays a fraction of what the US does. Space fanboys don't realize this because they swallow propaganda rather than actually study the facts.
 
For example - I bet you don't realize that the US paid for almost a third of MIR, boosted almost 40% of it's final weight into orbit, carried almost 25% of the supplies delivered over it's life - and returned electronics modules salvages from Progress so the Russians could reuse them. Or for another example - to replace a single Shuttle flight requires 4 Soyuz flights, and 6 Progress flights... (Which at currently quoted prices runs about 80% of the cost of Shuttle mission.) Even so, it still falls short of what the Shuttle can do - because they can't deliver exterior cargo (like the recently delivered DEXTRE), and their ability to deliver interior cargo is hampered because the Russian APAS docking system/hatches are a quarter the size of the US/ESA CBM berthing system/hatches.

Re:on-orbit assembly, finally

[salec]

The NEAs make much more interesting destinations

True. There will be little industry enterprises in space, spaceships construction included, without abundance of materials from some place out of deep gravity well, unless we get to make a space elevator, of course. However, it is a chicken-and-egg type of problem: in order to go and get enough materials for new space industry, we need large cargo vessels to begin with. And, we'll need permanent orbital bases as well.

Perhaps first (OK, next) generation of these structures will be universal: suitable for permanent orbiting celestial bodies, as well as for moving between them, with facilities to dock relatively small STO ships, as well as attach to own class ships to form larger structures.

Some sort of sphere with lot of ports comes to mind - single one easily rotated for artificial gravity, can be connected to sibling spheres with addition of cylindric corridors (Atomium [wikipedia.org] - like), same unused ports/connection points can be equipped for cargo capsules docking. The universal dock/connection points should also be strong points of the spheres: external thrust engine modules should be delivered from Earth as final stage (like any other STO ship, satellite, etc.) of a rocket and connected there when needed, manipulator (robotic "hands") modules too.

However, all this versatility is in vain if it cannot be repaired indefinitely. For short lived things, we better go for "do one thing and do it well" approach. If we cannot finish a project before its components wear out, we shouldn't set goal that ambitious. We need methods of reducing wear on critical components, perhaps by making replaceable outer shells or sheet layers that can be patched if damaged (and a method of patching that works in outer space, of course).

Last but not least, anything large enough in orbit must have autonomous safety self-destruction (breaking down in small enough chunks to burn in atmosphere) mechanism embedded inside, to be triggered by certain signs of atmospheric (re-)entry in progress. Or, there should be a strict regulation regarding limits of how big structures are allowed in sub-geosynchronous orbits.

Re:As they say in Wikipedia ..

[encoderer]

Not to mention, of course: When was the last time the Buran lifted-off? Hell, when was the FIRST time the Buran lifted-off? Sure, that's going back a few years, but this has been an endemic problem for an awful long time in the Ruskie space agency.

I mean, as an engineer I understand the 'if it works...' thinking, but the only thing the agency is producing of any utility is more Soyuez crafts.