Russia To Build an Orbital Construction Plant 182
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."
on-orbit assembly, finally (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:on-orbit assembly, finally (Score:4, Informative)
Re:on-orbit assembly, finally (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, it *is* for Moon and Mars flights (Score:2)
The original article starts with -
"Interfax reports that Russia is going to construct a spaceship assembly factory to service Moon and Mars flights. This has been announced by Anatoly Perminov, the head of RosCosmos agency"
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Well, lets get real. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Well, lets get real. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Well, lets get real. (Score:5, Insightful)
This project, like any fantastic one proposed in the past, has very little chance of, pun intended, ever flying.
As they say in Wikipedia .. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:As they say in Wikipedia .. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:As they say in Wikipedia .. (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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DS9 (Score:3, Funny)
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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 thes
Impressive...If It Works (Score:2)
Of course, it's going to be a while off, either way. Maybe our space program will have a renaissance in the meantime.
Re:Impressive...If It Works (Score:5, Interesting)
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Though I'd call it a faction, not a race, I welcome our Lunar Corporation [wikipedia.org] overlords^Wmistresses.
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Re:Impressive...If It Works (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/obamas_nasa_plan_gets_little_p.php [cjr.org]
Try to be a little less melodramatic, will you?
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Well yeah but...commercial space travel to the moon or Mars? We just barely got those commercial rockets into suborbital space...4 more years and they might finally hit orbital travel...
I'm not saying that commercial travel isn't feasible for the U.S., but just not in a 4 year timeframe that you think...
Re:Impressive...If It Works (Score:5, Insightful)
First: Space is not the bonanza we thought it was in the 1950's and 1960's. Part of the formulation of our space program was the terrible arms race with russia, but part of it was the modernist notion that we would remake space in our image and reap the dividends. Surprisingly this mindset not only impacted the laity but also the technological priesthood (engineers, scientists). We were going to have colonies on mars and the moon within 50 years, no question.
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.
Third: We confused lack of public progress with lack of progress and we confused public achievements with scientific achievements. In the time between Apollo 11 and now, we have sent out Cassini, Hubble, Chandra, DS-1, Pioneer 10 and 11 and Voyager, the mars rovers, the Venus probe, and hundreds of earth satellites. We have become much better (in many, though not all ways) at building spacecraft as a country and a species. But we have also glorified achievements that haven't been so monumental. The Space Shuttle wasn't as good a vehicle as it should have been and it should have been phased out long ago. the ISS, for all its good points, does not advance the state of the art as much as DS-1 did.
As a result, we have both an unrealistic expectation of space flight and an underestimation of our progress in the past 25 years. I think we need to be prepared to wait another 25 or 50 before we are talking about the Moon or Mars in any serious, consistent fashion. But we will also not be there in the same way. Corporate space flight WILL be a mainstay of the future and it probably will bring more people into space in the 21st century than government space flight.
So dont look at 4 year timelines. Look further down the road. Also, the 4 year comment of mine was snarky. The OP was complaining about Barack Obama's wish to cut nasa funding as though it would forever doom the US space program. I was pointing out what we happen to get a new president every so often and 4 years isn't the end of the world.
Re:Impressive...If It Works (Score:5, Informative)
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
One small step... (Score:4, Insightful)
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The tricky bit is that said government must be able to afford it. Russia is not currently on that list.
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China on the other hand, is an ethnic powderkeg(Tibet is just the tip of the iceberg) only kept together by guns and economic growth. From an economic standpoint, they have to deal with long-term environmental damage on a never before seen scale, a
makes sense (Score:5, Funny)
P-Fleet (Score:2, Funny)
Not sure this will work (Score:4, Insightful)
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I think Bigelow Aerospace would disagree. They already have prototype space station modules in orbit, and in the next few years they'll be launching up more of them and linking them together into larger stations. Robert Bigelow seems to think he can make a profit on it, and is betting a few hundred million of his own dollars on it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bigelow_Aerospace [wikipedia.org]
Re:Not sure this will work (Score:5, Insightful)
That completely explains why successful businessmen are staking their money and reputation on a "handful of billionaires". Too bad they haven't figured this out yet.
Russia does have the experience. Money always is a problem with them so you might be right there. I don't understand the desire for a "standards body". Everyone doesn't need to take part. Everyone doesn't need to get in on toilet seat design. Everyone doesn't need "a nasty bit of work" in charge.
Sorry, but I'm annoyed by the airchair astronauts who know better than anyone else what's to happen in space. You seem to fit that mold quite well with your groundless pronouncements. Maybe it'll turn out that that building things in space are indeed "horrendously complex and expensive", that commercial projects will flop, and that we need some sort of global effort to do this sort of thing in space. But none of this has been demonstrated.
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Do you mean this guy? http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/88/Astronaut-EVA.jpg/600px-Astronaut-EVA.jpg [wikimedia.org]
He probably knows quite a bit
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Their process is a bit backwards, they have cheap, stable, easy to build large rockets. The only problem is that they are no where near as efficient as US rockets... they can lift Heavy... cheap... exactly what space building requires. Besides if they need robotics
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the hard part is making sure the circuits can handle the extra radiation, and the Russians already can do that.
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Meh. It's a couple of ballons in an aluminium tube, parked on top of a gimballed copper funnel fed by pumps and a fuel-based cooling system. Control systems are cheap. Computation is cheap. Comms are cheap. Contractors are cheap and we've done all this stuff before.Not to say it isn't reasonably complex, just not horribly.
Vaporware (Score:5, Insightful)
This is not to say that the Russians aren't advancing the state of the art in space--they are. They are also excellent builders of launch vehicles and spacecraft. BUT. That doesn't mean that proclamations like this are to be accepted without a huge dose of skepticism.
I would be much more willing to believe that Russians would fund a new launch site, a SSTO or similar projects. This smacks of unreality.
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Even the article in question mentions that a new space launch site ("Vostochny", or Eastern) opens in 2015 - it's only 7 years from now, so I'd guess the construction has been funded already. The surveying and design phase will take until 2010, and then the workers come in. The site has been already decided on.
With a SSTO there is a little problem, though - nobody on this planet has a clue how
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With a SSTO there is a little problem, though - nobody on this planet has a clue how to do it, even in theory. Funding has little to do with this, compared to physics. My personal bet is that we won't see SSTO until we get antigravity. Chemical rockets are just as ridiculous as hot air balloons in the age of supersonic jets.
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Ret-con (Score:2)
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that's just F'ed up
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Or more likely, because he felt that it was a city the represented a look ahead and was cosmopolitan enough to get a feel for what Roddenberry felt the future should look like?
SEI/Space Station Freedom anyone? (Score:3, Insightful)
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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
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DS (Score:5, Funny)
I plan to buy yaught and jet plane (Score:2)
I didn't think the Russian economy had quite reached the point where orbital contruction factories were a consideration.
Would love to see it happen, but not holding my breath.
How about (Score:4, Insightful)
Notice how people come up with fantastic plans to do space stuff in the year 2020? Bush did a similar thing with his plan to go back to the moon.
Whatever date it is, it's a date that the current people in office, will no longer be in office, or if they are, no one will remember what the plans are.
This is just an attempt by politicians to make themselves look "visionary" while actually doing nothing. If, 70 years from now when someone actually gets around to going to mars, no one is going to remember what kind of plans a bunch of jokers with no intention of providing funding pulled out of the ass in 2008.
Wouldn't put too much faith in this (Score:2, Interesting)
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The current russian space agencies and companies care about safety but don't have the same apparatus as the US companies do, nor do they have the same litigation history. US companies may deal with safety in superficially different manners than russian companies but the underlying notions (sound engineering principles, learning from mistakes, valuing life) are the same.
Implies they aren't depending on "heavy lift" (Score:3, Insightful)
One reason that the US doesn't have a plan for an orbital assembly infrastructure is that NASA is working towards a "heavy lift vehicle", the Ares V which will lift somewhere in the order of 130 tons to low Earth orbit. The things NASA has in mind take only 1-3 launches of the Ares V to put up. So the only assembly one would need under those circumstances is docking.
Now my opinion on the matter is that Russia has a superior approach. NASA's Ares V is planned to launch around 2-4 times a year, but it has high fixed costs, and as far as I know, there are no plans to increase the launch rate of the Ares V significantly. That means there are unexploited economies of scale. An orbital assembly station is a cleverer approach in that it means one can use a smaller rocket to launch the material. They can either use existing rockets like Proton or Soyuz or future designs like Angora (which is intended to launch up to 25 tons into orbit, assuming they build it). That means the Russians can substitute frequent launches of a smaller vehicle to build things of comparable size (OTOH, I've been unable to determine how much mass or volume this station would be able to manage at once). My take is that the Russian approach, all else being equal including labor and ground-based infrastructure costs, will result in a lower cost per kilogram of payload. That is the primary metric for the cost of a launch vehicle.
There are tradeoffs between the two approaches. The Ares V has high operation costs and high costs per launch. The Russian approach will result (IMHO) in lower launch costs, but then one must add in assembly costs and R&D costs to make space equipment that can be assembled in space. I hope the Russians are serious about this assembly station and make it happen. If it works, it'll open up space in a way that larger launch vehicles cannot.
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When you launch an Ares V, you are, of course, burning a lot of money, but you are also launching about 5 times more cargo than an Angora launch. All things being equal, the bigger launch wastes less material and equipment.
And there is nothing that prevents using an Ares I or any other smaller lifter for lighter cargo.
Still, there is nothing to prevent usage of the combined capabilities of all the vehicles and platforms available. If someone can build an in-orbit
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If that is true, then using more launches of smaller vehicles saves more money than doing one on a large vehicle (also spreads out risk).
We aren't saying that it IS true, necessarily. I think that the spacecraft industry does face a declining cost curve, but not THAT steep (not like chipmaking or electricity
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(also spreads out risk)
One obvious way is that if the Ares V is built on schedule, it'll be the sole vehicle in its class. That means it is a single point of failure. If Angora runs into a problem. the Russians have two existing vehicles that can deliver slightly less performance (I'm ignoring the Proton M which might be discontinued to make way for Angora), Delta IV heavy and Ariane V. That means less delay in projects that depend on Angora. OTOH, the assembly station is also a single point of failure and one which is much more
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When you launch an Ares V, you are, of course, burning a lot of money, but you are also launching about 5 times more cargo than an Angora launch. All things being equal, the bigger launch wastes less material and equipment.
There are various things to remember here. First, let's assume that Ares V is launched for around 30 years and generates 100 launches over it's lifetime. I see speculation that it's fixed costs per year are on the order of $2 billion a year and incremental cost per rocket is $250 million. That may be overstated though when it comes to cost and failing to meet deadlines, NASA routinely exceeds expectations. There's also several billion in R&D costs including Ares I work (since the justification for the
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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.
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Well, if the Russians are smart (Score:4, Insightful)
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Canadians will pwn them. (Score:2, Interesting)
Damnit! (Score:2)
Actually, America MIGHT be interested (Score:2, Interesting)
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I gather from the clues in the story, that the Russians are talking about orbital assembly not manufacture. The distinction is that the pieces are made on Earth and assembled by robot or human in space. Probably most of the pieces will be designed so that it doesn't take a lot of labor to put them together. We are a long way from manufacture in space.
Currently, the only source for material would be Earth's surface. It doesn't make sense IMHO to lift a factory to orbit as well as the raw materials, when on
well, that is the question. (Score:2)
Of course, the question is, can it make money? At first glance I want to say not a chance. But I think that combine a carbon tax AND the military (US and NATO) needing quick easily movable power, coul
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I think in a lot of cases, the economics dictates that the absolute minimum be launched from earth (so an orbital assembly plant would only be a good idea if the eventual product is too large to be brought up by itself and the consumables needed for assembly are very few).
Once you are up there it is much more a task of conserving resources you have than anything else. So there better be
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I think you're missing the point.
True, for some things it would be ridiculous to try to make them in space--take music, for an extreme exa
I hope they keep the rules in mind (Score:2)
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Kruschev... (Score:2)
Russians are good at hyperbole and Americans are good at falling for it.
Ah, Russian translations (Score:2)
And, just where are they getting the cash? (Score:2)
proper human translation (Score:2, Informative)
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
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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.
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I see it as a research project, with the only output expected being numbers, charts and computer models. Besides, there ought to be something after ISS, probably? The best way to find out what it is is to give those rocket scientists something to work on. If the research ends up interesting, the thing will be built. If not, it will be set aside
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It meant that US companies and European companies could see lower costs to orbit for their products and that means that people in the US would face lower costs on things that required satellites in the first
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I'm all for human advancement. I just don't like being the one to pay for the other humans to ad
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So all in all, we paid for them to keep their slight edge in some areas (launch vehicles, payload integration, manned space flight--although that is arguable) and paid for them not to drop too far behind in others.
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Russia also financed a successful laser-sail project into the outer Solar System while it was saving that money on the ISS (but getting the science to repurpose for its private agenda).
Again, what I would prefer would just have been a better deal. I think the cooperation is the best part, partly because it kept that engineering out of the hands of ot
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And unfortunately, none of the NASA deals could have sto
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Putin's succession after Yeltsin was in fact really due the KGB concocting the Chechen war to discredit Yeltsin (and democracy with him). It's documented quite explicitly and in great detail in Alexander "Polonium 210" Litvinenko's report _Blowing Up Russia_ [google.com] (published right after he died from the KGB polonium poisoning). But that
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I'm not saying that stuff is a good use of taxpayer dollars just because it doesn't use that many taxpayer dollars. I'm just saying stuff needs to be kept in perspective.
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Also, to be fair, part of those dollar transfers and contracts were for launch services that the US could not offer. In other words, Arianaspace (spelling), Lockheed and Boeing (and NASA, w/ the shuttle) couldn't fit a launch window, so we paid the russians to do it.
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The Russians have world class talent and technology when it comes to space. that doesn't mean that they make great cars. As a matter of fact, it comes from making the decision as a communist power to make rockets, not cars (That is a gross over simplifica
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As for experience, not to pump the chest, but does 10 years of study/research on space-related programs in soviet institutions count for first hand?
Not if it leads you to the concluson that their launch vehicle and space expertise is somehow correlated to their ability to build cars.
Yes, some (read: a lot) of their tech is old. A lot of ours is old, although not that old. A good portion of US satellite CPUs are (or were a bit ago) based on a rad hardened version of the PPC 601/603 (some modern satellites I know have 68k's in them). Plenty of other components are even older. In the case of Russia, the basic tech (like the Proton launch vehicle) is