Russian Cargo Ship Successfully Makes Orbit, Will Supply ISS 50
An anonymous reader writes: Early this morning, a Russian Soyuz rocket successfully launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The rocket carried a Progress capsule containing 2,700kg of supplies for the International Space Station. It's a much-needed victory after a series of launch failures that saw ISS resupply missions from Orbital ATK, Russia, and SpaceX end in failure. "The station, a joint project involving 15 nations which is staffed by a crew of six astronauts and cosmonauts, currently has a four-month supply of food and water, NASA said. The arrival of the Russian cargo ship, and the planned launch of a Japanese HTV freighter in August, should replenish the station's pantries through the end of the year, NASA said. Friday's successful launch clears the way for three new crew members to fly to the station later this month."
And we have video (Score:5, Informative)
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Thanks!
Re:And we have video (Score:4, Informative)
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Simply beautiful. I do not know what rocket that is but is is beautiful and the video was spectacular. Thank you both for sharing.
Ahhh, back to the old days (Score:5, Funny)
When a successful launch was newsworthy.
Oh...my...gawd! (Score:5, Funny)
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This lap, yes. The Space Shuttle had roughly 3 times the cargo capacity of a Soyuz vehicle, but never fulfilled its design goal of being a "space truck" that could be refettied quickly and cheaply. SpaceX is having problems with the "land on a barge" task, which _no one_ has ever done before.
Re:Oh...my...gawd! (Score:5, Informative)
Sure but SpaceX's goal to land the first stage has little to do with its cargo launch capabilities and its recent launch failure, or its march to man-rated rockets and the heavy lift booster. So I argue SpaceX is still doing very well in this lap. They can lift about one metric tonne more than the Progress freighter, and they are the only ones with return cargo capabilities. Return capabilities we haven't had since the Space Shuttle. I'm glad to see the Japanese cargo vehicle getting good use, and I'm happy to see all the different companies enter this space (literally). SpaceX happens to be the American company the closest to providing independence for western astronauts.
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> Sure but SpaceX's goal to land the first stage has little to do with its cargo launch capabilities
It has a great deal to do with the cost of missions. They've not yet created a working human-rated craft. I applaud their work, but I'd call that the _next_ lap of the space race.
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We lose all of our wars. Even when we win we still lose. Hell, we are losing the war on drugs - to junkies! Yay! Go Team Junkie!
The Apollo Engine (Score:1, Insightful)
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I suppose. I could buy a Ferrari to pick up the groceries, too.
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A rocket engine is to a launch vehicle what a northbridge is to a computer. It's absolutely critical, does a whole hell of a lot of work, but you pretty much have to design it to the rest of the system or family of systems.
Re:The Apollo Engine (Score:5, Interesting)
Not to mention that each piece of hardware is built with the assumption of there being extant suppliers for its component parts. For Apollo hardware, this is rarely true, so you'd have to retool and test for each part. The sad thing is it'd actually be cheaper to build a brand new Saturn-V equivalent than to make an exact duplicate.
This is actually one of the sorts of cases where 3d printing (no, generally not things like plastic filament extruders... meaningful printing, like laser sintering, laser spraying, etc, as well as CNC milling, hybrid manufacture techniques and lost wax casting on a 3d-printed moulds) has the potential to really come into its own: all of these sort of parts that you only ever need half a dozen of them made but might some day suddenly want some more a couple decades down the road. Another interesting advantage on this front is also that of incremental testing - I know of one small rocketry startup that has set themselves up to sinter out aerospikes in an evolutionary fashion - they print one out, connect it straight to test, measure its performance, scrap it and feed that performance data back into the generation of the next printout, in a constant model-refining process. Combustion simulations can be tricky to get right, but real-world testing data doesn't lie ;)
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WHICH one? The ones used on the Saturn V? The Saturn V has the F-1, and J-2. Which do you want to use? The ones use on the landing module? It had two, one to land, one to go back up. The ones use on the orbiting capsule? That's the AJ10-137.
Which do you want to use? How do you want to use it?
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IIRC, the maneuvering engines are still in production in some form, so rebuilding them would be redundant.
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WHICH one?
Yeah, you figure in an earth to LEO vehicle that we'd be talking about a J2, or one of the LEM engines? Of course he's referring to the F1 engines.
Perhaps I need to explain here my dowmoddingest friends.
The J2 engine was not designed to be run at ground level. It's thrust nozzle was designed to run at altitude, with it's 27.5:1 expansion area ratio That's wide, and not efficient at sea level. In contrast, the F1 has a 16 to 1 ratio. Much more suited to lower altitude work. It's all related to the external pressure the rocket faces. Here's a pretty good explanation.
http://www.aerospaceweb.org/qu... [aerospaceweb.org]
Anyone look at the ill fated Spacex launch? befo
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What happened to the Apollo engine? Couldn't that be re-built and used by the U.S.A.?
They are:
http://arstechnica.com/science... [arstechnica.com]
An F1 powered rocket with modern improvements would be tremendous, iit was a monster then, an updated one would be doubleplusgood.
Amazing they let it languish for solid boosters.
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Amazing they let it languish for solid boosters.
Nothing amazing about it. Had to do with the ICBMs. They needed to pour money into that research without being too obvious.
ICBMs and solid boosters is because of readiness. Liquid fuel you have a limited window and time to get read. Solid can sit for much much longer.
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Amazing they let it languish for solid boosters.
Nothing amazing about it. Had to do with the ICBMs. They needed to pour money into that research without being too obvious.
ICBMs and solid boosters is because of readiness. Liquid fuel you have a limited window and time to get read. Solid can sit for much much longer.
So the concept of abandoning your Lexus for a Dodge Caravan then.
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You could, but why would you? It wasn't the most efficient engine (around 263 Isp using RP1). The SSME is far more efficient (~452 Isp using LH2), though it is wickedly expensive at about $40M each. There are several other engines would be far more efficient, cost far less overall and be more reliable.
why? Seriously, it would not help (Score:2)
Secondly, these are just growing pains. As such, not a big deal.
The bravest astronaut (Score:2)
will be the first to board the next launch vehicle to the ISS after all these failures.
It's not like any of them are proving themselves particularly reliable. And it's not like any of these failures would have been survivable for the crew.
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These are not human-certified craft.
Still, they're all pretty brave.
Think the earliest one were pretty gutsy; VERY unproven technology.
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I can't see them just letting the astronauts starve to death.
The ISS has a reentry lander, independent of these supply launches, they'd bug out at some point if it became necessary.
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Dumb question time...
Have they ever actually tested those reentry vehicles? I believe they have two of them but I do not recall either of them being tested. I am sure they must have...
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will be the first to board the next launch vehicle to the ISS after all these failures.
It's not like any of them are proving themselves particularly reliable. And it's not like any of these failures would have been survivable for the crew.
Actually, the situation is not as dire. The Progess launch failure was a result of combining the new Soyus 2-1A design with the supply ship, and
Officials were considering launching space station crews on the Soyuz-2.1a version once its performance was demonstrated on Progress missions [spaceflightnow.com].
Today's mission used the older Soyus-U [spaceflightnow.com] design, and I would guess that the next crew going up would also use this older launcher.
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SpaceX is a new company and had 19 launches before failure on this. Even now, we still do not know what caused this.
They have already shown that had this been a manned flight, that the crew would have survived just fine. Hell, the dragon stayed whole after the explosion and that was without an escape system.
I suspect that PLENTY of astronauts and regular citizens such as myself, would feel very happy and trusting of SpaceX. The same for CST-100 on Atlas or Delta. And even Soyuz.
I will give you
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I would hop on it today if it were an option. Get the price down to $50,000 USD and let me spend at least a week at the ISS and I will go. I will even get a bit more fit, if needed, so that I qualify. I accept the risks that the current gen will blow up and kill me. Where do I sign?
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SpaceX has had more then one failure, this is just their first failure on the Falcon 9 series that resulted in loss of all payloads. The Falcon 1 rocket had 3 failures out of five launches, but was considered a "test" project. Falcon 9 launch #4 was a partial failure where the secondary payload failed to reach orbit. Launch #7 was an almost failure due to a fire during flight down in th
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F9 #4 is the one where "a first stage engine acted up", but (contrary to your claim) it is inaccurate to say that "the secondary payload failed to reach orbit". With the loss of one engine from the first stage, the remaining engines burned longer to reach the desired orbit. This was successful (F9 being one of very few rocket boosters capable of mission completion despite an engine loss at any stage of the flight).
HOWEVER, while both payloads successfully made orbit, the secondary payload would have require
This came so soon after the SpaceX launch. (Score:2)
Are there two cargo docks on the ISS, or would the Soyuz have had to sit in a parking orbit for a month while they unloaded the Dragon, and then reloaded it?
Re:This came so soon after the SpaceX launch. (Score:5, Informative)
There are several docking ports on the space station. This diagram [space.com] may help clarify just what goes where, although this block diagram [wikipedia.org] may be easier to follow.
Dragon normally docks with Harmony, where the Space Shuttle used to park, while Soyuz and Progress would dock with the Zvezda, Rassvet, Pirs and Poisk modules on the Russian end.
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The progress uses the russian side as did the ESA's ATV.
And since ESA no longer flies the ATV, it is only Russian craft, on the Russian side.
Video of the successful launch (Score:1)
In Russia... (Score:2)
Title easy to (amusingly) mis-read (Score:2)