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How much lighter is the lander compared to Apollo moon lander? I mean, how far are the Chinese from sending people to the moon? The Russians landed a Lunokhod t
by dandare 8y ago
How much lighter is the lander compared to Apollo moon lander? I mean, how far are the Chinese from sending people to the moon? The Russians landed a Lunokhod too but were very far from sending people to the moon.
- eps 8y agoRussians were on a verge of manned mission, but the program stalled with Korolev's death and then scrapped altogether for non-technical reasons, primarily because of the regime change.
- computerex 8y agoNo they weren't. What's your source? Their solution (N1) had inherent flaws that would have taken a long time to work out.
- eps 8y agoDocumentary on the subject that interviewed people from the project. What's your source for the "would have taken a long time" bit? Edit - ok, read up on it and N1 was not indeed flightworthy. There is however little information on the nature of technical issues and how long they would've taken to resolve. The program collapsed first and foremost because of the politics and personnel/finance issues.
- computerex 8y agoThe N1 used closed loop cycles, which was something new at the time and was a lot harder to get right. Also the n1 had some 30 engines that all had to operate perfectly so the inherent risk of failure was higher. The rocket was never even man rated.
- avmich 8y agoUSA rocketry school tradition of counting engines by chambers makes R-7 a rocket which uses 32 engines at liftoff 4 main chambers for each of 4 RD-107 and 1 RD-108 (20 chambers) and 12 steering chambers (each with about 3 tons of thrust, about as much as a chamber of British Gamma-8 engine) - more than N-1. Yet R-7 is a pretty reliable rocket overall. Also Falcon Heavy has 27 engines, which not too many complain about. No, engines didn't need to operate perfectly. N-1 has less gross liftoff mass (GLOM) than Saturn-5, yet N-1 had higher liftoff trust. That's partially because it was supposed to complete the mission with up to 4 engines out during flight.
- avmich 8y agoNo it hadn't. There were problems with engines, which were being rectified, moving from NK-15 to NK-33. Fifth flight of N-1 would likely use NK-33 and had a high chance to succeed, given reliability of multiple-use NK-33s and almost-successful first stage flight in 4th attempt.
- billfruit 8y agoOnly recently did I come to learn, the Soviets had landed a Lunokhod, which actually returned sample of lunar soil back to earth.
- avmich 8y agoUSSR landed Lunokhod-1 and Lunokhod-2, and also returned lunar soil samples in programs Luna-16, Luna-20 and Luna-24. Those are all separate flights.