11 ms·
Declassified spacecrafts and orbital weapons of the USSR (2018)
- tzfld 6y agoKliper never was a classified project.
- trhway 6y agoit had huge natural overlap with hypersonic maneuverable reentry vehicle R&D which has been all the rage, at least in the Russian weapon program, in the last couple decades, so a lot of Kliper programs would be highly classified. Also, while being no weapons by design, there are several USSR satellites in the parking orbits carrying tens of kg of highly enriched uranium.
- mabbo 6y agoI can't stay on that website long because I start getting motion sick from the background. Animated gif backgrounds belong in the 90s.
- einpoklum 6y agoSomebody should really call the Polyus.
- sneak 6y agoI wish the US would declassify the space weapon stuff it did in the 70s and 80s.
- PaulHoule 6y agoIn 1993 I saw a complete ground-based anti-satellite laser system in New Mexico that had everything to burn a satellite except for the laser (aka. "optical tracking system") It actually did have a 25W laser that excited a "sodium guide star" in the upper atmosphere that controls a mirror that undoes atmospheric twinkling and is necessary if you want to uplink laser energy with high efficiency.
- hackeraccount 6y agoThat's nothing - in 1985 I saw a demo for an orbital 5 megawatt laser.
- reasonabl_human 6y agoOkay, story time!
- moreati 6y agoI think it's a reference to Real Genius https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089886/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089886/
- joshgoldman 6y agoBeware this page is mostly conspiracy theories
- KineticLensman 6y agoand / or some artists impressions of the systems that were never actually funded or constructed.
- PaulHoule 6y agoNo it is basically correct. A 1 MW chemical laser and optical targeting system of that scale was very possible at that time, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_YAL-1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_YAL-1 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tactical_High_Energy_Laser https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tactical_High_Energy_Laser for examples closer to Earth. It is by no means an apocalyptic weapon, but a satellite-to-satellite laser attack could make a detectable space junk mess for decades to come. That generation of chemical lasers use dangerous chemical reactions, like burning hydrogen in fluorine or mixing different kinds of bleach: operator safety concerns kept them from being fielded.
- p_l 6y agoThe laser was supposed to take care of SDI sats and other space-borne elements, indeed.
- dplavery92 6y agoWe may never actually know, but I have my doubts anything like that was ever fielded. You're talking about beam-expansion over thousands of km for a sat-to-sat weapon instead of the tens of km for the eventually de-funded ABL/YAL-1 (some two decades after the suggested Soviet space-based system.) You avoid the atmosphere in space but you can't avoid diffraction. Teller's original concepts for SDI space-based lasers proposed literal nuclear bombs to provide the necessary energy density at range; neither those, nor the other host of exotic 80s-era directed energy weapons concepts seem to have made it into operation.
- nyolfen 6y ago
- moftz 6y agoInteresting that Sierra Nevada Corp's space plane looks so similar to the USSR Spiral
- stetrain 6y agoThe SNC Dream Chaser is based on several previous US designs, which probably involved some back-and-forth responding to what the USSR was doing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HL-20_Personnel_Launch_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HL-20_Personnel_Launch_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-20_Dyna-Soar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-20_Dyna-Soar
- imglorp 6y agoIf you want a lifting body with a high AOA reentry, maneuverable approach, and runway landing, then the physics probably dictates everyone converging on similar shapes. Also in this group: Buran, Shuttle, and X37.
- sandworm101 6y ago>> Also in this group: Buran, Shuttle Buran/shuttle were more than just lifting bodies. They had the large wings necessary for cross-range flight, something more than just landing. This was needed for military single-overflight mission profiles that were never flown.
- monocasa 6y agoI've heard from drunk MechEs working at SNC that Dream Chaser is a blatantly soviet design, down to measurements making way more sense in metric than the imperial that they use.
- bri3d 6y agohttps://www.denverpost.com/2016/02/26/sierra-nevadas-dream-chaser-derived-from-lost-soviet-space-plane/ https://www.denverpost.com/2016/02/26/sierra-nevadas-dream-c... https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/a19029/nasas-next-gen-iss-ship-is-a-decades-old-soviet-project/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/a19029/nasas-next-gen... https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/01/nasas-newest-cargo-spacecraft-began-life-as-a-soviet-space-plane/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/01/nasas-newest-cargo-s...
- petard 6y agoSome of these look like German WWII aircraft eg ME-163
- nixass 6y agoRussians poached some German engineers as well, not only NASA
- inglor_cz 6y agoAnd a lot of the documentation that was on the territory of the future GDR.
- jryle70 6y agoThe Soviets also transferred the entire rocket manufacturing line from Germany to USSR http://www.russianspaceweb.com/rockets_ussr_germany.html http://www.russianspaceweb.com/rockets_ussr_germany.html
- oytis 6y agoThe website doesn't look really reliable overall.
- imglorp 6y agoWiki lists some primary sources. Not a terribly different story. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyus_(spacecraft) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyus_(spacecraft)
- sandworm101 6y agoMore comprehensive and authoritative source for same data: http://www.astronautix.com/ http://www.astronautix.com/ eg Kliper (2004) http://www.astronautix.com/k/kliper.html http://www.astronautix.com/k/kliper.html
- eternalban 6y agoGreat link, thanks. Vladimir Chelomei's name is all over that page. 12 counts to 16 for Von Braun. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Chelomey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Chelomey
- jaegerpicker 6y agoNot sure how much I trust this page but if you are interested in an alternative history version of the space race I highly recommend For All Mankind on AppleTV+! It's a great show IMO. It shows what might have happened if the USSR beat the US to the moon and the Space Race never ended. It kicks the US into high gear and leads to a more advanced and in my opinion better USA (more liberal and technological/focused on Science). It's a biased towards a progressive viewpoint (so am I so it works really well for me).
- sumitviii 6y agoMaybe the show tries to say that winning leads to slacking off?
- jaegerpicker 6y agoI'd say it says the competition can bring out the best in us. Which I find to be generally true, of course it can also bring out the worst in us also!
- lostlogin 6y agoThe show is great. Without too much of a spoiler, the route it takes toward the end with its need for individual heroics is rather unfortunate.
- simonh 6y agoTo be fair in the end it's down to a very small number of individuals a long way from Earth having to deal with extraordinary circumstances. That's hardly unrealistic given the circumstances.
- tnorthcutt 6y agoFYI, there's another season starting in just a few days. Just sharing in case you weren't aware.
- jaegerpicker 6y agoI think that's one of the things I really like about the show. That is shows that even in Hard(ish) SciFi there is room for humans to be heroes. Also minor spoiler ------ it show's diverse crews as being able to perform heroics just as much as the standard male heroic type.
- nanna 6y agoFrom a UX perspective, the moving background on this site literally makes me feel sick.
- jaywalk 6y agoCame here to say this as well. I can't say I've ever had a website make me feel that way before, so that's really something.
- King-Aaron 6y agoSo many sites back in the late 90's had similar backgrounds, good thing most of them stayed in the 90's
- tauwauwau 6y agoThis worked for me document.body.style.backgroundImage = 'url(\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com/noimage.png)'
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- jugg1es 6y agoSo the space laser crashed because the same command was accidentally used for both opening the solar panels and discarding the side module covers?
- tdy721 6y agoOr because Gorbachev ordered it...
- ChrisArchitect 6y ago(2018) and here's some more discussion about Soviet space cannon from years back https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10575450 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10575450
- tectonic 6y agoWe recently wrote a piece about space warfare for Orbital Index: https://orbitalindex.com/archive/2020-12-02-Issue-93/#space-warfare https://orbitalindex.com/archive/2020-12-02-Issue-93/#space-... One of the resources we linked to was this recent PDF (https://aerospace.org/sites/default/files/2020-10/Reesman_PhysicsWarSpace_20201001.pdf https://aerospace.org/sites/default/files/2020-10/Reesman_Ph...) called "The physics of space war: how orbital dynamics constrain space-to-space engagements" from Aerospace Corp. which talks about how the limited ∆v budgets of space vehicles limits warfare and makes planning and timing essential to an attack. The PDF, oddly, has the following invisible text on the first page if you click and drag to highlight it: "THIS MATERIAL IS BEING PROVIDED PRE-RELEASE SOLELY FOR THE USE OF GEN. JAMES DICKINSON, AND IS NOT APPROVED FOR RELEASE."
- edumucelli 6y agoNice find!
- sandworm101 6y agoSuch statements are true of low-orbit but once you get out to places like geostationary orbits things do slow down. Sats out there can do things with much lower deltaV, things like direct dashes at targets, that are not practical in lower orbits.
- nine_k 6y agoI suspect it is similar to naval warfare: distances are long, there's nowhere to hide, and maneuvers are limited.
- weinzierl 6y agoThe "Spaceshuttle" BURAN ended up in a German Museum https://speyer.technik-museum.de/en/spaceshuttle-buran https://speyer.technik-museum.de/en/spaceshuttle-buran
- aarchi 6y agoIt’s not the only extant orbiter. Most of them are in Baikonur or Moscow. The one in Speyer was an atmospheric test vehicle. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buran_programme#List_of_vehicles https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buran_programme#List_of_vehi...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- zelon88 6y agoThese ships reminds me of the old action-strategy PC game named Battlezone from 1998. It was set in an alternate universe during the Cold War where the US and Soviet Union were secretly engaged in an interplanetary war throughout the entire solar system, but concealed from society under the guise of the "Space Race." On another note, I've always wondered about the feasibility of putting a large caliber one-time use cannon on a satellite. Like a WWII battleship main gun floating in space for highly precise attacks on remote areas without the fallout of tactical nukes.
- nl 6y ago"Powerful airship overclockers (weight 52 tons, length 38 meters, wingspan of 16.5 m) was dispersed to six times the speed of sound (6M), then with his “back” at an altitude of 28-30 km was supposed to start a 10-ton manned orbital plane 8 m long and 7.4 m span." What on earth (or not!) is this supposed to mean?
- obimod 6y agoClassified concept renderings... ooo. Reminds me of those fake YouTube Russian fighter jet plane videos.