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The USSR should be commended on not throwing as much good money after bad as the US did w/ the Space-Shuttle Program, which was built on even worse faulty assum

The USSR should be commended on not throwing as much good money after bad as the US did w/ the Space-Shuttle Program, which was built on even worse faulty assumptions re: cost, reuse, safety, launch frequency, etc. > When all design and maintenance costs are taken into account, the final cost of the Space Shuttle program, averaged over all missions and adjusted for inflation, was estimated to come out to $1.5 billion per launch, or $60,000/kg (approximately $27,000 per pound) to LEO. This should be contrasted with the originally envisioned costs of $118 per kilogram (approximately $53 per pound) of payload in 1972 dollars ($1,400/kg, [approximately $630 per pound] adjusting for inflation to 2011) > The launch rate was significantly lower than initially expected. While not reducing absolute operating costs, more launches per year gives a lower cost per launch. Some early hypothetical studies examined 55 launches per year (see above), but the maximum possible launch rate was limited to 24 per year based on manufacturing capacity of the Michoud facility that constructs the external tank. Early in shuttle development, the expected launch rate was about 12 per year. Launch rates reached a peak of 9 per year in 1985 but averaged fewer thereafter. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_Space_Shuttle_program http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_Space_Shuttle_...

jlgreco 13y ago
Damn straight. They built a better shuttle, then had the common sense to realize the idea was silly. They were right about the Space Shuttle and the US military too; much of the design of the Space Shuttle was influenced (compromised) by the DoD so that the Shuttle would be able to get into polar orbits for military missions (such as launching US spy satellites, and stealing Soviet spy satellites). These design requirements forced them to design a shuttle with dimensions that were not optimized for the missions the shuttle ultimately carried out. One of the problems with the ultimate design is that the Shuttle stack relied in part on the SSMEs to get into orbit. This meant that the fuel tank/SRBs were worthless for anything other than getting the Shuttle into orbit, while the Energia from the Energia/Buran combo would have been useful in its own right (sadly the Energia was discontinued with the Buran). As for the Russians "ripping off" the Shuttle, I think the Encyclopedia Astronautica article for the Energia engines is interesting: http://www.astronautix.com/engines/rd0120.htm http://www.astronautix.com/engines/rd0120.htm
- rsynnott 13y ago
  > One of the problems with the ultimate design is that the Shuttle stack relied in part on the SSMEs to get into orbit. In addition, the SSMEs were only reusable in principle; in practice, they were rarely reused, and unit cost was very high. > while the Energia from the Energia/Buran combo would have been useful in its own right (sadly the Energia was discontinued with the Buran). The engines used for its boosters, however, are used in modified form in the Zenit (RD-171, like RD-170 with extra axis of movement) and Atlas V (RD-180; size-reduced version) rockets, and will be used in Angara.
  - avmich 13y ago
    I'd like to correct - Energia didn't have solid boosters; the four strap-ons were considered the first stage and burned LOX/kerosene in RD-170. RD-170 has 2 axis of thrust vectoring for each chamber, and RD-171 - the variant used in Zenit rockets - has 1 axis of thrust vectoring (the tangential one).
    - rsynnott 13y ago
      Oops, yep, they weren't solid.
  - cpleppert 13y ago
    >>In addition, the SSMEs were only reusable in principle; in practice, they were rarely reused, and unit cost was very high. They were reused and were extremely efficient with a much higher unit cost than the equivalent energia stack main engine. The Soviets intended to design a carrier shuttle with reusable engines just like the US Shuttle but abandoned the effort due to reliability concerns. That is the whole point of the space shuttle design in any case. If you can't reuse very powerful main engines that can be made to be very efficient there is no point in using a shuttle-truck design in the first place. > while the Energia from the Energia/Buran combo would have been useful in its own right (sadly the Energia was discontinued with the Buran). The energia was suboptimal for launching very large items due to its requirement that payloads have to carried on the side. This increases the weight due to atmospheric shielding that cannot be jettisoned and, more importantly, means a third stage cannot be used for efficiency. Every payload also has to be able to deploy itself into the correct orbit which requires custom development for each launch payload. So while energia was powerful it was very expensive as a standalone launch platform and never would have seen much use and consequently was never seriously considered as a future development platform. The soviets would have done better just to develop a lh2/lox successor to the failed n1 rocket in the first place; especially if they didn't think the shuttle was going to be economical. Instead, they developed a sub-optimal launch vehicle that was itself based on a flawed concept and they had every intention of running the program out to the year 2000 even with a handful of launches scheduled and development costs that were already higher than the US shuttle.
lostlogin 13y ago
Wow, that's quite a margin of error to estimate $630 but for it to cost $60k. Image if you were off by the same factor in your own favour when paying your taxes. That said, a trillion spent on this sort of thing beats a dollar spending on killing and maiming etc, which is what usually happens when big countries face off.

jlgreco 13y ago

Damn straight. They built a better shuttle, then had the common sense to realize the idea was silly. They were right about the Space Shuttle and the US military too; much of the design of the Space Shuttle was influenced (compromised) by the DoD so that the Shuttle would be able to get into polar orbits for military missions (such as launching US spy satellites, and stealing Soviet spy satellites). These design requirements forced them to design a shuttle with dimensions that were not optimized for the missions the shuttle ultimately carried out. One of the problems with the ultimate design is that the Shuttle stack relied in part on the SSMEs to get into orbit. This meant that the fuel tank/SRBs were worthless for anything other than getting the Shuttle into orbit, while the Energia from the Energia/Buran combo would have been useful in its own right (sadly the Energia was discontinued with the Buran). As for the Russians "ripping off" the Shuttle, I think the Encyclopedia Astronautica article for the Energia engines is interesting: http://www.astronautix.com/engines/rd0120.htm http://www.astronautix.com/engines/rd0120.htm

rsynnott 13y ago
> One of the problems with the ultimate design is that the Shuttle stack relied in part on the SSMEs to get into orbit. In addition, the SSMEs were only reusable in principle; in practice, they were rarely reused, and unit cost was very high. > while the Energia from the Energia/Buran combo would have been useful in its own right (sadly the Energia was discontinued with the Buran). The engines used for its boosters, however, are used in modified form in the Zenit (RD-171, like RD-170 with extra axis of movement) and Atlas V (RD-180; size-reduced version) rockets, and will be used in Angara.
- avmich 13y ago
  I'd like to correct - Energia didn't have solid boosters; the four strap-ons were considered the first stage and burned LOX/kerosene in RD-170. RD-170 has 2 axis of thrust vectoring for each chamber, and RD-171 - the variant used in Zenit rockets - has 1 axis of thrust vectoring (the tangential one).
  - rsynnott 13y ago
    Oops, yep, they weren't solid.
- cpleppert 13y ago
  >>In addition, the SSMEs were only reusable in principle; in practice, they were rarely reused, and unit cost was very high. They were reused and were extremely efficient with a much higher unit cost than the equivalent energia stack main engine. The Soviets intended to design a carrier shuttle with reusable engines just like the US Shuttle but abandoned the effort due to reliability concerns. That is the whole point of the space shuttle design in any case. If you can't reuse very powerful main engines that can be made to be very efficient there is no point in using a shuttle-truck design in the first place. > while the Energia from the Energia/Buran combo would have been useful in its own right (sadly the Energia was discontinued with the Buran). The energia was suboptimal for launching very large items due to its requirement that payloads have to carried on the side. This increases the weight due to atmospheric shielding that cannot be jettisoned and, more importantly, means a third stage cannot be used for efficiency. Every payload also has to be able to deploy itself into the correct orbit which requires custom development for each launch payload. So while energia was powerful it was very expensive as a standalone launch platform and never would have seen much use and consequently was never seriously considered as a future development platform. The soviets would have done better just to develop a lh2/lox successor to the failed n1 rocket in the first place; especially if they didn't think the shuttle was going to be economical. Instead, they developed a sub-optimal launch vehicle that was itself based on a flawed concept and they had every intention of running the program out to the year 2000 even with a handful of launches scheduled and development costs that were already higher than the US shuttle.

lostlogin 13y ago

Wow, that's quite a margin of error to estimate $630 but for it to cost $60k. Image if you were off by the same factor in your own favour when paying your taxes. That said, a trillion spent on this sort of thing beats a dollar spending on killing and maiming etc, which is what usually happens when big countries face off.