4 ms·

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 milita

by 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.
  - jlgreco 13y ago
    Part of the problem with reusing SSMEs was that they burned hydrogen and hydrogen embrittlement basically ensured that any sort of fast or cheap turn around with SSMEs was impossible. Hydrogen is a pain in the ass to work with if you want a reusable rocket. The Space Shuttle was really only nominally reusable, the engines had to practically be rebuilt every time to make sure everything was alright (the SRBs were hardly any better, though at least they were simpler.) (Really, hydrogen is just a pain in the ass in general though. It isn't very dense and needs to be kept much cooler than LOX to boot (requiring all that foam on the external tanks), which is why the Shuttle external tank had to be so goddamn big. The massive efficiency of LOX/LH2 are somewhat mitigated by these factors.) If SpaceX can get their F9R working well, that will likely be the first properly reusable rocket (first stage anyway). Those will burn RP-1 which won't suffer from hydrogen embrittlement. The Soviets would have been better off continuing to neglect LH2/LOX and focus on the fuels they did best with (basically what they have done ever since they discontinued Energia). Also, while the Energia would have been suboptimal for non-Buran loads, it still would have been the heaviest lifting rocket they ever had, able to put 32,000kg into TLI (compared to the Saturn V's 47,000kg and the N1's never realized 23,500 kg). The Shuttle stack wasn't merely suboptimal for that sort of thing, it was worthless.
- zerohp 13y ago
  SSMEs were commonly reused. Only 46 were built and 3 were used for each of the 135 missions. I wouldn't say that 9 missions per engine is rare.
  - jlgreco 13y ago
    Mean SSME resuse was 8.8 flights per engine, median is 8. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/25/SSME_Flight_History.png http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/25/SSME_Flig...
huhtenberg 13y ago
> then had the common sense to realize the idea was silly No, that's not what happened. Post-Perestroika economy collapse and massive inflation happened. The R&D funding crashed to absolute zero across all domains and Buran was just one of the casualties.
- jlgreco 13y ago
  The resources of the Russian space program had to be prioritized, and the Buran didn't make the grade. Had shuttles actually been as great as everybody claimed, it would have. From wikipedia: Commenting on the discontinuation of the program in his interview to New Scientist, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kotov confirms their accounts: "We had no civilian tasks for Buran and the military ones were no longer needed. It was originally designed as a military system for weapon delivery, maybe even nuclear weapons. The American shuttle also has military uses.[5]" Its not like everything stopped in the early 90s; they continued to run Progress and Soyuz missions.
furyg3 13y ago
[...] and stealing Soviet spy satellites Wow, now that you say it that seems logical that the shuttle could steal a satellite, but did that ever happen? I'm really hoping for some cool declassified stories from one/both sides of such a mission. :)
- _mulder_ 13y ago
  I'd be very surprised if it did. It's likely that the Russians would know about any Shuttle launch (I'm guessing they had a capability to track orbital objects) so it would be fairly obvious that the American's did it. At the height of the Cold war, things could have escalated pretty quickly is the US stole a spy satellite!
- jlgreco 13y ago
  No, I don't believe it ever did. It had several classified missions, but I don't think any of them could have plausibly been used for stealing spy satellites.

by jlgreco 13y ago

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.
- jlgreco 13y ago
  Part of the problem with reusing SSMEs was that they burned hydrogen and hydrogen embrittlement basically ensured that any sort of fast or cheap turn around with SSMEs was impossible. Hydrogen is a pain in the ass to work with if you want a reusable rocket. The Space Shuttle was really only nominally reusable, the engines had to practically be rebuilt every time to make sure everything was alright (the SRBs were hardly any better, though at least they were simpler.) (Really, hydrogen is just a pain in the ass in general though. It isn't very dense and needs to be kept much cooler than LOX to boot (requiring all that foam on the external tanks), which is why the Shuttle external tank had to be so goddamn big. The massive efficiency of LOX/LH2 are somewhat mitigated by these factors.) If SpaceX can get their F9R working well, that will likely be the first properly reusable rocket (first stage anyway). Those will burn RP-1 which won't suffer from hydrogen embrittlement. The Soviets would have been better off continuing to neglect LH2/LOX and focus on the fuels they did best with (basically what they have done ever since they discontinued Energia). Also, while the Energia would have been suboptimal for non-Buran loads, it still would have been the heaviest lifting rocket they ever had, able to put 32,000kg into TLI (compared to the Saturn V's 47,000kg and the N1's never realized 23,500 kg). The Shuttle stack wasn't merely suboptimal for that sort of thing, it was worthless.
zerohp 13y ago
SSMEs were commonly reused. Only 46 were built and 3 were used for each of the 135 missions. I wouldn't say that 9 missions per engine is rare.
- jlgreco 13y ago
  Mean SSME resuse was 8.8 flights per engine, median is 8. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/25/SSME_Flight_History.png http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/25/SSME_Flig...

huhtenberg 13y ago

> then had the common sense to realize the idea was silly No, that's not what happened. Post-Perestroika economy collapse and massive inflation happened. The R&D funding crashed to absolute zero across all domains and Buran was just one of the casualties.

jlgreco 13y ago
The resources of the Russian space program had to be prioritized, and the Buran didn't make the grade. Had shuttles actually been as great as everybody claimed, it would have. From wikipedia: Commenting on the discontinuation of the program in his interview to New Scientist, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kotov confirms their accounts: "We had no civilian tasks for Buran and the military ones were no longer needed. It was originally designed as a military system for weapon delivery, maybe even nuclear weapons. The American shuttle also has military uses.[5]" Its not like everything stopped in the early 90s; they continued to run Progress and Soyuz missions.

furyg3 13y ago

[...] and stealing Soviet spy satellites Wow, now that you say it that seems logical that the shuttle could steal a satellite, but did that ever happen? I'm really hoping for some cool declassified stories from one/both sides of such a mission. :)

_mulder_ 13y ago
I'd be very surprised if it did. It's likely that the Russians would know about any Shuttle launch (I'm guessing they had a capability to track orbital objects) so it would be fairly obvious that the American's did it. At the height of the Cold war, things could have escalated pretty quickly is the US stole a spy satellite!
jlgreco 13y ago
No, I don't believe it ever did. It had several classified missions, but I don't think any of them could have plausibly been used for stealing spy satellites.