Why no discussion you ask?Well, let me put this way. The Russians have a habbit of announcing some grandiose plan for their future explorations in space once every few years. They often include a new spaceship to replacy Soyuz, and a new superbooster, or resurrection of Energia and ideas for either lunar outposts or lunar space stations. However, so far, none of those plans have come to anything. As a result, enthusiasm for newly announced (or even leaked) Russian space plans has become lackluster at best over the years.
Mind you: this idea to resurrect Energia is certainly not the first, and it probably will not be the last either. And just as all other attempts it will probably fail. Most probable reason: no payloads for such a monster rocket.
Pretty much how the way has always been seen since the time of Korolev (with a brief side-excursion down a dead-end alley called 'N1' due to the need to race NASA to the Moon and, possibly, Korolev's ego not being able to tolerate von Braun having a bigger rocket than him).
Quote from: Ben the Space Brit on 11/26/2012 01:41 pmPretty much how the way has always been seen since the time of Korolev (with a brief side-excursion down a dead-end alley called 'N1' due to the need to race NASA to the Moon and, possibly, Korolev's ego not being able to tolerate von Braun having a bigger rocket than him).Let's not forget Glushko. He designed Energia to be an all-purpose rocket, not just a Shuttle launcher, by moving the engines off the orbiter and onto the bottom of what a lot of people think is Buran's "external fuel tank" -- it's not.
Glushko was very interested in going to the Moon after he took over TsKBEM from Korolev's successor Mishin in 1974; he was only shifted off the topic because he was specifically ordered to drop it and work on Buran and space stations instead.There's evidence, and I personally believe, that he was just waiting for another gyration in the USSR's political leadership so that he could shift back to a Moon mission and base. Even if he himself died, he positioned his bureau so that his hypothetical successor could use Energia as a foundation.Unfortunately for him the Soviet Union fell apart immediately after his death. His rocket is gone and not coming back, and the Russians aren't developing another one (or any of the other necessary hardware) as long as their economy is smaller than Brazil's -- i.e., for the foreseeable future.
Brazil's absence from the table should be a warning about the future of spaceflight overall. National prestige and spaceflight are slowly becoming unhinged from each other. Brazil might decide (and I'm talking about as a nation, not what Brazilian private enterprise may or may not do in the future) it doesnt care?P
I guess the biggest problem is that Roscosmos has apparently learnt PowerPoint from NASA, and now they are producing paper rockets and spacecrafts at alarming rate. Will see how it goes, but as I see now general public in Russia has started asking questions about where ever-growing RSA's budget money are going, so there might be some improvement. My guess is Angara will fly in a next couple years or so (especially keeping in mind that the parts of it already flew and will soon (hopefully) fly again as part of South Korea's rocket, so giving them flight experience for free.As for the Soyuz spacecraft successor - it's a difficult question because currently it has no destination. Missions to ISS are being perfectly handled by existing S/C, and Russian philosophy has always been not to fix something that isn't broken. The task here is much harder for Russians that for every other nation - while other nations need any human-rated S/C to gain independent access to space, Russia need the one that is significantly better than Soyuz which is excellent at what it does, and it's proven reliability would be hard to go around.There is a recent announcement that ISS partners are going to start technological preparations for manned flight to Moon, so someone will have to come up with hardware for that. I suspect that upgrading Soyuz for HEO would be an easiest (and surely the cheapest) option out there...
IMO I think you're much more likely to see the Russians get invited to join BEO mission from NASA sometime in the future rather than Russian doing it on its own.
Quote from: Khadgars on 11/29/2012 05:20 pmIMO I think you're much more likely to see the Russians get invited to join BEO mission from NASA sometime in the future rather than Russian doing it on its own.There is a possibility of that too, especially keeping in mind recent announcements from RSA, but NASA's plans are even more paper than RSA's are. At least Angara's parts are flying or, I should probably say, trying to fly , while SLS is in deep bureacratic paper stage, and there are no signs that it would ever leave that stage. And Russians has got a vehicle that can be adapted for BEO at a reasonable expence, while NASA's got nothing here as well...
Quote from: Khadgars on 11/29/2012 05:52 pmI believe SLS is due to complete its PDR by this time next year and Orion is well underway as well. Did you mean that it's due to complete one paper stage and advance into another paper stage? That's exactly what I've said above...
I believe SLS is due to complete its PDR by this time next year and Orion is well underway as well.
People keep saying that, which is true, but STS was also a jobs program that flew every year.This all sounds too familiar during the same time period between Apollo and STS. It will never be what we dream about, but doesn't mean its not going to fly and do amazing things.
Quote from: Khadgars on 11/29/2012 07:33 pmPeople keep saying that, which is true, but STS was also a jobs program that flew every year.This all sounds too familiar during the same time period between Apollo and STS. It will never be what we dream about, but doesn't mean its not going to fly and do amazing things.We will see, but this is off-topic here anyways, so let's get back on topic As far as russian flight is concerned, the main problem seems to be TLI stage, or a lack of it. The mission plan I've proposed is good enough for lunar flyby, but for LLO they will need something else, more powerful and what will be able to last long enough to execute TLI, LOI and TEI at the end of the mission. Current Soyuz main engine has Dv budget of around 500 m/s which is more than enough for LEO ops, but is a joke for lunar ops unless there is some sort of booster that can propel S/C back to Earth.
You don't need GTO to get to the Moon - all you need is ability to lift modified Soyuz (or whatever else S/C they are going to use) + TLI stage to LEO. I remember that such op (lunar flyaround) has been estimated to cost around $400M. I don't remember what kind of hardware was used though, but my coarse calculations are:S/C - 9 mt (currently it's 8 mt, I've added 1 mt for modifications)TLI stage - Briz-M (dry mass 2.5 mt, fueled mass 22.5 mt, ISP 326)such a combination would have Dv budget of 3221 m/s, enough to execute a mission. TLI stage can be lofted by Proton-M, Soyuz - by Soyuz-2.b launcher.Sounds like we have a mission