"Certainly the 'Buran-Energiya' system is the more effective space complex. But it is necessary to remember that "Buran" was created after 'Space-Shuttle' with a break of more than 5 years. It has allowed on one hand to apply more modern methods of designing, materials, manufacturing technologies, test methods etc. and to another - has enabled our designers to take into account all foreign miscalculations and mistakes.The on-board system was also created as an improved in comparison with the existing American shuttle. "
Energia/Buran could haul more payload, and had a built-in non-orbiter cargo capability that NASA was never able to develop. That's the "superior" part.But I'm comfortable saying, based on the history of RD-171 and Zenit for starters, that Energia would not have been safer than Shuttle. As for the ice/foam thing, wouldn't Energia have presented the same hazard to Buran TPS? Maybe even more since the boosters would also have shed ice. - Ed Kyle
I suspect that ice falling off the boosters would not have been that big of an issue. After all, we never lost an orbiter to ice, but we did lose one to foam coming off the external tank. I was under the impression that the Energia's core did not feature foam that could fall off like on the Shuttle's ET. Perhaps this would be one alleged superiority of the launch system Molniya is talking about. It certainly appears that's the case when you look at what launch footage is available. The only thing I see coming off the launcher seems to be ice, which surely would be less dangerous than foam.
It's true that the Energia rocket was only launched twice, and the Buran shuttle only launched once with it. This however has more to USSR's economic collapse than the merits of the design. But I've always wondered, had the USSR not economically collapsed, would the Energia launcher and Buran shuttle have proved the superior, safer designs? The Shuttle and STS after all has killed some 14 astronauts in two separate disasters due to design flaws the Energia/Buran system did not have. To the best of my knowledge, the Energia launcher lacked the falling foam problem that came with the shuttle's external tank, which later would doom Columbia. The Energia launcher also was an all-liquid engine design, so it lacked the o-ring issues on the SRBs that in 1986 would claim the shuttle Challenger shortly after lift-off. Yet the alleged superiority of the Energia/Buran does not end there. 1) Energia could be launched without the Soviet space shuttle.2) Soviet Space Shuttle could haul 5 mt more into LEO (thanks to not carrying the heavy main engines). 3) The Buran could supposedly be more easily refurbished for flight thanks to not carrying large engines. 4) The Buran demonstrated it could be flown unmanned, which was never demonstrated by the Shuttle. 5) The Buran had an automatic docking system, the Shuttle did not. 6) The Energia was modular and had far more lift capability (88 mt) compared to an equivalent STS cargo variant (70 mt). 7) With additional boosters and an upper stage, the "Vulkan Herkules" version of the Energia could have lifted 200 mt into LEO, which dwarfs the capability of even the Saturn V. On and on the list of alleged advantages go...But I've always wondered whether Valentin Glushko's setup was really safer than STS, having seen the numerous explosive first-stage failures of Zenits over the years. What I think is incontrovertible is that the Energia/Buran system was certainly more capable and flexible, and would have been able to much more easily transition to BEO manned spaceflight compared to the STS. But at the end of the day, was the Energia/Buran setup ultimately superior and safer than the Shuttle/STS? What do you think of Molniya's claims of the Energia/Buran setup being the superior design, is it chest-thumping or backed by the facts?
Quote from: Hyperion5 on 03/15/2013 03:29 pmI suspect that ice falling off the boosters would not have been that big of an issue. After all, we never lost an orbiter to ice, but we did lose one to foam coming off the external tank. I was under the impression that the Energia's core did not feature foam that could fall off like on the Shuttle's ET. Perhaps this would be one alleged superiority of the launch system Molniya is talking about. It certainly appears that's the case when you look at what launch footage is available. The only thing I see coming off the launcher seems to be ice, which surely would be less dangerous than foam. HUH? Ice is much more dangerous than foam. That is why the foam existed in the first place was to prevent ice. Look at LO2 tanks on launch vehicles, they don't have foam because they are not worried about ice.
Quote from: Hyperion5 on 11/25/2012 05:44 pmThere's also the Atlas V, which looks likely to start sending up American astronauts in a few years' time. Its RD-180 engine, unlike the RD-171, has proven extremely reliable. It has proven so reliable that ULA floated plans of an Atlas V Phase 2 with the exact same number of engine chambers as the Zenit. Yet with two RD-180 engines why doesn't ULA even appear to blink at the dangers of "catastrophic failures" you mention? Why would they even consider an Atlas V Phase 2 Heavy with six of those engines (12 engine chambers and considerably more turbopumps) on three cores? The answer, I think, is that dual RD-180 engines is a more reliable and safer setup than one RD-171. Wrong. The reason they use RD-180 for advanced designs is because they have a source for engine.RD-17X problems have nothing to do with the number of chambers. It has to do with manufacturing quality.
There's also the Atlas V, which looks likely to start sending up American astronauts in a few years' time. Its RD-180 engine, unlike the RD-171, has proven extremely reliable. It has proven so reliable that ULA floated plans of an Atlas V Phase 2 with the exact same number of engine chambers as the Zenit. Yet with two RD-180 engines why doesn't ULA even appear to blink at the dangers of "catastrophic failures" you mention? Why would they even consider an Atlas V Phase 2 Heavy with six of those engines (12 engine chambers and considerably more turbopumps) on three cores? The answer, I think, is that dual RD-180 engines is a more reliable and safer setup than one RD-171.
Btw Jim, about Ed's point on the RD-170 engines' design being problematic, I seem to recall you commenting that it had more to do with manufacturing quality than design. ...snip...So if the problem was with manufacturing quality, and they went all out on that with the RD-170 engines for the Energia's boosters, which I imagine they did, would that have been enough to give RD-180 like reliability?
Quote from: Hyperion5 on 03/15/2013 04:21 pmBtw Jim, about Ed's point on the RD-170 engines' design being problematic, I seem to recall you commenting that it had more to do with manufacturing quality than design. ...snip...So if the problem was with manufacturing quality, and they went all out on that with the RD-170 engines for the Energia's boosters, which I imagine they did, would that have been enough to give RD-180 like reliability? Regardless, as long as it was the Soviets building the boosters, you'd have those manufacturing quality issues. Who's to say the failures were the result of specific engine problems?I don't think it was the NK-33's that caused the failures of the N-1's specifically, but other quality issues of the N-1.
Alright, so it's much more dangerous, but the point stands that we lost an orbiter to the foam meant to prevent the ice, not the ice. So yes, in theory Jim, the ice is much more dangerous, but it's not what did in the Columbia. Can you name me another time when ice on the ET endangered a mission versus foam?
Shuttle was more economical than Titan IV, especially considering it could carry the same amount of cargo plus a crew, which would require a separate Titan flight.
Quote from: gospacex on 03/15/2013 05:32 pmBuran superior to Shuttle? "Superior" in what sense?If economically, then on that metric almost anything is "superior" to Shuttle.Buran was so economical it was never flown again.Shuttle was more economical than Titan IV, especially considering it could carry the same amount of cargo plus a crew, which would require a separate Titan flight.
Buran superior to Shuttle? "Superior" in what sense?If economically, then on that metric almost anything is "superior" to Shuttle.
Well, “superior” I think is too strong. The Soviets basically copied all of NASA’s hard work developing the shuttle for it. They made some better choices I think, as they didn’t have the political climate NASA had. Their directive was, “Give use parity to the American Capitalist pigs as soon as you can…learn what you can from the work they’ve already done…this is the money and assets you have to work with”. Where NASA’s was, “Gives us a brand new Reusable Space plane never seen by the world before, that is a fully reusable system, or as close to it as possible. Spread the work all round the country so that Congress is happy with it. It must have a 60ft X 22ft payload bay.”I don’t know that the Soviets had stolen the actual plans for the shuttle, but there was enough public knowledge about it’s metrics that it gave the Soviets a pretty good place to start rather than having to start from scratch like NASA did. They didn’t have access to make large solids like we did, so they went with what they had available. But that was a good move in it’s own right, and NASA would have been much better off using existing assets rather than developing brand new reusable boosters. But NASA didn’t have any reusable boosters assets, and the focus of the program was on reusability, and it was thought that reusable liquid boosters would take too long. Thus the 4-seg SRB’s. The Soviets didn’t care about reusing the boosters or main engines, so that influenced their changes and the assets they had available. The auto docking and auto landing capability might have just been a product of it being a later design than the Shuttle. I don’t know.
The reason the SSME’s were on the orbiter was for reusability, but then that made it impossible for the stack to launch without the orbiter. So that’s hard to really say if Buran was superior. If the SSME’s had turned out to be very cheap and easy to refurbish, then we might have looked at the expendable RD-0120’s as wasteful and inefficient. Same with the booster. The fact that the SSME’s ended up costing not more to save and refurbish than making new, as was with the SRB’s, was a hindsight perspective. You might say it ended up being better to do it the way Buran did by “accident”. Reusability wasn’t the cost saver we hoped, and expendability wasn’t the liability we thought it would. I think if either NASA or the Soviets had evaluated the Buran and Shuttle designs before either of them had been built, the consensus might have been that the Shuttle was better due to it’s more reusable elements, and Energyia/Buran would be more expensive and inefficient.
Buran/Energyia I believe didn’t have those reusable elements because they really couldn’t, or couldn’t in the time and money limits they were given to give the Soviet Union space parity with the US. Energyia and Buran were more simple designs by using hydrolox and existing booster engines that didn’t have any reusability criteria, and a MPS that was inline to the core, rather than placed in the orbiter. And those turned out to be better in the long run, more by accident than design.
The American shuttle design was studied intensively by Russian rocket scientists, but important aspects of it were rejected based on Soviet engineering analysis and technology:The Soviet Union at this point had no experience in production of large solid rocket motors, especially segmented solid rocket motors of the type used on the shuttle. Glushko favored a launch vehicle with parallel liquid propellant boosters. These would use a 700 metric ton thrust four-chamber Lox/Kerosene engine already under development.The high chamber pressure, closed-cycle, reusable 230 metric ton thrust Lox/LH2 main engine being developed for the shuttle was well outside engineering experience in the Soviet Union. No engine using these cryogenic propellants had ever been used in Russian rockets, and the largest such engine under development was the 40 metric ton thrust 11D57. Glushko believed that while a Soviet cryogenic engine of 200 metric tons thrust could be developed in the required time, to develop a reusable engine would be impossible due to limited experience with the propellants.This conclusion led to other important design decisions. If only expendable engines were to be used, there was no need to house them in the re-entry vehicle for recovery. This meant that the orbiter itself could be moved from the lateral mounting of the space shuttle to an on-axis position at the top of the rocket core. The result was the Vulkan - a classic Soviet launch vehicle design: booster stages arranged around a core vehicle, with the payload mounted on top. The elimination of the lateral loads resulted in a lighter booster, and one that was much more flexible. The vehicle could be customized for a wide range of payloads by the use of from two to eight booster stages around a core equipped with from one to four modular main engines. Either a payload container for heavy payloads (Glushko's LEK lunar base) or the military's required spaceplane could be placed on the nose as the payload.As far as the manned orbital vehicle itself, three different primary configurations were studied extensively, as well as a range of more radical proposals. The final choice was a straight aerodynamic copy of the US shuttle.
I don’t know about the foam shedding issues. How did the Soviets address it? Their core was still hydrolox, so it would have still had to be insulated. Did they insulate it internally or something? I assumed the still had them, but it just flew enough to be an issue.
However, despite all of that, I believe Buran/Energyia was very expensive like the Shuttle, not cheap because it was a reusable spacecraft, even if it was more simple and flexible. I think the one dirty little secret that the Soviet’s didn’t know from STS, was the huge costs of STS. We could afford those costs, but the Soviets broke their bank trying to get there. They stole the design, but didn’t steal the cost information. And you could say, that’s how we got even. ;-)
A few other issues with Energyia/Buran.The Zenit boosters didn’t have the O-ring problem, but that’s not to say they wouldn’t have had other problems. The Zenit boosters have had their issues over the years. Out of 80 total launches, 10 failures and 3 parital failures? A failure on Buran could have resulted in a Challenger type incident, depending on the nature of the failure. The Shuttle SRB’s turned out to have a pretty reliable flight rate comparatively. 1 failure in 271 launches I think.
Also, IMHO, the Soviets copied some drawbacks of the shuttle when they didn’t have to with their changes. They could have designed Energyia to be inline, and mounted Buran on the top. ....Especially with their budgets and assets. Perhaps a smaller 30-40mt launch system, say a 5m hydrolox core with two RD-0120’s and two outboard Zenit booster would have launched a smaller shuttle, and then individual payloads for space station components or whatever. Buran or Shuttle could only put 20-25mt to LEO, so a 30-40mt system would better that. Then launch a mini-Buran to rendezvous with the payload, rather than carrying it up with it. Maybe that could have been sustainable… But they followed us into the budget issues that followed the large reusable spaceplane/cargo hauler in order to have “parity” with us.
In terms of economics, the RD-0120 hydrolox engines on the Energia's core were simpler, single-turbopump designs with modestly inferior performance compared to those on the Shuttle. However, they cost a lot less because it the Soviets weren't pushing to the limits of engine tech with them and they weren't designed with lots of re-use in mind. It may very well have been cheaper for the Soviets to have produced them in large quantities rather than painstakingly refurbish them after each flight. Heck, that might have been cheaper for the shuttle as well.
Didn't the Soyuz have an auto-docking feature way back in the 1970s? If not, when was that added? Anyone know? I would think an auto-pilot could have been developed and added to the shuttle, given our electronics were much more advanced than the Sovets'. Regardless, I think the fact that the Buran had an auto-pilot was a major safety advantage over the Shuttle. If the Soviets had had a problem early in the program, it would not have cost cosmonaut lives. Also, had they lost an orbiter, they could have brought it back to flight without risking the lives of crew, which the shuttle couldn't do. As was the case with STS-1 and the first flights after Challenger and Columbia, the launches were all manned. That's a heck of a lot of risk that the Soviets could simply have avoided. I understand some look at Zenit failures and say, "of course the Energia/Buran system wasn't safer than STS/Shuttle". However given the Soviets wouldn't have had to take the same risks with their shuttles, I think this might be a closer-run thing than some estimate.
I thought the Soviets had done cost estimates on the shuttle and found it didn't make economic sense. Thus they figured it had to have a military purpose, which made them doubly determined to have their own.
from http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/energia.htmWell there you have it, Lobo. The engines being mounted on the core was a choice of Glushko's to cut the developmental difficulties. I can't say I disagree with it either. Had the USSR not collapsed, I don't doubt they could have produced a truer SSME equivalent, but it seems they didn't think it worth the effort.
Aren't NASA budgets a matter of public record? I had always heard the Soviets couldn't understand the economic justifications being made for the shuttle based on their own analysis, so they figured it must have a military purpose. You could say their paranoia was what pushed them into making their own shuttle.
Though it only flew twice, you would think a failure rate like that would have done in one of the first two Energia launches. They did after all have some eight RD-170 engines between them, and not one of them had issues or failed a la the RD-171 on the Zenit.
AFAIK, the Buran could launch with 30 mt of payload in the payload bay, not 24 mt like the Shuttle. I do agree launching an inline shuttle would have been safer, but would it have been easier to integrate? Given the Soviets liked to do horizontal integration (see any number of Energia pictures with Polyus or Buran), I would bet they found the engineering challenges not worth it. They could have done vertical integration, but I'd guess based on Spacex going with horizontal integration over vertical integration that this isn't a cheap way to do things.
Again, this could be chalked up to the “hindsight” argument. In theory, STS should have cost less and been more efficient than Buran/Energyia, because it had more reusable components. But it ended up be far more costly to process between missions, and the flight rate wasn’t enough to make the SSME’s and SRB’s cost effective as reusable components. In hindsight, the Buran design, all things being equal, would have probably been cheaper per year. Although I’m not sure about two SRB’s vs. four Zenits per launch. I’m not sure about the cost comparison. But a US version of Energyia/Buran probably would have been cheaper, and I think that was talked about on my other thread about a better STS.
An authoritative biographer of the Russian space program, academic Boris Chertok, recounts how the program came into being.[3] According to Chertok, after the U.S. developed its Space Shuttle program, the Soviet military became suspicious that it could be used for military purposes, due to its enormous payload, several times that of previous U.S. spaceships. The Soviet government asked the TsNIIMash (ЦНИИМАШ, Central Institute of Machine-building, a major player in defense analysis) for an expert opinion. Institute director, Yuri Mozzhorin, recalls that for a long time the institute could not envisage a civilian payload large enough to require a vehicle of that capacity. Based on this, as well as on US profitability analyses of that time, which showed that the Space Shuttle would be economically efficient only with a large number of launches (one every week or so), Mozzhorin concluded that the vehicle had a military purpose, although he was unable to say exactly what. The Soviet program was further boosted after Defense Minister Ustinov received a report from analysts showing that, at least in theory, the Space Shuttle could be used to deploy nuclear bombs over Soviet territory. Chertok recounts that Ustinov was so worried by the possibility that he made the Soviet response program a top priority.
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=28474.0With “hindsight” (or proper foresight), A US version of Energyia/Buran would have probably had like 5 J2S engines on the base of the ET, with four Titan III SRB’s on the ET rather than the two big 4-seg boosters. Costs would have been shared, and they wouldn’t have been reused. And the J2S engines could have been mass produced at a clip of 15 to 40 per year. (3-8 launches per year, 8 being the most STS launches in a year ever I think). The J2S was a cheaper and simplified version of J2 supposedly. I don’t think we had anything at that time that was similar to Zenit. In the 70’s, our bigger boosters were Titan III, S-IC, and S-1B. Maybe four S-1B stages in place of the Zenits? But the four Titan III boosters would be about the same thrust as the two 4-seg SRB’s, and they would have been costs shared. The ET/Core could have been based on the S-II as well for a 10m ET/Core rather than 8.4m.
I don’t know why STS never had full autopilot or auto dock ability. I don’t know if it just wasn’t available in the early 70’s when work started on it, if there were some other reasoning for not putting it in. I do know that STS-1 was probably one of the most dangerous missions ever undertaken by NASA because the STS stack could not be launch tested beforehand. Saturn 1B and Saturn V were all launched unmanned first, as were Redstones, Atlas’s, and Titans. That is certainly a point, but I don’t know if it was because Buran was “superior”, or if such an advanced autopilot wasn’t developed enough in the early and mid 70’s to integrate into the Orbiter, but it was in the 80’s for Buran? Or if there were some other reason it didn’t have it. And I don’t know why it was never added. Maybe it couldn’t be added without redesigning the whole Orbiter? Then again, you’d have think it would have been available to integrate into Endevour anyway as she wasn’t built until the later 80’s to replace Challenger.
It was also their choice to mount the orbiter on top of the stack rather than on the side.----It never really says WHY they moved it back to the side mount position, just that mounting it on top was the superior position. Maybe there were some wind tunnel issued that they thought they couldn’t’ resolve quickly or effectively?Like I said, my guess is if they knew the costs, they probably thought we were lying to keep them from trying to build their own, or something. They wanted military parity, and they thought the Shuttle would have military applications I’m sure. Regardless of what we were saying publically that it wouldn’t.
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.[4]
Not necessarily. It’s not a very large sample size. Besides, of the failures and partial failures of Zenit, some of those could have been 2nd stage failures, or avionics failures, or something that isn’t as applicable to the basic engine and kerolox 1st stage core of the Zenit strap on booster. I didn’t delve into it that deep. Just saying SRB’s did actually have a pretty good history, and the one failure wouldn’t have likely even been a failure if it had been on an outer part of the booster o-ring joint. Anywhere other than where it was.
...My whole point about mounting a shuttle on top (axially) is that it’s superior, and it would have been better overall, with hindsight and foresight, to have understood that reusing the main engines wouldn’t have been any cost advantages over disposing of mass-produced engines, and then designed the orbiter to launch on top of a stack (maybe the Saturn INT-21 stack? Or an S-II stage with four Titan SRB’s.) from the beginning, so it had all of the proper aerodynamic stability criteria for axial mounting designed into it. If the Soviets had not been just copying our orbiter, maybe they could have designed one that could have launched axially? Don’t know for sure, but obviously they understood that’s the superior way to go if you aren’t trying to save the main engines by putting them on the orbiter.
Reading about how the Energia/Buran program started is beginning to sound like it would be rather entertaining. Would anyone have a book in mind that addresses this very subject?
Quote
QuoteQuoteThis would be a good question for Jim: "Why were the shuttles never retro-fitted with autopilots after the Challenger disaster?" If the Soviets could have one on their shuttles, why couldn't the US match that safety feature? QuoteThere was a plan for STS-1 to be automated flight but according to John Young California pols were not keen on this idea, they wanted pilots on board in case there were problems with re-entry over the Cali coast.I just mention this because in comparing Buran/STS specs you are comparing apples and oranges in terms of all kinds of constraints, and the Soviet military could of come up with any design they preferred, isn't it amazing though how they came up with ghost of STS.
The Polyus spacecraft (Russian: Полюс, pole), also known as Polus, Skif-DM, GRAU index 17F19DM, was a prototype orbital weapons platform designed to destroy SDI satellites with a megawatt carbon-dioxide laser.[1] It had a Functional Cargo Block derived from a TKS spacecraft to control its orbit and it could fire test targets to demonstrate the fire control system.
I've often heard it said that the Shuttle and craft with payloads as large as it could lift aren't militarily useful.
1. This would be a good question for Jim: "Why were the shuttles never retro-fitted with autopilots after the Challenger disaster?" If the Soviets could have one on their shuttles, why couldn't the US match that safety feature? 2. Well as I recall we did use the Shuttle for at least a half dozen or more classified military payloads in the 1980s. That had to spook the Soviets, given how much they distrusted us. Heck, they thought we were about to do a nuclear surprise attack on them in 1983 during Operation Able Archer.
Quote from: Hyperion5 on 03/17/2013 04:01 amI've often heard it said that the Shuttle and craft with payloads as large as it could lift aren't militarily useful. Unsubstantiated and totally wrong. How come another launch system (Titan IV) was created with the same performance and cargo size capabilities?
Actually Jim, can't the Shuttle actually out-lift the Titan IV to LEO by about 3 mt? Getting away from the faults of my memory, isn't the very nature of the shuttle stack problematic for flinging substantial satellites up to geosynchronous orbit? If I had wanted to launch a 5700 kg DoD satellite up to GSO, I could have done it in one launch with the Titan IV. I'm not so sure that's the case with the shuttle, which besides its design causing problems, is also much higher cost than even the Titan IV. At the very least the Soviets wouldn't have had aproblem with the layout. If they had wanted to stick a 20 mt satellite into GSO, the Energia rocket could have done it rather than Buran. So once again in terms of military utility, the Energia stack would by its very layout be much easier to use than STS.
Quote from: Hyperion5 on 03/18/2013 06:45 pmQuote from: Jim on 03/17/2013 11:24 amQuote from: Hyperion5 on 03/17/2013 04:01 amI've often heard it said that the Shuttle and craft with payloads as large as it could lift aren't militarily useful. Unsubstantiated and totally wrong. How come another launch system (Titan IV) was created with the same performance and cargo size capabilities?Actually Jim, can't the Shuttle actually out-lift the Titan IV to LEO by about 3 mt?The Titan IV could carry any DoD payload the shuttle could. That was pretty much the driving design requirement for it. Any difference in *gross* payload capacity was not relevant to DoD.
Quote from: Jim on 03/17/2013 11:24 amQuote from: Hyperion5 on 03/17/2013 04:01 amI've often heard it said that the Shuttle and craft with payloads as large as it could lift aren't militarily useful. Unsubstantiated and totally wrong. How come another launch system (Titan IV) was created with the same performance and cargo size capabilities?Actually Jim, can't the Shuttle actually out-lift the Titan IV to LEO by about 3 mt?
But a US version of Energyia/Buran probably would have been cheaper
If I had wanted to launch a 5700 kg DoD satellite up to GSO, I could have done it in one launch with the Titan IV. I'm not so sure that's the case with the shuttle, which besides its design causing problems, is also much higher cost than even the Titan IV. At the very least the Soviets wouldn't have had aproblem with the layout. If they had wanted to stick a 20 mt satellite into GSO, the Energia rocket could have done it rather than Buran. So once again in terms of military utility, the Energia stack would by its very layout be much easier to use than STS.
(from the secret projects forum) Picture of the MSC-042 shuttle. Unlike Energia the Titan III-L had no monolithic hydrogen core but two hypergolic stages. As such the orbiter had to go on top of stage 2. This thing would have had serious control issues...
Quote from: Archibald on 03/24/2013 09:00 am(from the secret projects forum) Picture of the MSC-042 shuttle. Unlike Energia the Titan III-L had no monolithic hydrogen core but two hypergolic stages. As such the orbiter had to go on top of stage 2. This thing would have had serious control issues... That link is not working... Or do you have to be logged on to their server to see it?For this reason it would be better if you attach the image to a post directly. Link usually go bad after a while.
Looking at the bottom line, counting dead bodies and billions wasted, its pretty obvious which system was "superior"
Quote from: Hyperion5 on 03/18/2013 06:45 pmIf I had wanted to launch a 5700 kg DoD satellite up to GSO, I could have done it in one launch with the Titan IV. I'm not so sure that's the case with the shuttle, which besides its design causing problems, is also much higher cost than even the Titan IV. At the very least the Soviets wouldn't have had aproblem with the layout. If they had wanted to stick a 20 mt satellite into GSO, the Energia rocket could have done it rather than Buran. So once again in terms of military utility, the Energia stack would by its very layout be much easier to use than STS. I think the Titan Iv stack actually got up as expensive as STS, or close to it. Which is why it was retired and replaced with the EELV program. This is Wikipedia, so for whatever it's worth, it said the Titan 401A that exploded in [1998] cost $1.4 billion. I'm sure the flights after that must have cost similar. That's right in the range of STS launches, if not more expensive.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_IV
And yea, especially with a hydrogen upper stage (did the Soviets even have hydrogen upper stages? I think the RD-0120 on the core of Energia was their first hydrogen engine in production) Energia would have gotten a lot to GTO or escape. With a kerolox upper stage it would have been less, but I'm still thinking it's have been pretty capable?
I suppose the question though, was there any or many payloads that big that needed to get to GTO or escape? Did they have anything they couldn't just have done with Proton?
Even if it was cheaper than STS (and I don't know that it was), it would have been a very expensive system for launching non Buran payloads. Four Zenit boosters, a big core with four RD-0120's, and external payload carrier, and an upper stage. It'd have been a pretty spendy stack compared to Proton...and it would have been in addition to maintianing Proton unless they were going to retire Proton and just have Energia, Zenit and Soyuz?Although, in reality, they probably could have retired Proton, and used Zenit instead. It didn't have the performance, but...but two or three of them together, and you have Proton and more. And Zenit was supposed to replace Soyuz, but that went away with the fall of the soviet Union.
But, if Energia/Zenit had been kept, and Soyuz and Proton had been retired, and if the Soviet Union hadn't fallen apart just then, then Energia/Zenit/Buran could have possible lived as the main system for the Soviets to cover their launching requirements.Would have been interesting if that'd happened. Might have been good for them to develop two versions of the Energia core, a side mount one for Buran (once Buran was designed to launch side mount, I don't think it could have been modified to launch axially) and an in-line version for cargo launching. Of course, NASA toyed with doing that for a long time and never did...so who knows if the Ruskies would have had the money to do it, even if they were -only- maintaining a Buran orbiter or two, the Energia core, and the Zenit boosters (and appropriate upper stages). Still, Energia as it was would have been a lot like side-mount SDHLV, and a pretty capable HLV in it's own right...just more limited than an in-line version. So it would have been probably capable enough they might have not have needed an inline version.
That link is not working... Or do you have to be logged on to their server to see it?
This is Wikipedia, so for whatever it's worth, it said the Titan 401A that exploded in [1998] cost $1.4 billion. I'm sure the flights after that must have cost similar. That's right in the range of STS launches, if not more expensive.
1. Oh don't worry, they had something they couldn't just have done with Proton. Let's not forget the first payload on the Energia was a carbon dioxide-powered laser weapons platform massing 80 mt and designed to blow up US SDI satellites out of orbit! 2. The inline PLF of the Energia M is testament to the core's adaptability.
Quote from: Hyperion5 on 03/30/2013 06:14 am1. Oh don't worry, they had something they couldn't just have done with Proton. Let's not forget the first payload on the Energia was a carbon dioxide-powered laser weapons platform massing 80 mt and designed to blow up US SDI satellites out of orbit! 2. The inline PLF of the Energia M is testament to the core's adaptability. 1. it was a mockup, they had no working laser
2. Energia M was a kludge
Does anyone know when the Soviets could have had a real working version of that carbon-dioxide laser loaded into a production model Polyus weapons platform? I always got the impression the Soviets were not that far away from sending up the real deal had the US gone ahead with SDI.
The Energia M may be a clumsy solution, but I really doubt the US could've created a down-sized version of the STS stack like the Soviets could with the Energia stack. More design flexibility certainly would be a point in the Energia's favor over STS. Obviously we never created a full-on LV from the shuttle's SRBs like the Soviets did with the Energia's boosters, though we did get close before spiraling costs and delays axed the project. Though the Zenit is not exactly a world-beater in reliability, it still bests a non-existent LV for derived utility. Just curious, but if the Energia M is a clumsy solution, what would a better solution be for using Energia-derived parts on smaller rockets? A Zenit Heavy? Trimming back the Energia to 2 boosters and launching that?
There is one Energia-inspired solution I think might work well. Let's say the Soviets are looking to either upgrade the Proton or replace it in the late 1980s. They make the decision to upgrade it to what we know today as the Proton M (more thrust, less dry mass, more payload, etc). I'd have the first stage upgraded in both thrust and propellant load, its dry mass % trimmed, and then scrap the 2nd and 3rd stages. I'd replace them both with a single hydrolox stage powered by an RD-0120. That should up both payload and reliability considerably and get better economies of scale. If need be you'd add on a 4th stage for deep space missions or GEO comsats. That should be a better solution than the Energia M, no?
Quote from: Hyperion5 on 03/30/2013 08:37 pmThe Energia M may be a clumsy solution, but I really doubt the US could've created a down-sized version of the STS stack like the Soviets could with the Energia stack. More design flexibility certainly would be a point in the Energia's favor over STS. Obviously we never created a full-on LV from the shuttle's SRBs like the Soviets did with the Energia's boosters, though we did get close before spiraling costs and delays axed the project. Though the Zenit is not exactly a world-beater in reliability, it still bests a non-existent LV for derived utility. Just curious, but if the Energia M is a clumsy solution, what would a better solution be for using Energia-derived parts on smaller rockets? A Zenit Heavy? Trimming back the Energia to 2 boosters and launching that? Not sure, but Jim might mean that Energia M would still be a pretty big and expensive LV, but fairly under performing with just two two Zenits. Sort of like how ESAS looked at some 8.4m hydrolox cores with just a pair of Atlas V boosters. They were pretty under performing. They evaluated them with RS-68's and J2S powered hydrolox upper stages and they were still not very impressorve.The Soviets didn't have hydrolox powered upper stages then either apparently.Or, maybe Jim didn't mean that, and he can explain what he meant. ;-)Anyway, a 3 core Zenit would do the same thing or better, and probably be a good deal cheaper. A two core variant (with just one outboard booster. I think they looked at that to uprate Sealaunch.) could go inbetween the 1 core and 3 core.
Speaking about the Zenit, here is a proposal in the 1980s for a tri-core heavy Zenit, the 11K37 (performance is reportingly to be about 40 tonnes LEO): http://novosti-kosmonavtiki.ru/forum/forum9/topic10895/There is also an article about it in the November 2010 issue of Novosti Kosmonavtiki - any Russian members here can check out what it is about?
Quote from: Galactic Penguin SST on 03/30/2013 06:50 amSpeaking about the Zenit, here is a proposal in the 1980s for a tri-core heavy Zenit, the 11K37 (performance is reportingly to be about 40 tonnes LEO): http://novosti-kosmonavtiki.ru/forum/forum9/topic10895/There is also an article about it in the November 2010 issue of Novosti Kosmonavtiki - any Russian members here can check out what it is about? http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=27034.0
Dmitry, you might know, but what was the plan for the Soviets if there was a problem with the Energia while the Buran was on it? Would they abort the boosters first and then shut down the central core, then eject the Buran? Would the pilots simply eject via ejection seats? Or would the Buran use its remaining thrusters to fly itself away from the Energia and then to re-orient itself for an emergency landing at Baikonur? Was there ever any talk of doing an abort-to-orbit should the central core have an engine shutdown later in the flight?
Quote from: Hyperion5 on 04/01/2013 05:09 pmDmitry, you might know, but what was the plan for the Soviets if there was a problem with the Energia while the Buran was on it? Would they abort the boosters first and then shut down the central core, then eject the Buran? Would the pilots simply eject via ejection seats? Or would the Buran use its remaining thrusters to fly itself away from the Energia and then to re-orient itself for an emergency landing at Baikonur? Was there ever any talk of doing an abort-to-orbit should the central core have an engine shutdown later in the flight? Unfortunately, my English is too bad for detailed explanations. I will tell only that at failure of engines at the initial stage of flight the rocket had to bring Buran into such kinematic conditions that it could return on airfield. It is possible to look here in more detail: http://www.buran.ru/htm/rocket.htm
Quote from: Lobo on 03/30/2013 04:26 am This is Wikipedia, so for whatever it's worth, it said the Titan 401A that exploded in [1998] cost $1.4 billion. I'm sure the flights after that must have cost similar. That's right in the range of STS launches, if not more expensive.That included the payload
.... You're a cosmonaut offered a choice of riding in either. Which would you have felt safer going up in, the Buran or the Shuttle?
Quote from: Hyperion5 on 04/01/2013 09:58 pm.... You're a cosmonaut offered a choice of riding in either. Which would you have felt safer going up in, the Buran or the Shuttle? Soyuz
No big surprise there though.
Sounds like the price was spendy for it though, hence why it was replaced with the EELV program?I would guess the fact that the Titan core was no longer being produce for the DoD and so here was no cost sharing any more had a part to pay in that?
Quote from: Lobo on 04/02/2013 02:23 amSounds like the price was spendy for it though, hence why it was replaced with the EELV program?I would guess the fact that the Titan core was no longer being produce for the DoD and so here was no cost sharing any more had a part to pay in that?Titan II cores (as in ICBM's) production was concluded in the mid 60's. All subsequent production was for launch vehicles.
Quote from: Jim on 04/04/2013 01:36 pmQuote from: Lobo on 04/02/2013 02:23 amSounds like the price was spendy for it though, hence why it was replaced with the EELV program?I would guess the fact that the Titan core was no longer being produce for the DoD and so here was no cost sharing any more had a part to pay in that?Titan II cores (as in ICBM's) production was concluded in the mid 60's. All subsequent production was for launch vehicles.Good point. Titan III was initially relatively cost effective because the core was in production for DoD. Otherwise, why use a core with toxic hypergolic propellants???Why? Because it existed and was available then.Was Titan IV only incrementally more expensive than Titan III? Or was ita big jump in price? I believe I remember price as being a reason it was finally cancelled and replaced with the EELV program. But if Titan cores weren't being made for ICBM's after the mid 60's, why even develop a Titan IV? Why not have the EELV program to replace Titan III? I think I remember that the Titan III program used a lot of retired Titan cores. (Martin Mariette refurbished 14 of them in the late 80's for government launch requirements I think) So I got the impression new cores weren't actually being built for it. They were just using old ICBM's. The SRB's were the production element.Titan IV was a stretched core (so I'm assuming a newly build core) with non-optional boosters. So a new developemnt, and new cores. So why develop it?But perhaps I don't understand the history correctly.