Total Members Voted: 66
Yes.But not Starship (the current version anyway) and not anytime soon.Elon (and it may not be his company who does this) loves the airliner comparison.I believe there will be space truck or airliner vehicles, and that technology is heading toward that.Be we aren't there yet and won't be in R-7 numbers until about the end of the decade.
Since this is a silly question, I will provide a silly answer. To beat the R-7 record a launcher family will need 1900+ launches. At 100/yr, that's 19 years. But human civilization as we know it will not last another 19 years. The technological singularity will occur before then. Whether or not the concept of a "rocket family" has any meaning after the Singularity is unknowable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity
Quote from: nicp on 02/22/2023 08:11 pmYes.But not Starship (the current version anyway) and not anytime soon.Elon (and it may not be his company who does this) loves the airliner comparison.I believe there will be space truck or airliner vehicles, and that technology is heading toward that.Be we aren't there yet and won't be in R-7 numbers until about the end of the decade.If we're counting "anything with a Korolev Cross" as an R-7 derivative, surely "anything made from stainless steel by SpaceX" counts as a Starship derivative.
I'm puzzled by the literal question since the R-7 Semyorka only launched 27 times and nine of its launches failed.I'm also puzzled by the question in a more general sense. I'm guessing that Tywin means this in a very general sense, and hence he is including not only all past Russian ballistics missile launches, but also all future Russian nuclear ballistic missile launches. And he is adding all of the Soyuz launches to that.So the answer is that unless the human species is on the edge of extinction then of course there will eventually be another rocket family with more orbital launches than the Russian ballistic missile family.
Quote from: mandrewa on 02/23/2023 01:40 pmI'm puzzled by the literal question since the R-7 Semyorka only launched 27 times and nine of its launches failed.I'm also puzzled by the question in a more general sense. I'm guessing that Tywin means this in a very general sense, and hence he is including not only all past Russian ballistics missile launches, but also all future Russian nuclear ballistic missile launches. And he is adding all of the Soyuz launches to that.So the answer is that unless the human species is on the edge of extinction then of course there will eventually be another rocket family with more orbital launches than the Russian ballistic missile family.The R-7 ICBM was the basis for the SLVs used to launch the Sputnik satellites, Vostok, Voskhod, and Soyuz manned spacecraft, and a panoply of civil communications, early warning, and SIGINT satellites. The R-7 sans suffixe was launched 27 includes, while the operational version, the R-7A, was launched 21 times. The R-7 would find more widespread use as an SLV because its launch environment made it vulnerable to nuclear strikes whenever it was used as an ICBM.
There have been almost 2000 R7 family orbital launch attempts. Almost all of them have had a Korolev cross. Seriously, only 9 launch attempts (Soyuz -2-1v, using NK-33 first stage) didn’t use a 4-boosters-around-a-center-core type configuration using the RD-107/108(a) engine family.“Read a book” please. Or at least the relevant Wikipedia article . https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R-7_(rocket_family)
So to summarize there have been 23 different rockets in the R-7 family that have flown at least once. And there are an additional four rockets in this family that have never launched. The rockets differ in many details, like the engines, but with the exception of the Soyuz -2-1v, they all have the Korolev Cross.The first rocket to use the Korolev Cross was the R-7 Semyorka (not to be confused with the R-7A Semyorka) which was an ICBM. And in fact it was the original ICBM. And it was first launched in 1957. Sputnik was launched on a R-7 family rocket.There are currently three rockets in this family that are still active: Soyuz-2.1a, Soyuz-2.1b, and Soyuz-2.1v.
Quote from: nicp on 02/22/2023 08:11 pmYes.But not Starship (the current version anyway) and not anytime soon.Elon (and it may not be his company who does this) loves the airliner comparison.I believe there will be space truck or airliner vehicles, and that technology is heading toward that.Be we aren't there yet and won't be in R-7 numbers until about the end of the decade.I mean… “not current version of starship” is a pretty lame cop-out as they’re changing versions rapidly LOL.Falcon did 61 launches last year and is shooting for 100 this. That would put it at higher than the peak launch rate of the R7 family (80-something in one of the years in the 60s, 70s, or 80s).R7 family did 1965 launches. 1917 if we don’t count the ICBM versions (which were not orbital launch attempts).At last year’s launch rates that’d take Falcon 9 another 3 decades or so. At this year’s just 2 decades.Just to launch the 30,000 satellite constellation, Starlink will require 600 launches of Starship assuming 50 satellites per launch.Starship could get there within a decade, although with the infrastructure they’re building, they could do it in one or two years with daily launches from each of the 4 launch sites (Boca Chica, LC39A, and two more at LC-49). (And they want multiple launches per day per launch site. And more launch sites.)Stoke could also do it. In some ways, it’s a lot easier for Stoke. Deploying a 2000 satellite megaconstellation one satellite at a time would do it.
Quote from: mandrewa on 03/03/2023 06:18 pmSo to summarize there have been 23 different rockets in the R-7 family that have flown at least once. And there are an additional four rockets in this family that have never launched. The rockets differ in many details, like the engines, but with the exception of the Soyuz -2-1v, they all have the Korolev Cross.The first rocket to use the Korolev Cross was the R-7 Semyorka (not to be confused with the R-7A Semyorka) which was an ICBM. And in fact it was the original ICBM. And it was first launched in 1957. Sputnik was launched on a R-7 family rocket.There are currently three rockets in this family that are still active: Soyuz-2.1a, Soyuz-2.1b, and Soyuz-2.1v.There is nothing original R-7 left in Soyuz-2.1vSo I would not count Soyuz-2.1v in.
Premiered Aug 31, 2022The R-7 family of rockets is probably the most famous and the most important series of rockets in Soviet and even human history. The engineering behind this rocket brought the first satellite and humans into space and led to the development of the Soyuz rocket, which has been the workhorse of the Soviet, Russian, and even international space communities for many decades. Today, we’ll discuss space pioneers, engineers, cosmonauts, politics, and betrayal. We'll also discuss the many lives lost throughout the years and how the Soyuz almost never came to be.Strap in for a wild ride through history and see how the humans found the way to the stars.The main advantage the US had over the USSR in the 1950s was the means to deliver the nuclear payload. Moscow wasn’t as far away from US air bases as the DC, or pretty much any other US city, was from Soviet ones.So, the Soviets started developing new ballistic missiles with their experiences from the captured German V-1 and V-2 rockets and documents.When Nikita Khrushchev came to power, he made it his top priority to develop new ballistic missiles capable of delivering the end of the world.R-1 was a direct copy of V-2, and R-2 was a larger R-1 with a bigger range. However, in the early 1950s, Sergey Karalyov, the father of the Soviet space program, was put in charge of developing a new rocket that could balance the scales. And so started the development of the Semyorka R-7. The requirements for this project were a range of 8,000 km and a payload capacity of 3t. Soviet nuclear warheads were very bulky and heavy at the time, and this is an important fact that we’ll discuss in a minute. The rocket itself was unique in design.A 2-stage beast powered by a total of 5 engines.The core engine was RD-108, supported by four vernier thrusters. Four boosters, mounted around the first stage, carried RD-107 engines and two vernier thrusters, each powering this massive rocket.Upon launch, all engines would be started. After about a minute and a half, the boosters would detach from the rocket and form the legendary Karalyov’s cross.Four boosters were positioned at an angle and fixed on 2 points to the main body. When the fuel was spent and they were ready to detach, the bottom anchor point would first release, pushing the boosters upwards, and then the upper anchor would release and push the boosters away from the rocket. And then… the space ballet occurs. An amazing visual effect could be spotted even from the ground, where the boosters would continue to fall and move away from the rocket symmetrically.Back to the rocket, or more precisely, to the thing under the hood – the engine.The engines powering the thing were a true masterpiece of the era. They were powered by a mix of liquid oxygen and kerosene, and the innovation here was the fuel mixture control, allowing the engines to spend oxygen and kerosene in the same proportions between boosters and therefore maximizing the power and the utility of each booster before separation, along with making the flight path corrections much easier due to symmetrical weight distribution.Valentin Glushko was the man behind these legendary engines. He would later lead the Soviet space program, but more on that later. With the design sound and all the eyes facing towards the stars, it was time for the first flight.
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