meiza - 1/11/2007 11:29 AMOf course not from a historical point of view, but looking at the future of human spaceflight, and asking a question: Could Atlas 5 be America's Soyuz? It could, handily.
edkyle99 - 1/11/2007 7:30 AMNo. Absolutely no.
Atlas is gone. The balloon tanks are gone. The stage-and-a-half design is history, as is the Rocketdyne powerplant. Atlas last flew in 2004, completing a lifetime that included 576 launches, 320 of which were orbital attempts.
mike robel - 2/11/2007 5:19 PMSo, not only is Atlas not the equivelent of Soyuz, we have nothing in the game.
Antares - 1/11/2007 12:33 AM I was at dinner with a bunch of NASA-types a while back. Lo and behold, the guy across the table from me was an astronaut. I told him about my feelings on crew rating (fig leaf, Atlas > SDLV) and asked how the corps views it. I talked about the long flight history of Atlas. He asked me, "So is Atlas the American Soyuz?" I didn't have a good answer. What say you?
Could this more be a question of parallels - e.g. qualitative not quantitative? Atlas and Soyuz share similar gestation as ICBM's, they shrank with warhead improvements, they were supplanted by storable propellant ICBM's, they became work horses that put both manned and unmanned payloads in orbit for decades, used for interplanetary probes, and recent been incrementally "evolved".
Can see the argument for "yes" as each served roughly the same role for respective country. An administrator and/or program manager would say "yes". An accountant/analyst/politcal staffer would say "definitely yes".
Can see the argument for "no" as technologically very different design approaches with very different component selections - "night" and "day". Radically different development environment and motivations - driven by relative strengths of each country. A project manager and/or aerospace engineer would say "no, you're nuts".
edkyle99 - 1/11/2007 8:30 AMThe balloon tanks are gone.