NASASpaceFlight.com Forum
SLS / Orion / Beyond-LEO HSF - Constellation => Orion and Exploration Vehicles => Topic started by: Sergi Manstov on 04/09/2006 07:11 am
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http://www.interfax.ru/e/B/politics/28.html?id_issue=11494314
A bit obvious though!
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When was it ever 2010? Silly Russian media :)
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Andy L - 9/4/2006 12:58 PM
When was it ever 2010? Silly Russian media :)
I know personally Sergey Val'chenko, who has written this article, therefore I ask you to be more careful in your expressions... :( If he does not know about it, it does not mean, that he is silly!... :( I also work for one of Russian media, therefore your expression is unpleasant to me... :(
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Sorry, but if an American media site wrote "Kliper won't fly this year" you would say the same thing?
Basic lack of reseach is unprofessional and I was being more kind to the writer than I could be. So here is why.
"will likely fail" - no failure! 2010 was never, ever a target.
"will not be able to meet the 2010 deadline" - was never a deadline, so Griffin never said that, so the writer is being false.
"the U.S. will rely on Russian and other foreign colleagues to have access to the ISS in this time span, he said." - has been the case for years, not since yesterday.
It's a very lazy and inaccurate article and as an American I do not wish to see my agency misrepresented like that.
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The article is a big mistake, and Griffin clearly didn't say what he's been attributed.
However.
Andy L - 9/4/2006 6:14 AM
I do not wish to see my agency misrepresented like that.
You need to sort out some of the American media to get that right :)
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Andy calm down.
A way to think is: Could you write an article on the Kliper in Russian? I know I couldn't!
Are Griffin's quotes on line anywhere?
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Andy, I did not say that his article is correct!... I am sorry, but your phrase Silly Russian media has simply offended me... :(
Andy L - 9/4/2006 3:14 PM
if an American media site wrote "Kliper won't fly this year" you would say the same thing?
No, I shall say only that it is known already for a long time... And I never shall say the phrase Silly American media...
Chris Bergin - 9/4/2006 3:27 PM
Are Griffin's quotes on line anywhere?
Chris, I was in Russian Mission Control Center (MCC-M, Korolyov, Moscow region) today, but, unfortunately, have missed the press-conference after landing because I was speaking with MCC-M expert about Brazilian experiments and Russian EVA for Expedition 13... :(
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Hope you had fun!
Keith's got a good point on this (which is making some waves now) - where a transcript from a NASA PAO would really be useful, as I've already seen three other media sites pick up on the interfax report and incorrectly use the "We won't make the 2010 deadline" when it was never a deadline - and it's simply a mistranslation of what Griffin said (although we'll never know without a transcript.)
http://www.nasawatch.com/archives/2006/04/more_griffin_mi.html
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The deadline refered to isn't the CEV in service deadline but the end of STS operations in 2010. The article is saying there will be a gap in US manned spaceflight capablity, something we all know about but might supprise those not following the CEV. I think it might be poor wording (intentional or otherwize) of the article.
IE its not a CEV deadline being missed but a STS deadline being kept.
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anik - 9/4/2006 5:07 AM
No, I shall say only that it is known already for a long time... And I never shall say the phrase Silly American media...
Don't worry about that one, anik. We Americans say that exact phrase all the time! :)
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I for one have nothing but respect for the Russian/Soviet model of spaceflight.
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publiusr - 29/4/2006 4:40 PM
I for one have nothing but respect for the Russian/Soviet model of spaceflight.
I second that... they are just so professional..
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publiusr - 29/4/2006 4:40 PMI for one have nothing but respect for the Russian/Soviet model of spaceflight.
They don't have a model. Just one company doing what it pleases without gov't direction but with gov't money.
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I have a lot of respect for any launch program with more than 1700 successful launches under its belt, as the R-7 family of rockets has. Especially as its safety record is about 98%.
It's also very impressive what the Russians manage to continue doing on such a comparatively shoestring budget.
Ross.
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Thank you. This all goes back into LV philosophy--and where Jim and I disagree.
IIRC, Jim actually said here that the original Atlas was 'too big" when in fact it was of an R-7 class that would have really helped the early days of US manned spaceflight.
Stalin wanted his ICBM built quickly, and Korolov exploited his zeal into giving the world not only its first ICBM--but the largest ever fielded. It was a true space booster. As a WEAPON it failed, and during the Cuban missile crisis, vulnerable R-7 pads were about all they had outside of SLBMs and the like. We focused on smaller liquids and all but abandoned them as well (except Titan II) in favor of A LOT of smaller solids with tiny warheads. I know I sound like a broken record talking about what Medaris could have done had he more power--but in his book COUNTDOWN he relates how the Soviets had no fear of size in terms of boosters, and he also lamented about how he thought we were overspending on destruction. He wanted a missile force closer to their philosophy.
What we got out of the bargain was an effective and overwhelming solid ICBM force, with the Soviets really only had a handful of R-7 ICBM pads. (The arms race then really stated with UR-100s and other weapons)
But we don't launch ISS missions atop Minotaurs do we? We ride R-7. And that is the capper.
So in terms of which model was better for space, the Russian/Army model worked. I really believe that--had the ABMA been given the power the Soviet Chief designers had--we would have a better posture on space. Medaris and others in the Army looked at rockets as more than weapons but actual means of transport.
http://www.astronautix.com/astros/medaris.htm
http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/ithacus.htm
Troop rockets may have been farfetched, but if we could have gotten a family of Phil Bono type rockets out of the deal--a proof of concept vehicle (that would have been used for less outlandish payloads) could have resulted. It is my opinion that he and his had a more favorable view towards larger liquids that fit the Soviet model better. And that is what we are using, isn't it. Big Soviet rockets and Big Soviet liquid fueled engines that AMERICA could have had if--perhaps--another service had been allowed to take the lead in Space.
The Air Force model was always to shrink things. Yes Bernie did good work. But remember the quote about how the NRO likes to build their payloads atop the rocket? This is what you get as a result of people in the past talking about how the original Atlas was 'too big.' Our liquids were always playing catch up. The Soviets had a Titan II class rocket in the R-36 (SS-9) Tsiklon--but they didn't stick build the stupid thing and add solids and upper stages--overoptimising their rocket. They had UR-500 and it was supported, and became a winning carrier rocket. We saw the Pizza Hut logo on it--not Minotaur.
By the time the Air Force and company(s) finally got to their dedicated Space boosters of R-7 and Proton class (the EELVs) (and got their eggs out of the one STS basket)--the comsat market fell out and it was too late. The damage was done. And now Russian and European medium heavy boosters dominate the world LV market.
What this tells us is that we adopted the wrong model for spaceflight.
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publiusr - 30/4/2006 4:34 PMThank you. This all goes back into LV philosophy--and where Jim and I disagree.IIRC, Jim actually said here that the original Atlas was 'too big" when in fact it was of an R-7 class that would have really helped the early days of US manned spaceflight.Stalin wanted his ICBM built quickly, and Korolov exploited his zeal into giving the world not only its first ICBM--but the largest ever fielded. It was a true space booster. As a WEAPON it failed, and during the Cuban missile crisis, vulnerable R-7 pads were about all they had outside of SLBMs and the like. We focused on smaller liquids and all but abandoned them as well (except Titan II) in favor of A LOT of smaller solids with tiny warheads. I know I sound like a broken record talking about what Medaris could have done had he more power--but in his book COUNTDOWN he relates how the Soviets had no fear of size in terms of boosters, and he also lamented about how he thought we were overspending on destruction. He wanted a missile force closer to their philosophy.What we got out of the bargain was an effective and overwhelming solid ICBM force, with the Soviets really only had a handful of R-7 ICBM pads. (The arms race then really stated with UR-100s and other weapons)But we don't launch ISS missions atop Minotaurs do we? We ride R-7. And that is the capper.So in terms of which model was better for space, the Russian/Army model worked. I really believe that--had the ABMA been given the power the Soviet Chief designers had--we would have a better posture on space. Medaris and others in the Army looked at rockets as more than weapons but actual means of transport.http://www.astronautix.com/astros/medaris.htmhttp://www.astronautix.com/lvs/ithacus.htmTroop rockets may have been farfetched, but if we could have gotten a family of Phil Bono type rockets out of the deal--a proof of concept vehicle (that would have been used for less outlandish payloads) could have resulted. It is my opinion that he and his had a more favorable view towards larger liquids that fit the Soviet model better. And that is what we are using, isn't it. Big Soviet rockets and Big Soviet liquid fueled engines that AMERICA could have had if--perhaps--another service had been allowed to take the lead in Space.The Air Force model was always to shrink things. Yes Bernie did good work. But remember the quote about how the NRO likes to build their payloads atop the rocket? This is what you get as a result of people in the past talking about how the original Atlas was 'too big.' Our liquids were always playing catch up. The Soviets had a Titan II class rocket in the R-36 (SS-9) Tsiklon--but they didn't stick build the stupid thing and add solids and upper stages--overoptimising their rocket. They had UR-500 and it was supported, and became a winning carrier rocket. We saw the Pizza Hut logo on it--not Minotaur.By the time the Air Force and company(s) finally got to their dedicated Space boosters of R-7 and Proton class (the EELVs) (and got their eggs out of the one STS basket)--the comsat market fell out and it was too late. The damage was done. And now Russian and European medium heavy boosters dominate the world LV market.What this tells us is that we adopted the wrong model for spaceflight.
Who says the army would have made bigger rockets. The DOE supplies the nuke warheads and they would have supplied the same small ones to the army who would have made the similar small ICBM. Also weapon systems have different requirements and big is not one of them.
I repeat there was no one with large payloads that required big boosters until Apollo. It wasn't an Air Force model "to shrink things" the DOE shrank the warheads so that they could be launched.
The chief designer model failed the russians many times. It was the personality of Korolev that work, the remaining Energia chief designers didn't have his sucess or backing
The reference to the NRO building their payloads has nothing to do with the size of the booster. It is respect to the time the spacecraft stays on the pad .
AMBA wasn't under the chief designer concept and Medaris was a leader, not a manager, not a scientist, and not an engineer and not a visionary.
Bernie did.
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Some quotes from Countdown For Decision that I had from an old column of mine:
General Medaris was forced to use tricks on occasion in order to, quite literally, lay the foundation for future projects:
"One of the prime necessities is a test tower on which a big missile can be
mounted and held down for thorough static testing...The Army had no mission
beyond the Redstone...Yet if anything significant were to be done in the
future, the construction of such a complex would have to start right away."
He had no choice but to use production money:
"Finally, we cooked up a plausible story of needing the test tower and other
test facilities in order to carry on the required quality control and
inspection testing that would be needed when the Redstone missile went into
production...It is interesting to note that had not this project been rammed
through and approved when it was not really justified by either ground rules
or the needs of the moment, there would have been nothing available to make
possible the rapid development of the Jupiter missile or the test work that
made the satellites possible." (Page 63-64, Countdown For Decision).
What was to be the Saturn IB was tested here.
Even with this hand won, the General was only playing catch-up with the huge
R-7. The General lamented our lack of large, liquid-fueled rockets, while
giving due credit to the Soviets:
"They (the Russians) began with no fear of size, as such, and were quite
willing to build big missiles...Thus was laid the foundation for adequate
capability in large, powerful motors. The development of smaller, lighter
atomic warheads permitted the exploitation of these big motors in terms of
added range...and heavier weight carrying abilities in space-work. This in
turn permitted faster progress since a margin of power was available to
cover minor error. We have never had this margin for error, and we still
don't." (Page 45, Countdown For Decision.)
These words are true even today, as Boeing's SeaLaunch (Zenit) and
Lockheed's Atlas V launch comsats with Soviet space shuttle strap-on engines
like the RD-170 and the RD-180, respectively.
The need of heavy-lift is a running theme in the General's book, Countdown
For Decision. On page 202, he tells us that he could not put "any guidance
above the Redstone's first stage." This was "one of the penalties we were
paying for not having a big enough booster." On page 229, the second
satellite launch is described as a failure, the cause of which could not be
determined because they could not put enough instruments aboard - "one of
the worst penalties of not having big boosters to work with."
"Few people know, as we did, that only a few months before Sputnik, Dr.
Silverstein had been chairman of a committee appointed by the Secretary Of
Defense to determine future requirements for large rocket engines. After
considerable deliberation, the committee came out, over Dr. Silverstein's
signature, with the pontifical declaration that 'there appears to be no
foreseeable need for any rocket engines of thrust greater than that now
being developed for ICBM'."
General Medaris laid down some of his concerns in his "Dagger Report" and
was embarrassed when a man under him by the name of Nickerson wrote an even
sharper piece called "Considerations On The Wilson Memorandum" that was sent
to Washington reporter Jack Anderson who was then handling Drew Pearson's
column.
This incident almost killed Army rocket development, but later the General
himself had to fight the Air Force even more fervently to get anything done
at all (Page 129).
The General wraps up his thoughts on how the Army was given no credit for
its moon-plans (page 298, plans on page 187), and how the Nike-Zeus ABM
system was stymied, even when the similar Nike-Hercules, in defeating a
Corporal, proved "that a bullet can hit a bullet" (p. 301).
In the last chapter of his book, Medaris is concerned with the money spent
on offensive systems at the expense of defensive systems designed to protect
our cities from attack. He even thought Saturn vital.
One last quote--to show how little has changed.
"Vital military needs in space...clamor for attention while we overspend on
mass destruction. There is little apparent relationship between our foreign
policy and our military posture, yet the whole military establishment is
primarily the handmaiden of foreign policy and the base of support in the
field of international relations" (page 303).
This shows me how foresighted Medaris was.
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Medaris had only the Redstone and Jupiter to play with. The USAF didn't have the lack of thrust. It put upperstages on the Atlas and Thor and had plenty of performance.
Vanguard was chosen by Eisenhower for the following reasons:
1. Didn't want to interrupt Atlas/Titan/Thor development (an excepted reason but not really true, see below)
2. He wanted a civil effort as to not show that the US is not militarizign space
3. The real reason: He wanted a civilian spacecraft demonstrate orbiting satellite's "overflight" was not illegal and was accepted by the world community. Because....
He wanted to launch spy satellites, Corona
The USAF would have donethings early but was told to stand down many times. Agena/Discoverer/Corona was actually started before 1955.
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I'll give you that. As far as the upper stages for Atlas and Thor--while giving us experince in upper stages--started the trend towards never-ending stretching of LVs that we finally got rid of when we went whole cloth with EELV.
Thor became, Delta, then Delta II, and still places two tons less in space than R-7 (or the original Atlas concept perhaps)--even with the upper stages we were forced to rely on. We decided to make smaller rockets that kept being streched. Saturn IB was the first all-liquid booster that could match or exceed R-7--and until the EELVs we had no all-liquid fueled booster that could match R-7 outside of the Saturns.
It is my opinion that US spaceflight was damaged by only developing upper stages and not focusing on big boosters. R-7 is only now being considered for a big hydrogen upper stage for Kliper. It took them a long time to find a need for high energy upper stages for the R-7, for it and Proton were able to deliver as much if not more to space without fancy upper stages as we were able to do with upper stages.
Now if I am so off base in this opinion, then why do we use RD-180? We benefit for wisdom that WE could have had--had we better leaders.
Last I heard, we don't sell the Ukrainians F-1s to go under Zenit.
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publiusr - 5/5/2006 1:33 PMI'll give you that. As far as the upper stages for Atlas and Thor--while giving us experince in upper stages--started the trend towards never-ending stretching of LVs that we finally got rid of when we went whole cloth with EELV.Thor became, Delta, then Delta II, and still places two tons less in space than R-7 (or the original Atlas concept perhaps)--even with the upper stages we were forced to rely on. We decided to make smaller rockets that kept being streched. Saturn IB was the first all-liquid booster that could match or exceed R-7--and until the EELVs we had no all-liquid fueled booster that could match R-7 outside of the Saturns.It is my opinion that US spaceflight was damaged by only developing upper stages and not focusing on big boosters. R-7 is only now being considered for a big hydrogen upper stage for Kliper. It took them a long time to find a need for high energy upper stages for the R-7, for it and Proton were able to deliver as much if not more to space without fancy upper stages as we were able to do with upper stages.Now if I am so off base in this opinion, then why do we use RD-180? We benefit for wisdom that WE could have had--had we better leaders. Last I heard, we don't sell the Ukrainians F-1s to go under Zenit.
EELV's are big boosters. They are bigger than anything the Russians have. Once again, there weren't any requirements for anything bigger. The build it and they will come doesn't work.
We use the RD-180 because Rocketdyne couldn't do two development programs (RS-68 and Atlas) at the same time
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"EELV's are big boosters. They are bigger than anything the Russians have."
Not disputing that. That is true now--after how many years of smaller vehicles? EELVs came a bit too late with Proton/Ariane 5 with a solid hold over he market
"The build it and they will come doesn't work."
R-7 and Proton (and RD-180) . They built it--and we came. And now we need the Soyuz fix.
They had big gov't money and supported boosters, and privatized them later--keeping them protected from market forces until needed.
EELVs are also having to be propped up, same as STS. The same can be true for HLLV provided the push is there and the institutional inertia keeping STS alive is pushed to CaLV.
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publiusr - 5/5/2006 2:19 PM"EELV's are big boosters. They are bigger than anything the Russians have."Not disputing that. That is true now--after how many years of smaller vehicles? EELVs came a bit too late with Proton/Ariane 5 with a solid hold over he market "The build it and they will come doesn't work."R-7 and Proton (and RD-180) . They built it--and we came. And now we need the Soyuz fix.They had big gov't money and supported boosters, and privatized them later--keeping them protected from market forces until needed.EELVs are also having to be propped up, same as STS. The same can be true for HLLV provided the push is there and the institutional inertia keeping STS alive is pushed to CaLV.
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T-IV was a big booster too.
R-7 was a weapon first, just like the US's LV's. Atlas is the R-7 equivalent and it has served the US just as well
Proton was built with a mission in mind.
EELV's are gov't programs, they were going to be supported by the gov't one way or the other.