An yearly manned mission around Sun - proposal by Vladimir Bugrov

[fregate]

This is serious proposal (please do refrain from jokes about Irish on the Sun and Soviet Sun landing 

12.12.2014
Владимир Бугров предлагает вернуть стране статус первой космической державы с помощью полета вокруг Солнца
Россия сможет вернуть себе утерянный статус первой космической державы, если первой осуществит полет человека вокруг Солнца - такое мнение высказал разработчик проектов экспедиции на Марс и Луну Владимир Бугров в интервью "Российской газете". По его подсчетам, в случае принятия "политического решения" первый в мире полет человека вокруг Солнца может состояться в ближайшие 8-10 лет. "Это сделает космодром Восточный новым ракетно-космическим регионом России. Это вернет России статус первой космической державы", - уверен специалист. Комментируя планы Роскосмоса о создании отечественной орбитальной станции, он высказал убеждение, что это должен быть прототип межпланетного корабля. "Пилотируемые программы требуют больших затрат и должны приниматься политическими решениями, в пользу национальных интересов, - отметил Бугров. - В данном случае они очевидны: МКС в нынешнем виде для нас уже прошедший этап". По его мнению, корабль, разработанный для полета к Марсу, решит любые задачи в околоземном пространстве и на Луне. "А вот корабль, созданный только для Луны, в межпланетном полете не будет использован и станет тупиковым, как "Аполлон", - указал собеседник издания. "Сегодня реально планируются и выполняются только международные обязательства по МКС. Системный подход игнорируется. На лунной базе планируют отрабатывать технологии пребывания на Марсе, но не планируют проверять, может ли человек долететь до Марса. Ракета "Ангара", космодром Восточный, электрореактивные буксиры - это части какого-то будущего комплекса, проекта которого нет", - отметил Бугров. Разработать такой проект, по его мнению, должен "ансамбль" конструкторских бюро во главе с РКК "Энергия", а за основу нужно взять проект легендарного отечественного конструктора Сергея Королева: тяжелый межпланетный корабль выводится 80-тонной ракетой на эллиптическую траекторию, с апогеем в точке либрации между Землей и Солнцем, фиксируется в этой точке и выполняет полет по гелиоцентрической орбите. "Речь идет не о посадке на Марс, хотя она и будет конечной целью, - подчеркнул Бугров. - Необходимо проработать облик корабля для выполнения промежуточного этапа - полета в межпланетном пространстве. Стоимость такого полета к Марсу в десятки раз ниже стоимости создания той же лунной базы. Но его потом можно использовать и в лунной программе".

Vladimir Bugrov proposal to fly a manned mission around Sun could get Russia status of the great space-faring nation - this is a professional opinion of Mars and Lunar Manned missions designer expressed in his interview with "The Russian Newspaper". According to his estimations, if such political decision would be made today, a historical first manned space mission around the Sun might be made within 8-10 years. He is quite confident that "such event would transform Vostochny spaceport into a brand new major Russian rocket & space center and also would guarantee that Russia would recapture a status of the world leading space power"

Commenting Roskosmos plans about national orbital station, he expressed an opinion that it has to be a prototype of interplanetary spacecraft. "Manned space exploration programs require huge amount of investments and must be supported by political decisions to promote national interests" - said Bugrov. "In this particular instance those benefits are quite obvious - ISS in current configuration for us a the beaten path." According to his opinion, spacecraft to be developed for Martian mission, would be capable to carry any mission on LEO and in cis-Lunar space.  On a contrary - a spacecraft to be created exclusively for missions cis-Lunar space would not be capable to perform and interplanetary flight and would lead to a dead-end development, that happened with Apollo program."
 
"At present time Roskosmos only thoroughly carries out plans on its ISS international commitments. A system approach is completely ignored. On Lunar base we are planning feasibility of technology to be used on Mars but nobody is bothering to validate if human could fly to Mars. Angara LV, Vostochny spaceport, electrically propelled space tugs seems to be a random parts of a big mission stack while there is no an integrated project" - noted Bugrov.     

According to him such project could be developed by a cross-reference team of major Design Bureaus led by RKK Energia, and as a template this project could use a legendary vision of S.Korolev. Heavy interplanetary assembly stack (mass 80 tones) could be launch by SHLV to a highly elliptical orbit with apogee in the Sun-Earth Lagrange point (SEL-1),  and be inserted on heliocentric orbit upon arrival   

'We are not talking here about manned Mars Landing, that sill an ultimate goal" - highlighted Bugrov. "We have to worked out a concept of expedition stack that capable to perform an intermediate leg of the journey an interplanetary flight from Earth to Mars. Cost of such mission to Mars are 10 times smaller than price tug of the Lunar Base. But interplanetary expedition assembly stack could be re-used in Lunar program."

Original articles in "Russian newspaper" by Natalia Yachmennikova (Наталия Ячменникова)
Облетим вокруг Солнца from 10 Dec 2014
Замкнутый солнечный круг from 12 Apr 2012
and
Владимир Бугров: «Наша цель — полёт на Марс!» By Julia Novitskaya (Юлия Новицкая)  from 10 Apr 2012











Who is Vladimir Bugrov?
Bugrov, Vladimir Yevgrafovich (1933-) Russian engineer cosmonaut, 1966-1968.
Engineering degree from Moscow Aviation Institute (MAI), 1956. Civilian Engineer, Korolev OKB. Involved in the Soviet Lunar Landing Program. Left the cosmonaut corps for medical reasons. Worked at NPO Energia. In 1995 became advisor and technical director of AO Gazkom. Later retired.

He is author of the book The Martian Project of S.P.Korolev, 2009 "Russkie Vityazi"(in Russian)
He participated in Russian documentary film Tsar-rocket. Interrupted flight.. (2006) about Soviet Lunar Launch Vehicle N-1  and was a special consultant for Canadian/French TV Series documentary "Mars Rising" (2007)

A noble idea that is required a strong political will from current Russian Federation administration

[baldusi]

What would be the scientific and technical value of such a mission? Wouldn't a Venus fly-by be more worthy, for basically the same technical difficulty?

[fregate]

What would be the scientific and technical value of such a mission? Wouldn't a Venus fly-by be more worthy, for basically the same technical difficulty?

@Alessandro: Technical value - POC of the Martian Manned Mission (without constraints of mission window opportunity) as a stepping stone to holy grail of Manned Mars Landing mission by testing hardware and crew endurance in one-year flight. IMHO difference between on year on ISS (Soviet cosmonauts already achieve this objective) and one year around Sun is a quantum leap in terms of true Deep Space exploration.
I could definitely smell a slight hint of PR stunt here (in the best traditions of the Soviet Space Program), but never the less such mission would provide unique scientific opportunities beyond LEO, while it has a build-in "safety net" contingency in case of mission abort comparing with either Venus or Mars flyby - by keeping expedition stack not far away from Earth while flying on heliocentric orbit.
Plus additional bonus would be a testing of spacecraft Return Module EDL (Atmospheric Entry, Descent and Landing) on velocities similar to Mars/Venus return leg of the journey.   

[Dalhousie]

What would be the scientific and technical value of such a mission? Wouldn't a Venus fly-by be more worthy, for basically the same technical difficulty?

Unlike a flyby mission this would not be constrained by launch windows.  It would be a pure engineering and biomedical test mission.

[Dalhousie]

Would it be possible to have English annotations of those excellent illustrations?

[fregate]

Yes it would be possible - I just need extra more time: still translating summary of the news article before turning my head to pictures. Have a look at links I privided. Unfortunately all of them in Russian only. 

[baldusi]

If I understand the graphics correctly, the idea is to build the stack on LEO (particularly the solar shield). Then attach a series of tug. Then they crew and commission. Only then they go to a closer heliocentric orbit, probably still in plane to Earth. After they visit the opposite side of the Sun, they return.
It requires a lot more maneuvers than doing Venus fly by, for example. And they still couldn't return to Earth faster than completing the whole mission, if anything goes wrong. In fact, a failure on main propulsion is LOC. Venus flyby could be done just with auxiliary propulsion (if they use same propellant tank than main).
In other words, they will have all the risks of doing a really BEO mission but visit nothing interesting. Exactly the same effort and risk will get you a Venus or Mars fly-by. The Venus fly-by would take about the same time, the Mars would be longer, of course. This is what I don't get.  If you want to test everything that's risky to Mars just go to EML2. Exactly same requirements but you're 700m/s and one week away from Earth. And while you can simulate low bandwidth high latency there, you can't get back the 2400ms/100MBps connection that you could easily do from the Moon.
Obviously I'm just talking from watching the pictures since regrettably, I don't speak, much less read, Russian.

[DMeader]

Wasn't there a Gerry Anderson movie once? Oh yeah!

"Journey To The Far Side Of The Sun"
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064519/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1.

It didn't end well.

Seriously, what's the point. We'll ALL be on the far side of the sun in 6 or 7 months. If someone wants to spend an extended period in space for engineering or biomedical testing, I don't see the need to travel something on the order of 940 million kilometers without really going anywhere.

[fregate]

Movie is rather philosophical - an attempt to express in a very popular form concept of duality in nature to the extreme level (spoiler alert - by "inventing" a concept of Earth-2 that is not visible from Earth because it was placed on the same Earth heliocentric orbit with phase angle of 180 degrees making Earth 2 and Earth sitting on the diameter of circle with Sun in the Center). IMHO movie Has nothing to do with proposed mission - Bugrov proposed to launch expedition stack to highly elliptical orbit with apogee in one of the sun earth system libration points. Idea much closer to Buzz Alrdin Mars cycler expedition complex
But there is a chance that reality would bypass sci-fi movie idea from 1969.

[Dalhousie]

Seriously, what's the point. We'll ALL be on the far side of the sun in 6 or 7 months. If someone wants to spend an extended period in space for engineering or biomedical testing, I don't see the need to travel something on the order of 940 million kilometers without really going anywhere.

As I understand it would examine engineering and biomedical issues in the deep space environment, without the complexities of interplanetary encounters and launch windows and with some return possibilities in an emergency.

[geza]

In case of circular orbit, the stack EITHER remains in orbit very close to Earth's one, allowing any time return with moderate delta V, OR must go significantly closer to Sun to allow a return not too far in the future. The first case is nothing better, than going to a libration point. In the second case the spacecraft goes beyond Sun, as seen from Earth - and no emergency return. If the orbital period of the stack is 1/2 year, then it meets Earth again after 2 revolution, or 1 Earth year. If the period is 0.9 year, then the rendezvous occurs after 9 years, 10 revolutions. Alternatively, and against the picture, the stack must go to an elliptical orbit of arbitrary excentricity. Then, there is no "orbit the Sun" experience (we still orbit it together), but they get far from Earth and closer to Sun. This is something very similar to a Venus flyby, but without the constraints. It is a free parameter (question of initial delta V), how far/close we want to go with this orbit. 

[RonM]

Based on the first graphic, it looks like the station would be at Sun-Earth L1. That's about 1.5 million km from Earth.

[fregate]

That is correct: distance between Earth anf SEL-1 is approximately 0.01 astronomical units - with orbital period of 355 days; I need to calculate a time of flight for Hohmann eliptical transfer trajectory. 
I am sorry if I mislead you with the Far side of the sun concept - that 1969 movie was the closest thing produced by Hollywood!

[baldusi]

That is correct: distance between Earth anf SEL-1 is approximately 0.01 astronomical units - with orbital period of 355 days; I need to calculate a time of flight for Hohmann eliptical transfer trajectory.

So, I misinterpreted the graph? They stay at SEL1 for close to an year and get back or they simply stay in the HEO?

[asmi]

So, I misinterpreted the graph? They stay at SEL1 for close to an year and get back or they simply stay in the HEO?

Article says "going to SEL1 and stay there flying in heliocentric orbit."

[fregate]

Ok, in order to "clear the fog" this is my best understanding of the mission CONCEPT of OPERATION (CONOPS): 
1. Assembly of expedition stack in EML-2 Lagrange point (assembly crews manned flights on Soyuz-L spacecrafts);
2. Arrival of expedition crew to EML-2 and docking with fully assembled and tested expedition stack (manned  flight on PTK NP spacecraft, Deep Space configuration);
3. Injection to highly elliptical Earth orbit with perigee in EML-2 and apogee in SEL-1 Lagrange points;
4. Arrival at SEL-1 and insertion into heliocentric orbit with orbital period 355 days;
5. Heliocentric orbit flight in SEL-1 Lagrange point;
6. Injection to highly elliptical Earth orbit with perigee 100 km above Earth and apogee in SEL-1 Lagrange point performed by space tug and PTK spacecraft stack
7 Discarding space tug, PTK modules separation, atmospheric entry, descent and landing. 

All details about Delta-V and time of flights - later (as soon as I''ll complete translation)     

[TakeOff]

I note that this week 30 years have passed since Soviet/Russia sent any spacecraft to any celestial object. Vega 1 and 2 in year 1984 were launched December 15 and 21 to Venus and Halley's comet. 30 years! And nothing on the schedule until the 2020's.

3. Injection to highly elliptical Earth orbit with perigee in EML-2 and apogee in SEL-1 Lagrange points;

I take it that is a transfer trajectory, not a possible stable orbit?

[baldusi]

The station is also discarded against the Earth or is it left at SEL1?

[fregate]

The station is also discarded against the Earth or is it left at SEL1?

My understating that Lunar Orbital Station in EML-2 became expedition stack after docking with crewed vehicle. 

[fregate]

...

3. Injection to highly elliptical Earth orbit with perigee in EML-2 and apogee in SEL-1 Lagrange points;

I take it that is a transfer trajectory, not a possible stable orbit?

Yes it is a transfer trajectory from EML-2 to SEL-1 when EML-2, Earth and SEL-1 are aligned (I believe that it occured every 28 days)