May 15 double-barrel Soviet space anniversary

May 15 double-barrel Soviet space anniversary


A tale of two rockets ... with a happy ending

Russian anniversaries highlight how twists of fate averted war in space

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18620550/

By James Oberg, NBC News space analyst // Special to MSNBC

May 14, 2007

In this 50th-anniversary year for the space age, Tuesday marks a critical
date in two stages of the "Space Race."

On May 15, 1957, the Russians recorded their first-ever launch of the R-7
space rocket, a design that became (and remains) the mainstay of Russian
orbital transportation. That first rocket flew for only a minute or so
before exploding, but months later, Moscow officially initiated the space
age on Oct. 4 with the triumphant launch of the Sputnik satellite atop an
R-7.

Tuesday also marks the 20th anniversary of a Soviet launch - mercifully
unsuccessful - that easily could have reset the planet's space trajectory
onto an orbital weapons race that would have wiped out all of the
scientific, diplomatic and cultural benefits of the space age.

The first liftoff of the R-7 rocket began a competition that witnessed
the grandest conversion of "swords into plowshares" in human history.
Weapons of war - the intercontinental ballistic missiles such as the Soviet
R-7 and the American Atlas and Titan rockets - were paid for and perfected
from military budgets, but fortunately were never used in anger. The
missiles soon morphed into carrier rockets for space exploration.

It might have turned out otherwise, and almost did. The first flight of
the Soviet Energia super rocket on May 15, 1987, carried a top-secret
military payload called Skif-DM - a name that derives from the Russian word
for the Scythians, the fierce nomadic horsemen of the Eurasian steppes. The
satellite was supposed to have been the opening round of the Soviet "Star
Wars" program, aimed at beating the Americans to the deployment of
space-to-space missiles and lasers in orbit.

Had this prototype actually reached orbit successfully and performed
preliminary tests, the United States would have correctly identified its
purpose, and a vigorous military response would have been politically
unavoidable. On that still-little-known lift-off, the Energia super booster
performed well, clearing the way for its use to carry a Buran shuttle on
autopilot the following year. But the 100-ton black-painted cylindrical
payload suffered a mysterious control malfunction. This made it perform its
final rocket thrusts in the wrong direction, and it fell in flames over the
Pacific Ocean.

There was no second attempt. Under growing financial strain, Soviet
leader Mikhail Gorbachev's reformist government delayed and eventually
canceled any new "Star Wars" launches.

The Skif-DM debacle was the most beneficial and blessed space failure in
the history of the space age, closing off a path that seemed all too
unavoidable in the tense closing years of the Cold War. Thirty years
earlier, the first R-7 failure was merely a temporary setback, soon overcome
gloriously as its successors opened paths into orbit, to the moon and to the
nearest planets. May 15 marks both anniversaries.



The flight of the Semyorka

Long before 1957, Russians had dreamed of spaceflight as enthusiastically
as had Americans, West Europeans and other imaginative people around the
world. But it took a Russian named Sergey Korolev to make the dream into
metal with the seventh in a series of each more powerful military missiles.

The R-7 (R for "raketa," or "rocket") was called "semyorka" in Russian
slang ("sem" is Russian for "seven"). It was paid for by Moscow in order to
enable the slaughter of millions of Americans in a nuclear war. But Korolev,
a lifelong spaceflight nut, had other intentions. He built into the rocket
features that would prove invaluable for space missions. Many of these
features, it turned out, made it such a clumsy weapon that it was deployed
only in small numbers and was soon replaced by new generations of missiles
from other factories.

It looked different from every other rocket ever built by humans up until
then. Neither long and sleek and finned, or stacked stage upon stage in a
tapering tower, it resembled nothing so much as a bundle of fat asparagus
stalks. The long central core was flanked by four independent boosters,
identical at the business end to the central core but tapering to a point
near the top of the core.

This design allowed the missile to have maximum thrust where it needed it
most, at launch, when it was lowest, slowest and heaviest. It then could
cast off the excess weight of emptied fuel tanks and overpowerful engines
when it got higher, lighter and faster.

The "strap-ons" - and the R-7 used the first system of that design -
appeared on the U.S. Titan 3 booster a few years later. Strap-on boosters
became a key design feature of vehicles such as the Delta, Atlas and even
the space shuttle, as well as European, Japanese and Chinese heavy boosters
now in use.

But Korolev's R-7 didn't just go in for multiple parallel staging - even
its rocket engine was "multiple." When the engine designers found they
couldn't build a large thrust chamber with the desired power, Korolev had
them build an engine with one set of pumps but four separate nozzles -
another innovation that has stood the test of time.

The design proved so robust that it has been upgraded and refined for
half a century, and its latest incarnation - the Soyuz-2-1B booster - was
introduced only last year. A Soyuz launch pad is being built in French
Guiana, making South America the third continent to host the rocket. The
production line at the factory in the city of Samara on the Volga River
probably will keep building this design for decades yet to come.



Darth Vaderovitch almost strikes back

In contrast, only one space mission ever occurred for the Skif-DM - and
that was nearly enough to outweigh all the many hundreds of peaceful
"Semyorka" missions. All of the publicity photographs released after the
successful test launch of the Soviet Energia super-booster on May 15, 1987,
showed the same side of the massive booster and its two pairs of liquid
strap-on boosters. One such view is on a giant 1990 calendar on my study
wall, emblazoned with the slogan, "To Space with Peace."

But gradually, descriptions of a dark black side-mounted cylinder,
strapped to the other side of the booster, leaked out. It was said to be a
mass-scale model of a future space vehicle, or a dummy payload that had
merely been carried to stress the ascent profile test - no orbit had been
intended.

Years later, Western suspicions about the payload were fanned by
photographs that were gradually released, first under Gorbachev's glasnost
("openness") campaign and later once the Soviet Union had collapsed. Secret
Pentagon reports puzzled over the spectacular explosion of the payload when
it had fallen back into the atmosphere over the southeastern Pacific-"the
biggest infrared signature ever detected by U.S. satellites," they called
it. There were rumors that Gorbachev himself came to watch the launch and
was appalled to learn only then of the weaponry being carried. But the
ultimate illumination of the project came, fittingly enough, from an
independent Russian space historian in Moscow.

Konstantin Lantratov gathered all the bits and pieces of the stories
leaking out and visited the factory where the object had been built. He
wrote up his results, in Russian, and posted them on a private Russian Web
site. Translated by ace American space historian Asif Siddiqi, who
specializes in Russian activities, the report is at last being published in
a 12,000-word report in two issues of Quest, a quarterly journal on the
history of spaceflight.



Orbital battle stations

In illuminating detail, Lantratov chronicles how the payload was thrown
together from components of two orbital battle stations already in
development. One, the Skif, was to carry a carbon dioxide laser; the other,
the Kaskad (as in a "cascade" of rocks) was to carry kinetic kill warheads.

Aiming, stabilization, and power systems were installed inside a hollow
Buran fuselage, along with a target dispenser for tracking tests. A special
space station module was bolted on the front to maneuver the payload in
space. These payloads had been in development since the late 1970s, along
with a space shuttle system specifically tasked to service the fleet of
orbiting weapons platforms.

Lantratov makes clear that the carbon dioxide laser itself was not
flight-ready, so was not installed - for the first flight. But it was
scheduled for an orbital test a year or two later.

He also makes clear that Soviet leaders, up to Gorbachev, were thoroughly
familiar with the weapons-in-space nature of the payload. They extensively
debated how much to actually test in space, with the prospect of detection
by American sensors. The main goal of these strategies was to perform as
much of the weapons testing as possible while not revealing the nature of
the payload - and to allow Soviet diplomats to continue to denounce the
American "Star Wars" plan as illegal, immoral and dangerous.



Close call for space warriors

In hindsight, the elaborate Soviet plans to "slip one past" the U.S.
sensors look clumsy and ineffective. The suspicious nature of the payload
would have been overwhelmingly clear. The American response would have been
unavoidable. Such clear-cut and hypocritical "Soviet space treachery" would
have irremediably discredited Gorbachev and his reconciliation and reform
agenda.

As a result, the Western debate over the desirability of developing
space-based weapons would have, for all intents and purposes, ended - in the
affirmative. The Freedom space station would have become Fort Freedom, not
the international space station. For years to come, Mars would not have been
the symbol of a planetary target, but of a classic God of War.

With the stakes that high, there always has been some suspicion that the
guidance failure that crashed the payload was no accident, but a deliberate
self-destruction to avoid international opprobrium. Yet in his report,
Lantratov again delves to an unprecedented depth of new information to
explain that the error was in fact entirely unintentional, the result of
inadequate checking of control software on a project that was rushed far
beyond the bounds of sound space practice. Soviet officials had always
intended to orbit the payload, and then to lie about it.

But their intentions, and soon their entire regime, collapsed. Today's
web of international space cooperation, however strained and awkward from
time to time, is a consequence of that blessed accident. And in almost
unbelievable irony, the propulsion unit that doomed Skif-DM was later
redesigned as the propulsion unit and base module for the international
space station (NASA Web sites reveal no clue about its origin). The module
flies on today as part of the home for the latest in a long string of
international space crews. And Mars remains a distant target of promise, not
of threat.

Jim Oberg wrote:
May 15 double-barrel Soviet space anniversary



When one considers orbital velocities, and the fact that satellites
generally don't share orbital planes, just how realistic is it for one
fast moving satellite to precisely aim a laser at another fast moving
satellite and keep its aim such that the laser continues to point to the
same spot long enough to cause damage ?

Or have lasers gotten to the point where they have caught up with
science fiction and can instantly make another satellite explode ?

(Is it correct that satellites of strategic importance are in "random"
orbits (as opposed to geosynchronous well known spots) ?

Jim Oberg wrote:


stalks. The long central core was flanked by four independent boosters,
identical at the business end to the central core but tapering to a point
near the top of the core.

This design allowed the missile to have maximum thrust where it needed
it most, at launch, when it was lowest, slowest and heaviest.

Jim, this wording does rather imply that booster thrust falls off due to
the taper.

--
"Checking identity papers is a complete waste of time. If anyone can
be counted on to have valid papers, it will be the terrorists".

"Jim Oberg" wrote in message
...
May 15 double-barrel Soviet space anniversary


A tale of two rockets ... with a happy ending

Russian anniversaries highlight how twists of fate averted war in space

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18620550/

By James Oberg, NBC News space analyst // Special to MSNBC

May 14, 2007



Tuesday also marks the 20th anniversary of a Soviet launch - mercifully
unsuccessful - that easily could have reset the planet's space trajectory
onto an orbital weapons race that would have wiped out all of the
scientific, diplomatic and cultural benefits of the space age.


I just don't get your logic! I mean we started first with
the Star Wars research program. Technically I suppose
you can't have a race if only ..we.. are running, but it's
a bit intellectually dishonest to say the race was
started by their response to our program...which
I repeat came first.

Just like with the Chinese asat test, the Pentagon
also claimed it might start a weapons race.
Well ...eh hum...I mean...we've been feverishly
militarizing space for decades. And it's not like
we even try to keep it a secret, our space doctrine
is public. About two years ago they notably
turned down the boastful terminology, an effort
which you seemed to be trying to help.
But their push into space goes on.




In hindsight, the elaborate Soviet plans to "slip one past" the U.S.
sensors look clumsy and ineffective. The suspicious nature of the payload
would have been overwhelmingly clear. The American response would have
been unavoidable. Such clear-cut and hypocritical "Soviet space treachery"
would have irremediably discredited Gorbachev and his reconciliation and
reform agenda.


If our response would be unaviodable, why is that not also true
for the Soviets response, once our Star Wars program
become known?




As a result, the Western debate over the desirability of developing
space-based weapons would have, for all intents and purposes, ended - in
the affirmative. The Freedom space station would have become Fort Freedom,
not
the international space station. For years to come, Mars would not have
been the symbol of a planetary target, but of a classic God of War.


The Soviet Union would still collapse long before anyone could build
a space armada of any consequence. Gorbachev had already
told the world he was transforming the Soviet Union into
a free market democracy. He'd already had that big
summit where Reagan and Gorby 'bonded', kinda
like with George W and Putin, and they agreed
to get rid of all nukes in ten years, shocking the
advisors on both sides.

It was rather obvious at the time the Soviet Union
was broke and flying apart, and won't be building
any new fleet of expensive space weapons
....anytime soon.



But their intentions, and soon their entire regime, collapsed. Today's
web of international space cooperation, however strained and awkward from
time to time, is a consequence of that blessed accident.


It was Gorbachev that changed everything between us and them.


And in almost
unbelievable irony, the propulsion unit that doomed Skif-DM was later
redesigned as the propulsion unit and base module for the international
space station (NASA Web sites reveal no clue about its origin). The module
flies on today as part of the home for the latest in a long string of
international space crews. And Mars remains a distant target of promise,
not of threat.


It's the military and Lockheed that want to go back to the moon.
It's a make-work program designed to keep the aerospace
industry alive. Not that I have anything against that, it's only
they chose the one idea that gives them everything
and the public at large nothing at all.

They get a gravy train with no competitors, no X-33 like
breakthroughs in cost to orbit to worry about.

Just one great big do-over.


They chose the moon this time ..."not because it was hard
....but because it was easy".... to quote KFJ~

SSP is hard, and gives something back.
If you really care about NASA and the industry, then
give it a [good] reason to exist.

Space Solar Power as a goal is not just a good goal
but the best one. Why wouldn't anyone that cares
about these issues not want to see NASA
come to the rescue...saving our future and the world...
and even gets the girl.

A large committment to SSP would have large effects
right away. The 'day after' we convinced the world
we're going to do it, the perception of America in the
eyes of the world would be profoundly changed.

As our one great weakness as a nation would vanish
in their minds. Replaced by a new strength that
would only grow over time.




Jonathan


s

In article ,
Jim Oberg wrote:
...And in almost
unbelievable irony, the propulsion unit that doomed Skif-DM was later
redesigned as the propulsion unit and base module for the international
space station (NASA Web sites reveal no clue about its origin)...

Perhaps a slight overstatement, since the "propulsion unit" was not
developed for Skif-DM -- for the sake of throwing something together
quickly, it was yet another minimal-changes derivative of the existing
TKS service module. So its origins are with the Almaz military-station
program, not with Skif and friends.
--
spsystems.net is temporarily off the air; | Henry Spencer
mail to henry at zoo.utoronto.ca instead. |

In article ,
John Doe wrote:
When one considers orbital velocities, and the fact that satellites
generally don't share orbital planes, just how realistic is it for one
fast moving satellite to precisely aim a laser at another fast moving
satellite and keep its aim such that the laser continues to point to the
same spot long enough to cause damage ?

Not fundamentally very difficult. Orbital velocities are high by human
standards but nothing much by electronic standards, and the problem is
vastly simplified by the fact that satellite orbits can be predicted quite
accurately (in the absence of maneuvers, which aren't common).

Which is not to say that it's a trivial task, but it's not ridiculous.
In particular, if your plan with the laser is to overheat the target's
solar arrays, you need a lot of power but don't need pinpoint accuracy.

(Is it correct that satellites of strategic importance are in "random"
orbits (as opposed to geosynchronous well known spots) ?

Some are, some aren't. Missile-warning and eavesdropping satellites are
(mostly?) in GSO, at locations that may not be publicized but should not
be difficult to determine with tracking (an ordinary camera on a tripod,
with a modest time exposure, can pick out any substantial object in GSO).
Spy satellites, both optical and radar, are in low orbits by necessity.
The GPS navsats are midway in between, in *very* precisely known orbits.
--
spsystems.net is temporarily off the air; | Henry Spencer
mail to henry at zoo.utoronto.ca instead. |

granted. thanks for keeping a sharp eye out!

"Henry Spencer" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Jim Oberg wrote:
...And in almost
unbelievable irony, the propulsion unit that doomed Skif-DM was later
redesigned as the propulsion unit and base module for the international
space station (NASA Web sites reveal no clue about its origin)...

Perhaps a slight overstatement, since the "propulsion unit" was not
developed for Skif-DM -- for the sake of throwing something together
quickly, it was yet another minimal-changes derivative of the existing
TKS service module. So its origins are with the Almaz military-station
program, not with Skif and friends.
--
spsystems.net is temporarily off the air; | Henry Spencer
mail to henry at zoo.utoronto.ca instead. |

"John Doe" wrote in message
...
Jim Oberg wrote:
May 15 double-barrel Soviet space anniversary



When one considers orbital velocities, and the fact that satellites
generally don't share orbital planes, just how realistic is it for one
fast moving satellite to precisely aim a laser at another fast moving
satellite and keep its aim such that the laser continues to point to the
same spot long enough to cause damage ?

Or have lasers gotten to the point where they have caught up with
science fiction and can instantly make another satellite explode ?

(Is it correct that satellites of strategic importance are in "random"
orbits (as opposed to geosynchronous well known spots) ?


I think the plan is to use ground based lasers to shoot down
enemy satellites. We already have a facility designed to
do just that. And I just noticed, they call the beam control
a 'director', as in Directorate?


Starfire Optical Range
Directed Energy Directorate
http://www.de.afrl.af.mil/SOR/


So I guess they're not a space weapon, but light directors~


s

Henry Spencer wrote:
Perhaps a slight overstatement, since the "propulsion unit" was not
developed for Skif-DM -- for the sake of throwing something together
quickly, it was yet another minimal-changes derivative of the existing
TKS service module. So its origins are with the Almaz military-station
program, not with Skif and friends.


The plan was to use two Proton launches; the first would put up the
Almaz military station, the second would send up the crew and TKS/VA,
which would serve as the crew's living quarters once docked to the
Almaz. But that was expensive, and the TKS and its associated VA descent
module were both running behind schedule, so the plan switched to
launching the Almaz via Proton, then docking a Soyuz to it to serve as
living quarters. Although this saved money, the Almaz was very cramped
inside due to all the recon systems and military test equipment, and the
crew found it very uncomfortable to inhabit for any length of time, so
the program got scrapped in fairly short order and only the primarily
civilian Salyut missions remained.
What makes this interesting is that Almaz was very close in conception
to our MOL, and Almaz was a flop.
So we probably made the right decision in killing MOL in favor of large
unmanned reconsats.

Pat