Russian "Altairski" Lunar lander

On Fri, 25 Jul 2008 13:41:36 -0500,
wrote:

The US
is sharing what we learn with the world, rather than shrouding it in
secrecy.

Except, alas, global warming data, airline pilots complaints, and why
DART failed. But your point is still a valid one.

US: What caused the Columbia accident? We ignored a dangerous problem
of foam liberation and RCC vulnerabilty and our program managers
thought they knew better than their engineers, and so did nothing when
a dangerous impact was noticed.

Russia: What caused the Soyuz ballistic entry? There was a woman
onboard. It was all her fault.

Brian

wrote:
I have great respect for what the Russians have done, especially on a budget
much smaller than NASA's. But they shared very little of that experience
until the US made overtures to them to include Russia in the ISS. The US
is sharing what we learn with the world, rather than shrouding it in
secrecy.

The Soviets released a lot of science data from their Moon and planetary
missions...at least the ones that worked right.

Pat

On Jul 26, 4:41*am, wrote:
Greg D. Moore (Strider) wrote:



Let's see, what have the Russians done? *Killed a couple of crews and
floated around the Earth quite a few times.

Their interplanetary science program is tiny compared to what we've done.

Compared to the US, they really haven't done that much more and in many
ways have done a lot less.

And yet everyone holds them up as the paradigm of things done right.

Simply compare the number of manned flights for example.

The shuttle alone has flown more times than all Soviet and Russian manned
missions combined.

I have great respect for what the Russians have done, especially on a budget
much smaller than NASA's. *But they shared very little of that experience
until the US made overtures to them to include Russia in the ISS. *The US
is sharing what we learn with the world, rather than shrouding it in
secrecy.

Mike Ross

Except those bits that are proprietary, those bits whose technology
has/may have or could be used for military purposes. Then dont forget
those bits that could be a danger or used against "us" in whatever
paranoid realm you can think of. Then of course there are those bits
that are strategic or leading edge but we dont want examined too
closely.

Other than that everything else is made available.

The russians on the other hand make everything available. You simply
have to know where to get it and understand that the native tongue of
Russia is Russian, so that the documents will also be in Russian.

I Know I Know, if it's not in english and printed in US format and
published by Nasa, it doesnt exist . Luckily, other nations dont have
to follow this fantasy.

Greg D. Moore (Strider) wrote:
Their interplanetary science program is tiny compared to what we've done.


They did figure out a way to get samples back from the Moon in a
unmanned way, built Lunokhod, and did impressive stuff with probes to Venus.
They also built a permanently manned multi-module space station; we had
nothing like that till ISS came along.
Two things they were very good at was doing stuff on a fairly tight
budget, and using a incremental approach and standardized parts to
construct spacecraft from.
If Russia had built the MER rovers and seen how well they'd worked,
there would be more MERs going to Mars in the near future, and the
MER/Pathfinder landing module would be taking all sorts of different
types of scientific instruments to the Martian surface.
We build a planetary probe, see that it works well, and then start
building something new - rather than building more using a now proven
technology to cut R&D costs.

Compared to the US, they really haven't done that much more and in many ways
have done a lot less.

And yet everyone holds them up as the paradigm of things done right.

Simply compare the number of manned flights for example.

The shuttle alone has flown more times than all Soviet and Russian manned
missions combined.


One thing they did find out that we never learned from is that small
space stations like Salyut are a workable proposition.
With large space stations like Mir, the crew spends most of their time
just keeping the space station running without any time to do research
experiments.
When they looked back on how much Mir had cost versus what was learned
from it, they considered it a flop.
We might have taken that to heart before starting on the ISS.

Pat

On Sat, 26 Jul 2008 14:20:45 -0500, Pat Flannery
wrote:

When they looked back on how much Mir had cost versus what was learned
from it, they considered it a flop.
We might have taken that to heart before starting on the ISS.

You mean the ISS half of which was built to be Mir 2?

Brian

"Pat Flannery" wrote in message
...
One thing they did find out that we never learned from is that small space
stations like Salyut are a workable proposition.
With large space stations like Mir, the crew spends most of their time
just keeping the space station running without any time to do research
experiments.

THat's why ISS needs to handle 8 or 9 on a regular basis, so there can be
2-3 permanent maintenance positions, plus the occasional assistance of
others.


** Posted from http://www.teranews.com **

On Thu, 24 Jul 2008 22:37:04 GMT, "Martha Adams"
wrote:

the
Russians persisted, they are in their second thousand launches

That's not a virtue, its a necessity due to the short lives of their
satellites. Western satellites last 10-15 years.

Brian

Brian Thorn wrote:
That's not a virtue, its a necessity due to the short lives of their
satellites. Western satellites last 10-15 years.



A lot of those those first thousand launches were recon satellites. The
Soviets put them in very low orbits so they could get as much detail as
possible from their cameras. Since they recovered their film in return
capsules, they wanted to get at the film fairly quickly - so a
intentional lifetime measured in a few weeks wasn't a bad thing.
That particularly applied to the Zenit type Vostok/Voskhod derivatives.
They only had a single large reentry vehicle to bring the film and
camera back to Earth.

Pat

gaetanomarano wrote:
Some art and video of a concept study for a new Russian manned Moon lander:http://www.russianspaceweb.com/los.h..._surface_1.jpg




where are the descent/ascent engines' propellents tanks???


For the descent stage inside the LM-like lander stage.
In the ascent stage inside the white cylindrical section under the
dome-shaped crew compartment.
It may well used two toroidal tanks in the ascent stage stacked one atop
the other, with the engine(s) in the central hole of the torus - the
Russians are fond of torodial propellant tanks. The design shares some
similarities with their LEK moon lander design from the mid 1970's:
http://www.astronautix.com/craft/lek.htm

Pat

On Jul 24, 3:37 pm, Pat Flannery wrote:
gaetanomarano wrote:
Some art and video of a concept study for a new Russian manned Moon lander:http://www.russianspaceweb.com/los.h...anspaceweb.com...

where are the descent/ascent engines' propellents tanks???

For the descent stage inside the LM-like lander stage.
In the ascent stage inside the white cylindrical section under the
dome-shaped crew compartment.
It may well used two toroidal tanks in the ascent stage stacked one atop
the other, with the engine(s) in the central hole of the torus - the
Russians are fond of torodial propellant tanks. The design shares some
similarities with their LEK moon lander design from the mid 1970's:http://www.astronautix.com/craft/lek.htm

Pat

Without sufficiently powerful momentum reaction wheels is a pretty
nifty fly-by-rocket trick of that era. Too bad they too lost track of
all their R&D as related to such lunar landers, and still have nothing
that can be test verified in real time and thus easily documented on
film or rather video, much less demonstrated at international air show
events.

- Brad Guth Brad_Guth Brad.Guth BradGuth