Soyuz landing and recovery options

"Derek Lyons" wrote in message
...
"Jeff Findley" wrote:
Personally, given the success with all but one of the DC-X landings
(which
failed due to a ground processing error on a prototype vehicle which
lacked
redundancy), I'd consider using a powered vertical landing. With a
vertically landing vehicle, you can deal with crosswinds in a
fundamentally
different way. Note that large helicopters deal with crosswinds in a
different way than large fixed wing aircraft.

Ask any architect who has worked on skyscrapers on the problems wind
causes. It's not an easy problem.

In an emergency, you can put down a vertical lander on just about any
firm,
flat surface and not have it tip over.

ROTFLMAO. So long as it's firm, flat, and heavily reinforced.
Otherwise, it cracks under the weight.

I said in an emergency. In an emergency, you can accept a bent vehcle if it
saves the lives of the crew. You can't do that with a high speed glider
like the shuttle. The shuttle can't even survive a gear up landing on a
runway.

Landing an empty VTVL vehicle on
water in an emergency, where you accept the fact that is going to tip
over
and possibly damage the vehicle, may be survivable for the crew. It's
got
to be more survivable than landing a shuttle orbiter on water with
something
heavy in the payload bay (like an MPLM).

'Got to be more survivable'? Try figuring the loads the cabin will
take after falling 200 feet. Try figuring the weight that will be
required to brace against this.

Depends on the design of the vehicle. 200 feet long is an awfully long
vehicle. The space shuttle ET is about 154 feet long. Also, one could
design the vehicle to be short and squat. Something like the old Chrysler
SERV concept, perhaps:

http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/shueserv.htm

(Of course all my criticisms are based on the likely size of a vehicle
with a useful payload.)

Which is a debatable figure. Recent USAF studies indicate they think 10k to
15k lbs to LEO is a useful payload. Shuttle sized payloads are arguably too
big, especially if we're talking about a reusable vehicle which is intended
to have a high flight rate than the shuttle and today's EELV's.

Jeff
--
Remove icky phrase from email address to get a valid address.

Derek Lyons wrote:
"snidely" wrote:
[...]
Well, I call for Soyuz investigations just as often as I call for
Shuttle investigations, so I'm entirely consistent.

Not in these groups you don't. (Not unless you are JimO or rk
posting
under another name.)

No, I am not Jim O nor am I rk. Not even Spartacus. My statement is
true as written. Google for my postings calling for investigations,
and you'll see that I am entirely consistent.


Also, there is a self-selection process in these news groups, in
that
the majority of readers are from the US, with a large population of
other "western" countries (including Australia). This means that we
don't have a large population of Hallerski's and Doeski's to provide
the negative voice.

Utter bull****. That the majority of the posters are 'western' does
nothing to prevent a proper and open eyed examination of the history
of Soyuz.

Of course it doesn't prevent a proper and open eyed examination. But
since most of us are most familiar with STS, our comments will tend to
reflect that familiarity. I expect that only a handful of posters can
name more than 2 Soviet/Russian/Ukranian launchers.

It's equally bull**** that bBo and Doe provide anything
other than noise.

Didn't claim that they do. However, the rebuttals to them are often
useful. But the point is that we pretty much don't have a population
with *any* familiarity with Soyuz to provide any counterpoint to "Soyuz
is good".

We do, however, have Jim Oberg's insights, and we have spent a lot
of
time discussing the problems with programs that used capsules
(usually
in s.s.h).

We've spent a lot of time discussing the details of the problems.
We've spent zero time discussing the implications of those problems.

And this differs from our other discussions how?


I lean to a capsule these days not because I think capsules are
perfect, or because I am deluded they have a flawless record. I
don't
think they are as beautiful as the Shuttle, and they certainly don't
do
much (in any design I can refer to) for handling downmass. My vote
switched because wings make reentry a hard problem. Once we have
progressed to where we can do wings and still have a good reentry
solution, then I expect the new designs to reflect that, and for us
to
be able to do more than we can now.

And how exactly do we progress to 'doing wings and having a reentry
solution' unless we *do wings in the first place*?

By programs like X-43A/B/C. By continuing to research TPS solutions.
By playing with SS1, then SS2, and then something that might be
expected to do something more stressful. By investigating something in
a completely different direction and seeing how it reflects back on our
what we know about wings.

/dps

"rk"
Well, interesting you mention trains, as even
passenger train design is problematic, with
the Acelera trains -- the entire fleet --
being grounded yet again.

The NY Times ran an article about 10 days ago about the Acelera. The
train is panned by engineers, critics, etc. as a real piece of junk.

It is ironic that 1) The US does not care to have a domestic
train-building capability so 2) they get some company in Canada to build
it, then 3) tell the Canadian company that they are not building it
right; here are the changes that 4) double the weight of the train,
causing excess wear on tracks and brakes

"Michael Smith"
but a capsule is required if
people are going to fly beyond LEO.

The Kliper is a good compromise, a sort of gliding capsule. Roskosmos is
making wild claims that it is trans-lunar capable, but as it is mostly
drawings and models now, I will have to wait and see.