What if -- No VAB

In article ,
Encyclopedia Astronautica wrote:
Yep. On the other hand, the Russians have long accepted heavier structure
and lower payload fraction for the sake of durability and manufacturability.

Not necessarily always. The R-7 ICBM (and its follow-ons, the latest
being the Soyuz launcher) are suspended from the 'shoulders' of the
strap-ons over the flame trench. This provided a lighter structure...

Pretty much always. The Soyuz launcher is roughly the size of the basic
Atlas V, but has about half the payload. (This isn't *entirely* a fair
comparison, but even so, there's still a large discrepancy.)

And in general, this is a sensible thing to do. Making the rocket a bit
bigger to get the payload up costs very little, unless you run up against
limits of ground handling facilities. Trying to squeeze the highest
possible payload out of a rocket of fixed size is very expensive and tends
to yield relatively fragile vehicles.

In any case, all US rocket stages were transported horizontally to the
launch site (by plane, rail, or barge)...

However, the assembled rockets generally weren't moved that way. At most,
in a few cases the assembly was done horizontally (at the pad) and the
whole thing then very carefully erected. More usually, the stages are
erected one at a time and stacked vertically.

The EELV's now coming on line have absorbed a huge amount of Russian
engineering in their designs - horizontal assembly, austere pads,
quick-disconnects, etc...

Most of this isn't specifically Russian -- it's just the result of
designing a launch system for production operations, something the US has
rarely done before. Ariane 5 shows some of the same design approaches
(and its designers consciously adopted the "make the rocket bigger instead
of trying to squeeze maximum payload out of a fixed size" philosophy).

Incidentally, only Atlas V does full horizontal assembly with an austere
pad. Delta IV has rather longer pad times and a more elaborate pad, and
stacks the payload on the pad.
--
MOST launched 30 June; science observations running | Henry Spencer
since Oct; first surprises seen; papers pending. |

(Encyclopedia Astronautica) wrote:
Not to diminish the work of US engineers, but the Soviet Union spent
1970 to 1990 engineering a vast range of new liquid propellant ICBM's
and launch vehicles, at a time when the US was just modifying old
designs.

Of course that's only half the story. The USSR engineered all those
vehicles because a) politics, and b) their general inability to build
a completely reliable system. Or to put it simply, what you tout as a
feature is actually a bug.

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

OM om@our_blessed_lady_mary_of_the_holy_NASA_researc h_facility.org
wrote:
...Between _Korolev_ and Asif's book, the general concensus appears to
be that no Soviet equivalent of the VAB was built because of the
secrecy involved in the program. Had something that *big* been built
in or near Tyuratam/Baikonur, it would have shown up on the KEYHOLE
photos bigger than anything. By doing the assembly horizontally, they
could do so in a building that, if only two to four stories tall,
could have appeared as anything from a big warehouse to a medium-sized
factory, with nary a clue to the outsider that something like an N-1
was being built inside.

It appears that someone hasn't thought things through.

First off, it's pretty easy to determine the height of a building in
overhead imagery, and the existing interior photos of the N-1 assembly
plant plainly show something in the 8-10 story range. Given the
(equally easy to determine) square footage of the building, it would
be pretty clear this was an industrial building vice an office
building. (You can also tell by observing parking lots,
transportation arrangements, etc.. Which reveal the number of bodies
working in the building and what is expected to come in and out.)

Secondly, that the building had a set of transport rails connecting it
to a launch pad would be a massive circle-and-arrow saying "assembly
building here".

One suspects the Soviets retconned what happened, and that what they
really did what whta they usually did; stayed with proven methods.

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

(Derek Lyons) wrote in message ...
(Encyclopedia Astronautica) wrote:
Not to diminish the work of US engineers, but the Soviet Union spent
1970 to 1990 engineering a vast range of new liquid propellant ICBM's
and launch vehicles, at a time when the US was just modifying old
designs.

Of course that's only half the story. The USSR engineered all those
vehicles because a) politics, and b) their general inability to build
a completely reliable system. Or to put it simply, what you tout as a
feature is actually a bug.

Additionally, the US figured out how to do really high
performance solid propellants way before the Soviets ever
had a clue. So US ICBMs dramatically diverged from the
previous line of semi-general purpose sub-orbital rockets
that could be scaled up to orbital launch. America's
expendable launch vehicles, until recently, were derived
from a much older generation of LRBMs (Atlas, Titan, Thor).
The newer generations of LRBMs (Minuteman, Peacekeeper,
Polaris, Poseidon, Trident) were all solid fuel based and
gave birth to very few launcher variants (Taurus, Athena,
??), all of which were niche launchers unsuitable for the
general orbital launch market.

Even so, the backbone of the Russian/Soviet space program
has been the Soyuz and Proton boosters, which are of an
age and a technology level with the original Atlas and
Titan launchers.

I don't know where that impression comes from. The N1 MIK was sighted
by the American sats as soon as the foundation was laid and they came
to the immediate conclusion a *really big* booster was going to be
assembled there (see Charles Vick's annotated photos that are/used to
be on the FAS site). It's 52 m / 11 stories tall inside - and as
Kamanin proudly says in his memoirs, it was 'the biggest building in
Europe'... so there is nothing to indicate that making a horizontal
assembly instead of a vertical assembly building was done for any
covert reason...

The highest building at Baikonur is the 58+ m high MZK Static Test
building built to test the Energia booster upright (based on the
lessons of the N1 failures, but ironically not ready and not used to
test Energia before its first flight!)


...Between _Korolev_ and Asif's book, the general concensus appears to
be that no Soviet equivalent of the VAB was built because of the
secrecy involved in the program. Had something that *big* been built
in or near Tyuratam/Baikonur, it would have shown up on the KEYHOLE
photos bigger than anything. By doing the assembly horizontally, they
could do so in a building that, if only two to four stories tall,
could have appeared as anything from a big warehouse to a medium-sized
factory, with nary a clue to the outsider that something like an N-1
was being built inside.

It appears that someone hasn't thought things through.

First off, it's pretty easy to determine the height of a building in
overhead imagery, and the existing interior photos of the N-1 assembly
plant plainly show something in the 8-10 story range. Given the
(equally easy to determine) square footage of the building, it would
be pretty clear this was an industrial building vice an office
building. (You can also tell by observing parking lots,
transportation arrangements, etc.. Which reveal the number of bodies
working in the building and what is expected to come in and out.)

Secondly, that the building had a set of transport rails connecting it
to a launch pad would be a massive circle-and-arrow saying "assembly
building here".

One suspects the Soviets retconned what happened, and that what they
really did what whta they usually did; stayed with proven methods.

D.

In article ,
Jonathan Silverlight
wrote:
Didn't the Russians assemble Buran/Energiya horizontally, and then move
it to the pad on a huge machine that looked like something out of
Thunderbirds?

As I recall, Thunderbird 1 is moved vertically into launch position,
while Thunderbird 3 is always in a launch position.

But I forgot on how some of the other non-IR machines worked.

(Christopher M. Jones) wrote in message . com...
Most Russian/Soviet launch vehicles are assembled that way.
Which is why rail lines run right up to the launch gantries
at Baikonur.

(Henry Spencer) wrote in message ...
Yep. On the other hand, the Russians have long accepted heavier structure
and lower payload fraction for the sake of durability and manufacturability.
The Proton transporter doesn't even support the fourth stage and payload.

(Christopher M. Jones) wrote in message . com...
Which is the smart thing to do.

Personally, moving tall rockets horizontally makes quite sense than
moving vertically.

For one thing, I personally think that it's kinda scary moving around
tall structures. Things might gone really bad if they done vertical
moving at Baikonur, it's probably quite windy at Baikonur.

I was thinking about the
Russian space program a bit and I noted to myself that a
lot of the reason why they did some of it the right way
was because they were so poor.

The U.S.S.R. was anything but poor back then, the way the Soviet done
the space program seems to be based on the effeciency to cranked up as
many rockets and launches as possible, of course the fact that they
got lots of manpower and resources also help. Brute force actually
would describe on how the U.S.S.R. handle the space program.

The U.S.S.R. probably was the strongest country in the world, probably
that's why 'they' decided to break it up, too strong. The next target?
The U.S.A.


As for on how the U.S.S.R. got many things right.

Well... Modern rocketry started there.

http://www.informatics.org/museum/tsiol.html

http://www.spaceline.org/history/21.html

On the other hand, they could also got help from outside. The
Energia-Buran is often said as a copy of the STS, but it's kinda
strange on how a copy looks more complete than the originial.

The STS don't look like an U.S.A. design, but in the same time while
it look more like an U.S.S.R., but... in the same time, it also don't
look like an U.S.S.R. design.

Is it possible that BOTH the Energia-Buran and the STS are COPIES of
the same design that is neither U.S.S.R. nor U.S.A. in origin? No
matter what, both countries engineers seems to have this design
thrusted into their mouths despite their objections.



As for the current Russian space program, it's in survival mode and
currently being bought a certain party (disguising itself under the
name of 'international' companies), piece by piece.

But one shouldn't think that the U.S.A.'s space program is in a good
mode, it's too in survival mode, only not as publicized.

Is this due U.S.A.'s propaganda? Not bloody likely, the U.S.A. too is
a victim here.

Like for example, Russia is often mentioned as 'poor', in need of
'foreign cash', need more 'financial aid' (that people tend to forget
that it came in the form of loans), and how U.S. companies money is
putting 'new life' into many of the Russian companies.

But how many times in addition of comments like that you also see side
notes on how the U.S.A. is actually the biggest debtor (a party that
owed money) in the world and that these U.S. companies are NOT owned
by the government of the U.S.A?


Chances are that the ones who will be owning both space programs of
U.S.A. and U.S.S.R. are going to be the same people.

"EAC" wrote in message
m...

The U.S.S.R. probably was the strongest country in the world, probably
that's why 'they' decided to break it up, too strong. The next target?
The U.S.A.

Can we have Colorado?

On 5 May 2004 12:58:20 -0700, (EAC) wrote:

The U.S.S.R. probably was the strongest country in the world, probably
that's why 'they' decided to break it up, too strong. The next target?
The U.S.A.

....If that were in the cards, Texas would have seceded quite a number
of years ago. As it stands now, the only state with a chance of
leaving the Union is Arkansas, and quite probably not of their own
free will.

OM

--

"No ******* ever won a war by dying for | http://www.io.com/~o_m
his country. He won it by making the other | Sergeant-At-Arms
poor dumb ******* die for his country." | Human O-Ring Society

- General George S. Patton, Jr

OM om@our_blessed_lady_mary_of_the_holy_NASA_researc h_facility.org wrote in message . ..
On 5 May 2004 12:58:20 -0700, (EAC) wrote:

The U.S.S.R. probably was the strongest country in the world, probably
that's why 'they' decided to break it up, too strong. The next target?
The U.S.A.

...If that were in the cards, Texas would have seceded quite a number
of years ago. As it stands now, the only state with a chance of
leaving the Union is Arkansas, and quite probably not of their own
free will.

Are there multiple warheads targetting Sam's resting place? Other
than those owned by National Guard units?)

(Note for outsiders: in the US, National Guard units have a split
personality, belonging both to an individual state and (when called
up, as is happening currently) to the Feds.

/dps

In article ,
(dave schneider) writes:
OM om@our_blessed_lady_mary_of_the_holy_NASA_researc h_facility.org wrote in message . ..
On 5 May 2004 12:58:20 -0700, (EAC) wrote:

The U.S.S.R. probably was the strongest country in the world, probably
that's why 'they' decided to break it up, too strong. The next target?
The U.S.A.

...If that were in the cards, Texas would have seceded quite a number
of years ago. As it stands now, the only state with a chance of
leaving the Union is Arkansas, and quite probably not of their own
free will.

Are there multiple warheads targetting Sam's resting place? Other
than those owned by National Guard units?)

(Note for outsiders: in the US, National Guard units have a split
personality, belonging both to an individual state and (when called
up, as is happening currently) to the Feds.

Thay're actually a part of teh Organized Reserve of the United States
- and have been since about 1912 or so. They come under teh came
Chain of Command as the rest of the U.S. Military. For example - a
Massachusetts Air National Guard Interceptor sitting Alert at Otis
ANGB is launched and controlled by NORAD, not the Governor of
Massachusetts.

The States provide housing (The Armories), and some funds, but very
little else. Force Structure, Equipment, and Training are all
prescribed and overseen by the Department of Defence.
State Governors can call upon Guard units, but only in a particular
set of circumstances.

And yes, I know that it was a joke, but if any Nuclear Weapons were to
be deployed by Guard units, they'd follow under the same Positive
Control rules (Kennedy Switches, Two-Man Rule & all that) that any
other Nuke-equipped unit would. Governors aren't in the loop, for
that one.


--
Pete Stickney
A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many
bad measures. -- Daniel Webster