Energia's latest Mars plan - Station in orbit

Has anyone else here checked out Energia's most recent Mars plans? It
would involve a very large baseblock and solar-electric thrust, and
would place a semi-permanent space station in orbit around Mars.
According to their website, it would have two landers initially, and
would be expandable. It would allow exploration of Phobos & Deimos and
would largely serve as a teleoperation platform. On the "Cooperation"
page, they suggest Russia (ie. Energia) building the Mars space
station and the US developing the landers.

http://www.energia.ru/english/energia/mars/mars.html

http://www.energia.ru/english/energi...condition.html

Any thoughts on their plan? Minus money issues, they seem to have the
technology and skill to make it happen.

notes from one of my slashdot posts: 660 tons would be Low Earth Orbit
departure mass. It is assembled onorbit, like all Russian stations.
The system would be built around a GIANT version of the
FGB/Baseblock/Zarya line of craft - 70 tons and probably 20-25m for
the new baseblock.

The beauty of their plan is that most of it is demonstrated
technology. The life support, engines, hull and docking ports are
already in use on ISS, formerly Mir and Salyut/Almaz. It would use
solar-electric propulsion, demonstrated in numerous com sats, and
something based around Soyuz for Mars ascent. The plan is to put a
space station of Grand Soviet Style in orbit around Mars - it looks
longterm like Mir. Instead of concentrating on something really hard -
landing & surviving on Mars - the Energia plan focuses on demonstrated
capabilities in a new environment. The craft is to mostly do
remote-ops with surface robots (in realtime) with one or two surface
excursions (per 2-year crew-mission?). They say the craft would be
able to return to Earth if necessary.

IMHO, it actually makes sense to accelerate such a plan - put
AresStation1 into construction NOW and worry about the lander on a
later flight. Imagine what 10 people working in Mars orbit could
accomplish with a fleet of balloons and robot rovers - again, in
realtime. Establish the new station, get as much robot horsepower
their, then work on reasonable Mars capsules. Basing from Mars orbit
instead of the surface has advantages: Phobos and Diemos are nearby,
global perspective for science and colony/base site selection, known
working environment. Gonna need a personell centrifuge, though.

Their plan can be viewed at Energia Mars Plan. It may look like
vaporware, but remember that Energia, of all companies on the planet,
has the hardware heritage to actually do it.

-Josh

On 12 Apr 2004 17:32:37 -0700, in a place far, far away,
(Josh Gigantino) made the phosphor on my monitor
glow in such a way as to indicate that:

Any thoughts on their plan? Minus money issues, they seem to have the
technology and skill to make it happen.

Would that be the same technology and skill that has resulted in a
failure of every single probe that they've sent to the Red Planet?

(Josh Gigantino) wrote in
om:

Has anyone else here checked out Energia's most recent Mars plans? It
would involve a very large baseblock and solar-electric thrust, and
would place a semi-permanent space station in orbit around Mars.

http://www.energia.ru/english/energia/mars/mars.html

http://www.energia.ru/english/energi...condition.html

Any thoughts on their plan? Minus money issues, they seem to have the
technology and skill to make it happen.

The beauty of their plan is that most of it is demonstrated
technology. The life support, engines, hull and docking ports are
already in use on ISS, formerly Mir and Salyut/Almaz.

Would that be the same Elektron life support technology that has repeatedly
crapped out on ISS? How soon people forget. A couple of weeks ago, with the
supply of oxygen "candles" running low, people were talking about bringing
the ISS crew home by mid-summer if the Elektron re-activation failed. Had
the same scenario occurred on a Mars mission, and the Elektron re-
activation failed, the crew would be radioing their last goodbyes to their
families around now.

It would use
solar-electric propulsion, demonstrated in numerous com sats

A solar-electric departure from low Earth orbit would involve quite an
extended passage through the Van Allen belts. Has their technology been
proven against such a radiation dose? And have they budgeted for the extra
mass of shielding to protect the crew?

--
JRF

Reply-to address spam-proofed - to reply by E-mail,
check "Organization" (I am not assimilated) and
think one step ahead of IBM.

Hello,

the same technology and skill that has resulted in a failure
of every single probe russkies sent to the Red Planet?

According to long standing allegations, the failure of USSR's scientific
Mars probes was a direct result of US dis-information campaign. USA has
published deliberately falsified information about the ferrite content
of the Red Planet's soil in several scientific papers as measured by
their probes. The soviet radar altimeters were calibrated according to
this public information. This caused the probes to assume altitude zero
prematurely and turn their engines off, so they crashed from a great
height and broke up. if true, this is one great shame, as science that
serves mankind should never be subject to political machinations.

In turn US sources claim the soviet failures were related to the use of
helium pressure testing during the final acceptance tests of probes just
prior to launch, which somehow degraded something. This is quite
strange, I mean helium is a "noble" gas which never reacts with anything
else.

Sincerely: Tamas Feher.

Tell us more about this interesting 'allegation', which is not immediately
unbelievable, because similar falsified data on US shuttle thermal tests
WERE made available for the Soviets to steal in the late 1970's.




"Tamas Feher" wrote in message
...
Hello,

the same technology and skill that has resulted in a failure
of every single probe russkies sent to the Red Planet?

According to long standing allegations, the failure of USSR's scientific
Mars probes was a direct result of US dis-information campaign. USA has
published deliberately falsified information about the ferrite content
of the Red Planet's soil in several scientific papers as measured by
their probes. The soviet radar altimeters were calibrated according to
this public information. This caused the probes to assume altitude zero
prematurely and turn their engines off, so they crashed from a great
height and broke up. if true, this is one great shame, as science that
serves mankind should never be subject to political machinations.

In turn US sources claim the soviet failures were related to the use of
helium pressure testing during the final acceptance tests of probes just
prior to launch, which somehow degraded something. This is quite
strange, I mean helium is a "noble" gas which never reacts with anything
else.

Sincerely: Tamas Feher.

JimO wrote:
...similar falsified data on US
shuttle thermal tests WERE made available for the Soviets to steal in
the late 1970's.

Oh? Citation?

(Josh Gigantino) writes:

Has anyone else here checked out Energia's most recent Mars plans? It
would involve a very large baseblock and solar-electric thrust, and
would place a semi-permanent space station in orbit around Mars.

It wouldn't stay at Mars, it's solar/electric propulsion would be used
to get back to Earth.

I'd say the biggest stumbling block would be the solar arrays (huge)
and electric propulsion system (which would have to be scaled up quite
a bit in thrust). This is ignoring things like commonality with
Mir/ISS systems that are constantly failing (e.g. Elektron).

Their plan can be viewed at Energia Mars Plan. It may look like
vaporware, but remember that Energia, of all companies on the planet,
has the hardware heritage to actually do it.

Not really. While their stations work in LEO, they generally do so
due to availability of supplies and spare parts from Earth which
arrive on a regular basis via Progress flights. Russia has zero
experience with actual manned space missions beyond LEO.

The US manned space experience beyond LEO stopped over 30 years ago.

Jeff
--
Remove "no" and "spam" from email address to reply.
If it says "This is not spam!", it's surely a lie.

"Jorge R. Frank" writes:

A solar-electric departure from low Earth orbit would involve quite an
extended passage through the Van Allen belts. Has their technology been
proven against such a radiation dose? And have they budgeted for the extra
mass of shielding to protect the crew?

Worse, their plans call for solar power for this beast. Unless
they've come up with a revolutionary new solar panel design, the Van
Allen belts will significantly degrade them. I wouldn't be surprised
if you had to do significant maintenance on such a craft after every
flight to Mars, even though they claim it would be reusable.

Jeff
--
Remove "no" and "spam" from email address to reply.
If it says "This is not spam!", it's surely a lie.

Hello,

the same technology and skill that has resulted in a
failure of every single probe russkies sent to the Red
Planet?
According to long standing allegations, the failure of
USSR's scientific Mars probes was a direct result of US
dis-information campaign. USA has published deliberately
falsified information about the ferrite content of the Red
Planet's soil in several scientific papers as measured by
their probes. The soviet radar altimeters were calibrated
according to this public information. This caused the
probes to assume altitude zero prematurely and turn their
engines off, so they crashed from a great height and broke
up. if true, this is one great shame, as science that
serves mankind should never be subject to political
machinations.

So a sucessful landing requires that the launching agency
gets accurate info on the ferrite content of the soils.
Where did the US get their data on the ferrite content?

Or perhaps the allegation is just a convenient excuse?

Or perhaps the US probes built in a lot more margin for
error?

Sincerely: Tamas Feher.


Charles Phillips
"Drink Upstream Of The Herd, Get A Macintosh"
note feeble anti-spam attempt on Reply-To address

jeff findley wrote:
"Jorge R. Frank" writes:

A solar-electric departure from low Earth orbit would involve quite an
extended passage through the Van Allen belts. Has their technology been
proven against such a radiation dose? And have they budgeted for the extra
mass of shielding to protect the crew?

Worse, their plans call for solar power for this beast. Unless
they've come up with a revolutionary new solar panel design, the Van
Allen belts will significantly degrade them. I wouldn't be surprised
if you had to do significant maintenance on such a craft after every
flight to Mars, even though they claim it would be reusable.

My thoughts on this (probably from having read it here sometime
before) would be to do an unmanned move to, say, Cis-Lunar orbit, and
once there, send a refit flight on your upgraded Soyuz, and then a
staffing flight on another upgraded Soyuz.

What changes would be needed for a current Soyuz (things that didn't
get included from the LO version? things they hadn't thought about
then?) to get to CLO? We don't need any stinking N1 for this, the
UR500 (aka Proton) should be enough in this plan. Concentrate on
capsule issues, please. Would the reentry profile be the same as used
in the Zonds?

Note that this plan now becomes a (H)EOR plan.

/dps

P.S. I just got caught up with the 1999 I&T article on "Why Russia
Didn't Beat the US to the Moon", which tied in nicely with the recent
N1 thread.