Roscosmos Planetary Exploration Missions

In my opinion every country in the world should be sucking Russia's dick(not literally) and be doing everything in their power as in financial and resources support for that country's space agency. I want projects like launching a vityaz submarine drone to explore the ocean of Enceladus in search of underwater life, etc. Make something similar to breakthrough starshot, etc.

The Russian nuclear propulsion for space is a real historic breakthrough. There is no limit for the power density of a reactor compared to
chemical fuel. Chemical fuel scales volumetrically, but nuclear reactors do not. So a 10 MW reactor can be installed without making
the spacecraft 10 times heavier. I am sure that the cooling solution is not crappy and will not kill off this advantage. If they can
get over 100 N of thrust from a 1 MW reactor, they can get over 1000 N of thrust from a 10 MW reactor by simply scaling up the number of
MPD ion engines, this will add weight but nothing like adding chemical fuel to achieve the same thrust gain.

A 1000-2000 N thrust spacecraft is what will enable travel throughout the solar system. It can use both the gravitational slingshot
gains but can use powered flight minimized trajectories. The Cassini-Huygens mission took 7 years to reach Saturn. Powered Flight
would enable arrival in less than 2 years. The presence of continuous thrust is something fundamentally new in human space flight.
Up to now all we had was inertial guidance.

From the talk of several years to get to Jupiter I am seeing the same foot-in-mouth disease from Russian sources. Several years
is what it would take to get there with inertial guidance. Scaling up the Mars estimate with 200 N thrust, we have 1.5 years or
so of continuous acceleration. This is 10 times longer and thus the average speed goes up by the same factor. Around 430,000 km/h.
That is insanely fast compared to inertial flight. Increasing the thrust from 200 N to 2000 N gives options for direct flight paths at
speeds not dreamed of by inertial guidance. Flight times to Saturn of a few months, etc.

thegopnik wrote:I have been sounding like an uninformed dumbass this entire week, but I take it that this nuklon contract is different from their proposed Mars mission correct? Or there already has been a signed contract for the mars mission, meaning the nuklon contract is completely different right?

I think you'll find that the vehicle that Arsenal are building is a technology demonstrator (its clearly not a mock-up), a lower-powered version, probably intended for launch in a few years to prove the basic technology (reactor, cooling system, electrical power system, ion engines, flight controls etc).  The contract intended to be signed this year would be for the full 1MW vehicle.  Indications are that the tech demonstrator and upper stage will be approx 25T, so I won't be surprised if it is launched once the Angara pad is complete at Vostochny and the A-5M certification flights are complete.

Yep, I think its a dead-set certainty that the 2030 mission to Moon, Venus and Callisto won't be the first TEM that gets launched.  All eggs in one (untested) basket is simply too much technical risk.  

Arrow wrote:In the case of ion propulsion, some medium gas is needed, which is heated by the reactor and ejected from the space stack through the engine nozzles. How long can this gas be used for?

7


That is not ion propulsion, but direct nuclear thermal propulsion .

It is effective only with hydrogen, but with that it has twice as high exhaust speed than the best chemical rocket.

For ion you need electricity.

25 tons. that's more examples of work smart not hard. NASA said it was a pain in the ass to land a 1 ton rover to Mars while saying the Starship is 100 times more difficult to land which means that landing the TEM will be at least 4 times easier than what Space X proposes.

The TEM will be a space tug...it won't be able to land on the surface of anything so they'll still need to design some landing and ascent module that will be able to go from low orbit to the surface and back up again and would rely on the TEM for getting shuttled between orbits.

In the case of ion propulsion, some medium gas is needed, which is heated by the reactor and ejected from the space stack through the engine nozzles. How long can this gas be used for?

As the previous poster says, the reactor will generate electricity with a turbine, which will power some form of ion / electric propulsion unit. From what I've seen, the reaction mass is supposed to be Xenon, which is inert and can be stored as a liquid at near room temperature...so it only depends on the size of the storage tanks / mass constraints of the space ship, I guess (though boil-off might be a problem if the tanks are exposed to the sun's radiation for long periods of time). IIRC they want to attempt a demonstration of a sort of in-flight refueling with Xenon for one of those missions.

There was a computer game in the 1980s called Frontier Elite II, that came on a single 3 1/2 inch floppy disk for the Amiga 500... so we are talking 800K of memory.

It mapped the entire galaxy (not 100% accurately) but had planets and moons and space stations and space ports, and it was an open plan sort of game where you could pretty much do what you wanted.... buy ships and upgrade them, do work for the military that starts with delivering parcels but increases to assassinations and other stuff, you could mine material from asteroids and moons, and of course there were pirates you had to fight occasionally.

As you carried on you earned more money buying stuff that is the main product of that area and taking it somewhere where it was in short supply and selling for a huge profit.

The graphics were obviously pretty basic but you could takeoff from a ground base on earth and fly straight up out into space and accelerate to enormous speeds. There was an accelerate time function where you could do stuff in real time which would take ages to move around, or you could use autopilot and greatly accelerate time.... or accelerate time and free fly... when days are clicking over like seconds pushing the engine thrust button rapidly accelerates you to enormous speeds... but also burns through fuel rapidly too.

It was an amazing game... made more so because of its physical size... the interface was clever and simple and you basically could fly using one mouse... click and drag to steer, and interface buttons to change time speeds etc etc.

I used to cheat of course... buy the absolutely smallest lightest space ship and fly out of policed space and then hold a button and dump one ton of fuel or something... the fuel remained on board but one ton of rubbish appeared in space beside you and you got one ton of free space on board your ship. If you keep doing it you increase the capacity of your ship so a 20 ton tiny space ship with a 1 ton basic engine... you can keep dumping fuel till there are thousands of tons of free space inside your 20 ton ship so you go and land and buy a bigger engine. The more powerful the engine the faster you accelerate and the further you can jump when going to hyperspace to go to other star systems. By taking the smallest ship you maximise acceleration and the performance of any engine you put on board. You can also buy shield generators which protect your ship from damage... buy 100s of them and you are safe from enemy fire. Buy auto repair machines, buy missiles and radar and fuel scoops so you can fly low over hydrogen rich planets like Jupiter and scoop up hydrogen fuel. You can buy much more powerful lasers as well including mining lasers... you can look on your navigation system and find a planet and fly right up to it and then fly down and land on it. It handles the transition from free space floating to being caught in the gravity of a planet or a space station.

Enormous fun.

Damn... I want to play now....

I remember reading of an ION engine that they were testing... they ran it for about 3 years continuously and I believe it used about 10 or 13 kgs of Xenon during that time.

It relies for thrust not on volume but on speed... the very high exhaust speed is what makes it useful and gives it the potential to provide enormous speeds over time.

Another idea is that empty space is not actually empty and so a magnetically formed scoop projected in front of a space craft attracting and gathering in ionised particles could be collected up and put into a ring like a particle accelerate on earth... so magnetically the particles could be accelerated around and around till they get to a high percentage of the speed of light and then fired out the back of the spaceship. The huge scoop at the front would create a lot of drag, but as you moved through space over time with this system throwing everything you flew through out the back and propellent... a sort of space ramjet... it would be an interesting way of moving without using up onboard mass...

GarryB wrote:I remember reading of an ION engine that they were testing... they ran it for about 3 years continuously and I believe it used about 10 or 13 kgs of Xenon during that time.

It relies for thrust not on volume but on speed... the very high exhaust speed is what makes it useful and gives it the potential to provide enormous speeds over time.

Another idea is that empty space is not actually empty and so a magnetically formed scoop projected in front of a space craft attracting and gathering in ionised particles could be collected up and put into a ring like a particle accelerate on earth... so magnetically the particles could be accelerated around and around till they get to a high percentage of the speed of light and then fired out the back of the spaceship. The huge scoop at the front would create a lot of drag, but as you moved through space over time with this system throwing everything you flew through out the back and propellent... a sort of space ramjet... it would be an interesting way of moving without using up onboard mass...

This is an interesting idea but I suspect the H2 density (even if we count the solar wind protons) is too low to balance the consumption by the engine unless the ship is
flying insanely fast. It may be practical for interstellar travel but probably not for solar system type travel.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bussard_ramjet

Larry Niven's Protector novell is about Bussard Ramjets.

: D

Well depending on your power supply system you could super heat anything you pass through... even just dust and super heat it to a plasma which could then be accelerated in a magnetic field in a particle accelerator... not the most reliable form of propulsion but it means you are not limited by what you are carrying.

Other ideas could revolve around gravity... is it a field or is it a wave, or something else. If you could find a way of making the mass of a space ship effectively almost zero, then using the same technology to make a grain of sand enormously massive and ejecting it out the back of the ship at reasonable speed should propel that ship forward very efficiently... or a gravity beam could be directed and the planet you launch from to push you into space and towards your destination and attractor gravity beams pull yourself forward like Spiderman uses his webs to "Fly" through a city of tall buildings...

GarryB wrote:
Other ideas could revolve around gravity... is it a field or is it a wave, or something else. If you could find a way of making the mass of a space ship effectively almost zero, then using the same technology to make a grain of sand enormously massive and ejecting it out the back of the ship at reasonable speed should propel that ship forward very efficiently... or a gravity beam could be directed and the planet you launch from to push you into space and towards your destination and attractor gravity beams pull yourself forward like Spiderman uses his webs to "Fly" through a city of tall buildings...

Well if any nation can get create gravity generators it is Russia, but I doubt they will do it within the next 100 years.

A more "reasonable" approach would be to convert energy to matter (theoretically this is possible) and then accelerate that matter out the back of the craft.

Then you are only limited by your reactors. Carrying a 100 years supply of feul for thoes should be relatively easy.

The-thing-next-door wrote:

GarryB wrote:
Other ideas could revolve around gravity... is it a field or is it a wave, or something else. If you could find a way of making the mass of a space ship effectively almost zero, then using the same technology to make a grain of sand enormously massive and ejecting it out the back of the ship at reasonable speed should propel that ship forward very efficiently... or a gravity beam could be directed and the planet you launch from to push you into space and towards your destination and attractor gravity beams pull yourself forward like Spiderman uses his webs to "Fly" through a city of tall buildings...

Well if any nation can get create gravity generators it is Russia, but I doubt they will do it within the next 100 years.

A more "reasonable" approach would be to convert energy to matter (theoretically this is possible) and then accelerate that matter out the back of the craft.

Then you are only limited by your reactors. Carrying a 100 years supply of feul for thoes should be relatively easy.

There is no gain from this process. Both energy and mass have inertia. If you are going to intercept photons for use as "fuel" then
that is drag on the spacecraft which will then be taking up all the momentum value of those photons. At the end of the day, your
power source will be the only thing that gives you any net propulsion. If the idea is not to carry any fuel to save mass, then there
is more mass in interstellar (and for such solar system) space than photon density. May as well just scoop up the mass and
accelerate it to some large fraction of the speed of light.

The accelerator idea appears to be a nominally viable approach. Accelerating even a tiny amount of mass to near the speed of light would give the
same momentum kick as a huge amount of chemical combustion exhaust. The problem is that even nuclear reactors do not have the power density
to make this work right now. Another approach is to use nuclear fusion for both propulsion and electricity generation.

We are still far from a scifi space travel utopia.

Find a way to generate a bubble in the all-pervasive Higgs field (the field that interacts with matter and bestows the property that we fleshies refer to as "mass") and hey presto, zero weight.  Why should neutrinos have all the fun?  Are they somehow the Universe's equivalent of Earths liberal progressive black homosexuals to whom the fundamental laws just don't apply cuz they are just so friggin' "special"?  

Big_Gazza wrote:Find a way to generate a bubble in the all-pervasive Higgs field (the field that interacts with matter and bestows the property that we fleshies refer to as "mass") and hey presto, zero weight.  Why should neutrinos have all the fun?  Are they somehow the Universe's equivalent of Earths liberal progressive black homosexuals to whom the fundamental laws just don't apply cuz they are just so friggin' "special"?  

Neutrinos indicate that mass and charge and chirality are related. Most of the "neutral" mass (forget about dark matter for the purposes of this discussion)
in the universe consists of charged particles in bonded configurations. This includes neutrons (three fractionally charged quarks). Neutrinos lack charge but
still have chirality. Then we have the anti-matter reactions such as positrons and electrons which yield gamma photons. Where has the mass gone? It
disappeared together with the charge. All of this is way too much coincidence if mass has nothing to do with charge.

The Higgs particle, by contrast, is an item of faith. There are all sorts of massive particles generated by accelerators and the Higgs particle is circumstantial
evidence as opposed to direct proof that there is this super massive field out there giving every massive particle its mass for some unknown reason. It is a
staple job on the Standard Model.

Modern physics has a phobia of space(-time). There is a persistent reflex to treat it as nothing but some coordinate system. In reality it is a material entity.
It has volume (something "nothing" cannot have) and it is supposedly a sea of quantum foam at the Planck scale. Quantum effects are real and we see this
with the need to modify the Maxwell equations to give quantum electrodynamics. So it would not be a stretch to say that charge enables an EM coupling of
charged matter to the fabric of space(-time). This slows down massless particles and gives them mass. The energy is not lost in the process much like a
massive particle does not lose its momentum in a vacuum. Mass is then a measure of the coupling of charged particles and non-zero chirality neutral particles
(neutrinos) with space(-time).

It appears that there is no free lunch for space travel. Somehow neutralizing the coupling of charged particles with space(-time) is unlikely. This is another
reason that the charge-mass link is more plausible than the Higgs field. The latter allows free lunch scenarios such as you jokingly describe.

Um...  yeah, what you just said.  

Seriously though man, I'm an engineer, not a particle physicist!  That mostly flew over my head.  Good read however

Big_Gazza wrote:Um...  yeah, what you just said.  

Seriously though man, I'm an engineer, not a particle physicist!  That mostly flew over my head.  Good read however

My education is in theoretical physics and I have been ruminating on some topics for decades so the above heresy is really my own and I am prepared to go to the virtual stake to burn in the virtual fire.

But I am not the only heretic. Some of the brightest established minds out there are having doubts about the current dogma (e.g. Roger Penrose).

People should not be too timid to think about "high level" physics. If you can problem solve and know what logic is (most humans have a hard time with it)
then you can ask questions that show the emperor has no clothes. There is no divine cult of physicists that have knowledge no mere mortal can handle. There are only fallible, corrupt and hypocritical humans abusing their "authority".

Some info on the TEM https://21sci-tech.com/Articles_2012/Fall-Winter_2012/Interview_Koroteyev.pdf

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/286491960_Nuclear_power_propulsion_system_for_spacecraft

Surprised that there is a nuclear spacecraft project form NASA.

[quote="kvs"]

The-thing-next-door wrote:

GarryB wrote:
Other ideas could revolve around gravity... is it a field or is it a wave, or something else. If you could find a way of making the mass of a space ship effectively almost zero, then using the same technology to make a grain of sand enormously massive and ejecting it out the back of the ship at reasonable speed should propel that ship forward very efficiently... or a gravity beam could be directed and the planet you launch from to push you into space and towards your destination and attractor gravity beams pull yourself forward like Spiderman uses his webs to "Fly" through a city of tall buildings...

Well if any nation can get create gravity generators it is Russia, but I doubt they will do it within the next 100 years.

A more "reasonable" approach would be to convert energy to matter (theoretically this is possible) and then accelerate that matter out the back of the craft.

Bussar ramjet fusionate the interstellar protons, and getting energy from them, it doesn't need propelant.

Nice pic of the ExoMars Kazachok lander undergoing integration and testing at Cannes.

If she lands successfully on Mars (when then ESAs Schiaparelli failed) it will be a huge feather in Roscosmos' collective cap! it will go a long way to finally erasing the stain of the Phobos Grunt fiasco.

Russia starts designing the first mission to Venus since Soviet times

MOSCOW, March 4. / TASS /. The design of the Venera-D interplanetary automatic station begins in the Russian Federation, now contracts are being concluded with the contractors. This was reported to TASS by the scientific director of the Institute of Space Research (IKI) of the Russian Academy of Sciences, academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Lev Zeleny.

"The technical design of the project is starting. An important meeting of the leadership of the Russian Academy of Sciences and Roscosmos took place, we made decisions, in particular, on the Venus program," Zeleny said.

According to the academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the main contours of the Russian Venus program will be clarified in the course of the ongoing design. The first stage in the exploration of the planet will be the dispatch of the automatic interplanetary station "Venera-D". At the moment, contracts are being concluded with the performers of the work - NPO im. S. A. Lavochkina (part of Roscosmos) and IKI RAS. The design, Zeleny suggested, would take two years.

“We hope that in 2029 the first spacecraft will fly to Venus,” said the scientific director of the institute.

source

Roscosmos video on Luna-25, 6 months to launch

So exciting, wonder when they will have plans to launch rovers like the perseverance rover using a drone. They got moon and venus missions, and hell one of jupiters moon missions if we include nuklon, but avoiding Mars. Are they trying to fool the west that they are behind in getting a man to Mars?

Russia’s preparations for Luna-25 mission launch proceeding on schedule — Roscosmos chief

The plans are to achieve the launch readiness by September, according to the space agency's head

VOSTOCHNY COSMODROME /Amur Region/, April 26. /TASS/. Preparations for the launch of the Luna-25 mission to the Moon from the Vostochny spaceport are proceeding as scheduled, Head of Russia’s State Space Corporation Roscosmos Dmitry Rogozin said on Monday.

"The work is proceeding according to plan and we have no setbacks. We must achieve the launch readiness by September in order to get into a launch window that opens for us on October 1 and will exist until October 30," the Roscosmos chief said.

"These are a complex vehicle and a complex launch. For the first time in the world, we are going to launch a probe to the Moon’s southern pole. That is why, the developers are carefully preparing for that. So far, we have no fears that we may fail to get into this launch window. This is a historic event for the entire industry," Rogozin said.

The Russian Luna-25 probe, which is a follow-up of Soviet stations of this series, will open Russia’s long-term lunar program that envisages missions for studying the Moon from the orbit and the surface, collecting and delivering lunar soil to Earth.

Roscosmos plans to send the Luna-25 automatic station to the Moon in October 2021. The Luna-25 will become the first domestic spacecraft in the country’s modern history on the surface of the Earth’s natural satellite. Roscosmos has chosen October 1 as the basic and October 30 as the backup date for the spacecraft’s launch.

https://tass.com/science/1283131

https://tass.com/science/1283825

China is set to cooperate with Russia and other interested parties in the project of creating an international scientific lunar station, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Wang Wenbin told a regular press conference on Tuesday.

"Outer space is an important dimension of the relationships of comprehensive mutually advantageous cooperation between Russia and China where significant progress has been achieved in recent years. The latest Chinese-Russian declaration on creating a lunar station demonstrates the confidence of both parties and their resolve in implementing cooperation in exploring the Moon and deep space," the spokesperson said.

"China is ready to cooperate with Russia and other interested countries, international organizations and partners in building a lunar station to make contribution to scientific research of outer space and social and economic development," the diplomat added.

On March 9, Russia’s State Space Corporation Roscosmos and the China National Space Administration (CNSA) signed a memorandum of mutual understanding on behalf of their governments on cooperation in creating an international scientific lunar station (ISLS). The signing ceremony was held via a video conference.

Russia's economy will be boosted back up, but more importantly I see China further funding deeper exploration projects if the Nuklon mission is a success.