Russian Space Program: News & Discussion #3

The stupidity and incompetence of the guy running the show was made evident and proven beyond a shadow of a doubt with his stupid trampoline comments, his retarded accusations about Americans drilling holes in Soyuz and with his Moon landing conspiracies

Yeah, most US Astronauts are ex military... are you honestly sure they wouldn't try a bit of sabotage... the amount of hate from the US towards the Russians has been rather intense... black lives matter and a child can pick from any gender of which there now seem to be more genders than moods, but you can't question any of that in the west, but you can say anything you like about Russians... you can bet your ass if they found holes drilled in the US section they would be happy to blame Russia or China or North Korea or Iran or Cuba... they are not ones to let facts get in the way of a good story...

The plan for a small shuttle goes back to the 70´s. Buran should be the truck to deliver heavy things into orbit and put them togehter while the light shuttle was the taxi to fly from one space installation to the other or back to earth.

That is the Spiral... the western belief in the 80s was that it was an interceptor/bomber... either firing small missiles at enemy satellites or releasing bombs from orbit to rapidly hit US targets.

The design of Buran meant if you wanted to assemble a space station you could take teh whole Buran off the Energyia rocket and fit a complete 120 ton component of the station in a fairing that protected it during launch. Once in space it could open out the dishes and sensors and solar panels it might have.

The current ISS is about 350 tons or something so pretty much 4 flights could have gotten it into space with there just needing to be manouvering and connecting the pieces together to form the station and to start it up and align the solar panel arrays.

Big_Gazza wrote:

kvs wrote: It looks like the Soyuz-MS will be replaced by a species of the Hermes (not Buran)

I think the Kliper concept is more appropriate.  It was premature to consider back in the 00s, but I expect the concept will be adopted in the late 2020s and by then the issue of funds won't be the issue it was.

In the video Rogozin is cited as saying it is an inefficient solution. It cannot glide back to the surface and land on an air strip and
it is much heavier than the Soyuz-MS. So a real glider is needed and not a lifting body design. I agree with Rogozin. Either go all
in or do not bother. The Klipper looks like a compromise "solution" that is not a solution.

GarryB wrote:Yeah, most US Astronauts are ex military... are you honestly sure they wouldn't try a bit of sabotage...

So according to you some USA astronaut snuck out from under the noses of Russian astronauts (and mission control), put on an EVA suit, depressurized, strolled outside, drilled a hole in Russian capsule, glued it back up (in vacuum), came back on board, pressured, took off his suit and nobody noticed?

Damn, son!!! I know Americans own and operate New Zealand but you are making them sound way more awesome than they could ever be in reality.

What chance does Russia stand against such awesomeness?

GarryB wrote:... you can bet your ass if they found holes drilled in the US section...

They will never find one because no American worker would be butt-fuck retarded enough to drill a hole in the module during assembly and then to try and hide it with epoxy

Those levels of blinding stupidity are endemic and characteristic to Roskosmos not NASA

They will never find one because no American worker would be butt-fuck retarded enough to drill a hole in the module during assembly and then to try and hide it with epoxy

Those levels of blinding stupidity are endemic and characteristic to Roskosmos not NASA

They found American patriots that lie about the tensile strength of the steel they use in their submarines... why do you think every single worker in the US is a bronzed god that never makes mistakes or never covers up his mistakes to avoid getting in the shit again?

Damn, son!!! I know Americans own and operate New Zealand but you are making them sound way more awesome than they could ever be in reality.

Geez granddad... have you never listened to one? They do that themselves... they invented everything and they are the worlds policeman... which is why the world is in such good shape.

Maybe it is all the holes drilled into their pressure tested cylinders that make them fail spectacularly with every test?

American workers do not drill holes into space capsules because

1) They are brainwashed from birth that they are the master race living in the master country. So it is against their
ego to sabotage America.

2) They know that if they are caught they will be ass raped by the legal system and will end up living under a bridge.
For sure they will never be hired again in the space industry and will have a hard time even finding a burger flipping
job without a good reference from their former employer.

3) Nobody outside the USA is buying such services from "genius" American workers.

We do not even know when the holes were drilled. Assuming it was on the Russian production line is the usual Russia
hater reflex.

Sabotage happens in Russia because there are millions of western sycophants who volunteer to do this because it
boosts their ego. The USA and the NATzO west pay for these services by propaganda and turning saboteurs,
terrorists and criminals in Russia into dissident saints.

Anyway, for all the masses of liberast retards in Russia their effect on Russia's production across the full spectrum
is basically irrelevant. Too bad for all the Russia haters.

kvs wrote:American workers do not drill holes into space capsules because

1) They are brainwashed from birth that they are the master race living in the master country.    So it is against their
ego to sabotage America.   ...

Damn good approach

Russians should work on building up this level of ego instead of having everyone and their grandma waiting for first available opportunity to do sabotage for $20 and a Big Mac

kvs wrote:2) They know that if they are caught they will be ass raped by the legal system and will end up living under a bridge...

Another smart lesson for Russians, that's how it should be done

Definitely better than letting rats run rampant like they do now

Dmitry talks some more

Russia’s space leader blusters about Mars in the face of stiff budget cuts

https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/08/russias-space-leader-blusters-about-mars-in-the-face-of-stiff-budget-cuts/

The leader of Russia's civil space program appears to be increasingly disengaged from reality. In recent months Dmitry Rogozin, the chief of Roscosmos, has given a series of interviews in which he has made all manner of big promises about the supposedly bright future of Russia's space program....
.....................

At least he is right about Russia being on par with India (I just hope India doesn't take this insult personally...    )

https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/08/russias-space-leader-blusters-about-mars-in-the-face-of-stiff-budget-cuts/

GTF outta here.  You should be ashamed of yourself for posting such empty-headed nonsense penned by fuckwitz who know nothing...

Try this gem on fer size...

Roscosmos has a relatively meager budget to carry out its civil space activities. Its funding for civil programs in 2020 is 176 billion rubles, equivalent to $2.4 billion; that is about one-tenth the level of NASA's funding.

LOL!! You could say the same thing about the Russian military, but we all know (or at least, we SHOULD all know) that Russian militaries punch is massively greater than its USD-equivalent official budget would suggest.  It's space industry is no different.

These dumb cunts simply don't get.  Russia is replacing its Soviet-era rocket stable with new designs, including a new modular SHLV, developing a manned lunar capability, building a new Cosmodrome, and re-building from the ground up her space-related manufacturing infrastructure.  Heck, throw in a practical heavy nuke-powered interplanetary drive system for good measure (what that? it doesn't exist???  Kinda like the "non-existent" nuke powered LACM and Poseidon UUV and their multiple hypersonic weapons I guess...).  

Parallel works on this scale take time to come to fruition.  Time will tell, and arrogant dumb fuckers like this Eric Berger or this token (pet 5th columnist) Serb Mikhail Kokorich bloke (as well as the veritable galaxy of misinformed Murican NASCAR fans who comment on these shit sites) are gonna look well stupid...  

Indeed, nominal exchange rate comparisons are proof of total ignorance in the subject. Russian prices for the equivalent goods
and services are not the same as those in the USA or EU. Prices are not some sort of constants of physics. They have to
be normalized by comparing same for same for the whole list of relevant goods and services. Then you get an apples to apples
comparison instead of apples to ground meat comparisons.

But really the ignorance is a convenient tool to spread propaganda.

kvs wrote:But really the ignorance is a convenient tool to spread propaganda.  

To be honest, we should greatly value Murican stupidity and arrogance in all of its forms, as these dickheads are doing a wonderful job of blindsiding themselves to the reality around them. It wasn't that long ago that the Uh'Murikan chattering classes were totally dismissing the idea that China and Russia would be forced together into a real alliance by US malfeasance (China-Russian hostility was apparently on a genetic level according to these geniuses, and could never be resolved). Today the penny has dropped and they realise what is going down, and there is palpable panic in US establishment as they know their relative power is slipping and the USD is increasingly in danger (and they think that this will be magically reversed by stealing Tik Tok or intimidating the Taiwanese to give up business interests and cease making chipsets for Huawei)

Let these morons snigger and guffaw about primitive Russians living in mud huts being unable to innovate and having an (oil export based) economy smaller than Italy (seriously? What a litmus test of inbred congenital stupidity that particular world view represents!!!!). Their fall will only be harder for it.

Budgets are kinda strange thing in Russia. Roscosmos gets what most see a meager budget but other budgets are used for different purposes. Vostochney isn't being built under Roscosmos budget. Budget for the new space center is under Roscosmos budget. New rockets used for military are used under military budget (which Roscosmos gets) for said missiles (Sarmat development is done via Roscosmos corporation). Military satellites are the same.

So Roscosmos budget is more to do with internal development. The rest they get excess from government contracts or things fall under different budgets.

miketheterrible wrote:Budgets are kinda strange thing in Russia. Roscosmos gets what most see a meager budget but other budgets are used for different purposes.  Vostochney isn't being built under Roscosmos budget.  Budget for the new space center is under Roscosmos budget.  New rockets used for military are used under military budget (which Roscosmos gets) for said missiles (Sarmat development is done via Roscosmos corporation).  Military satellites are the same.

So Roscosmos budget is more to do with internal development.  The rest they get excess from government contracts or things fall under different budgets.

Very good point. These "experts" spreading their "wisdom" around don't even have real knowledge of the money flow in Russia.
They are amateur hacks tasked with generating anti-Russian screeds. Facts are not necessary, only the ring of truth is. Anyway,
as noted by Gazza, let them wallow in their own bubble of ignorant hubris. Being detached from reality is being your own worst
enemy.

So it turns out that all the claims about low price launches by Space-X are brazen lies. The clowns who claim that it
costs $55 million to launch a single astronaut into orbit do not count the fee for delivering goods to orbit to extrapolate
the manned costs. In the case of the Crew Dragon the total cost was $400 million to deliver two astronauts. That
would be $200 million per head. The shysters spreading around the myth of Space-X actually deduct the price of the
payload from the cost of the launch. As if the launch would happen at all if it had no payload. The payload price is
there to pay for the whole launch so the total price is the real price and no discounting makes any sense.

Also, if these sorts of BS pricing analyses are going to be done for Space-X, then they have to be done for the Soyuz.

https://twitter.com/roscosmos/status/1294188746053758976

In CJSC "Cheboksary enterprise" Sespel "with the participation of specialists from the RCC #Прогресс passed the second stage of acceptance works for equipment for friction stir welding under the program of creating a promising launch vehicle "Soyuz-5" - https://www.roscosmos.ru/29017/

Russia wants to restore the Sea Launch complex

https://bmpd.livejournal.com/4122277.html

Interview with Nikolay Testoedov, General Director of Reshetnev

https://tass.ru/interviews/9341145

This caught my eye, dealing with the progress of import substitution of Western space-rated electronics, in this case, specific to navsats.

When the sanctions broke out in 2014, the US vetoed the supply of the electronic component base. On average, Glonass had 50 percent of its imported electronic component base (85% of which was American). An import substitution program was adopted, including, among other things, the unification of elements, which made it possible to reduce the number of types by several times. At present, R&D works have been opened to create a domestic-made electronic components.

Further, the standard way - they bought a safety stock for nine satellites in advance from available imports, and ordered work for the unavailable one in the Ministry of Industry and Trade. We are moving towards the fact that the share of imported electronic components from 50%, which was in 2014, will fall to 12% by 2025 (this is all available or already purchased), and from 2026 the Glonass-K2 satellites will fly with 100% Russian element base

That's great news!! More please, and stick it right up 'em

Big_Gazza wrote:Interview with Nikolay Testoedov, General Director of Reshetnev

https://tass.ru/interviews/9341145

This caught my eye, dealing with the progress of import substitution of Western space-rated electronics, in this case, specific to navsats.

When the sanctions broke out in 2014, the US vetoed the supply of the electronic component base. On average, Glonass had 50 percent of its imported electronic component base (85% of which was American). An import substitution program was adopted, including, among other things, the unification of elements, which made it possible to reduce the number of types by several times. At present, R&D works have been opened to create a domestic-made electronic components.

Further, the standard way - they bought a safety stock for nine satellites in advance from available imports, and ordered work for the unavailable one in the Ministry of Industry and Trade. We are moving towards the fact that the share of imported electronic components from 50%, which was in 2014, will fall to 12% by 2025 (this is all available or already purchased), and from 2026 the Glonass-K2 satellites will fly with 100% Russian element base

That's great news!!  More please, and stick it right up 'em

To all the "Russia does not make anything" loons, this proves that Russia has the knowhow and the capacity to boostrap production in a very short period of time. Unlike in Hollywood
drivel plots, in the real world, manufacturing of such components is not some trivial task. If the loons think it is, then they should build a modern (or even 1950s) TV set from scratch.
Good luck.

This is good news but I hope they take it further and start exporting these components and challenge US producers and take some of their market... I am sure they can produce those parts at a reasonable price that is sanction proof unless to France or Germany or the UK when used in response to their sanctions on Russia of course.

That French engine making company... was it Safran... already said they would be happy to get their titanium expensive fiddly bits made for their engines in Russia instead of America. Fortunately Russia has decided to make Russian engines to replace the French engines, but I think they should still offer to make those parts for French engines... but not buy the French engines themselves.

Obviously the French would prefer to continue to sell engines to Russia for Russian aircraft, and their offer to get Russia to make the hot parts was for all their engines to sell to everyone else so it would cut the Americans out of their business.

I would expect the Russians could make the parts cheaper than the Americans could so even if they stop buying French engines the French would still be saving money and it would be a chance for them to give the fingers to the US too.

Making all the electronic parts for satellites in Russia is a big thing... well done

Perhaps some of these new parts could be sold to China or India or Brazil or France or Iran... countries that have space/satellite related interests...

Just friggin WOW!!!  Pics apparently of the Russian TEM prototype, nuclear electric propulsion system for deep space exploration.  

First a model from MAKS and a graphic model





Now some pics of the prototype in assembly, apparently at the Arsenal machine building plant











Looks to be a telescopic boom of low weight carbon-fibre sections hosting a set of what appear to be radiators.  The reactor (not shown) is at one end, and the propulsion package with the fuel tanks, ion engine, control & power systems (incl backup solar power) at the other (and therefore well away from the radiation hazard).

source

Edit:  another view of the MAKS 2019 model

Some NATzO clown will be claiming Russia stole the design any minute now.

Big Gazza wrote:
Just friggin WOW!!! Pics apparently of the Russian TEM prototype, nuclear electric propulsion system for deep space exploration.

Spectacular... sorry for the probably dumb question, but maybe this boom can serve to accelerate ions faster than a shorter nozzle? Like a linear particle accelerator?

I think the boom (3) is simply to keep the radiation hazard away from the propulsion package (4).  The reactor (1) is apparently gas cooled, with the hot gas used to spin up an electrical generator before being circulated thru the heat exchanger panels (2) to radiate away the waste heat.  The output is used to power the electric ion engines (via HV electric cables coiled within the boom).

The photos seem to show the heat exchanger panels are equipped with actuators, so I think the image below shows the exchangers in the stowed position rather than the deployed operating condition.



Edit1:  Another source with some extra details

source_2

FWIW here are some details from MAKS 2013 of the YaEDU reactor (4MWt/1MWe) and a 250kW Brayton cycle turbine prototype. There is however scuttlebutt that the curent concept has the Brayton cycle generation being replaced with thermionic generators like the Soviet-era Topaz reactors, in which case the power output will be significantly reduced. I guess that time will tell...

Interstingly, this doesn't seem to be the same as arrangement displayed back in MAKS 2013 in which the reactor cooling was shown as a liquid droplet system, and which according to a RIA Novosti report, states that the Keldysh Research Center created and tested prototypes of droplet generator and elements of the collector.





I suspect that the early flight models will be a less ambitious effort using a more conventional heat exchanger to reduce cost & risk and test the general concept.

The appearance of this display was met with the usual derision and outright dismissal by the usual Western media clowns and "experts". Maybe now that there is tangible progress these idiots will keep quiet and perform some long-overdue navel-gazing?

The droplet cooling concept requires hauling extra mass that is dumped into space.   So it is a negative payload account from the onset.   I am not dismissing it, but in principle
if a mass conserving cooling system is viable for a 1 MW electrical powerplant, then it is the optimal solution.   Perhaps for larger systems the droplet cooling approach will
be necessary, but larger systems can carry more cargo.

As for all the windbags denigrating Russian technology, they will never give up since their egos are heavily invested in this infantile spazzing. They will just delude themselves
on this particular topic and move onto some other target for their derision. But the day is coming when the world will laugh at these losers. Most people on the planet
are not heavily invested in hating Russia or anyone else.

kvs wrote:The droplet cooling concept requires hauling extra mass that is dumped into space.   So it is a negative payload account from the onset.   I am not dismissing it, but in principle
if a mass conserving cooling system is viable for a 1 MW electrical powerplant, then it is the optimal solution.   Perhaps for larger systems the droplet cooling approach will
be necessary, but larger systems can carry more cargo.  

The big unknown will be the recovery efficiency of the cooling media.  The Russians have been testing the concept on the "Drop-2" testbed installed to the ISS, and has apparently passed all ground-based vacuum chamber testing.

What I want to know is what cooling media they plan to use. It would need to have a very low vapour pressure at the operating temperatures to be able to function in a vacuum. No good if your hot coolant flashes into vapour as soon as it hits the vacuum of deep space. Some form of mineral oil perhaps, stripped of volatiles?

Patent on Yandex that looks to be related

https://yandex.ru/patents/doc/RU2607685C1_20170110