The thread for space cadets!

r16 said:
and exactly why ? Yeah , ı know it was an established plane compared to paper-projects from the Germans and the Japanese and it added "some" knowledge into the OKBs and the lot but they might have paid more attention to MiGs instead of creating an offensive force that carried no weight where it might have been employed .
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It was an awesome bomber and was the kind of long-range, heavy-load bomber that the Soviets didn't have and had been trying to develop for years. Plus, they needed some credible deterrent to stand-off the Americans. Sure, it could only make a one-way trip from the USSR to the USA but it could do that while carrying a nuclear weapon. This was pre-ICBM days and the USSR really needed that capability to stand on more-or-less even ground with the US.

When it came to MiGs and other fighters - the USSR took the same approach. They arranged to buy Rolls Royce Nene jet engines from the UK. They took delivery of the first batch and then refused to pay for them. The UK cut them off but the USSR took the ones they had and reversed engineered them, thus saving about a half a decade or more of development effort and giving them damn good fighters and interceptors.
 
reverse engineering is always available without a series production of the same . As such factory space and aviation grade aluminium could have been diverted to the MiGs .

americans do not need actual threats to justify spending money on "Defence" . Actually as soon as there was a credible Russian threat to CONUS , American spending on the said Defence went down .

nenes and the like were asked for as a commercial prospect , without any hope of being realized . It was the British Goverment of the time that agreed and "gave away" the engines , because they were "outdated" in view of the development of the axial compressors ... Made them perfect as a temporary stopgap in creating a "threat" that would be hard to ignore for the up and coming US of A which lacked respect to the Colonial Powers of the day . That half decade of development gap would not have existed had the Germans of the WW II had the mineral wealth of Siberia to tinker with and their axials would have the first time they were plugged onto Russian jets . And of course , ı always love the story of Nene was even a bigger success story for Pratt , which was barred by the established automakers of the US from the jet engine field . That PW has been robbing the US lately isd hardly my fault .
 
Not yet, as far as I know Vostochny will only take some of Baikonur launches to reduce its load.
 
Do you think it was also built in case relations between Kazakhstan and Russia break down in some way in the future? Not that I think that they might, but this seems like a "Let's build this just in case we need a backup" sort of thing, but I'm just really guessing.
 
I think major reasons for building new cosmodrome were economical, not political. It's always better to develop infrastructure in the country's own territory rather than investing in foreign projects. And there were other important factors, such as cost of rent, proximity of China's territory, etc. Baikonur's advantage is that it is closer to equator, but the difference in latitude is not that significant, ~6 degrees.
 
The space port appears to be far from complete though. Regular launches will commence in 2018 if the Russians are holding up to their schedule.
 
warpus said:
Do you think it was also built in case relations between Kazakhstan and Russia break down in some way in the future? Not that I think that they might, but this seems like a "Let's build this just in case we need a backup" sort of thing, but I'm just really guessing.
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I'm pretty sure that played into the decision to build Vostochny. Maybe not a primary motive (it is a massive prestige project, after all) but in the recent past there has been spats between Kazakhstan and Russia over the price of rent at Baikonaur.


_______________

A ton of news from SpaceX (too tired to link but will add some this weekend).

1) We are going to start sending Dragon 2 spacecraft to Mars starting in 2018 and every 18 months thereafter. The missions are called Red Dragon and will practice propulsive landing techniques, scout locations for our future colony site and perform experiments.

2) Revised prices for F9 and FH were put out and they haven't budged much from a few years ago but their lifting capacities are much improved. The Full Thrust upgrade was a major improvement over even the 1.1 rocket, much less 1.0. The prices are still far lower than our competitors and are even far lower than our competitors future vehicles (Vulcan, Ariane 6, etc). SpaceX is still the best deal in town by a mile.

3) Prices for re-used vehicles should be about 30% less than expendable versions.

4) SpaceX won our first EELV (military) contract to boost a GPS III sat into orbit. This was a huge win for us as it is the third major market we have cracked open (after commercial and non-military government). ULA declined to bid on the launch and publicly said it was an accounting issue. Everyone called BS on it at the time and it just so happens that a month or two ago a ULA VP gave a speech to students at a Colorado University where he admitted that ULA didn't bid because they couldn't win. He said a bunch of other inflammatory stuff like saying (and I'm not kidding) that Senator Shelby was in ULA's pocket and that SpaceX's re-usability strategy is dumb. He got fired the next day :lol: . The recording of his speech is on soundcloud if anyone is interested though the audio sucks.
 

Link to video.
USA! USA! USA!



I'll find a better video tomorrow. I'm really tired. Just got home from watching the launch.

Nights like these are what gets me up in the morning.

Edit:
The audio of this video does not do the landing justice. It was insane outside mission control.
 
warpus said:
Damn, I didn't even know they were doing another landing test. Was this just a test or was this as a part of a mission to get another satellite up into orbit?
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They launched a communication satellite. Since the landing involves only the first stage all of the landing attempts have been regular commercial missions I believe.
 
We launched JCSAT-14 to GTO for SKYPerfect of Japan with this launch + landing.

And Michkov is correct, all of our first-stage landing attempts have been on either commercial or NASA launches. This is the 3rd one that succeeded, the 2nd one that landed on a barge and the first successful landing of a GTO launch. This last thing is notable because servicing comm sat GEO/GTO launches is where the most demand and money is at. It's also a lot harder to land boosters for those types of missions given the velocity the first stage has to reach at MECO. I think we re-entered at 2km/sec.
 
Wow, that camera showing the grid fins, rcs and engines operating is really awesome. would have been cool with a velocity number as well.

Heard about a new sci-fi sounding technology recently, the Magnetoshell Aerocapture. SpaceX are already showing that bringing stuff back from space efficiently can be equally important as putting it up there efficiently. Could make aerobreaking around bodies much more easy, possible use for something like SpaceX second stage recovery?

A lot of this is over my head but I think I got the gist:
http://www.parabolicarc.com/2016/05/16/niac-focus-magnetoshells-human-robotic-exploration/
The Magnetoshell deploys a simple dipole magnetic field containing a magnetized plasma. It is interaction of the atmosphere with this magnetized plasma that supplies a significant impediment to atmospheric flow past the spacecraft, and thereby producing the desired drag for braking. Frictional heating would no longer be of concern as the energy dissipation required to slow the spacecraft would be deposited into the plasma ions helping to maintain the Magnetoshell plasma while at the same time shielding the spacecraft itself from frictional heating. With the aeroshell now being composed of massless magnetic field, the transverse scale of the magnetic barrier can be as large as 100 meters while requiring no more than a gram of plasma. With the ability to rapidly and precisely modify the drag in varying atmospheric conditions, much larger forces can now be achieved at low risk, enabling very aggressive aerocapture maneuvers. By providing power in a pulsed manner, the thermal and power processing requirements can be kept modest and with conventional technologies.

In Phase I a full system was designed for Neptune and Mars missions. This analysis showed that a 200 kg, 2 m magnet could generate a 9 m radius Magnetoshell for Neptune aerocapture with a 21 km/s injection at a peak force of 150 N entirely removing the need for a TPS. At Mars, a 2.5 m magnet could generate a 21 meter radius Magnetoshell, providing aerocapture for a 60 metric ton payload removing the dedicated aerocapture TPS [Thermal Protective Shield] and saving $2 B for DRA 5.0 [Mars Design Reference Architecture]. A transient analytic model was developed evolving the radial plasma parameters for a variety of plasma, neutral, and magnetic parameters.

Finally, a stationary 1.6 meter argon Magnetoshell was fully demonstrated and a 1000:1 increase in aerodynamic drag was found. This experimental program definitively demonstrated a subscale Magnetoshell by eliminating electromagnetic interference, utilizing a dielectric torsional thrust stand, and placing all key electrical components under vacuum in the plasma environment. In addition, by decrease the dynamic pressure requirements while simultaneously shielding the spacecraft, heating during an Aerocapture maneuver could be reduced by 10,000X.
- See more at: http://www.parabolicarc.com/2016/05...man-robotic-exploration/#sthash.fpMLZ9Ru.dpuf
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