The thread for space cadets!

[r16]

now that am so cheap and no way that it can be proved otherwise , this is how you do planetary defence . Hopefully it will arrive on Earth as well , soon . As for Juno shutdown , them Russkies are extremely prejudiced against like totally peaceful research in the asteroid belt ever since the Tankograd attack and obviously they have interfered with the line of sight comms , like totally immersed into the two way data flow between Jupiter and stuff .

"how closely the space agencies of world worked together to either make it happen or otherwise support it with their own assets."

amen , amen ...

 

[Cutlass]

Do they know how or why it went wrong?

 

[r16]

which one ? That one supposedly lost parachute or that went through some magnetic belt ?

not that ı can provide a not laughable answer . Patriot first , 7.7 Vickers for the second .

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I don't remember seeing any specifics today. It appears that the hardware was working correctly it just sequenced incorrectly. This tends to point toward a software failure - something like an overlooked loop that took data and processed it into its logical decision tree incorrectly.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I published my second blog post, Paws, Claws and Vomit Bags in Space. It's about the weirder implications of space colonization. You guys inspired and informed it, thank you very much.

Oh and an update on the lander - they found it, or rather the crater:

 

[warpus]

I guess they forgot to quicksave.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Let's hope it's not the European equivalent of forgetting to convert all units to metric.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Japan launched an H-IIA rocket carrying the Himawari-9 weather satellite to GTO yesterday. The satellite is in good health and will serve as an on-orbit spare to the Himawari-8 satellite already on orbit.

The H-IIA is the workhorse of the Japanese fleet. It is set to be replaced by the cheaper H-III in the 2020 time frame. Most of the rocket manufacturers around the globe are rushing to introduce new, low cost rockets as an answer to the Falcon 9. Many of these even include some form or re-usability in their design - though with the exception of Blue Origin, these plans only return sub-assemblies of the rocket as opposed to entire stages and will be introduced as mid-life evolutions of the design.

The Russian manufacturer of Proton has announced stripped down, lower cost versions of the Proton. That basic design hasn't appreciably changed in over 50 years.

 

[Bootstoots]

The Russians really suck at sending anything to Mars or its moons. They've tried a whole bunch of times, but have they ever actually succeeded at any of their missions? IIRC, they've managed an orbiter or two and once landed but lost contact within a minute at some point during the Soviet program. On the other hand, they were great at exploring Venus, at least while the USSR existed.

By the way, what was the point of the lander here in the first place? I read that it was just battery-powered and would have ceased transmitting within days, indicating that they couldn't even make it solar-powered. If that's right, were the ESA/Russia just trying to gain experience landing on Mars (which I know is notoriously difficult) without really contributing much else of value? On the other hand, I'm quite happy that they got their trace gas orbiter into orbit, because it can measure all the way down to tens of parts per trillion, and we really don't understand where Martian methane is coming from or where it's going.

For the Proton itself, it could just be a question of why bother innovating, when you can get to any ordinary Earth orbit fairly reliably and cheaply using a tried-and-true design. Of course there really isn't anything farther away than geostationary orbit that is currently worth it economically; everything else is purely for science and/or space tourism. I would expect a resource-strapped country to pull back to only safe Earth-orbit missions and not spend as much money on science, because that's the way humans tend to prioritize things.

 

[Synobun]

The Russians really suck at sending anything to Mars or its moons. They've tried a whole bunch of times, but have they ever actually succeeded at any of their missions? IIRC, they've managed an orbiter or two and once landed but lost contact within a minute at some point during the Soviet program. On the other hand, they were great at exploring Venus, at least while the USSR existed.

To be fair, nobody is that good at this save for NASA. Statistically speaking, if you're not working with NASA, you should start working with NASA ASAP if you hope to have a successful Mars mission.

But as for the matter of contributing value with landers and orbiters, each one contributes a lot of data that can be sifted through and used for future projects. Mathematical projections are immensely useful, but their usefulness is neutered without the hard data to support or change them. While it's unlikely that something would be different between 5 identical launches, it's still possible. And if something is different, the only way we'd know about it is if we do it. I would personally have us make that investment with unmanned craft before flipping a coin with people on-board.

 

[red_elk]

The Russians really suck at sending anything to Mars or its moons.

That's true, unfortunately. The rate of failures in Soviet/Russian Mars program is much higher comparing to Moon or Venus missions. Some of the failures can be explained by technical difficulties of Mars landing, but many also happened at launch or at Earth orbit stages. Guess Mars just doesn't like us.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

The Russians really suck at sending anything to Mars or its moons. They've tried a whole bunch of times, but have they ever actually succeeded at any of their missions? IIRC, they've managed an orbiter or two and once landed but lost contact within a minute at some point during the Soviet program. On the other hand, they were great at exploring Venus, at least while the USSR existed.

By the way, what was the point of the lander here in the first place? I read that it was just battery-powered and would have ceased transmitting within days, indicating that they couldn't even make it solar-powered. If that's right, were the ESA/Russia just trying to gain experience landing on Mars (which I know is notoriously difficult) without really contributing much else of value? On the other hand, I'm quite happy that they got their trace gas orbiter into orbit, because it can measure all the way down to tens of parts per trillion, and we really don't understand where Martian methane is coming from or where it's going.

For the Proton itself, it could just be a question of why bother innovating, when you can get to any ordinary Earth orbit fairly reliably and cheaply using a tried-and-true design. Of course there really isn't anything farther away than geostationary orbit that is currently worth it economically; everything else is purely for science and/or space tourism. I would expect a resource-strapped country to pull back to only safe Earth-orbit missions and not spend as much money on science, because that's the way humans tend to prioritize things.

Part of the original ExoMars agreement between Roscosmos and the ESA stipulated that Roscosmos would provide an RTG (radioisotopic thermoelectric generator) to the lander mission which would allow it to have a fairly long life. Given the simplicity of the design, it could have theoretically been collecting weather data for a decade or more.

Unfortunately, the Russian government deemed RTG technology a controlled weapons technology and later refused to provide it. This forced the designers to switch to batteries as I assume solar panels were fundamentally incompatible with the design. It still would have provided useful real-time data even with only batteries on board and would have been even better in its RTG-powered iteration. From the American point of view I think it's very easy to look at such a simple package and think 'why bother', but that overlooks the real point of the lander mission - to be a pathfinder for Exomars 2018.

The Europeans and Russians know how hard it is to land anything on Mars, so a chance to do a dress rehearsal for a much larger, more capable rover was worth the meager investment to add it to the Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO). Because of all this, the Euro-Russian team can rightfully claim that the lander was an 85% successful mission. They plan on re-using the landing software and some hardware components and they now have data on what went wrong and how to fix it. The lander sent a ton of data back up to the TGO the entire way down.

The Proton has always been a malleable design that has accepted different configurations. Additionally, shrinking a rocket is much easier than trying to grow one. ILS and the manufacturer (Krunitchev) are trying to grab more market share with a pretty straightforward modification that should lower costs for lower-mass and less energetic payloads. They had really good timing too when you consider the rival that has become one of their biggest competitors just blew up a payload on the ground.

To be fair, nobody is that good at this save for NASA. Statistically speaking, if you're not working with NASA, you should start working with NASA ASAP if you hope to have a successful Mars mission.

Pretty much this. I am excited about the Red Dragon mission but the odds of it succeeding are against us. That's just math but at least we're trying to make that equation work. It's one thing to want something to happen, it's another to attempt to make it happen. That gets me up in the morning and gets me through long hours.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Chinese Launch the Long March 5 Rocket

This new rocket is pretty neat. For sure it uses LOX/Kerosene liquid rocket boosters (4x in this configuration) with a LOX/LH2 core first stage. There are conflicting reports on whether the 2nd stage uses hypergolic propellants or an extended life LOX/LH2 kit. I personally really like this rocket because it's a unique combination that to the best of my knowledge has never been used before. Using LOX/Kerosene + LOX/LH2 gets you the benefits of high-thrust hydrocarbon liquid engines with the efficiency of LOX/LH2 on your upper stages. This is exactly what you want if you are trying to optimize payload mass or energy from your launch vehicle.

China also just signed a deal with Thaicom to build and launch one of their GEO telecom birds which is an even bigger deal than their new rocket. This signals that China has developed the technology necessary to build telecom satellites completely on their own that commercial operators will buy. ITAR restrictions basically forced China to develop this capability as it bans anyone from using satellite components that come from the United States that will be launched into space by the Chinese.

On top of this development, the US Government has been granting ITAR waivers to customers of Indian rockets and there are rumbles in the aerospace community that these waivers may take on a deeper and more permanent character soon. All of this means there may soon be even more competition and lower prices in the launch market in the coming decade.

Edit: Forgot to mention that with this successful launch, the Long March 5 rocket is now officially the second heaviest-lift rocket in the world, just a tad behind the Delta IV Heavy. As the design matures, I expect it to overtake the Delta as the heaviest-lift launch vehicle.

 

[red_elk]

Unfortunately, the Russian government deemed RTG technology a controlled weapons technology and later refused to provide it. This forced the designers to switch to batteries as I assume solar panels were fundamentally incompatible with the design.

Knowing what happened to the lander, may be it was a good decision after all.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Knowing what happened to the lander, may be it was a good decision after all.

Meh. There wouldn't have been enough radioactive materials on the lander to make any difference to radiation levels on Mars and as far as we know there is nothing on it we could hurt through our actions.

 

[red_elk]

By the way, I never thought Riteg was an advanced technology. Couldn't ESA just use their own instead of Russian one? Or there were other difficulties, may be with design or fission material?

 

[Michkov]

Does ESA have an off the shelf TRG? I would imagine budgetary reasons played into it as well. Even its as easy as sticking a couple of thermo couples on radiator and some plutonium you still got to make it work through a launch and all the way to Mars.

 

[uppi]

Does ESA have an off the shelf TRG? I would imagine budgetary reasons played into it as well. Even its as easy as sticking a couple of thermo couples on radiator and some plutonium you still got to make it work through a launch and all the way to Mars.

No, they do not have anything they can take off the shelf. The problem is the plutonium: it is not something you can easily buy.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Or produce, for that matter.

Probably one of the stumbling blocks is the unique nature of the ESA - it's a multinational entity that no one national government has complete power over. I too would have apprehensions about turning over technology and dangerous materials to such an entity. Though of course the ESA is one of the 'good' guys in the world (for lack of a better word), the laws in question may be written such that they afford Roscosmos no flexibility in how they are interpreted.

 

[red_elk]

Well, Russia didn't have problems regarding scientific cooperation with EU earlier (ITER, LHC, etc.). I think the issue is most likely not about ESA nature, but rather about plutonium. Russia recently withdrew from plutonium disposal treaty with the USA, may be these two events are somehow related.