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Photos from inside the Baikonur Cosmodrome

ralphmirebs.livejournal.com

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Re: Photos from inside the Baikonur Cosmodrome

#91

Post by fsloth »

sanoli wrote: post #50
fsloth wrote: post #41

Great photos. Does anyone have details why soviets thought a carbon copy of the botched shuttle design was a good idea in the first place? Where the economics of the vehicle not so obvious back then?

What do you mean botched shuttle design? They probably started copying its design from very early on.

One can hold the view that the design was affected by concerns that had little to do with the missions the vehicle actually performed and consequently locked human space exploration to low earth orbit for 30 years.

http://m.space.com/12166-space-shuttle-program-cost-promises...

Shuttle was locked to low earth orbit due to design reacting to concerns that were never realized. It was anything but cheap. It was ill suited as a vehicle of human space exploration.

It did lots of valuable things but it can be argued I understand that those things could have been achieved cheaper and better.

Re: Photos from inside the Baikonur Cosmodrome

#92

Post by rdtsc »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #79
rdtsc wrote: post #74

Fun fact: Buran was the first fully automated space shuttle. It did a complete flight cycle without human intervention. I believe our space shuttle could that that too eventually but not at the time. Even funner fact: There is a remnant of software that powered that shuttle still around. In the form of a visual programming language DRAKON ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRAKON )

The STS was purposely designed not to do that due to political reasons, pilots didnt want to feel like they were passangers, emergency restrictions, etc. Eventually those restrictions were lifted and was fully autonomous at a certain point, I don't remember which models have the full autonomy suite, but the capabilities varied as these things were built out. Considering the Buran has never put a person into space, it…

> The STS was doing all these things and more.

Ok but if Buran failed didn't STS fail too, just took more money and killed more people? No current space vehicles are based on it. It was too big. Too expensive. Too failure prone (it killed a lot more astronauts than Soyuz even though Soyuz is older). Once the concept was proven, after a few space walks, maybe fixing Hubble, it was time to realize it was a bad idea scrape it. Which eventually happened.

Otherwise if you say, "Ok" it was for research, well so was Buran it was research and jobs program. They showed they could build a space plane just like Americans. Cold War was full of such "we can do it too" feats. Some advanced science and engineering some didn't.

> poster-boy in mismanaging a spacecraft project and what essentially became a Soviet "make work" jobs program

Yes but by that token they can still laugh at us for mismanaging it longer and making it into an even more glorified jobs program.

> I find it interesting that these things haven't been turned into scrap yet.

It is not that surprising. Not sure how much nostalgia plays into but it is probably too expensive and cumbersome to go and start tearing the building and the spacecraft apart.

Re: Photos from inside the Baikonur Cosmodrome

#93

Post by kryptiskt »

Yetanfou wrote: post #89
briandear wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lysenkoism was certainly a highlight of the Soviet sciences. Mendelian inheritance was considered a capitalist fabrication.

What Lysenkoism was to the Soviet Union, is Creationism to the United States of America. Both 'doctrines' are completely nonsensical, but supported by strong religious currents in their respective environments. It just so happened the state religion in the Soviet Union had mortal gods versus the man-on-the-cloud of the born-again evangelical religion entertained by some recent US leaders.

People were persecuted and killed because of Lysenkoism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Vavilov

Your false equivalences trivializes that persecution.

Re: Photos from inside the Baikonur Cosmodrome

#94

Post by cicero »

Osmium wrote: post #11

I think being able to walk away from a project like this is actually quite commendable, in a way. Not that it's always the right call, but to be able to avoid the 'sunk cost fallacy'[1] on this scale is something that large governments/companies seem rarely capable of. That said, in this case, maybe they just didn't have a choice and ran out of money... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escalation_of_commitment

I worked for General Dynamics on the A-12 Avenger II program[1] that was cancelled by Dick Cheney. Even when the Navy threatened to cancel the project, a lot of people thought they would never do it because so much money had been spent on it. However, the end of the Cold War, some technical problems, and the need to rebuild political capital after the Gulf War all contributed to it being cancelled.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_A-12_Avenger...

Re: Photos from inside the Baikonur Cosmodrome

#95

Post by Yetanfou »

kryptiskt wrote: post #93
Yetanfou wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What Lysenkoism was to the Soviet Union, is Creationism to the United States of America. Both 'doctrines' are completely nonsensical, but supported by strong religious currents in their respective environments. It just so happened the state religion in the Soviet Union had mortal gods versus the man-on-the-cloud of the born-again evangelical religion entertained by some recent US leaders.

People were persecuted and killed because of Lysenkoism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Vavilov Your false equivalences trivializes that persecution.

I'd put this persecution more in the hands of Stalin and his cronies. He hardly needed an excuse to persecute and kill anyone, after all.

Re: Photos from inside the Baikonur Cosmodrome

#96

Post by drzaiusapelord »

rdtsc wrote: post #92
drzaiusapelord wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The STS was purposely designed not to do that due to political reasons, pilots didnt want to feel like they were passangers, emergency restrictions, etc. Eventually those restrictions were lifted and was fully autonomous at a certain point, I don't remember which models have the full autonomy suite, but the capabilities varied as these things were built out. Considering the Buran has never put a person into space, it…

> The STS was doing all these things and more. Ok but if Buran failed didn't STS fail too, just took more money and killed more people? No current space vehicles are based on it. It was too big. Too expensive. Too failure prone (it killed a lot more astronauts than Soyuz even though Soyuz is older). Once the concept was proven, after a few space walks, maybe fixing Hubble, it was time to realize it was a bad idea scr…

>it killed a lot more astronauts than Soyuz even though Soyuz is older)

The Soviet space program killed 200+ people. I think you USSR die-hards need to stop making excuses and accept history. Safety is not one of your strong suites.

"Nedelin pressured Yangel and the rest of the R-16 team to accelerate their timetable. They did this primarily by ignoring all of the quite sensible safety measures in effect at the time."

http://www.spacesafetymagazine.com/space-disasters/nedelin-c...

Re: Photos from inside the Baikonur Cosmodrome

#97

Post by drzaiusapelord »

cicero wrote: post #94
Osmium wrote: post #11

I think being able to walk away from a project like this is actually quite commendable, in a way. Not that it's always the right call, but to be able to avoid the 'sunk cost fallacy'[1] on this scale is something that large governments/companies seem rarely capable of. That said, in this case, maybe they just didn't have a choice and ran out of money... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escalation_of_commitment

I worked for General Dynamics on the A-12 Avenger II program[1] that was cancelled by Dick Cheney. Even when the Navy threatened to cancel the project, a lot of people thought they would never do it because so much money had been spent on it. However, the end of the Cold War, some technical problems, and the need to rebuild political capital after the Gulf War all contributed to it being cancelled. [1] https://en.wik…

Wow, I've never heard of that plane. Its gorgeous. I guess the B-2 took its place a few years later.

Re: Photos from inside the Baikonur Cosmodrome

#98

Post by drzaiusapelord »

rbryan71 wrote: post #62

History spirals. This is an objective process, repeated over and over again. You can regret for the lost time and to mourn about the past greatness, but the facts remain above this - Russia is rapidly losing its status as a leading space power. For more than twenty years, the country does not produce anything new in principle, continuing to exploit the legacy of the Soviet Union. Only lead the modernization of the ol…

Putin just cut the space program by a third. Russia is becoming a bit player in space and has no ability to compete with what NASA, SpaceX, and Boeing are building now. The Soyuz work-mule as a LEO transport is pretty much it for them for the forseeable future and with the ISS retirement, it won't have anywhere to go.

http://money.cnn.com/2015/04/27/news/economy/russia-space-cr...

Or top of corrupt autocrats stealing $2billion from the space program:

http://money.cnn.com/2015/05/25/technology/russia-space-corr...

and all his recent rocket failures. They cant get those proton-m and briz's to stop blowing up:

http://www.spacepolicyonline.com/pages/images/stories/List%2...

http://spaceflightnow.com/2015/05/16/proton-crash-deals-anot...

Re: Photos from inside the Baikonur Cosmodrome

#99

Post by brock_r »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #97
cicero wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked for General Dynamics on the A-12 Avenger II program[1] that was cancelled by Dick Cheney. Even when the Navy threatened to cancel the project, a lot of people thought they would never do it because so much money had been spent on it. However, the end of the Cold War, some technical problems, and the need to rebuild political capital after the Gulf War all contributed to it being cancelled. [1] https://en.wik…

Wow, I've never heard of that plane. Its gorgeous. I guess the B-2 took its place a few years later.

The tip-up wings are wild, too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_A-12_Avenger...

Re: Photos from inside the Baikonur Cosmodrome

#100

Post by drzaiusapelord »

agounaris wrote: post #22

For the geeks... Buran had prolog code in its brain and could land on its own...in the 80s!!!

The STS could land on its own too, but due to political and safety concerns this functionality was disabled by default. In scenarios where a damaged shuttle was in space, the crew would board the ISS and turn on this functionality via a cable that connected the computer to the landing gear. Once that was set, NASA could fly it home remotely.

The Buran never carried a person into space and Soviet space management never had to make the decision to enable this while pilots sat in the cockpit. I think they would have been under the same pressure as NASA and allowed them to fly and not use full automation outside of emergencies.

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