Quietly, the new space race between SpaceX and Boeing burns hot
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
The goal here is to build a thriving, private launch capability which can serve multiple markets. In the US at least folks have started thinking about a regulatory structure for how that would work. That is important for a number of reasons, not the least of which is how do you manage multiple launches going up into LEO across the country not looking like a preemptive nuclear strike :-).
I suppose that the right way is to inform every party capable of responding with their own nukes about the launches, the exact trajectories planned and to update them on any deviation in real-time, 'lest they go to DEFCON 1.
Government procurement waste has plagued us forever.
It’s been half a century since the United States finally dusted Russia in the space race, as NASA’s Gemini program ticked off an unprecedented series of long-duration flights, spacewalks, and in-space rendezvous to put America firmly on course to the Moon.
It's very questionable. USSR launched 2 Sputniks first, then the first man. Regarding Apollo mission: USSR didn't participate in manned lunar mission race.
Moreover the goal of the space race was not about a manned mission to the Moon, but about the supremacy in space, so things are more complicated. Russians had Voskhod programme, US had Gemini. USSR more focused on Venus, US - on Mars, etc.
[1]http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/science/space/2011-05-15...
>Q: Is there any other way to get into space?
A: Not from U.S. soil once the shuttles retire. NASA could eventually use the commercial rockets and capsules being developed by private companies. Two companies predict they could fly astronauts to the space station within three years. NASA is under orders to build a giant rocket to go beyond Earth orbit.
https://leadingspace.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/budget1.png
What strikes me is the area under this curve: funding was very high in the space race, but total dollars spent from 1980-2010 are huge too even after inflation.
However, % of federal budget paints a grimmer picture on what the feds value. http://c85c7a.medialib.glogster.com/paulsoma/media/e8/e87670...
(Well, there is a third US human spacecraft in sight, but I suspect it will be irrelevant compared with the other two.)
They got as far as building their own moon rocket, the N1. It was comparable in size to a Saturn V, and with an even more powerful first stage. They built six, and launched four. All four exploded or crashed during the launch, by which point it was clear that the race was lost to the Americans and the N1 wasn't practical, so it was canceled.
The legacy from the Soviet manned moon program lives on. The Soyuz spacecraft still used by the Russians was originally designed to be their lunar spacecraft. Engines originally built for the N1 were stored for decades, then purchased by Orbital Sciences for use on their Antares rocket. Unfortunately, the fifth Antares launch crashed due to an engine failure and Antares is now being redesigned to use a different engine.
> N1-L3 was underfunded and undertested, and started development in October 1965, almost four years after the Saturn V. The project was badly derailed by the death of its chief designer Sergei Korolev in 1966. [...]
In any case, Soviets certainly had plenty of successes too[1]. It would be hard to claim that USA won the "space race" just because they were the first with that milestone, especially since landing on the moon was perhaps the least useful achievement of all space programs; we still have satellites, space stations, ICBMs and manned spacecraft (all pioneered by Soviets), but no one has bother to go to the moon again.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N1_%28rocket%29 [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_space_program#Notable_f...
but try to sell that loss to general US public desperate to feel superior and "winning" in sixties, hence the current "opinion", aka self-lie regardless of facts.
Do you see the amusing double-speak whereby the Russians are excused from "losing", but the Americans are not?
>aka self-lie regardless of facts.
No different than your protection of the Russian public's desperation to not feel inferior to the capitalist West, causing them to "not even try to compete".
> then the first man. Regarding Apollo mission: USSR
> didn't participate in manned lunar mission race.
Huh? Yes, the Soviets had a (huge) head start, but they definitely participated in the race to the moon, and lost. Secretly[1].
From what I know, the article's characterization of the tide having turned by the time of the Gemini program is spot on. Gemini has been largely forgotten, but was hugely successful, methodically testing one concept after another and paving the way for Apollo.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_manned_lunar_programs
However USSR did participate in that race - even though they denied that for long time. USSR did a lot on that path; I'd say roughly 80% of the road to success.
That includes N-1 rocket, which in fourth flight almost completed successfully the first stage burn. Upper stages were better tested on Earth and had higher chances of working right in early flights. Also from the way first N-1 flew one can see that engineers were systematically eliminating problems. The Achilles' heel of the N-1 rocket was engines of the first stage - NK-15, which were due to be replaced in the next flight with much better NK-33. The next flight N-1 could already be significantly more successful; but the program was cancelled.
That also includes hardware like Soyuz spacecraft, which with a lot of modifications still flies today, and D stage, which is used on Protons and Zenits to boost satellites to the geostationary orbit. NK-33 engines flew on Antares rocket and on Soyuz 2-1v Russian rocket.
That also includes lunar landing ship, which was successfully tested on Earth orbit in three flights.
Additionally USSR had a good program for exploring the Moon with robots, including Lunokhods, lunar orbital spacecrafts and automatic sample return vehicles - Luna-16, Luna-20 and Luna-24. And also Zond program - with first circumlunar flights by a spacecraft which later returned to Earth with living animals onboard.
USSR had rather good lunar program - and that was way less expensive than American one - but lost the race to send a human to the Moon itself.
However, from Russian point of view, that was just a - big, but not final - episode in space. 1970-s were the decade of first space stations, and USSR achieved a number of impressive firsts there. Losing to America with reusable spacecraft - Buran flew only once, later than Shuttle, and that was still better than no landing at all in the Moon race - Russia kept perfecting orbital space stations, and Mir was the world class orbital laboratory - some features of which were surpassed by ISS only many years later.
At the end, Russia still has a unique combination of abilities to do things in space - even though it can't match USSR's pace.
Oh, the logic of government contracts. Maybe they should've incentivized Boeing to try and do it for the same price as SpaceX? I understand the whole redundancy argument, but by paying Boeing double to do the same thing SpaceX is doing you are simply incentivizing inefficiency.
This amounts to sheer stupidity in economic terms.