Russia Complains About A Gateway Role It Can't Afford
Russia throws doubt on joint lunar space station with U.S.: RIA, Reuters
“Moscow may abandon a project to build a space station in lunar orbit in partnership with U.S. space agency NASA because it does not want a “second fiddle role,” a Russian official said on Saturday. Russia agreed last year to work with the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) on plans for the moon-orbiting Deep Space Gateway, which will serve as a staging post for future missions. But the head of Russian space agency Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, said Russia might exit the joint programme and instead propose its own lunar orbit space station project. “The Russian Federation cannot afford to play the second fiddle role in it,” he was quoted as saying by the RIA news agency, without much further elaboration.”
Keith’s note: Russia’s space program is broke, so its not surprising that they are admitting the obvious – in a way that makes it look like someone else is at fault. As for playing “second fiddle” Roscosmos simply does not have the funds to play first fiddle, so good luck with that Dmitry.
Translation: “We will just take our trampoline and go home”.
LOL!
Keith might moderate the comment, if so I understand…
Rogozin is all mouth and full of excrement. I have long since given up on taking seriously anything that spouts from his cake hole. His own people quickly followed up and backpedaled his remarks.
Can Soyuz even reach such a station, or would Russia have to pay someone else to fly their people there?
Soviet plans in the late 1960s included a manned lunar flyby by a modified Soyuz launched on a Proton. I suppose that’s still technically possible, but it would take time and money for the modifications. Both Soyuz and Proton have changed enough since the 1960s that it’s anyone’s guess what the payload capacity or possible orbits would be like.
I wouldn’t want to ride on a Proton.
I don’t rust a rocket named after a subatomic particle.
LOL. You know that’s not what I mean.
I rather like the concept behind Electron, and it’s named for a lower mass, subatomic particle than the Proton. Whether they can make the concept work is another matter…
It is worth noting that Soviet/Russian launch vehicles are often named after their first payload (which does cause some confusion.) And, in a different context, I know someone who refuses to fly on an Airbus, simply because he thinks calling an airplane a “bus” is offensive. So people have all sorts of different ideas about names…
Reminded me of an unintentionally funny scene in the 1955 sci-fi movie This Island Earth when newly arrived scientist Cal Meacham is being shown around the lab by two other scientists. Suddenly a cat pops out, and one of the scientists says “It’s only Neutron. We call him that because he’s so positive.”
Why not? Right now the Proton has about a 89% success rate at over 400 launches while SpaceX is at about 92% success rate at 65 launches. Not a whole lot of difference here. And Soyuz beats them all at about 97% success for latest version and over 780 flights. Very hard for anyone to beat the Russian launch history.
And to keep things running and safe it boils down to money. As usual.
They have never launched a person on a Proton. There are some things about man rating that do matter and which go beyond reliability. Acceleration (probably ok), the vibration environment (1-10 Hz is very bad for people, but not so much for correctly designed hardware) and a few other things. A Proton might be a rough ride. Since the Soviets gave up on manned Proton launches half a century ago, and the Proton design has evolved considerably since then, it isn’t clear how much work it would take to man rate a modern one.
Not any different than launching on a Titan 2 or a Long March 2F. Of course the Chinese wants to transition to the KeroLox Long March 7 as their man-rated launcher for some reason.
I wonder how much g force they would have to endure coming back from the Moon in a Soyuz. And I would imagine a ballistic reentry from the Moon if it ever occurred would be pretty brutal.
Maybe competition would be good. From Russia and china. Something like Salyut boosted to lunar orbit by several Angara 5s.
Great idea. Let the world support TWO “space stations” with no mission.
President Reagan made that work. Announce a big, high-tech space project, something which probably can’t work and would be insanely expensive, but which the Russian’s would feel obliged to try to match. It’s not an ineffective form of economic warfare.
What vaperware? 😉
Ya, and it is used a lot on civilian industry as well.
To be fair, nobody seems to have funds to play any instruments on this project. Neither is it clear on why this should be done in the first place, apart from giving a certain white elephant something to lift.
Well, in-space construction of a proper, reusable, Interplanetary spacecraft makes more sense for exploring the solar system than launch-and-go in some ways I think. IMNEO (in my non-expert opinion). That’s what it’s for. Most of the benefit though is that it is built under the NextStep program, which is an extension of Commercial Crew.
I’m predicting that the white elephant of which you speak will be replaced by a commercial launcher before the project is finished. It may be part of the the reason way BFR has been reduced to a 9m diameter.
Is in-space construction of an interplanetary vehicle what you thing Gateway should be for, or what it actually planned to be for? If it’s the latter, then you know something the rest of us don’t. Including, to all appearances, most of the people within NASA and working on Gateway.
Sorry. It was my understanding that the stated end-purpose of LOP-G was to build a Mars/Interplanetary exploration spacecraft. First the station, then use the station as a base in construction of the spacecraft. Mars is too far away to ride in Orion alone.
It is not clear to me that orbital spacecraft assemly and checkout would be more productive in high lunar orbit or in LEO, where we already have a station,
Aye, but this way they can study the moon at the same time…as well as test Mars tech outside the Earth’s magnetic shell.
I think they might also be thinking of using Moon resources in the effort in some way that they don’t know about yet.
As for the ISS…wrong orbit, too far from the ecliptic for Interplanetary staging. But you knew that. 😉
There aren’t a whole lot of good orbits for interplanetary staging. You can get around the inclination by launching at a specific phase of the orbit (when the hyperbolic asymptote will be close to the ecliptic) and that imposes an annoying launch window constraint. But that will be the case for any inclination, and dealing with the window is probably easier than fighting against even a small inclination. ISS isn’t especially bad.
But I think you are giving the Gateway designers too much credit. The observations of the Moon may be interesting, but they solicited ideas for observations after deciding to built it, and after having a fairly mature concept of the design. The design doesn’t look great for adaptation, and if they want to take advantage of in situ resources, it should be. As you note, we don’t know enough about those resources or how best to use them. To my mind, that suggests an adaptable design.
The original Mir core, for example, had two axial docking ports (which they knew they would need for Soyuz and Progress) and four radial ports for some unspecified sorts of expansion modules. With Gateway, I don’t see a place for adding things which weren’t in the plan from the start.
I will say I like a high orbit for interplanetary staging. It lets a low thrust (e.g. solar electric) thruster get you to interplanetary space in weeks instead of months or years, and it’s close enough that a small (cramped) vehicle can be used for Earth-to-station travel.
BFR is as much of a white elephant as any other big ass rocket with no market.
Also, trying your hand at scalable in-space construction would make more sense at earth orbit. We had a good test run with ISS, except it was
a) manned assembly which makes it a nonstarter, non-scalable solution
b) limited to purpose-built assembly vehicle, not general rockets
Fix both of those problems with teleoperated, semi-automated assembly sequence serviced by general purpose rockets that are currently in service, and going to other places in solar system starts to look a whole lot more credible.
BFR has a market, all of the current payloads being launched in the F9, Atlas, and other expendable launch vehicles, plus the comsat constellations folks are proposing to build.
Right. They will carry multiple payloads per launch for lighter loads, like the upcome FH launch for the Air Force. Thos is because if they’ve added stuff up correctly (they’re probably optimistic but close) then full reusability makes BFR a full order of magnitude less expensive to fly than Falcon Heavy…while lifting twice as much.
I will add this short note to the conversation (because something you just said reminded me)…the SpaceX claim last week hat BFR is 100% privately funded isn’t exactly correct. The Air Force has contributed money to the development of the Raptor engine. Correct?
The Air Force funding may or may not be related to BFR. They paid for a smaller version of the Raptor, potentially for use in an upper stage for the Falcon 9 or Heavy. That’s not in the direct path towards BFR development, but presumably there are some synergistic benefits.
Let’s be honest all the agencies are playing second fiddle to nasa. None of them really want to waste time with gateway they want to go to the surface but since they don’t have the cash to go without the US they are forced to abide by this plan to delay their lunar ambitions by another decade. NASA doesn’t lead human spaceflight through technical prowess these days they lead via shouldering the biggest budget portion. As the pork flows into the NASA coffers so follows the rest of the world despite the unpalatable destination.
Interesting point. I’m not sure I completely agree with you though. How many countries have landed spacecraft on the Moon and Mars? I consider partnership with NASA to be an essential safety component for any Mars mission right now. While it’s true that LOP-G is not a Mars mission…Mars is the direction that the project itself is headed in the end.
You’re right about the money though. I just think that any Moon surface project not partnered with NASA will stay there a while…for both money and expertise reasons.
Economically Russia is no longer a super power. Only its nuclear weapons and excellent hackers is keeping them in the game.
The quote you’re looking for is from 1988, back when the current Russian Federation was the Soviet Union. German Chancellor Schmidt called the place “Upper Volta with missiles.”
I’m pretty sure they still have undeveloped oil reserves that could be used for economic growth.
If Russia wanted to; they could beat SpaceX to a Circumlunar flyby mission with 2x ‘space tourists’ before 2023 – ‘Space Adventures’ has offered such a prospect for years: http://www.spaceadventures….
I almost wish they’d do it!
https://www.businessinsider…
I rather doubt they’d do it, though… 🙁
They specifically announced that they don’t want to. They wanted to focus their energy on ISS support and on developing future launchers. I do not think they can compete with SpaceX or even Blue Origin on that though. Whether they like it or not they will be “second-fiddle”…or perhaps even third-fiddle if you count ESA.
I did say I doubted they would do it. I was merely saying they could if they wanted to – or were paid enough.
I don’t think money is the issue. I don’t think they have the ability to expand their quality control infrastructure for the Soyuz enough to meet any higher capacity. I will guess that their plan is to upgrade their quality control system as part of the development of their new HLV products and not revamp the system for older products.
Some quality control methods just are not expandable beyond a certain threshold.
In fact, I’ll submit this thought for discussion…that government-sponsered launch services have proven to be fiscally unsustainable and in decline now that independent commercial launch services are becoming available.
Yes, it would appear so.
They appeared to throw their hat into the ring again. But who in their right mind would go to the Moon cramped inside a Soyuz when you have the big, comfortable BFR waiting for you? BTW if I caught the update its pressurized area is now the same size as the ISS. But unlike ISS it’s not stuck in an always deteriorating orbit. 🙂
https://sputniknews.com/sci…
Russia’s RSC Energia Ready to Offer Tourists Moon Flights – Source
When it comes to space tourism, Energya has plenty of experience. Even in 1990, when they were a government agency of a communist nation, they did a good job of soaking Toyohiro Akiyama’s employer (Tokyo Broadcasting) with fees for additional services and ad placements. NASA is not in the same league…
But the Soyuz to the Moon idea doesn’t sound like a great idea for the customers. The old 1960s idea required a stripped down Soyuz (without the orbital module.) That would have made the Apollo command module look palatial. I don’t think the Russians have the launch capability for much more than that.
Good! While the United States probably can afford the Gateway, WE SHOULDN’T! That money is better spent subsidizing (if they need it) commercial efforts to establish a permanent, crewed base on the Moon, allowing us to determine whether reduced-g levels over, say a 2-year period is sufficient to ameliorate the adverse affects on the human body, as well as to develop ISRU techniques and how to live in low-g conditions. Once those things are determined, then it is “On-to-Mars”!
Ad LEO! Ad LUNA! Ad Ares! AD ASTRA!
Subsidizing a commercial entity the has no true, proven commercial product/plan destined to eventually make money that pays for its own sustainability is just throwing money down a well. And the reason we have been flying circles for 50 years is that no such product/plan has been proven.
Yep, its crazy to fund the Union Pacific Railroad to reach across the continent, they never built an inch of track…
NASA has had decades to do it and hasn’t. It is way past time to give someone else a turn at the bat.
Your insistence on comparing our space efforts to the transcontinental railroad is really annoying, Dr. M.
Were it only not so apt.
Edit 9.26: I wonder what was said about the TRR back in the decades it was being planned and discussed (1855+, I suppose?).
Would we recognize the language today? “If you build it, they will come?”
(I’ve also wondered it the TV series centered on the construction of the RR was realistic- cannot recall the name).
“Hell on Wheels” … 5 seasons
The railroads already had a destination. San Francisco was a boom town for miners in the 1850s, and British Columbia insisted on a rail line as a condition to joining Canada. But some of the stations along the way were “built it and they will come” (e.g. Cheyenne.)