Russia sending cargo ship to international space station after shuttle disaster (Today)

Why is it only U.S. space flights are "international" with other countries' astronauts welcome along for the ride?

Never thought I'd see the day when I was thanking God for the Russian space program.

Astronaut John Glenn said there have been only two fatal tragedies in over one hundred and fifty missions for the shuttles.

Anybody have any idea the Russian numbers?

Thank God for the Russians.

The old Soviet program carried at least one Cuban and several East Germans. The current Russian program has carried one American tourist and has offered to carry more.

We'll probably never hear about their worst failures. NASA probably knows, but it's impolitic to reveal the dirty secrets of a nation now our partner.

More than a few of their most active cosmonauts disappeared over the years, but who knows if that was due to political purges or covered-up mission mishaps.

Why do we need to risk lives hauling modules for the International Space station aboard the remaining space shuttles? There have been several proposals to use much of the existing shuttle hardware to launch large payloads to orbit.

One really big advantage of this approach is that it would get the space station parts up in fewer launches. Instead of wasting all the energy it takes to launch the shuttle orbiter when the shuttle returns to Earth, the weight of the payload permanently put into orbit could be increased. Shuttle flights could then be limited to missions requiring the presence of astronauts rather than cargo runs.

Considering that the space station is estimated to require 50 shuttle missions, and so far we are averaging a catastrophic loss of a shuttle per 50 missions, we are likely to have another space shutlle lost just hauling the pieces of the space station.

Nation: USA. Agency: NASA. Manufacturer: NASA.

Following the collapse of Space Station Fred, NASA quickly formed a Space Station redesign team which identified three major redesign options in April 1993...

These were:

Option B, the most expensive design, was very similar to the 1991 'Fred' design. Option B would have omitted one truss segment while simplifying some subsystems to save money. The Station assembly schedule would also have been delayed, and the project management structure would have been overhauled as well.. The total cost over five years could not be kept to under $9 billion, however, and this effectively killed the concept, although Space Station Freedom supporters in Congress preferred this option. Compared with Space Station Freedom, Option B would have saved some money by starting with half of the original design and grow to full size as the budget allowed. Like Option A, Option B would initially have relied on a docked Shuttle to provide housing for the crew. However, 'just going up for [less than 20] days and coming back...is nothing but Shuttle plus. It wouldn't be worth the money to do that' according to the Advisory Panel's Daniel Hastings. The completed Option B station would have offered better on-board data storage and lab space than Option A, but would also have required an additional 10 assembly flights and 60 hours of external assembly and maintenance work by astronauts. The technical risk was regarded as lower than for the other two Options, but the design still wasn't detailed enough for an accurate assessment of its user capabilities to be made.
Option C was the most controversial alternative since it represented a radical departure from all previous Space Station plans. It featured a single large 28m long, 7m diameter pressurised 'can' that would be launched fully outfitted on a new Shuttle derived heavy-lift booster. The cost of the core module was estimated to be $3.19 billion; a total cost of $6.502 billion over five years excluding reserves, operations and the $1 billion Freedom termination cost. The Shuttle, ESA Columbus and Japanese Experiment Modules would all be docked to the Option C Space Station. This design would have given researchers more lab space and power than Freedom, and it could support a permanent crew from the start while requiring less external maintenance by astronauts.
It would have included no fewer than 136 experiment racks - nearly three time as many as 'Fred' and far more than the Option C solar arrays could support. But its microgravity environment was comparatively poor since the Station would have to rotate to keep its solar panels facing the Sun or else the power would vary. The design made adding more solar panels very difficult. The Europeans, Japanese and Canadians disliked this option since would have to change the electrical, thermal control and data management systems of their modules - if they could be accommodated at all. The international contributions would also be rendered largely useless (e.g. Canada's robotic arm would also be of little value since little on-orbit assembly would required).
The Option C Space Station would have been launched in one piece on a new unmanned Shuttle-derived heavy-lift rocket. The design was regarded as a very high-risk venture since the Station would have to be developed essentially from scratch and tested in a very short time, and it would rely on a new launch vehicle that would have to work on its maiden voyage (NASA was going to use cannibalised parts from the Shuttle Orbiter 'Columbia' to save money). Nonetheless, the 'blue ribbon' selection panel endorsed Option C along with Option A. NASA proposed to farm out the construction of the 'can' to Russia in order to save money. The Russians declined, however, since they felt the bid wasn't detailed enough.
Option A was the 'compromise option' eventually chosen by Clinton. Like Option B, this configuration was based on the abandoned Space Station Freedom design from 1991, so it was more acceptable to the international partners than Option C. Option A would start with a 'power station' to which an extended duration Shuttle could dock for initial research lasting 20 days at most. Lockheed's 'Bus-1' (a previously classified US Air Force spacecraft) would provide propulsion and attitude control. The US laboratory and node would also be integrated into a single module.
Later, additional laboratories and a habitation module could be added to create the complete Option A Space Station shown here. A major drawback was the limited capability for scientific research, particularly for sensitive microgravity experiments since the Station periodically (every 2-3 months) would have to reorient itself 90 degrees to keep solar panels pointing toward the Sun. This would interrupt materials science regularly. Consequently, the Clinton Administration promised to use the same 'alpha' solar panel joints as Option B. The total estimated cost in 1994-98 was $13.3 billion, considerably higher than the $9-billion Space Station requested by the President in March 1993. NASA was asked to report back in September 1993 since the current Option A design was not detailed enough for an accurate assessment of its user capabilities to be made.




1993 SPACE STATION OPTIONS SUMMARY
-------------------------------------------------------------------
COSTS
($ billions)         Freedom  A/Bus-1  Option-B  Option-C  R-Alpha
-------------------------------------------------------------------
-FY 1994-98          $15.8    $13.3    $13.3     $11.9     $10.5
-FY'94 to
 assembly complete   $22.1    $17.0    $19.3     $15.2     $19.4
-Ops. & payloads     $25.0    $13.5    $15.1     $10.2        ?
-Total lifetime cost 
 incl.marginal STS   $65      $47      $50       $41
 flight cost
-Total lifetime cost $101     $80      $87       $65
 incl.average STS
 flight cost

-------------------------------------------------------------------
MILESTONES           Freedom  A/Bus-1  Option-B  Option-C  R-Alpha
-------------------------------------------------------------------
-1st element launch     3/96    10/97     10/97      9/99     6/97
-Man-tended capacity    6/97     4/98     12/98       -       8/97
-International modules 12/99    12/99      3/01      7/00     4/00
-Permanent crew         6/00     9/00     12/01     11/99     9/97
-Assembly complete      9/00     9/00     12/01      1/01    10/01


-------------------------------------------------------------------
PERFORMANCE          Freedom  A/Bus-1  Option-B  Option-C  R-Alpha
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Orbit inclination       28.5     28.5      28.5      28.5     51.6
Crew research hr/yr     6866h    6724h     6566h     6866h
Total power (kW)        68.3       57      68.3      61.5      105
User power (kW)         34.2       31      40.3      40.9     < 45     
Habitable volume (m3)    878      760       878      1117     1200
Equipment racks
  system racks            65       59        65      50.5       51* 
  user racks              45.5     39        45.5      72       33*
  user racks @ <1uG       29        8        29        40        ?
Assembly EVA, h.         340h     224h      311h       24h    224h
Annual maintenance EVA   240h     187h      253h       80h    197h
Total assembly flights    20       16        20        10   14+12 Russian.
Logistics fligths/yr.      4        6         6         6        7

* = does not include Russian equipment racks.

Article by Marcus Lindroos

Electrical System: Solar panels.

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Last update 26 June 2002.

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Shuttles can carry payloads of 100 metric tons (110 short tons), while Russian Progress supply ships like the one set to launch Sunday can carry no more than 5 metric tons (5.5 short tons), Interfax reported.

Interfax is full of BS. From http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/shuttle/reference/basics/

Weight
At liftoff: 2,041,166 kilograms (4.5 million pounds)
End of mission: 104,326 kilograms (230,000 pounds)

Maximum cargo to orbit
28,803 kilograms
(63,500 pounds)

So it looks like the shuttle can deliver a payload almost six times greater than the Progress launcher, not 20 times like they claim.

The U.S. made a decision several years ago to get the Russians involved in the ISS because despite our technological superiority in space, the old Soviet space program did some "routine" things very, very well. They were far better than us at perfecting the process of moving large payloads into orbit, re-supplying crews, and keeping cosmonauts up there for longer periods of time.

...the old Soviet space program did some "routine" things very, very well. They were far better than us at perfecting the process of moving large payloads into orbit...

Stuff we perfected at least a decade and a half before they did. Remember the Apollo program? Instead of building an evolutionary space shuttle program initially based on proven Apollo hardware, we threw away all that proven hardware to devlop the space shuttle that was supposed to replace all our other launch vehicles.

Actually we are quite fortunate the Challenger accident didn't happen a couple of years later. In that case, the tooling for Atlas and Titan boosters would have been destroyed, leaving us with no launch vehilces at all.

Maybe the U.S. DID perfect it before the Soviets did, but the U.S. (for some reason I don't understand) decided to replace their large unmanned rockets with a space shuttle program that is highly inefficient when it comes to delivering payloads.

Maybe the Russians just didn't have the money or the technology -- but they come out looking a little smarter because they still used those large rockets for payload delivery.

Maybe the U.S. DID perfect it before the Soviets did, but the U.S. (for some reason I don't understand) decided to replace their large unmanned rockets with a space shuttle program that is highly inefficient when it comes to delivering payloads.

That blame lies with a Congress that thought they could solve social problems by funding welfare programs by taking money away from the space program. If anything the social programs were worse than a waste of money, they actually made the problems worse. Yes it was really stupid to throw away in the seventies all the capabilities we had built in the sixties.

the russians lost i think 3 people in 1967 and in 1972.

the us space death toll is 17.

But all those numbers are irrelavant.

The russians had permanent station Mir in space for more than a decade and flew up and down cosmonauts once every few months and also unmanned supply modules. I guess that was cheaper for them.

on the other hand the shuttles went up stayed for 2 weeks and came down. So the astronauts had less time for experiments i guess.

I think the Americans were more active in space by going up and down all the time and per activity it is low human losses.

The Russians went for the permanent presence from start and have had less human in dangerous situations (if we exclude the mishaps in the Mir space station)

If one good thing comes out of this disaster, I hope it is this:

NASA ought to seriously think about developing a "two-track" space program in which separate vehicles are used for payloads and human flights. I'm no expert about aerospace issues, but it seems to me that using the same orbiter to deliver humans and cargo to space is a bit like using a tractor-trailer to carry 50 people from New York to California.

In space, already, so quickly? Wonder if they could have managed a rescue, if we had known about any problems with the Columbia...

BTTT