Apollo, Soyuz, Shenzhou and CEV

[pmn1]

http://www.astronautix.com/craftfam/cev.htm<br /><br />Part of an article on Astronautix.com....<br /><br /><font color="yellow"><br /><br />It looked like the errors of the original Apollo program would be repeated. A three-module spacecraft, as used successfully on Soyuz and Shenzhou, was rejected. Instead the sole crew habitat space would be the re-entry vehicle, which would be a 41% scaled up version of the Apollo command module. This would have over three times the internal volume and double the surface area of the Apollo capsule, but NASA claimed its mass could be limited to only 50% more than the Apollo design. Despite the increase in volume and mass, it would provide accommodation for only four to six crew (versus three to five in Apollo).<br /><br />The service module was stubbier and lighter than the Apollo CSM, and powered by a liquid oxygen/methane engine. The same propellant combination would be used in the reaction control systems of both the command and service modules, the ascent stage of any later lunar lander, and the ascent stages of any Mars landers. The choice of this untried rocket propellant was driven by NASA plans to - maybe - generate methane from the Martian atmosphere on future manned expeditions. For NASA's lunar landing scenario, the CEV would be required to make only the Trans-Earth injection maneuver to bring the crew home. In the Apollo scenario, the CSM had to brake both the CSM and lunar module into lunar orbit, as well as make Trans-earth injection for the CSM.<br /><br />The CEV would be launched into earth orbit by the Crew Launch Vehicle, a shuttle-derived two-stage rocket consisting of a single Shuttle RSRM solid booster as the first stage and a new second stage, 5.5 m in diameter, using Lox/LH2 propellants and powered by a single SSME.<br /><br />By January 2006 NASA still had not released its revised baseline so that the prospective contractors could begin working on</font> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[shoogerbrugge]

The snowball effect basicly......<br /><br />each kilo/pound that re-enters increases the weight of the heatshield. And having a large capsule means that you have a big area that should be protected.<br /><br />Soyuz and Shenzhou were designed with the idea in mind to keep all the equipment not used for re-entry out of the re-entry module, this made this section smaller and thus kept the total weight down. A lot of equipment is only used in orbit or during launch, these were placed in the orbital module which burns up during re-entry.<br /><br />Additional advantage is the additional airlock, and in the case of Shenzhou the independent orbital module.

 

[pmn1]

ah right, make sense<br /><br />thanks. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[steve82]

It was a very interesting article and had a lot of good points. I'm just not quite willing yet to refer to CEV in such a past tense or say that it was all that devastating a mistake to pick the current architecture. This is still a very dynamic program.

 

[j05h]

>I'm just not quite willing yet to refer to CEV in such a past tense or say that it was all that devastating a mistake to pick the current architecture.<br /><br />Astronautix.com uses the past tense for all vehicles, built, flown or proposed. This is in the interest of fairness between designs and eras, I think. They are not a news organization, but an online encyclopedia, the writing is different. <br /><br />Shenzhou is pretty cool, and I would like to see Northrup-Grumman go ahead with development of their own 3-piece capsule, regardless of NASA CEV funding. Combined with Bigelow and Space-X, we would finally have a state-of-the-art American space system.<br /><br />Josh <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <div align="center"><em>We need a first generation of pioneers.</em><br /></div> </div>

 

[tomnackid]

"It looked like the errors of the original Apollo program would be repeated. A three-module spacecraft, as used successfully on Soyuz and Shenzhou, was rejected."<br />------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br />Exactly what errors are those? The block II Apollo never killed a crew member on a mission and it made it to the moon and back 9 times, once with a severely crippled service module. The older Soyuz has yet to take people to the vicinity of the moon and unmanned versions have experienced reentry problems in returning to Earth from a lunar trajectory. Also I believe (I could be wrong the Soviet era records are intentionally obscure) all of the unmanned Soyuz flights around the moon under the code name "Zond" flew without the orbital module to save weight, which makes the whole "advantage" of a 3 piece design a little dubious. NASA extensively studied the 3 piece capsule design for Apollo and came to the conclusion that it provided a little extra room at the cost of a lot more weight, complications with abort modes, and unneeded redundancy. <br /><br />I appreciate Astronautic as a valuable resource and all of the hard work that goes in to it, but I think Mark Wade has a bug up his butt because NASA didn't give him a shiny new space plane to play with.

 

[pmn1]

What is the current version of Soyuz and Shenzhou? <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[CalliArcale]

I must confess I had the same feeling that Wade was really just grinding an axe with this article. The overly negative tone bothered me, especially before it's had a chance to prove itself. That said....<br /><br /><blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>The older Soyuz has yet to take people to the vicinity of the moon and unmanned versions have experienced reentry problems in returning to Earth from a lunar trajectory.<p><hr /></p></p></blockquote><br /><br />Actually, the Zond problems had nothing to do with the fundamental problems of reentry. They fell prey to guidance and propulsion problems. I found that out while writing a timeline of the Zonds; I'd always thought it was because the double-skip was so hard, but the truth was that their computers just weren't handling the conditions very well.<br /><br />You do remember correctly that they deleted the orbital module to save weight. This was beause the Proton rocket did not have the capability to lift that much mass to a cislunar orbit. Apparently with the new upper stages, that's no longer a problem; Russia's announcement to soon provide manned Soyuz trips to the Moon for paying passengers is technically feasible. (Whether or not it's financially feasible is a whole different ball of wax, of course.) <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><font color="#666699"><em>"People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly . . . timey wimey . . . stuff."</em>  -- The Tenth Doctor, "Blink"</font></p> </div>

 

[tomnackid]

Yes all the negativity can be very disheartening--between the people that want a spaceplane and those who think the CEV should be a Soyuz clone NASA is dammed of they do and dammed if they don't. I guess its encouraging that people still care so much.<br /><br />Concerning all of the projects that fell under the shadowy "Zond" designation in the days of the USSR: This is complete speculation on my part so take it or leave it, but it seams to me that if the Soviets could have safely sent men around the moon in a Soyuz they would have done it. Especially since they had sent animals. As you said you initially assumed that the skip reentry need to reenter a Soyuz from a high speed lunar trajectory was the downfall of some of the unsuccessful tests. Apparently a number of people had that impression as well. Most people outside of the Soviet space program didn't even know about the cislunar tests until after the breakup of the USSR so we may never know the complete story. Either way, some capsules were destroyed on reentry and others that survived would have inflicted sever damage on human occupants. Whether this was due to design flaws in the soyuz capsule (probably not) or flaws in the computer guidance and RCS (more likely) it still points out that the Soyuz was not ready for lunar missions. <br /><br />The point i'm trying to make is that regardless of wheter or not a manned, modern, updated Soyuz can travel to the moon and back safely (it probably could) it HASN"T yet. Why waste time and money trying to find out if a Soyuz clone (or any othe shape) is up to the task when we KNOW FOR A FACT that the Apollo shape CAN do the job. And has thousands of hours of simulations, wind tunnel testing and actual flight experience behind it! (Already paid for!)<br /><br />Doesn't this make sense?

 

[mlorrey]

Nah, the records that Mark Wade got ahold of state that once we landed on the moon, Soviet leadership considered the race lost to the US and didn't want to put up any second place missions that would be seen by the masses as proof that communism wasn't as good as capitalism. They came out with the party line that they were never in the race to begin with and were focusing on safe development of space station technologies. This is why the N-1 launch disasters were classified for so many years.<br /><br />Korolev was ready to go with a plan for a two launcher mission, putting up a lander and the Block D transtage on one launcher and the Soyuz on another when the moon missions were cancelled.<br /><br />The big problem with the Zond capsule missions was that the crew were basically passengers. All mission functions were handled by automation and simply could not be taken over by manual control. This is in comparison to the US space program where several times, manual override by astronauts prevented either LOM or LOC situations. This includes both Apollos 11 and 13, a Gemini mission, and one of the Mercury missions.<br /><br />The automated controls of the Zond capsules simply could not be relied on when so many people in the workforce were essentially slave labor, and they simply didn't have the technology for that degree of automation.

 

[ace5]

"The automated controls of the Zond capsules simply could not be relied on when so many people in the workforce were essentially slave labor, and they simply didn't have the technology for that degree of automation. "<br /><br />Slave labor at Korolev TSKBM?<br />As far as I know, all TSKBM - the nowadays RKK Energia has naver used slaves. I dont know if the enginners and technicians at there had huge salaries, but certainly people there worked for the genuine interest of putting a Soviet citizen in the Moon.<br />Name them as slaves is ridiculous.

 

[mlorrey]

Were they free to sell their labor on the free market and decide their own career path? No. In the Soviet Union, a persons career was determined by the state, their employment was determined by the state, and their pay was determined by the state. People who dissented against the system or simply displeased the regime due to failures often wound up in concentration camps north of the arctic circle. The only difference between that condition and slaving on a plantation in the pre-Civil War Southern US is that the slave owner in this case was a government and not private individuals. This is not an attack on their acheivements, but explains much of the poor quality of the automation, the slower rate of technological advancement, etc.<br /><br />Does ace5 deny, for example, that the jews who built the V-2 rockets on an assembly line underground in Nazi Germany were slaves? The only difference between the jewish slaves of WWII and the Soviet slaves of the Cold War was that the Soviet slaves were easily motivated by propaganda and were not singled out as inferior as the jews were. The facts are that the Soviets, from 1930-1970, had exterminated many times more people than the Nazis ever did, somewhere in the range of 20-40 million people. Were the Soviet people slaves? Yes.

 

[danwoodard]

Soyuz (the spacecraft) has been in production about 40 years, not 65, being significantly different from the earlier Vostok and Voskhod. Apollo is generally similar to Soyuz except for the slightly higher lift-to-drag ratio, which provides a greater crossrange and lower peak G on entry. The lack of an orbital module in the CEV would be compensated for somewhat by the presence of a separate lunar module.<br /><br />The biggest difference is that even today the Soyuz is far less expensive. It may be an exaggeration, but the Russians claimed the $20 million fee for a passenger flight to the ISS paid for the launch. Of course NASA is being asked to pay more. There was even talk at one time of building a Soyuz pad at the Cape. Russian engineers are not slaves today, but they earn much less than a US engineer would accept.

 

[mlorrey]

I never said Soyuz was in production 65 years. Where did you get that from? The facts are that the "Zond" missions were unmanned Soyuz capsules being tested. Soviet leadership took extra care not to waste human lives on their test flights not for care for the human lives, but care for the negative impact on their regime, particularly as this followed quite a number of reports in papers across europe of Vostok and Voskhod missions being launched that stranded men in high orbit, unable to reenter, due to some Italian ham radiomen reporting recording receiving transmissions from such.<br /><br />It is true that the Soyuz is far less expensive, and by this time has had all its kinks worked out, but that is a different topic. We were discussing whether there were any vehicles capable of going to the moon in production today. The Soyuz is in fact capable of it, it was designed for that mission specifically, both in the working space being made available for long duration missions, and the reentry shield being capable of handling direct reentry from a translunar trajectory.<br /><br />In this, the Chinese were smart to use the Soyuz design, and scale it up a little. The Shenzou is also capable of handling a translunar mission, and they even added some low tech innovation: their heat shield is or was, wetted wood (the pores acting as an active cooling system).<br /><br />The CEV may be an attempt by NASA to gain some of the operational cost savings that capsule systems provide over the STS, but they are going about it all wrong, taking a good idea and spending good engineering time figuring out how to make it more expensive and difficult to maintain: i.e. to employ the whole standing army of NASA. I predict that CEV's cost/lb in orbit will not fall below that of the STS.

 

[CalliArcale]

<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>Slave labor at Korolev TSKBM?<p><hr /></p></p></blockquote><br /><br />Well, I can name one person who was essentially a slave there. Sergei Korolev. Strange but true. <br /><br />Part of Stalin's legacy is that many of the finest Soviet aerospace engineers were nearly killed in the gulags before being pulled out and put in a position where their talents could be of use. We'll probably never know how many more brilliant engineers weren't as lucky. This was almost certainly a factor in their loss of the moon race. It was definitely a factor in Korolev's early death; he was in very poor health after his time in Siberia. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><font color="#666699"><em>"People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly . . . timey wimey . . . stuff."</em>  -- The Tenth Doctor, "Blink"</font></p> </div>

 

[ace5]

"Part of Stalin's legacy is that many of the finest Soviet aerospace engineers were nearly killed in the gulags before being pulled out and put in a position where their talents could be of use. We'll probably never know how many more brilliant engineers weren't as lucky. This was almost certainly a factor in their loss of the moon race. It was definitely a factor in Korolev's early death; he was in very poor health after his time in Siberia. "<br /><br />Yes, calli, you pointed it right -- as always you do!<br /><br />Korolev "enjoyed" a time in a stalin gulag. But he was a political prisioner of that time.<br /><br />But tell the 50´s and 60´s workers at TSKBM as "slaves" is ridiculous, and in fact shows that the person who writes such a nonsense is not very well informed.<br />There are no propaganda-driven slaves. You are a slave when you are obliged to work in a place when you DONT WANT to be there.<br /><br />Or was Gennady Strekalov, who worked and the old Sputnik factory in a minor function (he used to make solding and metal-molding duties) a slave?<br /><br />He later became cosmonaut and was part of the crew of Soyuz T-8 and T-10A.<br /><br />Give me a brake. Lets talk seriously, without political prejudices...

 

[j05h]

>I appreciate Astronautic as a valuable resource and all of the hard work that goes in to it, but I think Mark Wade has a bug up his butt because NASA didn't give him a shiny new space plane to play with.<br /><br />Largely agree, but have to emphasize Mark's contribution to the community. He obviously has some opinions on the CEV, his site however is epic.<br /><br />Josh <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <div align="center"><em>We need a first generation of pioneers.</em><br /></div> </div>

 

[ace5]

astronautix is a wonderful site.

 

[tomnackid]

Astronautix is awesome, I don't know where Mr. Wade gets the time and energy. As a scientific illustrator I especially appreciate the quality of the artwork. I just think Mr. Wades largely negative and--the only word I can think of to describe it is "whiny"--article on the CEV was beneath him. He is better than that.

 

[mlorrey]

It is the job of the fourth estate to expose and denounce fraud, waste, abuse, corruption, tyranny and stupidity in government. In this respect, Mark Wade does an excellent job and is someone I highly respect even if I do not agree with him all the time.

 

[gunsandrockets]

"NASA extensively studied the 3 piece capsule design for Apollo and came to the conclusion that it provided a little extra room at the cost of a lot more weight, complications with abort modes, and unneeded redundancy. "<br /><br />That's an interesting piece of data. What is your source?<br /><br />It's all the more interesting considering it contradicts the information available on the General Electric proposal for a three-module Apollo configuration. The G.E. Soyuz-style spacecraft was both lighter and roomier than the version of Apollo finally chosen by NASA.<br /><br />http://www.astronautix.com/articles/wastolen.htm<br /><br />http://www.astronautix.com/craft/apolocsm.htm<br /><br />http://www.astronautix.com/craft/soy7klok.htm<br /><br /> <br />

 

[mlorrey]

Not surprised. NASA is the champion of making up fake excuses for choosing the contractor who has the most parts and assemblies made in the most possible congressional districts.

 

[tomnackid]

That's an interesting piece of data. What is your source? <br />------------------------------------------------------------------------<br />Mainly from an interview with Max Faget on this site (The interview text can be found in other places as well):<br /><br />http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4223/ch14.htm<br /><br />I never said (and Faget never says) that the 3-piece design isn't roomier overall--it is, and that it doesn't result in a lighter DECENT module--it does. But those were only some of the considerations in the overall design.<br /><br />"[359] This started off to be a very attractive idea but as we went through our own studies and the contractors went through their studies it became clear that less and less things were going on in that mission module, and everything that was vital for one reason or another also was vital during entry so you either did it twice, once in the mission module and again in the command module, or you did it once in the command module. So it seems that the mission module was turning out to provide nothing but extra room. There were no systems and no particular activity that anyone really wanted to carry out in the mission module other than to stretch out and perhaps get a little sleep. The consequence of this was that it didn't look like it was worthwhile to have a mission module. So in the final analysis we ended up with a single cabin version. You might have noticed that the Russians ended up going into something very close to our two-compartment vehicle that we were considering. I don't know where they got their ideas, but it might have been from us. We made no secret of these considerations."<br /><br />This interview goes into great detail about all the unknowns surrounding a reentry from Lunar distances and Faget even points out some of the decisions he made that turned out to be errors in hindsight, like covering the conical portion of the capsule with ablative mater

 

[mlorrey]

Your problem, tomnackid, is that the CEV is NOT the Apollo. Sure, it looks kinda like it, but that really means squat from an engineering and systems point of vew. The CEV is an entirely new bird and will require being proven capable in and of itself. The design looking like Apollo is PR fluff, to bring back to NASA the pre-Shuttle public trust.<br /><br />A CEV has not yet even circumnavigated the moon. The Soyuz has done so several times. A CEV has not yet orbited, hundreds of Soyuz have orbited. A CEV has not yet demonstrated its escape system. The Soyuz has done so several times sucessfully.<br /><br />Treating the CEV like the Apollo is like Dan Quayle's aspirations to be another JFK: the CEV is no Apollo. I was alive back then, and I remember. The CEV is no Apollo.

 

[tomnackid]

Your problem, tomnackid, is that the CEV is NOT the Apollo. Sure, it looks kinda like it, but that really means squat from an engineering and systems point of vew. The CEV is an entirely new bird and will require being proven capable in and of itself. The design looking like Apollo is PR fluff, to bring back to NASA the pre-Shuttle public trust.<br />------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br />The CEV doesn't not simply "look kinda like Apollo". Read the Architecture studies. The whole point of using the Apollo shape was to be able to use as much of the Apollo CM data that already exists as possible. And yes, that data does mean A LOT from an engineering standpoint. Saying that the shape "means squat" makes me question your knowledge of engineering in the first place. <br /><br />Its not "PR fluff" if anything going with the Apollo shape (as opposed to Lockheed's spiffy lifting body) was a triumph of engineering and sound economics over PR. <br /><br />Yes some Soyuz's have circumnavigated the moon. So what. There is a big step between sending stripped down (they had no orbital modules) Soyuz around the moon (some of which failed) and landing men on it and bringing them back safely. The Soyuz has never done it.<br /><br />Also, you get no points for being alive during Apollo. So was I. So we are both old, big deal. That and 2 bucks will get you a coffee at Satrbucks. <br /><br />I'm not even quite sure what the whole point of your argument is anymore. Ae you saying that we should just scrap any plans of building spacecraft in the US and just buy Russian Soyuzs for the rest of eternity? Is the Soyuz really the zenith (no pun intended) of spacecraft design that can never be improved upon? Do you just have a knee jerk response to criticize anything that comes from, is endorsed by or has ever been studied by NASA? NASA deserves criticism, no doubt, but to just blindly dismiss everything makes no more sense than blindly accepting everything