russian reliability

[extropiandreams]

i just watched the last progress docking, they launch on time, they dock on time, it's really amazing. since we live in a globalized world, wouldn't it better to rely on their experience and to use their know how in rocket engines and docking systems. i mean there are russian companies investing in the us today, they have currency reserves above 417 billion plus a stabilization fund of about 127 billion, should we not work together. with russia we could fly to the moon and mars far cheaper. the us has 9 trillion dollars in debt, if the western world would like to beat china - russia would be the right joice. they have money and the know how. they have engines like the rd-170, or the rd-0120, they know docking better than everybody else, i believe we should work together with them.

 

[docm]

First; the US economy is over $13.13 trillion/year. Russias is a pimple by comparison; $1.7 trillion. Even counting our deficit of ~$200 billion/yr out of a $3 trillion budget (.07 %, far better than most household budgets) there is no comparison.<br /><br />Yes. Russia has cash assets but they also have huge pending liabilities. These include a dwindling population, partially due to systemic alcoholism and an adult HIV infection rate approaching 10%. <br /><br />Before 2050 they might not have the human resources to defend their territory without the use of nukes. Think about the possible scenarios & see if you have nightmares tonight.<br /><br />Then there are the political problems associated with their support of rogue nations like Syria, Iran, North Korea etc. with arms and nuke technologies. Not helpful.<br /><br />No to mention Putin and his former KGB buddies look to be sprinting back to Stalinism as if it were an Olympic event.<br /><br />Cooperate? Sure.<br /><br />Become even close to dependent on them, especially for space access? A VERY bad idea.<br /><br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[sorehed]

Yeah, they're pretty good at docking, after all it's not like they're a bunch of rookies. They are far from perfect, though. Remember, it was only a few years ago that they nearly wiped out their own space station with a botched docking attempt.

 

[gunsandrockets]

<Cooperate? Sure. Become even close to dependent on them, especially for space access? A VERY bad idea.><br /><br />Exactly right. <br /><br />

 

[thereiwas]

That botched docking attempt was done under manual control from inside Mir, instead of the usual automatic docking. The Soyuz auto-dock feature has proven to be quite reliable.

 

[extropiandreams]

Yes russia has a lot of problems. But the birth rate is rising, and the death rate is getting lower, this year looking very good. russia now has a higher birthrate than a lot of western european countries. More and more people from the cis are going to russia. In the first half of the year the economy grew by 7.8 %. The HIV rate is not at 10 %, that's simple a lie. The us has a giant trade deficit, if the other countries stop investing the us economy has a huge problem. it's only a question of time before the us economy crashes. Look at the housing market, which nearly caused a banking crises in germany.<br /><br />Most hardware is allready build in asia, so i believe the us allready relies on other countries. As russia is the worlds largest energy exporter, we allready need them anyway. One could buy engines in large batches, like the rd-180.<br /><br />There's talk again about klipper and the moon. This time from the rsa, not energia.i will post if i get some information abaout it.

 

[holmec]

Russia has been lending its technology to other entities. China bought soyuz tech from russia to make their manned ship, SpaceX claims it took some lessons learned from RSA. ESA made its ATV based on the Soyuz service module. So the knowledge is out there. <br /><br />You can see how much flak NASA is getting in just making a new space ship modeled after Apollo. If it made a space ship modeled after Soyuz, there would be just as much if not more flak. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><font color="#0000ff"><em>"SCE to AUX" - John Aaron, curiosity pays off</em></font></p> </div>

 

[vgorelik]

I am afraid that there is a tendency among some on this forum to view the realities through a prism of their biased perceptions... Here is a CIA link: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/rs.html; check the HIV/AIDS – it is 1.1% NOT 10%. And here some latest forecasts: http://www.spacewar.com/reports/Is_Russia_One_Of_The_Richest_Countries_999.html <br /><br />I think that the real objective of space exploration is to preserve and expand the humanity – this is not what a single country can do. We need to forget about our petty differences if we want to survive as species. More to that, I think that military-industrial complexes of US, Russia, China, etc. can be retooled from weapons (in search of wars) manufacturing to space explorations. The problem to this transition is a culture of fear that is maintained by some politicians and their support groups to keep feeding tax $$ into these wasteful industries. I think that fears, or rather awareness, of extinction due to overpopulation, overheating, diseases and yes – a comet strike one day in the future should be communicated to the public justifying such retooling. This awareness will be much more beneficial to the human kind. <br />

 

[holmec]

<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>I am afraid that there is a tendency among some on this forum to view the realities through a prism of their biased perceptions... Here is a CIA link<p><hr /></p></p></blockquote><br /><br />Way to prove your point, vgorelik! I guess your one of us now. LOL!<br /><br />["You underestimate the power of the Dark Side." Darth Vader, Star Wars: The Return of the Jedi]<br /><br />(if your using a CIA link, your probably looking at things through a "prism of your own biased perceptions". <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><font color="#0000ff"><em>"SCE to AUX" - John Aaron, curiosity pays off</em></font></p> </div>

 

[docm]

The CIA is not a medical research group.<br /><br />Recent UN reports say testing is way down and infection rates are spiraling, a bad sign since in most countries the demographic tends to be older. <br /><br />Another problem is in their reporting system, which even Russian epidemiologists say gives numbers that are off by a factor of 4-10. This report gives them the benefit of the doubt using 2% of the populace in 2003, IMO a rosy scenario.<br /><br />In my original post I was referring to a projection for 2010 made by the TPAA in 2003, which is unfortunately looking prophetic, so "approaching 10%" is accurate. Given how things are going it'll be there or damned close to it.<br /><br />Also; a 1% infection rate is a "tripwire" above which HIV speeds up its spread through a population, so even that 1.1% number is bad news.<br /> <br /><blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p><b>10 Percent Russian Adults May Have AIDS By 2010</b><br /><br />Transatlantic Partners Against AIDS<br /><br />9-16-03<br /><br />Russia's HIV/AIDS Epidemic: Status And Outlook<br /> <br />Russia has recently emerged as a new epicenter in the global HIV/AIDS pandemic, with one of the world's highest rates of new infection. As of August 2003, there have been more than 245,000 officially diagnosed cases of HIV infection in Russia, over 80 percent of which were reported in the last three years. It is widely acknowledged, however, that Russia's official statistics represent only a fraction of the actual number of HIV-infected Russians; most experts estimate that the true number is somewhere between 1.5 million and 2 million citizens, or over 2 percent of the adult population.<br /> <br />Epidemiologists warn that up to 8 million Russians - over 10 percent of the adult population - could be infected by 2010, under worst-case scenarios. The epidemic is growing fastest among young people aged 15-30, the very same group that should be leading Rus</p></blockquote> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[vgorelik]

I don’t think that this forum is a good place to discuss infectious disease and their impact on society.<br /><br />If you dream about Russia’s demise and it’s disappearance from the face of the planet and want to use 2003 “Transatlantic Partners Against AIDS†analysis/opinion as a proof for that – HALLELUJAH to you, but I will not bet on it! However, somehow I don’t think that this is relevant – I think, and hope that Russians will find their way out of this crisis.<br /><br />The real point is – what can be done to preserve and expand the humanity? I think that the only solution is space exploration and, as mentioned previously, any single country cannot do it effectively. We need the dedication of major industrial nations to succeed. <br />

 

[docm]

I was rebutting, and believe me I don't "dream" for this. I have Russian blood in these veins and people there I care for. IMO it's a potentially nightmare scenario for us all and sticking our heads in the sand helps not. <br /><br />As for its place in this thread; the question posed is Russia's reliability or lack of same. An HIV pandemic there affects the economy, social and political fabric and by extension the "reliability" of the government to keep its commitments. Far weaker forces have caused societies to implode. <br /><br />Because of these forces I feel that cooperation is OK but depending on them is not. Not saying <i>why</i> would have garnered criticism too, so I'm damned either way <img src="/images/icons/tongue.gif" /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[mithridates]

I think it's a good forum for that discussion. I'm always trying to shift the discussion towards greater demographic and economic trends and what effects these will have on space exploration in the future. That's why I think one of the best ways to contribute to space exploration is simply to work towards greater literacy, health and so on throughout the world, as the more of that we have the more people we will have that are able to think about things besides simple survival, and if that happens to include an interest in space that's great.<br /><br />I'm also interested in intra-linguistic cooperation, another way to share knowledge. Every once in a while you see a story where a scientist or other person has invented or discovered something that goes unnoticed because the work hasn't been translated yet or even worse, mistranslated. A Japanese scientist way back when failed to get the Nobel Prize because of that. It'll be interesting to see if Turkic-speaking nations will be able to form a kind of literary alliance that'll enable them to use their languages for higher purposes in the sciences and whatnot. Kazakhstan will hopefully be switching over to the Latin alphabet in a few years and that'll help. So will peace negotiations between Armenia and Azerbaijan.<br /><br />This may sound off-topic, but it's not. Imagine for example a scenario where Canada and the US were technically at war over a silly land dispute and never shared technology and research between the two, what a waste that would be. The more of the world we can make like the US-Canada-Europe-Japan and so on, the better. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p>----- </p><p>http://mithridates.blogspot.com</p> </div>

 

[vgorelik]

Docm, I accept your conciliatory note. It looks to me that extropiandreams was referring to reliability of specific technologies and how everybody can benefit from sharing the best and not repeating the worst, but somehow the discussion slipped into the national pride arguments. Btw, I am an American of a Russian/Jewish heritage and I am very concerned about space exploration and the problems that we have here in US. I am not sure which problem is more devastating – HIV/AIDS in Russia or obesity in US? Russia has infrastructure problems and we have the similar problems here – remember aging high pressure steam line exploding in Manhattan and recent bridge collapse? But I think that we need to concentrate on a bigger picture.

 

[MeteorWayne]

If this discussion continues to drift from the "Mission and Launches" subject of the forum, it might be time to move it.<br /><br />It's up to the posters, I suspect. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#000080"><em><font color="#000000">But the Krell forgot one thing John. Monsters. Monsters from the Id.</font></em> </font></p><p><font color="#000080">I really, really, really, really miss the "first unread post" function</font><font color="#000080"> </font></p> </div>

 

[haywood]

I agree.<br />This is drifting way off-topic.<br />

 

[qso1]

We are working with them on ISS to a large extent. The fact that Progress vehicles have been servicing ISS and Souz serves as the ISS crew rescue vehicle as well as crew ferry attests to that.<br /><br />If we eliminated NASA tomorrow, the budget wouldn't even feel it for more than a few minutes. 9 trillion vs 16 billion...I don't even need to bother doin the math. Besides, how will we gain experience if we let the Russians do all the work? <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><strong>My borrowed quote for the time being:</strong></p><p><em>There are three kinds of people in life. Those who make it happen, those who watch it happen...and those who do not know what happened.</em></p> </div>

 

[erioladastra]

"The Soyuz auto-dock feature has proven to be quite reliable. "<br /><br />The Kurs system, used for both Soyuz and Progress, is fairly reliable. But 1) it is not perfect and sometimes have to be manually overridden and 2) not the only link in the chain. Just this year we have had problems in 2 of the last 4 Progress vehicles. Progress 22P (In ISS notation) failed to retract one of its Kurs antenna and was rammed into ISS. A special EVA had to go out and cut it free. It could have done more damage to the hull. Just last week, 24P did not perform its automatic seperation burn. You can make the same thing a 100 times and you will still get glitches. <br /><br />Also, you still have man in the process. The botched Mir attempt was using humans to test something. Even a perfect system (if one exists) can go wrong then.

 

[halman]

extropiandreams,<br /><br />This is an excellent idea, which I have proposed here myself. The United States is going to be without manned launch capability for several years IF the Aries rocket works, and much longer if it doesn't. Someone said that we should work with the Russians, but not to depend upon them. Can we depend upon ourselves? My impression recently is that the U. S. space program is hanging by a thread, and any major setback could end it entirely. There is no sense of urgency, no sense of beating swords into plowshares by diverting the military-industrial complex away from promoting wars, and no sense of pride.<br /><br />To spend money building a rocket which duplicates existing launch vehicles makes absolutely no sense to me, when that money could be spent on the hardware that we will need once we make it to the Moon. Working with the Russians, spending American dollars on Russian hardware, accepting that we can be great without having to be great all by ourselves, acting as true citizens of the world, this is how I have envisioned the next 20 years or so. Russia and the United States are both facing serious problems, which threaten their ability to mount a high-tech, long-term program.<br /><br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> The secret to peace of mind is a short attention span. </div>

 

[holmec]

I hear your concern.<br /><br />But bear in mind that if all else fails the US would probably purchase Soyuz flights. Soyuz will be launching from Ariane's space port soon and maybe that scurries around any previous treaty from the cold war era. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><font color="#0000ff"><em>"SCE to AUX" - John Aaron, curiosity pays off</em></font></p> </div>

 

[vgorelik]

Bravo halman!!!