Space Flight Videos

Nice vids Aramonik.

This is a short vid of a Proton launch.



And this is a nice clear shot of another Proton launch where the camera follows the rocket and doesn't get knocked over from the blast:

this guy's work is 2nd to none

It is a nice animation but such a shame the flying model has a Su-27 canopy instead of the side by side seating Su-34 canopy shown in the drawing used.

BTW I have read about a proposed nuclear powered rocket that the Russians are developing to use as a sort of space tug that can take spacecraft from earth orbit to Mars and back or can be used to scoop up some of the space junk in orbit around the earth and deal with all the dead satellites and paint chips and booster rocket material.
This is not even developed yet but have you seen any animations or mockups around the place. I don't speak or read Russian so my sources are very limited.

BTW2 thanks for the vids.

Interesting video of the saucer shaped airships.

Airships are out of fashion mainly because of the vivid film footage of the Hnidenberg exploding.

The thing is that today with modern materials a modern airship can be light and strong and non flammable.

In fact a very large airship with lots of internal bags of helium would actually be a very difficult thing to bring down.

Traditionally an airship could be brought down with a few incendiary bullets from an MG but they ignited the hydrogen and set the aluminium structure alight. (powdered aluminium is used to make the bright sparks in fireworks and is added to HE to make High Explosive Incendiary that burns hotter and longer than standard HE.

With a modern carbon fibre helium airship you would need to repeatedly hit the airship with lots of missiles to deflate enough internal airbags to make the airship descend. Even then it wont burn well so it would actually be rather more resistant to battle damage than a conventional large aircraft.

Transporting heavy material where there are no roads or rails is one use and at the other end you could fit a large airship with enormous radar antenna and fly it in the upper atmosphere... say 40,000m or higher. It could even carry 100s of AAMs it could use to defend itself. It could have onboard crew facilities that allow 24/7 operation for weeks... especially with solar panels providing station keeping energy.

Regarding the PAK DA video... it is very nice but the flying wing model with the swing wings is the old T-4M design. This was one of the designs considered before the Tu-160 design was adopted so it has already lost to the Tu-160 design once. There must have been reasons not to use it before and it is a question as to whether those reasons still apply as to its chances now.

Nice Vids Aramonik, thanks for posting.

I read in an article about Russian airships being sold to China with radars fitted to them that the Russian airships had diesel engines inside and they could be used to heat up the gas inside the airship to give it more lift. It also had a system of condensing water from the exhaust as the fuel is burnt.

If you think about it all airships in flight weight the same as the air they are displacing which lets them float. They can fly up or down with engine thrust, but they can also rise or descend by gaining or losing weight, or gaining or losing lift.

If you think about it losing weight is easy... burning diesel fuel to run engines will lose weight as the diesel is burned. Some of that weight can be recovered by condensing the water and storing it as ballast, but you can also make the lost weight worse by increasing lift by heating the lifting gasses.

I think a good solution would be to have in the centre a large bag of Hydrogen gas with a fuel cell power source. As you burn diesel fuel and get lighter you can compensate by feeding the hydrogen into the fuel cell to create electricity and store the by product of water as ballast to compensate for the used diesel. The electricity generated by the fuel cell can be stored or used... if you store it then it can be used to convert the water back into hydrogen using the fuel cell to increase lift if you suddenly start needing lift like if you start to get covered in ice.

The alternative is to release lifting gas and while hydrogen is cheap helium is not so this little hydrogen/fuel cell combination is an excellent solution to a serious problem.

Obviously also having solar cells and using electric drives will also deal with the problem but all weather diesel engines are useful too.

The balloons sold to China contained large radar antennas and the airships themselves could be tethered to the ground and operate at altitudes from 2000-4000m in height for periods of up to 25 days with power supplied through the tether rope.

In addition to radar surveillance it could also operate as a radio relay station for up to 100,000 square kms and was much cheaper than a satellite and offered more time on station than any other aircraft.

Arrgh... you are torturing me!!!

Nephew is down to stay for the School holidays and he has been playing world of warcraft and I am down to dial up speed till the end of the month.

I'll tell you what I think of the vids then...

Thanks for finding them and posting them BTW.

Thanks Aramonik.

This is bad for my ego... but a while back on some space related thread I think I mentioned how useless dead weight legs are for people in space. When you are weightless your legs are useless.
If out in the open space of the cabin of the ISS unable to reach anything to grab onto to pull yourself where you want to go the only thing you can do is use your hands to swim... kicking your legs would offer negligible propulsion and would be a waste of energy. When you are near a surface and you want to move to a specific place you use your hands to grab the surface and push yourself away in the direction you want to go so again your legs are useless.
When moving around your legs simply make you longer and add mass to reduce acceleration and deceleration. Note in orbit of the earth there is gravity but you don't notice it because the ship and everything in it including crew are all falling at the same rate so it appears to be without gravity. Without gravity there is no such thing as weight because everything is weightless. There is still mass however.
This robot has no legs because it has no use for legs in a weightless environment.
If we fly a mission to Mars and all the crew are going down to the Mars surface then legs will be useful in getting around on the surface, but if there is a crewman that will stay in orbit and not land then it would make sense to choose that crewman from a group of candidates with no legs as they will not need them and it will benefit the mission for them to not have the encumbrance of legs on the mission.
It sounds harsh, but I actually think a person who has lost their legs would absolutely love a zero gravity environment as it would suit them much more than the conditions on Earth where gravity reduces their mobility, the zero gravity of space will make them more mobile and agile than someone with legs.

I hope when the decisions are made for crews to go to Mars are made that which ever agency is involved has the guts to make this sort of decision. I think it would be great to see someone with no legs go up to the ISS just to test this properly.

I am sure they would get a lot of volunteers.