Roscosmos Planetary Exploration Missions

Hole wrote:I wonder what Musk is doing to prevent taxpayer money to go up in flames. Looking at his record I would say...nothing.

There are musktards arguing with me that Russia is not on the level of creating Starship. They could be on a level above the starship if they continued with UR-700 to UR-900 but they have reasons cancelling that to go nuclear. While the US for stupid reasons cancelled NERVA to not be on a good pace in nuclear propulsion technology.

thegopnik wrote:There are musktards arguing with me that Russia is not on the level of creating Starship. They could be on a level above the starship if they continued with UR-700 to UR-900 but they have reasons cancelling that to go nuclear. While the US for stupid reasons cancelled NERVA to not be on a good pace in nuclear propulsion technology.

"Starship" is nothing but a Muskian con-job. This fucking idiot really thinks that he will send his flying silo to the Moon??? or Mars???

Gimmee a break... Has he invented a new set of physical laws????

Consider Apollo. The Saturn 5 launcher was needed just to get a ~29T spacecraft up out of the gravity well and into lunar orbit. By the time the crew returned to earth they only had a few % of the launch mass remaining, but Musk and his legion of fuktard True Believers think they are going to return the complete Crapship to a controlled landing, ready to refuel and fly again??? How is he going to carry all the fuel needed to lift the Crapship up to lunar orbit (along with all the passengers and their supplies & equipment)???

How is he going to deal with thermal loading from re-entry when returning from a lunar trajectory? Lunar capsules require reinforced (ie heavy) ablative sheilding, but this charlatan thinks he will stick on a few lightweight "high tech" (??) heat shields and all will be just fine and dandy???

FFS, just extrapolate the above to Mars. He thinks that Crapship will be able to carry enough chemical fuel to leave earth orbit, arrive at Mars, and then perform a largely powered landing cuz he won't have chutes and the tenuous Martian atmosphere lends sod all braking support????? He is going to use Methalox and try to manage propellent boil-off over a 7-month flight???

Where is he getting fuel to make the return trip? let me guess... he is going to use solar cells to power a plant to harness martian subsurface ice, electrolyse it into H2 and O2, then liquefy and store it as rocket fuels. Hmmm... yeah.... we have fuck tons of frozen water at our planets poles and to my knowledge, no-one makes rocket fuel this way, but Musk thinks this is a going concern and will stake the lives of a prospective crew and passengers on it???

What about radiation hazard? Solar radiation flux outside Earths magnetosphere is ~6x that within. 7 months of interplanetary cruise results in a radiation exposure equivalent to 3.5 YEARS on the ISS, and that's not even considering exposure at Mars or the return journey. Will he allocate sufficient mass (lead) for a radiation shelter for the dozens of unfortunate (and suicidal) souls that he wants to pack into his doomed ego-trip missions???

Nah, Musk is a FUCKING CHARLATAN. He takes other peoples IP and claims it as his own. His reusable rocket tech was based on the groundwork performed by NASA. The US gov sold it off to him as part of their ideological campaign against anything that even smells like public ownership, then handed over BILLIONS of public money thru no-bid contracts at inflated prices to provide him with free development capital. The experts who did the groundwork left NASA and joined his start-up, but Musk wants you to think that he did it all, and that's its all a triumph of "private enterprise".

The "miracle" of "private space" is a con-job. The profitable space activities (ie commsats and rocket building) have been privatised for DECADES already. ISS-related activities CONSUME money, it doesn't generate any net revenue as nothing it produces has any significant commercial value. Musks ISS launch services only exists as a business while the US gov continues to spend. "Space tourism" isn't going to amount to anything significant as its little more than a way to make pocket chnage from an existing but underutiised flight capability. When the US economy eventually goes tits-up, their manned space program will come to a grinding halt and there is ZERO chance that private capital will reach into their pockets to fund meaningless activities that burn money faster than a gas-fired brick-lined furnace...

"Private Space" will go the way of the "Shale Miracle". Its a fundamentally flawed confidence game by charlatans that relies on the abject stupidity of the uninformed public, and the connivance of "journalists" who seek no more than a regular paycheck by spruiking for those who run the shell game.

You do have a point because the Keldysh was concerned about radiation, for example they found it very wasteful to make several meter lead walls but trying to find ways to reduce weight regarding the creation of material. Even if we were to give Space X the benefit of a doubt on landing on Mars, I doubt anything chemical rocket related would be helpful regarding further space travel like landing astronauts on Jupiter's moon Ganymede.

I have been sounding like an uninformed dumbass this entire week, but I take it that this nuklon contract is different from their proposed Mars mission correct? Or there already has been a signed contract for the mars mission, meaning the nuklon contract is completely different right?

In my opinion every country in the world should be sucking Russia's dick(not literally) and be doing everything in their power as in financial and resources support for that country's space agency. I want projects like launching a vityaz submarine drone to explore the ocean of Enceladus in search of underwater life, etc. Make something similar to breakthrough starshot, etc.

thegopnik wrote:I have been sounding like an uninformed dumbass this entire week, but I take it that this nuklon contract is different from their proposed Mars mission correct? Or there already has been a signed contract for the mars mission, meaning the nuklon contract is completely different right?

I think you'll find that the vehicle that Arsenal are building is a technology demonstrator (its clearly not a mock-up), a lower-powered version, probably intended for launch in a few years to prove the basic technology (reactor, cooling system, electrical power system, ion engines, flight controls etc).  The contract intended to be signed this year would be for the full 1MW vehicle.  Indications are that the tech demonstrator and upper stage will be approx 25T, so I won't be surprised if it is launched once the Angara pad is complete at Vostochny and the A-5M certification flights are complete.

Yep, I think its a dead-set certainty that the 2030 mission to Moon, Venus and Callisto won't be the first TEM that gets launched.  All eggs in one (untested) basket is simply too much technical risk.  

In the case of ion propulsion, some medium gas is needed, which is heated by the reactor and ejected from the space stack through the engine nozzles. How long can this gas be used for?