The program for the development of near-earth space must be prepared anew
The most promising way of exploring near space, without a doubt, remains aerospace systems, which have significant advantages over the traditional rocket method of delivering payload to near-earth orbit.
The aerospace system differs from the rocket and space system in that it uses a reusable subsonic, supersonic or hypersonic aircraft as the first stage, and sometimes the second. Probably, you do not need to be seven inches in your forehead to understand: using an aircraft instead of the first stage allows you to make launches more economical (the rocket, in addition to fuel, also carries an oxidizer, which the aircraft engines take from the atmosphere). But there are other benefits as well. I will name some of them. Let's start with reusability. The aerospace system allows all of its components to be used repeatedly. As a result, the economy of starts is significantly increased. Another important advantage is the ability to start from any point, since the first stage of the carrier can also reach the equator in order to launch there. The proximity to zero parallel creates a sling effect, when an object launched into space receives additional energy from the rotation of the Earth.
Remembrance of the future
“Modern rocket and space vehicles are relatively expensive, have insufficient carrying capacity, and take a long time to prepare for a launch. All spacecraft (manned and unmanned) are now being launched into space using disposable launch vehicles. Complex spaceships are also designed for just one flight.
Is it possible to reconcile, for example, with the fact that a large ocean liner, under construction for several years, is intended for a single voyage? And in astronautics this is exactly the case.
Take, for example, the American Saturn 5 launch vehicle, which provided Apollo missions to the Moon. This giant, more than 100 meters high and weighing almost three thousand tons, actually ceased to exist a few minutes after the start. The victorious road of cosmonautics is littered with burnt-out fragments of rockets, blocks of spaceships and satellites thrown into orbits.
This disposability of technology turns into a serious brake on the further development of astronautics and space research. At first, when there were not so many launches, and the research was not on such a large scale, this could be tolerated. In the future, such waste will become impossible, wrote the pilot-cosmonaut of the USSR V. A. Shatalov at the dawn of the exploration of near-earth space.
So why aren't aerospace systems evolving? No, they are just actively developing, but not here.
For space tourism purposes, suborbital aerospace systems Space Ship One and Space Ship Two have been developed in recent years. Space Ship One has completed several suborbital flights. Space Ship Two is in the flight test phase.
What are our achievements? The Spiral aerospace system began to be developed back in 1964. It consisted of an orbital aircraft that was to be launched into space by a hypersonic booster, and then a rocket stage into orbit. It was developed at the A. I. Mikoyan Design Bureau. The chief designer of the system was G. E. Lozino-Lozinsky, later the chief designer of NPO Molniya, which created the Buran spacecraft. There is also a project of the MAKS multipurpose aerospace system, which in its present form was formed as a result of successive design studies carried out under the leadership of Lozino-Lozinsky at NPO Molniya together with related enterprises, industry research institutes and institutes of the Russian Academy of Sciences since the end of the 70s and to the present. But the path from design development to applied use in the current environment seems irresistible.
Who violates the convention
In light of the intensive development of aerospace systems for the entire world community, there is one very serious legal problem that may well put humanity on the brink of a new world war, no worse than the Cuban missile crisis. It is simply formulated: "At what altitude does aviation end and astronautics begin?"
The Chicago Convention on International Civil Aviation recognizes that each State has full and exclusive sovereignty over its airspace and no State aircraft flies over or lands on the territory of another State except with the permission of that State. Space law provides for equal access for all for research or use and does not divide space into any zones. It also excludes the launch of any objects with nuclear weapons or weapons of mass destruction into orbit around the earth, but does not prohibit suborbital flights with such weapons and any flights with conventional weapons. That is, it is possible to put into orbit weapons not prohibited by international law, which will periodically be located over the territory of another state. The trouble is that the altitude relative to the Earth, at which the Chicago Convention ends and space law begins, is not agreed upon.
Russia, like the International Aeronautical Federation (FAI), believes that the border between aviation and space runs 100 kilometers from the planet's surface. In the United States, such a boundary is considered to be 80.45 kilometers (50 miles). In 2006, the US President's National Space Policy Directive was issued, in which the United States renounces any international agreements restricting space activities associated with military programs, and contains the thesis on the right to deny America's adversaries the opportunity to use their space capabilities.
The development of civilian transport and passenger aerospace systems required the solution of their flight safety issues at the UN and ICAO levels. In March 2015, the first joint aerospace symposium of the UN Committee on Outer Space and ICAO was held at ICAO headquarters in Montreal. Russia did not present at it reports with its position. After that, is it necessary to be surprised if Russia's interests are ignored by the world community, which, for the sake of the United States, can make any decision that is unfavorable to us? What are we going to do if a suborbital apparatus of another state flies over our territory at an altitude of 90 kilometers towards Moscow: shoot it down or let it fly quietly over the capital? We must be the initiators of the correct solution of all these issues at the international level from the point of view of Russian interests, and not take an ostrich position and think that everything will resolve by itself or that foreign countries will help us.
Parallel Worlds
Let's return to the question: why are there no projects of aerospace systems in Russia and what needs to be done to implement them? The main and main, in my opinion, the reason is the departmental disunity of aviation and space in the USSR and the Russian Federation. The beginning of this disunity was laid by N. S. Khrushchev, when in 1955 he ordered to withdraw a number of design bureaus and factories from the subordination of the USSR Ministry of Aviation Industry and to form a new Ministry of General Machine Building on their basis. This is how our paths of aircraft and rocketry parted. The real disunity of the two departments manifested itself even during the joint work on the Energia-Buran project. I remember well how, after one of the meetings, the workers of the Design Bureau of the USSR Ministry of General Machinery, which was responsible for the Buran's control system when the orbital plane descended from orbit to an altitude of 20 kilometers, joked that after the ship passed this height, they went to drink champagne, and then let the aviation industry tremble. For the creation of a control system from an altitude of 20 kilometers to the stop of "Buran" on the ground was already responsible for the aircraft instrument-making design bureau … The only thing that to some extent saved then from departmental disunity was the presence of the Military-Industrial Commission under the Council of Ministers of the USSR (MIC), which was directly subordinate to all defense industries, as well as the Ministry of Civil Aviation. It is the coordinating and leading (this is the defining word here) role of the military-industrial complex that became decisive for the successful implementation of the Energia-Buran program.
Speaking about the aviation and rocket and space industries, we can safely say that their management should be carried out by a single state body. Moreover, one that could not only manage them as two parallel worlds, but also create a scientific, design and production alloy of the aviation and rocket and space industries. It may be said that such attempts have already been made to cross a snake with a hedgehog (the Department of the Aviation and Space Industry in the Ministry of Economy of the Russian Federation, and then Rosaviakosmos) and nothing happened. But they also existed for too little time to have time to really change something, and they did not set themselves the task of creating a single one out of two subsectors. Now this should be the main task. After the liquidation of Roskosmos as a government body and the creation of a single state corporation on the basis of it and the URSC, the normal process of state management of the industry will disappear completely. The GC will itself build a policy for the exploration of outer space, draw up plans, determine government orders, carry out research and create a scientific and technical reserve, engage in development and production, conduct launches and investigate incidents in case of their failures. In common parlance, this approach is called "mass grave". After all, there is already more than indicative experience of the UAC, which has been operating since 2006, but has not yet shown itself in anything. I will cite only two excerpts from the UAC annual report for 2007, in which it was planned to “reverse the current trend in the technical equipment of Russian airlines to modernize the fleet using foreign-made aircraft and to ensure the dominance of domestic aircraft production in the period after 2015” and “by 2015 to complete the development work and launch into serial production of the promising front-line aviation complex (PAK FA). " Today, in 2015, everyone can easily assess how close the UAC is to the implementation of the tasks set in 2007. But here at least there is the Ministry of Industry and Trade, which is still trying to implement state regulation. But there will be no control whatsoever over the new Roscosmos corporation.
NASA doesn't sound our way
Or maybe it's still worth seeing how the control of aircraft and space complexes in the United States is going on? The main body of government in the country in the aviation and space industry is the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). It is a federal state agency reporting directly to the Vice President of the United States and responsible for scientific, technical and technological research and achievements in the field of aviation and space, the country's civil space program, as well as for air and outer space exploration. From the point of view of state regulation, NASA simultaneously performs the functions of the Ministry of Aviation Industry and the Ministry of General Affairs of the USSR. In Russia, its analogue was shortly acted by the Rosaviakosmos, created in 1999 and liquidated in 2004. It is NASA that prepares and, after approval by the country's leadership, implements the program and plans for aerospace activities. NASA's aeronautical industry has contributed to aviation for decades. Nearly every aircraft today carries NASA-developed technology to help aircraft fly safer and more efficiently. Aviation research continues to play a vital role in air travel and cargo transportation, driving technology and innovation. This gives the US aviation industry the opportunity to continue to grow and maintain its global competitiveness. NASA includes 17 research and flight test complexes that allow launching spacecraft and aircraft for various purposes. A special place in NASA is occupied by the NASA Security Center (NSC), established in October 2006, created to ensure the implementation of safety requirements and guaranteed fulfillment of the set goals in NASA projects and programs.
Focusing on improving the development of the people, processes, and tools needed to safely and successfully achieve NASA's strategic goals, the NSC has four functional divisions: technology advancement, knowledge base management, auditing and peer review, and accident and disaster investigation assistance.
It is no coincidence that it was in 2006 that ICAO for the first time moved from the concept of aviation safety to the concept of its management. In 2013, ICAO adopted the 19th Annex to the Chicago Convention on International Civil Aviation, which is called "Safety Management". It is now a mandatory standard for global civil aviation. Unfortunately, this provision is poorly fulfilled in the Russian practice of air transportation and is not applied at all in the rocket and space industry.
Numerous private aerospace corporations in the United States are only executors of NASA's programs and plans in the aerospace sector, which are implemented through a government order.
Instruct Zhukovsky
In Russia, there is no government agency for aerospace activities similar to NASA. The Roskosmos state corporation, by its structure, is in principle incapable of playing the same role as NASA in the United States. But we have the opportunity right now to create a similar state governing body.
To do this, it is necessary to amend the federal law "On the National Research Center" Institute named after N. Ye. Zhukovsky "(No. 326-ФЗ dated November 4, 2014) - to entrust the SIC with the functions performed by NASA in the United States, and give it the status of a state body management in the field of aviation and rocket-space industry. It is also necessary to additionally introduce into it all the research institutes of rocket and space orientation (TsNIIMash, etc.), the Vostochny cosmodrome, as well as the LII im. MM Gromov, taking the last out of the KLA.
However, back to the States. Another government agency in the US aerospace industry is the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Its main functions are to regulate civil aviation and commercial aerospace activities to ensure flight safety and environmental impact.
The FAA has an Office of Commercial Space Transportation (AST) whose mission is to protect the population, property, national security, and foreign policy interests of the United States during commercial aerospace launch or re-entry activities, and to facilitate and promotion of aerospace transportation. The FAA will issue commercial aerospace licenses or experimental flight permits only after it determines that an application for a launch or re-entry, launch position, test equipment, structure, or aerospace application will not jeopardize public health, property, American national security, foreign policy interests, or international obligations of the United States. AST licenses spaceports for commercial exploitation. This is analogous to the certification of aerodromes for civil aviation or jointly with the Air Force for commercial use.
In Russia, there is no body analogous to the American FAA. But if the individual functions of the FAA related to the implementation of the Chicago Convention on International Civil Aviation are scattered between the Ministry of Transport of the Russian Federation, Rosaviatsia, Rostransnadzor and the Interstate Aviation Committee, in the field of aerospace such structures are generally absent. Thus, there is no independent state control over the safety of aerospace activities, as, for example, in the United States, in Russia and never has been.
Another US government agency that has a significant impact on the safety of aviation, missile and space flights is the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). The organizational structure of the council consists of subcommittees responsible for investigating safety incidents in aviation, road, sea, rail, pipeline transport and during the transport of hazardous materials, scientific, technical and design work, communications and legislative activities. In addition to emergencies in civil aviation, the NTSB investigates aerospace accidents of great public importance. These include all accidents and disasters of US aerospace vehicles. For example, it was the NTSB who led the investigation into the death of the Space Shuttle in both cases, and is now dealing with the disaster of the Virgin Galactic Space Ship Two suborbital spacecraft.
The main result of the NTSB's work is identifying the causes of the incident and issuing safety recommendations to prevent them in the future. Throughout its history, the council has issued more than 13 thousand recommendations, most of which were accepted by the FAA in whole or in part. The council has no legal authority to implement or enforce its recommendations. The FAA is doing this in aeronautics in the United States. This approach is necessary to ensure that only one agency is responsible for flight safety. But the NTSB has unconditional priority in the investigation of all incidents. The FAA is always involved in investigations, but no more - the NTSB is responsible for them.
There is no government body in Russia similar to the NTSB. Investigation of accidents with civil aircraft is carried out by the IAC, and incidents - by the Federal Air Transport Agency. At the same time, both bodies also simultaneously perform functions to ensure flight safety. This combination contradicts Annexes 13 ("Aircraft Accident Investigation") and 19 ("Safety Management") to the Chicago Convention, which are mandatory for all ICAO members. In the investigation of incidents, accidents and disasters with rocket and space technology, the situation is even worse. This is done by those responsible for development, production, start-up and operation. Naturally, the causes of accidents identified by such investigators in many cases raise serious doubts, which does not contribute to the prevention of emergencies. For example, when investigating the crash of the Falcon aircraft in Vnukovo, the IAC is unlikely to note mistakes in the certification of the Vnukovo airfield and its equipment, which it itself carried out, and the state commission chaired by the first deputy head of Roscosmos, responsible for the development, production and launch of a carrier rocket with a cargo ship, is unlikely whether it will objectively determine the causes of the accident. Most likely, as has happened more than once in Russian practice, they will find "scapegoats" who will be punished approximately and reported to the top about the measures taken. Although this will not make civil aviation flights or spacecraft launches any more safe.
In the column "total"
Now it is worth summarizing the proposals, the implementation of which will raise the development and implementation of aerospace systems to a level worthy of Russia.
1. Urgently get involved in the negotiation process at the UN and ICAO level and achieve recognition by all states of the world that an altitude of 100 kilometers and below from the surface of the Earth is the area of operation of the Chicago Convention on International Civil Aviation.
2. To create on the basis of the Military-Industrial Collegium and Scientific Research Center. N. Ye. Zhukovsky, a state regulatory body in the aviation and rocket and space industries, similar to NASA.
3. To create on the basis of the Federal Air Transport Agency a body for state regulation of flight safety. To entrust him with all the safety functions stipulated by Russia's obligations under the Chicago Convention, as well as responsibility for ensuring the safety of flights of suborbital, orbital and other commercial aviation, aerospace and rocket-space vehicles (similar to the FAA).
4. Form an independent state body to investigate incidents, accidents and disasters in aerospace transport in accordance with the requirements of the Chicago Convention, aimed not at punishing the perpetrators, but at preventing accidents. Ideally, this could be a state body for investigating incidents, accidents and disasters not only in aerospace transport, but also in railway, sea and river and pipeline commercial transport, for example, under the Security Council of the Russian Federation (by analogy with the NTSB).
5. To entrust the created on the basis of the Military-Industrial Commission and the Scientific Research Center. N. Ye. Zhukovsky, the state regulatory body in the aviation and rocket and space industry to develop a unified program of activities in the industry for the near future and for a long period with annual adjustments and mandatory inclusion in it of the subprogram for the development of aerospace launch systems.
