Americans have something besides a trampoline for space travel. Where is our new generation ship?
Five years ago, at the International Air Show in Zhukovsky, visitors saw a mock-up of a new generation of Russian spacecraft. How far have its creators come in the implementation of the project? We asked one of the organizers of our rocket and space industry, Hero of Socialist Labor, ex-minister Boris BALMONT to comment on the situation. It is also interesting because the first launch of the newest interplanetary 20-ton American spacecraft Orion is scheduled for December 4.
In Florida, at the launch site of the Air Force cosmodrome (Cape Canaveral), a 700-tonne Delta-4 missile of a 22-storey building has already been installed. It stands inside a 100-meter service tower. From the open side of the tower, three huge rocket boosters are clearly visible, connected to each other in a packet scheme.
Now, in the remaining month and a half, test checks of all systems of the carrier will be carried out. An important feature: the new rocket and space complex has an emergency rescue system (SAS), which was not on the shuttles. In the event of an accident, the SAS will instantly separate the ship from the rocket at the start or taking off, take the module with the crew to the side and ensure the landing.
To begin with, Orion will make two orbits around the Earth in 4.5 hours. An elliptical, highly elongated orbit with a maximum distance of 5, 8 thousand km (15 times higher than the ISS trajectory) was chosen for the flight. A ship for deep space is being tested, and therefore Orion is sent to the most dangerous radiation belts of Van Allen, 4 thousand kilometers from Earth. It is important to find solutions to protect crews and equipment from powerful radiation streams. Incidentally, the manned Apollo, which flew over 40 years ago with astronauts to the moon, only crossed the Van Allen belts. Now the new ship will have to pass a more serious radiation test, having spent much more time in extreme conditions.
Another important task is to check the new thermal protection of the ship. "Orion" before returning to Earth will accelerate to 32 thousand km per hour.
The ship will enter the dense layers of the earth's atmosphere, taking upon itself a terrible blow of incandescent plasma (its temperature will reach 2, 2 thousand degrees). Approximately the same awaits the ship after the flight to the Moon. The designers want to be convinced of the viability of Orion in this mode of descent in the Earth's atmosphere. Having extinguished the speed, the ship will smoothly descend by parachute and splash down in the Pacific Ocean.
It is also necessary to check the performance of the new computer, producing 480 million operations per second. This is 25 times faster than today's computers on the ISS and 4 thousand times faster than the great-grandfathers who worked on the Apollo …
Immediately I recall the recent joke of the vice-president of the Russian government Dmitry Rogozin about a trampoline on which the Americans will have to throw their crews to the ISS in case of refusal to cooperate with Roscosmos. As you can see, the United States has something besides the trampoline - it is consistently implementing its space program. And where is the Russian spacecraft of the new generation, the layout of which was presented in Zhukovsky at MAKS-2009? Perhaps, without much publicity, it has already been manufactured in the workshops of RSC Energia, has passed ground tests and will soon be launched into space.will compete with Orion? No, our ship is not only not made in an integrated flight version - it is not known at all when it will be possible to start assembling it.
- I am bitter to see the growing lag of the national cosmonautics, - Boris Balmont says bluntly. - Moreover, we had the opportunity to create a new promising ship, ahead of competitors. Scientific, technical, production potential, experience - we still have all this in spite of everything. The weakest link is ineffective management of the industry, failure in the organization of work. Endless approvals, development of programs and development strategies, competitions … There is a lot of fuss, but this is the appearance of work, and the efficiency is extremely low.
And indeed! In 2004-2006, work was underway on the Clipper reusable spacecraft project, which was also initially interested in the European Space Agency. Interest dried up, they decided to create an interorbital tug "Parom". And in 2009, a new competition was announced to create a promising ship. The Energia Corporation became the winner. We have developed more than a hundred terms of reference, prepared contracts with subcontractors. Made aerodynamic models: But now - a new twist. Today they say that it would be necessary to make a ship that can fly to Mars right away. And again approvals, paperwork. As a result, unmanned tests were postponed from 2015 to a later date. And there is no certainty that it will be possible to send the ship on its maiden flight at least in 2018. Moreover, in today's conditions, when the state has very tight finances.
It is not very clear how this whole mechanism works, Balmont wonders. - Enterprise "Energia" is now subordinate to the United Rocket and Space Corporation. The general direction of development is determined by Roskosmos. Specific assignments are also received from Roskosmos. And how the money is distributed, for whom the last word is - my interlocutors, by no means ordinary workers in the industry, do not understand. Now there are two chiefs at the factories - the president and the general designer, and there are two governing bodies in the industry. There are many bosses, but little sense. Personnel leapfrog, heads of enterprises are changing. And reforms, reforms …
Again, comparisons cannot be avoided. In the USA, a contract with the Lockheed Martin concern for the development, construction and testing of the Orion spacecraft was signed in 2006. Not everything went smoothly either. Barack Obama in 2010 even proposed to abandon the program. Nevertheless, after 8 years, the ship is ready for flight tests.
- Why are private foreign space companies quickly achieving results? - asks Boris Balmont. - Yes, there are much less bureaucratic barriers, highly qualified specialists are involved, the process is skillfully organized and the money is spent rationally. Engineer, entrepreneur, billionaire Elon Musk took up space and founded SpaceX just 12 years ago. And today his company has presented the world with a reusable Dragon (so far it flies in a cargo version to the ISS), as well as two good rockets, and Falcon 9 has significant competitive advantages over other carriers. At the same time, Musk's costs are many times less than for similar developments with us, and it is better not to compare the terms at all … For the sake of objectivity, I must say that the first space "private traders" began to appear in Russia: Dauria Aerospace, Sputniks "," Selenokhod "… It would be good for the state to create a favorable treatment for such firms. And Roscosmos officials could learn from NASA how to organize large-scale support for private companies. And most importantly: the reforms should not confuse the situation in the industry, but solve the accumulated problems. It is not visible yet.
By the way, when the Soviet Union in 1976 began to create the super-heavy rocket Energia (mass -2.4 thousand tons, it put a 100-ton cargo into orbit), more than 1,000 enterprises, over 1 million people, joined the work. All the threads of the project converged on the Interdepartmental Coordination Council, of which Boris Balmont was appointed chairman.
“Each manager then took full responsibility in his area of work and made decisions within the framework of a common task,” recalls my interlocutor. - There was the strictest personal responsibility. And a thousand enterprises acted as a single mechanism. 11 years later, Energia launched into space. Let me emphasize: the costs of its creation were much lower than those of the current "Angara" of incomparable power, which has been created for more than 20 years …
