ApolloHoax.net
Apollo Discussions => The Reality of Apollo => Topic started by: Bryanpoprobson on December 01, 2014, 01:19:42 PM
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the Russians had succeeded in getting to the Moon first. I often think that the US regarded Apollo as merely a race, once won, the need and drive had vanished. If the Russians had won the race to the, moon would they have had more incentive for further missions and to build Lunar Bases, would NASA have been forced to follow suit?
An additional comment, I noticed in an archived post, that Jay had mentioned an investigation into spies in the US space program. Was anything ever dug up about that? What a great thing to throw at hoax believers, the fact that the USSR had spies in a position to verify the authenticity of Apollo. :)
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Build a moon base? When we hadn't even gotten to the moon? How long would it have take to design a habitat and a new lander that could stay on the surface that long? How many Saturn V launches would building a moon base take? With a president that was not NASA budget friendly? As you can guess, my opinion is that the US would not have built a base.
Most likely is NASA would have continued on with the same program. Because the hardware was better the emphasis would have been to do science just as NASA did anyway. Full tilt better than one or two skimpy Russian one man "touch and go" landings. Because it seem unlikely they could have put together anything approaching an Apollo scale scientific exploration program.
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There's an Australian sci fi magazine called "Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine". In one of its earlier editions it had a story about a Soviet lunar landing mission which replaces Luna 15, and just makes it to the Moon ahead of Apollo 11. The author knew his stuff, using appropriate technology (and throwing in realistic problems for the technology!).
In the story the upshot of the Soviet success is - actually I don't remember, but either the Americans or the Soviets commit to a manned landing on Mars...
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I often think that the US regarded Apollo as merely a race, once won, the need and drive had vanished.
This isn't just your opinion, it's an established fact. To Congress and most of the public, Apollo was simply a race with the Russians.
It's interesting that the Russians kept trying until the mid 1970s, when they finally gave up after a 0-3 record in test flights of the N1. Then they denied they were ever in the race in the first place, a pretty transparent lie that wasn't officially acknowledged until the USSR fell apart.
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Kennedy called James Webb into the Oval Office and reminded him that it was a race. The President expressed concern about "scope creep" and admonished NASA to keep the project true to its "land a man on the Moon and return him safely to the Earth" roots.
However it's clear the U.S. and the Soviet Union took different approaches to winning. The early Soviet space program was all about "firsts," even meaningless ones. It could be somewhat grossly characterized as a set of publicity stunts, whereas NASA took a bit longer to engineer a system they thought would win. Keep in mind Apollo started out before Kennedy as an infrastructure for exploring the solar system, and it was envisioned that it would do more than just land on the Moon.
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Kennedy called James Webb into the Oval Office and reminded him that it was a race. The President expressed concern about "scope creep" and admonished NASA to keep the project true to its "land a man on the Moon and return him safely to the Earth" roots.
However it's clear the U.S. and the Soviet Union took different approaches to winning. The early Soviet space program was all about "firsts," even meaningless ones. It could be somewhat grossly characterized as a set of publicity stunts, whereas NASA took a bit longer to engineer a system they thought would win. Keep in mind Apollo started out before Kennedy as an infrastructure for exploring the solar system, and it was envisioned that it would do more than just land on the Moon.
Did you note my comment on the original post regarding "spies in the Apollo program?"
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Kennedy called James Webb into the Oval Office and reminded him that it was a race. The President expressed concern about "scope creep" and admonished NASA to keep the project true to its "land a man on the Moon and return him safely to the Earth" roots.
However it's clear the U.S. and the Soviet Union took different approaches to winning. The early Soviet space program was all about "firsts," even meaningless ones. It could be somewhat grossly characterized as a set of publicity stunts, whereas NASA took a bit longer to engineer a system they thought would win.
I've often heard it said that the Soviets were ahead in the "space race" and that gradually, the USA reined them in and overtook them, but I think the point about "meaningless firsts" belies that. Was there really a race to put the first satellite in orbit; was there really a race to put the first dog/chimp/man in space, or was it actually race to be first to do it properly and safely.
IMO, the USA was ahead in that last race from the get-go, and never relinquished it, although some might argue that they have now.
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Did you note my comment on the original post regarding "spies in the Apollo program?"
Why put spies in a program as open and public as Apollo?
Yes, I know that Apollo did have some important, short-lived secrets such as the initial decision to go all the way to the moon with Apollo 8. Numerous Apollo documents were once classified Confidential, but most were declassified in their entirety fairly quickly or just weren't all that relevant to the big picture of what Apollo was doing and where they were going. (The answer to that last one was pretty well known: the moon.)
I would have preferred no classification at all, but at least I get the impression that when classification was used in Apollo, it was generally intended to keep the Russians from directly applying its work to beating us in the race (and it was a race). I.e., unlike most government classification it wasn't intended to cover up misbehavior, incompetence or criminality.
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Being the USSR, there would have been a interest in assuring the US space program was what it claimed to be and not a ruse to threaten to deliver the ultimate bomb on them. The Apollo program started less than a decade after the death of Stalin, one of the great paranoids in history.
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The spy comment was in a thread I was reading on here, in the archives. Searching brings up too many results. :( Jay made the comment and promised a follow-up, I just wondered if there was.
Found it, it was on a thread in the archives called "Radio signals from the moon"
http://apollohoax.proboards.com/post/9410
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I've often heard it said that the Soviets were ahead in the "space race" and that gradually, the USA reined them in and overtook them, but I think the point about "meaningless firsts" belies that. Was there really a race to put the first satellite in orbit; was there really a race to put the first dog/chimp/man in space, or was it actually race to be first to do it properly and safely.
IMO, the USA was ahead in that last race from the get-go, and never relinquished it, although some might argue that they have now.
The only reason the Soviets got out of the gate quicker than the Americans is because they had a big booster, the R-7, flying first. The Americans only had small intermediate range missiles and couldn't match the Soviet's lift capability, thus were limited in the scope of missions they could fly. Once the Atlas and Titan became fully operational the Americans quickly overtook the Soviets, surged ahead, and never looked back. Even then the Atlas and Titan were smaller missiles than the R-7. It wasn't until Saturn that the Americans had the bigger launch vehicle.
The Soviets had an early lead in lift capability, but it didn't have anything to do with them having a better space program. It was born out of the military situation existing at the time. The Americans had better bomb making technology and could produce less massive bombs. They also had bases in Europe to stage their missiles. The Americans also had a bigger and better bomber aircraft fleet. All these things led to different strategies in terms of missile construction. The Soviets had to have a big booster to carry their heavier bombs all the way to America from the Soviet Union, which led to the R-7. The Americans didn't need anything that big. Thus, when the two sides turned their military missiles into space launch vehicles, the Americans trailed. The Saturn was the first large rocket designed and built from the beginning as a space launch vehicle. Everything before that were re-purposed military missiles.
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Even then the Americans could possibly have beat the Russians with the first satellite launch, if they had given Von Brauns Juno (Jupiter C derivative) rocket the nod. They actually expressly forbade Von Braun from attempting a satellite launch, giving priority to the Vanguard rocket instead. Von Braun stated that he could have launched a satellite as early as 1956 had he been given permission.
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Von Braun was not yet an American citizen. He was still a Nazi prisoner of war, for all intents and purposes. There was enough objection to America's first satellite being launched by a "Nazi" rocket that Von Braun was essentially out of the loop until the embarrassment reached a critical point. The joke goes that he pushed the Launch button before the ink was dry on his citizenship papers.
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What if Sergei Korolev had not died on the operating table? I doubt the USSR would have gotten there first, but would it be plausible they might have gotten there then?
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Would he have been able to solve their metallurgy issue?
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Would he have been able to solve their metallurgy issue?
What issue was this? I'd be interested to know.
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The NK-33 debaucle versus the RD-180 suggests a very definite maybe.
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I watched "Apollo 17: The Untold Story" last night on Nat Geo. Very, very interesting even if the narrator tended to drone somewhat. They brought up an interesting question similar to what has been asked here.
If America had been first to launch a satellite into orbit, and first to put a man in orbit, how would that have changed the space race? Would Apollo have ever even taken place?
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I have often said that I think it might be possible that Eisenhower deliberately prevented the Juno launch from achieving orbit, in order to allow the Soviets to gain first place. This would have been in response to the 'Open Skies' proposal, which the Soviets rejected. If the Soviets achieved orbit first and then made public hay of it, they would then be forced to either say they violated various countries airspace or that orbit was open to everyone.
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The NK-33 debaucle versus the RD-180 suggests a very definite maybe.
Could you elaborate, please?
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The NK-33 blew up in the Antares. Most likely caused by failure of the turbine casing, which in turn was most likely caused by a metallurgical degradation over time of the "magic" alloys that ordinarily would have kept the hot, oxygen-rich gases from breaching it.
In contrast the later RD-180, another expression of the same high-pressure. oxygen-rich, staged-combustion design, seems to work reasonably well.
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Jay, I know about the oxygen preburners on the NK-33 and RD-180. What I don't understand is why. What is to be gained by creating what is obviously a very difficult materials engineering problem?
The SSMEs used hydrogen preburning, which made perfect sense. The preburners produced a lot of hot, gaseous hydrogen (plus a little steam) to drive both fuel and oxidizer turbines. Sure, the hydrogen mass flow rate is a lot lower than the oxygen flow rate, but the thought of having to develop turbine blades to withstand a torrent of hot oxygen is chilling, er, uh, daunting.
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The marginal increase in performance -- well, thermodynamic efficiency in a greater power-to-weight ratio -- is apparently enough to motivate designers to shift the complexity of engine design over to exotic and unpredictable materials. Go figure.
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Jay, I know about the oxygen preburners on the NK-33 and RD-180. What I don't understand is why. What is to be gained by creating what is obviously a very difficult materials engineering problem?
The SSMEs used hydrogen preburning, which made perfect sense. The preburners produced a lot of hot, gaseous hydrogen (plus a little steam) to drive both fuel and oxidizer turbines. Sure, the hydrogen mass flow rate is a lot lower than the oxygen flow rate, but the thought of having to develop turbine blades to withstand a torrent of hot oxygen is chilling, er, uh, daunting.
These are LOX/RP-1 engines...an engine with a fuel rich preburner would probably not run long before being choked with coking deposits in the turbine and injectors.
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Ah, good point. Why didn't I realize that? The SSME burns LH2 so its fuel preburners don't have that problem.
I suspect that even gas-generator-cycle engines burning RP-1/LOX have coking problems since they also have to run fairly rich to keep the turbine temperatures down. Just not as rich as a fuel preburner.
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I suspect that even gas-generator-cycle engines burning RP-1/LOX have coking problems since they also have to run fairly rich to keep the turbine temperatures down. Just not as rich as a fuel preburner.
They also have a simpler downstream path...through the turbine and out the exhaust pipe.
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The Russians also operate the preburners of their hypergolic staged-combustion engines oxygen-rich, such as the RD-253, which burns UDMH and nitrogen tetroxide. I'm not sure why they choose to do this, unless there just isn't an adequate mass of UDMH to drive the turbopumps (there's more than twice as much N2O4 as there is UDMH).
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These are LOX/RP-1 engines...an engine with a fuel rich preburner would probably not run long before being choked with coking deposits in the turbine and injectors.
Yeah, I wrote something to that effect somewhere on this forum recently. Coking and sooting are problems even at the gas-generator mixing ratio. So no, I wouldn't run a hydrocarbon-fueled engine with a fuel preburner unless told to.
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The Russians also operate the preburners of their hypergolic staged-combustion engines oxygen-rich, such as the RD-253, which burns UDMH and nitrogen tetroxide. I'm not sure why they choose to do this, unless there just isn't an adequate mass of UDMH to drive the turbopumps (there's more than twice as much N2O4 as there is UDMH).
Yeah, those design decisions almost always come down to narrow margins in molecular chemistry and thermodynamics, usually aimed at performance and efficiency. The advantage of having solved the metallurgical problem of stainless steel exhaust lines to the powerhead that don't themselves erupt in flames under hot, high-pressure oxygen would be that you'll have practically solved it for all propellant formulations that use oxygen.
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I'm not a metallurgist, so I have no real idea how to make metals contain extremely hot, extremely fast streams of nearly pure oxygen. All I can think of is a refractory ceramic coating of some sort, but even if it won't burn or melt you still have to keep it from physically eroding.
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I'm not sure either. I know some metallurgists out at ATK Wasatch Propulsion, so next time I'm out there I'll bring it up.
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I have recently started re-reading (after many years) Arthur C. Clarke's "Profiles of the Future" (2nd edition revised in 1973). I find it amusing, fascinating and eye-opening to see how a future "profiled" in 1973 has panned out 40+ years later.
At the end of the first chapter (called Hazards of Prophesy: Failure of Nerve) Clarke wrote about his take on one of the reasons why he thought the Soviets got the initial jump on the USA in Space.
"When Dr (Vannevar) Bush spoke to the Senate Committee in December of the same year (1945), the only important secret about the atomic bomb was that it weighed five tons. Anyone could then work out in his head , as Lord Cherwelll had done, that a rocket to deliver it across intercontinental ranges would have to weigh about 200 tons - as against the mere fourteen tons of the them awe-inspiring V2.
The outcome was the greatest Failure of Nerve in all history, which changed the future of the world - indeed, of many worlds. Faced with the same facts and the same calculations, American and Russian technology took two separate roads. The Pentagon - accountable to the taxpayer - virtually abandoned long-range rockets for almost half a decade, until the development of thermonuclear bombs made it possible to build warheads almost five times lighter, yet fifty times more powerful than the amusing firecracker that was dropped on Hiroshima.
The Russians had no such inhibitions. Faced with the need for a 200 ton rocket, they went right ahead and built it. By the time it was perfected, it was no longer required for military purposes, for Soviet physicists had by-passed the Unites States' billion-dollar tritium bomb cul-de-sac and gone straight to the far cheaper lithium bomb. Having backed the wrong horse in rocketry, the Russians then entered it for a far more important event - and won the race to space."
Comments?
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I've heard something like this many times, ie, the USSR had heavy nuclear weapons so it needed heavy lift rockets while the US quickly developed lighter weapons so it didn't need to develop heavy-lift rockets. It's always seemed true.
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It also gave a major boost to developing computers using printed and integrated circuits, not to mention allowing the perceptual shift of a smaller computer that, while it could not do a lot, could do enough.