Well, this is a little annoying. Scott Ott seems to get it, though.
16 thoughts on “Soviet Lander Commentary”
Oy…. I’ve never watched PJTV before, and I clearly have not missed much. The quote “Did IQs just drop sharply while I was away?” springs to mind.
Well, considering Orion survived the Authorization Act as part of the PoR, and that it now looks like at a minimum, SpaceX and Boeing will be producing Crew Transport to Orbit services under this new authorization, I posit we have more manned space programs under development now than since the 60’s, mabey ever.
This is not counting SpaceDev and the Dream Chaser(which I hope makes it too), anything Orbital might do and all the suborbital stuff in the works. Somebody really needs to make a scorecard. Mabey if I get time over Thanksgiving, I will do just that with a little input from this site.
I just hope this does not turn into another rehash of the 80/90s. You know, Conestoga, Rotary Rocket, etc. Scaled Composites and SpaceX have already done some major achievements but the products and services offered, as well as the market for them, are still not mature enough.
As for the comments in the video it was mostly typical jingoistic nonsense. Who put the first commercial human customer in space? The Russians. Microwave oven technology was an offshoot of radar research which had nothing to do with Apollo.
I had already seen the prototypes for the Soviet lunar lander a couple of years back on Astronautix.
The Saturn V rocket was a technological marvel in its day. It was also an example of complex systems engineering done properly. The N-1 was an example of how not to engineer a complex system even if it had some interesting concepts like the staged combustion Lox/Kerosene engines.
I don’t understand what they think is so strange about the Russian lander; theirs, like ours, was built by a government design bureau; ours only looks “normal” because we’re used to seeing it in the history books. People certainly thought it looked bizarre at the time. The Russian lander looks like it has a module from a soyuz mated to a propulsion stage; this would make sense for a lander going back and forth between lunar orbit and the lunar surface.
Trying to compare it to a suborbital rocket plane, which has to be aerodynamic, is like comparing apples and oranges.
I don’t get all the hatin’ on the Soviet lander design, either. Viewed objectively, the Apollo LM is pretty freaky-looking, and it was CONSIDERABLY more flimsy than the Soviet design. I wonder if their reluctance to send cosmonauts to the Moon in a spaceship literally made of tinfoil cost them the prize?
Another point – Those images of the Soviet lunar lander are clearly not in the condition they would have flown in. There would have been insulation covers, etc. The final product might not have looked too far off our lunar lander. Or it might have looked more like Soyuz – covered with green insulation layers. If you strip off the insulation off a Soyuz it probably looks fairly similar to that lander.
This is school yard ridicule. Back when that Russian Mig landed in Japan they found it had riveted steel. It only had titanium on the leading edges that needed it. That’s a perfectly good solution. It had enough performance we considered it a real threat which it might have been.
Cars today all look alike and I can’t tell them apart (although a Jaguar always looks sexy to me.) They didn’t start out looking all alike. Creative people will always come up with different ideas.
One good point was that nothing happens without motivation.
The hardware shown in the video resembles a lot of the early Apollo concepts. The Soviets froze their designs earlier than we did, but their failure was in the launch vehicle side. The N-1 (the Soviet equivalent of the Saturn V) failed four out of four times.
The commentators actually have a fairly good take on the subject, given their limited knowledge. The LA guy is the least of the bunch, however.
I’ve been reviewing the Soyuz in some depth of late, and if I were the FAA, and had to license it for human transport, I would say no f*****g way. It’s a 60’s vintage death trap, and can’t fulfill any of the objectives of science on the ISS. NASA bought off on flying astronauts on Soyuz because it was the only Shuttle alternative. It would be extremely difficult for SpaceX to do worse.
“I’ve been reviewing the Soyuz in some depth of late, and if I were the FAA, and had to license it for human transport, I would say no f*****g way. It’s a 60’s vintage death trap, and can’t fulfill any of the objectives of science on the ISS.”
What science objectives does it need to fulfill??? It’s a people transport – nothing else. That’s all it was designed to do. You can’t compare it to the Shuttle that way.
“What science objectives does it need to fulfill???”
Returning experiments to earth, for a start. In it’s entire history, Soyuz hasn’t brought back a single experiment from space. It can’t do so, and never will be able to do so. That negates its usefulness in supporting research on ISS.
By the way, it also poses a significant risk of injury to anyone on board even during a nominal landing. Would you ride on something having such a feature?
What I don’t understand is how you can watch shit like this (or the even worse shit on Fox News) and come away thinking there is something wrong with intellectuals and ranting about the “liberal media”. These guys are fucktards and do nothing but demonstrate that your side is full of morons. “Laughing At Obama volume 1” may be a fantastic book full of interesting content but I’d never read it because I’ve seen the author demonstrate on video that he’s stupid.
My favorite part is where they talk about space tourism as if its an American achievement. Don’t tell them that so far the only space tourists who have actually flown have done so on Russian hardware, which I’m sure they would also consider “ugly”.
Rand, you should drop in on their studio and set them straight… they are not that far away from you…
Trent,
Ask Juan Williams about these so-called ‘intellectuals’.
So, they’ve get some things wrong about an esoteric subject. The ‘intellectuals’ you laud are wrong about 80% of the stuff they believe.
Which is worse? Being wrong about Soviet-era lunar tech or the whole global warming scam?
You wan’t to know why Fox is a popular as it is while being crap? Well, in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
The idiocy of the inbred intellectual class has set the bar for them very, very low.
Mike, I hate to tell you this, but our good friend Rand is considered an intellectual by any standard. So am I.. most likely, so are you. Anyone who cares about whether or not they *know what they’re talking about before opening their mouth* is an intellectual in my book.
Oy…. I’ve never watched PJTV before, and I clearly have not missed much. The quote “Did IQs just drop sharply while I was away?” springs to mind.
Well, considering Orion survived the Authorization Act as part of the PoR, and that it now looks like at a minimum, SpaceX and Boeing will be producing Crew Transport to Orbit services under this new authorization, I posit we have more manned space programs under development now than since the 60’s, mabey ever.
This is not counting SpaceDev and the Dream Chaser(which I hope makes it too), anything Orbital might do and all the suborbital stuff in the works. Somebody really needs to make a scorecard. Mabey if I get time over Thanksgiving, I will do just that with a little input from this site.
I just hope this does not turn into another rehash of the 80/90s. You know, Conestoga, Rotary Rocket, etc. Scaled Composites and SpaceX have already done some major achievements but the products and services offered, as well as the market for them, are still not mature enough.
As for the comments in the video it was mostly typical jingoistic nonsense. Who put the first commercial human customer in space? The Russians. Microwave oven technology was an offshoot of radar research which had nothing to do with Apollo.
I had already seen the prototypes for the Soviet lunar lander a couple of years back on Astronautix.
The Saturn V rocket was a technological marvel in its day. It was also an example of complex systems engineering done properly. The N-1 was an example of how not to engineer a complex system even if it had some interesting concepts like the staged combustion Lox/Kerosene engines.
I don’t understand what they think is so strange about the Russian lander; theirs, like ours, was built by a government design bureau; ours only looks “normal” because we’re used to seeing it in the history books. People certainly thought it looked bizarre at the time. The Russian lander looks like it has a module from a soyuz mated to a propulsion stage; this would make sense for a lander going back and forth between lunar orbit and the lunar surface.
Trying to compare it to a suborbital rocket plane, which has to be aerodynamic, is like comparing apples and oranges.
I don’t get all the hatin’ on the Soviet lander design, either. Viewed objectively, the Apollo LM is pretty freaky-looking, and it was CONSIDERABLY more flimsy than the Soviet design. I wonder if their reluctance to send cosmonauts to the Moon in a spaceship literally made of tinfoil cost them the prize?
Another point – Those images of the Soviet lunar lander are clearly not in the condition they would have flown in. There would have been insulation covers, etc. The final product might not have looked too far off our lunar lander. Or it might have looked more like Soyuz – covered with green insulation layers. If you strip off the insulation off a Soyuz it probably looks fairly similar to that lander.
This is school yard ridicule. Back when that Russian Mig landed in Japan they found it had riveted steel. It only had titanium on the leading edges that needed it. That’s a perfectly good solution. It had enough performance we considered it a real threat which it might have been.
Cars today all look alike and I can’t tell them apart (although a Jaguar always looks sexy to me.) They didn’t start out looking all alike. Creative people will always come up with different ideas.
One good point was that nothing happens without motivation.
The hardware shown in the video resembles a lot of the early Apollo concepts. The Soviets froze their designs earlier than we did, but their failure was in the launch vehicle side. The N-1 (the Soviet equivalent of the Saturn V) failed four out of four times.
The commentators actually have a fairly good take on the subject, given their limited knowledge. The LA guy is the least of the bunch, however.
I’ve been reviewing the Soyuz in some depth of late, and if I were the FAA, and had to license it for human transport, I would say no f*****g way. It’s a 60’s vintage death trap, and can’t fulfill any of the objectives of science on the ISS. NASA bought off on flying astronauts on Soyuz because it was the only Shuttle alternative. It would be extremely difficult for SpaceX to do worse.
“I’ve been reviewing the Soyuz in some depth of late, and if I were the FAA, and had to license it for human transport, I would say no f*****g way. It’s a 60’s vintage death trap, and can’t fulfill any of the objectives of science on the ISS.”
What science objectives does it need to fulfill??? It’s a people transport – nothing else. That’s all it was designed to do. You can’t compare it to the Shuttle that way.
“What science objectives does it need to fulfill???”
Returning experiments to earth, for a start. In it’s entire history, Soyuz hasn’t brought back a single experiment from space. It can’t do so, and never will be able to do so. That negates its usefulness in supporting research on ISS.
By the way, it also poses a significant risk of injury to anyone on board even during a nominal landing. Would you ride on something having such a feature?
What they’re designing these days…
What I don’t understand is how you can watch shit like this (or the even worse shit on Fox News) and come away thinking there is something wrong with intellectuals and ranting about the “liberal media”. These guys are fucktards and do nothing but demonstrate that your side is full of morons. “Laughing At Obama volume 1” may be a fantastic book full of interesting content but I’d never read it because I’ve seen the author demonstrate on video that he’s stupid.
My favorite part is where they talk about space tourism as if its an American achievement. Don’t tell them that so far the only space tourists who have actually flown have done so on Russian hardware, which I’m sure they would also consider “ugly”.
Rand, you should drop in on their studio and set them straight… they are not that far away from you…
Trent,
Ask Juan Williams about these so-called ‘intellectuals’.
So, they’ve get some things wrong about an esoteric subject. The ‘intellectuals’ you laud are wrong about 80% of the stuff they believe.
Which is worse? Being wrong about Soviet-era lunar tech or the whole global warming scam?
You wan’t to know why Fox is a popular as it is while being crap? Well, in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
The idiocy of the inbred intellectual class has set the bar for them very, very low.
Mike, I hate to tell you this, but our good friend Rand is considered an intellectual by any standard. So am I.. most likely, so are you. Anyone who cares about whether or not they *know what they’re talking about before opening their mouth* is an intellectual in my book.