Well, it's explicitly described as "Apollo derived" in the post where the plan for Freedom first comes up - supporting a crew of two on a lunar mission. My best guess, based on how it looks in the renders of the expanded Skylab, is that the Freedom capsule is about the same diameter as Apollo...
IIRC, the CRVs are actually using something closer to the Skylab Rescue configuration, ie., 5-seats at the cost of limited storage for supplies internally - perfect for use as a station lifeboat, because if the crew ever have to board it and undock from Skylab they're coming home ASAP anyways...
It also helps that this concept for Jupiter is effectively SLS come early - which, for all its flaws, is a capable rocket.
Are we still going to get COTS in this timeline? And if we do, is that going to get expanded into a Commercial Crew Program down the road? Even if NASA settles on the...
I'm honestly curious if someone could catalog all of the projects axed as a result of the 1957 Defence White Paper, and then see if it's plausible those projects could still have been useful had they been continued.
Another option might just be to have two engines, and cycle between them - when one is too covered by ice to run efficiently, you switch over to the other and use a portion of the energy from the second engine to run a defrost cycle on the first engine (or the heat exchanger used to boil the...
Just got around to reading the most recent updates, and that's a solid YIKES.
With hindsight, I could see an obvious modification to the nuclear powered stations being deliberately configuring the reactors to be recovered by Baikal orbiters - ie., have Tsiklon be fitted with a new sarcophagus...
I mean, one option for reducing ice build up could just be deliberately making the engine shake/rattle while in operation - ie., shake the ice off as soon as it starts forming on the exterior.
There's a real vehicle with a similar-ish layout in a Russian tank museum (videos about it can be found on YouTube) but I don't recall it having any form of turret - and even if it did, I don't think there were ever plans for a Panther or Panzer IV turreted version.
Well, in all fairness it kind of has to be - it's a horizontal landing spaceplane that needs to be launched atop a conventional launch vehicle, which guarantees that it's going to be aerodynamically tricky no matter what the designers do.
Not to mention even basic napkin math tells you that a faster carrier is better - higher speed in the water means a higher airspeed over the deck, especially when turned into the wind, which in turn improves the performance of aircraft launched by the carrier (higher MTOW/shorter takeoff run)...
So, based on how things were described, I'm guessing that Starlab was a proper Wet Workshop configuration? Did they use a more "To Boldly Go"-esque mounting system for flooring and hardware this go around, or did they just update the Wet Workshop plans from the original Skylab proposals?
Those fins absolutely are going to get crushed when the tank is rolling onto the beach, unless they fold the other direction when force is applied - which probably isn't going to help them with getting off the beaches, even if the extra firepower does increase the ability of the troops to break...
My guess would be that N11 was sacrificed so Mishin's design bureau could focus on making N-1 reliable enough for regular missions, as well as getting the support for the upgrades it desperately needs to keep up with weight growth on future payloads - as well as limited engine output from...
Still using the "airlock built into the MDA" approach? Or is that just until it can be expanded with an external airlock? I can't imagine NASA would be too happy to have to have non-EVA crew decamp to the ACRV every time the airlock needs to be used, after all.